It Could Happen Here Weekly 75

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
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 got to be nothing new here for you, but
you can make your own decisions. Hello, this is it

(00:27):
could happen here, and I am Sharne and today it's
just me. It's me and I am alone, So that
means I am probably going to tell you about some
fucked up shit that happened in the Middle East, which
is exactly what I'm about to do. I just think
some things are purposely underreported, and even when they are

(00:48):
seldom reported about, it's always a bit skewed and biased.
So I just try to draw attention to certain countries
and their people as best as I can because of this,
and today I think we're do you for an update
on Palestine. Israel continues to be humanize Palestinians daily and blatantly,
and it's not just through murdering them. Last year under

(01:10):
new Israeli restrictions on foreign entry into the West Bank.
Foreigners romantically involved with Palestinians must declare their relationship to
the occupying Israeli government. Yes, you have to tell them
if you are involved with the Palestinians. Why. I don't know,
because they're treated as less than human and this is
one of many laws that deny Palestinians of basic human

(01:32):
rights and keep them under apartheid rule. I want to
talk about all that's happened in just these first few
months of twenty twenty three, because this cycle of violence
in Jerusalem and the West Bank in particular has suddenly
surged to levels that we have not seen in years.
As of this recording on March seventh, at least sixty

(01:52):
six Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces and settlers
since the start of twenty twenty three, and at least
seventeen of those killed have been children. For comparison, in
twenty twenty two, which was the deadliest year in the
West Bank in decades, forty eight Palestinians were killed in
the combined months of January, February, March and April. The

(02:15):
deaths are increasing day by day and the rest seemed
to be a stop to them at all. Twenty twenty
two saw the highest number of civilians killed by Israeli
security forces in the past seventeen years, and the highest
number of Israelis killed since twenty sixteen. Renewed violence flared
up between Palestine and Israel and January of this year

(02:36):
for many reasons, and it continues to build and intensify
after a cascade of concerning events. And before we jump
into those events that happened in January and onward, I
think we need to look back on twenty twenty two
in order to understand this a bit better and to
hopefully provide some context. So let's take a look at
twenty twenty two and how we got here. We are

(02:59):
going to be focusing on the West Bank with the
majority of the data in this episode, in particular, the
one tomorrow will be more broad. I'm going to explain
a little bit about what the West Bank even is,
just for some more context. The West Bank is a
landlocked territory near the coast of the Mediterranean in Western
Asia that forms the main bulk of the Palestinian territories.

(03:21):
It is bordered by Jordan and the Dead Sea to
the east and by Israel to the southwest and north.
The West Bank includes East Jerusalem. It's been under Israeli
military occupation since nineteen sixty seven, and its area is
split into one hundred and sixty five Palestinian quote unquote islands.
These islands are under total or partial civil administration by

(03:43):
the Palestinian National Authority or the PNA or PA. There
are also two hundred and thirty Israeli settlements into which
israel law is being pipelined. The West Bank initially emerged
as a Jordanian occupied territory after the nineteen forty eight
Arab Israeli War, before being in xed outright by Jordan

(04:03):
in nineteen fifty, and it was given its name during
this time based on its location on the western bank
of the Jordan River. This annexation was widely considered to
be illegal and was only recognized by Iraq, Pakistan and
the UK. The territory remained under Jordanian rule until nineteen
sixty seven, when it was captured and occupied by Israel

(04:24):
during the Sixth Day War. The Oslo Accords, which were
signed in nineteen ninety three between the Palestinian Liberation Organization
and Israel created administrative districts with varying levels of Palestinian
authority in specific areas. In the West Bank, there was
Area A, which is administered exclusively by the PA, there
is Area B, which is administered by both the P

(04:45):
and A and Israel. And then there's Area SEA, which
is administered exclusively by Israel. And this Area C, which
is controlled exclusively by Israel, accounts for over sixty percent
of the West Bank's territory. Twenty twenty two was the
deadliest year for West Bank Palestinians in nearly two decades.
Israeli forces killed more Palestinians in the West Bank in

(05:08):
twenty twenty two than in any other year. The United
Nations began systematically recording Palestinian fatalities in two thousand and five,
and they started doing this after the last major Palestinian
uprising aka the Second Intifada that lasted five years. And
knowing that, I want you to keep in mind that unfortunately,
the number of Palestinians that have been killed by the

(05:30):
IDF is far greater than some of the numbers I'm
going to say in this episode. And again that is
because I am focusing particularly on the West Bank. I
want to talk about Israel's twelve month crackdown that has
been happening in the West Bank. Nearly twelve months ago,
Israel begana has become a year long violent crackdown in
the West Bank. Israel last year prompted a sweeping Israeli

(05:52):
military campaign that they called Operation Breakwater beginning March of
two and twenty two. It was created after attacks occurred
by Palestinians against Israeli settlers. Since then, Operation Breakwater has
conducted nearly nightly IDF raids in the West Bank, which
of course causes heightened friction between the IDF and the

(06:13):
Palestinian population. So far, Israeli security forces have made over
two thousand arrests, and that's way too big of a number,
just to give you an idea of the terrifying scale
of this operation. Operation Breakwater is the biggest IDF operation
in the West Bank since the Second Intifaba that I
mentioned earlier that lasted from two thousand to two thousand

(06:36):
and five. Since the start of this operation last year,
nearly every day Israel has conducted raids in the West Bank,
which is part of the Palestinian territory, which encompasses the
Godza strip in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and
this whole territory has been illegally occupied by Israel since
nineteen sixty seven. In spite of this, because Israel does

(06:58):
whatever the fuck it wants, because it's already founded upon
existing illegally in the first place, thousands of Palestinians, many
of them young, have been arrested, and nearly every week
more Palestinians are being killed. Last year, this all resulted
in the highest cumulative death toll in the West Bank
since two thousand and four. Palestinian rights groups and UN

(07:19):
experts have said that the bloodshed is due to Israel's
excessive use of force and open fire rules during near
daily military operations, as well as rising assaults by settlers
in the West Bank, where again Palestinians are living under
illegal Israeli occupation. Israel justified their intensifying violence because of
the fatal attacks on Israelis by Palestinian militants, which also

(07:41):
spiked last year, which is also very bad, but blaming
the people you've been oppressing for nearly a century for
being angry and fighting back people without an army faced
against one of the most powerful armies in the world.
It just does not sit right with me. In twenty
twenty two, Israeli security forces killed at least one hundred

(08:02):
and fifty two Palestinians in the West Bank and predominantly
Palestinian East Jerusalem, compared with seventy five Palestinians in twenty
twenty one. These are figures provided by the UN Office
for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs or OTCHA. Four Palestinians
in the West Bank were killed by Israeli settlers, not soldiers. Settlers,

(08:24):
settlers that have been emboldened and even encouraged in their
hate and violence by the Israeli far right, and the
Israeli far right is basically the Israeli government at this point.
And we're going to get into some of the extremes
that these settlers go through in their hate and their
violence more tomorrow, but for now, let's focus on twenty

(08:45):
twenty two. Most of the Palestinian deaths occurred during Israeli
military raids and clashes in the West Bank cities of
Jenin and Nablus. More than half of the Palestinians who
were murdered were under the age of twenty five. They
never even had a chance to live their lives with
their families and their loved ones. Each one of these

(09:05):
individuals that were killed have people mourning them and missing
them every day, and I never want anyone to forget that.
Among those killed last year were also US citizens El Jazeero,
journalists Sharin Abu Akhle, and seventy eight year old Omar Assad,
And because of their US citizenship, their deaths gained rare
worldwide attention and briefly sharpened international criticism of Israel. Sharine,

(09:30):
if you remember, was shot in the head while wearing
a press vest. She was there as a reporter doing
her job. No violence was taking place around her, she
was targeted and killed. Israel says she was probably killed
by a soldier's gunfire unintentionally, and that was that. The
world moved on. I did an episode last year about

(09:53):
Sharene Aboahle and how Israel murdered her in broad daylight,
So if you guys want to revisit that, that is there,
back to the episode. I don't want us to forget
that this data is regarding the West Bank. Only hundreds
of Palestinians die at the hands of Israel's terrorist organization,
that they call an army every year. In May of

(10:14):
twenty twenty one, if you can remember that far back,
at least two hundred Palestinians were killed in a week
of Israeli airstrikes, just one week, and the deaths included
fifty nine children and thirty five women, with nearly thirteen
hundred people wounded. Women and children made up nearly half
of the casualties. Fifty nine children, fifty nine children that

(10:38):
were just taken with families that will never be the same.
I just want people to remember these things when I
mentioned numbers, that each number is an actual living child
or person. In twenty twenty two, in a statement to
The Washington Post, Israel's military said that Israeli soldiers used
live fire when quote necessary during counter terrorisumectivities in response

(11:01):
to quote violent riots, which often include explosive devices, molotop cocktails,
and rocks hurled at the idef soldiers and Israeli civilians.
Are you kidding me? One of the most powerful and
supported armies in the world is saying that it's killing
people in response to rocks being thrown at them. Armed

(11:22):
and protected soldiers covered in swat gear with all the
weapons they could ever fucking dream of fighting against the
people without an army at all, blaming them in an
official statement to the Washington Post for throwing rocks. I mean,
just just get the fuck out of here. The idf
are all fucking clowns. And maybe I shouldn't be cursing

(11:44):
and I should pretend to be professional, but they make
me fucking mad, And I think we should all be
fucking mad because I don't think it's fair, and I
know life isn't built to be fair, but to terrorize
and genocided population, drive them into a corner and then
blame them for having the audacity for fighting back and
the only ways accessible to them is fucking ludicrous. You

(12:05):
can't both sides a conflict when one of those sides
has one of the most advanced and supported armies in
the world that oppresses the other side that has no
army and no support of any kind, a side who
has rocks in their hands resorting to violence because absolutely
nothing and no one is helping them. A total of
two hundred and twenty four Palestinians were killed in twenty

(12:27):
twenty two, including the forty nine people that I mentioned
earlier that were murdered during a three day Israeli assault
on the besieged Gaza Strip, Seventeen were children. And I'm
emphasizing this because Palestinian children have started keeping goodbye letters
in their pockets in case they're killed by the Israeli army.
No child should have to live in fear that they

(12:49):
might be killed at any moment, but that's the reality
for Palestinian children. Nearly every day, Palestinians wake up to
news that the Israeli military has killed yet another Palestinian.
This daily violence against Palestinians has traumatized generations of Palestinian children,
and their parents have no way to protect them. Many

(13:09):
of the casualties in the West Bank in twenty twenty
two were young Palestinians who have only ever known military
occupation and the oppression of the Israeli government. The West
Bank also has to deal with the repressive politics of
the Romala based Palestinian Authority, the PA, which was set
up as a caretaker government three decades ago and is
now widely unpopular among Palestinians. And I'll get into this

(13:32):
more after a quick break, So brb Okay, we're back.
As I mentioned earlier, the West Bank has to deal
with repressive politics of the Romala based Palestinian Authority, which
was set up three decades ago and is now widely
unpopular among Palestinians. A spokesperson from the Palestinian rights group

(13:53):
Al Huch said people are very, very fed up. Whether
it's in Jerusalem or Jenin or Nablus. The last twenty
years have not shown any improvements in the situation. This
spokesperson spoke only on the condition of anonymity for fear
of reprisal by Israeli security forces, because the Israeli security
forces raided the organization's headquarters in Romola last August. The

(14:17):
spokesperson explained that quote the near daily raids in areas
under control of the PA showed that the sovereignty of
the PA does not exist. So they're saying that the
Palestinian Authority is basically useless. If these Israeli raids are
happening in areas that are supposedly under control or quote
care of the PA, then what the fuck are they

(14:38):
even Therefore toward Wensland, the UN Special Coordinator for the
Middle East Peace Process, told the Washington Post last year, quote,
we have a new dynamic in the West Bank and
around Jerusalem with a quote new generation of Israelis and
Palestinians in conflict, there is an urgent need to de escalate.
He also cited the quote tension and so called friction zones,

(15:02):
which are areas where Israeli settlements continued to encroach on
Palestinian lands and where violence is mounting, probably in part
due to the frustration with the lack of action by
the Palestinian authority. Twenty twenty two also saw the emergence
of two new Palestinian militant groups, thee Genin Battalion and
the Lions Den, both led by disaffected young men with

(15:25):
local support networks. Meanwhile, Israel's military has repeatedly declined to
provide the number of internal investigations they supposedly opened last
year regarding their misconduct related to the Palestinian deaths. In
September of last year, Israel announced the results of its
inquiry into the death of Sharin abu Akhle, who again

(15:45):
was shot in the head while covering a military raid
near Jenin last May. The IDF said that a quote
found a high possibility that Miss abu Akhle was accidentally
killed by IDF gunfire towards suspects identified as armed Palestinian
gunmen during an exchange of fire, though it has not
released any evidence whatsoever showing the presence of gunmen in

(16:08):
the area. An investigation by The Post contradicted the IDF's
claim that there was an exchange of fire in the
minutes before Abu Akle was killed, and surprising absolutely no one,
the IDF said it would not pursue criminal charges against
its soldiers. No one is being held accountable for the
killing of Palestinian life, including Palestinian children. Israel has continued

(16:31):
to operate as though they have immunity, which in a
way they do thanks to the United States, who does
nothing but give Israel more money and weapons and good press.
Even more concerning, far right politician Itamar Ben Gevid, who
was Israel's new national security minister, has proposed giving police
and soldiers wider latitude to use live ammunition and putting

(16:54):
laws in place that would shield them from criminal prosecution
for killing or injuring Palestine. And this should be a
red flag for everybody. The other Hawk spokesperson said that
many of those killed in Israeli raids last year appeared
to be either bystanders or victims of excessive force. Let's
not forget that they also killed members of the press

(17:16):
who clearly wear press vests in a moment where no
violence was ever taking place, just a camera and reporters
trying to raise awareness that the crimes that Israel commits.
An early December, Israeli fire killed a teenage girl in
Jenin who was on her roof as a raid unfolded nearby.
Days earlier, Israeli forces fatally shot a sixteen year old

(17:39):
boy who was throwing stones at a checkpoint outside Ramula.
We're getting to the end here, so let's take our
last little break and we'll be right back, and we're
back talking about how the IDF shoots Palestinians as though
they're basically playing a video game. They had shot a
teenage girl and a sixteen year old boy, and there

(18:02):
are many disturbing videos of idea of soldiers shooting Palestinians
like they are playing a video game. There's one video
in particular that I'm thinking about that is so fucking
disgusting where one soldier is crouching down and aiming his
gun at a Palestinian who was hiding behind a dumpster.
I know that the Palestinian is hiding behind a dumpster,
because the soldier says something to the effect of what

(18:25):
does he think he's doing behind that dumpster? And then
the soldier shoots and jumps up in pure elation, cheering
for himself because he shot this person. There's another soldier
in the frame next to him who seems to be
more aware of the camera that is recording them, who
keeps telling his annoying murderer friend to we professional instead

(18:46):
of jumping up and down like he just scored a
point in a game, because that is all this is
to them. There is much more evidence of this infuriating
and horrific attitude and culture of the IDF and Abby
Martin's two nineteen films Gaza Fights for Freedom, which I've
probably already recommended a million times and will continue to recommend.

(19:06):
It is free on YouTube tour Wensland. We mentioned earlier
the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process said, quote,
the continued killings of Palestinians by Israeli security forces an
incidents where they did not appear to present an eminent
threat to life are disturbing. He went on to say
that quote, I am increasingly concerned by the fragility of

(19:29):
the current political and security dynamics, particularly in the occupied
West Bank including East Jerusalem. Vulker Turk, the UN High
Commissioner for Human Rights, said, for this violence to end,
the occupation must end on all sides. There are people
who know this. The violence of last year reflects a

(19:49):
dangerous mix of on the ground and generational changes, and
this could only escalate further as Israel's mostly far right
government becomes more far right because Jewish supremacists who have
incited violence against Palestinians were recently sworn into office, including
Israel's aforementioned new Minister of National Security. And he's just

(20:13):
one of the many cogs in the machine of Israel
being controlled by far right terrorists. And yes, to me,
they are terrorists because literally everything they do was either
a crime or a crime against humanity, regardless. At the
end of last year, Israel's new government was sworn into office.
It's nationalist, exclusionist and far far right. It's the most

(20:37):
extreme Israeli government in the nation's history. Benjamin and Yahoo,
who's already the country's longest serving prime minister, is at
the helm of the country for the sixth time, and
this time he's assembled the most far right cabinet in
Israel's history, with the most notable posts given to ultra nationalists,
one of them being the person we mentioned at tamar Ben,

(21:00):
the new Minister of National Security aka a position that
oversees the police. There's also Bezalel Simotric, who will have
significant power over Israeli settlements. In addition to his role
as Finance Minister. The government has promised to expand those
settlements those already illegal settlements. The members of this new
coalition have also made extensive comments denigrating the queer community.

(21:23):
They've also called for stricter definitions of who even qualifies
as Jewish. In making its vision abundantly clear, the government
released policy guidelines at the end of September, announcing the
Jewish people's quote exclusive and inalienable right to all parts
of the land of Israel. Toward the end of January,
the policies of the Enyaho's newly swording government coalition brought

(21:45):
out about eighty thousand protesters in Tel Aviv. The protesters
were largely focused on the government's proposals to overhaul the
judicial system, which could weaken the country's democracy and separation
of powers quote unquote democracy yet right, But the effects
of the policies on the one point six million Palestinian
citizens of Israel and the five point two million Palestinians

(22:06):
living in the occupied territories, all of these effects are
going to be catastrophic and only building upon years of
policies that Israeli human rights organizations say constitute crimes against humanity.
The human rights defenders and experts in Israeli politics emphasize
that this government is not a departure from the previous ones.
And yes, it is Netanyahu's sixth time leading the country,

(22:29):
but instead of being a new government, it's instead a
culmination of Israeli politics that are only drifting farther and
farther to the right, and then decades longer of policies
that amount to defacto annexation of the occupied West Bank
and policies of Jewish supremacy. What's different now, however, is
how clearly these ideas are stated in the new government's

(22:51):
coalition guidelines by prominent ministers of the fundamentals of how
the country runs. This time, it is clear it is
written in the guideline. There's no longer subtlety to their hate.
It is in writing. The new Israeli government is somewhat
of a turn from the brief centrist government of last year,
but it's still seeking to implement policies that are anti

(23:11):
Palestinian and anti liberal. But again, it is certainly not
the first Israeli government to do these things. The executive
director of the Israeli Watchdog Bitsalem again apologize, probably must
pronounced that said, it's key not to pretend, as many
seem to already be doing, that it'll somehow be a
sudden departure from Israeli quote unquote democracy. What worries me

(23:34):
is that even this level of clarity will not be
sufficient to trigger an adequate international response. And the new
Israeli government is shaping up just to be extreme as
we anticipated. Israel's parliamentary system is made up of many
fragmented parties, and it's slowly been collapsing, and there's been
turmoil and whatever, because there have been five national elections

(23:56):
since twenty nineteen. The quote unquote change government in twenty
twenty one brought together opposing parties last year to Auston
n Yahoo finally once and for all, right, But that
fell apart last summer, and in the ensuing elections, nan
Yahoo built a coalition of ultra orthodox and religious Zionist
parties that returned him to power, leading to an even

(24:18):
more extreme government. So even they tried to get rid
of him, but he came back worse than ever. And
so this extreme government is already acting in extreme ways
and again the new government's ministers have made long standing
attacks on the queer community, as well as religious freedom
and Israeli in Palestinian civil society, as well as who

(24:40):
can call themselves Jewish. Above all, there are going to
be drastic implications for Palestinians living in the occupied West
Bank and for the civil liberties of Israeli citizens, mostly
because Nenyahoo's internal coalition negotiations have brought settlers into key
ministerial posts, and only days into the government being sworn in,

(25:00):
there have been already multiple signs and signals of how
these personalities are going to rule. Justice Minister Yarev Levin
has introduced legislation that would weaken judicial review and the
power of israel Supreme Court to strike down legislation. Another
proposal would revamp and politicize the country's longstanding process for
selecting judges. And of course we can't forget about the

(25:22):
fucking new National Security Minister aka to Marvin Gavide, who
is part of the Jewish Power Party. His political ideas
are inspired by the late radical iconoclass Rabbi Mayor Kahane
Bengavie has stepped into a role that is basically tailor
made to oversee the police both within Israel and the
occupied West Bank, and in early January, he on somehow

(25:47):
legal grounds directed the police to tear down any Palestinian
flag in public spaces. And then there's also Finance Minister
Bezalel Summatric. He is the head of the Religious Zionism Party,
and he's also a settler whose anti gay rhetoric is prolific,
to say the least. He has already seized customs revenues

(26:08):
that belong to the Palestinian Authority, and he's called the
Palestinian Authority a terror abetting body that he thinks should fall.
He also holds newly created authorities that give him oversight
of the West Bank occupation through a role crafted for
him in the Defense Ministry. So they're essentially just creating
these roles and creating these rules that only allow them
to have more control corruption one oh one. I suppose

(26:31):
we can also see clearly Hona and Yaho and his
partners are going to govern. In the coalitions agreement that
sets out the new government's guidelines, it's not legally binding,
but it states plainly in its ideology that quote, the
Jewish people have an exclusive and in allegal right over
all areas of the Land of Israel. The government will
promote and develop the settlement of all parts of the

(26:53):
Land of Israel, and this includes to them the Occupied
West Bank. Israeli human rights organization of Dull La wrote
in a report, this goes further than any previous agreements.
The government has made explicit the coalition's party's long standing
intent to further entrench Jewish supremacy in Palestinian repression throughout

(27:14):
the State of Israel and the Occupied West Bank through
a two tiered system of governance on all levels. The
new government's approach to the occupied West Bank revolves around
the illegal annexation of Palestinian land. The government plans to
legalize the illegal outposts that are built on private Palestinian land,
and the likely result of that is Palestinians being stripped

(27:37):
of rights and protections and left even more vulnerable to
violence and the hardship they're already enduring. The Israeli Rights
organization of the LA goes on to say that these
changes to the judicial system and bestowing ministers like Symatrek
with new authorities over the occupation threatened civil rights and
individual rights in Israel, but it is mainly going to

(27:58):
be a big, big issue against the national minority, the
Palestinian citizens of Israel, who make up about twenty percent
of the country. They are going to be the first
and most severely damaged by those changes. And clearly the
Israeli government even before all of this, but now it
is clearly stated it has all the components of fascism.
And yet the US still appears to beholding out hope

(28:21):
that it can somehow work with and Yahoo and his
fucking government and its fucking ministers. Even now politics are
all a scam. Everyone fucking sucks. Israel has been violating
Palestinians human rights with impunity for decades, but this new
government again just illustrates the most brutal intentions with greater clarity.

(28:43):
Bits Salem, another human rights group, said the hypocrisy is
denying that Palestinians have already been living for many years
under extreme, organized criminal Israeli state violence underwritten by the US,
and the lack of accountability and the acquiescence of the
international community is to a great extent responsible for driving
this and as we mentioned in this episode, last year,

(29:07):
twenty twenty two was the most deadly year for Palestinians
living in the occupied West Bank since the UN began
recording the deaths in two thousand and five. It was
also the year that the most Palestinians have been held
in administrative detention, and the attacks on Palestinians throughout the
center right government leading up to all of this, the
governments of Ya Lapide and Nefatali Benett cannot be understated.

(29:30):
It's always been bad. Now it's just extremely bad. And
in sharpie, the US has a role here too, because
it continues to supply Israel with billions of dollars of
military aid, and it has also failed to publicly criticize
the En Yahoo's new political allies. An analyst covering Israel
and Palestine for International Crisis Group said there's no way

(29:51):
that the en Yahoo, as desperate as he is, would
have gone to form this kind of coalition. If it
wasn't for years and years of US abdication of sponsibility
for what happens here, he just wouldn't have felt that
he could do it. It would have been too outlandish.
And all of this brings us to twenty twenty three,
which we will talk about tomorrow because I like short episodes,

(30:14):
so I'll see you there and welcome back to it
could happen here. It's still Sharine, and we are going

(30:36):
to continue our discussion about Palestine. Yesterday we talked about
the atrocious things that Israel has done to Palestinians in
twenty twenty two, and it brought us all to now
twenty twenty three. And as a reminder, as of this
recording on March seventh, at least sixty six Palestinians have
been killed by Israeli forces and settlers since the start

(30:57):
of twenty twenty three, and at least seventeen of those
killed were children. Thursday, January twenty sixth marked one of
the deadliest Israeli army operations and the occupied West Bank
since at least two thousand and five. Israeli soldiers invaded
a crowded genin refugee camp on Palestinian land and massacred
nine Palestinians, wounding at least twenty others. Among these nine

(31:20):
Palestinians were two children and a sixty one year old woman.
The injuries of the wounded were in the head and chest,
indicating that Israeli soldiers were shooting to kill. Israeli soldiers
also blocked paramedics from delivering medical aid to the injured,
and they tear gassed the children's ward of a hospital.
This massacre is the deadliest Israeli attack in the Palestinian

(31:42):
West Bank in nearly twenty years. I just want to
repeat some things in case I said that too fast
or it's just glossed over. But nine Palestinians were killed,
two children, a sixty one year old woman, and the
injuries were in the head and the chest. They were
shooting to kill, They blocked paramedics from delivering medical aid
to the injured, and they tear gassed the children's ward

(32:05):
of a hospital. What is the justification of that? Someone
please tell me. I'm all ears just monstrous things that
Israel is doing to Palestinians. And in addition to the
massacre in Jenin Israeli soldiers killed three other Palestinians within
twenty four hours of the massacre, a child and two
young men. This raid on January twenty sixth led the

(32:28):
Palestinian Authority aka the PA to stop coordinating with Israel
on security matters, officially suspending it's US supervised security cooperation
with Israel, but it's unclear to what extent that will
take place, and this spike in violence is occurring on
both sides. A day after the raid aka massacre in

(32:48):
the Gena refugee camp, a Palestinian gunman near a synagogue
outside of Jerusalem killed seven people and injured three more.
Violence is often the response when you lead with violence,
and this event marked the deadliest Palestinian attack against Israelis
since two thousand and eight. Israel's colonization and military occupation
of Palestinian land and its violent apartheid rule over millions

(33:12):
of Palestinians are the root cause of this violence, but
US media largely ignores Israel's violence, as Israeli's soldiers routinely
murder Palestinians, including children, destroying their homes, and stealing their land.
Remember yesterday when I mentioned that we would talk about
the heinous things that Israeli settlers have been doing well.

(33:33):
On January twenty eighth, Israeli settlers attacked Palestinians at least
one hundred and forty four times. The attacks ranged from
assaulting Palestinians to setting Palestinian homes and cars on fire.
No arrests were made. In fact, Israeli soldiers often allow
Israeli settlers to attack Palestinians, even joining in themselves or

(33:55):
arresting the Palestinians who have been attacked. Israeli settlers live
on stolen Palestinian land and violation of international law. They
shouldn't be on Palestinian land in the first place, let
alone be given free reign to attack Palestinians without any
sort of consequence. These are all obvious hate crimes that
are only supported and encouraged by the military and the government.

(34:18):
If a government treats those it oppresses as less than human,
its people will only do the same. This January was
the deadliest January for Palestinians in fourteen years, and Israel's
violence shows no signs of stopping. It seems like Israel's
new extremist far right government is determined to exact more

(34:39):
violence against Palestinians this year than ever before, and with
the US officials refusing to condemn their actions, Israel's leaders
are getting a green light to continue to terrorize Palestinians.
Never held accountable for the daily violence and apartheid rule
over Palestine, Palestinians deserve freedom from Israel's daily violence and

(35:00):
at the very least, fair media coverage so that the
world understands what's really going on. On March third of
this year, Israel killed a fifteen year old Palestinian boy
by shooting him in the back. This occurred in the
West Bank town of Azoun, when an israel military vehicle
drove into town. Teens were hurling rocks at the car.

(35:21):
Soldiers responded with live fire, which is a very reasonable
response to having a stone thrown out your fucking tank.
In addition to shooting and killing a fifteen year old
Palestinian boy a child in the back, two others were
wounded in this attack, including a child. He was currently

(35:42):
still in critical condition. Israeli forces have carried out three
large scale raids on Palestinian cities since Israel's new government
took office at the end of last year, including one
in Nablus on February twenty second that led to the
largest Palestinian death toll in a single military occupation since
two thousand and five. Israeli forces killed at least eleven

(36:04):
Palestinians and wounded more than one hundred more. Among those
killed were a seventy two year old man, a sixteen
year old boy, and a sixty six year old man
who died of tear gas in hillation. New armed Palestinian
groups have also emerged in response to this violence, and
there has been a spate of Palestinian attacks against Israelis

(36:24):
going back though to the fakery of the Israeli settlers.
On February twenty sixth, at least four hundred Israeli settlers
attacked several Palestinian villages in Nablus, including Kawara, killing one
man and injuring hundreds of others. The violence came after
calls were made by Israeli Kanesset member Zabaka Fogel apologies

(36:47):
obviously mispronounced. I tried my best, but this violence came
after this Kanesset member told the settlers to burn the
town down. Settlers burned down more than thirty homes and
at least one hundred cars while beating Palestinians with metal
rods and rocks. None of these settlers were arrested. About

(37:07):
a hundred Palestinians are also being treated for tear gas
in hialation. In one of the many videos of this event,
and yes, there are actual videos of like this happening
without any justice, crowds of Jewish settlers can be heard
reciting the Jewish prayer for the dead as they stare
at a building in flames. There's a video of Israeli
settlers fucking dancing as the violence takes place. And earlier,

(37:32):
a prominent Israeli cabinet minister and settler leader had called
for Israel to quote strike without mercy. On March first,
Beziel Samatric, who was Israel's finance minister who also handles
civil administration in the West Bank, said the village of
Hawada should be wiped out. He told a journalist quote,
I think Hawada needs to be erased. The state should

(37:55):
be the one to do that. Back to that, Israeli
Knesset member Zivika Fogel again apologies for mispronouncing that. He
tweeted that quote. Hawada closed plus burnt down. That's what
I want to see. On an earlier occasion, Fogel said
that quote a hundred Palestinians must be killed in a day,

(38:16):
and he described these Palestinians as terrorists and to force
them to the quote Israeli will. In response to Symmetric's
statement that the Palestinian village of Hawaida should be wiped out,
the Human Rights Chief of the United Nations AKA Volker Turk,
who we mentioned briefly yesterday, he said that these commas
are an unfathomable statement of incitement to violence and hostility.

(38:41):
He went on to say the situation in the occupied
Palestinian territory is a tragedy, a tragedy above all else
for the Palestinian people. This was during a report that
he presented on the situation and the occupied territories to
the UN Human Rights Council. He said, my report finds
that over the reporting period, lethal force has been frequently

(39:03):
employed by the Israeli security forces, regardless of a level
of threat, and at times even as an initial measure
rather than a last resort. My office has also documented
several cases of apparent extra judicial targeted killings by members
of the isof the Israeli security forces. The report finds
that one hundred and thirty one Palestinians were killed by

(39:24):
the isof personnel over the past year in a context
of law enforcement, that is outside any context of hostilities.
This includes sixty five people who we understand were not
armed or not engaged in any attacks or clashes. The
occupation is eating away at the health of both societies
on every level, from childhood to old age and in

(39:45):
every part of life. For this violence to end, the
occupation must end on all sides. There are people who
know this. I did mention the end of that report
briefly yesterday, but I wanted to mention more of it today,
just to really give you the whole context of what
this report was saying to the UN. The European Union's
envoy to the Palestinians also called for accountability for these

(40:07):
settler attacks. It is absolutely necessary for us that accountability
is fully ensured, that the perpetrators are brought to justice,
that those who lost property be compensated. In what seemed
like a very rare move, the Defense Minister Yolav Gallant
said that he signed administrative detention orders for two suspects
over this rampage, and he court ordered police to release

(40:30):
all seven people who have been detained in connection to
the rampage. Amnesty International condemned this release of the suspects.
It also condemned the use of administrative attention, which it
said was a practice that violates international law. But Israel
doesn't care about that, because it violates international law a lot,
and here it is Israeli, writes group yesh Din found

(40:51):
that ninety three percent of investigations into settler attacks in
the occupied West Bank between two thousand and five and
twenty twenty two were closed without indictment. And even though
the US demanded that ne Enyahoo disavow symatrics call for
Hawaara to be erased, nothing has happened. Nunyah, who on
the night of the rampage urged people not to take

(41:12):
the law into their own hands, but he never publicly
addressed sematric statement or responded to the unusual criticism by
the US, who was obviously a close ally. The situation
in Israel today is clear. Israel has become a state
for the settlers, where some of these militias have the
support of the Israeli ministers, such as Symatric and Bengavid.

(41:34):
Israeli settlers who chant death to Arabs and mayor village
burn have the direct support of people in uniform and
the Israeli government. And just like the other Israeli settlers
who set hundreds of Palestinian homes on fire and uprooted
thousands of Palestinian olive trees and got away with their crimes,
it is highly unlikely that the Israeli settlers who burned

(41:55):
homes in Hawada will be touched. And there have been
protests that are actually secular and liberal in a desperate
attempt to stop this growing far right government, but they
don't do much, obviously, when you're in a fascist government regime.
I can't believe we haven't talked about him yet, but
President Isaac Herzog, who is Israel's eleventh president and he's

(42:18):
been president since twenty twenty one, he stepped in after
these protests were happening, and with support from President Biden,
he was facilitating a compromise between the government and these
protesters and what seemed like a well intentioned effort to
build some kind of consensus, it was only in fact
this ill advised attempt to appease fascists and pander to evil,

(42:42):
and any compromise that is offered by Herzog would be
skewed toward the ruling majority, which holds the power to
interpret its articles at will. A compromise will also whitewash
and empower the ruling fascists, presenting them as responsible and
pragmatic actors as they pursue their extremist agenda, and as
a street opposition loses momentum and disintegrates slowly but surely.

(43:05):
In a recent article, Haretz said that Herzog's plans were
born in sin to whitewasher government led by a criminal
defendant who was in a conflict of interest in everything
regarding changes in the judicial system and certainly regarding such
a radical quote unquote reform. And obviously, the more sinister
and dangerous ramifications of such a compromise lies in its

(43:29):
focusing on Israel's liberal democracy for the Jews while ignoring
its tyranny toward the Palestinians. In fact, reaching any sort
of compromise on domestic affairs is sure to free the
government's hand, only to widen its oppression, deepen its occupation,
and multiply its illegal settlements, Israel has no security solutions

(43:49):
in Palestine. Former intelligence officer Chief Ami Ayalon, in his
biography Friendly Fire, said of Israel, because of its occupation,
Israel's democracy will evolve into tyranny. Let's go back to
Izamar Binevide, Israel's Minister of Security, who the New York
are actually called Israel's Minister of chaos. He has been

(44:09):
convicted of eight charges, including supporting a terrorist organization and
incitement to racism, and who, according to former Prime Minister
a Hud al Marte, presents a more eminent danger to
Israel than a nuclear armed Iran. And as we mentioned,
Bin Gaveer serves as Minister of Security alongside his genocidal
partner and crime but Zabel Sumatric, the Minister of Finance.

(44:32):
Both of these men have risen to the highest echelons
of power thanks to their racist campaigns and incitement against Palestinians.
Their fanatical religious movement has sprung out of the illegal
settlements in the occupied West Bank based on these Zionist
belief in the necessity to take full control of all
of historic Palestine aka the quote the Land of Israel
as they call it, in order to redeem the Jewish

(44:54):
people by any means necessary. In other words, Israel's fanatics
have a divine ordained, vested interest in greater turmoil in
Israel and Palestine that strengthens and expands their base, especially
among their youth. After decades of military occupation. Polls and
surveys suggests that about sixty percent of Jewish Israeli's favor

(45:16):
segregation from the Palestinian Israelis, and sixty percent identify as
right wing today, a number that rises to seventy percent
for those aged eighteen to twenty four. This does not
bode well for a future piece or security. It's not
exactly a generation that's going to die out. It's a
generation that's being formed as we speak. And even though

(45:38):
Palestine has the Palestine Authority or any kind of leadership,
that is obviously weakening. Even when Israel pretends to coordinate
with them on security and intelligence matters, it persists on
humiliating the Palestinian leaders, undercutting their authority, and undermining their
legitimacy as it forces settlers to rampage through the Palestinian
neighborhoods and refugee camps without out any sort of repercussions.

(46:02):
And I know Israel gets called an apartheid state a
lot these days, and it isn't apartheid state. But basically
the engine of turmoil and violence today is only because
of Israel's decade long military and civilian occupation, This occupation
that has rapidly transformed into an entrenched system of apartheid
government because of the two separate set of laws, rules, standards,

(46:24):
and structures designed to favor the illegal settlers and to
maintain and expand Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to
the Mediterranean Sea. The ruling fascists plan to unleash greater
state and settler violence against the Palestinians as this year progresses,
and in the process transform Israel into a fascist garrison
state and worsen regional turmoil. Let's take our first break here.

(46:49):
We will continue when we come back. Brb Okay, we're back.
In twenty fifteen, the world was shocked by the kidnapping
of Palestinian child Muhamment of Jadid from Jerusalem by Israeli
settlers who burnt him alive. This was depicted in the
HBO show Our Boys. It's a decent show. I recommend

(47:09):
you swatch it just for more information. It's really hard
to watch, but it's still a really good show. But
this event, this kidnapping of a Palestinian child who was
burnt alive by Israeli settlers. This is the mentality of
Israeli settlers in the West Bank today, where birding Palestinians
in their homes is celebrated by their political leaders. These

(47:30):
groups have carried out dozens of attacks against Palestining families
by birding their homes and their farms, including burning the
Palestinian Dawabshi family in the village on Duma in late
July twenty fifteen, where an eighteen month old Dali Dawapshe
and his parents lost their lives. Between six hundred thousand
and seven hundred and fifty thousand Israeli settlers live in

(47:51):
at least two hundred and fifty settlements and outposts built
by the Israeli government and settlers across the occupied Palestining
West Bank and East Jerusalem. That is equivalent to roughly
eleven percent of the total Jewish Israeli population. They live
beyond the quote internationally recognized borders of their state on
Palestinian land. That Israel militarily occupied in nineteen sixty seven

(48:14):
and continues to do so until today. Settlers also lived
in the besieged Gaza Strip until two thousand and five,
when they were evacuated. The Gaza Strip has also been
described as an open air concentration camp if you want
an idea of maybe why they left. The majority of
settlers are armed, and Palestinians living on the occupied West

(48:36):
Bank and East Jerusalem suffer from hundreds of Israeli settler
attacks each year. Such attacks, which include shootings, stabbings, arson beatings,
and rock throwing, have become more organized over the last
few years. Every year, thousands of Palestinian trees and cars
and homes are burned by these settlers. Many of these

(48:57):
incidents have been recorded on video, showing that the attacks
often take place under the protection or in coordination with
the Israeli Army, sometimes with soldiers and settlers shooting side
by side. Israeli settlements are illegal under international law, as
they violate the Fourth Geneva Convention, which banns and occupying
power from transferring its population to the area it occupies.

(49:21):
This is for a variety of reasons, including protecting civilians
from the theft of resources by the occupying power, and
to prevent changes in the demographic makeup of the occupied territory,
which both things have happened. Israel is doing that very successfully. Unfortunately,
the majority of settlements have been built either entirely or

(49:43):
partially on private Palestinian land. Despite being outside of Israel proper.
These settlers are granted Israeli citizenship and they receive government
subsidies that significantly lower their cost of living. In contrast,
Palestinians living in the West Bank are subject to Israeli
military Harry law, and there has been an increasing number
of settler attacks. Between twenty ten and twenty nineteen, the

(50:06):
United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs recorded
at least two thousand, nine hundred and fifty five settler
attacks in which at least twenty two Palestinians were killed
and at least one thousand, two hundred and fifty eight
others were injured. The governance of Nablos, Tebron and Romola
had the highest numbers of these incidents. Since the start

(50:28):
of twenty twenty three, Israeli settler related violence reached an
average of three incidents per day, compared with two incidents
per day in twenty twenty two, still really shitty, and
one incident per day in twenty twenty one. This is
what the UN had told El Jazeera, and this is
the highest daily average of settler related incidents affecting Palestinians

(50:50):
since two thousand and six. And criminal charges are rarely,
if ever pursued, And although not every attack can be
tied to another, it seems that since the launch of
Israel's Operation Breakwater last March, it's only driving the surge
and violence further. The imbalance between these two forces doesn't

(51:10):
get any better when you add politics and leadership into
the mix. While Israel is appointing more and more far
right politicians to higher positions of power, there has been
a weakening of Palestinian security forces. Palestinian security forces are
trained by the US and international forces to patrol the
West Bank, round up Palestinian militants, and coordinate with Israeli

(51:31):
officials to prevent attacks on Israelis, but those forces have
lost a law of legitimacy among their own people. Many
Palestinians see them as doing Israel's bidding, maintaining Israel's military occupation,
rather than resisting it. Increasingly, pockets of the West Bank
have become no go zones for the Palestinian authority forces,

(51:52):
who now either refuse to enter or find it too dangerous.
That includes the Genin refugee camp, which is a dense,
highly populated district. Israel says it's stepping in to fill
the void of leadership, intensifying its arrest raids in these
densely populated areas, and unsurprisingly this leads to deadly clashes.

(52:14):
But Israel has occupied the West Bank for nearly fifty
six years and continues to deepen its grip on it.
It says Palestinians are not ready to make peace with
Israel and that the occupation is a security necessity. But
it has also allowed and supported hundreds of thousands of
Israeli settlers across the West Bank, which we've seen manifest
and the far right parades and the rallies that chant

(52:37):
for the quote death of Arabs. Additionally, Israel's new far
right government vows to legalize dozens of small settlement outposts
deep in the heart of the occupied territory, making it
harder to envision a future Palestinian state there, which is
part of their whole agenda. Younger Palestinians have grown up
not knowing anything but Israel's brutal permit regime, which controls

(53:00):
Palestinians entry and movement, and some of their only interactions
with Israelis are often with hostile settlers or with occupation
enforcing soldiers who raid their homes and jail people for
months without charges. And because of the inaction of both
the Palestinian Authority and the international community, some young Palestinians
see violent resistance against Israel as their only viable path

(53:24):
to freedom, With young militants lionized on social media, let's
take our last break here, we'll be right back, talk
about Palestinian leadership, Israel's far right, and a bunch of
other terrible stuff. So whoopee, you're back and we are back.

(53:44):
So as Palestinian leadership weakens, Israel's far right only gets stronger.
According to Poles, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas eighty seven,
one of the Middle East's oldest leaders, has lost the
support of most Palestinians. Palestinian protesters and activists have long
accused Abas of not taking a more active role in

(54:07):
dealing with Israeli aggression. In his nineteenth year of what
was supposed to be a four year term, a Bas
has lost control of Gaza to the mil to Hamas,
calling off elections for new leadership and allowing government corruption
to thrive, never laying out a clear future for Palestinians.
But it's not the end of Abbas's reign that worries Palestinians.

(54:30):
It's what comes next when the eighty seventy year old
is no longer president. But the question of who will
replace a Bas is not currently at the top of
the Palestinian public's agenda. Doctor Mustapha Baghruti, the head of
the Palestine National Initiative Movement, said that Palestinians, particularly the
younger generation, are no longer viewing the two state solution

(54:52):
as a viable option. They are also recognizing that they
can't expect anything from Israeli governments, particularly the coming one
that is discussing annexation, bolstering settlements and suppressing Palestinian rights.
He said, the notion is strengthening among the young generation
that Israel only understands force and opposition. It doesn't matter

(55:13):
whether national resistance is violent or not, which is why
there's growing support for armed groups in Jenin and Nablus.
Baruti said that Israel's prevention of a two state solution
will eventually make the Palestinian authority irrelevant. He said the
PA's current model as a type of subcontractor for Israel,

(55:33):
which implements apartheid against the Palestinians, cannot go on forever,
regardless of who runs the PA. On the flip side,
Israel's longtime leader Benjamin and Yahoo is back as prime ministers,
a prise surprise, with a far right coalition that has
laid out a plan for deepening its grip on the
West Bank and taking tougher action against Palestinians. And with

(55:55):
only a couple months in office in this new year,
the government has already sparked a series of controversies, including
over the status of the Uximosque in Jerusalem. The Uximosque
is a very holy and special place for Muslims, and
it has been subject to violence for years because of
Israel's government. More far right politicians have also come into office,

(56:19):
including the National Security minister we mentioned earlier, who essentially
wants to give Israeli police and soldiers immunity to use
live ammunition, which would shield them from criminal prosecution for
killing and injuring Palestinians. Israel's also planning to destroy an
entire Palestinian town, beginning their plans last month. Khan Alhamad

(56:40):
is a town just miles from Jerusalem with nearly two
hundred Palestinians. Israel is planning to destroy the entire town
in order to expand two illegal, racially segregated settlements nearby.
Israel plans to bulldoze all the homes, schools, and businesses
in Khan Hmad, forcing families into homeless. It's a process

(57:01):
they've done in countless Palestinian towns. Kahn Rahma is simply
Israel's latest target. Just miles away from this town, Israel
is destroying the Palestinian community of Masafiriata, where over a
thousand Palestinians are living in fear that Israeli soldiers will
violently tear down their homes at any given moment. No

(57:22):
government should be allowed to forcibly uproot entire communities in
order to steal their land. Israel should be no exception,
and the fact that it continues to operate in this
way as the entire world watches is it's shameful. Israeli
officials are already prepping for a tense month in April

(57:43):
when Ramadan and Passover coincide, which could be a combustible
mix for potential religious and nationalists fueled violence. The Israeli
military is inflicting horrific, deadly violence and Palestinians every single day.
Instead of condemning Israel or take any kind of action
to protect Palestinian lives, the US continues to turn a

(58:04):
blind eye while also continuing to send Israel billions of
dollars every year. These billions of dollars are used to
commit massacres of Palestinians. The world should bring to account
to the Israeli government, which has encouraged violence against Palestinians publicly,
and supportive settlers with arms and money to carry out
their crimes. The Israeli government just legalized nine illegal settlement outposts.

(58:30):
If the international community, including the US, does not criminalize
settlement activities in the West Bank, Israeli settlers, who in
recent years have leaned towards the far right in alarming ways,
will continue to enjoy impunity when they commit crimes against
the Palestinian people and Israel's brutal occupation shows no sign

(58:50):
of ending, so will continue to hear news like this
until any sort of action is taken to defend Palestinians
and end Israel's apartheid rule of Palestine and end the
ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people. Until then, we won't
stop raising awareness of the crimes against humanity that Israel
commits against Palestinians every single day. And that is the episode.

(59:16):
Who I hope some of that was informative or educational,
and I will probably be back with more upsetting news
about the Middle East very soon. So goodbye, dearly beloved,

(59:45):
Welcome to it could happen here. We are gathered here
today to get through this thing called life. Electric word life.
It's a thing that only happens with the addition of
a couple of ingredients, and one of those ingredients is
the subject of our episode today. Oh yeah, you guys
like that? Everybody really happy with that? I love that. Yeah,

(01:00:06):
I'm feeling not at all like I want to kind
of shower. You can you can you can hear the
moment where we're all like simultaneously questioning every single decision
we've ever made in our entire lives. Yeah, now we're
all bonded together. So how's everybody doing today. We've got
mea Wong, Garrison Davis, James Stout, and I should let

(01:00:27):
people know I wasn't joking about the come thingum. So
those of you who are two online will know this.
Those of you who are not online enough, this is
one of the online things that you will want to
know because it's very funny. And the gist of it
is that like four days ago, doctor Jordan B. Peterson
got sent a link to a Twitter account that is

(01:00:49):
that purports to be spreading like hidden news about the
evils of the Chinese communist regime, and they put out
a video that was a segment from British Milking fetish
pornography video. Now, if you're not aware the milking, as
far as I can tell, I believe they're kind of
descended from the long lineage of like rubber fetishists, right,

(01:01:12):
and there's like a lot of medical fetish stuff it
tied into it. But the idea is that men are
entirely wrapped up on hospital gurneys and giant pump sucked
the semen out of them. So it's like the machine
is very like a cow milk. This Twitter account put
this up, claiming that it was the Chinese government stealing

(01:01:34):
the semen of young men, and Jordan Peterson shared it,
saying it was an unbelievable act of evil and then
everyone had the best day of their lives. And an
hour of two later he deleted it. Now I have
been continuing, coward, coward, coward. Yeah, so strange, so stranger.

(01:01:54):
He left the world of peer reviewed academia. Yeah, it's
it's wild that he's no longer professor. Um, it's very funny.
We're continuing to give him shit for it online, but
it set us off down an interesting road, and because
some other stuff fell through, we're going to talk about
the wide world of weird right wing come conspiracies. Most
of them released are going to be right wing. There's

(01:02:15):
a surprising number of semen based conspiracies. Everybody did research
on their own special thing. I wanted to start by
talking about this this Jordan Peterson video and giving kind
of some of the some of the background on it,
so I believe it. Last July, the Chinese Human Sperm

(01:02:36):
Bank of Shanghai announced that it was hosting a competition
for college students to find out whose semen was the
best in terms of, like, you know, a number of
modal sperm per milli leader, I think is the way
that they judge it. And basically the idea was that
they were trying to find like people with sperm concentration

(01:02:56):
greater than sixty million per milli leader, and if they
visited a sperm bank a set number of times in
a six month period, they could receive a prize that
was equivalent to about twelve hundred dollars right now. The
reason this is happening is that China, for the first time,
as a result of a number of different policies, had
negative population growth very recently, and this is the thing

(01:03:17):
that can cause a problem for a country for a
variety of reasons. So the government is trying to shore
up birthrates, and there are a lot of couples in
China that have had issues conceiving, and so there's a
huge amount of demand for sperm in the country right now.
So this is not a weird story. It is actually
a thing that happens all around the world regularly. But

(01:03:39):
right around the time that this happened, a little bit
after that, it came out that a Japanese company started
selling what is called in the articles I found an
automatic sperm extractor to Chinese sperm banks. Now this is

(01:04:01):
I'm gonna send y'all the link. I was hoping you
would oh, oh, yes, good friends, thanks, but yes, we're
all going to see this. So the Machines price listing
on Ali Baba, where it sells for about five to
six thousand dollars, describes it as a device that quote
merges modern digital technology, automatic control technology, and simulation technologies

(01:04:22):
with semen collection and premature ejaculation desensitization training function. So
it has a number of purposes, including guests to help
guys stop coming too early, which no shame. It's funny
that someone built a machine for it. It's extremely funny
I that you can buy an Ali Express. It's like

(01:04:42):
I personally, I'm not attaching anything. I bought an Ali
Baba too sensitive parts to my body's thousand dollars. It's
not cheap. Now the primary these are not being used
for people who are coming to too quickly. Um, it's
just like the worst ever were two D two. This
it is. It is weird. It's see orientation. Does it
stand on the ground and you just approach it. You

(01:05:03):
have to stand up. Yeah, but what if you're a
shock king, Yeah, I said, I'm sure they have options.
It has like the rough shape of like canteld massage device,
but it's kind of like formed like almost an art
deco robot vagina. And basically, from what I've read, kind
of the reasoning is that, like, hey, we need people

(01:05:24):
to donate sperm. Some people feel weird about just masturbating
in a clinic, and we hope this is a more
pleasant experience for them. So again this we're laughing because like, look,
a machine designed to capture seamen is kind of a
funny thing. That's okay, no shame on anybody for that.
But the fact that you have both the government trying
to encourage people to donate sperm and this weird machine

(01:05:46):
kind of created fertile ground for a bunch of right
wing weirdos to start making grounded I know, fertile ground
tom to make the completely un ungrounded claim that like
the government was trying to steal people seemen, right, And
that is the basis of doctor Jordan B. Peterson's fun
little freak out on the internet. And I will say

(01:06:09):
you should try to find the videos of the automatic
sperm extractor. This this amazing Japanese machine, because it is funny, fascinating.
We should change some of these on the cool Stone account.
Do they have to like like like change like I
assume they like to. Ye, yeah, you can't clean that.
If you watch the video, there's like a there's a

(01:06:30):
rubbiot that like comes out, like the thing that the
penis goes in is also the captured device, so it
is removed with the sperm donation when you take it out. Um.
So again this is, you know, funny because come, but
there's nothing sinister here. It's just in the same way
that literally everything is. People have like spun it up

(01:06:52):
into a nonsense thing. But because of this beautiful, beautiful story,
which I hope we've all gotten to enjoy, I got
to do a lot of work on the some of you,
if you've lived, if you've worked in agriculture, you're not
going to be surprised that stealing come is a massive industry,
like it is a there is a lot of money
to be made in stealing semen. There's enough money to
be made in stealing semen that there are two different

(01:07:15):
official terms that I have found for semen theft. The
first is sperm jacking. How could it get better? How
could it get better than that? Garrison? It gets better
because the second, the second is spurgling. These are like

(01:07:38):
professionals who like come up with these terms. Huh, these
are genius. There actually is. I did find in my
research there is one actual Chinese based sperm conspiracy. It's
just not a very sinister one. There's this Chinese businessman,
Jesse Jabbai zoo Um who stole there. There's this I

(01:08:02):
think it was a Canadian company. It was a US
company who had So this is for like bull semen.
And one of the things that you want for bull
semen is you don't want if you're inseminating cows, you
want all of the babies to be female generally, right,
because bulls are not very with outside a certain space.
If you're like trying to make more breeders or whatever,

(01:08:23):
if you're in industrial agriculture, you don't want any of
the boys, right. You just want to keep making those sweet,
sweet lady cows that that are, you know, more useful
to you in a financial sense. So there's a US
company that developed a method of before insemination looking through
the sperm and like sorting out the sperm that will
make female cows um and that is apparently hard to do.

(01:08:47):
I mean, it sounds like it would be hard to do, right,
And this, uh, this Chinese businessman was like reverse engineering there.
It's kind of Actually it's basically the same story as
Jurassic Park. And anyway, this guy has gotten sued for
a bunch of money a raptor cattle. I hope it

(01:09:08):
works out just as well as Jurassic Park. Yeah, it's
very funny. I will say. There's a couple of really
wild lines from this the CBC story I found. I'm
just going to read one to you. Um Zoo's activities
could best be described as machiavellian. At various points he
outlined a plan to make X Y that's the American
company quote feel all the time, the sort of damocles

(01:09:29):
is on their heads and brag the law is strong,
but the outlaws are ten times stronger. Yeah. Jesse Jabezoo
my hero, the sperm Bandit incredible sperm jacker, one of
the best burglers in the business. This man lives on
an island with his cow raptors. What a hero. Um

(01:09:51):
there was also a case of a Japanese man who
illegally took wag you cattle sperm to China to try
to give them sperm, and like the Chinese government immediately
caught him and was like, no, this is actually incredibly dangerous,
Like you're not allowed to just take animal breeding material
into the country without because you know, there's a wide
variety of reasons that that could be in horribly So

(01:10:11):
he got into shipload of trouble. Yeah, anyway, that's my
that's my sperm stories. Everybody, thank you for yeah, thank you,
thank you for spurgling my knowledge. Garrison. Ah, we're back
and James is here to talk to us about the
kind of sperm jacking that you do when you don't jack.

(01:10:33):
I'm talking about jacking your own sperm by keeping it
inside of you seem in retention. Yeah, it's it. How
was that, James, beautiful? Unscripted? Did you just didn't even
write that a Garrison? Yeah, so on the back of
his hand. He had a brainwave at two in the
morning and I got that down. Those are the kind

(01:10:53):
of things you can do when you've been podcasting as
long as I in a come space. I've been in
those saggy trenches for a long time. Yeah, all right,
we are after all, it works, so let me continue.
So I'm going to talk about what happens when you
keep your comb inside you. Okay, yeah, this is the thing.

(01:11:18):
What are we doing today? What this is? This is
critical journalist. We are making content doing Okay, talking of content,
let's talk about the content of some Reddit posters. So
the what it's called the semen retention movement, and this

(01:11:39):
will this will shock many of you began on reddit
dot com. Oh my god, yeah yeah yeah, yeah, yeah yeah,
like so many ones. I feel like, I feel like
because I feel like if you type that into your phone,
it would have finished the sentence the same autodirect What

(01:12:00):
is the auto directed to Reddit? I would believe me.
We're gonna go there, Garrison, because when you google sperm retention,
you do indeed find some stuff on Reddit. So now
they've spun off from Reddit, right then I have their
own organization, which is No Fat dot com and No
fact dot com is a community centered sexual health platform.
I'm I'm using, I'm allowing them to define themselves here,

(01:12:22):
I guess designed to help people overcome poorn addiction and
compulsive sexual behavior, which is not necessarily really like like
the this isn't not all seamen retention, as we're going
to learn, is basically helping people I become addiction to
pawn but so far as that is a thing that
people actually have. And if someone was accusing Rabbit of

(01:12:44):
being addicted to pawn on on his timeline this weekend,
that would be because I keep Ratio and Jordan Peterson
with the pornography video that he mistaking. That's correct, Yeah, yeah, yeah,
I just want them to respond, so I could ask him, Jordan,
tell me in your own words, what you thought was
happening in that video. I really hope he thinks it's

(01:13:08):
like milking, Like they have RFID collars and they get
fed based on their production level. That would be great. Yeah,
And what did you you you're a medical doctor, did
you think that come actually worked that way and you
could just stick a sucker anyway? Yeah, just get it out, Okay. So,
after this movement began on Ready dot com, it quickly

(01:13:29):
pivoted to kind of offering all kinds of weird physical
and mental health benefits, and that's where it was adopted
by friends in the podcast the Proud Boys, and luckily
we do have a bit of insight into why and
into the exact nature of the no fat fascism that
the Proud Boys practice. Sanks to Kyle Cheney, who's a
political reporter who was reporting on the trial of one

(01:13:52):
of the Proud Boys accused of additional January six called
Zach Rell and that trial for reasons that I'm not
exactly clear on the Proud Boy I guess it's like
their handbook, like that the kind of a Proud Boy
bybe was introduced and into the into the record. Somebody's
in there. Yep, it's in the court record, buddy, because

(01:14:13):
because what the lawyers decided that it was pertinent to
the cause. So a Proud Boy may not ejaculate alone
more than once in every thirty days. That means he
must abstain from portography during that time. And if he
needs to ejaculate, this is really weird, it must be
within one yard of a woman. Fascinatingly specific. Yeah, yeah, right,

(01:14:34):
And I like that they've they've gone with imperial measurements
with her consent, so that's nice. The woman may not
be a prostitute, so that that's the Proud poison nature.
They know FA fascism. But I think I think the
way of of understanding why some people practice this perhaps
best is to is to go on to reddit dot com.
So I found a post by Reddit user you slash

(01:14:55):
Monk one nine one eight one seven. It seems like
a nice guy and there are four votes. What I
did was I went to semen retention and I looked
at you know, sorted by popular posts, found this one
from a bunch of numbers. And so this guy has
nine years of experience with semen retention. So I'm just

(01:15:18):
going to read I'm presuming it. Boy, yeah, yeah, yeah,
him and some mugs off the coast of fucking lind
Spark cannot be healthy. No, I don't think it is.
There is I will get to this evidence that you
shouldn't do this. So in his nine years of experience,
he has experienced the following things. Semen, when retained in

(01:15:40):
our bodies, has healing, rejuvenating effects. Loss of semen has
the opposite effects. This may not be scientifically proven, but
it's proven by experience. That's a red flag. That's interesting.
Getting Reddit medical advice while attempting any task. It demands
high physical, mental or intellectual abilities. If we are semen
tension powered, we would actually enjoy the task, which would

(01:16:02):
otherwise seem dull. This is called sexual energy transmutation in
layman's terms. Oh no, that's the layman's the what's the
non layman terms? It's got even more. I have no
idea spermozoic fucking fission. So for peak performance, it's always

(01:16:24):
necessary to be powered by seamen, and it would be
best to use seamen only for regeneration purposes, since nature
originally intended it for regeneration, and not use it for
sexual purposes apart from to create a child. If not
serving that purpose, Master whatever teach techniques are useful in
not letting the seed out while having sex. At the
end of the day, don't let your seed out like

(01:16:45):
a worthless thing. There's more so, just contain yourself great great,
which is exactly the reason why core religions are based
on celibacy, because opposite of regeneration is degeneration, which will
cause a man to fall into a lower state controlled
by his lower nature, rather than when he's subduing it.
We should let seem in retention be part of our lives,

(01:17:06):
not something that is done for superpowers. For superpowers are,
in my experience, the sudden ecstasy that we feel once
we transition from the degenerated to the regenerated state, and
that will stabilize after some time, similar to how a
flight maintained stable altitude after takeoff. Very simple, very similar. Actually, yeah,
that's that's what you can hear when the when the

(01:17:26):
engine a spinning up. If just a dude trying really
hard not to nut and it makes that noise. So
excited for the next Marvel film, the where the superhero
power from Paul Rods and not come so he can
get tiny no fat man. Yeah so yeah he didn't.
I should add that this person confess us to having

(01:17:47):
elapsed at some point in the nine years. Yeah, it
stole Armstrong was on steroids. It's just disappointing. Yeah, no
one would have seen it coming. See what I did there. Okay,
So this person then urges other posters on the Sema
Retention subredit to not use streaks to outperform others or

(01:18:10):
look better about ourselves or bring others down. The battle
with lust is a lifelong fight, and the more we
get better at finding victories, Yeah, yeah, buddy, at finding
victories over internal battles. The battle, we become as high
valued men. Hell yeah, I've often wished that, you know,

(01:18:31):
if the if the pandemic hadn't been a thing, and
I could force you all to work in a central location,
I could have like a wall of murals where I
put under each of your faces a quote from an
episode that you've participated in, and James that that would
be your quotes. The battles lust is a lifelong struggle. Yeah,

(01:18:52):
that'll get some T shirts knocked up, but we can
do a fundraise. We eventually get the cools on media offices.
But you have a portrait hanging on the wall of
each of us have one quote under the yeah yeah
yeah on a plaque with a yeah. We get the
cool when we when we take over the meta officers
three weeks from now. Yeah, there is a marketing company

(01:19:13):
that has been emailing me for about six months telling
me how cheap it is to buy a billboard by
the side of a road and send a message to
a loved one. So maybe great, maybe I'll do bang
rang yeah yeah yeah, yeah, Well there will be until
I put my positive messages about the controlling lust and
holding seamen inside our bodies true and return ment to

(01:19:37):
the former glory. So a lot of the a lot
of the reddit posts rely on a couple of different studies, right,
and one of these studies measured participants. A lot of
what they're doing is a claiming to increase testosterone right
right at the bat. The testosterone does have, as Long's
armstrong can tell you some performance enhancing benefits, so yeah,
you know, increasing your muscle growth, your your coverage from exercise,

(01:20:01):
all those stuff. One of the studies measured participants testosterone
levels at baseline before masturbation and then in ten minute
intervals after masturbation, right, and then they were asked to
abstain for three weeks, and they came back and they
did the process again. Testosterone was higher in the baseline
measurement at the end of the three weeks of abstinence, right,

(01:20:23):
But the sample size was pretty small, and there's some
theorizing that the boost was actually caused by the anticipated
masturbation that they were about to do. At the second
it was so ready to go, yeah, yeah, yeah, you're
just ready to pop. After three weeks, the second study
looked at a forty five percent entury, So after a

(01:20:44):
few days seven days of abstinence, but even the study
showed this was a temporary peak that returned to normal
even with continuing abstinence. So there's there's just these two studies.
They're pretty they happened a long time ago. Will post
them all in the show notes if you guys want
to read more about no fab science. But we should

(01:21:04):
just point out that there is in fact a multitude
of evidence this is a bad idea that having sex
is actually good for you. Having sex will will trying
not to ejaculate. It's probably not good for you, probably
not good for your your relationship either. One would surmise
there are in that whatever yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, Well

(01:21:26):
if that's your thing, you do you do you. There
was a study that investigated the motivation for semen retention
among semen and retainers, and a lot of it it
seemed like people were people who felt that like either
sex or masturbation was unhealthy or wrong or sinful. And
there is evidence to show that like feeling like guilty

(01:21:49):
about yourself or like living with stress and self loathing,
like that is bad for you, right, and that will
reduce your test aftera level. There's also some evidence to
suggest not ejaculating can give you prostate issues, which yes,
um yeah, there's there's and this is like pretty debatable,
like most things that people talk about in regards to

(01:22:12):
coming and health, Like you can find some studies, like
the studies on testosterone. Some of them are kind of sketchy. Anyway. Yeah,
I don't think come or come either way. Um, you know,
it's whatever. But if you do have a chance to
fuck one of those Ali Baba robots, I recommend it out.

(01:22:33):
Let's talk about come demons. Hell yeah, wait, okay, okay,
hard hard pivot here from so okay, we we we
are not going as far afield from the no fat
people as as as as you would think. Okay, but
all right, now, the year is twenty twenty. Everyone on

(01:22:55):
Earth has collectively gone insane. Uh this is this is
this is the summer. This is the summer twenty twenty.
So this is the part of twenty twenty where fun
stuff is happening. This is like late July, Garrison, that's
when we met. So yeah, we're getting just incredibly poisoned. Yeah, yeah,
we share were it would be fun in like twenty years. Well, well,

(01:23:19):
while life or death struggle for the sort of the
life or death struggle for the fate of the United
States and whether or not people are going to be
conducing murdered by the cops is being waged in the streets. Uh,
Donald Trump and Donald J. Trump Ronald Donald J. Trump. Wow,
Donald Trump Junior. That one. That's that's that's the Trump
A little drum here, Yeah, Trump Acts. We're you know,

(01:23:40):
looking for look at looking for their there they're they're
cure to COVID nineteen on Twitter. And Okay, so as
we probably all remember, right, I think they found was hydroxy. Okay,
so one of the first ones that they found before
before I remact the this is this is before we
found so much? Was it inside of them all along? Man? No?
This is this is this is hydroxy florican the thing
that was probable. I hope they weren't full of acord. No. No,

(01:24:05):
well we'll get to that. Where there there's a The
road is long, but it ends with cum demons. We
first must walk the road. So the road here is
Donald Donald Trump Junior post a tweet saying like this,
saying this is necessary watching about this video from this

(01:24:26):
doctor named doctor Stella Emanue. Now, okay, so who is
this person. Um she she is part of a oh okay,
I say part of she runs this thing called Firepower Ministries,
which oh no, so you don't know, going great. Um
she's also part of yeah, okay, cool, Yeah she she's

(01:24:50):
also part of America's frontline doctors who are yeah, yeah, yeah,
I forgotten. Yeah, these dipshits, Oh my god. Okay, So
this is this is very very very much in the
same vein as architecture nine eleventh truth. They found a
bunch of people who technically have medical degrees or like
nurses who were like no, no, vaccines are bad and

(01:25:13):
hydroxy chloric clean hydroctic chor clean is well, we'll chlorical
covid cor qu that one. Yeah, it's it's it's been.
It's been. It's been a long day. I I've slept
for eight hours, but in like several distinct parts of
the day that we're not continuous. It's been. Things are going,
things are going corect. If you've taken some horse medicine fisk,

(01:25:35):
quite possibly, I mean it's it's all like you could
have gone worse. All all right, So so this this
person's from the very sketchy doctors who are trying to
sell like a bunch of random shit to to to
cure COVID. And okay, so who actually is this person? Um?

(01:25:55):
She is from Camera Roon and doctor Stella. An Emanuey
was caught up in the unbelievably sort of like i
mean right, like yes, objectively right wing, also very very
weird wave of Pentecostalism and charismatic Christianity that's been sweeping

(01:26:15):
across that part of Africa as part of sort of
a you know, sort of like a very sort of
long range of coordinated effort by by right wing Christian missionaries.
So okay, so for for for people who don't know
your Christianity very well, the Pentecostals and the charismatic Christians
are like firmly in the very very weird camp of Christians.

(01:26:38):
Like these are these are people who do faith healing. Um.
One of the very common sort of Pentecostal things is
this belief that like like you just you talk to God,
like God's in your head and you just have conversations
with Him. Now unfortunately for like all of us, and
this is you know what a thing that is a
non insignificant contributing factor to why the last I don't know,
ten years have been so bat shit? Is that? Like

(01:26:59):
the this originally was kind of an isolated Pentecostal thing
and like the broader evangelicals were like no, no, no no,
God only talks to me like your pastor, Like he's
probably not like you're you're not like having a conversation
in your head with but like change that's changed. Yeah,
this ship has this ship has fucking taken over everywhere.
It's really bad. Um. And these people believe a lot

(01:27:21):
of very very weird stuff. So well do I mean? Okay, so,
like you know, she she has like some of the
sort of standard like really really hardline like David Ike shit,
Like she believes that the world's being run by aliens
and like reptiles, and like the vaccine has like alien
DNA in it to like take over your dude. You know.

(01:27:42):
This is like sort of kind of Facebook moments Alex Jones. Shit,
yeah right, okay, but okay, I'm gonna read this quote
from will Sumner. This is a quote from one of
her for her sermons, they which is, demons are responsible
for serious guy in ecological problems, and Manuel said we
call them all kinds of names and Tremesius and Travisius.

(01:28:03):
We call them molar pregnancies, we call them fibroids, we
call them cysts. But most of them were evil deposits
from spirit husband God. No, they are responsible for miscarriages, impotence,
men that can't get it up. So all right, immediately
we we have like we have there there are several

(01:28:25):
kinds of cum demons here that we're dealing with. So
there are like there, there's, there's, there's okay. So a
lot of this is drawn from what is I a
very like a JT. Whitely unbelievably dubious piece of theology.
So when when when I was res musician, this right,
I saw, I saw, I saw someone there there was
there was like a religious scholar who was writing this.

(01:28:47):
He was like, oh, I immediately recognized the theology of this.
This is from this is from a Genesis six so okay.
So I was like, okay, what what the fuck are
they talking about? So I went back and I read
genis Okay. So I went back and I read the Genesis,
and I'm going to read the two this is this
is from Genesis chapter six, verses one and two, and
I am just going to read these two sentences, and

(01:29:08):
I'm going to see if you two can produce cum
demons from this, Okay, happy to do so. I mean
I could produce cum demons from almost in anything that is.
That is the power with the right machinery. You know what.
I think we know exactly what the right machinery is. Look,
we know that we can produce cum demons mechanically. Our

(01:29:30):
challenge here is to produce them theologically. Okay, try I will,
I will use all of my knowledge. We must, we
must find a way to evacuate the past deference of
the soul. Okay. So I'm using I'm using the King
James translation, because that's the translation that all these psychos use,

(01:29:51):
And it came to pass when men began to multiply
on the face of the earth and daughters were born
onto them, that the sons of God saw the daughters
of and that they were fair, and they took them
wives of all which they chose. Okay, So I I
do know why they're I do know what what they
are doing. So the sons of God those would be
what like fallen angels that have been procreating with women. Yeah,

(01:30:16):
so this this ties into like the book of Enoch stuff,
which was made a little bit like after Genesis, but
it kind of it like retconned a lot of like
the creation story. So I can see where they're they're
pulling come demons from, but it is it is a
bit of a stretch. Yeah, they're kind you could say,
come demons in the way that like God seemed. Yeah,

(01:30:37):
you could see it. Yeah, it's that's it is a stretch. No, okay,
my my, my, my analysis because I think I I
I think they're pulling this out of their ass and
I think they're pulling this out of theirs. It's also
come demons. So yeah, they're like I I I I
have It is well known for people who follow me

(01:30:58):
on Twitter that I have an immense in powerful disrespect
for theology. But what what what part of the sons
of God? What? What? What part of that gets you
to demons? And not? Like because again, isn't the whole
point of Christianity that we are all God's children? Like,
isn't is this not a thing that they tell you
in every single fucking sort How do you read that

(01:31:21):
and not think they're talking about people and immediately jump
to come deemon? Like here's what's going on? I could
I could explain this because this is the King's James version.
So this was made in a post book of Enoch world.
Around the around the alleged birth of Jesus, the Book
of Enoch got very popular, um and this this introduced
the idea of a fallen angel. The fallow fallen angel

(01:31:41):
isn't really in the Bible at all, it's only it's
only in like non biblical um Abrahamic texts. So this
this idea then kind of got planted into a lot
of like Catholic mythology as well. So when they're they're
caused there they have a distinction between like the like
the sons of like the sons of God versus is
um what was the what was? I think they used

(01:32:02):
to refer to the daughters the sons of the daughters
of men exactly. So the daughters are human, where the
the the sons are like came from God. So that
is some type of fallen angel that has been cast
down to earth. Like they are doing a specific thing.
But it's it's it's it's a result of a whole
bunch of like mistranslations and a whole bunch of various

(01:32:24):
various like christian a Gnostic texts that that have been
misinterpreted for thousands of years by the Catholic Church, and
it creates a really weird theology that is indistinguishable from
like Castle of India. So yeah, I blame I blamed
Martin lud This is Martin Luther's fault, like the like
there's things the thing would keep it in high latins

(01:32:46):
can't understand this. This is this is, this is what
Martin Luther. I'm specifically because okay, so this was already happened.
The count the Church was already doing this right, but
Martin Luther had a chance to fix this ship and
he was like, do you know what I'm gonna do?
Instead of that, I am going to you, I am
going to turn against the peasant revolts and I'm going
to do it. I'm going to bring about a level
of anti Semitism that is going to allow me to

(01:33:07):
outflank the Inquisition on the right. She could have been
fixing this bullshit. No anti semitism. Whoo, I gotta keep
my patron lords in power. He was German like, there's
only so much you can ask, that's true. Yeah, well
I'm happy that we can all go to sleep at
night worrying about the sons of God and planting semen. Oh,

(01:33:30):
there's also that that's that's come demon type type one, right,
that is okay, so those are those are the demons
that like they they have they have sex with women
and they produce nephelim from or sometimes Also there's there's
a lot of sort of conflicting sort of theological All
that stuff comes from the Book of Enoch. All that
stuff is non canon to the modern Bible, but it's

(01:33:52):
where it's where it comes from. Fucking Council of Nicia. Okay.
But there's also there's also a second there's also the
second kind of cum demon, right, which is these are
the these are well, okay, so succubine and incubi are
based here we go. I knew it, I was down,
it was counting down. Had faith. Yeah. The the other

(01:34:12):
kind of of demon. So you have your incubi, right,
who are another type of sex demon. The incubi fuck
men so they can steal their semen and they're they're
there there, you know, there's such difference are reasons that
there there's another thing that she talks about, which is
that um, there are witches who have like actual spirit
sex with men in their sleep. And if you're like
having a sex dream, it's because you're having actual spirit sex.

(01:34:34):
Oh no, no, yeah, I mean like I like Bill Murray,
I've I've experienced that. Oh no, that was Bill Murray. Sorry,
my mistake. Oh wait, understandable, Yes, okay, Okay, the cloud
the fog is clearing. I've I've had I've had sex
with too many sex demons. It's it's a real issue. Okay.
So so all right, So we have the sex demons

(01:34:56):
who are like trying to pregnant you. We have the
sex demans you're trying to steal your cump. We allo
have the actually, we have the actual projecting projecting witches, right,
and the actual projecting witches are trying to steal people's
come as part of an Illuminati plot to create like
an even more powerful witch. And the even more powerful
witch is going to use gay marriage and children's toys
to like destroy the fabric of Western civilization and thus

(01:35:17):
bring about sort of general new world order, et cetera. Honestly,
some of my witch meetings, Yeah, it is not as
far from the backstory to Warhammer forty thousand as it
should be. That's very sadly true. I didn't want Warhammer
forty thousands coming to our come episode if I moneyed. No, no,

(01:35:38):
it's I mean, look, there's a lot of people who
are interested in both seem in Retention and Warhammer forty thousands.
That's a tight venda ram yeah. Yeah, and they all
play ultramarines. That was. That's pretty good Warhammer forty thousand
joke for those of you who plays. I also learned

(01:35:59):
a couple of days ago that I one of the
many crimes of the Emperor of forty k was passing
off and a Miri Bekara quote is his own. Oh yeah,
that is. That was. That was a good bit. That
was a really good bit. It's little pieces like that
that let you know that Dan Abnett's pretty base. That

(01:36:20):
was my favorite part of the book. So funny, that's like,
that's literary cannon. I do have like three pages written
on contest tanning. Okay, yeah, that's that's that's the end
of the sum go off. Well, okay. I The one
thing I'll add on is that one of the more
funny modern versions of these if you go on the

(01:36:40):
Beta Drill subreddit to the Recreational Penetral subreddit, you can
find people who try to take enough Beta drill to
have sex with the hat Man, which is another another
form of trying to subve and shedow people. Maybe you
have to you have to explain your terms for people here. Yeah,

(01:37:00):
I'm not. The man is a tall, thin man wearing
a hat who appears when you take hallucinogenic doses of
Bena drill because you can't afford better drugs because you're seventeen. Yes,
we're younger, and there people the hat Man. Some people
find the hat Man extremely attractive or some of like
the female Shadow People variants, and they try to they

(01:37:23):
have I have read multiple reports of people explaining their
sexual experiences of the Shadow People. Anyways, the President of
the United States and his son were promoting this, so
this is great. This website. By the way, absolute adventures
on here. I'm just reading about how to use christ
blood as a weapon. Amazing. Oh that's good. Yeah, yeah,

(01:37:44):
no problems here. Yeah. Do you know who won't steal
your semen? Everybody? We can't promise that. I can. I
can promise any advertiser on this show I've personally approved
to make sure they will not come into your bedroom
and steal your semen. Wow, how do you do? How's
the approval process works? Out of interest, I cannot divulge

(01:38:05):
private garrisons. We are We are going to close off
by by talking about a sperm antestosterone um to two
of our favorite topics for this episode. For some reason,
about about a year ago, a trailer on Fox News

(01:38:25):
dropped for a new batch of Tucker Carlson originals titled
The End of Men. It opens with the text that reads,
in the current year, the cycle continues once a society collapse,
he said, You're in hard time as well. Hot iron

(01:38:47):
sharpens iron, as they'd say, and those hard times inevitably
produce men who are tough, men, who are resourceful, men
who are strong enough to survive, and then they go
on to re establish older and so the cycle begins again. Now,

(01:39:09):
there's a few funny things about this video, from the
ripped shirtless dudes milking cows, to wrestling each other and
shooting bottles of canola oil. They're just at a undranche.
They're just shooting like ten bottles of canola oil for
some reason maybe, But the Mussolini's like they're into the
Mussolini staff. He was by far the most bizarre. I

(01:39:33):
suspect they're shooting the canola because it's like a seed
oil thing. They think that like seeding thing, like sucking
out your testa sterone. Anyway, it's something very silly, but
by far the most bizarre thing in this trailer is
a shot of a laked man with outstretched arms like
Jesus on the Cross style, standing in front of a

(01:39:55):
lake at dusk, with a white machine shining a glowing
red light on his dick. What and again at the
climax of the music from two thousand and one A
Space Odyssey, Uh, there's this. There's this man facing balls
first in front of this large red light at the
end of this trailer. I it should never have been

(01:40:19):
any cause on our podcast or on Fox News for
anyone to say the line after the end of the
climax of the music from two thousand and one A
Space Odyssey. Oh, that's the thing we're objecting to from
this episode. That's the light. Yeah, yeah, because it shouldn't
a climax. It lost its power in that moment. It

(01:40:40):
was considering both like the gas. That was a very
good joke, Thank you. Thank you, thank you for seeing me, buddy. Yeah, So,
considering both like the text at the beginning and then
some of the narration that we just heard in the trailer,
they're kind of doing this weird like calli Yuga thing, right,
that is that it's a bit of a bit of

(01:41:00):
what's going on here, because again you can listen to
our episodes on Savitri Devi for a little more information
about this. But it's like this weird right wing uh
like quasi apocalyptic concept that evolved during an intermix between
some of the early Nazis and some of the people
who are currently behind the present leader of India. It's

(01:41:22):
it's way too esoteric weird to get into, but it's
one of the things that like the real Yeah, it's
like it. Um, We're not going to get into it
too much. But I think the previous news unsettling that
it wound up adjacent to a Tucker Carlson episode because
it's some like weird esoteric Nazi wizard shit. Yes um.

(01:41:43):
And that previous November, Joe Rogan posted a Kali Yuga
meme which went viral. It's it's about how hard times
creates strong men, which create good times. Which lead to
weak men, which create hard times. It's a fucking silly his, his, his.
The the accompanying text on the Instagram post that that
Rogan did said, civilizations move in predictable cycles. We are

(01:42:05):
in the Kali Yuga, the age of conflict. All of
the chaos we're seeing right now was predicted in Hinduism
thousands of years ago. Rogan was probably just like parroting
something that he heard from one of his many fashy
or new age friends, which, considering Rogan's social circle, that
could very well just be the same person. Yes, yeah,

(01:42:26):
one of his fucking sparring buddies is either friends with
the Nazi or just stumbled upon a fucking the wrong
podcast and then told him that when they were smoking weed,
And you know, yeah, that's I mean, that's honestly to
It's problematic because of his platform, but that's how I learned.
Everything about s O Tereca that I learned when I
was in my twenties was some I was smoking wheat

(01:42:47):
with some sketchy dude who was going places you shouldn't
have been on the Internet. So a few months after
Rogan posted this meme, we have Tucker Carlson making this
whole mini series surrounding this hard Times creation strong men
kind of trend. Uh. It's taken cues from the online manisphere,
and Tucker posited that weak, unmanly men are leading to

(01:43:09):
the collapse of civilization and a hardening of men is
necessary to save it. According to According to Tucker, one
of the one of the threats to manhood is a
quote unquote total collapse in testosterone levels amongst men in
recent years. And the solution goes beyond just your typical
like anti soy crusading that Tucker has done in the past. Now,

(01:43:32):
Tucker has turned to the cutting edge science of bromeopathic medicine,
as advocated for by a quote unquote fitness professional named
Andrew McGovern who touts that infrared light and testicle tanning

(01:43:55):
is this day sex makeda for plummeting tea levels in men.
So obviously half the viewers right now are like, what
that's cutestical telling that's crazy, But my view is Okay,
testosterone levels like crash and nobody says anything about it.
That's crazy. So why is it crazy to seek solutions?
It's not crazy to seek solutions. And I think um.

(01:44:16):
I was recently exposed to a term called bromeopathy, and
I think there's a lot of people out there right
now that um are don't trust the mainstream information. This
TV special is constantly referred to as a documentary, so
surely you would expect Tucker to try and like interview scientists,
or like anyone with expertise on this topic. Of course,

(01:44:39):
not act not no ways. Andrew McGovern are our bromeopathic hero.
Works as a personal trader at Lifetime Fitness in Columbus, Ohio.
And he hasn't even been a trader for very long.
About a decade ago, a good one. About a decade ago,

(01:45:02):
he was the manager of an Abercrombie and Fitch store
in Mama. Oh perfect, Yes you know, okay now descriptions
from it looks at the Abercrombie and Fitch store. Wait,
but in Miami. Hey, if you want to get trim,
that's where you get trim. That is that type of dude.

(01:45:27):
He's emerging here. As of twenties eventeen, he was the
director of operations for Petland retail stores. You're getting funnier.
This guy's resume is highly amusing. But Tucker being a
competent journalist did not just interview one person. However, Kid

(01:45:48):
Rock was brought on to be the sole voice of reasons.
You laugh, But Kid Rock is the other person. I've
gotten prescription drugs from so real Bastia. In the platonic
cave of men stands Kid Rock and a guy from
Apocrombie and Fitch. We must only be their shadows. Dude,
stop testical tanning. Come on, I mean, yeah, I haven't

(01:46:11):
heard anything, Bobby. I'm starting a punk rock band and
it's called testicle tanning. That's the end of it. I mean,
don't you think at this point, when so many of
the therapies, the paths they've told us to take, have
turned out to be dead ends that have really hurt people,
why wouldn't open minded people seek new solutions. I don't

(01:46:33):
know what the hell is going on in this world.
I'm not even sure if I understood that question. But
some days I just want to stop this planet let
me off. Like kid Rock was not did not buy
into testicle tanning the same way Tuckers seemed to. Oh God,
is kid Rock gonna be the voice? That's what I said.
I said he was brought up to be the sole
voice of reason again. But we thought you were joking.

(01:46:55):
Because it's kid Rock, you were joking. Believe you know,
he is the only person Kid Rock stands with science.
It is indeed sweet Home Alabama all summer long. Tucker
was not the first person to advocate for testicular tanning
as the solution to an allegedly problematic dip in testosterol levels.

(01:47:18):
Dating back to twenty fifteen, you can find articles online
such as quote former MLB player Gabe Kapler says men
who want to get stronger should tan their testicles from
Complex and quote I put a giant red light on
my balls to triple white testosterone levels from a Men's
Health twenty seventeen. Is that written by Ben Greenfield? Banny
chuns because he normally pops up with these things, which

(01:47:39):
which which one the Men's health one. Let me see
the guy who injected to make it big. I have
it in my show notes here. This was written by
someone named Ben Greenfield. This baland has won games. So
proud of you today, buddy, I'm so happy teams are

(01:48:03):
you taking? Are you taking performance enhancing drugs for this podcast?
Shad me rub it? I'm not. This is so funny.
We have stepped into a gold minded contact with Ben Greenfield,
the guy who injected his own dick with stemseelves to
make it bigger. That's so funny. I urge you. I

(01:48:24):
compel you. If you have any free time in your day,
just google Ben Greenfield penis. There will be several articles.
It's supposed to be rectible outlets. It will just fucking
make you unwell. Well, that's that is great to hear.
But despite not being the first person to talk about
testicular tanning, Tucker was certainly the most impactful. After the

(01:48:45):
airing of the End of Men. Testicular tanning showed a
seven thousand increase in relative search interest on Google and
thirty thirty five thousand increase in tweets on the topic. Now,
surely some of these things or stuff like what if,
like making fun of it, right, Yeah, but also a

(01:49:06):
lot of it's also people who are just talking about
it genuinely. Um to quote a study published in jmi R,
a dermatology publication, quote, the promotion of testicular tanning generated
significant public interest in an evidence lacking and potentially dangerous
health trend. Dermatologists and other healthcare professionals should be aware
of these new viral health trends to best consultations and

(01:49:27):
combat health misinformation. So like, in terms of actual data,
a twenty seventeen meta analysis of studies on sperm counts
found that in North America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand,
men's sperm counts have declined by about fifty percent between
nineteen seventy three and twenty eleven. Now, these results have

(01:49:47):
not been enough to really cause broad concern unless you're
like a right wing influencer for men, because there doesn't
really seem to be an equal drop in testosterial levels
up problems mankind has had on the not enough yes
and and like compared to previous decades. There is this

(01:50:08):
maybe like a twenty percent decrease in total testasterone levels
amongst adolescent and young adult males, but that's highly fluctual
and it's impacted heavily by diet. It's it's suspected that
pollution environmental degradation are also suspected of being contributing factors,
with plastics like highlight being known to interfere with the

(01:50:29):
production of hormones like testosterone. But this this area of
research is still heavily contested, but still that has not
stopped fitness YouTubers and conservative influencers from tying this to
like the soy boy feminization of men and drumming up
panic to grow their social media followings, sell their supplements
and advertise affiliate products. The Kreme de la creme of

(01:50:50):
red lights for testicular tanning is the Jeve Light. A light.
Juve is a light therapy panel company which ells these
LEDs um They're they're like this, They're like this upscale
wellness brand. Um. The smallest model they have costs over
a thousand dollars, with the full body ones going for

(01:51:11):
around ten grand. This is when you know it's a grift.
If someone is telling you that they need to sell
you sunlight, they are having a fucking laugh. Our friend
Ben Greenfield advocates a quote that advocates that you spend
the big bucks on Drew lest you quote fry your

(01:51:31):
balls to a crisp with a cheap knockoff. You wouldn't
want to do that, would you? Unwill Yeah, it seems
like it's maybe a bad idea. I can teach you
how to how to how to cook your balls safely.
Without spending any money at all. Get a pair of
double A batteries. Take them right out of your out
of your your your your your remote control. You stick

(01:51:54):
the active end in a bottle of water, and then
you put your hand on your testicles and it'll complete
the circuit and power your testicles up with electricity, which
you can then ejaculate instead of come. They'll probably give
you superpowers too, almost certainly, Garrison, legally, this is not
a recommendation to do this. If you do this, that

(01:52:16):
shit's not on us. Divolition, Please to not connect batteries.
Dick to quote that JMIR study evaluating the public's interest
into secular tanning quote. The interest in this topic may
be partially explained by the men's attention and advertising men's
sexual health and homeown replacement or homeown enhancing therapies receive
in the US. Although subsequent media coverage largely disfavored to

(01:52:39):
secular tanning due to lacking evidence and potential dangers, other
health influencers came to defend and encourage the practice of
testicular tanning, specifically by using UV light as an unquote.
As an example, here is a clip from fitness YouTuber
Elliott Hulsey's Strength Camp with one point seven million followers.

(01:53:00):
Blast your balls with sunshine to increase testosterone. Now you
can drop your draws and let your balls get kissed
by the sun, or you can try one of these
light panels to roast by nuts and be more manly.
Nineteen thirty nine study suggests that UV light exposure to
your testicles increases testosterone by two hundred percent. If you

(01:53:20):
want to join me in this experiment, you can find
one of these bad boys at cozyhealth dot com. Then
just go to personal labs dot com, get your blood tested,
get your testosterone. Then after eight to twelve weeks, check
it again and find out if the nut rusting really works.
So this whole idea goes back to this one nineteen
thirty nine. Studies eighteen thirty nine. Yeah, yeah, yeah, get

(01:53:44):
chience in nineteen thirty nine. Man, And if there's one
thing I trust, it's science from nineteen thirty nine. Yep,
got any comments on race in the study. So this
study was published in the journal Endercnology, and it found
that frequent UV irritation to the genitals increased urinary and drosterone,

(01:54:04):
a metabolite of distasterone. Increases levels by nearly two hundred percent,
quote unquote. Now you'll be shocked to learn that there
may be problems with this study. Guess how many test
subjects were included in this In this study, I'm going
to be generous and say eight. So Mia says eight,
James and Greenfield just one? One? You say one, Robert,

(01:54:27):
how many? How many do you think are in the study? Geez?
I think like seven was sacred to the Nazi, So
I'm gonna say that five. A grand total of five
people are in this study. Wow, I give too much credit.
They had to pick the sacred discordion number bullshit. Three
of them are fifty four years old and have manic
depressive psychosis. The other two are twenty Honestly, not a

(01:54:53):
bad representative sample for Tucker's audience. I was about to
say the same thing. This is actually the other two
or twenty eight and forty five and have a quote
psychopathia with depressive features, which is very old old timey
term everyone on Twitter, etc. Etc. But I think what

(01:55:14):
what actually happened is I think they did this study
at an asylum and just found people with depressive psychosis
to do the study on it. It's just these five,
these five random people. Um No, no individual graft results
were produced. It only showed the quote unquote typical reaction.
And there wasn't even a control group for the study.

(01:55:38):
Not to mention, there's many problems with like measuring to
stosterone in the first place, because it changes broadly day
to day and by age, and it's very kind of unreliable.
Um to quote the jmi R study again, quote Beyond
this questionable study, research has shown that exposure to UV
radiation may increase sex steroid hormone levels. However, these studies

(01:55:58):
either do not include human participants or do you not
specifically evaluate UV radiation exposure to the genitals. There is
there is not a single other study since then that
has done anything resembling like peer reviewed science. You know
why why everybody go to go to go fund me,

(01:56:19):
help cool Zone determine whether or not testical tanning works.
And we'll get that control group. Well, okay, so what
my mile question about this? Aren't aren't all these people
getting fucking ball cancer? We are? We are, Okay, we
are about to get to that, because yes, you may

(01:56:39):
think that shining UFI lights on your bulls might have
some long term problems. Yeah, it's great that long sound
strans come back to the episode of gain. So Vice
interviewed Seth Cohen, a urologist and the director of the
Sexual Dysfunction Program at NYU lendin Health. Quote, I'm not
aware of any science or data or any journal publications

(01:57:00):
proving that red light therapy improves meltostosterone and quote we
change recommendations on medical therapies based on a double blind,
placebo controlled randomized trials, large studies with thousands of patients.
That's where you'll find if there's any really statistical significance
between red light therapy and a placebo Could these men
who underwent red light therapy and came out and felt

(01:57:21):
stronger and more manly? Could they Could that have been
a placebo effect? Of course it could unquote so and
as Mia mentioned, we have not really even gotten into
the potential dangers yet. Close direct heat to your testicles
actually damages sperm count on top of the risk of
giving yourself ball cancer by blasting concentrated UV light on

(01:57:43):
your genitals for twenty minutes a day, every day of
the week, which is what is recommended to quote to
quote that study one last time quote. Research shows that
excessive exposure to UV radiation may lead to higher rates
of genital tumor formation and decreased sperm counts, as spermo

(01:58:03):
to genesis is temperature dependent. Thus, given the current obsession
with optimizing male hormone levels, the high cost of Redleigh therapy,
and misleading information labeling of testicular tanning by prominent influencers,
there may be an increase in men exposing themselves to
UV radiation and developing associated complications, right heroic, So guys,

(01:58:26):
almost done here. But man, it's pretty it's pretty funny
that all of the worst people you know are gonna
get ball cancer. Ye don't stop him. Yeah, I you know,
there was a period of time in my life when
I had said where I will never wich cancer on anybody.
But if you are deliberately exposing your testicles for the sun,
to the sun and the hope of getting superpowers because

(01:58:48):
of Nazi science, it's okay. It's it's okay, Like I'm
not going to mourn that. To be fair, That thirty
nine study was from the United States, so it could
I'm talking about the other Nazi science. Oh yes, yeah, yeah, yeah,
well yeah, um and I think I think of a

(01:59:11):
part of this whole narrative of like the total collapse
of men's distosterone levels, as as Tucker puts it, fucking
wish Yeah, chasier. But I think this is more about
men in power feeling that their position of assumed superiority
is being threatened. Really, all of our quack science and
conspiracy theory stories today all revolve around this, like subliminal

(01:59:33):
dog whistle. It's no mistake that Tucker titled his program
the End of Men. In all the stories we'recovering today,
it is the fear of emasculation that is the hook
used to drum up fear and anger about how liberal
feminism is eroding manhood. It targets some of young men's
sexual insecurities while promoting this like anti woke return to

(01:59:54):
the old ways of rugged masculinity. Yeah, I might add,
because I think you're missing one aspect of it. I
think you're identifying what he's signaling to his listeners and
what they get out of it. But I also think
that what he and the other folks who are kind
of in positions of power and influence in the right
get out of this because they're not they don't believe this,

(02:00:15):
they're not actually motivated by that. Now, what this is
and what because because we do not know specifically why,
like testosterone rates, maybe lower white sperm counts are definitely lower,
but it likely has to do with a massive variety
of industrial pollutants in the environment, and with the fact
that industrial agriculture and the process nature of a lot

(02:00:37):
of our foods is having a negative impact on all
these things. Like it's it's consequences of capitalism, right, and
because the consequences are getting increasingly hard to ignore, the
thing that people like that need to do is find
either a cure for them or another way to blame
or another thing to blame them on. Right. And so
if the aspect the things that are horribly unhealthy about

(02:00:59):
these society that we have built is causing men to
suffer consequences in their bodies, um, the thing to do
on the right is to blame that shit on the
liberals emasculating men. And the solution is whatever kind of
shit we can sell you, right, Like, that's what's going
on here, that's the motivation, and it happens outside of
like man shit too, Like that's all the right has anymore.

(02:01:23):
Like their their economic theories have been proven disastrously wrong.
They have no actual ability to govern in a meaningful
way other than by causing harm to people. So it's
entirely about taking the consequences of the world that they
advocate and blaming them on someone else and selling you
snake oil to deal with it. Yeah, exactly, And so

(02:01:44):
that is that. That is most of the of the
testicular tanning fun that that I got into. We haven't
covered all the things in twenty seventeen. We'll get back
on this subject, but it is time for us to end.
This is all right over an hour. So I want
to leave you all, all of you, all of you beautiful. First,

(02:02:04):
I want to thank all of our beautiful correspondence for
their research. And I want to leave all of you
with this simple piece of advice. If you feel like
your testicles aren't getting enough solar radiation, simply purchase a
glass cutter and an old microwave, cut a circular hole
in the microwave, and you bag it while it's on.
You'll be okay. That is our legally binding health advice.

(02:02:28):
That's the end of the episode. Hello, Welcome to It
could happen here We've got a bit of a bit

(02:02:51):
of a downer of an episode here, but this is
going to be part one of a two part series
talking about the increasing war on transpeople that we've seen
both on the horcle side and on the actual legislative side.
UM with me today is mia Anna Margaret. How how
are you doing on this fine day? It's it's been.

(02:03:13):
It's been really fun frantically updating my part of the
script because they're keep being fucking new bills that are
like going through committee. So it's great having having a
good time. I'm doing great. I'm not aware of anything
that's wrong. I assume you all are here to tell
me that everything's fine forever. Well, hopefully next episode we'll

(02:03:36):
talk more about how we can, like, uh, I don't know,
deal with this sort of thing. I most I it
was my job to handle the bad part of the
of this two part series, and it was the other
people's job to handle the good part. So I don't
know what they haven't planned for the next episode. Actually,
all I all I did was watch hours and hours

(02:03:59):
of people advocate for genocide and put together some of
the worst bits that I feel like are still worth mentioning.
It's probably worth noting that the two of us who
are supposed to be writing about what we do about
it both have swords over our shoulders. I can go
grab a sword, if that is, If that is a
core part of the advice, I think so okay. So

(02:04:22):
I think whenever I put together episodes like these, I
always try to be careful not to I don't just
want to include people who are talking about why myself
and others should die, like just like I don't want
to include that unnecessarily because that's just kind of a bummer.
But I think it is also important to actually hear

(02:04:43):
and understand the types of rhetoric that they are trying
to spread and they're trying to normalize, and be aware
of what techniques and what rhetorical styles they are trying
to employ. So I've condensed this down as much as
I can. You will still hear a decent amount of
pretty gross stuff. Um. I think I should have almost
all of the machendering completely edited out. I should have

(02:05:05):
a whole bunch of things not not included. But there
will be a decent amount of rhetoric that that that
you will hear from, just as as a heads up.
That's what's going to be kind of part of this episode.
A lot of this is going to be talking about
hosts that are employed by the conservative news site ran
by Ben Shapiro, The Daily Wire. They have really, really

(02:05:27):
focused in an excruciating extent on antitrans like campaigning and
activism for really the past year. It got this type
of stuff got really bad last February, and it once
again got really bad this February. It's no coincidence that
this is also the start of the legislative cycle, that
this is why they're doing this right now. It is.

(02:05:48):
It is part of an attempt to actually affect the
laws that the United States have around if trans people
are allowed to exist. It is, it is. It is purposeful,
So we may as well just get started here. We're
going to start a little bit liked actually, so most
of this will be documenting the types of rhetoric they

(02:06:10):
were using in February to March, so the past like
month and a half. In early February, Candice Owens on
her Daily Wire show refer to transpeople as demonic while
advocating for the total ban of transgender healthcare for all ages.
The trans Lives Matter protesters decided to occupy the Oklahoma
Capitol building to fight GOP bills that ban gender conforming

(02:06:34):
surgery for people that are under the age of twenty one.
So that, of course that should be banned. If you
are in the age twenty one, you should not be Honestly,
you should never be allowed by I would go a
little further, Oklahoma, if you really want to do something,
just ban it altogether. Yeah. I love that because they're
always trying to be like, no, no, no, we're just
here to protect the children, whereas we've known this entire
time that they're trying to stop anyone from being trends. Yes,

(02:06:58):
this is a pattern that will come up a lot
in the research I've put together for this is how
last year it was their very much trying to make
it like, no, it's just about the kids. And then
we were talking about how first they're going to try
to limit it to eighteen years old, and they're gonna
limit it to twenty one years old, and they're gonna
limit it to twenty five years old. Then they're just
going to ban it all together. And that is very
clearly what they're doing. And they're they're now just saying

(02:07:18):
the quiet part out loud. So good on us for
calling that a year in advance, but now they're emboldened
just to say it outright. So kind of Someone's refers
to trans people as demonic later on a night clip.
I'm not not including that bit because just today Michael
Knowles on his Daily Wire show said that this so

(02:07:38):
called transgenderism is demonic, the second second Daily Wire person
to drum up this satanic panic shit. This is demonic stuff,
really demonic stuff. And I made this point I got
in trouble with our publicists over at Media Matters because
I said that the attacks on man end's sexual nature

(02:08:01):
and sexual difference in complimentarity are demonic, and they are.
They go back throughout all of history, throughout some of
the earliest depictions of demons, even one of the most
prominent depictions of demons. It comes from an artist, Lafas Levy,
who is an occultist, who did a depiction of Baphomet.
If you just think what's a demon look like, you're

(02:08:23):
probably thinking of this picture. Okay, okay, all right, that's
not true. It's it's completely wrong. So this is this
is really funny to be because for years now I've
been trying to say that being trans is not demonic.
It's very clearly alchemical. Please please get your occults terms right.

(02:08:45):
Thousands of years of alchemical development has delivered onto me
estradial valorate. It's it's very clearly alchemy. Um. But also
it's just extremely funny to me that Noels tried to
cite Levy, who's like, Baphomet isn't really a demon in
Lovey's work, but like whatever, it's it's all it's extremely funny.
He He goes on to talk about Solivate and and Coigila,

(02:09:07):
which I've actually been planning to do an episode on
for a while. But it's it's all extremely funny too.
Is it worth describing that Bapphamet is the statue of
the like hornheaded person with like Yes, often falsely falsely
identified as the Satan or a demon, But yes, it's
a very famous, very famous statue. Like if you think

(02:09:29):
of like the statue of Satan, this is what bapha
Bet actually is. Yeah, it's it's not Satan, but I
mean the use of this like demonic rhetoric is a
very is it's it's very basic, like a dehumanizing stuff.
Trying to dehumanize trans people, um, while also pulling from
like the remnants of the satanic panic that still exists
in some conservatives minds. UM. Moving on to to a

(02:09:52):
friend of the pod, Matt Walsh. UM. One of one
of his recent main targets is actress Dylan mulvain. On
February fourteenth, Matt went on a mindless rant while continuously
miss gendering mulvaney and attacking her appearance, at one point
referring to her as like doing a woman face minstrel

(02:10:13):
show routine. Which a reaccording thing about this is that
all in all of their rhetoric against transpeople, they also
managed to be incredibly racist yep, and like not understanding
what racism actually is, which I mean is not surprising
considering there they work for the Daily Wire. I'm not
going to actually include the clip of Matt Walsh there
because it's it's just it's just miss gendering and like

(02:10:35):
making fun of how someone looks for like a minute,
and it's all very gross. Who is that actress? I
just I live under a rock. Dylan Mulvaney. I think
she does like Broadway stuff. She's like a New York
person I've not, I've only i've wholly really heard of her.
Based on Matt Walsh's continuing rants against this person, we
can't have cross stressors in the theater a matchin. We'd

(02:11:00):
have to I actually don't know. I literally don't know
how far back you'd have to get to get to
where people didn't play with gender on stage. I think
it's impossible. Well, I think the further back you go,
the worsting guests, because like things were like only men
could be on stage, and it's like, well, okay, this
is every Shakespeare Beforeance, etcetera, etcetera. In one of the

(02:11:23):
more bizarre Daily Wire appearances in this um so on
on February fifteenth, a young dad who called into the
Daily Wire sports show Crane on Company talked about how
dad's like him are going to cause dangerous problems if
trans inclusivity continues. The hosts of the show agreed and

(02:11:44):
said that violence will be an inevitable response to trans
women playing sports, which one of you bar up. But
somebody said something about dad being in the stand finding
out that for the first time that somebody in the
locker room was a male, and that they were just
hanging it all out in front of their girls, how
I rate they would get. My view is that, yeah,

(02:12:05):
we're gonna have not just one irate dad, We're gonna
have a lot of I rate dads. That's gonna content
massive problem in the school system, and it's going to
be very dangerous for everybody because people are gonna start
taking in their own hands because they're seeing that other
people are. That's exactly jungle rules, as we call it,
jungle rules. Exactly at what point do we say, we've
tried to talk this out and hash this out with you,

(02:12:25):
you're not being reasonable. Those are part of my values.
So it's not even us saying go in there and
handle business. It's saying, I know what's gonna happen the
minute that girl runs out of that locker room or
a couple girls. Imagine if a twelve year old girl
ran out of the locker room and said that to
her doll mine, just to imagine that how or whatever.
Men shouldn't be in women's locker room. But if a

(02:12:46):
man that was straight walked into a women's locker room
with a trench coat and just showed everything and started
shaking like this and got beatn asleep everybody would be
doing this, they'd be clapping, great job. But you let
the same thing happen to somebody who says they think
they're a woman in there and does the exact same thing,
then it's no, it's a totally different situation. So while

(02:13:06):
we're not advocating for it, I'm telling you what's going
to happen because I live in the real world. I
know what you would do for your daughter. Yep, that
man does not live in the real world. No, And
it's it's all like, it's this weird like trying to
have some form of like of a of of like
denial in their very clear advocating for violence and like

(02:13:27):
advocating for the normalization of just assaulting people. I mean,
I even feel like though this is like, this is
like last year's anti trans rhetoric, you know, the like
lowest hanging fruit was to come at us about sports,
this issue that affects the tiniest percentage of people, you know. Yeah,
and it's it's it's the it's the blending of the
sports issue with like the locker room stuff. Yeah. Later

(02:13:50):
on in the show, another caller admitted that he would
assault trans woman, including his own children. And The Daily
Wirehouse refused to push back on like any of this
as this man just advocates child abuse. And I just
wanted to say too, as a as a new father,
I've got a new baby boy, uh, and I've got

(02:14:12):
a two year old daughter, And not only would I
want to beat somebody up for doing that to my daughter,
but I would beat my son up if he ever
thought about doing something like that in a women's locker room.
It's just again, and I want to make sure and again,
we live in the real world. We know what's gonna
happen because we're not even advocating violence, like I said,
We're telling you what's gonna happen. These are the fathers
and the brothers and the uncles and the mamas are

(02:14:35):
it's gonna get to a point where they're just gonna
handle business like and it's just it is. It is
what it is. We're trying to tell y'all this in
the threat, this it's just a four warning. It is
foreshadowing what's gonna happen. British are coming. Yeah, okay, but
but the British is coming. Is a really, really funny
thing for an American to say about this because he's wait,

(02:14:55):
is he saying that they're the British they're trying to
do like a Paul Revere sing oh oh oh. I
thought they were trying to be like, we're gonna show
up and we're going to handle business us. No, I
think in the opposite. I'm sorry, we are we are
warning that if this insanity continues, then people will start
violently assaulting anyone who they suspect of being a man

(02:15:16):
in a bathroom, which will also just lead to like
people assaulting like a like a butch sis woman as well.
Like no, I mean, it's like this has already been happening,
like like one of my friends can't get changed at
the local gym um even though they're assigned female at birth,
because there's no safe place for them to do it
because the way that they read, you know, like and

(02:15:37):
I don't know whatever. I mean, that's just one example
of the time my head, but it's just happening constantly.
Suddenly we have gender police everywhere, and everyone is expected
to perform masculinity and femininity and like weird sis normative
ways saying that everyone knows. I'm sorry, I'm just no, no,
but I think there's something important about this too, which
is like, and anytime someone tries to say, like anytime

(02:16:00):
someone starts talking about their real world, this is the
way the world really works. Right, That's not an actual
description of reality. It's an it's an aspirational thing, right.
And the way that you make something real is through violence. Yes,
And that's what all this stuff is absolutely and and
specifically speaking of violence and child abuse. The next day,

(02:16:21):
on February sixteenth, Candice Owens was discussing this, uh, this
like trans kids TikTok video about his grandmother's transphobic reaction
to him coming out. Um, and it's it's also it's
it's just extremely grows. So these like these media people
who are paid millions of dollars spend their days making

(02:16:41):
fun of trans kids on TikTok like like random like
random miners on TikTok. We are making videos about their experiences.
And they then these these like these grifters and these
content creators who work on the right, it's like blast
these kids on their on their on their shows. They
get like millions of millions of viewers. I mean, this
is the entire lips of TikTok platform. But yours now

(02:17:04):
seeing this across like almost every mainstream conservative influencer. So
on top of Candice calling being trans a mental illness
placed upon you by society, Candas Owns also said that
if she had a trans grandchild, she would beat them
with a cane. It is a cry for help, and

(02:17:24):
your grandmother answered that cry for help by telling you
that you are loved as you are and that you
don't need to fall into this trap of insanity. You're
the best grandma ever, by the way, because when I'm
a grandma, I get any foolishness like that. I don't know.
I want to be a sweet grandma, I really do.
I want to be a sweet old lady. But I
feel like I might be the kind hit somebody with

(02:17:45):
a cane. I don't know, I'll be like, why you
are not calling your Michaels. I feel like that will
probably be me, but I will I would have prayed
for you. You know the thing that I keep thinking
about with this, with this Candas clip, with most of
these clips, it's like they're just like laughing the whole
time they're saying this stuff. Yep, Like it's just a
joke to them, right, It's like, yeah, they believe it.
But it's also it's just like a joke. It's just
something they can sort of like casually talk about while

(02:18:08):
like you know, fucking hanging out in their show or whatever.
And absolutely, because I mean the primary goal for these
people is is content creation, and yeah, they're making suffering
content for for and as well as like normalizing this
type of like violent response. Yeah. And and I think

(02:18:29):
I think the sort of joking thing is is a
big part of how the normalization works. Like I don't think,
like I think it would be much harder to have
someone just being incredibly serious going like yeah, I'm gonna
like beat my child with a cane, right, like if
but if if you do, when that's sort of like
joking like matter of fact thing, it helps, It helps
normalize it enormously. Yeah. No, absolutely, I'm just really sad

(02:18:52):
thinking about the because acceptance by family, a family that
doesn't necessarily understand, but that's willing to accept. It's like
the thing that I think bolsters the spirits of young
trans people or adult trans people more than anything else,
you know. And I've been like reading a bunch of
history about like trans people from one hundred years ago
where their family are like, all right, well we don't

(02:19:15):
get it, but what's your name now? Yeah, And like
a hundred years ago, we we could have improved from there.
And this is something that the Daily Wire definitely does
continue to harp on across multiple hosts, even like the
next video that we have here, Matt Matt Walsh is
doing like this is the same thing they're they're talking

(02:19:36):
about if they themselves had trans kids or trans grandkids,
that they would continue to be as openly vitriolic and
even violent against their own children. So this next clip
came like a week after Matt Walsh's first unhinged rant
attacking Dylan Muldaney. Walsh claimed that he wouldn't stop barking

(02:20:01):
the vitriolic rhetoric if he had a trans kid, that
in fact, he would quote rather be dead than discover
he had a trans kid. A beautiful and innocent kid
one day, seemingly out of nowhere, gets sucked into the
gender call and is devoured by it. All of their
innocence and light and beauty just drained out of them,

(02:20:21):
replaced by this self cannibalizing madness. For a parent to
see this happen to a child, it is a fate
worse than death. I would rather be dead than have
that happened to my kids, then die. We do argue
with you. I'm not on the debate team. This is
a mock trial. I keep thinking of whatever these things happened, Like,

(02:20:43):
I keep thinking about Matt Christman's one good line, which
is we should give to Christians what they want and
crucify them, persecute, persecute all day, every day. So unfortunately,
there was more to that clip than Walsh just threatening
to kill himself using like a groomer and protect the
children rhetoric that we saw go viral last year. Walsh

(02:21:04):
promises that mean words are only the beginning. See, the
thing that I most despise about Dylan Wilvni is that
part of a movement which actively seeks to turn my
children into Dylan Wolvni. That's why I'm entitled to my
anger and to whatever language I use to convey it.

(02:21:26):
I will say whatever I want to say, and I
will be justified in saying it, because these people are
after my kids and yours and everyone else's. And you're
worried that I'm being a little rude, Well, you see,
when it comes to my children, the children that I
cherish more than my own life. If you think mean

(02:21:47):
words go too far, then you would be very shocked
to hear how far I would really go to protect them.
Trust me, words are the least of it. I love this.
I would do anything to protect my children, unless they're
a gay, in which case I'm good, like off myself
or something like yeah, just I mean, I mean, I

(02:22:07):
don't know whatever. Already the legally actionable things have already
been said. Hey, it's it's not my idea, it's only
Matt Walsh's. This is his idea. You know. I do
want to go back for a second to the early
parts of this clip when he's talking about like, oh,
like you have these like purean innocent children, and like

(02:22:28):
the light goes out of him, like it's this thing
that strikes you about that so much? Is like she's
describing the process exactly in reverse, Like the thing that
he's describing is what is like, this is what happens
if you do transition a kid like by force, Like
the thing that actually happens when a trans kid transitions
is like you can you can literally see this in

(02:22:50):
like like you can you can like literally see this
in pictures of kids. It's like like you can wash
the light come back to their eyes as a transition totally. No, yeah, yeah,
it's you know, it's it's it's one of sort of
like it's one of the most beautiful things about being
trans It's like is experiencing that joy and experiencing like
what it is to be yourself and then you get
to watch this fucking dipshit like just literally just like

(02:23:14):
taking the process as it actually happens, and then like
lying and saying it's like literally like lying and saying
that the thing that is making these people have this
joy is the like the thing that's fucking killing them. No.
Absolutely that that's something that's often overlooked when covering this
sort of thing, is the like just the presence of

(02:23:34):
trans joy and the trans joy that can be experienced
when people are given access to the treatments that have
been like known to be successful for decades now. It's
also I mean, I don't know if you're intentionally going
in an escalating sense. This is the first person that
I'm looking at being like, oh, this man wants to
kill me, you know I am I am going in

(02:23:55):
an escalating Yeah, yeah, we escalate pretty far over the
next First, I think let's let's have a bit of
an ad break. Do you know who doesn't want to
kill you? Fifty percent of the advertisers, at least at
least fifty percent of the advertisers don't want you dead
because instead they want your money. All right, we are back,

(02:24:17):
as as previously stated, Like when when reporting on this
topic before, we've always said that the limited focus on
transgender miners was simply a form of rhetorical deception. Oh,
somebody please think of the children. By conjuring concerns that
have been like culturally ingrained in US around the protection

(02:24:39):
of children, Anti transactivists have been introducing and a normalizing
anti trans talking points that inevitably get used against trans
people of all ages. Last year, Matt Walsh openly said
that quote, it should be illegal for doctors to medically
transition anyone of any age unquote. And as Margaret said,

(02:25:00):
it seems like we were we were moving in a
more escalating direction, but that that just so happens to
corresponds as the month of February continued. So here's a
clip from Daily Wire host Michael Knowles from the late
February twenty twenty three. In order for women to have
the right to have their own bathrooms, you have to
ban transgenderism entirely. You can't just ban it for the kids.

(02:25:23):
It's got to be entirely. In order for women to
be able to have their own locker rooms at the gym,
you have to ban transgenderism entirely. In order to protect
businesses from having to participate in weird occult sexual rituals
like the transgender transition, you have to ban transgenderism entirely.

(02:25:44):
So that is just like straight up advocating for genocide, right, Like, yeah,
there there is no difference between this term that the
daily Wire people use, transgenderism and and currently existing transgender people.
That that isn't you It's like saying, we have to
eradicate judaism, Like what what is it? What do you

(02:26:04):
mean by that? You obviously mean exterminating human beings and
making it impossible for them to continue on? Like that
is that? That is what genocide is? Yeah, and you
can hear me like literally the next thing he says
is like you know, he's talking about like like transition
angas and the cult ritual or whatever the fuck it.
It's like well, yeah, no, like like he's he's explicitly saying,
like what what Yeah, what does banning transgenderism means? Does it? Never?

(02:26:27):
Like confuse you all when you just have these moments
where you're like, these people believe in sky Daddy. Like
I'm not even anti religious, I'm not even an atheist.
I don't know exactly what I am. But like when
you hear people just being like God has willed me
to do this murder or whatever, that this is what
this person is saying, I'm just like they think of

(02:26:49):
themselves as like holy warriors who have been chosen by
God to eradicate this demonic plague that is infecting like humankind. Yeah,
it would be like if all of the sudden they
were like, and that's why Gandolf has told me that
I must go on a quest. Like I'm just like,
am I living in the same century as these people?

(02:27:10):
Like again, not an atheist, but I'm just like you've
decided that sky Daddy has told you to march off
to murder, Like yeah, that doesn't even map to a
fucking basic understanding even of religious anyway. Sorry, no, absolutely,
And I mean this unfortunately continues to get worse Yeah.

(02:27:33):
The very next day, Michael Knowles defended his eliminationis rhetoric
in another unhinged rant about the like probably about two
million trans people in the United States, saying that quote,
there can't be a genocide of trans people because it's quote,
not a legitimate category of being. They said that I
was calling for the extermination of transgender people. They said

(02:27:58):
I was calling for a genocide. I said, what, I
must have missed that part of my show. When did
I did? I say that? I don't one. I don't
know how you could have a genocide of transgender people
because genocide refers to genes, It refers to genetics, it
refers to biology, and the point of those genderism is

(02:28:21):
that it has nothing to do with biology. That's what
the transgender activists say. They say, forget about biological sex.
My gender expression doesn't have to have anything to do
with my biological sex. Okay, well, then there can't be
a genocide. It refers to genetics. But furthermore, nobody is
calling to exterminate anybody, because the other problem with that

(02:28:42):
statement is that transgender people is not a real ontological category.
It's not a legitimate category of being. There are people
who think that they're the wrong sex, but they're mistaken.
They're laboring under a delusion, and so we need to
correct that delusion. Okay, so that was that was a lot.

(02:29:04):
I'm just clinging to my emotional support sword, Like, what
what solution to preytel will you be employing to correct
that's so called delusion? Maybe just like one one once,
like a like one one of the last one, Yeah,
a fal one. Not the penultimate solution, that's not his
his thing. No one step further the the very the

(02:29:27):
very last one. I can't think of a of a
of a of another word for for for very last.
But yeah, I also like, have these motherfucker's karrotyped themselves?
No one has almost no one has been goddamn like
the percentage of people who've seen what their genes are like,
I don't know, whatever, sense it's nonsense. Yeah, the the

(02:29:47):
science does not hold up to the like thing you
learn in fourth grade that the you know, I don't
know when they teach you xx and x y or whatever.
But it's like, but like that's not science. That's not
the current scientific understanding, and I think has never really
been the scientific understanding. That part I'm not as certain
about um no, I mean like it's and by saying
like I'm not calling for genocide because the group I'm

(02:30:09):
targeting aren't even a real group of people, They're not
even literally it's literally the talking point of every single
genocide or fascist ever in existence. So like like literally
literally this is I can't I cannot find the person
who was writing about this. I apologize immensely. But there
when when when this clip was first circulating, there was
a really interesting article about that was circulating about how
like not a legitimate category is what like the word

(02:30:34):
that gets translated as degenerate like that the Nazis used
like actually means like like that's like non legitimate kind
like like that very specifically is what the Nazis used
as like you know, as as they're staying for we
need to kill the Jews, right like that, that's that's
that's very very specifically what they were doing now and
and like genocide does not refer to genetics, it doesn't.

(02:30:57):
And and and you know, you know you can you can
look at like think because like these people are like
just unfathomably fucking stupid, right like they they they look
at genocide, right and they see the word gen and
they go, this means gen No. But you know, and
I think, I think something that is worth mentioning is that.
So Raphael Lemkin is the guy who coins the term genocide, right, Um,

(02:31:21):
the Lemkin Institute, which is the the like the lempicin Scitude,
which is the institute from this guy that that does
genoisde like does anti genocide prevention works specifically in the US.
Was like there was now a risk of genocide against
trans people. So, you know, the institute of the actual
guy who made the term genocide versus a guy who
thinks that gen means gene. It's like, it's just no,

(02:31:45):
It's it's very obvious that that saying that transgender people
are not a real ontological category is like he's doing
He's literally is how you do the Nazis did That
is how you do Nazi stuff. Like I'm under the
impression of the whole thing with ontology is accepting that
there's like multiple ontologies, Like it's clearly not an ontological

(02:32:06):
concept in his ontological like his way of viewing the world.
That's one of my problems, you know, I don't think
he would pass a basic philosophy of course at college.
You know, okay, I will say this, my my, my,
my argument against against specifically against there being multiple legitimate
ontologies is this is this these people's fucking ontology who
like believe that, like these people, all these fucking freaks

(02:32:28):
literally believe individually right, that there is no scientific explanation
for lightning and that like every act of lightning is
an individual act of God, that is not a legitimate ontology.
Like fuck that shit. No, I I refuse, I refuse
to do fucking to have to have to have there
be fucking multiple valid ontological positions. I refuse for there

(02:32:48):
to be valid worlds like no, there's something that are
just wrong, and you have to be able to say
that shit otherwise you get this fucking bullshit reality tunnels
do do be funny like that? He later added quote
transgenderism ultimately is a lie, It's a deception. It is
a fraud. Fraud is not protected by the First Amendment.

(02:33:12):
Fraud is not a category protected by the principles of
a free speech. You have no right to fraud. But
you know, here's the thing, I will I will agree
with him. You have no right to fraud. Fraud is
not protected by free speech. I really like have have
a real fun time when we fucking come for you
on those principles, like a show disappears a few days

(02:33:36):
of A few days later, Noles once again invoked grooma
rhetoric and openly called drag Queen's pedophiles and explicitly called
on quote the heavy hand of the state to shut
down to drag shows and arrest performers and parents. Why
is he dressed like um mister Rogers in a Black

(02:33:56):
Marre episode. He's just he's just mirror universe. Mister Rogers's
like just telling you to hate your neighbor. You know,
I don't know how you can watch this and not
conclude that the performers are pedophiles. I don't use that
word lightly. I know a lot of people on the
right use that word. They fling it around, and they

(02:34:16):
use it in precisely. I don't see how you can
dance around in a thong or in a leather harness
in front of babies and toddlers if you are not
a pedophile. So I would bet if not the farm,
I'd bet a lot of my money that that's the case,
and that's being normalized. I don't see how these parents
should be permitted to keep their children. They're abusing your children,

(02:34:38):
are sexually abusing your children by taking them to these events.
I don't see how whatever company is hosting this should
be allowed to keep its doors open. All of this
should be shut down by the heavy hand of the state.
All of these people other than the children should be arrested,
and some of them should face pretty severe consequences. Not
great stuff. He did hedge his bets. He was like,

(02:35:01):
you know, I'm actually not sure about this. That was
my favorite part. I think it is. It is interesting
that the whole heavy hand of the state line is
is is an interesting, little little unique gem in their
style of rhetoric whenever they explicitly call on the powers
of the government to like do fascism. I think a
lot of this type of rhetoric was leading up to

(02:35:22):
Sea Pack in which happened in early March. During Seapack,
anti trans rhetoric was a very central theme across There
are many speakers. That's like the big right wing gathering
where all the far right people get together and talk
to an empty room. Well, Seapack is the Conservative political
action conference. It is far right by the world's over

(02:35:44):
to the window. But it's like a mainstream right wing
convention in the United States. Cool. So the conference featured
in a rave speakers, including prominent Republican politicians and policymakers,
as well as people like Michael Knowles who are just
like right wing pundits. The many many speeches had attacks
against gender affirming healthcare, trans inclusive sports, and bathroom policies,

(02:36:07):
as well as the you know, the typical groomer and
and pedophelia stuff that we saw gets super popular last year. Um,
as well as framing this word transgenderism as a radical ideology. Now,
words like transgenderism and gender ideology are not actually terms
that trans people use. These were terms invented by anti transactivists.

(02:36:29):
I want to be very certific about this because I
think I don't think people understand the term gender ideology
was specifically invented by the Catholic Church, like as as
as a thing to oppose this and also a sort
of a way to oppose like gay marriage and like
queerness in general. And they're all of the fucking all
of the like shitty, like one of the one of
those sort of like quote unquote like dark secrets in

(02:36:52):
the fucking closet of all of the black people who
claim to be radical feminists who are anti trans is.
All of these people specifically worked with the back back
this up was first being developed in like the late
nineties and early two thousands. All these people worked with
the Catholic Church specifically to make sure that I like
that that that more sort of liked more gender inclusive
like terminology and stuff like not on a terminology like

(02:37:13):
more gender and preclusive programs and definitions of like of
what gender is wouldn't be implemented at the un. So
this this sort of like rad fem conservative Catholic alliance
is very old, and most of the people who are
in it will deny that that's what they were doing,
but it is like, this is this is Catholic Church ship.
The Pope literally had a rant about how gender ideology

(02:37:36):
was colonialism like like a week ago, like and and
and the Pope does the same demonic rhetoric as these people.
And I mean, yeah, so I believe this terms him.
It makes sense from him. That's his that's his thing,
that's his literal job. Yeah, which immediately also it's like, sir,

(02:37:56):
you are the pope, like, shut the fuck up about colonization, man, Like, yeah,
you know from Latin America. That doesn't excuse you, like
the Cash Church. The Catholic Church famously never never, never
done colonization. Um. But yeah, these words were invented by
anti transactivists to the humanized transgender people and frame being
trans as itself this dangerous ideology or a mental illness

(02:38:21):
in a need of curing m Seapack speakers consistently invoked
like grooming and pedophilia stuff in their In their long
anti LGBTQ hate rants, um Lauren Bobert claimed that educators
attempting to groom children, echoing the libs of TikTok stuff
that got popular in twenty twenty one and twenty twenty two.
Tulsi Gabbard was at Seapack. She basically claimed at LGBTQ

(02:38:43):
plus people were trying to gain acceptance for pedophiles by
labeling them as minor attracted persons and allowing them to
teach in schools. This is another conspiracy theory that Libs
of TikTok has boosted for a long time. By the way,
I want to hold a fucking greed share, which is
that there were a lot of people who who like
claimed to be leftist, who in like twenty eighteen, twenty nine,
twenty and twenty were like telling all of us that

(02:39:06):
Tulsi Gabbard was a leftists, like the only anti very
clearly a fascist walk like she she she like, no,
fuck off, you were wrong, Please admit you were wrong.
Please be more careful about who you're going to fucking
back so you don't end up backing this fucking like
weird peto jacketing dipshit. But you know who you should back.

(02:39:30):
Oh god, not yet, not yet almost almost okay, oh
not almost almost time? Sorry, I have abot planned. Um
Matt Gates spoke about an instant in Virginia which the
right wing media sphere has spread disinformation about to falsely
frame it as an instance of a transit student abusing
inclusive bathroom policies to attack young girls. Just spreading all
kinds of misinformation and disinformation from these right wing hate websites,

(02:39:54):
that that is why they exist, is to prop by
gate disinformation. Um Marjor Taylor Green target agenda from healthcare,
praising her current reintroduction of the twenty twenty two protect
Children's Innocence Act in the House, a bill which would
make it a felony to provide a gender affirming care
to miners. Green spread the lies and disinformation made popular
by Matt Walsh that gender affirming healthcare designed to quote

(02:40:16):
mutilate your kids and quote chemically castrate them. Stuff that
we've debunked on the show before and many others have debunked.
Trump gave a pretty pretty bad transphobic speech to close
out the conference. On the one side, he said that
he would keep men out of women's sports, but then

(02:40:37):
closed out to see pack by saying, quote, he would
revoke every Biden policy promoting the sexual mutilation and chemical
castration of our youth, and I will ask Congress to
send me a bill prohibiting child sexual mutilation in all
fifty states unquote. I don't want to include Trump's stuff
here because I find his voice to be slightly annoying. Anyway,

(02:41:01):
Moving off, Donald Trump more annoying than Michael Knowles. Shocking
so hard, challenge level almost impossible. Speaking of Michael Knowles,
he gave a speeches Sepack where he advocated that transgenderism
must be eradicated to thunderous applause. Now I'm going to
play this whole clip here. Bear with me. There can

(02:41:24):
be no middle way in dealing with transgenderism. It is
all or nothing. If transgenderism is true, if men really
can become women, then it's true for everybody of all ages.
If transgenderism is false, as it is, if men really
can't become women, as they cannot, then it's false for

(02:41:45):
everybody too. And if it's false, then we should not
indulge it, especially since that indulgence requires taking away the
rights and customs of so many people. If it is false,
then for the good of society, and especially for the
good of the poor people who have fallen prey to
this confusion, transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely,

(02:42:11):
the whole preposterous ideology at every level. Pretty pretty bad stuff.
Not great to hear a room full of people applaud
someone who's very clearly talking about the eradication of an
entire group of people. And I want to specifically point
out the from public life thing, because that was something

(02:42:32):
that you know, like back when the first bathroom bills
were happening in twenty sixteen, right, you know, like people
like trans people who were following this stuff. You know,
the thing everyone said was they're trying to they're trying
to erase trans people from public life, right, because that's
that's what happens when you can't use a restroom in public, right,
is like it limits your ability to just exist in

(02:42:55):
the public sphere. And we've gotten to a point now
where they can just fucking say what we you know,
what we all knew they wanted from the beginning, and
that's terrifying. I remember when I hit them the kind
of uncanny valley space, like when I hit the space
where I freaked people out, no matter what bathroom I used,
you know, it's like a very conscious thing where I

(02:43:17):
remember it because I pick which bathroom do you use
based on safety, right, and and like depending on my presentation.
It's it's wildly different depending on what kind of space
I'm in, it's wildly different. I don't know, I just
I just remember really consciously the first time I like
just I picked the men's room and then got like
double takes about why was I in there, and it's
just like, oh, I like can't do anything anymore. Yeah,

(02:43:41):
Like no, absolutely. After Nol's speech at Sepack, arguing for
the eradication of transgenderism quote unquote. Daily Wire hosts, including
Matt Walsh, defended him by saying, quote, we are in
a war against the most deranged ideology ever invented by
the human race. We are fighting to eradicate the ideogical
equivalent of a parasitic infection. But is a term like

(02:44:04):
eradicate over the top. Does it have a needlessly militant tone? No,
definitely not. The tone may be militant, but not needlessly so.
We are, after all, in a war, and lives are
at stake. We are in a war against the most
deranged ideology ever invented by the human race, plain and simple.

(02:44:27):
We are fighting to eradicate the ideological equivalent of a
parasitic infestation. And the parasite gender ideology seeks to not
only brainwash a generation of children, not only degrade and
appropriate womanhood, but also and manhood by the way, but also,
and most fundamentally, it seeks to eat away at truth itself.

(02:44:49):
This is coming from somebody who glibly refers to himself
as a theocratic fascist, And in cases like this, when
they tell you who they are, you should fuck believe them.
Like the first bit of that clip is like pretty bad,
very very clearly fascistic, Like it's it's checking all of
the boxes. But then I'm going to continue on to

(02:45:10):
the second part of this clip, and it is incredibly chilling.
Can we point out about how his poor choice and
plaid is also degrading too masculinity. Really, he is the
greatest threat to masculine right now because of his plaid choice.
Eradication of gender ideology. Total defeat is the only option
because there's no compromise with it. There's no living side

(02:45:32):
by side with it, there's no finding common ground. The
gender ideologue wants to destroy your culture and your children.
You will either rise up against it or lose everything
to it. We're so fucked, it's so Nazzi, Like, yeah, quote,
total defeat is the only option. The gender ideologue wants

(02:45:52):
to destroy your culture and your children. Like that is
less than a stones throw away from we must have
secured the existence of our people in a future white children.
It's right there. It's like, it's so it's so clear.
I think there's like a tiny grain of truth in it,
which is that like they are very very very close
to like permanently losing the battle over whether the trans

(02:46:13):
people could exist. And that's why they're doing this, right,
because like the only like like like so support for
trans people getting healthcare is like sixty is at like
sixty percent, right, The only thing they have left is
just straight up genocide because if they don't fucking kill
us all now, right, and they don't right now act

(02:46:33):
to make it impossible for future trans people to be trans, right,
they are going to lose. And I will talk about
this towards the end of the episode. This is kind
of part of my thesis on this, and this is
something that Michael Knowles himself actually admits. In one of
Michael Knowles's first shows after Sepack, he suggests that eradicating
transgenderism would be a simple matter of returning to the

(02:46:55):
state of Affairs in twenty fifteen to eradicate transgender is
from public life. And it's a good question. I'm glad
people are talking about that. That was the point of
my speech. What would it mean to eradicate the preposterous
ideology of transgenderism from public life at every level? Put
simply eradicating transgenderism from public life would mean behaving as

(02:47:22):
American society did before, say twenty fifteen. Before Round twenty fifteen,
we did not have any acceptance of transgenderism in public life. Also,
in just like a grim moment of surality, in the

(02:47:42):
middle of that clip, Knowles does an adder read for
a company called Rabbit Air, which is an air purifier
company who has an office in Pasadena, California. She's fu oh.
Knowles goes on to blame Obama for leading this wave
of trans end's acceptance in public life. Now, this whole

(02:48:03):
twenty fifteen thing is very funny to me because in
a lot of ways it was actually kind of easier
to be trans and twenty fifteen what it is right now.
But I and I think that this is mostly that
like for conservatives, it's mostly that young trans people are
simply more visible now, mostly due to things like TikTok.

(02:48:23):
Like there's just there's a more visible presence of trans
joy and trans people living, and that is angering conservatives.
So they think it's is like some new recent thing.
And because Michael Knowles did an ad break for Rabbit Air,
who again has an office in Pasadena, California, I too,
am going to do an ad break for our fine sponsors,

(02:48:44):
all right, and we're back we are. We are almost done.
I only have like one or two more clips to show.
I like the ad for Rabbit Air that just played
fuck off. So in Michael knowles case, I think he
isn't even primary early against just like trans equality, he
is against modernity. Now, when I say modernity, I'm not

(02:49:07):
referring to like industrial civilization. It's many consequences for humans
and the planet at large. Right wing antimodernism is very
different than like anarchist ANTISTI of ideas. This idea of
modernism isn't really tied to industrial developments. It's more linked
to a psycho spiritual antagonism against modern social progress. It's

(02:49:28):
more akin to the esoteric super fascist Julius Vola's idea
of like revolt against the modern world and how liberalism
is like a plague against moral society and causing maths degeneracy.
Michael knowles own Twitter bio reads quote, I am completely
opposed to the error of the modernists. Again, when these

(02:49:50):
people tell tell you who they are, you have to
believe them. Just this week, during a speech at the
University of Buffalo, Knowles laid out a plan to attack
quote the illogic of so called gay marriage, the rights
to fornication, and the feminists who loosened divorce laws. Yeah,
I think it's I think it's worth pointing out here, right.

(02:50:11):
I think I think the actual reason why twenty fifteen
is the year that he picked out of his head
is at twenty fifteen is the year that game that
game marriage is legalized by the Supreme Court. Sure, so
like that that like ninety nine percent chats that he
means like twenty fifteen before game marriage is the thing
that he wants to go back to. But here's here's
a here's a clip of him talking about how conservatives

(02:50:32):
have continued to lose the battleground at a whole bunch
of topics, and how he's going to try to win
them back. Now, even many conservatives accept so called gay marriage,
and they have to. They have to accept gay marriage
if they accept the illogic of the Sexual Revolution, which
held that all sexual relations are fine and dandy so

(02:50:55):
long as they're consensual. After the Sexual Revolution, the only
test for sexual ethics became if it feels good, do it.
For most of American history, nobody believed that too. For
most of American history, there were all sorts of laws
against certain sexual behaviors. There were famously laws against sodomy,
but there were lots of other laws as well, laws

(02:51:17):
against fornication, laws against adultery, laws against plenty of other
destructive sexual behaviors. Those laws were on the books as
recently as two thousand and three, when liberals on the
Supreme Court discovered in the Constitution some sort of right
to all of those things. He wants all these things
to become illegal again, that is his political project. And

(02:51:41):
to quote airy dren end quote, none of this is
a theoretical exercise. After banning drag or gender if I
may care for minors, the Tennessee House yesterday passed a
bill that would allow local officials to refuse same sex, interfaith,
or interracial marriages ute. Now. Last year we titled some
of our episodes that cover this wave of anti trans

(02:52:01):
attacks quote like the War on trans people unquote and
even like considering the origin of this podcast, I am
often hesitant to entertain fantasies of actual civil conflict in
the United States, but in this case, like they are
the ones who are killing us and trying to make
our very existence illegal. It is them who has initiated

(02:52:23):
this type of militant language. The last clip I have
here is of Matt Walsh talking about just that we
aren't even remotely done. Okay, this is honestly only the beginning.
We've got a lot more in store for you. I
promised you a year ago that we were going to
war here, and I kept that promise. I'll keep this

(02:52:44):
one too. There's much more to be done, that needs
to be done, and we aim to do it. So
the battle continues, whether you like it or not. The
battle continues. So a few days ago, the Governor of
Mississippi brought Matt Walsh to speak during an official press

(02:53:04):
conference about the signing of House Bill one one two five,
banning gender affirming healthcare for minors. The presidence of Matt
Walsh at a State of Mississippi official press conference is
a clear example of fascism being inserted into the governmental process. Um,
and speaking of bills, I'm going to hand this over
to Mia to now talk about some of the legislative stuff. Yay, yeah, wow,

(02:53:27):
So this is going to be a long one, I'm sorry, folks. Yeah. Unfortunately,
the the list of ways in which they are trying
to kill us as long. So yeah, this is this
is the inevitable result of that. In one of the
very early clips, right, I think I can't remember which
one it was, one of the maybe it was Kennis

(02:53:48):
Owen has talked about like our publicist at Media Matters, right, Yeah,
And I think, you know, I think there is in
a lot of cases, I think there's a lot of
merit and not like covering this ship when it's tifically
people like like very specific. You know Alex Jones does this, right, Well,
he'll say something like specifically incredibly inflammatory is a way
to start of get media attention to him. Yeah, But

(02:54:10):
in this case, we can't fucking do that because all
of the policy proposals that these people want are getting
actually fucking implemented. So here here's from the Human Rights
Campaign about how bad things have gotten. Less than two
months into twenty twenty three, Human Rights Campaign is already
tracking three hundred and forty anti LGBTQ bills that have
been introduced in statehouses across the country. I think four hundred.

(02:54:33):
Oh yeah, it's this, Yeah, I was gonna get this.
So those numbers are from early Those numbers are from
early February, right or mid February now, yeah, it's something
like over four hundred. It's really hard to get actual
totals because there are so fucking many of them. One
hundred and fifty of those would specifically restrict the rights
of transgender people, the highest number of bills targeting transgender
people in a single year to date. They also note,

(02:54:55):
as everyone else does, every single successive year breaks the
record for the most number of bills targeting people. Um. Yeah,
those numbers are already out of date. And okay, So
on the one hands, right there, there are there are
real problems with projects that just track the raw number
of bills, and you know, okay, on the one hands,

(02:55:18):
the world like the raw numbers are I think a
good way of actually getting people to sort of understand
like the level of threat that is happening, like just
sort of just sort of the raw magnitude of the threats.
On the other hands, okay, it's kind of misleading in
the sense that almost all these bills are going to
fail because most of these most most and this is

(02:55:40):
the incredible important thing here, most but not all, most
of these bills are made by just random state lawmakers
and no political backing. And this allows organizations you know,
sort of like like a lot of the nonprofit groups
who who work in these sort of legislative spaces to
like claim credit for defeating like ninety percent of the bills,
and it's like, well, no, like most of those, like

(02:56:00):
almost none of them we're ever going to pass in
the first place. And the second thing that it does
is it puts this sort of cloud out, which makes
it really really difficult. You know, if you're just being if,
if you're if you're trying to follow right the sort
of legislative process here, it gets very very hard because
it's it's very difficult to sort out which bills have
any chance of passing in which ones are just some

(02:56:22):
random dipshit like first term like I don't know, some
some some like first term lawmaker from like a part
of Mississippi that is two lawmakers right like. But so my, my,
my solution to this is we're going to run through
the bills had ever already been passed. Um, I guess
we should just start in Mississippi because we've sort of

(02:56:43):
already talked about, Yeah, Governor Tate Reeves inviting that wallshing
of a speech at the bill signing ceremony. So in Mississippi,
a law was passed called the reap Act, which you know,
that's that's great. It's a that's that that tells you
exactly what they fucking I mean by this. This is

(02:57:04):
a bill that bands and this this is a very
very common pattern for bills. Um. It bans miners from
getting hormones, from getting any kind of gender affirming surgery,
and blocks anyone from getting puberty blockers. We've said this before,
We'll say it again. All of this stuff is good.
Kids should be able to get these things. Kids should
be able to get these things easier. They they just

(02:57:25):
unfathomably improve the lives of the child to get them.
All of the data supports this notion. This has been
normalized for literally decades. Yeah, and I mean puberty blockers
in particular is one of the things that's become the
focus of like, oh, it's not safe. It's like puberty
blockers were the compromise position, right, And this is something
that I think has been lost in a lot of
debate about this, because you know, we've gotten to the

(02:57:46):
point where everything is being banned, but puberty blockers, you know,
we're a compromise position because you could give people puberty
blockers without like actually giving trans kids to hormones that
they need, and even that, you know, we're at a
point where stare full on banning kids from getting them.
This sucks, It's awful. It is killing trans kids. Um.

(02:58:09):
Mississippi also has a band. One of the other things
about this specific one and not not all the states
are doing it do this, but the specific bill also
bans state money from going to any institution that practices
like does like gender form for minors. They also have
an anti sports law, so you can, you know, you
can see the sort of like how how the dominoes

(02:58:30):
went down in terms of, like, I sorry, you can
see how the dominoes fell down in terms of where
it started and where it was going right for at
first you get your anti bathroom long and then you
you get your sort of like keep trans people out
of sports, and then the yeah, yeah, so I will

(02:58:51):
also has a band that's you know, but basically identical
identical ban on hormone, gender firming surgery and puberty blockers.
They also passed to build bands trans kids from using
bathrooms and locker rooms according to their gender and elementary,
middle and high schools and I want to talk a
little bit about this, because this is going to lead
to kids getting fucking raped, because it turns out if

(02:59:12):
you force a trans girl into a men's locker room,
things are going to go real fucking bad for them.
They don't give a shit about this, right, They simply
do not care. Um. But that's you know that that
that's that that that's the actual substantive results. Um. I
will also pass. I've seen it variously refers to as

(02:59:33):
like I don't say trans or like I don't say
LGBTQ plus bill. This is a bill that prohibits teachers
who teach either from kindergarteners through sixth grade from teaching
about transniss like at all. You can't teach about gender.
You can't teach about like sex. You can't teach about
you know, you can't teach about the fact that you can,
in fact change your gender and it's good and cool. Um.

(02:59:55):
The Human Rights Campaign says quote. This bill would also
prohibit schools from providing to refer me accommodations for transgender
students without parental consent, and would require school staff to
out transgender students. Um. So I read this bill and
it's not clear to me how it requires that. But
that's what the lawyers are saying, and I'm not a lawyer,
so it may or may not require that. This is

(03:00:16):
another thing, very specifically, this isn't everything that that that's
been happening in the sort of newer waves of these
laws are laws that specifically require school counselors, teachers, and
school staff to out their kids, like to out kids
to their parents, which is unbelievably dangerous. Un in the
last few years alone, there have been a bunch of

(03:00:37):
trans people who are just killed by their parents. And
you know, forcibly adding people is like you're you're you're
exposing them to the risk of abuse, You're exposing them
to the risk of unsafe housing environments. No, it's just
a little soft whack by your grandma, I remember, just
a little a little tap on the head. Yeah, yeah,
I was gonna fucking beat you to death. So these

(03:00:58):
bills in Iowa have been and passed by the House
in the Senate and they're just like they're just like
sitting on a desk winning for the government to sign them,
and the governor's going to so yeah, that's that's the
situation Iowa. In Arkansas, you have the hormone puberty blockers,
gender firming surgery ban. The Arkansas one is on hold
because you know, and this is a this is true
for a couple of these, is that people have done

(03:01:20):
legal challenges on it. And yeah, our Arkansas particulars had
a huge legal fight. We still don't know how that's
I mean, the legal fights are going on for like
a year. We still haven't gotten ruling on it yet.
They also have a ban on transgids competing in sports.
Alabama made it a Class C felony punishable by up
to a decade in prison. To give trench gender kids hormones,

(03:01:42):
puberty blockers, gender affirming surgery. This was also interesting because
it's the only built so most of these ones when
they do when they say minors, right, it's until you're eighteen.
You can't get it for whatever reason. Alabama. It also
bans eighteen year olds from getting any of these things.
You just have to be nineteen. Yeah. Part part of
the bill, you know about hormone blockers, So okay, So

(03:02:04):
specifically the part of the parts of this bill that
are about hormones and hormone blockers are on hold pending
sort of resolution to legal challenges, but the judge was like,
fuck it, you can do the surgery band. So that sucks.
Um Alabama also has bills that you know, have the
whole trans kids in schools can't use the right bathroom
and you know, teachers, counselors and other school officials have

(03:02:26):
to out them. They also have another Dosa trans bill
that does a very similar thing about bands teachers from
talking about transit until fifth grade. I think a lot
of these bills are written by like lobbying groups who
just and paced the same thing and see a whole
bunch of different states. I will say there are weird
differences in them, like so you'll see like different completely

(03:02:50):
scatter shot like definitions of what hormones are, or like
like some somebody's bills trying to find what a woman is.
And it's very funny because they have to like do
all this weird stuff about like like clusters of like chromosomes,
but also there's like chromosomal diseases, Like you can't do this,
like a fuck off. It's it's so funny. We should

(03:03:10):
also mention that, like there will be more reporting on
this later. This bill. This episode is already too long,
but there have been a bunch of emails released from
a bunch of anti trans sort of organizers and fake
scientists and stuff about how they've been coordinating all of this,
and a lot of the experts that they use for
testimony for all they show up to these capitals are

(03:03:31):
like are exactly the same people. And the big guy
they have saying that puberty blockers is unsafe like has
never worked with a trans person in their life and
has no fucking idea what they're talking about. So you know,
this is this is this is fun Utah also bands
also passed a band banning gender affirming surgeries, puberty blockers,

(03:03:51):
and hormones. They also have a band I also have
a bill forcing students and counselors to out their students
to their families. Last year, you take Governor Spencer Cox
was praised by the media for a symbolic veto of
a bill that made it illegal for trans students to
compete in sports. Cox signed this fucking bill, signed, signed,
the one signed, the one that bands of gender affirming surgeries,

(03:04:15):
beauty blockers, and hormones. Yeah. I think we talked about
this last year. Yeah, I want to we had we
talked about some Utah thing last Yeah, well we talked. Yeah,
the thing we talked about was him vetoing that bill. Um,
I want to read his thing for why why he packed?
Why so he vetoed the bill that was less bad

(03:04:36):
and signed the one that's worse. And I'm gonna read
what he said about this quote. Well, we understand our
words will be of little comfort to those who disagree
with us. We sincerely hope that we can treat our
transgender families with more love and respect as we work
to better understand the science and consequences behind these procedures.
Fuck off, Fuck all the way off. He's trying to

(03:04:58):
avoid the Nurembug trials. Look As a as a neutral
objective journalist, I'm obligated to inform me that Spencer Cox
was a full time missionary from the Mormon Church, which
is currently embroiled in a pedophilius gandal. Lefter is revealed
to have systematically protected church members and members of the
clergy who sexually abused children from church sanctions and legal repercussions.

(03:05:19):
Under Utah law, clergy have the right of penitent privilege,
which means they are not required to report child abuse
to the authorities as long as the information is revealed
during confession. Both the Mormon and Catholic churches, along with
Jehovah's witnesses, have lobbied against all efforts have changed this law.
Earlier this month, survivors of the Mormon Church rallied in
support of a bill that would have ended penitent privilege.

(03:05:41):
Governor Cox publicly announced his support for the bill being
considered in the legislature, but did nothing to pressure legislators
to vote for and as of time of recording, the
bill is dead, leaving the church free to protect yet
another route of pedophiles. Also, his name is Cox. Yeah,
so South Dakota also, I did I could do this

(03:06:02):
for every fucking governor on this list, and I decided
I was going to do it once and not do
it for all the rest of them, but fuck them.
South Dakota has a sports bill. They also have a
ban on puberty blockers, hormones, genderate firming surgery. Arizona has
an anti bathroom bill. Tennessee has a sports ban. It
has the basically identical ban on puberty blockers, hormones, and

(03:06:24):
gender firming surgery, and it also has this. It also
has what's been kind of a new innovation. I guess
which is the anti they have an anti drag law. Yes,
this is the one that's gotten the most amount attraction
and has sparked some debate over how much of it
can actually be applied against just trans people living their
lives because it is tied to the state's pre existing

(03:06:46):
obscenity laws. So there's been some debate about this. We will,
we will. We will learn more about this as it
starts being enforced by law enforcement and the court system. Yeah,
I want to talk about it. It's not good. Like, Yeah,
I want to talk about it a little bit more
so the specific bill it makes it illegal for anyone

(03:07:07):
to be underage and a drag show. And you know,
it basically applies like the rules around the sex offender
list for where you can have drag shows. So Governor
William Brian Lee, who signed this bill did drag in
high school, which I'm saying. No, I'm saying here not
to point out the hypocrisy, like Governor Lee doesn't see
anything any hypocrisy here, but to get across the fact
the Republicans who want to do this stuff will still

(03:07:29):
be able to. This bill will targeted a very very
specific group of people. As Jules gil Peterson points out
in your piece the left Hand to the Law, which
people should go read, this is an attack on a
very specific, precarious class of workers, many of whom are trans,
some of whom aren't, who do drag performances. This is
this is it's it's a very specific attempt to sort

(03:07:49):
of like neutralize, Okay, it's targeting this very specific middle
ground between sort of like being in the formal economy
and do sex work. They're an enormous amount of trans
people who do sex work. Drag shows provide a way
to sort of like not exactly enter the middle class,

(03:08:11):
but it provides a legal way for trans people to
like have a job that's not fucking that and those
and those workers are specifically the people being targeted by this. Weirdly,
I don't know. The other thing that's unclear is, for example,
like if a podcast does a live show where there's
trans people, like, what will happen? We don't know. But

(03:08:34):
the other thing I want to say about this, right
is everyone's talking about this fucking drag bill. I have
seen like basically zero discussion of the of the fact
that they also past the same fucking ban on puberty blockers, tormones,
and gender affirming surgery, which is way way more destructive
and damaging. It's like but directly attacking. Yeah, so I
think I want to push back about the like, yeah,

(03:08:55):
like what you're talking about about, like what will happen
if you do a live show? Like what will happen?
Because to trans people who live in these states. The
state I live in as a red state, well it's
not supposed to be, but as a red state, and
you know, is considering a drag bill and things like that.
And I recognize that they're like aimed, they're targeted specifically
at drag performances, but there's a fairly easy interpretation of

(03:09:20):
a lot of these things that literally says I can't
go to the grocery store. And that is how like
a lot of trans people in Tennessee are viewing this
right now. And so I don't think it's a disproportionate
thing that the drag bill is something that a lot
of people are focusing on. I mean, we all care
also about the hormone issues or whatever, but the Tennessee

(03:09:41):
passing the drag law that other states are considering is
a new bad thing that could criminalize our very public existence. Yeah,
that is part of the kind of discussion around this
laws ties to the pre existing obscenity laws, and that
will heavily depend on the discretion that law enforcement chooses

(03:10:04):
to employ this law, and if it gets taken up
to the court system, how the court's going to interpret
this law. So it is like the vagueness is part
of the point because that causes a lot of fear
because you really just don't know what it all entails.
And yeah, that's fucking weird because you don't know if
you going to the store is going to be a

(03:10:27):
felony or not, And how are you supposed to live
like that? Yeah, and it I don't know. The sort
of pervasive atmosphere of fear is definitely like part of
the point of this, right, Like part of the way
the sort of extermination campaign works is by forcing everyone
to sort of live in fear of what they can
and can't do, and also live in fear specifically of

(03:10:49):
the police increasing the amount of violence that they're deploying. Yeah,
I mean, and all the stuff like we talked about,
they're specifically targeting people's ability to exist in a public life,
which is whenever you want to do a genocide, that's
one of the things you do is you make people
unable to exist in public life. This is literally what
the Nazis did, right, Like you section them off into
their own little communities where they cannot actually leave and

(03:11:11):
enter into the outside world. Yep. So, so far as
of writing this, there are seven states with bands on gender,
firm and care for Youth. I was about to become
number eight whenever the governor gets round as signing the bill.
There are nineteen states that ban transathletes from competing. There
are a number of states. Oh so other st forgot

(03:11:32):
much So there's like literally while I was like, while
I was like waiting to record this episode, there were
a few things that happened in like the legislature. So
in Florida, there was a bill that got just got
out of committee that would ban LGBTQ books like in

(03:11:53):
all libraries, not just sort of school libraries. So I
don't know that that actually has a real chance of
passing because it's Florida. There's a lot of movement right now.
The situation is very very sort of fluid and bad. Yes, yeah,
how I would say it it is, I think one
closing note, I will save my kind of my ending

(03:12:13):
thesis to start the next episode, just because we're going
on so long here. But the last thing I will
say is I be wary of social media accounts that
depend on ramping up and spreading panic to grow their
follower accounts. Typically news news aggregation accounts are not the
best source of information because their existence is entirely dependent
on causing panic. So like look into the things like

(03:12:36):
beyond just a tweet, Like look into stuff before before
you spread it, just as like a general rule of thumb.
I'm not calling anybody out here in any way, I'm
just saying it. It is a good practice to get into,
especially when we're looking into stuff that is about our
very existence being criminalized, and that can be very depressing
and it can suck to be constantly bombarded with. So

(03:12:58):
it's good to stayed to stuff that's going on in
your own state. It's good to state connected to bills
that have a decent trans of passing. But but be
wary of of of of undo panic spreading just constantly, NonStop,
because a big part of being trends needs to also
be like finding joy in living Yeah, And I think
I think the very last thing I want to say

(03:13:20):
don't lead into this next episode is we're not fucking
done yet. We are still here. We're going to continue
to be here. We are going to kick these people's
fucking shit in and we are going to fight them
for every fucking inch and they are going to lose.
And next episode is going to be us talking about
how you can start doing that. Oh boy, welcome to

(03:13:55):
It could happen here, and it sure do feel like
it's happening, don't it. M thank for surviving that last long,
excruciating episode full of basically just like a bunch of
hate speech that we were trying to be like, Hey,
doesn't this look like hate speech? This is bad. Maybe
platforms like Spotify, YouTube other podcast hosting platforms that I

(03:14:17):
am somehow forgetting the name of, but perhaps they shouldn't
be hosting all of this Daily Wire content that is
explicitly calling for genocide. Anyway, I think it is interesting
what the Daily Wire is trying to do here because
they obviously saw what is a woman? The documentary, the
quote unquote documentary by Matt Walsh last year get incredible

(03:14:39):
traction online and boost their subscription service. So now they're
they're they're doubling dead on this because this is how
they're gonna try to make content, and they are trying
out as many rhetorical styles and arguments as possible just
to see what sticks. Like it really feels like they're
just doing like the shotgun method of like throwing every
single possible reason that turns people are ikey up against

(03:15:00):
the wall and seeing which one like catches on, like
they're doing, they're doing a band and transgenderism entirely, what
is a woman? Groomers? They can't be genocided because they
don't exist. Attacking transgenderism as a cover for trans people. Right,
So it's all these all these various various tactics, all
these different rhetorical strategies, calling them demonic, it's it's it's

(03:15:22):
it's very much trying to be like if we, if we,
if we throw up as much stuff as possible attacking
and demonizing trans people. Some of these trends will catch
on online, right, some of these will will catch on,
will be spread to legislators. Eventually something will stick. And
that that is that is very much the tactic that
they are trying to use. And I think this is
a point I wanted to make last episode, but I

(03:15:45):
think it's still it's it's it's useful to hear now
kind of in retrospect everything all of the like extremism
that you heard in in the last episode, all of
these like very very fascist talking points. This is what
conservatism is now, right, Like, this is the mainstream new right.
Sure you can call it fascist because by definition it is,

(03:16:09):
but sometimes that term fascist or fascism it carries with
it this false sense of foreignness. It has like this,
it has like this displacement in the time right. Most
people view fascism as something that happens elsewhere or something
that happened in the past. By by by just referring

(03:16:29):
to this stuff as fascist, it creates a distance in
people's minds. This this this like um exotic improbability. But
this stuff is like the mainstream conservative platform that the
up and coming leaders of the conservative movement are trying
to normalize. That this was like the main talking point
at CEPAC, which is like the biggest conservative convention in

(03:16:51):
the entire country. It is this stuff is is what
the conservative platform is now, and I think it is
It is just as it's important to emphasize that this
is what the modern conservative mainstream is, and it is
it is. It is just as important to say that
as it is to tie it and tie this rhetoric

(03:17:11):
to the history of fascism, because the Overton window is
certainly accelerating. Right, Like, this thing can both be heavily
steeped in the history of fascist rhetoric and also be
like the new up and coming version of the conservative
right that the Daily Wire and its allies are trying
to normalize. And I just think that is, that is
something that I that I am trying to focus on

(03:17:32):
a little bit more when I when I'm doing my
writing and my research in these topics. Um is that
we often will use terms like fascist because these things
are are are pretty fascist, and I want to make
sure that doesn't like create this false distance in people's
in people's minds when they when they think about these bills,
when they and when they think about this rhetoric. Yeah,

(03:17:52):
and I and I think I think the way in
which this is simply what the modern right is demands
a different kind of response than a lot of what
we've been seeing so far. Yeah, you can't simply try
to catch them in their contradictions. You can't simply catch
them in their hypocrisy. Every every tactic that liberals tried

(03:18:14):
to use against Trump in the lead up to his election,
and even Republicans try to use those tactics aren't going
to be successful here because they weren't successful back then.
Like you can't, you can't like outthink them in that
in that way. Well, but the reason that you like
when you when you call out, say the governor of
Tennessee or lieutenant governor or whatever Tennessee for about his
hypocrisy and how addressed and dragon stuff, it's not that.

(03:18:38):
The thing that that does to defend it a little
bit to that calling out is it doesn't make his supporters,
It doesn't change his mind, It doesn't expose him as
a hypocrite to his base, but it does expose him
as a hypocrite to his enemies. UM, and I think
it is worth understanding that are the people who have
declared us their enemies. It's worth understanding that they are

(03:18:58):
not like UM more worally consistent actors. You know, it
is worth understanding that they don't believe the things they
are saying. A lot of their base does. But so
I actually do think that there is a point. Um,
all of the shit talk on Trump or whatever. UM,
I think might be part of how Trump didn't get
elected again is because he as he got more and

(03:19:18):
more defensive, he looked more and more ridiculous, not to
his base, but to uh to the middle, which is
basically the Democrats at this point. Yeah, it was able
to recruit like a growing moderate oppositional force, which was
what beat Trump. Trump was not beaten because people liked Biden.
He was beaten because they didn't like Trump. And I

(03:19:40):
think you are you are right in having that that
is a point to focus on. Um. I think it's
it's important to mention that like fascists do not believe
in the absurdity of what they say, um, it is
that that is not necessary to maintain fascism. Yeah, and
I think I think so. The position we're at right

(03:20:00):
now is a very very strange one for the left,
which is that we're in a position where, you know,
when when when the Republicans tried to run on this
shit in in twenty twenty two, they got destroyed. Right,
this is actually have mass popularity. This is what I
wanted to talk about next I have this is this

(03:20:21):
is the very last section I have written is on
this topic, because yeah, this off putting focus on like
a genocide and like the culture war stuff seemed to
hurt conservatives in the last election cycle ended, and yet
again there they are. They are still doubling down on it. Um.
Voters in some of swing states were turned off by

(03:20:42):
the focus on the regression of queer rights instead of
like actually addressing material conditions. This strategy, though, is a
core concept of the fascist project right. Instead of addressing
material conditions under capitalism to improve people's lives, right wing
populists will conjure up this culture war bilgie Man to
blame all of like society's problems on and to to

(03:21:02):
talk about the social war that is contributing to degeneracy.
I also think that they're winning, unfortunately not winning in
a broader sense, but in terms of um, yes, this
is a very unpopular issue that they're doubling down on.
But I think that, um, you know, I've I've seen
studies where like a higher percentage of the US population

(03:21:24):
supports anti trans stuff than did two years ago. It's
still a minority thing to hate trans people, but it
is a growing minority. Um. Yes, which is why, like
we're talking about how in a lot of ways it's
easier to be trans in twenty fifteen than it is now.
Um And And kind of on that point, I'm going
to play the very final clip of Michael Knowles. We

(03:21:46):
will never have to hear his voice again, hopefully his
annoying little voice. UM. But I'm I'm gonna play a
bit of a longer clip from him. Um. And this
is from his initial like band Transgenderism entire early rant.
And I'm only going to play this because he actually
makes a point that we ourselves have made before when

(03:22:07):
discussing this topic. The conservative right is desperately trying to
play catch up. Right, Us who believe in like liberation
and freedom have been winning historically, and the rights getting
very scared and desperate. So in response, they're introducing all
of these bills, right, and they're accelerating these types of
eliminationist rhetoric. But in this clip, Michael Knowles provides us

(03:22:31):
with our pathway to victory. We cannot simply hold our
ground on these issues. We have to keep pushing forward.
Because as long as we keep going forward and get
on the offense, the right will be stuck playing a
catch up forever. And it reminds us of a truth
and politics that Republicans all too often forget. You're either
on offense or you're on defense. You're either making gains

(03:22:56):
in the culture or you're losing ground in the culture.
There's no standing still, there's no status quo, there's no neutrality.
And what the Conservatives have screwed up on for at
least fifty years now, probably more, is the Libs make
some crazy aggressive play and then we try to dial
it back by about five to ten percent, or worse,
we try to slow it down by about five to

(03:23:18):
ten percent. So the Libs attack the family through feminism,
the fundamental political institution. They claim that men and women
are basically the same. That takes the culture pretty far
to the left. And then Conservatives try to try to
inch it back a little bit, but not by the
time they're even thinking about inching it back, the Libs

(03:23:38):
push forward with the normalization of other sexual practices. They
agree with this, and then by the time the Conservatives
are trying to dial all that back, they've lurched much
further to the left. They're trying to redefine marriage. Now
they're saying redefine marriage. Well, I don't know. I guess
we could come to some kind of terms with a
civil union. And by the time you say that, they've
lurched even further to the left. Now they're saying, actually,
we've got transgenderism. She Now a man can become a woman,

(03:24:01):
a man can become a woman. Okay, but but maybe
we shouldn't do it till mind. By the time we
say that, oh my gosh, we're now we're all the
way off the screen because now they're trying to train
as the kids. And there are many conservatives never were saying, Look,
if you want, if you're a man and you want
to put on address, that's fine, but just don't do
it to children. Just don't make me pay for it. No,
that is such an interesting little cliff. No, I mean

(03:24:24):
it's funny because this is like kind of this is
what I've been saying for a long time, since about
twenty fifteen or so, like looking at the rise all
this shit and you know, Trump and all that is
that we were winning. Culturally, I hate the word culture
war now means something different. It means arguing about guns
or whatever. But like we were winning on a cultural

(03:24:44):
front very dramatically, and like I would point to Stephen
Universe as the evidence that we are winning, right, you know.
And then they basically had to play to their strengths.
And he's talking about He's like, look, the it's funny
that so much this is happening on a cultural front
because it is not a conservative strength. They have some

(03:25:07):
cards in their hand when it comes to cultural stuff,
you know, the antimidarity stuff when it does weird, anti semitic,
you know, almost anti capitalism or whatever. That's like a
strong card they like pulling out all the time. But
conservatives overall are not very good at the cultural thing.
But they're good at is politics and violence. And so
they're playing to their immediate strengths as hard and fast

(03:25:29):
as they can because they're on their back foot. Yeah, no,
they are. They they're defaulting to advocating physical violence and
enforcing their worldview with violence and advocate and doing stuff
on like the political legislative front because they've realized just
screaming about transpeople isn't enough. They have to actually start
dedicating millions and millions and millions of dollars to pushing

(03:25:50):
these through state legislative cycles, which is why The Daily
Wire has su spent the past month and a half
harping on this so hard as the legislative cycle for
twenty twenty three is starting to like ramp up. Yeah,
And I think there's another thing here, which is the
sort of fundamental disparity, you know, the fact that they've
chosen this front, right, there's a fundamental disparity in what

(03:26:13):
they have to do versus what we have to do. Right,
and and this this, this is a giant sort of
shift in a way that I don't think has we
don't I don't think the left really has much experience
with right, which is like, the thing that is happening
in the US right now is that we are the
silent majority, Like this is this is true when when

(03:26:33):
like consistently over and over again, when you when you
look at polling on these issues, right, like just regular
people are like, what the fuck are you guys doing? Right?
The problem is that you know, we haven't those people
haven't been mobilized. And you know, it doesn't matter if
you're a majority as long as these sort of like
you know, because because again, like who the actual majority

(03:26:56):
is in the us or like who actually what what
what actual regular people believe has very very little impact
on the kinds of policies that are that are that
are sort of enacted. But you know, but there's a
second sort of issue here, right, which is the conservatives
have like, because of the fact that we are, right now,
the sort of silent majority that we have a kind
of I guess you know, the gramsyan thing would be

(03:27:17):
like hegemony, right, but like we have we have an
advantage in just how average people behave. Right, they have
to kill us, they have to fucking kill us. They
have to make it illegal for us to exist, and
they could do this right there, there is a there
is a real there is a real possibility that they
can win. Right. They are winning on this rent right now.

(03:27:38):
This is this is what they are you know, in
the places where they have power. This is what they
are doing. All we really have to do is survive.
Because if if we survive and we're able to stop them,
you know, I mean, even if we don't get sort
of like Argentina style, like we're gonna have like like
hiring mandates for trans people, right, Like, even if we
just hold the ground that we already have, we will

(03:28:00):
win inevitably, right, like the sort of march of where
of where the culture has been going will favor us.
Trans people will be able to sort of exist in public.
Trans people will be able to survive unless they kill
us right now. And that's that's that's sort of that's
the sort of the key thing that that Knowles has realized, right,

(03:28:22):
is that this is the critical moments where either we
win and we interns people get to continue our lives,
or they kill us. I would argue that it's not
just kill us. I think that even though we're listening
to all this exterminationist rhetoric, I think that the odds
are that most of these people don't actually envision a
future where they're like rounding us up and putting us

(03:28:42):
in camps and gassing us. I think that overall, it's
a drive back into the closet. I actually I actually
take them at their word that they want to destroy transgenderism,
and if transgender people have to die along the way,
that's on us. But if we, you know, put on
appropriate clothing and shut the fuck up, like, I actually
think that that would suit them just fine. So I

(03:29:04):
actually think they have to kill transgenderism. I think that's
true now, but I don't know how true that is
as they keep actually having to implement there. They don't
think being trans actually exists though, right like they they
think it just is people doing these things. So as
long as trans people are able to, for one, maybe
even not even realize their trans to like repress that

(03:29:28):
and just live their lives as if they were as
this person, that that that is all that that that's
what conservatives think trans people already are. And I think
that that is a large part. That is a large
large part of it is making us just not able
to be trans in public life at all in any capacity.
I think that's true, but I don't. I don't think
they can. I don't think their political path allows them

(03:29:50):
to maintain that position. Like I don't. I don't think
they can, Like I like, you know what, one of
one of the things that's happening with with right right
now is they're they're they're they're doing those feedback right
where they get you know, like like where where they're
they're sort of media people right or are continuously radicalized
by their base, and their base radicalizes them back. And
I don't I don't think they can maintain an equlibrium

(03:30:11):
position that doesn't involve like we have to hunt all
these people down to make sure they don't go after
our kids. Like I know, I don't don't think they're
gonna I don't think they're doing that now. I don't
think they're planning that now. But it's it's I don't
know how they can keep up this cycle without eventually
getting to something like that. Well it's worth, it's worth
being prepared for that type of possibility. But the kind

(03:30:32):
of thing that I feel like, really strongly about with
all of this is to like really not like the
sky is falling, but it's not falling the way that
we sometimes say it is. And and when we say
this guy is falling in a way that people look
around they're like, oh, just know how this guy is
falling to me, then people get like, well, actually, I
think you all are being hyperbolic, right, yes, And and

(03:30:52):
so I think that we do need to be really
clear that they are open to the possibility of mass
murdering us, and they are actively discussing individual acts of
violence being very justified against us. But currently I believe
the thing that they are trying to do is eradicate

(03:31:13):
the concept of being trans as a thing you can
do in American society. And of course, like there's a
lot of people who believe in death before detransition, and
all fucking power to I don't even know where I
fall in all this shit. I'm not trying to. I
literally don't want to opine about it because I don't
want to give anyone. I don't want to tell anyone

(03:31:36):
to do about that shit. Right, Everyone makes their own
decisions about closeting not closeting based on their own positions,
you know. But I think we do have to be
like careful about it. And I think one of the
reasons is because, from my point of view, they have
picked trans people not because they care so much about us,
but because we're a wedge issue. You know. We saw

(03:31:57):
this in like actually I don't want to name them
because I don't want to get or whatever, like different
large coalitions of LGBT people were perfectly willing to drop
the T twenty years ago if in order to get
certain like equal rights ship passed. They just like straight
up like trans people did all this fucking work organizing
for this ship. As soon as it got to like
higher up level in the government. They were like, oh,

(03:32:20):
trans people, that's gonna be a problem. We're gonna take
them off of their right and you know, and because
we are a wedge issue, and we always have been,
and I think the Nazis used us in a very
similar way. But even within US, there's trans sorry, there's
wedge issues within that. And so sports was the first

(03:32:41):
wedge issue. I actually believe I was reading this earlier,
but I wasn't reading it for this, so I didn't
take notes. I believe that the majority of Americans do
not believe that trans people should be able to compete
in high school sports based on their preferred gender. I'm
under the impression that is minority position to be trans

(03:33:01):
supportive of trans athletes in school. And so that is
the wedge issue that they used to open up this
divide in order to then come at us. But we're
still just a wedge issue. And one of the reasons
I think it's so important for people to understand us
as a wedge issue is so that people understand, like
really clearly that they are not fucking stopping with us.

(03:33:22):
You know, this is like absolutely about like you can
hear it, and that guy talking because one of the
other things he's talking about is he's talking about like
women need to get back in the kitchen and be
obedient to their husbands and shit. And one of the
reasons that trans people scare them so much is because
we like, like it's so funny because like largely, by
and large, like trans men are left out of this
discussion and trans women are seeing these like evil monsters

(03:33:44):
or whatever. Right, but trans men are absolutely part of
it because massive threat. Absolutely because it's stealing women from them.
It is stealing their fucking wives that they want to have.
They want to fucking own women, and like so they
can't handle the idea of anyway whatever. I know a
lot of a lot of the things they get so

(03:34:05):
mad about is when they see a young transgai on
TikTok and they're like, look, sorry, this is going to
be like gross, but like, look at this potentially beautiful
woman who's now been ruined, like just horrible, horrible, horrible, right,
But that is but we have so many grown men,
like thirsting over fourteen year old like a fab people

(03:34:25):
who are who are deciding that hey, maybe I want
to start HRT, maybe I want to use different pronouns
maybe I want to have a binder and this They
get so so mad at that. And I think a
big part of not not simply I think, I think
it is truly not enough just to hold our ground.
We have to keep going forward. And a big part
of that is having more intersectionality with transmasculine people. A

(03:34:46):
big part of that is having a much much more
of a focus on gender not nonconforming people and non
binary people. Um. Because we have we have to keep
pushing it forward. We cannot simply hold our ground on
this because if if we simply hold our ground, they
can pull out the rug from from under us. UM.
So I think that is that is that is a
massive part of this, and I think I do believe

(03:35:07):
that we will win. I fundamentally do because if you
look at if you look at like the rights of
which young people zoomers and even the generation younger than zoobers,
I do not know what they're called, um, but if
you look at the amount of amount of us who
are who who self identify us non binary, trans or
gender nonconforming, it is so much bigger than any previous

(03:35:30):
generation people. Once people experience a form of freedom, it
is hard to take that freedom away. There are so
many people who are entering their teens and are realizing
they can be so much more free and they don't
need to be limited to these weird, draconian like dualistic
notions of gender. And that's amazing. If you look at
a whole new wave of like actors and actresses and

(03:35:52):
people in the entertainment industry, almost all of our non binary,
like the person who plays Ellie in the in the
Last of Us is transum. I believe they identify trans
non binary or some of them of gender queer. But
this sort of play Ellie like that too anyway, I
just like absolutely, but this is something that that keeps happening.

(03:36:13):
We are going to win this because there's so many
of us and we know that it rules to exist
like this, and we're not going to let them take
it away. And I think that that is a big
part of not only standing our ground, but continuing to
move forward with the confidence that we will win in
the long run. Yeah, and I think that we can.

(03:36:34):
And I think that like a lot of the stuff,
including myself, right, Um, I'm famously armed. I'm someone who
you know, believes in self defense and in all of
these things, right, Um, But I think that we always
need to like focus on our strengths when it comes
to being especially on the offense, right. And so when

(03:36:54):
I think about like strategizing how do we win, the
stuff that you're talking about about staying on the offensive
makes so much sense. And I think that, to misquote
the art of war, you attack your enemy where they
are weak and you are strong, you know, and so like,
and they are weak at cultural creation and I don't
mean culture wars and culture war issues like art like creativity. Yeah,

(03:37:18):
and so like we win because we say because our
ideas are good, and when we express them, people are like,
oh that sounds sick. I want to be free, right yeah. Um. Now,
at the same time, we need to shore up our weaknesses.
And I think our weaknesses at the moment are in

(03:37:38):
the political sphere, which we're at on a back We're
on the back foot right now because of all the
I guess I don't track this stuff as much, but
like all the judges and shit that got put in
under Trump, and we are also not at our strongest.
I'm not trying to call us weak here, but like
far few of us, few of us are like weird
gun nuts and like no, you know, militant strategy protect

(03:38:03):
e type people. And I we've seen us shoring up
that weakness and that rules. But I think it's always important.
Maybe not always, maybe there would be a time when
this would shift, But overall, I don't think that's our strength.
That's not where we go on the offense. That is
where we stay, like protecting ourselves. Yes, and no. DREG

(03:38:25):
defense like DREG defense, square defense that has defense in
the name, exactly, It is crucially important, exactly. It also
terrifies the fascist right. The fact the fact that like
like that one one hundred and forty pound twink can
carry an AAR and defend a DREG show terrifies fascists.
It utterly destroys their brains. You know. For sequalizations a

(03:38:50):
hell of a thing. Sorry, buddy, The trigger pole is
two and a half pounds. Yeah, you know what else
is a four key force equalizer, the force of advertising

(03:39:13):
and pole arms. As as long as we don't have
an ad for a rabbit air who has an office
in Pasadena, California, I'm fine. So I think if you've
listened to the show a lot, they're they're One of
the sort of sub themes of a lot of the
writing that I do is thinking about what we owe

(03:39:34):
the dead. And on the face of it, it's a
sort of nonsensical question. Right, you can't have any kind
of reciprocal relationship with someone who's dead, because well, you know,
they're dead. And this question, this question of what we
owe the dead is a question board of grief, of
a kind of sort of raw and immaculate anguish that

(03:39:57):
comes to the memory of people who are like you
in every way except that you're here and they're not.
And this was written, you know, this is written seven
weeks ago. The people this is written for aren't even
the same people that you know, that that that like

(03:40:18):
that that is for now. Right, the question, in some
sense becomes, what do we owe the people who have
died and were thus denied to live, that denied the
chance to live the lives that we do You know what,
what do we owe them? What do we owe these
people that we failed to keep alive? And this has
an answer, this has this has a very very definite

(03:40:38):
political answer. We owe them the destruction of the world
that killed them. We owe them a future that we
owe them the future that they should have had, and
we owe them, we owe them a world where they
never take another one of this another one of us. Again,
the world is already fucking burning. It is time to
start the counterfire now. One of one of the things

(03:40:59):
that you that you will hear a lot, and this,
this is, this has been, this has been one of
the sort of dominant responses, for better or for worse,
from how people are thinking about these laws is that
these laws, you know, these anti trans laws are unconstitutional
and that does not matter. That does not matter for shit,

(03:41:19):
right like, oh, oh, our old friend the Constitution. Ha,
Like I just, I just I need. I need everyone
to understand that the ability of the Supreme Court to
strike down a law is not in the Constitution. None
of this ship matters. They're making all of it up.
The only thing that actually matters is power. And to
understand why the law is about power and you know,

(03:41:42):
and and why legality is not actually a tool that
we can rely on. I want to I want to
tell the story. I'm not sure if I've told this
story on on this on this podcast before, but I
want to tell the story of the worst mistake I
ever made as an activist. So the year is two thousand.
In seventeen, Donald Trump's Executive Order one three seven six nine,

(03:42:04):
locally known as the Muslim Ban, has prevented people from Iran,
Iraq with whore they drop a rock, later Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria,
and Yemen from entering the country. Now, almost immediately after
the Muslim Ban is announced, um there is a spontaneous
wave of airport occupations that sweeps the country. And these

(03:42:26):
protests have two goals. Their immediate goal is to free
the people who have been taking captive by immigration authorities
before they can be deported, and the second goal is
to end the Muslim band more broadly. This was this
was actually my this was my first Irrell direct action.
I you know, I remember I was in this train
car on the Blue Line to O'Hare, which is our

(03:42:47):
airport in Chicago. And you know, I'm on this train
and it's packed and everyone is completely silent, and you know,
everyone thinks people are going to get off, but as
we get to this airport, lies that the entire train
is completely full of protesters. Like everyone on there's a protester.
And it goes on and on and on, and we

(03:43:07):
get off the train, right and we're walking through the airport.
And the way this airport is structured is there's like
this overpass that you walk over where you can see
the trains coming in and every single train is full
of protesters. And the trains keep coming and they keep
coming and they keep coming, and you know, every everyone
and every time a train shows up, everyone starts cheering
and it is like it is, you know, one of
the most amazing things I've ever been a part of.

(03:43:30):
And you know, and we we start moving and there
are just you know, this is a fucking this is
an airport, right, Like, this is one of the most
heavily policed places in the world. There are not enough
cops to stop us. And you know, they make this
one token attempt to try to clear us, and they
can't do it, and they pull back and now we
are holding the airport, and we do it. We reat them,

(03:43:50):
We win. The airport releases the detainees they've been they've
been negotiating with the a CLU, the ASU have been
trying to get me released. And the person from the
person from the ASLU, like God, comes on the mic
and announced that they've they've released everyone and everyone chairs,
and then and then the person on the ALU personal
and the mic says they're going to beat the Muslim

(03:44:11):
band in court, and everyone goes home. It takes a
few hours, but by the end of it, everyone goes home.
And here's the thing. The ACLU several years later lost
that case at the Dream Court. The Muslim band continued
the entire fucking Trump administration. Right, it wasn't repealed until
Biden took office. We could have stopped it there, right,

(03:44:33):
we held that fucking airport. Airports across the country and
fucking like dozens and dozens of states were being held
by protesters, and we could have stopped them. But we didn't,
and we didn't because we trusted the courts. Right we
went home, we trusted the SLU, and they lost because again,
the law is not about the law. The law is

(03:44:55):
about power, and millions of people suffered the consequences of that.
And this is what's going to happen if we if
we leave this fight to the courts, either either we
actually sort of like stand up and actually fight not
in the courtroom, but in the streets, in schools, in
salons and shop floors, in the places where we have
power or we are going to die. That is my

(03:45:15):
intro to this, which is that we cannot we literally like,
if we try to leave this to the people who
have been acting right now, right, if if we leave
this electorialists, if we leave this to sort of legal institutions,
and if we purely fight self defense battles, we are
going to lose. Yeah. So the question from there is
how do we hit them back? And the thing that

(03:45:37):
I specifically wanted to talk about first is I wanted
to talk about this thing called power mapping. Now, Okay,
the moment, the moment you say that we're in map
around leftists, people immediately start talking about how the map
is not the terrain. And that's true, true, the map
is not the terrain. They're different things, don't both are useful? Yeah, yeah,

(03:45:59):
you still a map when your hiking, even though it's not. Actually,
that's spash the maps. Spash the maps. Situation is practice
walk around the city without a map, but mess up
the maps. It sabotage the mass. Yeah, don't walk through
the forest about a fucking map. Forest is dispassionate and
cruel and will kill you. So all right, So what

(03:46:25):
is power mapping? So there there is a normal version.
There is a version of this that gets you know,
it's it's part of sort of like what I guess
you would call like the liberal version of organizer training
one on one, which is this like pure NGEO thing,
which is you know, I guess you could you could
argue it's from like a lins like like from Salo
Lynsky or whatever the fuck. Um And and this this

(03:46:47):
version about it is this version is about finding and
pressuring quote unquote stakeholders. This is almost completely useless to us.
It's largely politically bankrupt and tactically it is simply not
going to work. Right, Like, there is some value in
mapping out which specific like legislators and which specific governors
are going to like sign bills, right Yeah, but like okay,

(03:47:09):
NGO style pressure campaigns are not going to stop this
is this is simply not going to work. Um. And
the strategies that people have been employing to sort of
stop this, right which is you know, relying on our
suffering and our pain and relying on medical expertise that
that doesn't that doesn't work. It's weigh them a lack
of diversity of tactics. Yeah, the only language people understand

(03:47:29):
is power. So Okay, having said all this, we can
strategically use other groups like NGOs or sympathetic lawmakers to
do their own pressure campaigns. But that that that is
not what I'm talking about here. We can leave. We
can leave those people in their terrain they're paid to
do it. Don't get sucked up into it. But you know,

(03:47:49):
and I will say, like, okay, sometimes very strategically right,
like you can you can show up to people's events
and embarrass them because you know who they are and
what they're doing, and that that that can be useful sometimes,
like I I you know, I sci shame can be
can be a useful tactics sometimes, yeah, like I know,
I know people who've done union campaigns were like things

(03:48:10):
have turned around when they like showed up to like
some NGEO person's fund raiser and they're like, hey, you
guys aren't paying us, and they're like everyone was like,
oh my god, but you know what what what what?
What are we? What are we actually doing here? And
what what? What? What? What? What I'm specifically talking about
is powermapping in the context of direct action and in
the context a sort of offensive direct action and when

(03:48:34):
when you're thinking about power mapping. Here there's two kinds
of mappings that are useful. One is physical mapping, and
this is something that people don't do enough. I don't
know why they don't do this more. But first of
one of one of the things that made the Hong
Kong protest work is that Hong Kong had really really
detailed maps, right they were you know, they they had
apps for this that were very very detailed maps of

(03:48:57):
Hong Kong city streets. They would map where the police swear,
they would map where the police were moving to, they
would map where protesters were and you know, obviously there
are sort of security and tactical considerations to this, but
if we know the terrain better than the police do,
we can do a lot of things. This is this
is something that people are successfully employing in the city

(03:49:20):
of Atlanta, yep, yep. And anyway, I mean this, this, this,
this is the thing where we have we actually do
have an a legitimate advantage in in large cities, which
is that like the cops who are in large cities
are not from like those those cities, right you know,
And and I think I think we squander this advantage
a lot By just like like in fucking Chicago, there's

(03:49:40):
this one plaza right like pretty close to Trump Tower
where every single protest starts. And that's like it's in
the middle of fucking downtown, So I guess people sort
of know the way around there, but like I fuck nobody,
like nobody lives there who doesn't make like fucking seven
hundred thousand dollars a year, right, Like you're you're you're
kind of squandering whatever tactical advantage you haven't. Also, you know,

(03:50:02):
and and and another sort of another reason to do
mapping and stuff is so you know, you can you
can plan things out ahead of time, Right, you can
plan out where your lines of retreat are. You can
figure out where choke points are so you don't get kettled,
a thing that like I swear to God, no one
who arranges the protest in the US fucking ever does.

(03:50:22):
Like I mean, I know some people do it, but
like Jesus Christ, you can you can figure out on
a map where you're gonna get kettled, Like you can
do this, yeah, and you know, and you can do
other things too with maps, right, you can you can
figure out where the locations are of infrastructure that is
particularly vulnerable, you can figure out what roads will will

(03:50:44):
cause the maximum a matter of sort of economic damage
if you shut them down, you can figure you know,
you can figure out things like can you learn the
police into places where they can't use their numbers very well? Right?
Can you spread them out over one hundred different areas
and neutralize their effectiveness? And this is a kind of
These are the kind of terms that we need to
be thinking thinking about in terms and when when when
we're physically mapping and physically trying to understand an area,

(03:51:05):
which is that we need to be thinking in very direct,
tactical terms. We need to figure out what kind of
places you know? And this also this also works defensively, right,
we need to be figuring out you know, okay, so
we have a drag show that's under attack, right, we
need we need to figure out what kinds of places
if people are attacking, we need to figure out how
we can defend them. And we need to be thinking
again not not just like showing up to a place

(03:51:26):
and being like, okay, we're hearing these people across the street, right,
like before that happens, and be like before a protest,
stars before an actually starts. There needs to be like
work put in to make sure that what we're that
the actions that we're doing are effective, are as effective
as possible, so that that's that. Yeah, that that that

(03:51:48):
that that that's that's one part of this kind of
mapping stuff. You know, if if if you if you
want more sort of inspiration for this stuff. There's a
bunch of uh, oh my god, I'm not forgetting the
name of every book I puble should have actually written
the books in here, but they're they're that you can
some of the some of the Italian Autonomous will talk
about this stuff and they have all of these like
really wild sort of tactical stuff about like things you
could do in a city, like you can mess up

(03:52:08):
stop lights, you can like I don't know, like they
they they did a lot of stuff and like moving
signs around there. There's a lot of very weird things
in a city that you can do that we don't
think about because we've limited our tactical arsenal to like
people show up at a place and yell yes, stand
stand outside of a building and yell at a building.

(03:52:31):
End of protests. Yeah, and that that doesn't work, Like
we need to have tactics that are sort of like
that are beyond that. I guess, I guess part of
the reason that I'm I'm starting here is that I
want people to like literally go back very much to
square one of thinking about what our response needs to
be before we start moving, because you know, like, and

(03:52:53):
I'm not this this this is not a sort of
criticism of the people who've been doing dract de fats,
like they've been doing a great job, right, but our
standard protest arsenal is not enough. It has not been working,
and we need to reevaluate what we're doing. It needs
to expand, and we need to see a better understanding
of what diversity of tactics means. I also think that
on this particular issue, until fairly recently, our primary threat

(03:53:17):
vector was non state actors threatening physical violence, and so
the community defense model is actually a very effective response
to that threat and has been incredibly effective on numerous times.
Now that we are looking at the threat coming from
the state in terms of legislative legislative action and all

(03:53:38):
that stuff, it does open up a lot more tactical possibility,
like what you're talking about, and that's cool, and people
should realize that. Yeah, No, I think you're right. We
should go back and look from the ground up and
like come to new conclusions, new ideas, And I think

(03:54:00):
I think the the the the other thing of going
back to sort of like basics, right, is going going
back to the kinds of going going going back to
changing how we think about the world around us so
that we can actually so that we can more effectively
take action. And the other kind of thing that we
need to do is social mapping. It's figuring out the

(03:54:21):
resources that we have, the resources that they have, where
they are, how they function. And this is something that Margaret,
you've you've talked about in your in your threat about this,
which is very good. Yeah, but one of the things
that we need to figure out very quickly is what
skills do we have and what resources do we have?
And you know this this expands into a lot of

(03:54:43):
into a lot of different sort of fields, right um.
You know, there's some of this is sort of territorial, right,
Like it's about thinking about like what kinds like what's
physically what spaces are safe for us and which ones aren't.
How can we sort of leverage the spaces that we
have that are safe and you know, maneuver in the

(03:55:06):
ones that are how is this changing? There's also something
that I I want to sort of think about here,
which is this old this is old tradition. Do you do?
You do? You know what workers inquiry is? I don't know? Okay,
So this is this is a very old Marxist tradition.
Um it means a lot of different things to a
lot of different people, Like Marx was attempting. So the

(03:55:28):
origin of this is Marx was trying to like send
out surveys to like workers to figure out what their
conditions were, and people over time took this into more
interesting directions of you know, but it turns into a
kind of like like a worker's ethnography of you know,
workers sitting down and writing or doing interviews about just
literally like what what their work day is, like, what

(03:55:51):
the sort of like labor processes they're involved in are,
How does how does that work? Like? Who? Like, how
do their bosses work? How how are they being managed?
How are they resisting them? And you know, and you
you there there there are other things you can sort
of use this for that are very useful to us,
which is, for example, figuring out things like what does
the what does your local economy depend on? What are

(03:56:13):
the sort of important logistics lines in that local economy?
You know, who is physically doing the labor that the
economy depends on, who is doing the care labor, because
that's another side of this that gets sort of brushed
over a lot. But for example, this this, this is
a large part of why teachers are enormously powerful because
teachers are doing a shit ton of care labor that

(03:56:35):
is is necessary for the necessary for the entire economy
to function, but isn't really seen that way, right, And
you know, and and you you you you can ask
other questions like you know what what what? Like literally,
what are the physical conditions under which you and the
people around you are working? A lot of the stuff's
come to you like person who works a job. Right, Um,

(03:56:58):
there there is an advantage that we have as people
who do this stuff, which is that we we will
understand the terrain of our own workplace is better than
the people who are sitting at the at the top
of the power structure because we're on the bottom of it,
right the people who are above us. And and this
this is another thing that that's important about this kind
of transphobia is that it's it's very much an elite thing.

(03:57:19):
This is I think especially noticeable in the UK, where
like you can literally track who is going to be
a turf by like what kind of like elite schools
they're going to. Okay, but but like literally like if
someone goes to eat like you know, it's like who
goes to eaton? Right, Like this is this is the thing.
It tracks who the ruling class isn't who and who
is a turf and who's not going to be a turf?
Right and but this is this is also true in
the US, where like I mean again, if you look

(03:57:40):
at them media people who are pushing this, it's a
bunch of people sitting on like an unbelievable amount of
trust fund money and getting a bunch of sort of
right wing billionaire money. Yes, my experience has been that
since Trump's selection, the random folks around me have become
substantially less favorable towards me. Um And I think anti
and stuff is is popular across class. But I don't know,

(03:58:04):
I think that's I think that's true, but I don't
think it matters that much because like like the the
the ordinary person in your neighborhood who has become transphobic,
isn't the person who has the capacity to get these
laws passed? Okay, that's fair. And and the things that
they know are not the things that the actual people
running these campaigns know. Yeah, okay. And and that that

(03:58:25):
that that I think is what is sort of important
about this, is that like legislatures, right, or like you know,
the people who are funding who are funding these campaigns,
the people who donate to these who donate literally literally
donate to sort of political campaigns. Right. These people do
not understand what our jobs are. They don't understand what

(03:58:46):
we do, They don't understand how the economy works very well.
What the version of reality that they can see is
is a sort of bureaucratic image of it produced by
their subordinates. And you know that there's a realm with that,
which is that a lot of the time, right, the
more powerful person is, the more likely it is that
the version of reality that they're getting is the version

(03:59:08):
of reality that is just being told to them by
the people by the people below them. And you know,
and this this means, like the more powerful the people
we're dealing with, the less capacity they actually have to understand.
Is this is true even with for organizations to have
like an enormous amount of raw intelligence that you know,
they're sort of spy and surveillance networks have assembled, right

(03:59:30):
they're you know, they have all this information, but they
don't understand and they're sort of buried in trying to
like trying and often failing to sort through all of
the information that they have. Yeah, and they try and
map it to their world view. It's how you always
end up with like we found the like I have
a friend who is investigated as the leader of international anarchism,
and it took them a really really long time before

(03:59:52):
they were like, I don't think that's a thing. Yeah,
well it's like they don't they don't understand how our
networks work very well, because yeah, they have stuff like that.
But but this is also true, especially like on the
level of the workplace, right, Um, there is a bunch
of stuff that we know that cannot be replicated by

(04:00:13):
the people on the top of the org chart. And
a lot of that stuff has to do with we
know how to make things stop working in ways that
they don't, okay, and and that that is that that
that is very sort of useful information to have, because
if you know how something works, you can make it
stop working. And this is this is the sort of uh,

(04:00:35):
you know, this is a lot of what the Marxist
tradition sort of was, right, It was an attempt to understand,
like what workers are doing. The distinction I would make
is they were trying to figure out what workers are
doing because they were trying to figure out how capitalism works.
And I don't care about that enormously like that. That's
that's that's not a thing that actually sort of like

(04:00:56):
I don't know whatever I do, I don't I don't
care about whatever esoteric value debates they were having. The
decision I would make here is that, you know, the
Marxist version of this has a tendency to collapse and
dollar production into just like incredibly bitter and minute debates
about Marxism. We are not trying to do that. The
thing we're trying to do with our version of this
is stop agendicide. Right. Our Our version of inquiry means

(04:01:17):
attack and and when when when When I say when,
when I'm talking about this kind of stuff, right, I'm
talking about like you and finding the other people in
your workplace who are supportive of this stuff. And you know,
I mean literally just on like a very very basic level.
And this is something that you get union organizing right.
It's like just figuring out what the fuck they do,

(04:01:37):
because like management doesn't know what you do, right, Like
I I I have I have worked in a lot
of of of places. I have talked to managers a lot.
They have no fucking idea what what anyone is actually doing.
And if if you if you can build up and
this is this is you know, this is all going,
this is all kind of abstract. But if if you

(04:01:58):
can figure out how your workplace works, and you can
figure out how the workplaces of the people around you work,
and how how the workplaces that like actually genuinely matter
to the people who are doing this stuff, you suddenly have.
You suddenly have leverage that you normal that you know,
a sort of like traditional like protest thing doesn't. And

(04:02:22):
this means, for better or for worse, trying to get
unions involved. Um, there are upsides and downsides here. The
downside is that there just aren't there many unions and
there aren't there many people in unions as I just
have like a middling faith in them. Yeah, or working
on it. I mean, yeah, I mean some of them,

(04:02:43):
I'm sure good, and I want to challenge all of
them too, and if they do, I will eat my shoe.
Whatever they saying is um some yeah, I mean it's
like they're not going to do unless they're forced you, right, well,
depending on the I think some unions do. Now I'm
like suddenly one eighteen, I mean, like talk shit on
unions like that. Whatever anyway continues, So okay. So the

(04:03:06):
thing part of the other reason that that I'm focusing
specifically on unions and I'm specifically I'm focusing a lot
and workplace organizing stuff is that, Okay, one of the
inherent problems of trans organizing is that trans people are
not a large enough minority to enter the most sort
of like cynical, like numerically determinist accounts of who matters
enough to support right like not not yet not right.

(04:03:32):
But as as of right now, we're like maybe two
percent of the population. Now change it is, it is grown.
If the zuber numbers continue, we're gonna be We're gonna
be quite quite the problem. I remember marching with my
my first boyfriend and this this bashback March where we're
chanting one in ten is not enough. Yeah, and it's
just funny because it's like it works. There's more of

(04:03:54):
us now, yeah. Yeah, And this is trands are really
good at recruiting the LGBT, because literally, you can not
think I'm cute and be heterosexual. There's no way of
making that happen. True. No, this is like legit legitimately.
One of the reasons that I figured out that I
wasn't like a sistet straight dude was I was dating
an un binary person, and I was like, shit, okay,

(04:04:14):
something like it's, um, there are places where trans people
are like enormously overrepresented, right and and and there are
places where we exist in numbers enough that we actually
statistically matter. And unions are one of those places because
the people to people who are organizing unions, like trans

(04:04:37):
people are so unbelievably fucking overrepresented in all of that stuff.
And this is this is as much true of I mean, okay,
so this this is true really, especially of any kind
of sort of new unionism, like particularly things like grad
student unions, right, but it's also true of like like
all all of the fucking service sector unions that are
getting organized and this has been true for like twenty years.

(04:04:59):
All of the people ORGANI using that, whether they realize
it or not, are trans. And you know, but this
this means we actually have leverage there, right, because this
is this is a part of the economy where if
we stop doing our job, shit will actually fall apart, right,
like you know, act actual sort of large scale union
campaigns like cannot work without us. And that means that

(04:05:22):
we actually we have the ability to pressure them into
doing shit in a way that's not necessarily true. Another,
and I'm talking here like specifically about like you the
listener who is trans, which is like statistically, statistically like
you the listener is not trans. If you are, congratulations, um,
if you're not, I also suspect that they are slightly overrepresented.

(04:05:45):
That definitely still probably not a majority, yes, I guess
I like I also want to say that like, um,
I mean, it's funny because the way to define sis
allyship is literally as if you're willing to car yourself siss,
you know, because it's not actually a slur, it's just
a description. It's just a you know, like that the
not trans word, right, and it's not bad at all. Yeah,

(04:06:09):
And now that that's a battleground word. It's like pronouns
and profile or whatever. You know. It's like it's actually
fairly easy to make it clear where you stand on
this kind of issue. And I I will say, I mean,
obviously trans people will do a lot of this organizing,
but I think that we have a lot, an awful
lot of CIS people with us, And so you, the

(04:06:30):
CIS listener, we also fucking love and respect you because
if you've made it into an hour of us talking
about how much this matter is, it clearly matters to
you too, you know. Yeah, this is probably our like
three or whatever the fuck and both episodes and soon
you won't be allowed to wear pants if you're a
fab So you know this is gonna hit everyone. Yeah, yeah,

(04:06:51):
and I think you know all of the stuff that
I've been seeing right about you know. Like another part
of this also is is literally just like a thing
that you can do that is organizing that will help
in this stuff is literally just talking to your friends, yeah,
and being like, hey, here's my eight friends or whatever,
here are things. How do you feel about this? You know,

(04:07:12):
and then and then and then try and then you know,
using using this kind of stuff using this kind of
mapping stuff and you know, using using what you can
learn about how you know this this this, this, this
part of it has been kind of abstract, but I
think intentionally so it's like we we we we are,
we are in a place where we need to very

(04:07:33):
rapidly build up capacity for a kind of movements that
can actually do things. And I think this is this,
this is sort of like the planning phase for that is. Yeah,
but you know, like these these are things that are
going down to be created very quickly. These were we
are going to have to very quickly figure out you

(04:07:54):
know what what what levers can be like pushed right.
And one of the things about like the first bathroom
bill in North Carolina, right, it didn't get repealed, but
it got like amended to be slightly less bad. Yeah,
And it got amended to be slightly less bad because
the state it very quickly ran into trouble with a

(04:08:14):
bunch of corporations who were like, you know, because an
initial push that they were like we're like, Okay, we're
gonna we're gonna pull out of events in this state.
We're gonna pull out of like backing your giant, Like
we're gonna pull out of having our giant like fucking
sports tournaments here, We're gonna pull out of like advertising
for like retails off and that. And that got them
to sort of like run away very very quickly, right,
And that's been the one big thing they've been actually

(04:08:36):
scared of. And I think this is part of why
they've been pushing this sort of like quote corporation like
anti Disney stuff so hard. Is that like the kind
of backlash that can very quickly get these people to
flip is the kind of backlash that starts actually hurting.
If these kinds of bills start hurting their bottom line,
these a lot of these people will flip because a

(04:08:57):
lot of a lot of even the legislators who are
voting for this arn't as hardline as to sort of
like daily wire people. And if their campaign funders are like, hey,
you gotta fucking turn this around so the economy can
go back to normal, like they they will flip on
this stuff. Okay, this is what I was talking about,
is about things that you can do to begin to
mount pressure campaigns and mount direct actions. I also wanted

(04:09:20):
to talk about sort of like just survival network stuff
because that also was going to be a part of this.
And yeah, Margaret, you had a lot of very very
good stuff in a thread that you wrote about this. Yeah,
I wrote a thread a week or so ago about
all this stuff as I woke up and doom squirrelled
for a while, and you know, and I was just

(04:09:41):
thinking a lot back on the organizing that I know
people are doing and stuff like that, and trying to
put things together and and so some of it's just
kind of like tips, right, And I want to say,
like again, well again to the threat, not to something
I've said here, Um, I think that we need to
focus on what unites us and not what divides us.

(04:10:02):
Right now. I think that this is not a time
for public facing internal conflict. It is not a time
for interpersonal conflict to be aired publicly. Not to say
that interpersonal conflict doesn't matter, it doesn't matter. We need
to you know. I believe mediation is actually one of

(04:10:25):
the most important skills actually, frankly, literally, if you're listening
and you have any mediation skills, I think it is
the thing that the revolution needs more than anything else.
Off the top of my head, but overall, basically, there's
something that MC Soul said, I don't know if his
own podcast might have been Twitter a long time ago.
And it's really stuck in my head, which is that
we need to focus on. We need to de escalate

(04:10:46):
all conflict that isn't with the enemy, Which isn't to
say that the conflict doesn't happen, is that we need
to look how to de escalate it and bring it
down in pressure. Except when it's with the enemy, like
with someone who's trying to murder all the trans people
or someone who's like a white nationalist or whatever, right,
we are not looking to de escalate that conflict. We
are probably looking to escalate that conflict. We are looking

(04:11:08):
to make it very clear the way in which we
are not that person. But and I'm as guilty this
as anyone else. I have a lot of pet peeves
that people who listen to my show are very aware of. Also,
this fight will happen on multiple fronts, using multiple tactics.
There's this magical phrase diversity of tactics, and we have
to mean it. And diversity of tactics usually means like

(04:11:28):
kind of like, no, you should support my tactic, like
especially if you're like tactic is like riots or something.
You know. You often say diversity of tactics, and what
you really mean is like my shit rules and your
shit sucks. We actually have to straight up mean it.
We need to support the people who are focused in
legislative action, even though it's not where we are strong.
It is a place that needs to be shored up.
We need to focus. We need to support the people

(04:11:50):
who focus on community defense. We need to focus. We
need to support the people who are doing illegal things.
We need to support the people who are doing organizing
in all kinds of different ways. And if build organizations
that accept diversity of tactics and don't expect to have
a sort of hegemony over the movement, we can create
a very strong movement. Most of my personal infighting is

(04:12:11):
with people who do want to have a Gemini over
a movement, and so you get I fall into this
like trap where I'm like, how do we fucking anyway whatever? Okay,
other things that people can do if you are not
visibility LGBT and you feel like it is safe to
do so, or you feel like it is dangerous to
do so, and you're willing to be a little bit
fucking dangerous because we are in complicated fucking times, be

(04:12:32):
publicly clear that you support lg LGTP, whatever us And
like the day that I wrote yeah, support the queers,
Like the day that I wrote this. I live in
you know, I live in West Virginia. I go to
Lows and you know I'm having a bad day. I'm like, fuck,
I mean, like, you know, at what point is it
going to be a crime for me to go to Lows? Right?
And the like guy, just the fucking metal head guy

(04:12:55):
who seemed kind of like super masculine metal guy tattoos
and he had his fucking like trans ally support pin
on And if we were in like a big major city,
it might have almost seemed like cringey because it said
like ally or whatever on it, right, And I'm fucking
overworrying about what's cringe e. I'm like, no, thank you.

(04:13:18):
I I went up and I thanked him, right, because
it like fucking helped my day. And that kind of
shit is going to matter because it is now actually
a fairly dangerous thing in some places to be visibly
in support of us, And I absolutely appreciate the people
who are doing it. And another thing that we need

(04:13:43):
to support this is the kind of thing that you've
talked a little bit about is that, Okay, we need
to have support networks. We need to have networks that
are protecting trans people, families that are leaving environments. There's
so many families that want to leave these states where
their child is no longer safe will be or so
detransition will not be allowed to transition. There are transparents

(04:14:03):
in Florida who might be at risk of losing their children.
All of these things, people are going to want to move.
We need to support people materially who are trying to move.
And there will be organizations that are doing this. If
they don't exist yet, you can start them. And if
you wait for them to start, that's also sometimes okay,
if you're played is full, you can support those organizations
in a lot of different ways. We can also support

(04:14:26):
and not shame people who choose to live in red
states as like, as a Red state transperson, I think
about this a lot about like because like I'm not
planning on moving right, you know, it helps that I'm
an adult. I'm like settled whatever, Like my mental health
is strong, you know, but I'm not planning on going anywhere.
And that's why we can't give up these spaces, right.

(04:14:49):
I think that one of the things I kind of
mentioned earlier, but is that like we are not in
normal times. We need to take this seriously. We also
need to not assume that all this is a foregone conclusion.
We need to not assume that this will go down
like Nazi Germany. However, we need to be aware that
it might, and we need everyone This is not a

(04:15:11):
trans people thing, This isn't everyone thing. We need to
think about what that actually means. You know, there's that
cliche that is true right now that is like, if
you want to know what you have been doing in
Germany in nineteen thirty three, it's what you're doing right now.
And that's true. This is a time for us to
be the kind of person that we want to be.

(04:15:33):
We are in dangerous and complicated times, and it is
times that we need to be brave, and we need
to be brave for each other. Bravery is not the
absence of fear. Bravery is doing things despite fear. Bravery
is the presence of courage, not the lack of awareness
that things are scary and bad. Yes, and that's kind

(04:15:54):
of like my main thing is I want us to
not panic, right, not assume that we're going to lose,
to realize that they are acting this way because they're
on their back foot. This was always going to happen
in the fact that in a way we kind of
started this fight by like existing and like coming out

(04:16:16):
of the closet and shit. But we basically were like, no,
we're allowed to be here, and most people were like, yeah, okay,
I guess that tracks. I guess you're allowed to be here.
And then some small portion were like, these are demons
from hell sent to rip the tits off of the children.
I'd like to marry. The freaks like Matt Walsh are
the ones who declared quote unquote war on trans people, right,

(04:16:41):
because we were coming for their way of life, not
their way of life in terms of like heterosexual marriage
that gets to still exist, that's fine, like, but compulsory
heterosexuality and compulsory sis sexuality is the thing that we
are coming for. And their way of life is hegemony.

(04:17:04):
Their way of life is being the only force of power.
And so yeah, I guess the other stuff is that
we just okay, what would you do in Nazi Germany?
That's what you're doing right now, and you should think
about what skills you have and how they apply to
different things. And then the kind of final point to
a lot of this is as a specific issue and

(04:17:24):
it's a pet issue of mine, and that could be
completely wrong. I have a lot of bias about this,
but I would fucking love it if liberals would shut
the fuck up about guns. Right now, it is very
hard for me to find a state that is not
either in the process of trying to tell me that
I can't wear a dress, or find a state that
is trying to tell me that I can't carry the

(04:17:45):
means to protect myself from the violent bigots who want
to kill me because I wear a dress. It is
incredibly hard to find states that are not pushing in
one of those directions or another, and it is embarrassing.
It is embarrassing that this, of all times, is the
time that liberals are focusing so hard on gun issues,
which is a culture war bullshit thing for them. They

(04:18:07):
don't fucking care. They didn't fucking care about abortion. They
just want your fucking votes. And we are probably entering
a very bad and hard time. However, we can do it.
We have done it in the past, and my reading

(04:18:29):
of history it basically is this cycle I kind of
don't quite believe in, like a forward progress everything gets better,
things ebb and flow. And however, we will survive this,
not necessarily all of us as individuals. Probably probably there
won't be like large numbers of killings as a result

(04:18:51):
of this, but it is possible, right, But they it
is impossible to stamp out homosexuality, It is impossible to
stamp out transsexuality. We have always been here, we will
always be here. And so yeah, to quote my final

(04:19:13):
quote in that particular threat, I definitely went off threat.
But um, we need to find each other. We need
to stop fighting with each other about bullshit. We need
to defend each other. We need to be brave. And
then I will cite the anarchist's prayer, which is that
I ask not to be safe for my enemies, but
dangerous to them, because all right, this is what we're

(04:19:37):
fucking doing, and like, we all want to be safe,
but that's not something that we're guaranteed. What we are
guaranteed is that we can choose how to handle the
situation that we're in. And then almost done, almost done.
You talked to earlier about what we owe the dead
I really liked your way phrasing that. I really liked

(04:19:57):
a lot of what you were talking about about all
of that, and one thing that I think about we're
talking about like the Catholic church and shit right, one
thing that I owe the dead is I owe Sister Dominic,
a Catholic nun, to not fucking go back into the
closet because when my cousin came out as trans, this
woman who is literally married to God, she died a

(04:20:20):
couple of years ago, maybe ten years ago now, before
I came out, but my cousin came out before me,
because it's a contagion now because we were always fucking trans,
and she was completely supportive, completely and immediately in my like,
you know, and just this is a woman who dedicated
her entire life too well to God and saw literally

(04:20:45):
no problem. Was the most immediately accepting person immediately said
you know, I bet she's always felt that way. And
so I personally owe it to her to tell these
Catholics to shut the fuck up, because fucking Jesus Is
wife says, it's fine. Fuck you, That's what I got.

(04:21:05):
Thank you, Margaret, Yeah, that was fantastic. Where where can
people find you? And some of your other work across
the across the web. Yeah, I just finished a four
part series on Stonewall and the stuff that came before Stonewall,
the riots that kind of brought us this movement, and
how it was all different types of queers and even
some hat people working together to bring us as far

(04:21:29):
as we've gotten. And you can find that on my
podcast Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff. It's with It
Could Happen here host Sharine as my guest. And you
can also find me talking about the end of the
world on Live Like the World Is Dying as another
podcast that I'm a co host of. And my most
recent book is called Escape from Insel Island, and it

(04:21:51):
is not nonfiction. It is not something about how people
should get better. It's literally about someone with the shotgun
who lands on an island full of insults and has
to get out alive. Fantastic. Well, thank you for listening
through all the way. If you are still here, hopefully,
hopefully you've learned something interesting across these these these two

(04:22:11):
pretty pretty heavy episodes. We will we will see you
on the other side. Hey, We'll be back Monday with
more episodes every week from now and totally heat death
of the Universe. It could Happen here as a production
of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media,
visit our website cool zonemedia dot com or check us

(04:22:31):
out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It could
Happen Here, updated monthly at cool zonemedia dot com slash sources.
Thanks for listening.