It Could Happen Here Weekly 155

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Alzon Media.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
Hey everybody, Robert Evans here and I wanted to let
you know. This is a compilation episode. So every episode
of the week that just happened is here in one
convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to
listen to in a long stretch if you want. If
you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
there's going to be nothing new here for you, but
you can make your own decisions. Welcome back to it

(00:28):
could happen here, a podcast about it happening here, and
the it that is on everyone's minds right now. This
will be dropping two or three days before the twenty
twenty four election, possibly two or three days before everyone's
life changes substantially. We have no way of knowing. I'm
not optimistic or pessimistic. I have no idea what's going

(00:49):
to happen. But one thing that everyone ought to be
aware of, whether or not Trump wins, is kind of,
to put it bluntly, the man has shooters. And some
of those shooters are literal shooters in that they are
local sheriff's departments, people who call themselves constitutional sheriffs. This
is an organization that's really got off the ground in

(01:10):
twenty twelve, and for more than a decade has been
making inroads with elected Republican leaders, with Republican influencers, with
groups like the Oathkeepers, And these are guys who, in
brief belief, the sheriff is the only is You can
kind of get two versions of this, but generally either
the sheriff is the only legitimate law enforcement authority in
the country or the sheriff is the highest legitimate law

(01:33):
enforcement I've heard it both ways in the country, and
kind of the reason for this basically is a lot
of people in rural areas that are more conservative do
not want to have to listen to or follow the
laws made by people in cities. And more to the point,
they believe that the country has been taken off of
a good track by dangerous liberal communist types, and you know,

(01:57):
they want the ability to use force against you know, migrants,
against the undocumented, against people they see as criminals, against
left wing protesters, and this is kind of a way
for them to argue that they have a right to
do it without any restrictions. Now, the whole story is
much deeper than that, and to talk about what I
think is one of the most important subjects to be

(02:18):
discussing right now, because you know, people laugh a lot
about like the gravy seals or whatever, like, you know,
all these different kind of out of shape militia dudes,
the kind of silly fumbling that we saw a lot
at January sixth, you know, which I think is a mistake,
just because January sixth was still quite dangerous. But when
we're talking about these guys, these are not just like

(02:38):
random yahoo's. These are people who have the force of
law behind them. They're they're armed, they're organized, and they're
quite dangerous. And to talk about how dangerous they are
and where they came from, I want to bring on
a wonderful journalist, investigative reporter and PRA research director Chloe Cooper,
who has co executive produced a podcast on the Constitutional

(03:00):
Sheriff's movement called The Insurgence, which is a co production
of Political Research Associates and Quintero Productions. Chloe, I think
I got that all right, right.

Speaker 3 (03:10):
That was awesome, Yes, thank you, thank you.

Speaker 2 (03:13):
Yeah, So let's talk about this. Where do these guys?
I gave a little brief overview, but like, where do
these guys come from? And you know, what are we
seeing from them and the lead up to this election,
Like what are they?

Speaker 4 (03:24):
What are they going to do? Do you think?

Speaker 5 (03:27):
Yeah, I mean I loved the overview that you just gave.
I think that was such a great way to approach
this all. So the leader of the Constitutional Sheriffs and
Peace Officers Association is this guy named former Sheriff mac
and he was a sheriff in Arizona. But one little
important detail to note is that he actually kind of

(03:50):
got his bearings before that in Nevada, and he was
courted by someone who was basically in very close company
with the John Birch Society.

Speaker 4 (04:01):
Always comes back to them, I.

Speaker 5 (04:04):
Know, he actually becomes a sheriff partially because of some
of the ideas that come out of the John Birch
Society and some of this kind of like emerging trend
that in some cases is actually like skeptical of the
federal government, skeptical of state governments, and then they start
to build out with sheriffs in different parts of the country.

(04:26):
At times, I would say the network has really ebbed
and flowed. But a couple of things that have been
important to note, Like throughout the six years of researching
this network of sheriffs that I think is really important,
especially in advance of the elections. One is that sheriffs
who are aligned with this have really embraced this idea

(04:47):
that you can deputize anybody.

Speaker 4 (04:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (04:52):
So in some cases you have oath keepers and other
militias going to the sheriff to say, hey, you want
to deputize me. But in other cases we've actually followed
sheriffs who are going into churches and saying we're deputizing
all of you.

Speaker 3 (05:04):
Great sheriffs in Virginia.

Speaker 5 (05:07):
When the state passed a law that was like a
law for some gun restrictions, saying don't worry, people were
actually going to deputize you.

Speaker 1 (05:15):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (05:15):
That way you can have whatever gun you want and
carry it anywhere.

Speaker 6 (05:18):
Yes.

Speaker 4 (05:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (05:20):
And also what we started to see is.

Speaker 5 (05:23):
That during the former Trump administration, he was really actually
courting sheriffs around the country, and I think he started
to see networks like CSPOA as like part of his
ground troops. And so I think that there is a
potential danger in sheriffs that are part of this formal
network called the CESPOA or other sheriffs, because there are

(05:44):
hundreds more that just have like aligned with their way
of thinking about things, just playing this role of deputizing
more people and creating this kind of idea of like
a super citizen or people who are kind of aligned
with a far right way of seeing the world, and
then getting deputies to be part of the kind of
ground troops for that.

Speaker 3 (06:05):
Yeah, So that's like one thing.

Speaker 5 (06:07):
And then in addition to that, there is also CSPOA
itself teamed up with this group called True the Vote,
which has mostly since been discredited, but it's been one
of the loudest groups in the country that has been
spreading this idea that the twenty twenty election was stolen
and has been actually working with county sheriffs to try

(06:28):
to investigate voter fraud at the local level, but in
some cases also working with sheriffs to align with vigilante
groups on the border, for example, to intimidate people from
actually voting. And so there's kind of, i would say,
like a multi pronged series of potential risks and dangers

(06:50):
that could play out, particularly from this network in the
coming weeks. One other quick thing I'll note is that
one of the very late things that we saw and
this actually came out of a close kind of colleague
and the movement. Devin Burkhardt, who works at the Institute
for Research and Education on Human Rights, is that he

(07:11):
came across a plan that the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace
Officers Association put.

Speaker 3 (07:15):
Out in Florida.

Speaker 5 (07:16):
And the plan is to essentially resurrect kind of sovereign
citizens style groups in Florida, militia's citizen militias in collaboration
with sheriffs to do kind of old school style like
intimidation of election clerks of people involved in the election process,

(07:39):
and they plan to try to hold tribunals if, for example,
the certification of election goes in the direction they disagree with.
And now, as a hardcore leftist, you may find like,
how what do you actually think about voting and whether
that actually changes things and all of that, And I'm like,
I've had those, you know, thought bubbles in my brain
for a long time also, But I think what we have,
what I've started to see is that the Constitutional Sheriffs

(08:01):
to me represent and also the groups of people who
have aligned with them are actual not just white nationalists,
but people who are neo Confederates. And I think of
it more of like a neo confederacy, and that what
we could see is something like sheriffs actually coming in
confrontation with potentially even police and mayors and governors, and

(08:24):
them representing a different kind of politic, a different type
of way of seeing society. And one person also talked
about how the constitutional what are they really referring to?
Are they referring to? You know, what is it the
organic constitution? Essentially before slavery was abolished, before women had
the right to vote, before the you know, Native Americans
had the right to vote. And so if that's the case,

(08:46):
that that is actually the kind of constitution that they
are upholding and representing, then they are actually been quite
successful in building out different alliances around the country within
a somewhat prominent law enforcement institution that has very little accountability.

Speaker 4 (09:07):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (09:07):
And I so this is where I kind of wind
up in conflict with both liberals and a lot of leftists.
Is I think that the leftists who say like there's
no point in voting are wrong for the same reason
that like I think people who say there's no reason
for civilians to be armed, I don't happen to agree

(09:28):
with that, and I don't happen to agree with it,
because I think if somebody who wants to kill you
has a weapon and you have the ability to either
match that weapon or take it from them, then that's
probably what you should do for the sake of your
own survival. And handing over complete control of the state,
the military, and the police apparatus to the far right
is handing them the most powerful weapon anyone has ever made,

(09:50):
and I just don't think that's wise.

Speaker 7 (09:52):
Now.

Speaker 2 (09:52):
At the same token, the thing that kind of liberals
will bring up a lot, which is that like, just vote,
just get out and vote. What we've been doing, and
Democrats have overwhelmingly outperformed conservatives in elections this century, and
it hasn't been enough, and it hasn't been enough in
part because these people don't care about the law. You know,
there's a moment in your podcast where you know, I like,

(10:14):
you have an expert on who's kind of talking about
the sheriff deputizing you know, seventy people or whatever in
this small town and being like, well, he's not actually
allowed to do that, Like, you know, the actual letter
of the law does not give him the right to
be doing this. He's misinterpreting the Constitution. But the reality
of the situation is that like he's allowed to do

(10:35):
whatever he can get enough people with guns to back
him in doing And that's that's honestly, the root of
all politics is how much force can you bring to bear,
you know, in order to support the reality you want
to support, right, Like, that's that is how it all works.
And the bet the right is making with all of
these different anti democratic strategies they're trying is that no

(10:58):
matter what they do, and no matter how far against
the Constitution, against the rule of law they take things,
they will have the force to support their version of reality.
And I don't know, I don't know how we thread
this needle. Right, The easiest thing is like, well, maybe
if Kamala has a really resounding victory, there just won't

(11:20):
be much for them to fight on right and they'll
kind of back down. But even if she wins in
twenty twenty four, which I think is the better of
the options that we've got, these people aren't going away,
and in fact, I think you are going to see
challenges at local levels. I think it's not impossible that
we wind up with like an anti pope style situation
with the presidency, whereas like Trump holds his own inauguration

(11:43):
and a bunch of state and local leaders say like, no,
we're not recognizing the Harris administration. Donald Trump is our president. Like,
there's a lot of weird shit that could wind up
as the result of this, And I just don't see
us getting out of this purely through electoral methods.

Speaker 4 (11:59):
And I don't know what.

Speaker 2 (12:00):
I don't know how else we handle it, right, because
you also get into this situation of like, Okay, well
we're going to send in the police to crack down
on these sheriffs that are breaking the law. Well what
if the police don't want to do it. What if
the police are more supportive of these sheriffs departments than
they are of you know, they're elected leaders in the
state or at the federal level. You know, what if

(12:21):
the FBI, as has happened in the past, what if
the Feds are unwilling to go up against a bunch
of arm heavily armed quote unquote patriots, you know, like
we saw in you know, some of the Bundy shit
from about a decade ago, right, Like, what if what
if the people who are supposed to handle this for
the citizenry in a situation that abides by the law,

(12:43):
abrogate their responsibility because they're scared you know who backs
us up?

Speaker 3 (12:47):
Then wow, Okay, you just put a lot out.

Speaker 4 (12:50):
There, Sorry, sir, Like I wanted.

Speaker 8 (12:52):
To respond about oh one more diapologist.

Speaker 4 (12:55):
That was my That was my bad that I think.

Speaker 3 (12:58):
Okay, a couple a couple of thoughts.

Speaker 5 (13:00):
One is that I think that far right movements are
very much mobilizing within the government right now, and or
you could say maybe.

Speaker 3 (13:11):
Fascism is trying to mobilize within the government, and.

Speaker 5 (13:15):
So I think you have I think we have to
grapple with that really seriously. And so like in terms
of anti fascist strategies, I don't know what is you know,
what could that actually look like right now, but you
have to grapple with the reality that many far right
movements have made serious, serious headway into not just former president,

(13:35):
but into state legislators, into the judicial system, into sheriff's departments,
and so we are seeing a major fissure right now.
So I don't know how to respond completely to some
of the questions around around electoral politics, but I think

(13:56):
those are really important questions that you're posing and then
just to go pivot back to my wheelhouse, which is
the right and the far right and some of their strategies.
One of the things that you touched on is something
that a number of different far right strategies have been
practicing over the years, and it is about this idea

(14:18):
of both nullification or interposition is what they call it. So,
these constitutional sheriffs, one of the tactics that they have
used over the years is to get sheriffs around the
country to not enforce state laws. Right, and so you
had a whole wave of sheriffs around the country supporting

(14:40):
sanctuaries for the Second Amendment.

Speaker 3 (14:42):
Second Amendment sanctuaries.

Speaker 5 (14:43):
Okay, so they said in their own county, we're not
going to enforce gun restriction laws. And again think about that, however,
you will all good, but they're saying we're not going
to afford us at the county level. Then you had
all these shrifs around the country being like, we're not
going to enforce lockdown orders, We're not going to enforce
mask mandates. What are they practicing. They're practicing them muscle
of exactly what you just talked about.

Speaker 2 (15:02):
Right right, Yeah, I think that's a great way to
look at it too.

Speaker 5 (15:05):
Yeah, independent of what's happening at the federal government, independent
of who wins. Right now, there is like a confederated
situation happening in the country, and these sheriffs and also
others have been very much in those muscles. So it's
not just kind of the militias that will back these

(15:25):
sheriffs that are interested in that type of strategy.

Speaker 3 (15:28):
There's the whole.

Speaker 5 (15:30):
Like all these different movements that come out of the
Christian reconstructionists all talk about interposition, So the idea of
getting sheriffs, other elected officials within the local magistrate to
prop up and kind of protect your politics, regardless of
the state or federal And so now we have this
interesting moment where you've had in recent history, you know,

(15:50):
a former president that actually aligned with some of those politics,
and then you have a bunch of state legislators at
align and so I think understanding some of the strategies
that's important. It's important to understand that you may have
sheriffs that are backing this, and they may not always
align with the police, and they may not always align
with the governor, and so it's going to be a
little different than what we may often think of as

(16:13):
like systemic white supremacy, where all the state and law
enforcement are locking step together. Yeah, I think looking at
the Civil War, as you've done so many different times,
is actually really important, Like how does this reflect patterns
that are more similar actually to you know, the Confederacy
against the North or those or you know, these types
of other moments in US history.

Speaker 2 (16:34):
I'm going to throw to ads and then I'll come back. So, yeah, everybody,
here's here's some maths.

Speaker 4 (16:49):
We're back.

Speaker 2 (16:49):
I wanted to ask, are there cases you can think
of of, like some of these guys, these constitutional sheriffs
who have been voted out and like forced out of office,
had kind of these some of these policies that they've
been pushing reverse, Like do we have do we have
any kind of case studies of times sheriffs went hard

(17:10):
into this ideology and actually lost power as a result
of it.

Speaker 5 (17:15):
So actually, in episode four it touches on it briefly,
but it's a really interesting and kind of rather both
in some ways inspiring but also disturbing.

Speaker 3 (17:25):
Case study to some degree.

Speaker 5 (17:26):
There is a sheriff in North Carolina, Sheriff Jim pendergraph
of Mecklenburg County, and he was really inspired by the
former sheriff Joe or Pio in Arizona, and he is
one of the people who really champions this program called
two eighty seven G which allows sheriffs to basically deputize
their office as ICE federal ICE agents and work with ICE.

(17:50):
So he pilots that in Mecklenburg County and then as
basically picked up by ICE and kind of helps try
to spread it all.

Speaker 3 (17:57):
Throughout the South.

Speaker 5 (17:58):
Something pretty historic and credible happened in some ways in
twenty eighteen where you had black organizers, immigrant rights organizers
pushed for this whole campaign to oust him and a
number of other close by kind of real white supremacist
sheriffs in North Carolina, and they were successful, and there
was a sheriff that ran and a number of black

(18:19):
sheriffs were elected in the state, and some of the
sheriffs ran on not complying with ICE and knock up
and ending this program called the twenty seven G Agreement.
And seemed like this historic moment, this historic win in
the immediate aftermath of that, as opposed to in moments
where you have sheriff saying we're not going to enforce

(18:40):
the lockdown order, and essentially, besides some reporters reporting on it,
nothing happens. Instead, what happened is that within a few
months of this sheriff ending the twenty seven g agreement,
the federal government comes in and issues pretty massive ICE
raids through the county and actually, you know, ends up

(19:01):
locking up over one hundred different people, many of whom
got deported.

Speaker 3 (19:06):
Pretty soon after that, you had.

Speaker 5 (19:07):
A number of other sheriffs in the state, including this
one constitutional sheriff who also had aligned with another large
anti immigrant network called the Federation for American Immigration Reform,
essentially organizing in the state for the state to push
back and push an entire state wide mandate that all
sheriffs comply with ICE. So that's not really an uplifting story.

Speaker 4 (19:27):
Yeah, actually not quite.

Speaker 5 (19:29):
I think what it demonstrates, in a tough way, is
more about this kind of like when sheriffs claim all
of this autonomy at the local level, which they seem
to actually in many cases be able to practice kind
of quite well, you know, when they say they want
to enforce the state wide gun restrictions or mask mandates. Again,

(19:51):
from what I understand and I've been in touch with
some of the leading constitutional lawyers who are trying to
look into it further.

Speaker 3 (19:57):
Yeah, almost nothing happens.

Speaker 5 (19:59):
But then if you have let's say, a sheriff in
this case, you know, not enforcing ending an agreement with ICE,
there's a pretty serious and significant backlash. There has also,
though been you know, there was an amazing campaign to
eventually get sheriff, your former sheriff, you or Pyo out
that took like a ton of organizing by immigrant rights

(20:21):
organizers in Arizona, and that was pretty incredible and sustained,
and there's been a lot of good stuff written about it.
So it's not it's not not the case that people
have built campaigns and have been able to unseat their sheriff.

Speaker 2 (20:36):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, and that's that's good to know,
because like I much prefer the like slow disassembling of
this in a world in which they don't just get
full power and start, you know, going after people with
the wrong signs on their front yards. Been any other
option here, It just it seems like it's one of

(20:56):
those situations where the deck is very much stacked in
their favor, right in part because of how long I
think this problem has been ignored, Like it's really just
now I'm so glad that y'all's podcast is out, because
I still don't think there's nearly enough attention on like
what these sheriffs are doing, because this really is it's

(21:17):
so fundamentally anti democratic in a way that is also
has a great deal of legitimacy in the eyes and
ears of at least a lot of the people living
in these areas, right Like, this is not just some
Yahoo declaring himself, you know, a militia. It's not like
the State of Jefferson movement saying like we're totally going

(21:37):
to secede from California. These are guys with real power.
So I guess kind of where I'd like to close
by is asking do you see a shift in rhetoric
from these people from like twenty twenty to twenty twenty four, Like,
because I feel like right now the rhetoric is much

(21:58):
more like aggressively anti like the enemy within, whereas you know,
in twenty twenty it was much more focused on gun
rights and going after migrants. But I think you would
have a better better sense of that than I do.

Speaker 5 (22:12):
So one thing is that immediately following twenty twenty, there
was some effort on the part of CSPOA to start
to slightly distance themselves from the Oath Keepers.

Speaker 3 (22:23):
Yeah, CSPO and the Oathkeepers.

Speaker 5 (22:25):
I mean, the former Sheriff mac that was the founder
of the CSPOA was on the board of the Oath Keepers,
and Stuart Rhodes, who's been charged with seditious conspiracy for
his role planning J six, has been working closely with
CSPOA for the entire time that CSPOA, for the most part,
has been around, So they were working really, really, really
closely together. So there was a little bit of a

(22:46):
shift after J six where CSPOA tried to distance themselves from.

Speaker 3 (22:51):
The Oath Keepers.

Speaker 5 (22:52):
But I would say that the other thing that you
touched on is also true. As opposed to focusing so
much on kind of nullification of any sort of creating
you know, Second Amendment sanctuaries or those types of things,
they've really leaned hard into investigating election fraud and kind

(23:13):
of stop this deal style rhetoric.

Speaker 4 (23:15):
Oh right, yeah, yeah, yeah, of course.

Speaker 5 (23:17):
And they've really leaned hard in a very frightening way
into more like really harsh and horrible anti immigrant rhetoric.
And so, you know, back literally at their twenty twenty
four spring CSPOA convening, they're talking about the great replacement theory.
They're talking about doing every single thing in their powers
to make sure that there is not election fraud. They're

(23:37):
talking about, you know, making sure that I don't want
to use the terms here, but that undocument people don't
vote in the elections and those types of things. And
then what was really frightening in this plan that I
spoke about briefly in Florida that the state director of
CSPOA released is that they are actually embracing more far

(23:58):
right views overtly in that plan than they have in
any other time actually since they were formed. So they're
explicitly quoting, for any of your nerds out here that
follow this stuff, this guy Matthew Truhella, and he openly
advocated for political violence and was one of the people
who actually justified violence against abortion providers in the nineteen nineties.

(24:21):
They quote him numerous times when talking about setting up
citizen militias to actually essentially target election clerks in the
event that they are not happy with how the elections
turn out. So there is a shift I would say,
in like in multiple directions, some of which are very

(24:41):
very much just in line with Trump and the Trump
campaign to some degree, and some of which are already
kind of, you know, plans for a different type of
insurgence at the local level, and the event that things
don't go in their.

Speaker 8 (24:54):
Direction, yeah, I'm going to throw us to ads once
more and then we will come back and to close
ourselves out.

Speaker 2 (25:01):
So everybody have an ad and we're back, so quobe. Yeah,
just kind of inclosing. What are you kind of keeping
your ear to the ground on as we as we

(25:22):
near election day? Like, what are kind of your do
you have any like particular sort of red lines that
you're keeping an eye out for from these people.

Speaker 5 (25:31):
I am looking closely at Florida and whether some of
the plans that they've actually laid out in Florida might happen.
I'm also keeping a close ear to battleground states where
it seems like a number of these militias are kind
of activated aligned with some sheriff's departments, and I want

(25:53):
to particularly see if there's any type of cases that
kind of show up in terms of either voter intimidation
or those types of things. And it's just been dawning
on me more and more that a number of the
people who are in the CSPA network are actually in
battleground states, and I just wonder to what degree that's

(26:15):
a coincidence or not. I think I'm just trying to
kind of get a sense of how also some of
the framing from these sheriffs continue to shift and whether
they actually become activated, whether they're polsees or citizen militias
that become kind of mobilized as they did to some

(26:35):
degree in twenty twenty.

Speaker 2 (26:37):
Well, that's what I will be keeping an eye on too.
Thank you, thank you so much for coming on. Thank
you for putting together this podcast series everyone listened to.
The Insurgents Sheriffs co produced by Political Researches, Soviets, Political
Research Associates and Quintero Productions. Again, that's the Insurgents Sheriffs

(26:59):
you can find wherever podcasts are found. Thank you for
coming on. Everybody check this out and hopefully we will
have a drop of the podcast and the Bastard Speed
so people can listen in on that too. Thank you
so much, Chloe, thank you so much for having me,
and thank you listeners.

Speaker 6 (27:36):
Welcome to Ikadapa.

Speaker 9 (27:37):
Here a podcast taking place on a day that will
live in infamy and set a country ablaze. I am,
of course referring to Guy Fox Day. I'm your host,
be along with these James here.

Speaker 4 (27:48):
I'm excited.

Speaker 8 (27:49):
I'm excited to share with people some of our national
traditions in the United Kingdom.

Speaker 9 (27:54):
Yeah, and so as a person from the country who
won the Revolution, I get to.

Speaker 6 (27:59):
Do the British episode because should I fucking yes? So
all right.

Speaker 9 (28:09):
The the thing about the Gunpowder plot is that, like
another event occurring in November fifth, there are no heroes
and everyone like sucks shit. Yes, So in order in
order to return to a type of heroes and to
get the context of what the fuck is going on here,
we're taking a digression because I Am never going to

(28:30):
get another chance to talk about this part of history
unless I read a Martin Luther episode. So we're going
all the way back to the origins of the split
between Protestantism and Catholicism.

Speaker 4 (28:41):
Good.

Speaker 9 (28:43):
Yeah, I just I was raised to Lutheran, Okay, so
I got a very very sanitized version of who Martin
Luther was, and then I read about Martin Luther actually
was and was like, holy shit, yeah, different dude, Martin Luther.
And this is the part also that doesn't really get
talked about in the sort of luther tradition because Luthor
and the Lutheran tradition is not a revolutionary tradition. Shall

(29:04):
we say that the thing that Lutheran did, we started
Protestant dism by accident, was accidentally kicked off a genuine,
full scale social revolution in Europe with his attacks on
the Catholic Church. He was not trying to do this,
but he very quickly has has in fact accidentally done this,
and through the sort of breach that he'd opened, and

(29:25):
like the ironclad walls of Catholic monarchical rule, came the
German Peasants Wars. And my favorite dude in this entire
period of time, Flora Gehren.

Speaker 4 (29:35):
The thing. If you're familiar with Flora, good name.

Speaker 6 (29:38):
Oh, this guy rules. This guy fucking rips.

Speaker 9 (29:42):
Okay, there is a Knight who there's a lot of
debate about this, but the sources that I've read a
long time ago, when I was reading about this guy
says that he is the only like they are, the
only like knights, like mounted knights, in like the entire
history of Europe to defect and join a peasant revolution.

Speaker 4 (30:00):
Oh, they're these guys, they're like the yeah Night so something.

Speaker 6 (30:04):
Yeah, the Black Company.

Speaker 9 (30:05):
Yeah yeah, he rules, Yeah, it slaps, So the druid
peasant Wars kickoff and he he he enjoys the peasant
revolution with this sword that is supposedly inscribed with the
words neither cross nor crown.

Speaker 6 (30:19):
Unbelievably based he fucking proto. Yeah. Yeah, and his thing him.

Speaker 9 (30:25):
In the Black Company, which is part like, it's part
Knight's part. Like peasants just basically run around the regia
and kill the ship out of nobles and priests and
like spread the spread, spread the glorious fire of the
peasant revolution.

Speaker 6 (30:38):
What hero, Yeah, it's awesome.

Speaker 8 (30:40):
I found a picture of him strong chin as well,
I will say powerful Joline.

Speaker 9 (30:45):
Yeah. I mean he has an interesting sort of conflicting legacy.
So he gets killed eventually, the giant preasant revolution is
eventually destroyed, and we'll talk about Martin Luther's role in
that in a second. But he has this interesting legacy
where he's taken up as an national hero by like
every kind of non establishment faction of German politics. So

(31:07):
he's like like there's an SS division named after him.
He's also like one of the heroes of East Germany.

Speaker 6 (31:12):
Yeah, I can see this. Yeah, and like this is.

Speaker 9 (31:15):
One of these things were like and like in like
twenty and thirties Germany you will have communist social Democrats
and the Nazis all singing like the same songs about
this guy.

Speaker 6 (31:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 9 (31:23):
You know, he's one of the few sort of redeemable
figures in German history.

Speaker 4 (31:27):
Yeah, yeah, rips.

Speaker 8 (31:29):
Yeah, And this is what happens with national myth making, right,
you just take you sing and make it plastic. It's
like you mold it to whatever you want it to be,
whatever you want you a national story to be.

Speaker 1 (31:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 9 (31:38):
Yeah, And like like this happens with Makno and Ukraine.
This happiest with what we talked was on Margaret Show
and I did. We did a bunch of episodes about
anarchism in Korea, and like they do this with a
bunch of Korean anarchists too. They become like national like
state heroes, and it's like, well, okay, this guy would
have absolutely shot you. Like this is one of these
things where it's like like if you if you if
you were to show if you were to show this

(32:00):
guy the SS, he'd be like, what the fuck?

Speaker 4 (32:03):
Like, get my sewed out again?

Speaker 9 (32:07):
Yeah, it's time, It's time to start the killing again.

Speaker 6 (32:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 9 (32:11):
And very specifically, Geary is like he'd actually had known
Martin Luther back before he like joined the peasants, and
like specifically the fact that they're they're like these peasants
are like sacking castles and killing priests and like the
ruling class very specifically makes is like like the fact
that the ruling class could conceivably be in danger is
the thing that convinces Martin Luther to become I think

(32:33):
I've made this argument on the show before, but I
think he is, at very worst, like the second greatest
kind of revolutionary in like the last four or five
hundred years, because I hold that the greatest kind of
revolutionary is the one who starts the revolution and then realizes,
holy shit, I can't control this and I don't like
where it's going, and then immediately turns kind of revenue
true to kill everyone who was involved.

Speaker 4 (32:53):
No, not like that.

Speaker 6 (32:54):
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 9 (32:57):
So the product of this is that Martin Luther writes
this book kind of long pamphlet called against the murderous,
diving hordes the peasants and aligns himself with the princes. Yeah,
and you know, so then this is the start of
what it's eventually a century.

Speaker 6 (33:18):
You know, there's a couple of centuries of religious war
in here where they get to you.

Speaker 9 (33:21):
But this is in a lot of ways, I think
the beginning of the reproach ma between Catholicism and Protestantism, because.

Speaker 4 (33:29):
Yeah, because class is more important.

Speaker 9 (33:31):
Yeah yeah, and that that actually, weirdly, is it an
extremely important part of the story of Guy fox Day.

Speaker 6 (33:37):
Yes, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 9 (33:39):
And you know, the other thing that Luther's up to
in this period is trying to outflank the Catholics on
anti Semitism, which is pretty hard because like, so this
is the early this is the early like fifteen hundreds, right, yeah,
we are like forty years out from two Spanish monarchs
like expelling the Jews from Spain.

Speaker 4 (33:57):
So like sixteenth century anti Semitism is like peak.

Speaker 9 (34:01):
I don't know, it's it's hard to exactly like tear
list the like periods of anti Semitism, but like, right,
like the Holocaust, the Holocaust is obviously number one, and
then like this period like the Kolmannitsky pull Grom and
like some of the stuff in late nineteen like late
eighteen hundred Russia or like yeah, some like the worst
periods in human history for this.

Speaker 6 (34:22):
Yeah, this is pretty terrific shit.

Speaker 9 (34:23):
And and Luther decides that he's going to like outflank
the Catholics and anti Semitism, and so he writes this
book called on the Jews and their Lies, which is like, yeah,
the first version of this that I wrote had a
joke here about how it could have been written by Hitler.
But then I then I like did it a little
bit of reading about it and was like, holy shit,

(34:44):
this specific thing was used by like Nazi Like, oh,
I'm sure Lutheran pastors specifically justifiedly that the Holocaust in
like thirty eight.

Speaker 6 (34:53):
So that's great. Yeah, how cool.

Speaker 9 (34:57):
Yeah, So this is this is you know, this is
the sort of one of like what you could call
like the Protestant counter revolution against the sort of social
revolutionary forces they kicked off right. Well, the anti Sumptus
like hard line stuff is a bit later. But there's
there's one more kind of big uprising which is very funny,
which is the Anabaptist in Munster who formed this like
oh yeah, pretty base democratic commune that eventually kind of

(35:21):
peers into like a sex cult thing, but like in
a way that's more like people realize they could be
poly than it is like normal sex cult.

Speaker 8 (35:29):
It's people like like emerging from an extremely constrained like yeah,
socialized sexuality.

Speaker 9 (35:38):
I guess, yeah, And you know, so this is like
this is you know, those are the two sorts of
periods of like high of like the highest levels of
class conflict that that are the results of the prosent information.
And this kind of ends with Muonster when they all
get killed by by the monarchies.

Speaker 6 (35:58):
And this is something about the European peasantry. I don't know.

Speaker 9 (36:00):
Maybe one day I'll do a project on why the
European pasantry was so much worse at doing were revolts
in the Chinese peasantry, because the Chinese pasantry knocks off
dynasties all the time, Like the Chinese central government is
like one hundred thousand times more formidable as a force
than like any of these dipshit like Holy Roman Empire principalities.
But the Chinese peasantry did it anyway that I don't know.
The German peasantry fought hard, it doesn't go great for them.

Speaker 4 (36:24):
Yeah, I mean the entirety of the European society is
structured along like the state monopoly on violence and how
oh yeah, like feudalism is like the sene kwandoon of
feudalism is having the ability to kill all your peasants.

Speaker 6 (36:37):
Yeah, and it's it's a it's a it's a system.

Speaker 9 (36:40):
And I think this is something that like, you know,
this is there's reflection of this you see in sort
of like fantasy a lot, right, where like people will
write monarchies and then you'll get like or like it's
using like the science station right where like people people
understand what's bad about a democracy because you've all lived
in one and you know all the ways that it sucks.
But because most of us like haven't lived under an

(37:03):
actual monarchy. Well okay even then even then yeah, compared
to this shit.

Speaker 6 (37:11):
Yeah, like people don't understand how just hideous this shit is.
And this is gonna play a role.

Speaker 9 (37:20):
I mean this this is like again, this is like
the thing that starts the French Revolution where the first
time that not the first time but like when people
actually like start beating the monarchists. Seriously, people have this
tendency to remember like the violence of the French Revolution.
It's like, yeah, there was a lot of shit that
was very bad. But also like these people, these people
that they are fighting, these are these are people who

(37:41):
for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years, anytime anyone
has like even dared to talk back to them, has
just fucking murdered them, their families and everyone around them.

Speaker 6 (37:48):
Yeah, like as horribly as possible.

Speaker 9 (37:51):
Yeah, yeah, and you know, and like as as the
process of their them holding on to their fucking deranged
hereditary power system. And the consequence of this is that
once once these revolutions are put down, sort of Protestantism
versus Catholicism, Like it's not fully this because it's like
there are sort of popular e I mean not in

(38:13):
the good sense, but there are sort of like more
mass like Catholicism versus Prossetism stuff. But like a lot
of it politically becomes the domain of like princes who
are either sort of running wars that are like nominally
religious based. Although like go go go, look on what
side France enters on the thirty years War in about

(38:36):
twenty years when when France enters out the side and
of Protestants to figure out exactly how much right. But like,
you know, but this kind of conflict becomes this this
kind of more the actual politics becomes centralized in the
ruling class. The metaphor that popped in mind to me
is one that will make sense to about four people.
But it's kind of like the way that all politics
became centralized in the Bath Party and Serie over the

(38:57):
course of like the sixties and seventies, like all where
like you have this mass politics, but the only politics
that matters is the military and the military factions the
military fighting it out. Like that's kind of what's happening here,
is that like all of these princes are sort of
centralizing religious power.

Speaker 6 (39:11):
But this means that like religious wars.

Speaker 9 (39:14):
Quote unquote in conflict becomes the domain of like these
coups and counter coups by like princes and they're like
noble factions and shit. Yeah, and that's where we find
ourselves in the year sixteen oh four, at the beginning
of the gunpowdered treason. And but before before we get that,
do you know what else supports the gunpowder treason the
seventeenth century.

Speaker 4 (39:33):
Yeah, definitely, chump a casino.

Speaker 6 (39:35):
Yeah, they're really major funders.

Speaker 8 (39:39):
The Yeah, it's okay if you lose your money, jump
at casino guys, because they're trying to blow up the
houses of Parliament.

Speaker 6 (39:56):
We are back. We are back to the past.

Speaker 9 (39:59):
We're back you I guess the future of where we
were several seconds before that. So England famously became Protestant
when King Henry the eighth wanted a new wife and
the Pope wouldn't let him get a new wife.

Speaker 8 (40:11):
Yeah, yeah, anohing new wife, right, Like, was it like this,
this was new Wait, that's a rhyme for this divorce divorced, beheaded.

Speaker 6 (40:19):
Survived, survived. Yeah.

Speaker 8 (40:21):
I think it was the first divorced because after that
he just went he went ham on the wives.

Speaker 9 (40:26):
And so through this incredibly silly chain of events, they
leave the Catholic Church and become Protestants through Anglicanism, which.

Speaker 4 (40:33):
Is Catholicism light.

Speaker 6 (40:35):
Like yeah, and I.

Speaker 9 (40:37):
Think it's more Catholicism light because like Lutheranism also gets
described to this Becautholicism light. But I could emphatically state
there is a major difference because I came, I was
raised Lutheran, and I fucking have no guilt whatsoever.

Speaker 6 (40:49):
No guilt, zero, I feel bad about nothing, no shame.

Speaker 8 (40:55):
Catholicism to England is more or less Catholicism minus Pope.

Speaker 6 (40:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 8 (41:00):
Yeah, and obviously they differ over time, because yeah, because
it's just the drift of history, they evolved differently.

Speaker 6 (41:07):
Yeah yeah.

Speaker 9 (41:08):
But then but this this starts like actual a series
of kind of horrendous religious conflicts inside of the UK
where just like a bunch of random people get killed
because once princes become the people controlling religions, everything gets
unbelievably stupid really quickly.

Speaker 8 (41:24):
Yeah, it's just a vehicle for like elite fucking ambitions,
yeah right, that they can pick a faction and use
that to get a little bit higher up the ladder.

Speaker 9 (41:32):
So there's like there's a series of like coups and
countercups to attempt to like reinstall Catholic rule or get
rid of and like it's all really boring, Like it's
it's so boring I cannot haveize.

Speaker 8 (41:45):
Like, yeah, let me tell you, Mayer, I did that
in history in school for years. Somehow overcame that to
get a PhD in history, But that shit was dull.

Speaker 9 (41:53):
It's it's hideously boring, like which is insane because like
like bloody Mary is involved in this and it's still boring.

Speaker 8 (42:00):
Oh yeah, there's a lot of beheadings, the princes in
the Tower, famous little dead children, a lot of murder.

Speaker 6 (42:07):
Yeah, but boring murder, which is staggering. How do you
make murder boring? Easy? Ah? You do this shit.

Speaker 8 (42:13):
Yeah, Shakespeare wrote some good place about this shit. And
for those of you who are interested.

Speaker 6 (42:17):
Yeah, go go consult that. I don't know.

Speaker 9 (42:21):
So by sixteen oh four, a group of guys that
would eventually extend to like thirteen Catholic guys start to
form a frankly not very good plan to do a
coup and appoint the child king to restore Catholic rule
to Indians.

Speaker 6 (42:41):
The child queen.

Speaker 4 (42:43):
Yeah, they love a child king.

Speaker 9 (42:45):
So this plan has Okay, I'm separating it out into
three stages. I don't know whether it's fair to but
I'm doing it. So Part one, use a bunch of
gunpowder to blow up the English Parliament. Okay, Now there's
something that's very important to to understand what's happening here.
This is not a parliament in the sense that we
understand it today, Like this is not like a representative

(43:06):
body like the Parliament is. Basically it's an assembly assembly
of nobles. Yeah, it's the instrument of power of the
English aristocracy. Yeah, which is one of the greatest forces
for human evil in the entirety of human like the
three hundred thousand year history of humanity.

Speaker 8 (43:20):
Yeah, we don't have it. Britain doesn't have a universal
franchise until after eighteen thirty two, so.

Speaker 9 (43:24):
Like yeah, and this is this is this is sixteen
oh five, yeah, right, like and throughout that whole period
that the powers of the aristocracy like weighs, but this,
this is there unbelievably powerful.

Speaker 8 (43:36):
They don't have an universal manhood suffrage even until late
eighteen forty eight. Before that, every constituency it has its
own franchise rules, which makes Parliament even fucking weirder. You
have some that like proto democratic, and you have some
where it's just a guy yep, and he just shows
up to Parliament and represents himself.

Speaker 6 (43:55):
Yeah, it's great. Yeah.

Speaker 9 (43:57):
So you know this part of the plan, the blowing
up the parliament plan. Great, we love it. We support
destroying the English aristocracy. Yeah, always great.

Speaker 8 (44:06):
Yet the king, why not it's gonna was it going
to be at the state opening of Parliament?

Speaker 9 (44:10):
I think it was. It was going to be at
some session of parliament with the King was going to
be there. That was part parliament.

Speaker 8 (44:17):
So fun fact, Britain still does this incredibly antiquated.

Speaker 9 (44:22):
Like barbaric country. Yeah, this is where the we need
China to conquer the UK and established civilization there like
failed it there.

Speaker 6 (44:31):
Like Britain.

Speaker 9 (44:32):
Britain couldn't even do a bourgeois revolution. Do you know
how easy it is to do a bourgeois revolution? Like son,
yet send pulled it on because Britain.

Speaker 8 (44:41):
Has the most established fucking aristocracy in the world.

Speaker 6 (44:44):
So, oh my god.

Speaker 8 (44:45):
The potty state opening in Parliament, which still happens to
this day, right, incredibly like antiquated procedure. They searched the
sellers of Parliament before did and no one else is
trying to blow them up like this is now part
of the of the like there's a whole that's an
exchange of hostages, like like there are all these things
that are built in from bizarre episodes in British histories.

(45:08):
They send someone a bottoment to Buckingham Palace to be
like a hostage for the.

Speaker 9 (45:14):
Duration.

Speaker 4 (45:15):
It's an incredible Yeah.

Speaker 6 (45:17):
This is the stupidest system and the like it the British.

Speaker 9 (45:21):
The British system, like I think, functionally it is a
more advanced democratic system than the American system, but in
terms of the way that it's like procedure works, it
is like like the American Constitution, which is like one
of the most regressive constitutions, like a constitution that failed
to enshrine one person, one vote. Yeah, right, Like that

(45:44):
constitution looks like fucking star trek compared to like watching
the stupid ass king the hauling around a scepter.

Speaker 8 (45:52):
Yeah, some dude three times and then yeah, it just
gets in there and reads his speech.

Speaker 6 (45:57):
Yeah.

Speaker 9 (45:58):
So so part two of the Gunpowder plot is the
king who's going to be there too. This is also great.
We like killing the king. The coolsone media is a
pro killing the king register establishment, Yes is reticide rules.

Speaker 6 (46:11):
We love it. It's great.

Speaker 9 (46:13):
Part three is to install a Catholic theocracy or a
place the Protestant one. And we simply do not love this.
The ship sucks.

Speaker 8 (46:20):
That's where we diverge, sadly yeah, what, this work's very bad.
Viva Vendetta may have misled you about the intentions of
Guy Forks.

Speaker 9 (46:30):
Yes, and we'll get to Viva Vendetta because that's I
think that's an important part of the closing of this story.

Speaker 6 (46:35):
So the plan falls apart. The plotters get betrayed.

Speaker 9 (46:39):
Guy Fox, who's the guy who's supposed to light the gunpowder,
gets caught and like tortured, which is really funny because
you'll read accounts.

Speaker 6 (46:45):
I'm going to read a bit from an account from the.

Speaker 9 (46:47):
Somewhat dubiously named English Heritage dot org that is like
they're just quite pretty good on this.

Speaker 6 (46:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 8 (46:52):
They like they own lots of like big old houses
and stuff. Like if you want to go and see
like a manor house, you're pretty going to give them
money to go in. Like it's it's not like as
bad as something named English Heritage could have been. It
could be a lot more racist in an open and
explicit way.

Speaker 9 (47:09):
Yeah yeah, now, but like to think about this, right,
it's like they don't actually discribe what happened to him
during his interrogation as torture, even though they tortured the
shit out of this guy. Oh yeah, like the king
was there. Well, they tortured the shit out of the sky.

Speaker 4 (47:28):
Yeah yeah, very unpleasant, imagine.

Speaker 6 (47:30):
Yeah yeah.

Speaker 9 (47:31):
And so eventually, like all the plotters are like either
captured or killed. And I'm going to read this from
that English Heritage article quote. Each was found guilty and
sentenced to a trader's death by the grizzly ordeal of hanging, drawing,
and quartering. Oh yeah, the men were hanged. It's it's
so bad.

Speaker 4 (47:48):
I love this shit.

Speaker 8 (47:48):
When I was in school, you don't understand how great
this is for like eight year old boys.

Speaker 9 (47:53):
Yeah, but Jesus fucking Christ. So they were hanged, cut
down while still alivee castrated, dismember, and beheaded, and then
their bodies were cut into quarters and displayed for all
to see and for birds to feast upon. According to
all accounts, all face their fates bravely. So these like
and this is something that like is genuinely important to
undersand because we're going to get to the French Revolution

(48:14):
part of the story very soon.

Speaker 6 (48:16):
These people are fucking deranged.

Speaker 9 (48:18):
They're like they're psychopaths, Like they just they do this
as public entertainments. Yeah, yeah, Like they hang people and
then cut them down and castrate them and then dismember
and behead them while they're alive, like they do this
like for fun.

Speaker 8 (48:31):
Yeah, isn't this the opening scene of They're just s
been punished by Fuco?

Speaker 6 (48:36):
Doesn't he describe?

Speaker 9 (48:37):
Yes? Yeah, yeah, and like you know, like this is
this is the thing you have to remember about the
French Revolution is that like these are the people who
rule Europe for like seven hundred years, oh yeah, or
like these motherfuckers and so you know, like they they
stopped the gunpowder trees and no one gets blown up,

(48:58):
and November fifth like immediately gets declared a holiday, but
it's not really the same holiday as as we have today.
I'm gonna read again from that article quote. Since sixteen
seventy three and up until the nineteenth century, some crowds
have paraded an effigy of the pope through the street,
strung up above a bonfire. This symbolized continuing prejudice, prejudice

(49:19):
towards Catholics, which again, like you motherfuckers weren't Catholics until
like fucking seven seconds.

Speaker 6 (49:24):
Ago, Like what is wrong with you? People like I
like you?

Speaker 9 (49:30):
You were all Catholics until your king decided to make
a fake pope so he could get divorced.

Speaker 6 (49:35):
Like what the fuck?

Speaker 8 (49:37):
Yeah, yeah, the Anti want to say, some guy's pretty hot.

Speaker 9 (49:41):
Like for a country where like you, like, you were
all literally Catholics until the king decided you weren't.

Speaker 6 (49:48):
What is it? Oh my god, I hate Christian so much.
Shit sucks so badly.

Speaker 8 (49:54):
Cooking of parades? Have you have you read about the
Lewis bom fire in Sussex? No, okay, they like they
go super hard for bon finite. They also, like, I
think it was the same day or something that some
Protestants will burned at the steak thereat. They have this
big parade where they like they drag, like I think

(50:15):
it's burning barrels of like pitch or tar. Possibly those
are the same thing they have. Like, I'm going to
invite you to google Lewis Lewis bonfire. Just just tell
me what the first image you see is.

Speaker 6 (50:28):
Oh Jesus Christ.

Speaker 8 (50:30):
Oh no, oh no, yeah that's correct. Yeah, yeah, what
you see crosses jump scared. So they don't just burn
guy forks in effigy. They have these big sort of
every every year they'll have like the person of the
Year they're going to burn so like effigies that they've

(50:53):
burned include David Cameron, don't be Clarkson except blatter like
some of it got surprisingly hard, Like I think at
some point, like there's like a formal like they've been
investigated by the police, fight multiple time. Nearly all of
them are against politicians, like you know, we probably should

(51:16):
have mentioned that they also burned a Romani caravan, which
is pretty fucking terrible.

Speaker 9 (51:22):
Yeah, all right, speaking speaking speaking of burning David Cameron,
do you know who else burns David Cameron?

Speaker 4 (51:27):
Is it the goods and services that support this podcast?

Speaker 6 (51:30):
Yeah? Great, yeah, yeah, we're now returning.

Speaker 9 (51:42):
Let's go back to that thing I was reading about
what happened to them them haying the Pope. Yeah, so
the less this symboli is continuing presidents against Catholics. However,
during the French Revolution, English and Irish Catholics fought from Britain,
which found itself on the same side of the Pope,
and perhaps because of this, in around eighteen hundred, Guy

(52:02):
Fox seems to have finally entered the picture as the
boogeyman of Bonfire Night rather than the Pope. Fox was
barely mentioned in fifth November sermons in the eighteenth century,
and his name doesn't feature in the titles of books
or tracks before eighteen hundred, but after that date his
name began to appear, and Fox seems to have quickly
become a central character in English popular culture, often portrayed
as a dashing, doomed anti hero. Yeah, and this is

(52:26):
a reminder that Protestant disn't versus Catholic.

Speaker 6 (52:28):
Catholicism is a fucking joke.

Speaker 9 (52:30):
The ruling class has always had one religion counter revolution,
and when their asses are on the line, Protestant terrorists
and Catholic Supreme Court justices can work together, just find
to make sure you can't get a fucking abortion.

Speaker 4 (52:42):
Yep.

Speaker 6 (52:43):
So you know what we have here.

Speaker 9 (52:45):
And this is an interesting thing in the sense of
like like Guy Fox becoming the guy that Guy Fox
Day is about, and not like the pope is literally
an icon of sort of like of kind of revolution. Yeah,
that's a good point, like specifically again it's a French revolution.
But it's interesting because it's like this eventually seems to
kind of have backfired because.

Speaker 6 (53:06):
Guys Fux kind of like becomes the central figure. Right.

Speaker 9 (53:09):
But then, and this is something that like This article
also mentions that I want to go into more. Everything
sort of changes again about this when the movie Viva
Vendetta gets made.

Speaker 4 (53:19):
Yeah, it's very strange.

Speaker 9 (53:22):
Yeah, and let's actually say before we dovey, can you
talk a little bit more about like what people do
drin drink Guy Fox day, because it's fun.

Speaker 4 (53:28):
Yeah, totally. Yeah, So it is fun.

Speaker 1 (53:31):
It is.

Speaker 8 (53:31):
It's a nice like a little as burnings in effigy go,
you know, a fun one at least.

Speaker 4 (53:36):
What we used to do I grow up in a
more rural area is.

Speaker 8 (53:40):
We know everyone if you had like wood, or you
chop down a tree, you know, on your land, or
you had old furniture, you don't bring it to one
place right, big field.

Speaker 4 (53:48):
You pilot and you're with it's fucking high.

Speaker 8 (53:51):
It's like a couple of stories high by the time, damn,
and then you go down. On the fifth of November,
everyone gets fireworks. This is where I'll tell my fireworks
story very amusingly. When I was younger, everyone in my
village club together to buy one of those fireworks displays,
you know where it's like a box and you light
one fuse and they all go off. Yeah.

Speaker 6 (54:09):
Oh shit.

Speaker 8 (54:10):
So we've set that up, my dad and his mate
and we're in the van there. We've lit it. Then
we've we're sort of standing there like grenny to go
ooh ah. Unfortunately we've placed it upside down, fucking bouncing
off the ground and then it flips on the side
and it just went out behind the.

Speaker 4 (54:30):
Van and it's just fucking smashing the van.

Speaker 8 (54:34):
So yeah, what you do is you get fireworks, you
shoot them at your friends, you shoot them in the air.
You have a massive bonfire, like and it's this is
November and Britain, right, so you know days are short
nights so long, everything's wet, so you're using a lot
of petrol to start the bonfire, like you know, irresponsible amount.

Speaker 4 (54:55):
And you just have a huge fire.

Speaker 6 (54:56):
And then if you have all clothes.

Speaker 8 (54:58):
At least, I'm sure different if you grow up in
like a more urban setting, what we would do is
we get our old clothes, tie the bottom of the
trousers together, tie the wrists together, and then you stuffle
that with straw bedding that you have, right, and then
you put a head on it pet like a bag,
like a plastic bag or flower bag.

Speaker 4 (55:18):
You draw a little face on it. And that's your guy.

Speaker 8 (55:22):
You can go around to people's houses and ask for
a penny for the guys. That had sort of become
quite old fashioned by the time I was a child.
But you make these guys and then you take them
down there, and then you put them on top of
the bonfire before you light it, and everyone watches as
he catches on fire and burns to death. And you
have toffee apples at the other thing, new apples dipped

(55:45):
in toffee.

Speaker 4 (55:45):
Yeah, I used to like it.

Speaker 8 (55:46):
And you have sparklers, you know, which is you know,
a little sparker on a stick.

Speaker 4 (55:51):
Yeah, it was fun. It's got something for every age.
A little kid, you have a sparker.

Speaker 8 (55:55):
And then once you get to you know, like ten twelve,
you can shoot fireworks at your friends and like it's
something for everyone. And I guess unless you're Catholic.

Speaker 6 (56:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 9 (56:03):
But that's the thing though, that the Catholic hasn't been Protestantism.

Speaker 4 (56:06):
It's very it's secularized.

Speaker 9 (56:08):
Yeah, like they've been united, they've been united in the
single Greek British religion of kind of revolutions. So now
everyone can celebrate Guy Fox state together.

Speaker 6 (56:16):
Yeah, it's true.

Speaker 8 (56:17):
And it's supposed to like reinforce the state and be like,
if you funk with the state, we will burn you,
which Viva Vendetta kind of I guess messes with a
little bit.

Speaker 9 (56:26):
But yeah, and this I think is actually a really
interesting process because I think Guy Fox now is most
known for the Guy Fox mask, which was one of
the symbol and the symbol of anonymous and like one
of the symbols of Yeah, but it wasn't before that, yeah.

Speaker 6 (56:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 9 (56:41):
And parts of how this happens is so it is
a character named Guy Fox in Alan Moore's view for
Vendetta and viv for Vendetta is not about a Catholic
plot to establish the Catholic rule in.

Speaker 6 (56:53):
Britain.

Speaker 3 (56:54):
Yeah.

Speaker 9 (56:54):
This is about like effectively the government of the UK
is going to have in five years when they just
like completely descended to fascism.

Speaker 4 (57:02):
Yeah. I would not that far away now, to be honest.

Speaker 6 (57:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 9 (57:05):
Yeah. And it's about that government getting overthrown by by
an anarchist revolution.

Speaker 6 (57:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 9 (57:09):
And and it's like this because like you know, Alan
Moore is a leftist. It's made by the Wachowskis of
like of Matrix fame, who are also trans leftists, We're
gonna close on them actually, But you know sort of
what happens to you, right, is like this mask becomes
a symbol of like kind of like really altogether detached
from the original figure of Guy Fox, and like through
the form of this movie, like this becomes the symbol

(57:30):
of like the twenty eleven like occupy cycle revolutions everywhere.

Speaker 6 (57:33):
Yeah, and like like.

Speaker 9 (57:34):
One of my most sort of like harrowing memories like
coming up in that movement was of this like twenty fourteen,
everything's going By twenty fourteen, everything's going to shit, right,
Like the Serians of War is kicked off through Bob
Massacre in Egypt has like slaughtered a bunch of protesters,
and Egypt's like just under full military rule. And there's

(57:55):
a like there are like Palestinian kids like wearing Guy
Fosx masks, and there's like this image that haunts me
is there's video and an image of it of this kid.
Is like this kid's like seventeen, maybe like sixteen seventeen,
like wearing this mask and he walks around a cord
and this really sniper just fucking shoots him the head.
And there's this picture of him with like this just
like mask with a hole in it next to his face,

(58:16):
and he's just like lying there on the floor, and
it's like one of the things that is like the
reason why the way I am now is because.

Speaker 6 (58:24):
Of that shit.

Speaker 9 (58:25):
Yeah, and you know, in some sense, like he's become
it weirdly and enduring danger to the state in ways
that he would be extremely pissed about, which, yeah, very
funny to me.

Speaker 6 (58:35):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (58:36):
He started as a graphic novel, right, it was a
graphic novel before.

Speaker 6 (58:39):
Yeah, yeah, it was an Alan rograph novel. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 9 (58:42):
And I want to close on on the wachousekis and
specifically I wanted to shout out so again like the
watch House. He's made the movie Viva Vedetta, which is
the thing that like popularized it and is in a
lot of sense responsible for like the aesthetic of the
twenty eleven revolutions. And she's found in a new project
called Anarchist United. I'm going to quote from an interview

(59:03):
with her quote. It will be a studio wholly owned
by a foundation. It's owned by this five O one
C three. The five O one C three provides grants
for artists and young filmmakers with marginalized points of view.
Hopefully those people will create stuff, bring it over to
the studio, the studio can make it, and then fund
the foundation. So you create this evergreen operation that can
hopefully exist outside of the studio system if necessary. And

(59:23):
so they're making a bunch of trans shit, like they're
adapting Gretchen Felken Martin's Manhunt, which is like the most
transfem ass like book of the last like that GE's
a book about trans misogyny and it's getting We're getting
a fucking adapted. So yeah, it's really cool. And yeah,
like I think, I think, I don't know that. That's

(59:44):
the thing I want to close on is like a
note of hope of like even the most deranged kind
of revolutionaries actions against the state can sometimes ricochet around
four hundred years later and into like a revolutionary movement.

Speaker 8 (59:59):
Bounce back in transferm films. And it's like I often
think about Hunger Games, like, yeah, the Hunger Games symbol.
I would love to into the lady who wrote Hunger Games.
I think she's quite like doesn't like the media attention
so much from.

Speaker 4 (01:00:12):
What I've heard.

Speaker 8 (01:00:13):
Yeah, but like that became the symbol of the like
around the Milky Alliance right in Hong Kong, Myanmar obviously
even in Thailand they use yeah and think it's fascinating
how these things have these cultural and like, yeah, they
sort of bounce around. It becomes a bit completely different
from what they were.

Speaker 6 (01:00:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 9 (01:00:32):
Well, and and you know it's this weird thing too,
because like the Hunger Games was born of Susan Collins,
like flipping channels between coverage of like the like watching
the bombing in the Iraq War and reality TV.

Speaker 6 (01:00:45):
Yeah, I remember reading that and.

Speaker 9 (01:00:47):
You see and you watch like this rebound of this
like the intense reaction of this cultural moment to runs
two thousand and three, two thousand and four, like like
what of the peaks of American like kind of revolution
rebounds around a bunch of like a bunch of bunch
of revolutionaries of MBAR are doing the like fucking two
figures thing.

Speaker 4 (01:01:05):
Yeah, yeah, doing the cub scouts.

Speaker 6 (01:01:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 9 (01:01:08):
And so you know, this is one of these things
where like you know, who knows where where your story
one day is going to end up in rebound two.
But if if if we survived this, we are promised
that this year was the beginning of the golden age
of leftist transcendement. So let's let's sucking get their war.

Speaker 4 (01:01:27):
And yeah, if you're in England, enjoy burning ship tonight.

Speaker 6 (01:01:32):
Yeah, I in America, enjoy burning ship tonight.

Speaker 2 (01:01:55):
You wake up before dawn. This was once abnormal for you.
Bet Ever since the election, you found it harder and
harder to sleep. You just barely drifted off when the
sound of shouts wafted in from across the street. Reflected
sirens bounce off your bedroom window. Through a fog of sleep.
You reflect on the last few days. Voting went better

(01:02:15):
you'd feared. It's what happened in the days after that's
kept your spine at a constant eerie tingle. Several Republican
led states are refusing to certify their election results. Most
analysts say the blizzard of lawsuits launched on behalf of
Trump have no chance at winning, But that didn't stop
the candidate from declaring victory and promising to carry out
his own inauguration. No matter what the courts decide, it's

(01:02:38):
all absurd, laughable. But you live on the border of
a majority red county and your sheriffs just announced support
for the real winner of the election. Your local pd
have been notably silent, while right wing provocateurs online have
started circulating allegations of election fraud that the sheriff has
promised to look into. That was yesterday to day, Just

(01:03:01):
after five, You're jolted awake in your bed by the
sound of breaking glass and screaming. You stay low and
crawl to your front window to peep out across your
yard and into the street. Before you, three police cruisers
are stacked up in front of your neighbor's house. You
can't imagine why. You know he did some volunteer canvassing
a few weeks back. He volunteered at a voting precinct.

(01:03:24):
Could they be there because of that? You try a
few different search terms on social media to puzzle out
the truth. It looks like a few people around the
country are reporting similar raids, but most of the posts
register is deleted before you can click on them. There's
more shouting from inside your neighbor's house, and within seconds,
a pair of birdly deputies drag him out in front
and into a waiting squad car. It's dark outside, but

(01:03:47):
you think you might see blood on his face. Your
heart starts to pound. You feel the urge to call someone,
but the cops are already here. Who else is there?
As your mind raises, one of the officers stationed outside
turns back and looks towards your window. Recognition sparks his eyes,
He sees you. He starts to walk over. You, turn back,
drop the shades, and with a pounding heart, retreat to

(01:04:10):
your bedroom. Maybe he won't knock, Maybe he just wanted
to scare you. Maybe hello, everyone, hand welcome to It
could happen here. I'm Robert Evanson. Back in early twenty nineteen,
I released the first season of this show. It wasn't

(01:04:32):
a daily news and politics podcast back then. Instead, it
gave a focused argument for why a new US civil
war was more frightening and possible than you might guess.
Over the last few years, that belief has become unfortunately mainstream.
It is no longer fringe or unique to talk about
a new civil war as a real possibility. There was
a blockbuster movie earlier this year based around presenting what

(01:04:56):
it called a realistic picture of such a possibility. Leave
my thoughts on that for another time. A Marist poll
from earlier this year showed that forty seven percent of
Americans consider a second Civil War likely or very likely.
This is a massive shift considering where things were when
I wrote this podcast series in twenty nineteen. That number

(01:05:18):
includes an expected fifty three percent of Republicans, but also
forty percent of Democrats and forty one percent of independence.
Depending on how you want to see it, I've either
been vindicated as much as as possible for someone in
my line of work, or I've played an outsized role
in creating a particularly dangerous eggregre in the collective unconsciousness

(01:05:38):
of our nation, effectively talking this possibility into being. I'm
really not sure either way. My conscience has been troubled
on that matter ever since the first episode started coming out.
If you'll remember, midway through the first season, we dropped
an extra episode I hadn't initially intended as part of
the run, just trying to stop people from panicking, and

(01:05:59):
ever since I've kept that as a particular goal in
my head. However you want to, you know, think about this.
The first season of It Could Happen Here undoubtedly helped
to make my career today. Sophie and I run an
entire network that employs several dozen people, largely on the
strength of that series, and yet I have no issue
telling you that I don't have any idea how election

(01:06:21):
Day is going to go. You know, we've had a
lot of polls lately that seem much better for Harris.
A number of pollsters are starting to shift. You know,
there's a good chance that they were hurting in the
direction of Trump because they didn't want to underestimate him again.
But there's also a good chance that you know that
sells her poll is an outlier, and now these guys
are hurting in the direction of Harris winning because they

(01:06:43):
don't want to be embarrassed. I really have no idea
what's going to happen. My official stance is that it's
probably pretty close to a coin flip, although maybe one
that favors Harris now you know, more than one that
favors Trump. Whatever happens, I don't know what's going to
had happen, let alone what's going to happen the day after.
And as I sat down to write this episode, which

(01:07:04):
is going to air on the day of the election,
I went back and forth as to where the focus
should be. I did consider doing another Don't Panic style episode.
Perhaps that would have been the call. You know, depending
on how today goes, people might either be listening to
this and you know, relaxing or listening to this and
in a heightened state of panic. You know, it really

(01:07:26):
depends on where things are and where things are and
the counting of votes by this period of time. My
reasoning on what I decided to do is pretty simple,
which is that I think there's a good chance we
either know or have a strong inkling of how this
election is going to shake out by the time this
episode airs, And at the time I write this, the
indicators do look better for Harris than for Trump, enough

(01:07:47):
that I'd say the election leans in her direction. And
so I think there's a lot of value in talking
about what might happen in the aftermath of that. If
Trump tries to protest the election, and if he goes
particularly trying to protest by force, and if that's the case,
if that's the direction he lands in, I think these
shooters that we have to worry about. And I mean

(01:08:10):
that in the figurative sense, right, you know, people who
support him, who will put skin in the game in
order to try to force him into office. I think
they're different than they were last time. I don't think
the threat here is that a bunch of proud boys
and the like raid the capital next January. I think
the threat here has a lot more to do with
licensed law enforcement officers who have already declared themselves in

(01:08:32):
the tank for Trump. We ran an episode just the
other day about the Constitutional Sheriff's movement. There's a lot
to say about that. One in four law enforcement officers
today report to a sheriff. They make twenty percent of
all arrests in the country. Earlier this year, Wired published
an article on the far right sheriff's ready to disrupt
the election. It focused heavily on dar Leif, who sits

(01:08:55):
on the board of the Constitutional Sheriffs in Peace Officers
Association ORPOA. Leif, a Trump supporter and sheriff in Berry County, Michigan,
has spent the lead up to this election investigating the
twenty twenty election. He's tried to seize voting machines and
run militia training courses where he offers to teach potential jurors, homeschoolers, ladies,

(01:09:17):
and gentlemen how to form an ad hoc posse, each
member armed with quote a standard Air fifteen type military
grade weapon and at least five hundred rounds of AMMO.
Speaking of five hundred rounds of AMMO, he probably can't
buy that from our sponsors.

Speaker 4 (01:09:32):
But here they are.

Speaker 2 (01:09:43):
We're back, and we're talking about a constitutional sheriff who
sits on the board of that organization named dar Leaf
Leif has already promised to have his posse patrolling stations
in Barry County to watch for evidence of fraud and
the legal immigrant voting in what expected to be one
of the swing states this election might hinge on. Deeply

(01:10:04):
reported articles like that Wired piece have warred in my
own personal paranoia with troubling accounts on social media. The
day before the election, which is when I wrote this,
I came across a post on the Pennsylvania subreddit from
a Philly voter titled my dad just got harassed by
a police officer about the election.

Speaker 4 (01:10:21):
Quote.

Speaker 2 (01:10:21):
He was driving down the Old Lincoln Highway when a
trooper stopped him and asked him if he was voting tomorrow. Trooper,
will you be voting tomorrow?

Speaker 4 (01:10:28):
Dad?

Speaker 2 (01:10:29):
That's none of your business, trooper. Who are you voting
for tomorrow?

Speaker 4 (01:10:32):
Dad?

Speaker 2 (01:10:33):
None of your business, trooper, Oh, sir, you're illegal now.
The poster's dad, who is Hispanic, stated that he didn't
have to answer that and asked if he was being detained.
The trooper let him go, but later, according to the poster,
this happened when my dad went to the precinct. There
were three other people there to report the exact same story.
Election harassment at a traffic stop. Turns out the officer

(01:10:56):
or officers doing it arn't even from Bucks County or Pennsylvania.
Their new Jersey State troopers wiled across state borders to
harass people driving down the highway. In the lead up
to the twenty twenty election, we were all deeply worried
about the dangers of different far right groups, militias, and
organizations like the Proud Boys who wore right wing death
squad patches and threatened to throw leftists out of helicopters

(01:11:19):
when their god Emperor won reelection. Today, most of those
figures are either a spent force or something that cannot
act on its own, reliant upon the backing of groups
like the aforementioned constitutional sheriffs, or being empowered by a
Trump controlled White House if they want to have any
hope of being directly relevant again. The positive side of

(01:11:40):
this is that it allows us to triage our fears.
The downside is that independent paramilitary actors are in fact
something we can easily combat as individuals and communities. Portland
proved that when it eventually won its five year street
battle to oust these sundry right wing groups from constant
occupations of the city. Groups like the Proud Boys cross

(01:12:01):
the line into outright violence, it is legal to meet
them with defensive violence, and they can and have been
beaten this way. That's simply not something the extant left
wing community defense organizations and political groups in this country
can say and do against. For example, law enforcement entities
hell bent on executing a purge against the left. In

(01:12:23):
rallies prior to the election, Trump has often merged promises
to prosecute his political opponents US with promises to use
ice to deport twenty million illegals and descend in the
military or federal law enforcement to clean up cities. I
want to quote now from an article in The New
Republic reporting on a rally earlier this year in Wilmington,
North Carolina. Today, I am announcing a new plan to

(01:12:46):
end all sanctuary cities in North Carolina. And across our country,
said Trump, no more sanctuary cities. As soon as I
take office, we will immediately surge federal law enforcement to
every city that is failing, which is a lot of them,
to turn over criminal aliens. And we will hunt down
and capture every single gang member, drug dealer, rapist, murderer,
and migrant criminal that is being illegally harbored. The article

(01:13:06):
goes on to note Trump has previously vowed to militarize
US law enforcement to restore law and order to our cities,
which he claimed to have become cesspools of bloodshed and
crime under President Joe Biden. Trump has argued that additional
federal funding and forces would help supplement supposedly defunded police departments,
but that extra help would only go to cities that
complied with ice. Now, this is scary stuff, and it

(01:13:29):
would necessitate some sort of response if it were to happen.
But I don't really know how to tell you to
organize against it right now. There are so many unknowns
that one would need to factor into any plans. I
could theorize about underground railroads to help people avoid deportation
or to avoid being raided for their past political activism,
and I could base those theories on, for example, how

(01:13:51):
activists in Nazi Germany helped hide people from the Gestapo.
But those heroes of yesteryear existed in a world where
the technological tools available to the enemy were primitive beyond
compare to what exists today. Perhaps the most chilling article
I read this year had nothing to do with ice
or right wing paramilitaries and everything to do with the
technology that has been standard among law enforcement for years.

(01:14:13):
License plate recognition systems like Motorollas dr in use optical
character recognition technology to identify the text of a vehicle's
license plate and put it in a searchable database. The
policing implications of this are obvious and not all negative,
although it's far from clear if they actually work too.
The idea is that if someone carries out a drive

(01:14:33):
by shooting, or assaults a woman on the street, or
is seen fleeing some other form of dangerous crime by
someone who gets the car, make and model and maybe
the first couple letters of the plate. Dn r's database
of more than fifteen billion vehicle sidings, built from automatic
recordings of license plate reading cameras on police cruisers and
tow trucks and the like might well help identify and
stop someone before they hunter kill again. Now their serious

(01:14:56):
reason to question whether or not this system action works
this way. I'm not claiming to take a stance on
this one way or the other. I'm not an expert
on this, but the issue here from a privacy standpoint,
when we imagine what might happen in a future Trump
dominated government, is that you can't train a system like
this to only pay attention to license plates, nor is

(01:15:19):
there any benefit to Motorola in doing so. In recent
investigations conducted by a private detective with access to dn
r's database for her work have shown that someone with
access to this database can search based on more than
just license plates. They can look up signs supporting political
candidates and match them to front yards and thus to
people's addresses. They can find individuals who were captured by

(01:15:41):
these cameras, and there are again billions of these photos wearing,
for example, planned parenthood shirts. This is not an idle fear.
This is a weapon that could very easily be used
by the enemy within months of you listening to this.
This is also a weapon that in an event like
the one I forecasted at the start of this episode
could be used to crack down on activists and voters

(01:16:03):
in counties that are loyal to Trump in some sort
of national schism situation. Police officers already misused databases like
this with comic regularity. In twenty twenty two, a different
Wired investigation showed that hundreds of ICE employees and contractors
had been caught abusing similar databases made via license plate
recognition systems. Some had used them to stalk citizens. Stuff

(01:16:26):
like this pairs forebodingly with threats made by emboldened pro
Trump cops earlier this election season. I'm talking about something
that happened in September when Ohio Sheriff of Portage County
Bruce Szukowski posted a screenshot of a Fox News segment
criticizing the current president over his immigration record and the
impact of Haitian migrants on Springfield, Ohio, from an article

(01:16:47):
in The ap by Michael Rubacam likening people in the
US illegally to human locusts Zukowski wrote on a personal
Facebook account and his campaign's account, when people ask me,
what's going to happen if the flip flopping last Hyena wins,
I say, write down all the addresses of the people
who had their signs in their yards. That way, Zukowski continued,
when migrants need places to live, we're already have the

(01:17:10):
addresses of their new families who supported their arrival. Now,
as the full context of that statement makes clear, Zukowski
was not technically threatening Harris voters. But it's pretty much
impossible for me to take that as anything but a threat,
just one dressed up enough for plausible deniability and an
environment where the future ability of Zukowski and those like
him to punish Democrats is still unclear. And we're going

(01:17:32):
to talk more about that. But first here's another ad break. Now,
I don't mean to make it sound like that there's
nothing that can be done to fight against technological tools

(01:17:52):
in the arsenal of repression like this, but I have
no doubt that if the Republicans do take total power,
they will read any positive election for them as a
mandate to punish the left and purge the people. Trump
is already repeatedly called the enemy within, and I worry
that in the event of any sort of national schism,
either where there's an extended period of time where Trump
is claiming to have been the winner, or if there's

(01:18:13):
a situation where he just has himself inaugurated in Florida
and you have a bunch of these counties and states
around the country sign up for Trump, that the first
thing we'll see law enforcement do in these areas is
punished the enemy within, especially if they declare themselves on
a war footing with the rest of the country. These
are all things that are maybe not the likeliest possibility here,

(01:18:34):
but they are something to keep in mind, and they
are something that represents a real danger at this point.
I don't think anyone who's paid attention to the kinds
of thing the Republicans have been saying lately can deny that.
Now it is important to remember that whatever plan these
people try won't work as well as they hope. We've
been watching them for years, and if there's one thing
you know about all of the people around Trump, it's

(01:18:55):
that they're fuck ups. That doesn't mean they can't win,
it doesn't mean they're not dangerous. It just means that
they're going to make mistakes. Now, those mistakes aren't going
to be survivable for everybody that we care about, which
is something that should be on your mind. Bruce and
most of the Trump aligned police, local and federal still
feel a need to couch their threats in deniable terms, though,
but many on the far right have been less careful.

(01:19:17):
And one thing we've seen is this election has lurched
closer to its conclusion.

Speaker 6 (01:19:22):
Is a lot of.

Speaker 2 (01:19:23):
People, people like particularly Elon Musk, have absolutely taken their
masks off.

Speaker 4 (01:19:28):
Now.

Speaker 2 (01:19:28):
I think this had a lot to do with the
fact that Trump was looking more like the favorite a
couple of weeks ago, and they felt like after years
of having to do what Bruce did, having to cover
up their outright eliminationist impulses, they no longer had to
do that now. Obviously, some influential people on the far
right have been masked off from much longer, and this
is something that should concern you as well. One of

(01:19:50):
the most sinister examples of this is Jack Pisobic, a
former US Navy intelligence officer whose recent book Unhumans is
framed as a secret history of communist allusions. From an
article in Mother Jones quote they they being. Pisobic and
his co author claim for as long as there have
been beauty and truth, love and life, there have also
been the ugly liars who hate and kill. And these

(01:20:11):
people of anti civilization have always gone by different names communists, socialists, leftists,
and progressives. The pair contend that these folks, be they
the Bolsheviks of Russia or the BLM activists of this decade,
are better called unhumans. It's a hard edged message. The
foes of conservatism are not merely misguided souls pushing the
wrong policies, but people who seek to annihilate civilization. They

(01:20:33):
rob and kill. Pisobic and Lyssek, his co author, maintain
they don't believe what they say. They don't care about
winning debates. They don't even want a quality. They just
want an excuse to destroy everything. They want an excuse
to destroy you. Now, Jack has been a laughable character
for much of his career, but his outright eliminationist rhetoric
has had an audience in the Howls of Power. Jd
Vance himself provided a blurb for the book, claiming it

(01:20:55):
shows us what to do to fight back. Steve Bannon
meanwhile wrote the forward. Now, I started this episode with
a fictional vignette imagining what might happen if Trump chooses
to contest the election without right force, and he might.
The good news is I think that such an effort
would be doomed to fail if he sticks to the courts.
Trying to refuse certifications and kick the election to the

(01:21:15):
House is a better chance at succeeding, and it is
possible that isolated thefts of ballots and arrests of poll
workers could play into a broader effort like this, but
doing so is a big risk. My gut tells me
that moving so openly resorting to violence first creates a
situation in which the Biden administration and the incoming Harris
administration would have to respond with force. There would have

(01:21:37):
to be consequences, and given that they currently control the
arsenal of state power, I think they would win even
in the event that you have all of these sheriffs
break for Trump in some sort of insurgent situation develop.
If that were to happen, having backed this insurgency would
put Trump in real jeopardy, and it would put a
lot of his backers in jeopardy as well. It might
even force consequences for provocateurs like Sobic and even Elon Musk.

(01:22:02):
Backing an outright violent coup is almost the only thing
I can imagine putting Musk behind bars. There are pieces
of this logic train that I find comforting, but there
are also pieces that aren't. Many of us, me included,
made the mistake of assuming that after January sixth, twenty
twenty one, Trumpism might finally be a spent force. He'd
gambled too much and he'd lost too big. But despite

(01:22:23):
the existential threat, he presented himself as being The Democratic
Party and the Merrick Garland Justice Department largely chose mercy
for the main players. I suspect anything short of armed
insurrection will see a similar reaction from them this year.
I don't believe Musk's fears that the Democrats will throw
him in prison if Harris Winds are real, or that
instead as his own predictive justification for the violence he'd

(01:22:46):
like to support against his political enemies. That desire won't
go away just because Trump rides off into the sunset
and the Republican Party has to go searching for another feurer.
If we defer their dream, it will simply sit under
the floorboards and waiting for the next opportunity, and that
won't take long. Kamala will inherit a broken system and

(01:23:06):
a world where climate change and conflict are on the rise.
Low information voters less literate by the day, will continue
to swing back and forth. The feral beast we've heard
growling all year long will surge forward, all the hungrier
for being made to wait. If you've kept up with
our election coverage this year, you've probably noticed that we
haven't endorsed any candidates, and I haven't wasted any time

(01:23:27):
advising our listeners to vote. I happen to be someone
who does think a Harris win represents substantially less harm
than a Trump win to a lot of people. But
I don't think that the folks who listen to our
podcast are waiting for me to make that decision for them.
I don't agree with the anti electoralist side of things
on every matter, but one place where I do agree
with them is that a Harris win won't fix what's broken.

(01:23:50):
It represents the historic equivalent of jinking out of the
way and a dog fight. Necessary maybe, but not something
that guarantees future security. Hey everybody, Robert here, I've changed locations,
so sorry if it sounds a little bit different. I'm
currently in a cabin waiting out the election trying not
to think too much about it. But I wrote a

(01:24:10):
new ending to this because I just thought that what
I had there was incomplete. Now, when it comes to
what does work in the long run to beat these people,
my mind is drawn back constantly to perhaps an odd place.
A twenty eleven article in the scientific journal Nature titled
the Evolution of over Confidence.

Speaker 4 (01:24:32):
Now.

Speaker 2 (01:24:32):
The gist is that this was an attempt by two
scientists to solve the evolutionary mystery of the Dunning Krueger effect.
It seems to be extraordinarily common for people who know
very little about a subject to overestimate their competence in it.
This is probably why so many Americans think they could
win a fistfight with a bear. Such a phenomenon seems

(01:24:53):
profoundly maladaptive. How could overestimating our abilities provide any kind
of benefit to evolutionary fitness? The explanation devised in this
paper is that overconfidence is beneficial more often than not, because,
in a hypothetical situation where two organisms are competing for
a resource and evenly matched in the event of a fight,

(01:25:14):
the organism that is more confident is likelier to reach
for that resource if they do. One of three things
can happen. They fight and win, they fight and lose,
or the other organism backs away insecure in its chances
of victory and they get that resource without even fighting
for it. Such a scenario favors the overconfident individual so

(01:25:36):
much so that it might explain why many of us
seem to have a build in tendency to irrationally judge
our own capabilities.

Speaker 8 (01:25:43):
Now.

Speaker 2 (01:25:44):
I first became aware of this research almost a decade
ago when I started work on my first published book,
A Brief History of Vice. At the time, I found
it interesting because it posited a likely adaptive basis for
a kind of bad behavior, and that's what my whole
book was about. In the years since, though, I've come
to see it as the fundamental underlying explanation for how

(01:26:05):
fascists win. It's well established that fascist regimes and individuals
themselves are bad at threat modeling. We can bring up
examples as varied as the invasion of the Soviet Union,
or that proud boy who got shot in Portland after
picking the wrong fight, and of course January sixth. There
are many examples to choose from, but as often as

(01:26:25):
they fail, the success of these movements is also based
entirely on their willingness to dare and the fact that
liberals in particular are often too frightened and cautious to
confront them. We are still dealing with Donald Trump and
his foot soldiers in twenty twenty four because no one
quite had the guts to confront him to the degree
he needed to be confronted. Doing so would have meant

(01:26:47):
taking unprecedented legal steps and risking right wing backlash that
likely would have included acts of terrorism. In the end,
most people with any say in the matter chose to
either back away or pull their punches until after the election.
On other episodes of this show, our correspondent Mia and
I have talked about the actual path destroying the far

(01:27:09):
rights organizational and electoral base. We are up against a
coalition a fused car dealers, supplement salesman, multi level marketing goals,
sheriffs taking blatantly unconstitutional stances on their own power, and
churches that, by any decent measure lost their justification for
tax exempt status years ago. These are all forces that

(01:27:29):
can be targeted and neutered through the courts in the
legislative system with consistent activism and pressure applied to elected
leaders sitting here. I think that the odds the Democrats
embrace such as strategy are exceptionally low, but we do
have to try to make them because when you're sitting
across from a monster, one that's fattened on over confidence,

(01:27:51):
and you see him start to reach again, the only
same response is to swallow your fear and take a swing.

Speaker 1 (01:28:17):
Welcome to it could happen here. On today's episode, we
have Robert Evans, Harrison Davis Mio Wong, James Stout, Margaret Kildoy,
and I'm Sophie Lichterman. This is the post election episode.

Speaker 2 (01:28:29):
Robert, Yeah, it happened here, is happening has continued to
happen here.

Speaker 1 (01:28:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:28:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:28:37):
This has been a podcast from the beginning about things
falling apart, which is a great business to be in,
I guess because they keep doing that. I want to
start by kind of talking about yesterday's episode, the one
that I dropped before the election because I thought a
lot about like what to put out on the day
of the election, and I kind of made the call,

(01:29:00):
which I don't know regrets the wrong word. I made
the call yesterday that like, okay, we've got this new
poll from Selzer, people are starting to feel like, you know,
some of this late breaking news is good for Harris.
Some of the posters are hurting back in that direction.
I probably should do something to kind of like pump
the breaks on enthusiasm and remind people that even if

(01:29:21):
she wins, there's still a lot of dangers out there, right,
because that's what I saw as like the big threat
model is Harris is likely to win, and then people
are going to forget about these constitutional sheriffs and all
these different kind of like right wing gules that will
still be a problem if we don't take care of them, right,
if we don't do anything to actually like hamper their
ability to exercise power. So I wrote that episode with

(01:29:43):
that in mind, and it turns out I was being
overly optimistic, and I think it was being overly optimistic
in part. You know, I tend towards pessimism, which is
why this show exists in the first place. You Know,
one of the things that's happened is we've gotten bigger
and more people have listened, and is whenever like shit
happens in the world, we get bombarded on the subreddit,

(01:30:04):
and just like in emails to myself with people saying
versions of like I don't know what to do, using
language that's like very worrying sometimes about how hopeless they feel.
And so I've kind of felt a growing responsibility to
like spread calm and hope. And I think that merged
to a degree with the you know, after my dad died,

(01:30:25):
this desire to like not just be sad and de doomer,
and I think it led me to have I guess,
more of an optimistic like I forced myself into an
unreasonably optimistic frame of mind just because I thought that
was the responsible thing to do. And I guess I'm
kind of like evaluating that now, like what should I

(01:30:45):
have done differently, you know, if I'd been in a
more logical state of mind. And I guess the answer
is I don't know how to be in a more
logical state of mind. Like the problem is there's so much,
you know, you've got this hyper object of a political
real life happening in our country in this very dark
direction you're also trying to deal with and I'm sure
everyone listening is dealing with versions of this on their own.

(01:31:08):
You know, people you care about getting sick and dying
and you know, losing jobs or having to start new
ones and embarking, you know, starting to become a parent
or whatever. Like everybody's got all these massive things in
their own lives, and like trying to keep a completely
rational perspective on the political happenings in this country while

(01:31:30):
remaining unaffected from like the way in which your own
life is going to color your optimism and biases is
probably a hopeless cause to some extent, which I guess
is part of why we're here to try and as
a collective offer people our most reasonable, sort of averaged

(01:31:50):
opinion about what's going to happen. So I guess that's
what we're going to try to do here. That's what
I've got to start with.

Speaker 1 (01:31:56):
I mean, hope is illogical, but it is necessary, and
I think that's really where we have to start. I'm
going to toss over to Margaret real quick about hope.

Speaker 6 (01:32:09):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Margaret, fix this for you.

Speaker 1 (01:32:12):
Well, just to say, just to say, I woke up
today with some hope, and I think a lot of
that is from my friendship with Margaret, and I don't
think there's a better person to talk about that than her.

Speaker 4 (01:32:21):
Yeah, Margaret, I appreciate that.

Speaker 10 (01:32:24):
I often make the joke about the fact that I
named myself killed Joy in my twenties and then became
a professional optimist. But that and I think that actually
it could happen here, and I think folks here do
it really well. Sometimes determination is almost sometimes the right
word instead of hope, right because or like optimism is
always the right word because you're like, well, bad things
are happening, and they're going to happen, and they're going

(01:32:46):
to keep happening, right, And so sometimes we look at
like like climate change, for example, which is the broader problem.
You know, you're like, well, no matter what we do,
it's going to get worse. And so the immediate electoral
problem in front of us, like, no matter what happens,
it's going to get worse before it gets better. But
we need to stay aware of that and stop pretending

(01:33:06):
like the bad things aren't coming. Will then still looking
at saying like, well what can we do? And for me,
the thing that I focus on I have a therapist
friend who talks about how agency is the opposite of trauma,
you know, and that the more that we act with
agency while bad things are happening the less that they
destroy us emotionally, and so I think that focusing on

(01:33:28):
what can we do is just incredibly useful and necessary.

Speaker 6 (01:33:32):
And also the fact that.

Speaker 10 (01:33:34):
Things are in turmoil right now and that means lots
of bad things are happening and the old status quo
is gone. We saw that with the defeat of the Democrats.
Their whole thing is that they doubled down on the
old status quo, and people don't want that. People want
something different, and Trump offers something different, a very horrible
nightmare thing that's different, and the Democrats did not offer
something different. And so I actually think, in a weird way,

(01:33:56):
we are in a good position to on a grassroots
level build something different and say that people want something different.
And I think that by working towards something different and better, well,
it's the best way to keep our own spirits up.

Speaker 8 (01:34:12):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:34:13):
Yeah, thanks mac buy, I absolutely agree, James. What's your
perspective here.

Speaker 8 (01:34:20):
Yeah, Like it goes without saying that like Trump's proposed
border policies are horrific, and his propos migration policies are horrific.

Speaker 4 (01:34:27):
Houses were also bad.

Speaker 8 (01:34:29):
I think like that that doesn't mean that that trumps
are acceptable or the same they're not. But also, like
I think, having spent as much time as I have
with refugees, having spent as much time as I have
with people who have gone through things that are horrific
and like state hostility, state violent, civil war, et cetera, Like.

Speaker 6 (01:34:48):
I have a lot of hope that.

Speaker 8 (01:34:49):
Like, like Margaret said, right, there's this quote from Di Riti.
It probably isn't real about how like we're not afraid
of ruins, and we've lived in ruins our lives, and
we'll build our future in the ruins of the old world.
But like, when I think about the next four years,
like the state will be absent or hostile right now,

(01:35:10):
absent at best and hostile at worst. It's been that
way at the border for a very long time. Yeah,
And we've built our little community and our little world.
And like when I am sad, when I'm despairing, when
I'm scared, I think about the things that we did
in the last year, Right, we fed tens of thousands
of people by ourselves, and in doing that, we demonstrated

(01:35:34):
how powerful we are in the absence of the state,
because the state wasn't there, or the state was actively hostile.
We were able to step in and from nothing, we
were able to build something that took care of people
who needed to be taken care of, and that like
we're not special or unique, you know, we didn't have
like some incredible structure here before. People just showed up
to help people, and like more people will need to

(01:35:57):
do that now, and that mean that there are more
people in difficult places who need help, right, But that
doesn't mean that you can't do it. If we can
do it, you can do it. And having done it
has made me less. I just I'm not as scared
as I would be if I felt like I was
on my own, or if I felt like that we

(01:36:19):
can't deal with this, because we can, and I know
that because we have and I want Obviously that's something
we're going to focus on.

Speaker 4 (01:36:27):
Right we have between now and the middle of January.

Speaker 8 (01:36:31):
I have no idea how many weeks or days that is,
but it's a lot of time to organize, and it's
a lot of time to put aside some of the
differences we might have, some of the petty disagreements we
might have, some of the shit that people have said
on Twitter dot com and like get together and organize
and build a way of taking care of each other

(01:36:51):
that doesn't rely on the state, because that's always been
what we needed and we need it now even more so.

Speaker 2 (01:36:58):
Yeah, speaking of of what we need, now here's some ads.

Speaker 1 (01:37:03):
Oh, Robert total tone?

Speaker 4 (01:37:07):
What else was?

Speaker 6 (01:37:10):
Just can't stop him?

Speaker 4 (01:37:11):
That was just physics. There was no other way for
that to go. An object in motion.

Speaker 2 (01:37:15):
Yeah, yeah, that was like the oceans forming after the
moon hit the Earth. Well, whatever happened to make oceans?

Speaker 4 (01:37:22):
I don't know. I don't know how oceans came about.

Speaker 8 (01:37:24):
Even they call him Robert tectonic plate effants.

Speaker 1 (01:37:38):
All right, welcome back to it could happen here where
it is happening here, And Robert still can't help himself
to make strange ad transitions. Garrison, what do you got
for us?

Speaker 6 (01:37:49):
Yeah? I don't know.

Speaker 7 (01:37:50):
I I feel like I am not an optimist, and
I also put a lot of work into not being
a doomer. I try to be pretty realistic about a
whole bunch of my like thoughts and analysis on this
sort of thing, and I tend towards survival as kind
of when I'm my main priorities, And I'd like to

(01:38:12):
talk a little bit about kind of some of what
we actually saw on election night and some maybe some
small like misconceptions going around, mainly this kind of idea
that the country has like wildly swung to the right,
like people have like overwhelmingly, like more so than ever before,
have have voted for like far right figures, have voted

(01:38:33):
for far right like bills, basically wanting this this complete
like nationalistic takeover. If you look at you know, their presidency,
the Supreme Court, the House, the Senate, and I mean
the final count is still coming in. We are recording
this Wednesday afternoon. It's noon on the West coast right now,
and Trump has almost the same number of votes as

(01:38:55):
he gotten twenty twenty. I think it's a little bit
under at this point. Now there is some demographic just
certain groups may have leaned more towards or against Trump
than in past elections, but the final like averaged popular
vote number is at this point pretty much the same.

Speaker 6 (01:39:10):
Now.

Speaker 7 (01:39:11):
Kind of why this has happened, why he's still kind
of sweeping all of these swing states is we've kind
of had a collapse of trust in the Democratic Party,
and you could attribute this to a lot of things.
I don't think it's a single thing. It is obviously
a confluence of events. I think one of one of
the big things is like nine percent inflation is kind
of hard to beat if people, to Margaret's point earlier,

(01:39:33):
they're looking for something different, and Harris meaningfully was not
offering anything like substantially different. Was She's the VP, right,
Like it's she has that legacy. I don't think Biden
could have done much more to alter the inflation, but
like that that doesn't matter. People people feel this and
that's and that's very strong, and there's other reasons why
people have kind of lost faith in the Democratic Party

(01:39:55):
or aren't as willing to come out in as high
numbers as we saw back in twenty twenty. And crucially,
but back in twenty twenty, in a lot of the
swing states, the vote was very close. Although the popular
vote swung pretty heavily towards Biden in a lot of
the crucial swing states, in some of the states he
was only like twenty thousand votes ahead, Like it was
a pretty tight race in some of those states.

Speaker 4 (01:40:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (01:40:17):
Now, the other thing I'm kind of seeing, which kind
of reflects this idea that like the country hasn't wildly
like the average people haven't wildly become a more fascist.
It's that even in states that have elected Trump, they
have also passed like a decent number of progressive initiatives,
including abortion rights. Voters in Arizona and Missouri approved ballid

(01:40:38):
initiatives that will serve to protect abortion rights until further
laws are in the books. And in Maryland, in Montana, Nevada,
and New York where abortion is legal, and Colorado, where
there's no laws restricting abortion, they all passed measures that
enshrine those rights into law. Now, Florida unfortunately was not

(01:41:00):
to do this due to the super majority rules. Even
though majority of people did vote for this in Florida,
they did not reach the sixty percent threshold, so that
did not pass in Florida.

Speaker 2 (01:41:10):
But fifty seven percent very close close, and it was
an outright majority.

Speaker 7 (01:41:14):
Yeah, So people are willing to vote for these types
of things, even if they're unwilling to vote for a
Democrat at the top of the ticket, and like, this
is something that is worth considering when trying to figure
out what exactly happened here and consider why people have
kind of lost faith in the Democratic Party as a
reliable institution to improve their lives or represent the things
that they believe in, the Gaza issue being kind of

(01:41:36):
the prime example of this in the past year. One
other thing I was thinking about this morning when trying
to kind of look forward and imagine what the next
four years would look like, specifically with the concern of
figures like Elon Musk and RFK Junior being put into
pretty important positions of government. Right the idea that RFK

(01:41:57):
Junior is going to be in charge of the CDC
and Herman public health policies for the country is a
very worrying prospect. Having Elon Musk in a senior advisory
role in some kind of governmental department of efficiency doesn't
sound great. But as I was having my coffee next
to a beautiful river in the mountains of North Georgia
this morning, I was thinking about Steve Bannon because my

(01:42:21):
brain is just fucked up like that, but specifically how
Trump used Steve Bannon to get elected back in twenty sixteen,
even though Bannon's actual tenure at the White House was
quite short lived for whatever reasons, like personality clashes with
Trump happen all the time and he loses friends and
advisors at a pretty frequent rate. And I think because

(01:42:43):
Trump is just like petty and you know, ablest and
a bad guy, he might just find RFK Junior and
Elon Musk annoying to be around. Considering rf K Junior's
speech impediment and Elon Musk's apparent neurodiversity, Trump just might
not want to be around them. So, even though he
did utilize both these figures to get elected, albeit slightly

(01:43:06):
later on in the campaign, it took a while for
Musk to kind of worm his way into Trump's orbit.
I am not convinced that they will have direct access
to Trump for very long.

Speaker 8 (01:43:17):
Now.

Speaker 7 (01:43:18):
This could happen, but if you look at Steve Bannon,
who was similarly a worrying figure, he did not last
very long beside Trump. So something like this could happen now,
I don't think it'll happen the exact same way. Elon
Musk has been positioning himself to have the government be
reliant on him for contracting, and he'll probably continue to
exist in some form in that regard, But in terms

(01:43:39):
of his like direct influence on the White House and
controlling sectors of government, this won't necessarily be a four
year thing. I think that is most of what I
had on this topic.

Speaker 6 (01:43:53):
I guess. I guess.

Speaker 7 (01:43:54):
The other thing is, like it turns out in Harris's
efforts to kind of court independent and court like Republicans
that largely that largely failed.

Speaker 2 (01:44:05):
Massive failure, massive failure.

Speaker 7 (01:44:06):
I mean again, it turns out when you have a
party that's running as kind of like a mini fascist party,
and then you have another party that's running as just
a conservative party.

Speaker 4 (01:44:13):
We've got Dick Cheney.

Speaker 7 (01:44:15):
Yeah, it's not a solid opposition party. Why like this
hasn't worked for like the second time in a row.
The stats are almost identical to twenty twenty on this
issue of Republicans voting for the Republican Party. In fact,
it was slightly fewer of them voted Republican back in
twenty twenty. More of them voted Republican in twenty twenty four.

(01:44:36):
I think it's by about one percent.

Speaker 1 (01:44:37):
Trying to court the conservative vote means that the Conservatives
are going to vote for conservative.

Speaker 7 (01:44:44):
Maybe we should have an actual opposition party if you
believe in electoral politics.

Speaker 4 (01:44:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:44:48):
No, I mean, like the lesson people should take from
trump Ism Trump did not get where he is by
courting the conservative vote. Now Trump took over the Republican
Party and made it the Trump Party, and yeah, like
that is what worked, right, Like, and that's that's the
actual lesson. Like the reason why Dick Cheney was fucking

(01:45:12):
doing appearances with Kamala Harris was because conservatives, what we
had known as conservatives prior to Trump coming to power,
largely are out of the picture, right, Like the new
crop of guys are all weirdos that have molded themselves
in the image of Trump since his rise to power. Right, Yeah,

(01:45:33):
And one of the things that is, like, the lesson
is not we need to make our own Trump, although
by god, some people are going to take that lesson
out of this. The lesson is that, sure, you have
to come to people with a vision, right, Like, you
don't come to people by saying, well, what if we
put a Republican in our cabinet? Right, what if it's
basically the same as this last thing that you're not

(01:45:53):
really that happy with, but instead with more Cheney.

Speaker 6 (01:45:56):
Right, it turns out that doesn't drive food or enthusiasm.

Speaker 2 (01:45:59):
And hey, like that, you know, I'm hitting the Libs
pretty hard because this is like the most catastrophic failure
of any political party in living memory. Right, so they
do deserve to be hit. But it's not like the
left accomplished anything right, either electorally or otherwise. Right, there
is no organized national left wing movement that is worth
talking about in any kind of building power way, Like

(01:46:22):
it simply doesn't exist.

Speaker 1 (01:46:24):
And ignoring the blind loyalty that people have for Trump
was a mistake. Yeah, not considering like targeting that audience.

Speaker 7 (01:46:34):
It doesn't seem like all of the January sixth ads
did anything at all.

Speaker 1 (01:46:38):
No, did fuck all.

Speaker 7 (01:46:39):
I mean, in fact, in fact statistically they did they
did nothing. They did nothing to hurt Trump. Yeah, right,
if Trump gets essentially the same total number of votes,
they didn't do anything to hurt him like that, Like
that strategy was not that was not successful.

Speaker 6 (01:46:56):
Yeah, you have to offer something.

Speaker 7 (01:46:57):
And just the large swath of like electoral nihilism that
that the Democratic Party keeps keeps running up against continues
to be its most like existential threat.

Speaker 1 (01:47:07):
Robert Garre and I at the RNC talked to a
variety of people who did not give a flying fuck
about Trump's record.

Speaker 6 (01:47:16):
Well, of course not.

Speaker 1 (01:47:17):
All they cared about was no, they had blind loyalty
timp I posted this on Twitter dot com, and I'm
thinking specifically of the woman that was like compared Trump's
evil for lack of a better word, oh, sometimes he's ridiculous,
like my husband, and that blind loyalty and the Democrats
weren't gonna fucking flip those people. That was not gonna happen.

(01:47:40):
They took a gamble, wasn't even really a gamble. They
took a gamble on the wrong crowd, and like that
that's not effective, but you know, it's not really here
or there at this point. It happened kind of like
now what, Yeah, we haven't really heard from me much,
so I'm gonna I'm gonna shoot over to me A yeah, and.

Speaker 9 (01:48:00):
I mean I think I think where I'm at is
that Okay, we're in this moment. Are one of our
biggest advantages is that we're not the Democrats. Right, this
has been a fairly comprehensive referendum on the failure of
the Democrats to offer anything. We also like screwed up
offering a better world.

Speaker 7 (01:48:20):
Right.

Speaker 9 (01:48:21):
This is you know, I look, if you look at
what happened to twenty twenty, and you look at the
places that we actually sort of like I mean took
power as a strong word, but like there are places
where we ran the cops out and we screwed up
making those places like a world that was like ideologically
compelling it off to spread, and like we're not going
to get like a third do over of that, right.

(01:48:42):
We have to be able to sort of like when
the moment arise, we have to be able to actually
create a world that is better enough than this one
that we can move. But that's not impossible. Yeah, I
think what we have right now is we have a
period of time before Trump takes power, and we have
this time to washer beasts. We have this time to organize,

(01:49:02):
We have this time to plan and I think of
the at least part of what we need to do,
and we'll we'll get into this more like in other
episodes and later too. You know, there's there's there's the
obvious tasks of organization. There's getting people involved in things,
there's getting into meetings. I also think, and this is
something that's I think easier to do, like literally immediately,

(01:49:24):
is that we've been fighting completely defensively on the cultural
front for four years and it's been a complete disaster,
and we need to have a large scale cultural offensive.
There needs to be something other than fucking TikTok Mormonism,
like we need we need some alternatives to trad wife ship.
We need alternatives to this like terrible, like the fucking

(01:49:45):
influencer sphere. There needs to be something else. We need
to create that very very fast, anarchist tradwife stuff like Christ.

Speaker 6 (01:49:56):
That's what's gonna say us.

Speaker 2 (01:49:57):
All right, yeah, everybody, everybody go buy a sun dress
right now, get out.

Speaker 4 (01:50:02):
There, both of you to assume we don't have them,
Robot and.

Speaker 1 (01:50:05):
I'm gonna I'm gonna pull Robert everything. Speaking of buying things,
it's time for our last ad break. All right, we're back,
and I do want to get I do want to
get into, you know, a little bit more specifics of

(01:50:27):
what can we do now, And I just want to
say a fucking lot. The cards are on the table.

Speaker 6 (01:50:33):
It's going to be a busy four years.

Speaker 4 (01:50:35):
Yeah, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:50:36):
I intended Margaret's book books signing last week, and I've
attended lots of our events. And one of the questions
and q and a's, and one of the questions that
gets asked all the time is how do I get involved?
How do I how do I find how do I
meet people? How do I do this things? And you know,
I want to get into that. I also want to
give some very basic tangible advice. You know, don't post

(01:50:57):
stupid things on the internet.

Speaker 2 (01:50:59):
If somebody tells you we need to go out and
engage in revolutionary activity, maybe sit at home right now.
You don't want to come into this thing with a
criminal record. Nobody is making good plans right now. Go
make good ones. Don't just reactively show up and follow
someone with a clipboard in the streets.

Speaker 1 (01:51:18):
Don't post actionable threats on the internet.

Speaker 7 (01:51:23):
Don't post that picture of that comedian that gave that
really funny joke. Just don't do it. There's no reason to.
It's not cool. Yeah, Like, don't if you know what,
if you know what comedian I'm talking about, you'll get it.

Speaker 6 (01:51:35):
You'll get it.

Speaker 2 (01:51:37):
If you're going to, you know, get messed up. Use
substances in order to cope with things. Log out of
social media on all of your devices first.

Speaker 8 (01:51:45):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:51:46):
Yeah, sounds like that's some advice you were giving yourself.

Speaker 2 (01:51:50):
Sober as a church mouse, Sophie, just just coffee and
clean Mountain Air for me.

Speaker 1 (01:51:55):
A very basic recommendation that I have for people is
to get delete me.

Speaker 4 (01:51:59):
Yeah mm hmm.

Speaker 1 (01:52:01):
It is worth the investment. It is a good product,
That's what I'll say.

Speaker 2 (01:52:06):
Yes, delete me is a service that helps purge aspects
of your public record from the internet.

Speaker 8 (01:52:12):
Right.

Speaker 2 (01:52:13):
There's a lot of different site like, yeah, you have
been involved if you are a person who participates in
the economy through the internet. Right, if you buy things
through the internet, your shit has been leaked.

Speaker 4 (01:52:22):
Right.

Speaker 1 (01:52:23):
Their you know tagline is your private information is no
longer private. Right, And so essentially what they do is
they scour the Internet and remove your personal data from
online and they don't do that once. They continuously do it.
This is like a fantastic plug for the product. They
are not paying us. Yeah, let's just say the Churchier

(01:52:43):
Scientology could not find me. Hell yeah, So.

Speaker 7 (01:52:47):
I will say there is some alternatives to delete me
that are trying to get up the running. We might
do a full episode on data removal in the future.

Speaker 1 (01:52:53):
Yeah, we definitely should.

Speaker 7 (01:52:54):
It does require you to also do manual inputs. There
are certain sites that delete me when they send takedown
requests to data brokers. Certain sites will not comply. You
have to send requests manually. It's pretty simple, but they
will give you a list of certain sites as well
to do to go through this process manually. But I
think like kind of the last thing we want to
talk about is like we have seventy five days right

(01:53:16):
to like prepare for stuff. We have seventy five days
to prepare for the next four years. In some ways,
it's going to kind of be like twenty seventeen to
twenty nineteen again, which was a very busy time. Kind
of all of the right wing gouals that have been
hiding under the rocks the past few years because of
the liberal doj will probably start coming out of the woodwork.
There's going to be, you know, a lot more stuff

(01:53:36):
going on, and you know, those of us that are here,
we're able to make it through those years. Some of
your friends probably weren't able to, and it is up
to us to take care of each other to try
to ensure that ourselves and people we know have a
better chance of making it through these next four years.
And I think kind of lastly, I'd like to kind

(01:53:57):
of just go around talking about like what that will
look like and how to kind of start that process,
especially during these first seventy five days. Like brunch is over.
Brunch has been over for a while, bunch of brunch
should have never started. Yeah, but brunch is over now,
So what can what can we do in these next
to seventy five days?

Speaker 1 (01:54:18):
It's share your black coffee with friends.

Speaker 2 (01:54:21):
Time, share your black coffee with friends.

Speaker 4 (01:54:23):
Maybe cork the champagne.

Speaker 1 (01:54:25):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, cork the champagne.

Speaker 4 (01:54:27):
You've drinking that orange juice though you don't have enough
vitamin C.

Speaker 10 (01:54:31):
Or when you and your anarchist tradwife friends get together
for brunch, just make sure to actually talk about real
radical things you can do.

Speaker 6 (01:54:39):
Because if you already have a way of gathering with.

Speaker 10 (01:54:41):
Your friends, you should just turn it into talking about
more than just how.

Speaker 6 (01:54:45):
Your day is.

Speaker 9 (01:54:45):
Absolutely, Yeah, I feel like I need to put on
the record that what I said, that what I was
trying to say is we need feminism, not an anti tradwife.
I don't know how that was conveyed.

Speaker 6 (01:54:56):
I was trying to recruit you into my tradwife called.

Speaker 1 (01:54:58):
No, thank you for clarifying. Yeah, but that was very
much understood. But being a little bit literal right now.

Speaker 6 (01:55:08):
Is not bad.

Speaker 1 (01:55:09):
Yeah, there, so true. I just think about like the
ways that I've found my people and the way that
I have made my community. Obviously, like the taglines of
you know, talk to your neighbors and things like that
are absolutely important, but the recommendation you know, obviously joining

(01:55:30):
orgs are great. Sure, that's a great talking point, but
that's not really how I met my community. The people
that are essentially my family now, I met by going
to content and different creators, shows and music and different
events where we had mutual interests, even if that meant
that I had to drive pretty far and found people

(01:55:52):
that liked the things that I like. And it turns
out a lot of the people that like the things
you like believe the things you believe, and if they don't,
they're usually pretty open to hearing you out. Yeah, and
I think it's super important to listen to your friends
and also, like I've said this quite a bit, support
your friend's weird hobby. Yeah, that's super crucial. Listen to

(01:56:16):
the people around you, And it's not easy. I had
basically no friends for a very long time because I
did not have the right people around me, and it
took a lot of effort to find my core humans.
I mean, I'm not recommending this, and several of us

(01:56:37):
did do this. I moved to a different state. You
save up for it. It's definitely not affordable thing to do,
definitely not an easy thing to do. But I don't
know where I would be without those people, and I
love them.

Speaker 7 (01:56:51):
Yeah, politics and culture do go hand in hand in
so many ways, and kind of cultural engagement and ways
to kind of grow your social network, especially you know
in places where there's probably where there's I mean in
my case, you know, like trans people, queer people, people
that I'm kind of around, and people who I'm like,
you know, concerned about, like personally, people are like no,
you know, going into these next four years, I guess

(01:57:14):
like the biggest thing I was kind of thinking about
last night is like, yes, these next four years are
going to suck, and in many ways it'll just be
like everything will just get slightly worse. But like I
know that myself and those I know like immediately around
me will be fine, Like we will be okay. Things
will be worse, but we already have networks, We already

(01:57:37):
have community. We have these things built up to take
care of each other and provide the things that we need,
and this is something that we'll be talking more about
in the kind of the next few months. Like we
have we have that, and that's taken effort. That doesn't
just happen by itself. It requires effort, and it requires
resistance to this idea like community nihilism, this kind of
belief that like community is like not a real thing

(01:57:57):
that doesn't actually exist, which is a very privileged thing
to believe, because there's people out there who rely on
this and will continue to rely on this even more
in these next few years. But there are those without that,
and and that's the people I'm most concerned about. Yeah,
it's queer kids, it's trans kids who do not have
those networks, do not have those communities, people who are

(01:58:18):
isolated like that is who I am most concerned about that.
And I understand the impulse to kind of isolate and
just go online because that's safer than having to go
out into the real world, or at least it feels safer,
But I don't think that's actually real. I think that
leads to its own forms of detrimental harm. So like
it requires like a getting off discord and like a
going into your community and trying to make friends, which

(01:58:40):
can be scary, but it is like incredibly crucial. I
think we should talk about like joining actual orgs as well.
I think some other people on this call can speak
more to that and like the utility of those as well.
But I think first and foremostly even getting a network
of friends outside of orgs, it's also a very is
a very good it's not even it's just like a

(01:59:01):
life support system that it's going to be super important.

Speaker 1 (01:59:04):
Yeah, yeah, I'd like to throw it to Margaret for
a socond because she looks like she really wants to
say something.

Speaker 10 (01:59:11):
Oh and I don't actually disagree with anything that they're saying.
I think, no, not at all.

Speaker 6 (01:59:15):
It's absolutely crucial.

Speaker 10 (01:59:16):
I wanted to just say that, like, I think there's
actually a weird blurriness in the lines between an organization
and a friend group, right totally. And the problem isn't
necessarily subculture. The problem is a sort of if we
have this idea that there's a hegemonic subculture, like in
order to be a radical, you have to be part
of our click, right, And that's a problem. Whereas if

(01:59:36):
whatever click you're already part of or already subculture you're
already part of you turn that radical. I think that is,
you know, it's what Sophie was talking about. But then yes,
there's a lot of people who have no access to
any of that, and some of it, as I think
you're saying, is well, if you only hang out with
your friends on discord, like maybe it's time to start
meeting up in person, and even if that's very complicated

(01:59:57):
to do. But I also think that there's a huge,
huge importance to open door organizing and organizing. Like when
I say orgs, I don't mean like go join PSL
or any authoritarian cult, right, or that there should never
be a one organization that says this is the strategy
that we have to use to fight this. But instead,
if you get together with the people that you want

(02:00:19):
to get together with and say, this is the problem
we're dealing with, how do we deal with it? And
that is how you can create an organization. And if
you do that, many of those organizations, I would hope
would have open door policies and be public because there
are so many isolated people who want to be involved
who don't have any kind of like cultural cachet with
which to get into a more subcultural group. I think

(02:00:41):
this is why churches are very good at recruiting unfortunately
depending on the church, but like because you can just
show up and they will be like, okay, you have
a community now, right, And that is what people desperately want,
I think right now. And we have to be careful.
We don't want to just be like, oh, therefore we
should replicate what they do. But I think that overall
what our movement needs is instead of gatekeepers, we need ushers.

(02:01:03):
We need people to help people find their way into
the movement, to help bring them in and figure out like, hey,
what are you good at or what are you interested
in being good at? Here's how you can apply it.
And I want to really quickly use a case study
that happened from the last Trump election that I think
was actually fairly useful. It was living in a small town,
a small city with a fairly vibrant to anarchist community,

(02:01:23):
and when Trump was elected, we called for anarchist assemblies
and they were open door and they were places where
you don't get together to plan crime. But all of
these different mutual aid groups would come and bring representation.
People would say this is what we're working on. This
is what we can use help with. And they weren't
decision making bodies, they were information sharing bodies. And a

(02:01:48):
lot of different groups spun up out of it that
are still around, like herbal clinics and different mutual aid
organizations because we just said, hey, everyone who cares about this,
let's get together and talk about what we want to do.
And I found that to be an incredibly useful thing.
And it's like the kind of thing I would pitch
to people is not necessarily and if you're not an anarchist,

(02:02:09):
don't do it as the anarchist thing. Yeah, that's that's
what I care about. That's what I'm excited about.

Speaker 8 (02:02:13):
Yeah, I just wanted to offer, like, first of all,
like get outside if you can, like touch craw and
touch grass. Can be very condescending, and I don't mean
it like that. I just like I was feeling stressed
last week and I went off and I climbed to
the top of a mountain and I sat there by
myself for a while and it was nice and it
was so quiet. I could hear like this little hawk's wingspeeding,

(02:02:33):
and that was really good for me. That's what I
like to hear. It would not have changed the outcome
one bit if I had stayed and sound twister dot
com for four hours instead of doing that. So I
want you to all take time for yourselves and do
things that kind.

Speaker 6 (02:02:47):
Of make you feel hopeful.

Speaker 8 (02:02:49):
I want to build a for what Margaret said, there
are so many skills that all of you had that
you could share with someone. I think when I started
being an anarchist, it was largely because I was going
to a bike co op and like, people shared their
skills with me, and I shared my skills with them,
and we all shared our stuff with each other, and
I worked out that we could just rely on other

(02:03:11):
people for that shit and they didn't need to be
hierarchical or based on some transfer of material goods.

Speaker 4 (02:03:16):
People just want to help each other.

Speaker 8 (02:03:19):
And a lot of people have messaged me saying that,
like they know that I participate in mutilae and they
want you to. If you can't see it, then you
have to start it, and that's okay. You can change
the world if you make a caller full of sandwiches
and give them to people who are hungry. I guarantee
if you start doing that shit, you will find other
people and they will say hey, what are you doing?

Speaker 4 (02:03:40):
Oh I'm feeling people? Why because they're hungry? Can I help?

Speaker 8 (02:03:43):
Yes, it's that easy, and like we can build from there.
We don't have to agree with them on everything, first
of all, but we can build from there, and I
think it can be really scary, But like now, it's
the time to start, not once things get worse, you know,
four eight years ago was the time to start. But
we can't go back, and I want to kind of

(02:04:04):
finish up with that that we can't go back. I
don't care where someone was yesterday. I don't care where
they were last week. I don't care where they were
last year, like all the malices, where they are now,
and we can build forward from here. We cannot go
back and change things. And it is not worth doing
endless recriminations. It doesn't matter it's happened. It's on us

(02:04:28):
to decide how we react now. And you can react
in a way that strengthens our communities and that builds
ways are taking care of each other, which aren't way
they of controlling each other. That that's all that you
need to do to make this so much less despairing,
so much less terrible, and so much less deadly for
some people. And I know that we're doing that here.

(02:04:51):
Check in on my friends. I'm in the Daddy and Gap.
I'm checking in on my mutual aid friends. And if
you don't have that, I want you to build that.
And I promise it's not something this out of reach,
like you can do it.

Speaker 6 (02:05:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (02:05:02):
I want to add one last thing.

Speaker 6 (02:05:03):
I think a lot of people think they don't have skills.
You do have skills.

Speaker 9 (02:05:06):
The thing that I did when I started organizing was
I moved chairs around so that people could have meetings
by moving chairs. And I have helped take care of
people's kids that like, helped put posters up right. People,
people can do things. You have things that you can do,
and it's it's time to lock in. That's that's that's
what we have from here. It is time to lock in.

(02:05:26):
It's time to organize, and it's time to get prepared to fight.

Speaker 6 (02:05:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:05:29):
Yeah, this is just the first episode after the election.
In the coming weeks, coming days, coming months, we're going
to go into very specific detail on things. We are
going to provide different information and resources and continue to
defend against disinformation and misinformation. And this is a fucking

(02:05:51):
daily show.

Speaker 7 (02:05:53):
We will we will be getting into all of all
of these topics, especially in these next to seventy five days,
to help prepare topic by topic.

Speaker 6 (02:06:01):
Yeah, it's going to be. It's gonna be a long
four years.

Speaker 1 (02:06:23):
Welcome to it could happen? Here a podcast about things
crumbling and how to pick up the pieces wooing.

Speaker 4 (02:06:33):
We love to crumble.

Speaker 1 (02:06:35):
Yeah, yeah, And part of that is understanding what is
going to happen and how it is going to happen,
and obsorbing that knowledge and what you can do with it.
So today James is going to tell us about Trump's
plans for migrants.

Speaker 8 (02:06:52):
Yep, yeah, I guess in terms of what's going to happen,
we don't know, right. Trump said a lot of stuff
in his first term and kind of didn't stick the
landing a lot of it he tried. But they're more
experienced now and I think crucially they have a much
more favorable Supreme Court and then probably will have an
even more favorable Supreme Court by the end of this term.

(02:07:13):
So a plan to deport up to a million people
this year was one of the very few concrete and
tangible promises that the Trump campaign made. Right, they had
a lot of vibes, nasty vibes, but like in terms
of like we will do X by y. This was
one of the very few. Now, Trump tried to deport
a lot of people in his first term.

Speaker 4 (02:07:33):
Right.

Speaker 8 (02:07:34):
The one consistent part of his policy ever since he
rode sideways down an escalator in twenty fifteen and then
shit talked to Mexican people, has been an anti migrant policy.
He didn't really stick the landing on mass deportations in
his first term. In fact, Biden deported more people in
twenty twenty three than Trump did in any year of

(02:07:55):
his first term. In fact, Trump also fell behind Obama
in terms of deep ortations per year. None of that
means that he won't be able to do that this time, right,
I'm just trying to put some numbers on his promises
the last time. So I want to look first at
how he could go about his promise in his second term.

Speaker 6 (02:08:12):
Right.

Speaker 8 (02:08:12):
One thing that he said he will do is use
Title forty two again. So if people have not listened
to the series I did last May or June on
Title forty two, I would like to direct them there.
Title forty two is a reminder, it's a public health law.
And it's public health law that, in this interpretation, allowed CBP,
specifically Border Patrol to immediately return people to Mexico without

(02:08:36):
processing them first. Sometimes they call it catch and release.

Speaker 4 (02:08:40):
Right.

Speaker 8 (02:08:40):
What it resulted in was these are not technically deportations.
But when Trump said something, I don't think he's considering
the exact meanings of what he's saying. Right, So if
we look at Title forty two expulsions, if he's going
to bring back Title forty two, reaching that one million
per year number is pretty easy. In fact, that happened

(02:09:01):
in twenty twenty two, again under Biden. Right, So if
he considers those to be deportations and that's within his
one million per year goal, it's reasonable that he will
reach to say that he will be able to reach that,
and he will be able to do that with the
current infrastructure, right without massively upgrading CBP, ice, ice, detention facilities,
immigration judges, all those things. Yeah, So, like, if we

(02:09:26):
consider those to be deportations, and one million a year
is very much something that we might.

Speaker 1 (02:09:30):
Well see, do you know where we're at this year
or it hasn't been released yet.

Speaker 6 (02:09:34):
I don't know.

Speaker 4 (02:09:35):
In twenty twenty two was the last stats I could find.

Speaker 8 (02:09:38):
I linked to the CBP If people want to look
at the title forty two and title so Title eight.
It's the immigration law under which people are normally received right.
Title forty two ended in May of twenty twenty three,
mayle elevens twenty twenty three with the end of the
COVID nineteen emergency, because the reason they were using public
health law as immigration law was because of this health

(02:09:59):
emergency right now. Obviously it was used extremely cynically. For instance,
there weren't exemptions for vaccinated people, but nonetheless that's why
they were using it. And when the federal emergency for
COVID nineteen ended, so did Biden's.

Speaker 6 (02:10:09):
Excuse for using Title forty two.

Speaker 8 (02:10:12):
That I will link to the CBP data center in
the notes so people can see Title forty two versus
tight late over the last few years. As I pointed
out last week, the US can also fund deportations of
migrants further south, and it's done this at Panama. I've
had a series from there last week. People hadn't listened
to it. I would love them to do so, but
the numbers that they've been able to achieve there are
pretty low. And I don't think that's really going to

(02:10:33):
meaningfully impact his target. So let's talk about what everyone
is most afraid of, which is mass deportations of people
who are already living in.

Speaker 4 (02:10:42):
The United States.

Speaker 1 (02:10:43):
Right.

Speaker 8 (02:10:44):
That is definitely what his right wing trolls have been
sort of hyping up, certainly over the last few weeks, right,
the idea that they are going to come to your
house and find you if you're an undocumented person in
the United States. So to talk about this, I want
to talk about, first of all, like the real nuts
and bolts of how he would be able, if he
would be able to.

Speaker 4 (02:11:04):
Do this, right.

Speaker 8 (02:11:05):
And I draw very heavily here on a report by
the American Immigration Council who did some calculations on the
cost of a single ice detention, right, the cost of
a single raid, the amount of agents that will be
required to meet this kind of capacity. And there are
two models that they use, and those are the models

(02:11:25):
I think are most relevant. If we look at people
who are in the United States without permanent legal status,
we make an estimate for numbers, we're looking at about
eleven million undocumented people. That's not going to be perfect,
but if we use that as a ballpark, and then
two point three million people who have entered since the
end of Title forty two, and they're on various forms

(02:11:47):
of bail or parole, a bond, and they don't have
a permanent status here either rent, So we're looking at
somewhere in the region of thirteen million. If Trump wanted
to all of those.

Speaker 6 (02:12:01):
People right now.

Speaker 8 (02:12:03):
To do that, he would need to massively expand ICE
detention facilities. About half of ICE's staff aren't Countrary to
what you might believe about ICE kicking in people's doors
and deporting them, half of ICE's staff work for something
called homeod Security Investigations. It's not that those people don't
do deportations. They do, but they mostly focus on human trafficking,

(02:12:26):
drug trafficking, transnational crime. Now sometimes as people also do deportations.
People might be familiar with the big HSI raids on
certain employers who are employing a lot of undocumented people.
Those still result in deportations, but that's not their primary tasking,
and HSI has historically preferred not to do the deportation

(02:12:46):
work because they feel that that makes it very hard
for them to do the other work of like monitoring
human and drug trafficking, because evidently migrants are going to
be scared to go anywhere near HSI if they know
that HSI could deport them, right, So they're not going.

Speaker 6 (02:12:59):
To talk to them.

Speaker 8 (02:13:00):
Now, it would be very easy for Trump to retask
those those agents, right That would obviously undermine what it's
done to prevent drug trafficking and human trafficking. Whether or
not he cares is a question that's I think I
probably have an answer for that. I guess up for
debates somewhat. So Trump has already called in addition to

(02:13:22):
potentially re equipping those HSI agents, he said he wants
to employ ten thousand more Border Patrol agents.

Speaker 4 (02:13:29):
Right now.

Speaker 8 (02:13:30):
BP agents can do deportations, but it's not BP agents
who are coming to your door in Chicago and coming
after you, right that that's ICE Immigration and Customs enforcement.
He's also said he wants to give Border plot agents
a ten thousand dollars retention bonus and a ten percent raise.
Just to put it in the perspective, there are twenty
thousand BP agents right now, so that would be about

(02:13:52):
a fifty percent increase.

Speaker 4 (02:13:53):
Right.

Speaker 8 (02:13:53):
This is not something he can do quickly. They need
to go through the academy. They need to be recruited, trained,
back and check, et cetera. Border Patrol has a lot
of waivers right now, so you can, we can waive
requirements that other law enforcement agencies would have few to
work for them, if that makes sense, right, be it
a GED or a college degree or another language or whatever.

(02:14:13):
They are offering waivers a lot right now. They can
increase that number of waivers to recruit more people, right,
but that would still take a long time. So the
estimate the American Immigration Council has is that to remove
all of those thirteen million people in that sort of
in the one mass deportation as opposed to a million
people a year scenario, would require between two hundred and

(02:14:36):
twenty and four hundred and nine thousand staff Jesus Christ.

Speaker 6 (02:14:40):
Yeah, yeah, that is a lot of people.

Speaker 2 (02:14:43):
So I mean, like, for comparison as to how many
that actually is, the United States military active duties about
a million people.

Speaker 8 (02:14:50):
Yes, that was exactly. That's a comparison. Not the Army,
not the Navy, the military, yeah, like all of it. Yeah,
this would put DHS at like substantially more personal than
like the Marine Corps, right, like.

Speaker 2 (02:15:02):
Yeah, not that people don't want to do. It's just
like it is. Actually, we've talked a lot about how
there are not guard rails on Trump like there were
last time. That is true, and that is a very
realistic thing to like be worried about and scared about.
But that we're not just talking about guard rails. We
are talking about a logistical hurdle. It is not a
simple or necessarily possible thing to make an agency like

(02:15:25):
that that much larger and have it actually function Like
just this is just physics we're talking about here. Yeah,
it's the same with anything. If cool Zone suddenly received
one hundred billion dollars from Jeff Bezos and he said,
do anything you want with it, we could not scale
up to half a million employees like.

Speaker 8 (02:15:45):
We have.

Speaker 2 (02:15:45):
We have absolutely no capacity to handle that.

Speaker 6 (02:15:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 8 (02:15:49):
Yeah, Like, I think what people have to remember is
that every doual kicking ice agent needs to enable us, right.
They need paid they need health insurance, they need human resources,
they need training.

Speaker 6 (02:15:59):
This would make a very long time.

Speaker 2 (02:16:02):
Sorry, it's one point three million or so, Okay, I
think it's a little less. That's twenty seventeen data, so
it's probably as closer to a million now but slightly
over a million, but.

Speaker 8 (02:16:10):
This is close to that's close to half, right, Yeah,
that's in addition to what they already have.

Speaker 6 (02:16:14):
Yeah, the four hundred and ninety plus whatever they have.

Speaker 8 (02:16:16):
It would also, of course mean like substantially increasing their
investigative capacity, because most deportations right now, when ICE arrest
someone happen when someone else has already arrested that person.
So like the person who's in detention federally or on
a state level for something else that they did and
they're undocumented, that's when ICE can take them and deport them, right,

(02:16:37):
So they'd have to also increase their ability to search
out and find people, not saying they can't, but you
can't take you know, fucking Tim Poole, bring him into ICE.
He's not going to instantly know how to find people
where to find people, right, So like this, this will
take time.

Speaker 6 (02:16:52):
There is a practical.

Speaker 8 (02:16:53):
Constraint on him doing this, even if there aren't other
constraints within the balance of powers. So Stephen Miller, dude
with the giant head, I'm sorry, but you're going to
have to be more specific when we talk about like
conservatives who are about to come into power, who have.

Speaker 4 (02:17:08):
Like a weirdly huge head.

Speaker 6 (02:17:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 8 (02:17:10):
Okay, that's like, find me a Californian who has strong
opinions on gluten.

Speaker 4 (02:17:18):
Yeah, that's me. I'm a pro glue yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 8 (02:17:20):
So Stephen Miller is he is the guy who's crafted
a lot of Trump's nefarious border policies.

Speaker 4 (02:17:26):
Right.

Speaker 8 (02:17:27):
It was Miller who who sook out Title forty two.
And I want to talk about this a bit later.
One thing that Miller did effectively, I don't want to
say well, because it was objectively horrible. But one thing
that Miller was good at was finding this obscure piece
of public health law and mobilizing it against migrants.

Speaker 4 (02:17:45):
Right.

Speaker 8 (02:17:45):
I think if you'd spoken to me in twenty fifteen
and said what do you think Trump's going to do
against migrants, I wouldn't have said, Oh, it'll be Title
forty two, the United States Code, you know, that regulates
public health. He or people within his team were very
effective at finding that and using that effective and the
Biden administration kept it for three years after the Trump
administration did it for one year, Right, And so Miller

(02:18:06):
could find some niche kind of law. What he wants
to do is use the National Guard from cooperative states, right, yeah,
and to use a national Guard from cooperative states in
states that are not cooperative and where local law enforcement
would not cooperate.

Speaker 4 (02:18:23):
Right.

Speaker 8 (02:18:23):
So, some quote unquote sanctuary states, I think there's probably
an overstatement. They don't in theory refer and documented people
they arrest to ICE for deportation. Right now, What federal
fusion centers do is allow for that even if it
is a sanctuary state. Actually, but in theoretical terms, a
sanctuary state would not at least contact ICE about every

(02:18:44):
undocumented person they're arrested.

Speaker 9 (02:18:46):
Right.

Speaker 8 (02:18:46):
So Miller's plan is to use the National Guard. Again, like,
that's not what the National Guard does right now. They're
not really trained up for doing that either, Right. I've
seen plenty of National Guard folks on the border. I
it's a bunch of scared eighteen year olds, right who
are trying to get money through robat And I have

(02:19:06):
met Texas National Guide.

Speaker 4 (02:19:09):
They're kids. They're kids.

Speaker 6 (02:19:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:19:11):
Now, to be fair, that's not saying they're like innocent
or inherent Like every group of soldiers who has done
any good or bad things, and often but usually both
at the same time, it's a bunch of scared eighteen
year old kids. Yes, that's been the case for ten
thousand years. Yeah, that's true.

Speaker 8 (02:19:30):
Anytime you have conflict reporting, you it's always shocking how
young people are.

Speaker 2 (02:19:35):
It's always just like, oh, okay, all wars are fought
by children. There's no non child soldiers, with the exception
of I mean, that is the weird thing about the
Ukraine War, right yet, Like I remember the first time
I wound up at the front there, it was like, oh,
this is actually it is actually old men fighting this war,
old men who repeatedly told me it's either me or
my kid shows up here. And I already fucking lost
my soul in Afghanistan, Yes, like I literally had that

(02:19:57):
interview with people.

Speaker 8 (02:19:58):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's crazy to me people who are
in Afghanistan and fighting again. Yeah, I mean I think
those guys are probably out now. There's uptop back fifty. Yeah,
I think twenty twenty four, so it's forty years later.

Speaker 4 (02:20:08):
I'm sure they're too old now.

Speaker 8 (02:20:09):
But Robert talking of being too old, I unfortunately I
am not too old to be obliged to transition to advertisement.

Speaker 4 (02:20:16):
So that's what we're going to do.

Speaker 2 (02:20:17):
You're never too old for that. James and in fact,
the older you get. It's kind of like how if
you reread Moby Dick at different points in your life,
it's a completely different novel, every ten years, different book.
The same thing is true with Ulysses, and the same
thing is true with these advertisements. That's right, Save them,
record them on your home device, and every couple of
months listen and you'll you'll learn something new from jumpa

(02:20:40):
Casino every time.

Speaker 8 (02:20:52):
All Right, we're back, and I hope you've downloaded that
chump of casino at for later in the event of
a great down scenario, you could have a whole library
of those to listen to. So talking of obscure legislations,
we did right. Trump and his team have mentioned this
thing called the Alien Enemies Act. It sounds like alien
Ant Farm, but it's not in any way related.

Speaker 2 (02:21:12):
Sadly, not nearly as good as for one thing, it's
cover of smooth Criminal, terrible, terrible.

Speaker 8 (02:21:17):
Yeah, no, nowhere near the same standard. That's a joke
for people who are over thirty.

Speaker 2 (02:21:22):
Yes, anyone who tries to dance to that alien Ant
Farm song today not only has to think about the
fact that Michael Jackson was definitely a pedophile, but also
their needs no longer work.

Speaker 8 (02:21:32):
Yeah, it's a loseless just sadly shuffling along, properly moonwalking
while crying, uh, taking iberprofen. No. I was at a
street light show in Portland that was all millennials and
every time like the pit was crazy, but also it

(02:21:52):
sounded like a cement mixer when everybody's knees got going,
doling out hyberprofen and the way out. So you're going
to need this tomorrows. So the Alien Enemies Act, it
hasn't been used since the United States used it in
the Second World War for in tournament camps, right, which,

(02:22:14):
at least for many of US, is are part of
national shame. I guess like a pretty terrible fucking thing
that United States did. Obviously, for some folks in the
Trump administration, this is something that they're kind of aspiring to.
I guess Trump has said that he would like to
use this to deport gang members. That's not really what
it's for. And like even sources within DHS have pointed
out that they would have to prove that these migrants

(02:22:37):
were sent by a foreign government, right, or someone that
the US is at war with. This is going to
be hard, because, like if we look at Venezuelans, who
are representing a larger and larger proportion of migrants since
the elections there, they will actively shit talk the government
of their country at the first opportunity. I have met hundreds,
if not thousands of Venezuelan migrants in California and in

(02:22:59):
the Dallian Gap, and yeah, you're not going to find
people who you can plausibly say were sent.

Speaker 4 (02:23:05):
By Maduro that way.

Speaker 8 (02:23:06):
Yeah, but Miller's pretty good at finding these obscure laws
and ways of doing things. So we would be fully
to write this off entirely. But I don't think that
will make up the bulk of these mass deportations. So
I want to go to that American Immigration Council report,
which our link in the show notes. Right, assuming a
million deportations a year, which is what jd. Vance said
to The New York Times, that's the sort of steady

(02:23:28):
deportation scenario as opposed to the mass deportation of thirteen
million people scenario, which a steady one is is more
realistic in terms of practicality. Right, the cost of that,
assuming that twenty percent of undocumented people decided to leave
on their own would be about eighty eight billion a year,
which is a large amount of money.

Speaker 4 (02:23:49):
We'll talk in a little bit about what you could
get with that money.

Speaker 8 (02:23:51):
A one off massed deportation would cost about three hundred
and fifteen billion. The detention costs alone for that one
off massed deportation of eleven to thirteen million people would
be one hundred and sixty seven point eight billion dollars,
which is probably why private prison group geo groups stock
sawed this week. Right if Trump wants to deport people,

(02:24:14):
the average deportee is detained for fifty nine days before
they're deported, and so they are going to massively have
to increase their capacity. Right now, their current detention contract
includes a minimum of twenty nine thousand, seven hundred and
ninety beds between like increases and other facilities they have
access to, and early twenty twenty four, accralling to the

(02:24:35):
American Immigration Council, they detained thirty nine thousand people. Astute
listeners will notice that eleven million and thirty nine thousand
are quite quite desparate as numbers go. So, ah, yeah,
I mean you're talking about a huge percentage of Like
we'll get into this later, But in California, Texas, and
Florida it's between five and six percent of the population

(02:24:55):
are undocumented. Right, you're talking about building prison city. If
you were to detain that many people, then one fell
swoop Again. That takes time. But in this case it's
private sector actors like Geogroup. They can tend to move
a little bit faster. Right, So to put that cost
in terms of things that the government could do with

(02:25:16):
the money instead, Right, a decade of one million deportations
a year means foregoing forty four hundred and fifty elementary
schools or two point nine million new homes, or funding
the head Start program for seventy nine years. A single
year of mass deportation would cost nearly twice the National
Institute of Health's annual budget, or eighteen times a global

(02:25:37):
annual expenditure on cancer research. So I guess that's shit
that we could have instead. But that's not all because
undocumented households, contrary to what you might have heard, paid taxes.
And if we deported every undocumented person in the United States,
we look at twenty twenty two numbers, undocumented households paid

(02:25:57):
forty six point eight billion in federal taxes and nine
point three billion in state and local taxes. That's a
huge amount of tax revenue forgone right, absolutely, yeah, that again,
that won't be the end of it, because some industries
like construction and agriculture rely heavily on undocumented labor. And
if you're worried about the cost of your groceries, now

(02:26:19):
if people voted for Donald Trump, because that egg costs more,
shit will cost an awful lot more if we deport the.

Speaker 4 (02:26:26):
Undocumented people working in agriculture.

Speaker 8 (02:26:28):
Right, sectors of that industry do not function economically without
underpaid migrant labor. And this is something that migrants are
very aware of. Actually I broadcast interview with one of
them last week. But they know that they will be
underpaid because they're undocumented, but they still think that that's
worth it for them to be safe. Right, So for
going that, I don't think Trump has not proposed a

(02:26:50):
solution to this, right like these sort of this long
form thinking is not what he does certainly in his speeches,
but that would have a massive impact on the economy.
What he would also certainly need to do is persuade
the countries that these migrants come from to take them back,
and that has historically been something that has been extremely difficult.

Speaker 4 (02:27:09):
The State Department.

Speaker 8 (02:27:10):
Doesn't see the sort of process of persuading people to
accept migrants as really within its remit, and it certainly
sort of bristle that having to do this the last
Trump administration. I think a mass deportation like this it
would trigger some nations refusing to take people back, for instance,
to Venezuela. Right, Venezuela is already not taking people back

(02:27:33):
from Panama. You at the US funds deportations for Panama.
Venezuela and Panama have ceased relations after the election in
Venezuela and Panama rightly claiming that that was a fraudulent election,
and as a result, Panama is now looking for a
third country to deport these people too. If the US
attempted to deport potentially millions people to Venezuela again, there's
no guarantee that Madua has to accept them back.

Speaker 4 (02:27:56):
Right.

Speaker 1 (02:27:57):
I can hear a lot of people saying, how is
that allowed.

Speaker 4 (02:28:00):
To not accept take them back?

Speaker 1 (02:28:02):
Yeah?

Speaker 8 (02:28:03):
I mean if international law is like it's a unicorn,
Like you know, if everyone agrees that they see it,
and they see it, but it's not real, right, So
like who is going to make them? I guess, like,
like whether it's allowed or not, it's kind of immaterial.
Madua is not allowed to steal the election, right, you're
not allowed to abuse human rights. Migrants are allowed to
cross any country they want and claim asylum anywhere that

(02:28:25):
they feel safe. But like here we are so Yeah,
in theory a country should accept its citizens back and
practice will it?

Speaker 6 (02:28:33):
I don't know, certainly.

Speaker 8 (02:28:34):
It becomes like a bigger issue when you have millions
of people, right, And if we have millions of people
deported back, then like if we can't deport them, where
are we going to detain them? That gets back to
the cost of detentions, right, talking of costs should probably
cover the costs of our podcasting set up here by
pivoting to adverts again, Yeah, we are back, and for

(02:29:10):
the final segment here, I want to talk about who
Trump could pursue with these deportations. Right, there's two major groups.
The obvious starting point would be the two point three
million people who cross between January of twenty twenty three
and April of this year before Biden signed his Asylum band.

Speaker 6 (02:29:25):
To be prescribed.

Speaker 8 (02:29:26):
That to two million two hundred and sixty four eight
hundred and thirty. Those people don't have permanent immigration status.
Those are the people who you've heard from on this
podcast who are in cucumber right, the people who we've
interviewed for the last year and a bit now. They
have various immigration status, but none of them are permanent.
None of them have permanent residency. All of them are

(02:29:48):
obviously registered right. They normally have a notice to appear
in court, which would make them easy to find and
potentially easy to deport.

Speaker 6 (02:29:57):
The other group of people.

Speaker 8 (02:29:59):
Are the documented migrant who have been here for longer
than that. Many of them have most have been in
the country for more than a decade. They're working, They
often have citizen children right because of birthright citizenship. Most
of the pay taxes. Most of these people have some
form of revocable legal status, so that might be something
called a temporary protected status. We talked about a temporary

(02:30:19):
protected status last week as well, but it applies to
people who are already in the country when it's granted
and it allows them to stay for a designated period
of time while it's not safe to deport them to
their home country. Let's say there's been a war or
a natural disaster, right, it's not safe to deport them,
but it gets renewed two months before the end of
that period. Let's say it renews every eighteen months, and

(02:30:40):
you find out two months before the end of that
period if it's not going to be renewed. If they
didn't renew those TPSS, those people could either change status
or would become undocumented.

Speaker 3 (02:30:50):
Right.

Speaker 8 (02:30:50):
The TPS has existed since nineteen ninety and they're about
eight hundred and sixty thousand people on TPS right now.
The other major category that people will probably be more
familiar with are Dreamer, people who came to the United
States as children and are undocumented, but they benefit from
something called Darker Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, and about
eight hundred and thirty four thousand young people benefit from this,

(02:31:12):
which allows them to receive a renewable two year period
of deferred action from deportation. Trump did try and go
after this in his previous term in twenty eighteen. He
ended up in a two year court battle which sort
of finished up with NAACP versus Trump, and that ran
out the clock on his term and Biden reinstated Darker,

(02:31:32):
but again because people have to register for darker, their
whereabouts are easier for someone like ICE to potentially find.
Then after that, we have people who entered without being detected.
We have people who overstayed their visas. Those people might
be harder to find. The model of the undocumented migrant
that people have in their head comes across the border

(02:31:53):
with carpet shoes, sneaks past a BP checkpoint, and then
lives in the United States without ever encountering migration authorities.
That's actually not the majority model, but those people do exist,
and that they would be harder for ICE to find potentially.
Trump is also vowed to end parole programs that allow
Ukrainians and Afghans to enter the USA and work. I

(02:32:14):
would think that some of those would be pretty unpopular.
People have been much more broadly in solidarity with Ukrainian
migrants than they have with other migrants in other parts
of the world. They'll say, but it would be an
easy one again for him to end.

Speaker 6 (02:32:25):
Right.

Speaker 8 (02:32:26):
The last thing he's really said he wanted to do
is to end birthright citizenship.

Speaker 6 (02:32:32):
Yep.

Speaker 8 (02:32:33):
That is I spoke about this before in our Agenda
forty seven episodes. That's pretty clear in the fourteenth Amendment.
They have some kind of fringes on the flag. Legal
theory around this, but like I would think that that
will require a constitutional amendment, but who knows, because he
might have both houses and the Supreme Court on his side,
so he might just be able to get away with

(02:32:54):
doing that. This obviously wouldn't rescind citizenship from people who
have previously have said children who are citizens. Talking of
people have children as citizens. They are about four million
mixed status families in the United States, so this deportation
plan could potentially separate parents from children and children from parents,
children from their older parents who they take care of.
It could destroy these families, right, Deportations always destroy families.

(02:33:16):
I've seen this happening myself, and it's horrible. The states
where this would most likely happen the states of the
highest documented population at California, Texas, and Florida. California thus
far retains its sanctuary policies. Texas of Florida very much
do not, right, and so those would be the states
where they will be the highest risk of this happening.

(02:33:38):
That's between five and six percent of their population, and
that's kind of where I want to finish up today.
I've got some more stuff I wanted to say about
his border policy, but I think I'm going to say
that for another episode, because the border and immigration are
different things, and I think sometimes this is something that
a lot of legacy media doesn't understand. They have immigration

(02:33:58):
reporters who report immigrant law, the stuff I've spoken about today,
but the border is not somewhere that they go and
it's not something that they cover very well. If you've
been listening for a while, you'll know that I've spent
a lot of time at the border on the ground,
in the mountains, in the desert, and that's something that
we've covered in great depth here, and I'm pretty happy
that listeners have a really complete understanding of it.

Speaker 1 (02:34:19):
Would California actually be able to enforce being a sanctuary
state or.

Speaker 8 (02:34:24):
Now, yes, in the it's law enforcement doesn't have to
call ice right, the federal government cannot compel local law
enforcement to state law enforcement to do its work.

Speaker 6 (02:34:35):
That is very well established.

Speaker 8 (02:34:37):
Again, nothing's off the cards when you have both Houses
of Congress and the Supreme Court. But again that would
take time and it would take a court battle. So
what they can do now is not report those people, right,
not say hey, we got someone here. He came in
because we found him with a bag of weed. He's undocumented.
You know, he was driving thirty five and a thirty

(02:34:59):
he's undocked, invented. These are things that people who are
undocumented have to worry about, right Like, for those of
you who don't have undocumented folks in your life, Like
it's a speeding ticket, it's the most minor in it's
not paying a parking ticket and ending up in court,
right Like, this shit is so minor to so many people,
but it could tear someone's life apart. And so I

(02:35:23):
want to like finish up by saying that, yeah, Texas
and Florida are going to be the places where we
see this. Yeah, five percent of the population is a
large amount of your population. If he even attempts half
of that, people are going to see this. It's going
to happen in your community. Now, I'm not saying he will,
but if it does, Like the time to start organizing

(02:35:45):
to protect people you care about is now. Be that
with their nations, to groups like Alo Torolalo, who have
successfully sued the Trump and buy An administrations for my
goods rights. Be that with organizing such that your undocumented
friends don't end up in court because they couldn't pay
parking ticket, right, even if that means you paying someone
at giving someone fifty bucks for a parking ticket, so
that it doesn't ruin the rest of their life.

Speaker 6 (02:36:07):
Whatever it is. The way that we.

Speaker 8 (02:36:11):
Prevent this is through strong communities. We have to start
putting those now. I know we've said this a lot
this week, but we're probably going to say a lot
for the next three months. Like a lot of people
have reached out to me since the Tramp election, which
was two days but also like seven years ago, because
that's how time works, saying that they want to participate
in mutil aid at the border. I would love for

(02:36:33):
you to come and join us, of course it would.
And I think people have heard a lot about our
mutual aid setup because of something I do a lot,
but that I don't want you to come here and
do mutual aid tourism, like I want you to come
here and understand and learn what we do and then
do it yourself, or just do it yourself, like there
was a time when this didn't exist and people started
it right, and you can start it to And I'm

(02:36:54):
not going to tell you, like the specifics of what
I think you should do, because I don't know. I
don't know what the legal environment will be. I don't
know what the legal environment will be in your state.
But whatever the legal environment is, it will be better
if we have strong and cohesive communities to look after
one another. Right, If you're looking to donate your money,

(02:37:14):
I've said it before, ALOTLAO where I would suggest it,
it's a L O t R L A d O
dot org. They've done really valuable work in defending migrants
rights in court. Haitian Bridge Alliance would be another great
example of that.

Speaker 1 (02:37:29):
Will you link that?

Speaker 4 (02:37:30):
I'll put them both in the show notes. Yeah.

Speaker 6 (02:37:32):
But the way we confront this is together.

Speaker 8 (02:37:34):
And it's super important that now in the next three
months off there are and document people in your life
so that you check in with them, that you talk
with them about what the best plan is. We don't
know what's going to happen. I've outlined some scenarios here.
None of them may happen, right, we don't know yet,
but we have these three months and we'd be foolish
not to use them.

Speaker 4 (02:37:55):
Yep.

Speaker 8 (02:37:55):
Yeah, talk to your friends, begin organizing The solution is
not to spare. Solution this community, and I know it
can be really to spend. If you're listening and you
are and documented, I understand how petrifying this is. And
just know that, like we're all thinking of you and
hopefully there are people in your life who are there
to help you and to help you get through a
difficult time.

Speaker 2 (02:38:18):
Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week
from now until the heat death of the Universe.

Speaker 1 (02:38:24):
It Could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can
now find sources for It Could Happen Here listened directly
in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.

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