November 30, 2023 • 41 mins
Robert, Gare and Mia discuss the last few months of right wing terrorist attacks in the US and UK and the social and political forces behind them.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Also media, Ah, I have slain the God of Abraham
and cast his ruin upon.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
The mountain side, and now I am the Lord and
Savior of all. Podcasting Robert Evans, This is it could
happen here a podcast about things falling apart and about
my slow descent into theistic narcissism. Here with me today,
Garrison Davis and me along. How are you guys doing great?
(00:34):
He wasn't like.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
This like fifteen minutes ago, that there's been a rapid
radicalization process.
Speaker 4 (00:40):
Yeah, speaking speaking of rapid radicalization.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
I downed a bottle of this alive ancient mushroom elixir
and it is over empowered me.
Speaker 4 (00:55):
Not a sponsor too, free free, free advertising, ergizing.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
But if they want to pay us, I will probably
stop claiming to have slain the God of Abraham. This
is This Week in Terrorism, a show title we've never
used before and may never use again, but we wanted to.
We're probably gonna have to use it again. None of
the terrorism we're talking about has occurred this week. It
all occurred in previous weeks. We were out last week.
(01:21):
We wanted to talk about some of our recent terrorism attacks,
to discuss kind of what we're seeing in radicalization of
the people who are carrying out usually shootings, but not exclusively.
We're actually going to start with a hammer attack. Yeah,
what we're seeing out there because.
Speaker 4 (01:38):
Very British style. Actually, I think we're ending on a
stabbing too, ending on a stabbing.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Most of these are not shootings. I'm a liar. It's
the mushroom juice. But yeah, we're going to start by
talking about the attack on Paul Pelosi, who's, of course
Nancy Pelosi's fuck buddy. Some people call him a husband.
I think that's an archaic term, but yeah, he got
assaulted in his house by this guy, Brian Depayup. This
(02:07):
was like a year or so ago, and he just
recently got convicted of a bunch of stuff. He's going
to be going to forever prison. But we're going to
talk about that attack essentially. I wanted to start with
kind of a little bit of audio of the attack itself.
This is from police body camera, and basically what happened
is this guy Brian broke into the Pelosi's backyard, which
(02:30):
was not guarded. Nancy was away from the house. She
had their security detail. Capitol Police does not protect spouses
and family members of Congress people, and he used a
hammer in one of the two very large backs he
brought with him to bust into the house and then
had a conversation with Paul Pelosi that he insists, was
(02:51):
very polite until the police showed up, at which point
he started bashing him in the skull with a hammer.
And we're going to get into more of what happened,
but I wanted to I want to start by playing
that audio. This is right at the point that the
police opened the door.
Speaker 4 (03:07):
How you doing?
Speaker 1 (03:09):
What's going on?
Speaker 5 (03:10):
Man?
Speaker 2 (03:12):
That's the guy?
Speaker 4 (03:13):
What drop the hammer?
Speaker 5 (03:18):
What is har.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
And so what is actually happening in the video is
this guy Brian, who is like he's got a big,
very large hammer in his hands, and like there's a
very mild struggle going on for it. Pelosi has one
hand on the hammer, which is a reasonable thing to
want to do in this situation, and the guy just
(03:41):
looks kind of stunned, and the police show up and
they're like, yeah, man, drop the hammer, and he says no,
and they, to be fair to the police, pretty reasonably
take a step towards him, and he pulls the hammer
away from Paul and hits him in the head several times.
The police tackle him off. Paul got hit, hurt very badly.
This is pretty ugly. Att He's an old man. He
got hit in the head with a hammer several times
(04:02):
by a much younger man. Pretty ugly. One of the
things that becomes clear if you watch the earlier footage
of this guy in their backyard, because they have a
security camera, and if you watch this footage is that, like,
this is not a guy who had a super clear
plan about what he was going to do. This is
a guy who was kind of flying by the seat
of his pants, and when the police came in kind
(04:24):
of irrationally like based on his existing plans, decided to
swing at him. And when he was in court, like
some of the things to Pape said were very interesting,
he basically like, you know, he busts into their backyard.
Paul Pelosi in his pajamas, confronts him when he hears it,
and Depap asks, are you Paul Pelosi? Whar's Nancy? Wears
(04:47):
Nancy and Pelosi's like, she's not home, She's going to
be gone for several days, and de Pap started threatening
to tie Pelosi up. He does this like ten times
Eventually Paul's able to get away briefly to go to
the bathroom. He has a cell phone and he calls
the police, and like, while he's on the phone with
a dispatcher, you can hear de Pap like telling him
(05:07):
to hang up. You know. The police get there and
he attacks him. The first thing that happens in the
wake of this, This is obviously big news, and the
entirety of right wing media basically decided that this was
Paul Pelosi's lover.
Speaker 4 (05:21):
And yeah, I was under the impression from reparable sources
that this was this was Paul's gay lover.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
Is ye I was told that. Immediately comes out. Marjorie
Taylor Green spreads this. Tucker Carlson spreads this. Elon Musk
spreads this. Representative Carla Tinni spreads this again because this
is very clearly a right wing attack motivated by right
wing media on an elected leader. Pretty brutal attack. Not
an elected leader. Sorry, I'm the husband of an elected leader,
(05:51):
right And I wanted to quote really quickly from an
MSN write up on this that talks about like why
Depap says he did this. Depap explained that he broke
into the Pelosi home in order to lure University of
Michigan anthropology and Women's study professor Gail Rubin to their house.
Ruben's research, according to her professional bio, focuses on LGBTQ studies,
(06:12):
gay and lesbian ethnography, sexual populations and geographies, sexology, and
feminist theory. She is known for her nineteen eighty four
sa Thinking Sex, which is considered a founding text of
queer theory. Paul was never a target to pap said
in court, explaining that he was only using the Pelosis
to get to my other targets and that he felt
really bad for Paul Pelosi. He explained that he spent
six hours a day watching political commentary on YouTube before
(06:36):
he was arrested, where he learned that everything was a
lie coming from the press. He listened off common right
wing grievances, according to NBC News, to explain why he
broke into the home. He claims to have heard about
Gail Rubin from anti LGBTQ activist James Lindsay, who is
the same person who claims to have popularize the groomer's
slur against LGBTQ people. To Pahaps said that he regularly
(06:56):
listened to Lindsay's podcast. The takeaway I got is that
she wants to do in our schools into pedophile molestation factories.
To Pap said, so, one of the things that's really
interesting to me is that this guy's in the home
of one of the most powerful people in the entire country,
who is worth one hundred million dollars or more so,
also extremely wealthy person. But she's not his target. His
(07:19):
target is this woman's studies professor, who James Lindsay has
convinced him is trying to molest all of the kids
in America. Right. This is again, this is entirely stochastic terrorism.
This is the fault James Lindsay wanted stuff like this
to happen. That's why he does what he does. This
is on him, and it's a very clear example. This
(07:39):
is if you go into this dude's backstory, he was
not always like this. He used to be, I think
a pro nudity activist, but like was not a guy
who was like wildly conservative. And then the pandemic hits
and he's spending all day playing video games alone, increasingly isolated,
and he starts going down these YouTube and podcasts primarily
(08:00):
listening to these right wing podcasters. Lindsay's one of them.
He's also a huge Timpool listener. Who is this super
right wing guy who believes that like we're already in
a shooting civil war with the left, And yeah, these
are all big groomer guys, These are all women's studies professors,
are the most dangerous people in the country. And this
is a vulnerable dude who the pandemic isolated from what
(08:23):
social networks he had had, and he just kind of
completely loses his shit. It's a very clear radicalization path,
and it's a big bummer because this is a deeply
mentally unwell man who was taken advantage of by a
right wing media ecosystem that exists to churn exactly this
kind of guy towards violence against their ideological opponents.
Speaker 4 (08:46):
Now, it is certainly interesting. This is this attack was
more deeply weird than what we all initially thought, like, oh,
like someone was trying to kill Pelosi, right is, Like.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
I'm not surprised someone would try to do that. I'm
not saying it's just I'm not like saying because fucker,
I'm saying that, Like, I'm not surprised she's incredibly powerful.
Of course people want a killer. Yeah, like the way
it is, Yeah.
Speaker 4 (09:03):
We all saw what happened on January sixth, the come
on guys.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
Yes, but like this is normal politics.
Speaker 4 (09:08):
Yes, but like the idea that you're like holding holding
Pelosi is a hostage to get like a gender theory
women's studies professor is just so much more like like
highlighting the type of American brain rot that is just
totally taking over large swaths of the media, of the
media ecosystem at this point.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
I think one of my favorite details from this is
that if you go into like his court case, why
he chose to attack the home of again Nancy Pelosi,
super wealthy, powerful person with a security detail, is because
he believed this Gail Rubin, this professor lived in a
fortress that he could not break into. Yeah, this woman's
studies professor lives in an undergrowned bunker.
Speaker 4 (09:53):
It was easier to get to the speaker of the
house's home that it is a woman's studies for fessor's house.
Speaker 3 (10:01):
I think it's interesting too that it was specifically James Lindsay,
who I don't know.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
Have we talked about.
Speaker 4 (10:06):
Him really on the show. I'm I'm sure in passing.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
But we had a big Twitter fight with him earlier
this year.
Speaker 4 (10:13):
I've had.
Speaker 5 (10:16):
The yeah, my, you know.
Speaker 3 (10:19):
So he's an interesting he's like kind of like a
proto Chris Rufo like, but he's interesting because he's one
of these people who makes a very classic mistake in
in when you're trying to become a media person, which
is that he tries to do theory bullshit and it's
on it's it's nonsense like and he like it's it's
(10:41):
you know, but his things he's trying to derive basically,
like effectively, what he's trying to do is derive a
theoretical basis for the whole like Judeo Bolshevik conspiracy, which
he was one of the big sort of cultural Marxism people.
Speaker 4 (10:54):
Yeah, well he is. He is probably most known for
propagating the critical race theory kind of debacle that happened
a few years ago that was mostly spearheaded by this guy,
James Lindsay.
Speaker 3 (11:06):
Yeah, and he's he's trying to he's like, his project
is intellectual project. He's trying to trace this line from
Hegel through Marx, through Gramsey, through Mouth through the Frankfurt
School through the sixties radicals, and it's it's it's interesting though,
because what he's doing is he's he's he's he's part
of this really systemic attempt to completely and we saw
(11:29):
this this, this is the result of this is this
Paul Pelosi attack. It's to completely obscure the actual power
relations of American society to the point where, Yeah, the
thing we've been talking about happens where because this person
thinks that this Marxist conspiracy from gender studies professors is
actually the thing that controls the US.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
He is like.
Speaker 3 (11:46):
Kidnapping one of like the husband of one of the
most powerful people in the United States because he thinks
that as a way to get to a gender studies professor.
It's it's this, it's this interesting I think, like, I
don't know, it's I think it's this interesting demonstration of
of how of how right wing ideology is specifically designed
to act to like conceal the actual power relations to
(12:09):
society and then blame like queer people for it.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
It's like it's taken Lindsey comes out of academia too, right,
He's like this professor at a in watch but he's
like he's like a math professor or something. He's like, no, no,
it's basically the gist of what why. What happens is
he realizes you're never going to get rich being a
math professor, but if you become a right wing thought leader,
(12:33):
you know there's money in that. So he makes the
series of bullshit claims about how he's being oppressed by
fucking evil progressive fascism. And yeah, this is why. Also
all of his grievances are so focused around academics. It's
because he still has academia brainworms, where everything that matters
is like what this handful of upper middle class professors
(12:56):
at fancy ivy league schools argue about.
Speaker 4 (13:00):
He also believes that queer people are engaging in a
form of ancient hermetic magic, which.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
Is not that party, Harrison, if I know you at all,
that part's true, Like that's accurate.
Speaker 3 (13:12):
It's so funny that he got there because like, like when
I was arguing with him, he was trying to argue
that Mao had read this Gramsey, who's this Italian Marxist
theory she demonisterrably cannot have read because Gramsey's prison notebooks
don't come out until like art translated in Chinese until
after Mao dies. So it's like it's it's physically impossible
for him to have done this, but it's funny because
like he's gone from that to like the queer hermetic
(13:35):
like yes, yes, to destroy.
Speaker 4 (13:38):
The Who do we want to talk about next? Because
I have I have, I have my Dayton Shooter and
I know we we have we have a list.
Speaker 3 (13:48):
Of let's do, let's let's do, let's do Dayton Shooter
and then close out with the too antipersonian.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
Yeah. So yeah, I'm not I don't know shit about this,
So date me up, motherfuckers.
Speaker 6 (13:59):
So a few days before Thanksgiving, well home, we should
we shuld take Oh yeah, speaking of Thanksgiving, you know what,
I'm thankful for the fact that we're supported by advertisers.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
And we're back. Okay, let's talk about this fucking date
to shooting.
Speaker 4 (14:25):
A few days before Thanksgiving, someone walked into a Walmart
in Beaver Creek, Ohio with I believe it was a
it was a high point forty five caliber carbine.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
With and I know, wow, high point Okay, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4 (14:39):
He shot four people before eventually dying of a self
inflicted gunshot wound. Victims were transferred to the hospital. It
looks like nobody actually died besides the shooter. So hey,
that's a win, great, great job medical medical teams. But
upon looking into this this guy's home, it's very very
kind of standard stuff. Ever since twenty sixteen. We have
(15:01):
Nazi flags, we have Nazi books. He's he went to
a Christian online school. He was twenty years old. He
spent almost all his time at home on the internet.
He did not believe the Holocaust was real. He had
been to the hospital before for mental health evaluations. The
(15:23):
FBI referred to his beliefs as a quote loosely organized
movement of individuals and groups that espouse some combination of racist,
aty Semitica, zenophobic, Islamophobic, misogynistic, and homophobic ideology, which is
a very very broad broadway of saying. Yeah, he was
like a far right nut job. He was very very
typical kind of Nazi guy. He had two swastika flags.
(15:44):
Now because he died, it's where people are still putting
together like what exactly led to him to like do
this specific act because they can't like talk to him.
But yeah, it was very very typical sort of thing
of this guy deciding to go into a Walmart and
(16:04):
do a shooting. This is something that other Nazi accelerationists
have done before. It's something that will probably keep happening.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
Oh yeah, I mean for sure.
Speaker 4 (16:13):
It's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's not like
a big story. It's it's just another thing that's happened.
But it is weird the sort of like normalization of
it of like, oh yeah, not seeing the Walmart shooting
again isn't actually a story anymore. It's just like it's
just it's just another Tuesday. No.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
And this is like what the right wants, by the way,
is that like when they do these mass shootings, it
does not make the news, and whenever they can blame
a shooting on a queer a trans person, they try
to keep it make it be the only thing anyone
talks about, right, Like this is this is part of
the plan, you know. Yeah, And it's a bummer that
(16:51):
it's it's worked, just because like h it's impossible to
stay at an equal level of anger every time this happens.
It's so common, you know, like you just can't, you
can't continue existing and have the same reaction to these
that you had in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 4 (17:08):
Yeah, so I mean like that. I don't have much
else on this because it's just it's this guy who
played video games alone for most of his life, went
to a Christian online homeschool, never really interacted with the public.
It was almost solely existed within this this like medio
Ecosystem online, which pushed him towards buying a book on
the history of the SS and buying multiple Nazi flags
(17:31):
and not thinking the Holocaust is real. And this, this
is the inevitable result of this sort of thing. So
I guess do we want to segue to Vermont for
our next next? Like? Something happened I think less than
a week later.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
It sure did. But first, Garrison, speaking of Segus, did
you realize that the guy who bought the segue company
died in a segwe crash in Scotland? Yeah, segment he did, Garrison,
He sure did you know?
Speaker 4 (18:04):
This is this is why I think there is a
little bit of magic that Israel, because every once in
a while, the funniest thing happens.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
Oh man, what a what a stupid product segues. I
remember when those first came out and people were like,
this is the future of transportation, and then everyone who
was not completely brain deed was like, of course they're not.
Look at how dumb those things look. Nobody's gonna want
to drive these.
Speaker 4 (18:30):
I mean, if I was a self educated finance guy,
I'm sure I would be able to to to to
estimate the life cycle of of the segue.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
You're not gonna make it if you if you just
walk like a peasant, you gotta get a one wheel
that explodes.
Speaker 3 (18:46):
It's so funny to me too, because it's like like
a thing there. Like I genuinely think is a real
kind of shift in in our modes of transportation, is
that people really did start using electric bikes more and
then has a lot too and stuff.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
Yeah, it's like huge. Actually, instead, no, it's like, yeah,
we don't need you don't need to fuck with the
form factor. People are happy using bikes. They're just too
slow and sometimes too much effort is required. So you
make that easier and then people don't drive as fucking much.
Great idea. Speaking of a bad idea, let's talk about
(19:22):
this other mass shooter in Vermont from from last week.
This actually happened on Thanksgiving Day, so this guy. I
think it was on Thanksgiving Day.
Speaker 4 (19:32):
It may have been like a day or two later.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
It was Saturday night, so that would have been. Yeah,
that had been like the day or two after, two
days after Thanksgiving. So two days after Thanksgiving, you know,
you've got these three twenty year old Palestinian men who
are in town visiting family. You know they're doing. I
think they go over and do they do a Thanksgiving
dinner with some friends. They're over another thing people's.
Speaker 3 (19:54):
Yeah, yeah, this big thing they were leaving was it
was they they went to it an eight year old
birthday party.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
Yes, yes, yeah. They're with one of them's uncle who
lives in Burlington. And these kids are all students at
different Northeast I think, all Northeast colleges. One's from Brown University,
once from Haverford, one is from Trinity College. Two of
them are citizens and the other is I think naturalized
(20:22):
or at least a permanent resident. And at some point
after you know they're they're hanging out at this event,
family event, they're like, let's go on a walk. You know,
it's a nice night, let's let's have us a walk around.
And they're they're walking around, they're near an apartment building,
and this forty eight year old man named Jason j
Eaton steps off his porch, pulls out a gun, and
(20:45):
apparently without saying anything, fires at least four shots at
these three young men. Two of them are shot and
they're torso a third is shot in the lower extremities.
They are all alive. Still, they're all expected to live.
I think one of them was more seriously injured than
the others, but they're all like going to survive, thankfully.
And then Eaton flees on foot. I think, like the
(21:06):
next day the police catch up with him. He used
a three eighty pistol, if that matters to you, which
is a fairly small handgun, which probably explains why everybody's survived.
And yeah, so that's the extent of like what physically
happened on the day. Again, Eaton doesn't say anything before
he starts shooting. There's no evidence that he knew these guys.
(21:29):
They are apparently speaking in a mixture of Arabic and
English as they walk by, which and also at least
I think two of them were wearing like Palestinian color,
sort of shimogs or kefias. I don't think, I don't
know if it's like like not like the colors of
the Palestinian flag, but like the color palette there is
used in that specific it's like the white and black
(21:50):
yeah scarves. Yeah, yeah, yeah exactly. Eaton was a finance
broker and advisor kind of part time. I don't know
how much money he actually made from it.
Speaker 4 (22:01):
Yeah, he was like working on a farm part time. Yeah,
he was employed at Edward Jones a few years ago.
He's kind of yeah, he's this this libertarian finance bro.
Speaker 2 (22:12):
Yeah, and so yeah, people found his social pretty quickly.
There's like an archived Twitter, which is really standard uh
standard libertarian stuff. He talks about like he complains about
the Fed an awful lot. He quotes Elon Musk a
number of times. He seems to be a fan of him.
(22:32):
But he's also a huge fan of Bernie Sanders and
described ye like the only good man in politics pretty much.
Speaker 4 (22:38):
Yeah. I think it's kind of like it's kind of
like the Joe Rogan libertarian.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
Of like right, right, yes, very much.
Speaker 4 (22:44):
So you like Bernie because he's like he like cares
about like the people. He's not like he's not like
falling for like the big finance corporation stuff blah blah
blah blah blah.
Speaker 3 (22:53):
Yeah, it's it's like it's this old sort of like
the oh my god, what I've forgotten his name? Uh,
the libertarian guy from the two and early twenty tens.
Speaker 4 (23:03):
Who were the Riddler suits.
Speaker 3 (23:06):
No, he was a congressman. He was like he was
like one of the fashions in occupy was like these
weird libertarians and it's like this seems like that's like
the ideological as sentence of those people who didn't turn
into like neo Confederate like yeah people.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
And it's in his old archived Twitter account, he describes
himself like His profile describes him as radical citizen patrolling democracy,
which he spells with a K, and carapitalism for oath
keepers well oath creepers. I don't know entirely what all
of that means, and then hashtag wild type with the
(23:44):
little atomic symbol, which I guess means he likes science.
He describes himself as a dad and a part time farmer,
a reformed yes stockbroker, and his archived account includes a
link to his sub stack, which is is our DKL Radical.
He describes it as yeah wander wandering ramblings of a reformed
(24:05):
broker on the ADHD ASD spectrum. He's claiming at least
to have ADHD in autism. It's uh, he's deleted by
the time we got to them. Everyone got to them.
Most of the posts on his sub stack. The only
thing on there is a really extensive post where he's
like talking about how how restaurants can keep dishwashers employed.
(24:27):
He seems to have worked this one and be angry
that they're not always paid fair wage commencer to back
on the lions or in front of the Lion staff,
I guess, which is like not unreasonable, but an odd
thing for him to be so focused on.
Speaker 4 (24:40):
He has a really interesting online footprint. Yes, at least
like everything like pre pandemic is like he's like this
regular libertarian finance guy. Like there's not like there's nothing
too concerning. He's like he's yeah, he's like retweet like
(25:00):
the Libertarian Party of Tennessee saying that they like Bernie
Sanders and like he's he has like this podcast where
he talks about penny stalks, and it's like it's a
lot of like you see lots of these types of
guy around and most of them are just like guys
in their forties, because that's what he was, Just like
a libertarian guy in his forties who lived in Vermont.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
So like, yeah, so you know, as you kind of
stated Garrison, he's pretty normal up until he gets like
COVID hits, and that seems to be what pushes him
over the limit. I want to read a quote from
Vice News here, who's done a lengthy breakdown of his
social media presence. One post from March twenty twenty two
(25:43):
titled thought crime. It's an anti vax screed that labels
COVID nineteen as a government conspiracy. The scale and scope
of this operation was next level, he wrote. He also
shared other anti VAX sentiments on his LinkedIn and wrote
last year that he'd started deleting or unpublishing certain posts
because my ideas make some people not want to hire me.
He also has an Instagram account, which is largely dedicated
(26:03):
to sharing images from his farm. Only one post hints
at any ideological or political outlook, which is a screenshot
from the Urban Dictionary Definition of America with a K,
a word used to describe the worst sense of the
United States, i e. Imperialism, corruption and the global exportation
of American culture. His Instagram links to another blog, which
has the same name as his substack and contains rambling
podcasts about the financial system. He's uploaded documentation of his
(26:27):
various qualifications over the years. One document indicates that he
was a boy Scout leader between at least twenty seventeen
and twenty twenty one. Don't worry everyone, the Boy Scouts
are not letting this guy continue to be an adult leader.
Speaker 4 (26:39):
Yeah. It's the homepage of his website just reads together
no King, And there's a lot of stuff that looks
like it's been deleted, a lot of weird financial advice
under the name Radical Citizen spelled all stupid. But I
(27:00):
i've I've I found his YouTube pretty quick. I found
his LinkedIn pretty quick. There's a lot of like vaccin
it's his his His YouTube starts with a lot of
like vaccine hesitancy stuff. Yeah, and then on his LinkedIn
he moves into like full full, like weird, like COVID conspiracies,
vaccine denial, vaccine conspiracy theories. And I will say I've
never seen a shooter post like this on LinkedIn before.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
Yes, that's interesting, really unique.
Speaker 4 (27:26):
It's it's really unique thing. Like so you'll find stuff
like this on like Reddit, you'll find stuff like this
on Twitter, but having having a shooter share this types
of conspiratorial content on LinkedIn and then talk about how
he has to delete some because he's not getting hired
because LinkedIn's a place to help you get hired. Like
that's like, it's it's it's a really weird platform. Yes,
(27:46):
this could just be his like libertarianness showing and like
they they use they use LinkedIn because it's like for
like business and finance, but it is certainly weird, Like
the way he was using it is is unlike most
most like either like like cod COVID, conspiracy shooters, vaccine shooters,
or whatever his motivation was for this, for targeting three
(28:08):
Palestinian people. It's it's certainly certainly a unique facet of
this incident.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
Yeah, yeah, so I don't know. I mean, in some
ways this is a pretty standard case and that like
not the specific things that this guy is starting point,
but just the fact that this is a guy who's
clearly open to some level of right wing politics and
thought influencers. And it seems as if COVID nineteen drove
(28:37):
him off a wall ideologically.
Speaker 3 (28:40):
Yeah, and I mean, it wouldn't surprise me if this
winds up being a very you know, if we wind
up finding out that a specific motivation for this santi
Palsinian racism, because yeah, well yeah, we know it also
probably is.
Speaker 4 (28:58):
But his mom just him as a Christian who takes
his spirituality very seriously. She said that he thought the
whole state of the world was kind of like a
big mess right now, like everything, everything spiritually is kind
of falling apart, is what his mom said. Because he
he was he was at Thanksgiving dinner with his family
like two nights before this happened. They said he seemed
(29:20):
to act be acting like like his usual self. Not
not saying like, you know, not saying that he was
acting good, but like he was acting normal for him. Yeah,
but no, he certainly had some some degree of religious affiliation.
He talked about using his religious statust as to get
(29:40):
like vaccine exemptions for his kids. So there's stuff stuff
like that that that that that does tie to his
religious background, which which could certainly contribute to to anti
Palestinian violence.
Speaker 2 (29:56):
Yeah, and I don't know, if I had to say,
oom kind of how this went down Without more evidence,
my guess would be he was having a bad day,
probably you know that kind of after the holiday depression.
That's not uncommon. He's like listening to or reading some
sort of listening to some sort of weird conspiracy podcast,
(30:19):
or he's just falling down another rabbit hole online. He
gets angrier and angrier, and he hears some people talking
in Arabic outside, looks out his window, sees a Palestinian
Keffia and decides, I'm going to just start shooting. I
don't actually know, like, I don't know what else it
could be. He can't have These people were not like
regular walkers in his neighborhoods, so this can't have been
(30:40):
like he wasn't laying in wait for them. This seems
like from you know, it must have been like a
spur of the moment thing, right, He waited.
Speaker 4 (30:47):
For the ATF to come to his door. He said,
He said, like I've been expecting you or I've been
waiting for you or something, and he said, I don't
want to say anything without a lawyer. So like he
he had like you know, like the libertarian script of
like is what you say if the police are coming
to arrest you is like, yeah, he didn't. He didn't
like kill himself at the end of this act of
violence like a lot of other shooters do. He was
(31:07):
very very like put together weirdly.
Speaker 2 (31:10):
And he's he's lawyered up. I guess we'll learn more.
Speaker 4 (31:13):
But yeah, no, it's it's it's certainly interesting. I mean,
I've been scrolling through the past two years of LinkedIn
posts where he posted a lot on like LinkedIn's like
social platform, and it's a big mix of like big
mix of like financial conspiracy theories and COVID conspiracy theories
and vaccine conspiracy theories. I can certainly see how the
way the way, like libertarians in general the past three years, past,
(31:38):
like five years, six years, may maybe even since like
the Tea Party realistically have just you have been getting
increasingly aligned with like other aspects of the far right
where uh it contributes to like transphobia or contributes to racism, xenophobia, homophobia. Yeah,
like that that that has big that that ven diagram
(32:01):
is slowly becoming more of a circle. And I can
certainly see if this guy, this guy obviously was listening
to podcasts, if he was making he was making a
financial podcast at some point. Yeah, he like, I can
totally see if if you're listening to libertarian podcasts, you
slowly getting all of these other kind of beliefs that
have been seeping in to almost the entirety of the
(32:21):
libertarian political project. If you see, like a few years ago,
he was retweeting posts from like the libertarian parties of
these various states, and now many of those accounts are
just run by Nazis.
Speaker 2 (32:33):
Like, yeah, it is.
Speaker 4 (32:34):
It is like, yeah, watching how the posting trends of
like official libertarian party affiliated accounts have changed, the past
few years, specifically the New Hampshire account.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
Yeah, oh my god, quite is quite something. Yeah, and
it's it's not always what you'd think because the the
the Louisiana Libertarian Party is like super chill, reasonable, anti racist,
you know, guy, Whereas yeah, the New Hampshire Liberty Terran Party,
dude is like just a straight up Nazi. Yeah, interesting, interesting,
(33:05):
good stuff. Should we do our second ad break? Did
we already do that?
Speaker 4 (33:09):
Did we already do it?
Speaker 2 (33:10):
Anyway, Daniel? If we didn't do a second ad break,
here's our second ad break. Ah, we're back after either
our second ad break or that will be edited out
(33:30):
because we already did do we forgot which Daniel will
figure it out, and you the listener will never know
if I fucked up. Dani'll keep it in if I
fuck up.
Speaker 3 (33:40):
Yeah, And speaking of speaking of stuff that's fucked up, yeah, yeah.
So the last thing I want to talk about is
this is this is an older This is from like October, right, Yeah,
this is from October fourteenth, and I think it's specifically
this is this is seven days after the sort of
Amos attack that started all of the sort of stuff
(34:01):
that's been happening in Palestine. Yeah, so in Plainfield, which
is this kind of Yeah, it's it's like a.
Speaker 4 (34:10):
It's a really far suburb of Chicago.
Speaker 3 (34:12):
Yeah, it's it's in these things where it's like it's
in the kind of I don't know, almost a borderline
of is it a suburb like it is it's a
place that sucks ass. Yeah, and no offense to anyone
living there with yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:26):
No, like there are good people there, but it some
of them I assume are good people.
Speaker 3 (34:31):
Yeah. So on on the fourteenth, a seventy one year
old man named Joseph Cuspa, who was the landlord of
a Palestinian woman and her son, and you know, okay,
so this story, this story just sucks. They had actually
so these this family and their landlord had been like
(34:51):
pretty close friends. Like the family had considered him like
like a like they considered him like a grandfather. And
this guy comes through the door and the six year
old kid runs up to go hug him, and he
stabs the kid twenty six times and kills him, nearly
kills his mom. He's screaming like the entire time about
(35:14):
like yeah, he's screaming, you Muslims have to die. You're
killing our kids in Israel. You Palestinians don't deserve to live.
And this is a I think this is a kind
of a kind of different kind of shoot of well
actually a different kind of like killing than the ones
we've been talking about, because this is a very sort
of like wake of two thousand and one killing where
(35:36):
you have this enormous, enormous spike in Islamophobia, very specifically here,
you have this incredible spike in in anti Palastinian racism,
and you have this this period like especially in the
week I mean, and this is still happening to this day,
but in like the week after, in the week after
this all started, you could say fucking anything you could say.
(35:56):
You could you could like you could talk about fucking
turning the Gauza strip the glass, like you could talk
about fucking dropping nucause, you could talk about killing every
single Palestinian on earth. And it was and no one
fucking said anything, right, all these fucking people, all of
these fucking all these fucking journalists said nothing. All Like
the president, Like, the President only starts talking about his
homophobia after this fucking kid gets stabbed the death and
(36:18):
you know, and this guy is listening to right wing
talk radio, which is why you know, this is like,
this is a this is an older like this, this
is a this is a specific kind of killing that
like I think is very very similar to the the
enormous number of Muslims who were killed. And I will
seek people too because these people are just really racist. Yeah,
and Palestenians people who were just killed right after nine
to eleven, because there's just this wave of the US
(36:40):
that gets into one of these sort of murder frenzies,
like one of these sort of racist frenzies.
Speaker 2 (36:45):
And this kid.
Speaker 3 (36:46):
Gets stabbed the death, and yeah, this guy you know,
and I mean and like I think, I think I
think about this case right like this is you know,
this is a radicalization in terms like in terms of
like going from going from literally like this kid is
running up to hug him because like he had built
like a treehouse for the family before this, right like
(37:08):
like in and over the course of like seven days,
this guy goes from that to like we need to
kill all Muslims. We need to like stab them to death,
right like it's it's horrible and and this is you know,
like this kind of stuff just keeps happening, and you know,
like the only time, the only the media literally only
(37:30):
covers this stuff like in terms of like, oh, it's
casting a Democrats support and it's like, you guys, just
I don't know. The extense of which the media has
been utterly and completely complicit in anti Polsinian racism has
been appalling, and you know it's killed people now. Yeah,
and there will there will be no reckoning with this
(37:52):
because the US media does this ship all the time
and no one cares.
Speaker 2 (37:56):
And yeah, by by a wide margin, the most disturbing
thing about this is just and I think what separates
this from the two thousand and one stuff, because this
version of this attack in two thousand and one would
have just been some racist stranger who saw, you know,
a Muslim person or just a person he assumed look
like they were Muslim and attacked but did not have
(38:16):
a relationship with them. This guy is super close to
this kid, right, This is like an example of how
fairly integrated this community was. And it's the again an
example kind of what we're seeing in most of these
other attacks we've talked about, except of that Nazi is
like these people who are a lot more normal. And
then I'm going to guess if we when we find
(38:39):
out more about the dude who stabbed that kid, a
lot of his drift happened after COVID, right. You know,
it's a product of this right wing media ecosystem that
again exists purely to do this sort of thing, but
it's also a product of COVID. Right, it's a product
of this lockdown that just fucking shattered so many people.
Speaker 4 (39:02):
It's the one other thing I will mention because it
is relevant because the trial is starting. Is another extremely
targeted attack with the murder of Brianna Jai. Yeah, the
perpetrators were very familiar they were, they were interested in
killing her specifically because Brianna was trans.
Speaker 3 (39:21):
I don't I don't know if we talked about this
on the show that.
Speaker 4 (39:24):
I don't think we did.
Speaker 2 (39:25):
I don't happened.
Speaker 4 (39:27):
No, But with with with with the trial happening, we're
we've gotten text exchanges between the two people who were
involved in the killing, and it's it's very very very
telling the way they were talking about Brianna like as
this as this like object and very very very specifically
(39:48):
like uh like almost like stalking and gaining familiar with
her specifically to kill her out of like fascination.
Speaker 3 (39:56):
Oh wait, So so for people who don't know what
this is, Brianna was, I think she was fifty sixteen sixteen,
sixteen year old trans girl in the UK who was
stabbed to death by two other kids. And yeah, so
the trial's like happening right now and it's it's really
really fucking sucks.
Speaker 2 (40:17):
Yeah, she was, she was.
Speaker 3 (40:17):
Killed earlier this year. Yeah, and yeah, I mean, if
you if you want to understand what transphobes think about
trans people, like those texts are as clean as an
example that you're going to get about how like all
(40:38):
of the fucking right wing media people and all of
the sort of like you know, like all of the
most sort of like absolutely like committed transphobes think about
trans but how they talk about us like in in
closed like like behind closed doors where they think you
will never see it.
Speaker 2 (40:56):
And this this is just this is just how they talk.
Speaker 3 (40:57):
About us, And this is what happens is people like
people fucking weirder trans people and yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:06):
Yeah, well then yep, all right, well folks, this has
been uh it could happen here? A podcast about terrorism? Goodbye?
Speaker 4 (41:19):
Do we want to try to end in any literally
any other way?
Speaker 2 (41:25):
I'm you know, no, Garrison, We're not. That's the end
of the podcast. Goodbye.
Speaker 5 (41:37):
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 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.
Also media, Ah, I have slain the God of Abraham
and cast his ruin upon.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
The mountain side, and now I am the Lord and
Savior of all. Podcasting Robert Evans, This is it could
happen here a podcast about things falling apart and about
my slow descent into theistic narcissism. Here with me today,
Garrison Davis and me along. How are you guys doing great?
(00:34):
He wasn't like.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
This like fifteen minutes ago, that there's been a rapid
radicalization process.
Speaker 4 (00:40):
Yeah, speaking speaking of rapid radicalization.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
I downed a bottle of this alive ancient mushroom elixir
and it is over empowered me.
Speaker 4 (00:55):
Not a sponsor too, free free, free advertising, ergizing.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
But if they want to pay us, I will probably
stop claiming to have slain the God of Abraham. This
is This Week in Terrorism, a show title we've never
used before and may never use again, but we wanted to.
We're probably gonna have to use it again. None of
the terrorism we're talking about has occurred this week. It
all occurred in previous weeks. We were out last week.
(01:21):
We wanted to talk about some of our recent terrorism attacks,
to discuss kind of what we're seeing in radicalization of
the people who are carrying out usually shootings, but not exclusively.
We're actually going to start with a hammer attack. Yeah,
what we're seeing out there because.
Speaker 4 (01:38):
Very British style. Actually, I think we're ending on a
stabbing too, ending on a stabbing.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Most of these are not shootings. I'm a liar. It's
the mushroom juice. But yeah, we're going to start by
talking about the attack on Paul Pelosi, who's, of course
Nancy Pelosi's fuck buddy. Some people call him a husband.
I think that's an archaic term, but yeah, he got
assaulted in his house by this guy, Brian Depayup. This
(02:07):
was like a year or so ago, and he just
recently got convicted of a bunch of stuff. He's going
to be going to forever prison. But we're going to
talk about that attack essentially. I wanted to start with
kind of a little bit of audio of the attack itself.
This is from police body camera, and basically what happened
is this guy Brian broke into the Pelosi's backyard, which
(02:30):
was not guarded. Nancy was away from the house. She
had their security detail. Capitol Police does not protect spouses
and family members of Congress people, and he used a
hammer in one of the two very large backs he
brought with him to bust into the house and then
had a conversation with Paul Pelosi that he insists, was
(02:51):
very polite until the police showed up, at which point
he started bashing him in the skull with a hammer.
And we're going to get into more of what happened,
but I wanted to I want to start by playing
that audio. This is right at the point that the
police opened the door.
Speaker 4 (03:07):
How you doing?
Speaker 1 (03:09):
What's going on?
Speaker 5 (03:10):
Man?
Speaker 2 (03:12):
That's the guy?
Speaker 4 (03:13):
What drop the hammer?
Speaker 5 (03:18):
What is har.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
And so what is actually happening in the video is
this guy Brian, who is like he's got a big,
very large hammer in his hands, and like there's a
very mild struggle going on for it. Pelosi has one
hand on the hammer, which is a reasonable thing to
want to do in this situation, and the guy just
(03:41):
looks kind of stunned, and the police show up and
they're like, yeah, man, drop the hammer, and he says no,
and they, to be fair to the police, pretty reasonably
take a step towards him, and he pulls the hammer
away from Paul and hits him in the head several times.
The police tackle him off. Paul got hit, hurt very badly.
This is pretty ugly. Att He's an old man. He
got hit in the head with a hammer several times
(04:02):
by a much younger man. Pretty ugly. One of the
things that becomes clear if you watch the earlier footage
of this guy in their backyard, because they have a
security camera, and if you watch this footage is that, like,
this is not a guy who had a super clear
plan about what he was going to do. This is
a guy who was kind of flying by the seat
of his pants, and when the police came in kind
(04:24):
of irrationally like based on his existing plans, decided to
swing at him. And when he was in court, like
some of the things to Pape said were very interesting,
he basically like, you know, he busts into their backyard.
Paul Pelosi in his pajamas, confronts him when he hears it,
and Depap asks, are you Paul Pelosi? Whar's Nancy? Wears
(04:47):
Nancy and Pelosi's like, she's not home, She's going to
be gone for several days, and de Pap started threatening
to tie Pelosi up. He does this like ten times
Eventually Paul's able to get away briefly to go to
the bathroom. He has a cell phone and he calls
the police, and like, while he's on the phone with
a dispatcher, you can hear de Pap like telling him
(05:07):
to hang up. You know. The police get there and
he attacks him. The first thing that happens in the
wake of this, This is obviously big news, and the
entirety of right wing media basically decided that this was
Paul Pelosi's lover.
Speaker 4 (05:21):
And yeah, I was under the impression from reparable sources
that this was this was Paul's gay lover.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
Is ye I was told that. Immediately comes out. Marjorie
Taylor Green spreads this. Tucker Carlson spreads this. Elon Musk
spreads this. Representative Carla Tinni spreads this again because this
is very clearly a right wing attack motivated by right
wing media on an elected leader. Pretty brutal attack. Not
an elected leader. Sorry, I'm the husband of an elected leader,
(05:51):
right And I wanted to quote really quickly from an
MSN write up on this that talks about like why
Depap says he did this. Depap explained that he broke
into the Pelosi home in order to lure University of
Michigan anthropology and Women's study professor Gail Rubin to their house.
Ruben's research, according to her professional bio, focuses on LGBTQ studies,
(06:12):
gay and lesbian ethnography, sexual populations and geographies, sexology, and
feminist theory. She is known for her nineteen eighty four
sa Thinking Sex, which is considered a founding text of
queer theory. Paul was never a target to pap said
in court, explaining that he was only using the Pelosis
to get to my other targets and that he felt
really bad for Paul Pelosi. He explained that he spent
six hours a day watching political commentary on YouTube before
(06:36):
he was arrested, where he learned that everything was a
lie coming from the press. He listened off common right
wing grievances, according to NBC News, to explain why he
broke into the home. He claims to have heard about
Gail Rubin from anti LGBTQ activist James Lindsay, who is
the same person who claims to have popularize the groomer's
slur against LGBTQ people. To Pahaps said that he regularly
(06:56):
listened to Lindsay's podcast. The takeaway I got is that
she wants to do in our schools into pedophile molestation factories.
To Pap said, so, one of the things that's really
interesting to me is that this guy's in the home
of one of the most powerful people in the entire country,
who is worth one hundred million dollars or more so,
also extremely wealthy person. But she's not his target. His
(07:19):
target is this woman's studies professor, who James Lindsay has
convinced him is trying to molest all of the kids
in America. Right. This is again, this is entirely stochastic terrorism.
This is the fault James Lindsay wanted stuff like this
to happen. That's why he does what he does. This
is on him, and it's a very clear example. This
(07:39):
is if you go into this dude's backstory, he was
not always like this. He used to be, I think
a pro nudity activist, but like was not a guy
who was like wildly conservative. And then the pandemic hits
and he's spending all day playing video games alone, increasingly isolated,
and he starts going down these YouTube and podcasts primarily
(08:00):
listening to these right wing podcasters. Lindsay's one of them.
He's also a huge Timpool listener. Who is this super
right wing guy who believes that like we're already in
a shooting civil war with the left, And yeah, these
are all big groomer guys, These are all women's studies professors,
are the most dangerous people in the country. And this
is a vulnerable dude who the pandemic isolated from what
(08:23):
social networks he had had, and he just kind of
completely loses his shit. It's a very clear radicalization path,
and it's a big bummer because this is a deeply
mentally unwell man who was taken advantage of by a
right wing media ecosystem that exists to churn exactly this
kind of guy towards violence against their ideological opponents.
Speaker 4 (08:46):
Now, it is certainly interesting. This is this attack was
more deeply weird than what we all initially thought, like, oh,
like someone was trying to kill Pelosi, right is, Like.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
I'm not surprised someone would try to do that. I'm
not saying it's just I'm not like saying because fucker,
I'm saying that, Like, I'm not surprised she's incredibly powerful.
Of course people want a killer. Yeah, like the way
it is, Yeah.
Speaker 4 (09:03):
We all saw what happened on January sixth, the come
on guys.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
Yes, but like this is normal politics.
Speaker 4 (09:08):
Yes, but like the idea that you're like holding holding
Pelosi is a hostage to get like a gender theory
women's studies professor is just so much more like like
highlighting the type of American brain rot that is just
totally taking over large swaths of the media, of the
media ecosystem at this point.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
I think one of my favorite details from this is
that if you go into like his court case, why
he chose to attack the home of again Nancy Pelosi,
super wealthy, powerful person with a security detail, is because
he believed this Gail Rubin, this professor lived in a
fortress that he could not break into. Yeah, this woman's
studies professor lives in an undergrowned bunker.
Speaker 4 (09:53):
It was easier to get to the speaker of the
house's home that it is a woman's studies for fessor's house.
Speaker 3 (10:01):
I think it's interesting too that it was specifically James Lindsay,
who I don't know.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
Have we talked about.
Speaker 4 (10:06):
Him really on the show. I'm I'm sure in passing.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
But we had a big Twitter fight with him earlier
this year.
Speaker 4 (10:13):
I've had.
Speaker 5 (10:16):
The yeah, my, you know.
Speaker 3 (10:19):
So he's an interesting he's like kind of like a
proto Chris Rufo like, but he's interesting because he's one
of these people who makes a very classic mistake in
in when you're trying to become a media person, which
is that he tries to do theory bullshit and it's
on it's it's nonsense like and he like it's it's
(10:41):
you know, but his things he's trying to derive basically,
like effectively, what he's trying to do is derive a
theoretical basis for the whole like Judeo Bolshevik conspiracy, which
he was one of the big sort of cultural Marxism people.
Speaker 4 (10:54):
Yeah, well he is. He is probably most known for
propagating the critical race theory kind of debacle that happened
a few years ago that was mostly spearheaded by this guy,
James Lindsay.
Speaker 3 (11:06):
Yeah, and he's he's trying to he's like, his project
is intellectual project. He's trying to trace this line from
Hegel through Marx, through Gramsey, through Mouth through the Frankfurt
School through the sixties radicals, and it's it's it's interesting though,
because what he's doing is he's he's he's he's part
of this really systemic attempt to completely and we saw
(11:29):
this this, this is the result of this is this
Paul Pelosi attack. It's to completely obscure the actual power
relations of American society to the point where, Yeah, the
thing we've been talking about happens where because this person
thinks that this Marxist conspiracy from gender studies professors is
actually the thing that controls the US.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
He is like.
Speaker 3 (11:46):
Kidnapping one of like the husband of one of the
most powerful people in the United States because he thinks
that as a way to get to a gender studies professor.
It's it's this, it's this interesting I think, like, I
don't know, it's I think it's this interesting demonstration of
of how of how right wing ideology is specifically designed
to act to like conceal the actual power relations to
(12:09):
society and then blame like queer people for it.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
It's like it's taken Lindsey comes out of academia too, right,
He's like this professor at a in watch but he's
like he's like a math professor or something. He's like, no, no,
it's basically the gist of what why. What happens is
he realizes you're never going to get rich being a
math professor, but if you become a right wing thought leader,
(12:33):
you know there's money in that. So he makes the
series of bullshit claims about how he's being oppressed by
fucking evil progressive fascism. And yeah, this is why. Also
all of his grievances are so focused around academics. It's
because he still has academia brainworms, where everything that matters
is like what this handful of upper middle class professors
(12:56):
at fancy ivy league schools argue about.
Speaker 4 (13:00):
He also believes that queer people are engaging in a
form of ancient hermetic magic, which.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
Is not that party, Harrison, if I know you at all,
that part's true, Like that's accurate.
Speaker 3 (13:12):
It's so funny that he got there because like, like when
I was arguing with him, he was trying to argue
that Mao had read this Gramsey, who's this Italian Marxist
theory she demonisterrably cannot have read because Gramsey's prison notebooks
don't come out until like art translated in Chinese until
after Mao dies. So it's like it's it's physically impossible
for him to have done this, but it's funny because
like he's gone from that to like the queer hermetic
(13:35):
like yes, yes, to destroy.
Speaker 4 (13:38):
The Who do we want to talk about next? Because
I have I have, I have my Dayton Shooter and
I know we we have we have a list.
Speaker 3 (13:48):
Of let's do, let's let's do, let's do Dayton Shooter
and then close out with the too antipersonian.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
Yeah. So yeah, I'm not I don't know shit about this,
So date me up, motherfuckers.
Speaker 6 (13:59):
So a few days before Thanksgiving, well home, we should
we shuld take Oh yeah, speaking of Thanksgiving, you know what,
I'm thankful for the fact that we're supported by advertisers.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
And we're back. Okay, let's talk about this fucking date
to shooting.
Speaker 4 (14:25):
A few days before Thanksgiving, someone walked into a Walmart
in Beaver Creek, Ohio with I believe it was a
it was a high point forty five caliber carbine.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
With and I know, wow, high point Okay, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4 (14:39):
He shot four people before eventually dying of a self
inflicted gunshot wound. Victims were transferred to the hospital. It
looks like nobody actually died besides the shooter. So hey,
that's a win, great, great job medical medical teams. But
upon looking into this this guy's home, it's very very
kind of standard stuff. Ever since twenty sixteen. We have
(15:01):
Nazi flags, we have Nazi books. He's he went to
a Christian online school. He was twenty years old. He
spent almost all his time at home on the internet.
He did not believe the Holocaust was real. He had
been to the hospital before for mental health evaluations. The
(15:23):
FBI referred to his beliefs as a quote loosely organized
movement of individuals and groups that espouse some combination of racist,
aty Semitica, zenophobic, Islamophobic, misogynistic, and homophobic ideology, which is
a very very broad broadway of saying. Yeah, he was
like a far right nut job. He was very very
typical kind of Nazi guy. He had two swastika flags.
(15:44):
Now because he died, it's where people are still putting
together like what exactly led to him to like do
this specific act because they can't like talk to him.
But yeah, it was very very typical sort of thing
of this guy deciding to go into a Walmart and
(16:04):
do a shooting. This is something that other Nazi accelerationists
have done before. It's something that will probably keep happening.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
Oh yeah, I mean for sure.
Speaker 4 (16:13):
It's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's not like
a big story. It's it's just another thing that's happened.
But it is weird the sort of like normalization of
it of like, oh yeah, not seeing the Walmart shooting
again isn't actually a story anymore. It's just like it's
just it's just another Tuesday. No.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
And this is like what the right wants, by the way,
is that like when they do these mass shootings, it
does not make the news, and whenever they can blame
a shooting on a queer a trans person, they try
to keep it make it be the only thing anyone
talks about, right, Like this is this is part of
the plan, you know. Yeah, And it's a bummer that
(16:51):
it's it's worked, just because like h it's impossible to
stay at an equal level of anger every time this happens.
It's so common, you know, like you just can't, you
can't continue existing and have the same reaction to these
that you had in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 4 (17:08):
Yeah, so I mean like that. I don't have much
else on this because it's just it's this guy who
played video games alone for most of his life, went
to a Christian online homeschool, never really interacted with the public.
It was almost solely existed within this this like medio
Ecosystem online, which pushed him towards buying a book on
the history of the SS and buying multiple Nazi flags
(17:31):
and not thinking the Holocaust is real. And this, this
is the inevitable result of this sort of thing. So
I guess do we want to segue to Vermont for
our next next? Like? Something happened I think less than
a week later.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
It sure did. But first, Garrison, speaking of Segus, did
you realize that the guy who bought the segue company
died in a segwe crash in Scotland? Yeah, segment he did, Garrison,
He sure did you know?
Speaker 4 (18:04):
This is this is why I think there is a
little bit of magic that Israel, because every once in
a while, the funniest thing happens.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
Oh man, what a what a stupid product segues. I
remember when those first came out and people were like,
this is the future of transportation, and then everyone who
was not completely brain deed was like, of course they're not.
Look at how dumb those things look. Nobody's gonna want
to drive these.
Speaker 4 (18:30):
I mean, if I was a self educated finance guy,
I'm sure I would be able to to to to
estimate the life cycle of of the segue.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
You're not gonna make it if you if you just
walk like a peasant, you gotta get a one wheel
that explodes.
Speaker 3 (18:46):
It's so funny to me too, because it's like like
a thing there. Like I genuinely think is a real
kind of shift in in our modes of transportation, is
that people really did start using electric bikes more and
then has a lot too and stuff.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
Yeah, it's like huge. Actually, instead, no, it's like, yeah,
we don't need you don't need to fuck with the
form factor. People are happy using bikes. They're just too
slow and sometimes too much effort is required. So you
make that easier and then people don't drive as fucking much.
Great idea. Speaking of a bad idea, let's talk about
(19:22):
this other mass shooter in Vermont from from last week.
This actually happened on Thanksgiving Day, so this guy. I
think it was on Thanksgiving Day.
Speaker 4 (19:32):
It may have been like a day or two later.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
It was Saturday night, so that would have been. Yeah,
that had been like the day or two after, two
days after Thanksgiving. So two days after Thanksgiving, you know,
you've got these three twenty year old Palestinian men who
are in town visiting family. You know they're doing. I
think they go over and do they do a Thanksgiving
dinner with some friends. They're over another thing people's.
Speaker 3 (19:54):
Yeah, yeah, this big thing they were leaving was it
was they they went to it an eight year old
birthday party.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
Yes, yes, yeah. They're with one of them's uncle who
lives in Burlington. And these kids are all students at
different Northeast I think, all Northeast colleges. One's from Brown University,
once from Haverford, one is from Trinity College. Two of
them are citizens and the other is I think naturalized
(20:22):
or at least a permanent resident. And at some point
after you know they're they're hanging out at this event,
family event, they're like, let's go on a walk. You know,
it's a nice night, let's let's have us a walk around.
And they're they're walking around, they're near an apartment building,
and this forty eight year old man named Jason j
Eaton steps off his porch, pulls out a gun, and
(20:45):
apparently without saying anything, fires at least four shots at
these three young men. Two of them are shot and
they're torso a third is shot in the lower extremities.
They are all alive. Still, they're all expected to live.
I think one of them was more seriously injured than
the others, but they're all like going to survive, thankfully.
And then Eaton flees on foot. I think, like the
(21:06):
next day the police catch up with him. He used
a three eighty pistol, if that matters to you, which
is a fairly small handgun, which probably explains why everybody's survived.
And yeah, so that's the extent of like what physically
happened on the day. Again, Eaton doesn't say anything before
he starts shooting. There's no evidence that he knew these guys.
(21:29):
They are apparently speaking in a mixture of Arabic and
English as they walk by, which and also at least
I think two of them were wearing like Palestinian color,
sort of shimogs or kefias. I don't think, I don't
know if it's like like not like the colors of
the Palestinian flag, but like the color palette there is
used in that specific it's like the white and black
(21:50):
yeah scarves. Yeah, yeah, yeah exactly. Eaton was a finance
broker and advisor kind of part time. I don't know
how much money he actually made from it.
Speaker 4 (22:01):
Yeah, he was like working on a farm part time. Yeah,
he was employed at Edward Jones a few years ago.
He's kind of yeah, he's this this libertarian finance bro.
Speaker 2 (22:12):
Yeah, and so yeah, people found his social pretty quickly.
There's like an archived Twitter, which is really standard uh
standard libertarian stuff. He talks about like he complains about
the Fed an awful lot. He quotes Elon Musk a
number of times. He seems to be a fan of him.
(22:32):
But he's also a huge fan of Bernie Sanders and
described ye like the only good man in politics pretty much.
Speaker 4 (22:38):
Yeah. I think it's kind of like it's kind of
like the Joe Rogan libertarian.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
Of like right, right, yes, very much.
Speaker 4 (22:44):
So you like Bernie because he's like he like cares
about like the people. He's not like he's not like
falling for like the big finance corporation stuff blah blah
blah blah blah.
Speaker 3 (22:53):
Yeah, it's it's like it's this old sort of like
the oh my god, what I've forgotten his name? Uh,
the libertarian guy from the two and early twenty tens.
Speaker 4 (23:03):
Who were the Riddler suits.
Speaker 3 (23:06):
No, he was a congressman. He was like he was
like one of the fashions in occupy was like these
weird libertarians and it's like this seems like that's like
the ideological as sentence of those people who didn't turn
into like neo Confederate like yeah people.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
And it's in his old archived Twitter account, he describes
himself like His profile describes him as radical citizen patrolling democracy,
which he spells with a K, and carapitalism for oath
keepers well oath creepers. I don't know entirely what all
of that means, and then hashtag wild type with the
(23:44):
little atomic symbol, which I guess means he likes science.
He describes himself as a dad and a part time farmer,
a reformed yes stockbroker, and his archived account includes a
link to his sub stack, which is is our DKL Radical.
He describes it as yeah wander wandering ramblings of a reformed
(24:05):
broker on the ADHD ASD spectrum. He's claiming at least
to have ADHD in autism. It's uh, he's deleted by
the time we got to them. Everyone got to them.
Most of the posts on his sub stack. The only
thing on there is a really extensive post where he's
like talking about how how restaurants can keep dishwashers employed.
(24:27):
He seems to have worked this one and be angry
that they're not always paid fair wage commencer to back
on the lions or in front of the Lion staff,
I guess, which is like not unreasonable, but an odd
thing for him to be so focused on.
Speaker 4 (24:40):
He has a really interesting online footprint. Yes, at least
like everything like pre pandemic is like he's like this
regular libertarian finance guy. Like there's not like there's nothing
too concerning. He's like he's yeah, he's like retweet like
(25:00):
the Libertarian Party of Tennessee saying that they like Bernie
Sanders and like he's he has like this podcast where
he talks about penny stalks, and it's like it's a
lot of like you see lots of these types of
guy around and most of them are just like guys
in their forties, because that's what he was, Just like
a libertarian guy in his forties who lived in Vermont.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
So like, yeah, so you know, as you kind of
stated Garrison, he's pretty normal up until he gets like
COVID hits, and that seems to be what pushes him
over the limit. I want to read a quote from
Vice News here, who's done a lengthy breakdown of his
social media presence. One post from March twenty twenty two
(25:43):
titled thought crime. It's an anti vax screed that labels
COVID nineteen as a government conspiracy. The scale and scope
of this operation was next level, he wrote. He also
shared other anti VAX sentiments on his LinkedIn and wrote
last year that he'd started deleting or unpublishing certain posts
because my ideas make some people not want to hire me.
He also has an Instagram account, which is largely dedicated
(26:03):
to sharing images from his farm. Only one post hints
at any ideological or political outlook, which is a screenshot
from the Urban Dictionary Definition of America with a K,
a word used to describe the worst sense of the
United States, i e. Imperialism, corruption and the global exportation
of American culture. His Instagram links to another blog, which
has the same name as his substack and contains rambling
podcasts about the financial system. He's uploaded documentation of his
(26:27):
various qualifications over the years. One document indicates that he
was a boy Scout leader between at least twenty seventeen
and twenty twenty one. Don't worry everyone, the Boy Scouts
are not letting this guy continue to be an adult leader.
Speaker 4 (26:39):
Yeah. It's the homepage of his website just reads together
no King, And there's a lot of stuff that looks
like it's been deleted, a lot of weird financial advice
under the name Radical Citizen spelled all stupid. But I
(27:00):
i've I've I found his YouTube pretty quick. I found
his LinkedIn pretty quick. There's a lot of like vaccin
it's his his His YouTube starts with a lot of
like vaccine hesitancy stuff. Yeah, and then on his LinkedIn
he moves into like full full, like weird, like COVID conspiracies,
vaccine denial, vaccine conspiracy theories. And I will say I've
never seen a shooter post like this on LinkedIn before.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
Yes, that's interesting, really unique.
Speaker 4 (27:26):
It's it's really unique thing. Like so you'll find stuff
like this on like Reddit, you'll find stuff like this
on Twitter, but having having a shooter share this types
of conspiratorial content on LinkedIn and then talk about how
he has to delete some because he's not getting hired
because LinkedIn's a place to help you get hired. Like
that's like, it's it's it's a really weird platform. Yes,
(27:46):
this could just be his like libertarianness showing and like
they they use they use LinkedIn because it's like for
like business and finance, but it is certainly weird, Like
the way he was using it is is unlike most
most like either like like cod COVID, conspiracy shooters, vaccine shooters,
or whatever his motivation was for this, for targeting three
(28:08):
Palestinian people. It's it's certainly certainly a unique facet of
this incident.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
Yeah, yeah, so I don't know. I mean, in some
ways this is a pretty standard case and that like
not the specific things that this guy is starting point,
but just the fact that this is a guy who's
clearly open to some level of right wing politics and
thought influencers. And it seems as if COVID nineteen drove
(28:37):
him off a wall ideologically.
Speaker 3 (28:40):
Yeah, and I mean, it wouldn't surprise me if this
winds up being a very you know, if we wind
up finding out that a specific motivation for this santi
Palsinian racism, because yeah, well yeah, we know it also
probably is.
Speaker 4 (28:58):
But his mom just him as a Christian who takes
his spirituality very seriously. She said that he thought the
whole state of the world was kind of like a
big mess right now, like everything, everything spiritually is kind
of falling apart, is what his mom said. Because he
he was he was at Thanksgiving dinner with his family
like two nights before this happened. They said he seemed
(29:20):
to act be acting like like his usual self. Not
not saying like, you know, not saying that he was
acting good, but like he was acting normal for him. Yeah,
but no, he certainly had some some degree of religious affiliation.
He talked about using his religious statust as to get
(29:40):
like vaccine exemptions for his kids. So there's stuff stuff
like that that that that that does tie to his
religious background, which which could certainly contribute to to anti
Palestinian violence.
Speaker 2 (29:56):
Yeah, and I don't know, if I had to say,
oom kind of how this went down Without more evidence,
my guess would be he was having a bad day,
probably you know that kind of after the holiday depression.
That's not uncommon. He's like listening to or reading some
sort of listening to some sort of weird conspiracy podcast,
(30:19):
or he's just falling down another rabbit hole online. He
gets angrier and angrier, and he hears some people talking
in Arabic outside, looks out his window, sees a Palestinian
Keffia and decides, I'm going to just start shooting. I
don't actually know, like, I don't know what else it
could be. He can't have These people were not like
regular walkers in his neighborhoods, so this can't have been
(30:40):
like he wasn't laying in wait for them. This seems
like from you know, it must have been like a
spur of the moment thing, right, He waited.
Speaker 4 (30:47):
For the ATF to come to his door. He said,
He said, like I've been expecting you or I've been
waiting for you or something, and he said, I don't
want to say anything without a lawyer. So like he
he had like you know, like the libertarian script of
like is what you say if the police are coming
to arrest you is like, yeah, he didn't. He didn't
like kill himself at the end of this act of
violence like a lot of other shooters do. He was
(31:07):
very very like put together weirdly.
Speaker 2 (31:10):
And he's he's lawyered up. I guess we'll learn more.
Speaker 4 (31:13):
But yeah, no, it's it's it's certainly interesting. I mean,
I've been scrolling through the past two years of LinkedIn
posts where he posted a lot on like LinkedIn's like
social platform, and it's a big mix of like big
mix of like financial conspiracy theories and COVID conspiracy theories
and vaccine conspiracy theories. I can certainly see how the
way the way, like libertarians in general the past three years, past,
(31:38):
like five years, six years, may maybe even since like
the Tea Party realistically have just you have been getting
increasingly aligned with like other aspects of the far right
where uh it contributes to like transphobia or contributes to racism, xenophobia, homophobia. Yeah,
like that that that has big that that ven diagram
(32:01):
is slowly becoming more of a circle. And I can
certainly see if this guy, this guy obviously was listening
to podcasts, if he was making he was making a
financial podcast at some point. Yeah, he like, I can
totally see if if you're listening to libertarian podcasts, you
slowly getting all of these other kind of beliefs that
have been seeping in to almost the entirety of the
(32:21):
libertarian political project. If you see, like a few years ago,
he was retweeting posts from like the libertarian parties of
these various states, and now many of those accounts are
just run by Nazis.
Speaker 2 (32:33):
Like, yeah, it is.
Speaker 4 (32:34):
It is like, yeah, watching how the posting trends of
like official libertarian party affiliated accounts have changed, the past
few years, specifically the New Hampshire account.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
Yeah, oh my god, quite is quite something. Yeah, and
it's it's not always what you'd think because the the
the Louisiana Libertarian Party is like super chill, reasonable, anti racist,
you know, guy, Whereas yeah, the New Hampshire Liberty Terran Party,
dude is like just a straight up Nazi. Yeah, interesting, interesting,
(33:05):
good stuff. Should we do our second ad break? Did
we already do that?
Speaker 4 (33:09):
Did we already do it?
Speaker 2 (33:10):
Anyway, Daniel? If we didn't do a second ad break,
here's our second ad break. Ah, we're back after either
our second ad break or that will be edited out
(33:30):
because we already did do we forgot which Daniel will
figure it out, and you the listener will never know
if I fucked up. Dani'll keep it in if I
fuck up.
Speaker 3 (33:40):
Yeah, And speaking of speaking of stuff that's fucked up, yeah, yeah.
So the last thing I want to talk about is
this is this is an older This is from like October, right, Yeah,
this is from October fourteenth, and I think it's specifically
this is this is seven days after the sort of
Amos attack that started all of the sort of stuff
(34:01):
that's been happening in Palestine. Yeah, so in Plainfield, which
is this kind of Yeah, it's it's like a.
Speaker 4 (34:10):
It's a really far suburb of Chicago.
Speaker 3 (34:12):
Yeah, it's it's in these things where it's like it's
in the kind of I don't know, almost a borderline
of is it a suburb like it is it's a
place that sucks ass. Yeah, and no offense to anyone
living there with yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:26):
No, like there are good people there, but it some
of them I assume are good people.
Speaker 3 (34:31):
Yeah. So on on the fourteenth, a seventy one year
old man named Joseph Cuspa, who was the landlord of
a Palestinian woman and her son, and you know, okay,
so this story, this story just sucks. They had actually
so these this family and their landlord had been like
(34:51):
pretty close friends. Like the family had considered him like
like a like they considered him like a grandfather. And
this guy comes through the door and the six year
old kid runs up to go hug him, and he
stabs the kid twenty six times and kills him, nearly
kills his mom. He's screaming like the entire time about
(35:14):
like yeah, he's screaming, you Muslims have to die. You're
killing our kids in Israel. You Palestinians don't deserve to live.
And this is a I think this is a kind
of a kind of different kind of shoot of well
actually a different kind of like killing than the ones
we've been talking about, because this is a very sort
of like wake of two thousand and one killing where
(35:36):
you have this enormous, enormous spike in Islamophobia, very specifically here,
you have this incredible spike in in anti Palastinian racism,
and you have this this period like especially in the
week I mean, and this is still happening to this day,
but in like the week after, in the week after
this all started, you could say fucking anything you could say.
(35:56):
You could you could like you could talk about fucking
turning the Gauza strip the glass, like you could talk
about fucking dropping nucause, you could talk about killing every
single Palestinian on earth. And it was and no one
fucking said anything, right, all these fucking people, all of
these fucking all these fucking journalists said nothing. All Like
the president, Like, the President only starts talking about his
homophobia after this fucking kid gets stabbed the death and
(36:18):
you know, and this guy is listening to right wing
talk radio, which is why you know, this is like,
this is a this is an older like this, this
is a this is a specific kind of killing that
like I think is very very similar to the the
enormous number of Muslims who were killed. And I will
seek people too because these people are just really racist. Yeah,
and Palestenians people who were just killed right after nine
to eleven, because there's just this wave of the US
(36:40):
that gets into one of these sort of murder frenzies,
like one of these sort of racist frenzies.
Speaker 2 (36:45):
And this kid.
Speaker 3 (36:46):
Gets stabbed the death, and yeah, this guy you know,
and I mean and like I think, I think I
think about this case right like this is you know,
this is a radicalization in terms like in terms of
like going from going from literally like this kid is
running up to hug him because like he had built
like a treehouse for the family before this, right like
(37:08):
like in and over the course of like seven days,
this guy goes from that to like we need to
kill all Muslims. We need to like stab them to death,
right like it's it's horrible and and this is you know,
like this kind of stuff just keeps happening, and you know,
like the only time, the only the media literally only
(37:30):
covers this stuff like in terms of like, oh, it's
casting a Democrats support and it's like, you guys, just
I don't know. The extense of which the media has
been utterly and completely complicit in anti Polsinian racism has
been appalling, and you know it's killed people now. Yeah,
and there will there will be no reckoning with this
(37:52):
because the US media does this ship all the time
and no one cares.
Speaker 2 (37:56):
And yeah, by by a wide margin, the most disturbing
thing about this is just and I think what separates
this from the two thousand and one stuff, because this
version of this attack in two thousand and one would
have just been some racist stranger who saw, you know,
a Muslim person or just a person he assumed look
like they were Muslim and attacked but did not have
(38:16):
a relationship with them. This guy is super close to
this kid, right, This is like an example of how
fairly integrated this community was. And it's the again an
example kind of what we're seeing in most of these
other attacks we've talked about, except of that Nazi is
like these people who are a lot more normal. And
then I'm going to guess if we when we find
(38:39):
out more about the dude who stabbed that kid, a
lot of his drift happened after COVID, right. You know,
it's a product of this right wing media ecosystem that
again exists purely to do this sort of thing, but
it's also a product of COVID. Right, it's a product
of this lockdown that just fucking shattered so many people.
Speaker 4 (39:02):
It's the one other thing I will mention because it
is relevant because the trial is starting. Is another extremely
targeted attack with the murder of Brianna Jai. Yeah, the
perpetrators were very familiar they were, they were interested in
killing her specifically because Brianna was trans.
Speaker 3 (39:21):
I don't I don't know if we talked about this
on the show that.
Speaker 4 (39:24):
I don't think we did.
Speaker 2 (39:25):
I don't happened.
Speaker 4 (39:27):
No, But with with with with the trial happening, we're
we've gotten text exchanges between the two people who were
involved in the killing, and it's it's very very very
telling the way they were talking about Brianna like as
this as this like object and very very very specifically
(39:48):
like uh like almost like stalking and gaining familiar with
her specifically to kill her out of like fascination.
Speaker 3 (39:56):
Oh wait, So so for people who don't know what
this is, Brianna was, I think she was fifty sixteen sixteen,
sixteen year old trans girl in the UK who was
stabbed to death by two other kids. And yeah, so
the trial's like happening right now and it's it's really
really fucking sucks.
Speaker 2 (40:17):
Yeah, she was, she was.
Speaker 3 (40:17):
Killed earlier this year. Yeah, and yeah, I mean, if
you if you want to understand what transphobes think about
trans people, like those texts are as clean as an
example that you're going to get about how like all
(40:38):
of the fucking right wing media people and all of
the sort of like you know, like all of the
most sort of like absolutely like committed transphobes think about
trans but how they talk about us like in in
closed like like behind closed doors where they think you
will never see it.
Speaker 2 (40:56):
And this this is just this is just how they talk.
Speaker 3 (40:57):
About us, And this is what happens is people like
people fucking weirder trans people and yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:06):
Yeah, well then yep, all right, well folks, this has
been uh it could happen here? A podcast about terrorism? Goodbye?
Speaker 4 (41:19):
Do we want to try to end in any literally
any other way?
Speaker 2 (41:25):
I'm you know, no, Garrison, We're not. That's the end
of the podcast. Goodbye.
Speaker 5 (41:37):
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 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.
It Could Happen Here News
Hosts And Creators
Robert Evans
Garrison Davis
James Stout
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