It Could Happen Here Weekly 43

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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 gotta be nothing new here for you, but you
can make your own decisions. Welcome to it could happen

(00:27):
here a podcast that, for the first time ever, is
being recorded on an earth that I no longer have
to share with that fascist rap baster chinzawabe. And with
with me, with me to celebrate this occasion is Garrison Davis. Hi, Hello,
and James, have have we actually have we like introduced you?

(00:47):
Introduced you? Yet I didn't think so. No, I just
pop up talking about three D printed guns and people
who hate butterflies. Yeah, this is this is truly a
dark day for democracy. I am saddened by the horrible
loss of a great leader, UM, A hero to feminism

(01:08):
and women UM, and I guess a hero to those
who defend war crimes. So I guess before heard before
before Wefore we get into one of the funniest things
that has happened in maybe twenty years. Um, you do
you want to like talk about who you are? Because
you are now one of us and I'm very excited
about it. Yeah, I'm wanted. Yeah, I'm now a podcast. Yeah.

(01:32):
Um so who I am? I am a journalist, I guess,
uh and a historian and I wrote a book about
the first week of the Spanish Civil War. And my
PhD is in the history of international anti fascism, building
international anti fascist alliances through physical culture, which is very nerdy,

(01:54):
but yeah, I love that stuff with else I'm British
if that had not been made abundantly clear but accent.
And I live in southern California, which means this is
a Now this episode is a majority Commonwealth episode. Really exciting.
We made it. Yeah, well we do in the national

(02:15):
anthem in a minute here and we'll just stand up.
Uh so, ex Prime Minister kind of he's not around anymore,
is he? No? He is dead as fuck? So all
right we should I guess I guess we should explain
who Shenzo Abe is. Yeah. Okay, if if you want

(02:37):
a really really long account of what the Japanese Liberal
Democratic Party is because they are some of the worst
people who've ever existed democratic How can this be? So?
The very short version of this is that the Liberal
Democratic Party is a party that was founded by Nobusuke Kishi,

(02:58):
who is one of history's worst war crimin les person
like personally responsible for enslaving hundreds of thousands of people
in China. Uh. He's the guy who basically he's the
guy who was in charge of the economy of the
fascist war machine, like like in Japan Jua War two.
He was the guy who ran like the sort of
fascist puppet state called Manchuqua that was run by Japan

(03:21):
after they conquered it. Uh. Real war criminal also just
like personally raped a like extremely large number of people.
I think that, like I was almost never discussed when
people talk about him, almost like like a shockingly high
white number. Yeah. It's of sex crimes. It's wild. Yeah.

(03:42):
And he's also mean. He's involved with the Japanese military
sex slave program, which he referred to as comfort women.
And I refused to call the comfort women because that
is a fucking horrifying euphemism for again, a program of
military sex slavery. Uh. He also was one of the
people who signed off on Unit seven thirty one, which
was Japan's chemical weapons testing unit where they fucking like

(04:04):
purposely infested, in facted and tested chemical weapons on prisoners. Uh. Yeah,
he's one of the worst people ever. And then he
got a bunch of CIA backing and so backing from
the Aukuza because the CIA is working with the Yakuza
on early uh fifty Japan. And she's able basically to
force all of the other conservative like people to join

(04:26):
his party, and the sort of the merger of the
of the Liberal Party, Liberal Party and the Democratic Party
is now the Liberal Democratic Party. This is Keishi's party.
He founded it. Uh, he drags everyone else into it.
He does an immense amount of corruption. He tries to
bring fascism back. He narrowly fails. Shinzo Abe is his grandson. Uh.
The LDP Liberal Democratic Party, Yeah has Yeah, it sucks.

(04:48):
It's like like the way that I've been thinking about,
like how do you explain this to people who don't
who don't have like a background in like Japanese like
war crime stuff. Is like imagine if like one of
Hitler's generals had like survived World War Two and then
the CIA made him made him the Prime Minister of Germany,
and then and he got more fascist because people were

(05:10):
saying mean things about his grandpa. He's like, oh, I
don't like that they're calling him bad names. I'm going
to get more fascist down. So, like ill Be, Abbe himself,
he's carried he's been carrying out a lot of the
same things that that she was trying to do. Kishi
was trying to sort of restore the sort of full
fascist power of the police. Abe has been doing a
whole bunch of shifts of centralizing power in the executive

(05:33):
and spanning the police's power to just arrest whoever the
funk they want. Um. So, one of one of the
other things about Japan is that like legally in their
constitution they can't go to war. And like both Kishi
and Abbe like this is like they're big fucking things
that they want. They want to fully rearm Japan and
they want Japan be able to go to war because
they want to do the fucking empire again. And you know,

(05:55):
so this has led. Yeah, Abe has been doing fat um.
He also the thing he's probably most famous for in
terms of like the reasons people think he's bad because
he is he's like just actually a monster. Is he's
just like a like unfathomable degree of war crime denial,
like he he pulled. So Japan in the nineties had

(06:18):
admitted that they fucking kidnapped and enslaved like an enormous
number of people from of people from Korea, people from China.
I think they also did. They did in the Philippines
and Indonesia too, although there's less sort of coverage of that,
and like tourn them into military sex slaves, did things
to them that are like, I fucking unspeakable. Um. And

(06:39):
so the Japanese government in the nineties had admitted they
did this and apologized for it, and Abe was like, no,
funk that that's that's wrong. He's also a part of
this group called Niponka Guy, which is like a fascist group.
And okay, so this this is, this is according to
a US congressional report, what they believe quote Japan should
be applauded for liberating must of East Asia from western

(07:00):
colonial powers, that the ninety eight Tokyo War crivate stripe
unials were illegitimate, and that the killings by Japanese troops
through the nineteen thirties seven Nunjing massacre were exaggerated or fabricated.
Oh boy. They also openly yeah yeah, yeah, they also
saw the nudging denialists. They're they're they're sex slave denialists.
They openly call for the restoration of the monarchy and

(07:21):
the institution of Shinto as a state religion. Umb like
a like has continuously said that the sex slave like
did it were like, did were there voluntarily? Does another
thing that but but but but Hillary Clinton just tweeted
that preg Minister was a champion of democracy and a
firm believer that new economy, society, country can achieve its

(07:43):
full potential if you leave women behind. What you know,
she to be fair, to be fair, to be fair,
both abbe and nobody. She did, in fact believe in
using women to fuel the economy, just not in that way.
He also, there's there's neverthing that so probably these most
like famous most controversial thing was. So there's the shrine

(08:06):
called the um Yasukuni Shrine, which is is the shrine
is dedicated to soldiers who like died serving the Japanese
emperor and in in this so there's this thing called
the Book of souls that has like lists of names
right of just like the other people who died, and
a thousand sixty eight of the people who were of
the people in that book are people who were who

(08:27):
were convicted of war crimes. And there are also at
fourteen Class A war criminals who either died or were
executed who are considered martyrs there and Abe fucking like
visited there and like brand and ship and this piste
off everyone, any I mean, this is like there are
lots of people who have gotten mad and me already
for celebrating Abbe's death, and my, my, my, My official
line on this is, if ab didn't want me to

(08:48):
celebrate his fucking death, maybe he shouldn't have celebrated the
lives of the people who killed my fucking family, So
fuck them. Yeah, so he's not not not a great dude,
This real pack an automatic. The other thing we should
mention too before we go into sort of like the
details of the shooting is that there is an election actually,

(09:09):
but by by the time this episode drops, I think
the election will have happened, um, where there is a
real chance that the Liberal Democratic Party is going to
sort of like just fucking sweep it. Because Liberal Democratic
Party immediately start to blame me the left for this. Uh,
there's a whole bunch of i mean, just absolutely horrifying
stuff where they're blaming Korean people who live in live

(09:32):
in Japan, which, if you know anything about Japanese history,
when that stuff starts happening, like in in after the
Canto earthquake, h a bunch of people just started blaming
Koreans for the whole thing, and they fucking literally exterminated
almost the entire Korean population in several major Japanese cities.
And so this stuff is very scary. Uh, it's possible

(09:52):
that this is going to set off like an incredible
right wing lyrici of Japanese politics, and there's a chance
that this this this could be the actual thing that
like full on triggers Japan like we are being and
you know, going back into sort of just being a
pure fascist empire. So this is not Yeah, that that
part is really bad. The motivation for the assassination is still,

(10:15):
at least at time of recording, still slightly unclear, very
uncle according according to some politicians and news media, we
do know the suspect is Hito Kojima. That you can
you can infer a little bit fased on. So yeah,
there's there's like French politicians and a Greek news channel

(10:35):
who are you see pictures of video developer Hideo Kojima
and passing them off as the shooting suspect, which is
really funny. It is funny. Pictures of Kachima like inside
like a Russian like communist hat fucking thing, pictures of
him wearing a joker shirt and standing in front of

(10:57):
a Jacobara picture and there you see this as proof
that it's via left wing terrorist and it's actually video
game developer Tokajiba. It's yeah, So like I guess what
we know about the actual shooter, Um, we don't know
that much. Is a forty two year old guy who

(11:19):
was a former veteran of the of the Japanese Self
Defense Force. He was he was a Navy guy, which
I guess partially explains why he can shoot a gun. Um,
But yeah, the details are really murky. What what we've
got at time of recording is the Japanese police saying
that it wasn't because of a political thing, and that

(11:40):
it was because of a group that he was that
I was a member of who the funk knows what
that means. That can mean any number of things. I
I'm not going to speculate live on here because I
I don't know. Uh yeah. But also it was extremely
funny and we should we should talk about the weapon

(12:02):
that was. Yeah, this is why. This is one of
the reasons why it's extremely funny and we we should
probably gonna hand this over to James because James is
a bit a bit more of an expert in this
type of uh d I Y weapon rate. So what
what the fund is going on with this homemade gun? Yeah?

(12:22):
This ship, Yeah, this ship is fucking this ship. This
is crazy. Um, yeah, it's extremely funny. It's extremely funny
that all these people with fifty thou followers on Twitter
who quote and quote do Ocean like immediately label this
is a three D printed gun, which is not. It
does not look this gun is being held together with

(12:44):
duct tape like that. That is that. That is the
kind of weapon that we're dealing with. You. This is
this is a homemade gun like held together with fucking
duct tape. It is extremely It is like he got
blown up by an electric blunderbuss. It is Yeah, like
there they're gonna be well, be three D printed parts
in like around it. But it is, but it's not

(13:04):
it's not looking it's it's it's not like it's not
like a neducite or anything. Um, it's it's a weird
like electronic pipe duct taped together shotgun. Yeah, it's I
think perhaps if people don't understand, we should like break
down how firearms work broadly and then how this one
works specifically. Sure, right, so like and there's no reason

(13:26):
why you should be familiar with this, but like you
need something to explode, something to make it explode, and
something to go at the end, and a way to
make sure it only goes in one direction. Right. Uh
So what this character has done is seemingly it's yeah,
it's like a blunderbuss or a musket in that it
seems to be like muzzle loaded from the front. Uh
And uh, I'm looking at it now and it really

(13:49):
is just covered in duct tape. I tweeted a picture
of it. It's a gay. Yeah, this ship is is
very old fashioned. He seems to have made his own
powder to like it was very very smoky, which you
can do. I'm not gonna tell you how to do it,
but it's the thing that is possible, and so essentially
from what I'm seeing here, it looks like it's like
a piezo electric ignition which then ignites his homemade powder

(14:13):
that he had, uh, and then he's put something in
a shotgun. Means it doesn't have rifling right, so it
doesn't impart spin on the projectile. So he's basically got
two pipes, a piezo electric ignited some homemade powder, and
then he could have put nails in there. He could
have put a cast lead ball, anything, bolts. And this

(14:34):
wasn't the only homemade weapon he had. The police rated
his house. He had a whole bunch of supplies that
looks it looks out of like it looks like it's
out of like fallout or something. It is like there
was one like blunderbust that had nine different barrels all
duct tapes together. It's like exposed wiring, exposed circuit boards,

(14:59):
like it's it's like it's extremely JANKI yeah, it's like
I'm not entirely sure that the nine barrel one the
central barrel isn't touched by the by the structural duct tape,
and I'm not sure that it wouldn't have moved in
one direction or the other when he fired it in Yeah,
I think that's a there's like a yoga. I can't

(15:21):
see what he's put something on the He's made a
butt stock with that one, so like he can be
shoulder it, I guess. And I don't know if that's
like a piece of tire or what, but yeah, yeah,
this is not a precision weapon. Wooden boards. There's like
some type of like reflective it looks almost like a
smartphone's attached to some of the wiring or there's something

(15:42):
reflective screen that looks like it's like like an electronic
control box, which could could just be like an old
smartphone or something. Yeah, I wondered if he could, because
that's what you use for for an improvised explosive device, right,
it's a it's a cell phone to actuate it. So
it could be maybe he had a plan to just
put it near where are they going to be and
then call it and then think that would be well,

(16:04):
I mean, no, this this is a this is a
much better assassinated has the stock, So I'm guessing. I'm
guessing would he beginning to hold it because otherwise there's
no reason to put the butt stock there. Yeah, but
who knows this guy is operating a different level. We
have no way to know what he was thinking, at
least at least at least not at the moment. What

(16:25):
he was thinking was I want to kill Shinzo Abbe
with my pipes and planks. He did it. He's exactly
whatever you think of him. This man didn't successfully kill
Shenzo Abbe with a gun held together by duct tape.
It's it's pretty impressive, Like I think the everything about
this is kind of impressive. A he so so there
were there were two barrels on it that each fired,

(16:46):
and he managed to hit him from like a pretty
good distance away, Like we don't have there's there's no
video that directly well at least not that's out yet
that's like directly shows the shooting. We have a lot
of video because I was giving a speech, right, so
we have a bunch of video of like filming Abbe,
and it's and because of where it is coming from
off screen, like that was a pretty good distance. And

(17:06):
as best I can tell, he only hit Abbe. I
don't I don't think. I haven't seen any reports of
anyone else getting hit, So I yeah impressed. That is
actually that is actually kind of slightly surprising. Yeah, there
was there was no one else hit. It's like he
just got the guy. He was that that that is
genuinely pretty rare and assassinated, like like basically like a
homemade blunderbust cannon was like surprisingly surprisingly controlled and accurate. Yeah.

(17:33):
I just found a picture of it with the Cyberpunk
seven logo underneath you, which is pretty great. Yeah, this rule.
Yeah he did manage to cause it kind of just
put like a large, massive lead ball in it, I guess,
And yeah, whatever, because I don't think it I don't

(17:54):
think it was one thing. So that one of the
one thing I could say about the that we guys
we know about the EMMA was that like there they
were like a bunch of like they're they're one of
the munch of the reports about the injuries that he suffered.
We're talking about like he got hit in the back,
but they're also holes in his neck. So my guests
from a lot of there's a lot of blood from

(18:14):
a lot of different places. Yeah, I guess it wasn't
one thing then, but I don't know everything that was
kind of interesting about this is like the extent to
which Okay, so like he was like was like very
clearly dead, like people people had like reported him at
the scene is having no vitals and they were like, yeah,
his heart stopped, and they had like coptered at him

(18:35):
to like what tokyo, Yeah, tokyo. But the Japanese government
did a very good job of making sure the press
had like no information, and so there was just like
there was like many many many hours where they were
like pretending that he wasn't dead and like wouldn't confirm
that he was dead. And he's like this, this man
is clearly dead as shit, like he has gotten blown
up by a blunderbus like in the back. His next gone.

(18:57):
He's like, I mean he's not not gone, Like his
his neck is next been shot, his heart is stopped
and they just sort of like keep it there for
for a pretty impressively long long time. And that's the
only thing we we we know very little about what
happened and why um the pressidmen keeping the government's been
keeping a very tight lid on information about the shooting

(19:19):
so far. Yeah, I guess we want to pivot into
the gun control side of this sure, Um I guess okay,
so the I mean like there was a mayor shot
a few years ago. Yeah, justin seven Yaka is a
guy shot the mayor of Nagasaki. So like, and like
there's a there's been a lot of people, like journalists,
people who are like supposedly japan experts who are like, oh,

(19:41):
this is really rare in Japanese culture. Is like, no,
it's not. People get assassinated, like like the Japan has
a very low rate of gun violence, but of that
gun violence and the number of politicians gonna get assassinated
is like unbelievably high. And you know, I mean like
that there have been there there have been a lot
of I mean like Abe's like grandfather, it was a
yakishi like got stabbed right after we left office, like

(20:02):
and he only didn't die because the guy who stabbed
him claimed that he wasn't trying to kill him, he
was just stabbing him, which is one of the weirdest
things I've ever heard. I don't know, I I suspect
some yakuza bullshit was going on there, but yeah, like
Japan has assassinations, um it. There's there's this weird thing
where people think Japan is this place that's like like

(20:25):
no violence happens, like it's a completely orderly society. It's
like all this all this like weird stuff. Famously, Yeah,
it's like this this is a country. Like this is
a country where people like like even in like the
seventies and like through the eighties, people would charge like
RB convoys with sticks and like fight them. Like this

(20:46):
is a country that like like people they have a
sort of ape ship switch that just like yeah, they
have their fair share of like cults that do activite,
like the fair share of political extreamers that do exilence
like this and like everywhere else in like like everywhere

(21:07):
else in the world, stuff just happened sometimes. Yeah. Yeah,
I think it is interesting that like Japan has extremely
strict gun control, right like licenses, test background checks, prohibitions,
and most people learning and carrying. But like it's kind
of interesting that this is more of a like a

(21:27):
First Amendment question, I guess in American terms, right, Like,
if you're on the internet enough, I'm sure it looks
like this person has just googled how to make gun
and like this is what came up. And so I
think it's kind of fascinating that that this person has
been like aside from their possible connection to any criminal networks,

(21:49):
but like I know the Yakuza were selling guns to
people in me and Mark pretty recently, so they have
access to this. Yeah, and like the mayor who got
whacked by yaks A guy, like if the Arkansa is
going to do like I don't know if yours is
going to do a killing like they like they they
have access to weapon, they would use a real gun
active together. Okay, so like probably, but also like I

(22:11):
wouldn't completely rule it out because I wouldn't rule out
them just finding some guy and doing this thing the
FBI does and it's like, hey, you're gonna go do
an attack now, Like it wouldn't It wouldn't surprise me
if that if they did that as like a possible
ideally thing, but like we don't know. Um, I still
don't think we can rule out that head out. Kajima
is the mastermind behind this, um and it's all I mean,

(22:33):
it's I know right, it's it's just employed to play
his next game. UM just have to add a few
like nonsense names to the all the all the people involved,
like blunderbustman. And then it's just it's it's easy, easy.
But yeah, it's fascinating that this person was seemingly like

(22:54):
maybe had other plans or had tried several other like
craft firearms, and settled on this one. But yeah, they
had access to a lot of pipes, that's for sure.
Did you guys see the yuk As a guy who
was arms dealing to me and Ma? No, no, oh,
for fucking wild. So he he was like extensively stung

(23:17):
by the Feds to this guy he was yuk As.
He was part of it, like an ongoing sting operation
for like several years where he was selling like basically
like trading guns for drugs, trading guns to buy drugs.
He was selling to a couple of groups in Me
and Ma. He was two groups in the Tamil region

(23:39):
and a couple of other people and he uh, he
was at least one of the people he thought was
a buyer was actually a fed. And they've captured all
of these amazing conversations where they call the guns like
cake and ice cream. Like one of the one of
the things in the the criminal complaint, it's a picture

(24:01):
of him just with like a a law like an
anti tank weapon, and he's just like giving it like
the V sign, and he's wearing these like yellow aviators
and a leather jacket. Like the way they arrested him
was at a steakhouse I think either in New York
or New Jersey, but like they lured him into a
steakhouse meeting and then he got busted by the FEDS.

(24:23):
But yeah, these guys were trafficking like serious stuff like
surface to our missiles some things. They have access to
some pretty heavy equipment. Yeah, that's a that's a pretty
old Like the officer has been sort of like I
don't know how you describe it, like a kind of
like para arm of the Japanese state in a lot

(24:45):
of ways for a very very long time. Like there
are there have been like because of people with basically
special forces training. Um, they they at one point like
kidnapped and killed the Empress of Korea as part of
like a thing to like justify started a or so
they are they're very well hooked up. I I I
don't know, it's still unclear to be because like that's

(25:07):
the obviously everything again, like they're the LDP has a
lot of the Akasa connections because kind of okay, partially
kind of everything is, but partially also because the accusae
were like a sort of founding like political block of
the l d P in the first place. So who knows,
like LDP people have gotten like attacked by Akas people before.

(25:31):
It could be that, it could be something else. We
sort of just don't know yet. Um. Yeah, there's nothing
identifying this guy. Like I'm just looking at a picture
of him and there's nothing particularly sort of identifying his
clothing or anything like that. Yeah, I guess, I guess
that's the deficitions of extremely funny critical support to Hideo

(25:55):
Kajima and all of the other freedom fighters. Oh, I
guess guess when you talk a little bit about the
international response to this, Yeah, because people have no idea
what's ethnic. Yeah, I mean, like so like all the
Americans are sorry of like are doing the all American
liberals deserve of doing that, Like, oh my god, he
was a good guy. It's like, no, he wasn't. This
guy was a monster. Um Okay, I will say this,

(26:20):
Both the Chinese and the Korean embassies are being surprisingly
diplomatic about it, as in no one they haven't no
one has actively insulted him yet social media wise. Likely
that's a good move for like inter country relationship, but like, okay,
like try Japanese relationships with Korea with South Korea and

(26:40):
North Korea are really bad, and a lot of the
reason why they're really bad is specifically because of Chanawabe
and because of all of his bullshit. Happy but they're
not going to like Rubb it. I mean, it's not
clear to me that they wouldn't have done this if
this had happened like the two Tho tangs, Like these
guys really hate each other. Um. Yeah, there's been some

(27:03):
sort of like people people are trying to do a
Taiwan angle on this because Obb is like a Taiwan supporter,
But I don't Yeah, I don't think there's actually that much.
The people want this to have much more geo political
like significance than it probably actually will. Um yeah, yeah,

(27:23):
well it's meantime. Yeah, fascist is dead. That's always funny.
It happened, Uh it did in fact happen here. Well,
it happened over there, but you know what I mean, Um,
it could happen here. Sertain statistically we are we are
about to do based on. Yeah, yeah, you wouldn't need

(27:46):
to to deductate model in America. No, with the amount
of firearms here, it is kind of a little is
sometimes a little surprising how little stuff like this actually happens.
There's obviously a lot of work that goes into like
preventing it, but but still sometimes it's it's kind of
it's kind of shot king. Um. Yeah, like I think,
I think. I think if you look at the last
twenty years, I think more Japanese politicians have been assassinated

(28:06):
to American politicians. Like I'm trying to think of an
American politician because because they do a lot more American
politicians and a lot of guns they killed, they killed
when when they went after Gabby giffordge they killed someone,
I think, But yeah, I don't I'm trying to think
of anyone else other than that, um not in recent memory.

(28:29):
The guy who showed Reagan is now touring. Yeah, but
he didn't even kill him. That's not even assassination. That's
just an assassination attempts like a very bouched one. Yeah.
Yeahs that crossover between John Hinckley and Hideo Kajima, It's
possible that will be the game. I'm just gonna keep

(28:49):
referring to the suspect of Hideo Kajima. It's worth noting
that like he did have armed God, so were um
God's president. That you can see their guns in their
whole services. They take down the person who shot him,
but they they were not on their A game that day. Yeah,
that you can see in the video. There's like one

(29:11):
of the guys, I think, trying to like get a
bulletproof briefcase in between Abe and the guy and just
doesn't work. It just it just it just fails completely.
They had one job they didn't Yeah, like the operation
meat Shield. They weren't just on they weren't just not
on their A game. They completely feel that they're over. Yes,

(29:35):
it's not like the guy even tried to run away.
He just like stood there and got arrested. Yeah. Yeah,
he did not really put much of a did not
put up much of a fight. Yeah, yeah, he know
he didn't. Yeah, he he went down pretty fast. I
guess he went with like this small again, maybe to
conceal it, because it looks like he was pretty close. Yeah,
that is that is very likely. Well, a very dark

(29:57):
day for democracy, um dark day for feminism um as
Hillary Clinton said, Ah anyway, yeah, yeah, Luckily they have
RAMA Manual as a bastard to your pan to come
to them in it's difficult. The the the l d
P are the only people on earth who does who
actually deserve RAMA Manual. So look, if if you, if

(30:19):
you didn't want to have to deal with RAMA Manual,
you should have taken all that's your money. Is this
is this is now their curse. Well, I'm sure we'll
talk more about these types of holmemade weapons and all
that kind of kind of stuff in the future because
it is. It is interesting. And you know, places where
places where like actual firearms are hard are harder to get.
We're seeing more and more ship like this popping up.
Yeah yeah, and that'll that would definitely be worth be

(30:42):
worth getting into, along with three D printed weapons. All right,
anything else to add? Does that? Does Does that? Do it? Yeah?
I think that's a wrap. All right? Well, follow the
show on Twitter, Instagram. But happened here pod and cools
the media, Uh, see you next time? Even critical support
to Hideokachima, welcome to it could happen here the podcast

(31:22):
that just happened here? All right, that's my by part done, Chris,
What are we What are we talking about today? I
I have brought you all here today to discuss one
of the most sacred and variable of our political institutions,
an institution whose words echo through history and carved the political, legal,
and economic framework of our world. I am referring, of course,

(31:44):
to the bread riot. Hey, there we go. I love
good bread riot. I do too. This is this is
a good a non zero part of why I wrote
this episode. How how is this? How is this relatable?
The grain supplies seems really stable right now? It's all
what everyone says about the grain supply. No one. No
one has thrown a ball top through a bank window
in two hundred years. I was. I was reliably informed

(32:08):
by several Marxist historians that that bread riots were over.
I'm gonna I'm gonna google Ukrainian wheat harvest, as I
do every exactly five years. The moment just now came
up where where I check it every five years. Let
me just uh, is there a problem? Well, let me

(32:31):
go eat my fifth wonder bread slice of the day
and not think about it. Good stuff, all right? So yeah,
let's talk bread riots. Yeah, we're talking bead riots. So
prep riots are an ancient institution. Um, you can, I mean,
you can find them like very easily as far back
as the Roman Republic, of Roman Republican policy bread like Okay,

(32:53):
if you wanted to go further back than that, I
have no doubt you could like spend probably ten minutes
and find bread rioting in like Sumeria or something. I
didn't do this. And the reason I didn't do this,
even though I'm talking about the history of the bread riot,
is that the sort of the structure of the bread
riot is shaped inexorably by the sort of political and
economic conditions around it, and the political and economic condition

(33:15):
of ancient Rome are somewhat similar to us, but not really.
So instead of doing that, we're starting in the late
seventeen hundreds, where there are a lot of bread riots,
but particularly there's a lot of very well documented bread
riots in the UK and France. And I guess but
before we actually like talk about the specific riots, we
should you should talk about what a bread right actually

(33:37):
is because okay, so I mean, on a very superficial level,
of bread riot is when people don't have bread and
they riot, But the actual response to that and what
the riots look like are interesting and sort of complicated. Um,
I'm going to quote now from the book Free Markets
and Food Riots. This is just talking about specifically the
seventeen hundreds riots. But yeah, food riots took several forms.

(34:00):
A the blockader and trade that prevented the export of
grain from an area in which shortages existed. Be the
price riot or taxation popularity in which food was seized
by protesters, a just price set and the lot sold.
See a grarian demonstrations in which farmers destroyed their own produces,
a dramatic protest. Indeed, the market right, in which the

(34:21):
crowd took me retribute of action against commercial agents, bakers
and millers and local magistrates in the form of looting
or tumultuous assembly to force dealers and local authorities to
reduce prices. So, okay, there's a lot of different things
going on here. We're going to get back to the
farmer's protest stuff like a lot later because the specific
kind of like rural like versions of this kind of

(34:42):
fading into the background for a couple of centuries. Um,
what's happening the urban centers. That was really interesting in
a lot of ways, and it gets at the core
of what's going on in these sort of like late
santeen hundreds riots. Notably, the crowds who are doing the
rioting are just like they're not just like seizing the
bread and eating it, which is a thing that like
you would assume they would be doing if they were

(35:02):
you know, it's a bunch of people who are starving
and there's bread and they take it, right, But that's
that's actually not what they're doing. What they're doing is
essentially negotiating over price. You see this in the sort
of price riot thing, right. You know. The thing that
they actually do is they see a bunch of grain
and then they sell it off at what they sort
of like and what they deem a fair price is.
And you know what what this is the something to

(35:23):
do basically is it's it's a it's a very very
direct way of trying to get bakers to lower their prices.
And the other thing that's about these riots is that
they are they're they're very politically sophisticated, and they're they're
very targeted. Um, there's the thing you hear a lot,
and if if you ever read anything about any modern riot,
you will hear just people ranting about how people are

(35:46):
destroying blindly destroying their own neighborhoods, and it's it's just
like not true. Riots tend to have sort of riots
tend to have a sort of political specific political focus
and attacking specific targets, which is why, like, you know,
the first things that go up in a riot are pawnshops,
liquor stores, police stations, and now stores that think they're
employed employees badly They literally have specific targets. Yeah, yeah,

(36:10):
like it it's you know, it's it's it's very like
all all of all of the stuff that's happening is
stuff that has like it's the result of political grievances
that people have sort of been accumulating for a long time.
And this is also true of these sort of of
these early bread riots too. Going back to the book,
free Markets and food rights, protesters did not rampage indiscriminately,

(36:30):
but focus their wrath in particular individuals and institutions whom
the crowd held responsible for unjust practices. Typically, it was
not the producers or retailers of food, but the middlemen
who were seen as responsible for shortages and price raises.
The grain dealers wholesalers, speculators, and mills. Grain shipments by
wagon ship and canal bars were seves and distributed among

(36:51):
participants are sold at a just price. Warehouses were rated
with similar results. Textile workers in seventeen seventy reams quote
sees the talents of our gets proceeded to sell all
the grain in the market at three quarters of the
current price. They then turn their attention to the warehouse
into the grainaries of numerous religious houses, which they treated
in a similar fashion. Yeah, and so you know, like this,

(37:11):
this this is like this is a pretty remarkable degree
of political sophistication right there. They're not targeting sort of
farmers or bakers, and especially not targeting people who are
like well known election the community. They're targeting people who
they can directly tie it toto grand price speculation. And
this is, you know, in someone sense like this this
is a demonstration of the kind of like basic contradiction
of the market. Right on the one hand, you have

(37:31):
bread as this like physical thing that you need to survive.
On the other hand, you have bread as this market commodity,
and the market you know, as a market commodity. It's
a sort of speculative asset which people are like buying
and selling and hoarding like stocks, because not because they
actually eat it, but because they're interested in its sort
of market value. And you know, the Marxists will call
this the difference between the use value or like the

(37:52):
value you get from eating a piece of bread, and
the exchange value, which is like the bread is a
commodity that can be traded for the commodities. And you know,
I like this is this isn't sometimes like this is
behind a lot of like the housing crisis. Right now,
you have a bunch of people who buy houses and
apartment buildings that you know, not because they need to
live on them, but as an asset that will appreciate
over time, you know, like appreciating value over time like

(38:12):
stocks do. But this means that people who like need
houses to like live in them, like, don't get a
house because they're being held by people who are trying
to get the value to appreciate. And the goal of
these riots is basically to prevent bread from becoming an
exchange value, that is, to sort of like market commodity
user speculation and turn them back into use values. But

(38:33):
even again here this is interesting, right, because it's not
like these people are like like like anti market, anti capitalists, right,
they tend not to sort of just seize the bread
out right. What they're doing is they they're insisting on
buying it at a specific quote unquote just price. And
this this sort of gets into the question of, like,
why are these riots happening in the first place. Um,

(38:53):
The obvious explanation like, Okay, the people are rioting because
the price of bread is increasing, But that's that's not
actually like an explanation, right, It's just it's a precondition.
But there's a lot of places where bread prices rising,
you'd never get a riot. So a lot of of
people have studied this and try to figure out what
is happening. The second explanation that historians come up with

(39:14):
is something called the moral economy, um and and and
in this bottle, people aren't just reacting to like a
price increase, but what they're actually reacting to is what
becomes known as the entitlement gap, which is this gap
between people what people think they're entitled to based on
the morality and how hard they work, etcetera, and like
what they actually get. And so you know, in less
academic language. It's people going like I'm getting price gouged.

(39:37):
This is bullshit. Bring the prices down that what they're
supposed to be. And you know that's part of it.
That there's there's another theory that argues that food riots
are different by these like really complicated or like webs
of horizontal social relations and like things like a networks
of wives and like political organizations and sort of like
alliance is to happen inside of villages stuff like that,

(39:58):
and that, you know, and these groups sort of like
react to price increases by banding together and voicing people
are lower prices. Um. Now, notably, I want one of
the like the things I listed in those that like
web of things right as wives, net works as the
sort of like first community widly as the food riots. Um.
And this is this is turns out to be important.

(40:19):
Women are often like the leaders an initiator of bread riots,
and the sort of theory behind it is that they're
actually the ones like buying the bread and so they're
sort of they're more in tune with disturbances of food prices, etcetera.
And you know, the food price increases are a threat
to what academics called social reproduction or an essence like
taking care of yourself, your family and your household, like

(40:39):
making sure you can sort of support and raise your children.
So there's well, so the the good version of it
is it's you're taking care of the people around you.
The cynical version of it is it's social. It's real,
it's social reproduction because you're creating another generation of workers
for capital, all right, but because women end up doing
like enormously disapportionate amount of that work. Uh, they you know,

(41:01):
they wind up in the streets first because they are
the people who are most acutely sort of like sensitive
to this stuff happening. Um, yeah, what's what's you know?
The and and the other thing is sort of worth
noting here is that riots are these these kind of
bread riots are usually urban affairs, and they're sort of
they're the product of people who live in cities, right,

(41:22):
It's sort of artisans and industrial workers. There's this like
fighting corps of teenagers who seemed to show up in
all of these bread riots, and thankfully that that that
never happens today. We do not have a bunch of
teenagers show up any time to fight the cops. And
something bad happens. No experience with this. Yeah, I've certainly
never seen anything like that happened these other countries. Have

(41:47):
the FEDS put piles of bricks out on the street, Well,
you know this is we have. We haven't. They haven't
gone to that level of entrapman yet. They're right, they're
not powerful enough that this. This is before the development
of the police state. Yeah, they didn't have an FBI
to burn down the Third Precinct. Yeah, they haven't devented
the agent provocatury yet. A cunning false flag. So what's

(42:11):
interesting about the eighte century riots? Those I've been talking
a lot about how these are live women, and that's true,
but specifically the age ones tend to be more gender
balanced and later riots. And I'm going to read this
from the historian Lynn Taylor because it's it's one of
the funniest things I've ever read in my life, and
I love it. Cynthia Bolton's study of the French Flower
War of seven of seventeen seventy five makes clear the

(42:34):
mixed nature of traditional food riots. Indeed, the number of
men involved had increased significantly in the Flower Wars due
to the changing male economic social including familial and political status.
During thecon regime, there's was a life of precarious and
declining social economic position. This equilibrium in the family structure
of political alienation, one that left them in position similar

(42:55):
to those of mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters. The men
who rioted had in crucial ways been feminized. Oh boy,
they before they're writing, because I mean, this is a
thing that literally happened in uh in Myanmar during the uprising.
That there are kind of local, local cultural sort of

(43:16):
attitudes there that make it that have made it for
a long time, like essentially considered like shameful to touch
women's clothing um or particularly like there's certain things that
like you don't wear and that you're not supposed to
look at if you see someone dressed that way, um
that are like traditional women's clothing. And so a bunch

(43:36):
of male protesters would dress that way and form up
and like ranks at the protests because it made the
police like uncomfortable and sometimes like back off. That's extremely cool. Yeah,
there's like some literal examples of that very recent riots. Yeah,
And I think that gets at one of the things
that's sort of happening is happening in this period too,
which is that like one of the kinds of things

(43:59):
that gen raise these bread riots is this kind of
is this instability and gender roles and is this sort
of instability in in what the role of a person
in society is going to be and that I don't know,
it has a lot of interesting effects. And when those
effects are riots, the stuff that stuff that happens is
really cool because you get a lot of sort of
like gender roles getting messed up, you get a lot

(44:21):
of like social ties being broken. I guess. So the
other thing that's going on in this period, um that
is is important because because it's sort of like foreshadows
a lot of what the sort of later bread riots
are going to be about. Is that and this is
this is like the fourth theory of bread riots. If
you sort of like go through your economic historians of

(44:42):
this stuff. Um they're talking about basically the late Senti
hunters are are one of the sort of key moments
in like the formation of the modern state. And what
this means in terms of food is that control the
food supply is mood from these this sort of like
parentalistic like feudal state thing where on a local level
you have guaranteed prices and access to food, and this

(45:06):
has shifted to laws for capitalism in which there is
there there are there are no price controls, there's there's
no guarantee you can get food. And subsequent to this,
also at the same time is the centralization of the
military bureacracy. And cent relation to the military bureaucracy means
that they're taking more control of the food supply um
here here from few markets and food riots. Again, older
parent realistic models operating at the local level and assuring

(45:28):
a prentiful supply of necessaries at a low price were
undermined by new national policies aimed at greater efficiency and
market regulation. Spanning a century and more. The policies included
such varied activities as enclosure, land concentration, capital, intensification of farming, proletarianization,
grain exports, taxes, tariffs, and other government efforts to regulate
the food supply. Price riots were simply one expression of

(45:52):
popular grievances stemming from this broader change. And this is something,
this is something that that's very common. Bread riots are
are like deeply an intimate linked in the with the
ways that food, food product the food production process is changing,
and specifically linked to the link to the ways of
the food production process is changing because of the state
and markets. But we're sort of leading into the late

(46:15):
seventeen hundreds, and at this point something happened that no
one expected. A bread riot went completely the other direction.
It irrevocably changed the state in the market itself. Um.
And I am talking about histories maybe most famous bread riot.
That's right, it's the French Revolution baby, liberty, egality, fraternity,
han han and this is this is this is you

(46:37):
mean to tell me that the French had a revolution.
I mean it's kind of it's kind of marginal. Admittedly,
the fame that doesn't sound like the French that I know.
That's true. The modern French have replaced revolution with racism unfortunately.
But you know, look, look we're we're we're we're in
the seventeen hundreds. Things are different. Um. Yeah, and so

(46:59):
we're we're we're in in a secondary going to talk
about the Red riot that changed the history of bread
rights and the course of world history forever. But first,
do you know who doesn't love bread riots? Yeah? Who
is the primary sponsor of this show? She realized the
whole cake thing didn't work out great. So now she's saying,

(47:21):
let him have podcasts, let them cast pods. We're back in.
Our primary sponsor has been executed by a mob. So
if you are a member of European nobility, maybe you're
a Habsburg you know, um hit us up and uh
offer us a sponsorship. Yeah, well, okay, we we We're

(47:44):
going to rewind a little bit before they kill Mary
Antoinette to get to how that happened. So one of
the things if you read the sort of literature on
bread rights, one of the things bread right people will
talk about over and over again is bread rights being
a political and they kind of like stretch this to
a point, well because I mean okay, so like like
there's a couple levels which doesn't make any sense, right, Like, okay,

(48:06):
if you think that bread is being sold at too
high a price because people are are gouging you, that
is political, right, and then you go out and make
them nott do that. Yeah, that's politics. People love to
say things aren't political when they don't align with like
a simple political party, like if it if it doesn't
line up directly with the kind of approved debate topics

(48:29):
between the political parties that dominate things. They like to
say ship is a political but you know, starving because
of the tax decisions or whatnot is is an inherently
political thing. Yeah, and and and and deciding that you're
not going to starve and taking bread from people, it's
an incredibly political thing. Yeah, that's the politics. You have
done a politicy, I've done, You've done a lot of politics,

(48:52):
and you know, but but one of one of the
things that that and the other thing this leads to
is if if if a thing that involves bread suddenly
like turns into capital p politics, and suddenly you have
people doing things that are like well understood as like
conventional political gestures, immediately everyone stops calling it a bread right.
And if but like, if you look at what's actually happening,

(49:14):
it's here's a bunch of people who are mad about
the price of bread. Uh, they went to change the
price of bread. It kind of didn't work, and so
instead they oversee the government and this is this is
this is this is uh, this is the bread right
that that we're getting to now up until you know,
up until nine, like you can argue that like people

(49:38):
historians will argue that oh it's bad rights a political
that just ends in I think it's October five. But
but by this point the French Revolution is like, well underway. Um,
they've stormn the Bistell. There's a bunch of people in
a parliament writing a constitution. But like in October of nine,
it's still unclear, like how radical any of this is

(50:02):
going to be? Right, Um, at this point it still
seems likely that there's going to be a king. And
not only is there gonna be a king, the king
is Cearlialy gonna be pretty strong. And then yeah, in October, uh,
maybe history's most same as bread right breaks out? So
seven thousand women who are like incredibly piste off at

(50:23):
the high price of bread and Paris march on Versailles,
which is where the Royal family of France had been
like governing France from for like a hundred years. And
these women are really really angry and they they they
basically forced the royal family to come back within to Paris.
And I guess it's it's important to note here that
Paris and versided like twelve miles apart, so this isn't

(50:43):
like a multi day journey. They just like get mad
one day and they wake up and they walk to
the next city over, and this radically changes the entire
direction of the French revolution because once, if the royal
family is in Versailles, right like, the Parisian mob doesn't
have direct access to them. But once that, once they're
in Paris, and once once once this bread riot like

(51:06):
brings the king to Paris. Suddenly the entire, like, the
entire concentrated political power of the French system is now
centered in Paris and is now in a place where
subsequent bread riots can actually do stuff. And this directly
leads to the King's being executed, This leads to our
sponsors getting guillotined, and it basically it's it's it completely

(51:27):
cements bread as sort of like the central part of
of like one of the central aspects of what the
French Revolution is about. Like by by, by the end
of the revolution, that the that the slogan of the
sort of revolutionary French working class is bred in the
Constitution of seventee. So you know, you can you can
you can you can look at the priorities there and
look at like all of this is sort of and

(51:49):
a sort of extended rolling bread riot um unfortunately for
us uh and spoilers to everyone who has not caught
up on the end of the French Revolution. The revolution loses,
Napoleon takes power, and this is where we enter the
era of what's going as the bourgeois revolution. This is

(52:10):
this is the modern era. And if you if you've
read your like your like Arab cops swam, you're like,
you're you're sort of very conventional like march historians, you're
conventional sort of liberal historians. They will all tell you
that the bread riots ort of dies in nearly eighteen hundreds,
and that's replaced by like strikes and political protests organized
by unions and parties, because like the rural class has
been like displaced at the center of history by the

(52:32):
industrial working class. And that's just like not true, um.
And it's not true in two senses. One, it's in
the sense that like we have bread riots now, but
it's also not true because there's another wave of bread
riots that are that are very very conventional and very
much sort of in the classic Sampion Hunter's bolt. Here
is here's Lynn Taylor again. It is true that the

(52:55):
proactive form of protests became common, even predominant by the
early twentieth century. However, scatitude the periodical literature are accounts
of twentieth century food riots, which looks surprisingly like those
of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, something not expected
in modern industrialized nation states. Food riots occurred in northern
France in nineteen eleven, in Britain during the winter of

(53:16):
nineteen sixteen, nineteen seventeen in New York and nineteen seventeen
in Toronto and BOTHWY three in Barcelona in nineteen eighteen,
in Vichy, France in nineteen forty two, and in northern
France throughout the German occupation. The form of protests was
remarkably consistent in each and reminiscent of traditional food riots
of earlier centuries. And these are these are these are

(53:37):
very conventional sort of eighteenth century bread riots. They're led
by women. They refuse that they're led by women who
are refusing to pay a higher price for food. And
in some sense they kind of are a political in
that there are various attempts in like basically all of
these protests by like organized political organists to take that over,
and basically every single time the women who were involved

(53:58):
are like, no, absolutely not uh, there's there. There's a
very funny one where I think this is the the
I think this is the British one in seventeen were
like a bunch of men show up and the women
are like, no, go home, you can't riot with us.
This is this is our riot now. Yeah. Then the
British case in particular was also interesting because this is

(54:19):
the middle of World War One, and so you know,
this is a sort of giant presence looming over these
these these bread riots, and you know the government sort
of like that. The government, in response to this, or
sponsor to widespread hunger, like, decreased these price controls on food,
but farmers are just refusing to obey them, and so
women in Mayport organized and the result was quote when

(54:40):
one farmer said he did not care what the government
said about price controls, there was bedlamb The women rushed
the farmer's cart, and the street was quote filled with hooting, yelling,
women and young people while potatoes, cabbages and turn ups
were flying through the air. The example of Mayport soon
spread to other parts of the country. These riots are
led by housewives who had filled the front line and
did much of the fighting. Although the miners of Cumberland

(55:02):
were also active in supporting their wives efforts, both as
added bodies strengthening the crowds, but also through the Minors
Association other working class institutions. So A, I don't know,
I had to include this specifically because the image of
a bunch of people throwing cabbages at farmers is extremely
funny to me. Oh, but the other thing I think

(55:23):
is interesting here is you can serve to see the
shifts from the sort of eighteenth century like riots to
these ones on on a social level, where you know,
in the eighte hundreds you're dealing with sort of like
town and sort of peasant cultural groupings thur s approaching
the protest, but by the nineteen hundreds bread riots are
being backed by like organized political institutions. Um, there's another

(55:44):
one in New York in ninteen seventeen, which is remarkable
for being it's self organized by Like it's remarkable because
it's it's self organized by women, even though this is
like the part of New York they're in is a
Socialist Party stronghold, But the Socialist Party isn't there people
who do it. It's the women who are like married
in a lot of cases the Social Party or in

(56:04):
to some excenter in it, but are sort of operating autonomously,
and they do this thing where they sort of like
they start setting and forcing these boycotts of like shops
that are deemed to be at like price gouging levels,
and they fight the cops and they do a bunch
of stuff. Um. And the ones I mentioned in Toronto
earlier interesting because those ones actually do like have an

(56:25):
organization in the beginning, but in keeping with sort of
the tradition of of of the bread right, the organization
was the Jewish Women's the Jewish Women's Labor League. And
these are these are remarkably effective political movements. They win
their demands really quickly. I'm going to read one more
account because it just rules. Uh. Lester Golden and Temma
Caplan have both examined food riots in Barcelona in nineteen,

(56:48):
part of a wave of riots which occurred between June nine,
seventeen and March nine throughout Spain. As in previous cases,
these riots arounted because of devastating price inflation I think
we know nothing about now this time, resulting from the
post war collapse of the economy. The participants were all women.
They forbade men's participation, and the actions were led first
by radical Republicans and then by a small group of

(57:10):
female and arco syndicalists. The women's demands were simple and straightforward.
They demanded lower prices for foods. They attacked bread shops
and cold wag as it took over a ship laden
with fish. When police and civil guard attempted to break
out the women crowds of women on the street, the
woman turned on them, stripping some of the officers of
their pants, spanking or thrashing them, and sending them home. Yes, yes,

(57:34):
that's that's it's so good, perfect, perfect, This is the
energy we need in every century that human beings have
ever inhabitants. Amazing that the historians are parent parenthetical note
after that is quote, rather undermining their authority in the process,

(57:54):
which yes, I would imagine. So, yes, if you are
if you are being spanked by a crowd, you have
lost control of that crowd. That that that is that
is fair to say. And so they it takes about
three weeks and they win and prices drop thirty So

(58:16):
good for them. That's a pretty solid look. Hey, I
think I think most of the people listening would do
some hardcore spanking if they could get at cut on
their grocery bill. Yeah, it's it's look, I'm just saying
it is much harder to pull down a modern cops
trousers because they're wearing like so much weird ship on
top of it. But belt technology has improved tremendously since then. Yeah, however, Comma,

(58:39):
where there is a will, there's a way. Yep. If
I learned one thing from high school, if that anyone
can be pantsed just you just you just have to.
You just have to. You just have to want it
hard enough. You have to want it more than the
person wants to be wearing their pants. That's right, that's right,
you have to believe. So there's one more of these

(58:59):
bed right since we're talking about, which also is not
conventionally framed as a bread right, but is entirely keeping
with everything I've said here, the February Revolution in Russia.
Um So, the February Revolution is the revolution that actually
overthrows there. There's another revolution, which is the act Revolution,
which is one of the bullshers come to power. But
that's a that's that's a separate one. They're fighting a

(59:20):
completely group of people. The February Revolution has all of
the sort of key factors of a bread right right.
There's these massive bread lines. Women are piste off by
lack of food. The revolution itself is led by women
whose like male comrades had literally told them, don't, like,
don't go out and do a protest on that day
because this is International Women's Day. But the like all
all of the men who are like doing this are

(59:41):
are convinced that, like the conditions aren't right for revolution,
so they try to get everyone to stay home, and
everyone's like no. And you know, like the sort of
key difference between the like this bread right and the
other bread rounds we were talking about is that, you know,
the the demands of the of the the march in
International Women's Day, United seventeen are overtly political, like they

(01:00:04):
they are chanting down with the czar and they're trying
to overthrow the government. And this, you know, this is
another thing that has this sort of like incredible impact
on on how the bolshot revolution is is sort of working. Right,
Like Lenin winds up using peace bread in land as
one of the sort of like central like Bolshevik slogans
because part of it, because a huge part about the

(01:00:25):
revolution is is just a bread riot, and that that
that's where where we're that's that's where we're gonna leave
it today, with the world just completely and utterly transformed
by another bread riot. And next episode we're going to
get to the modern bread riots because those are also interesting.
And yeah, we're gonna once again prove everyone who insists

(01:00:47):
that bread riots don't happen anymore wrong, A thing that
I didn't know existed until I started reading this and
then now incredibly mad about. Yeah, So go out there
and have a bread riot, pants a cop or a
mother kind of riot, you know, a guacamole riot um,
a mate riot um, you could have You could have

(01:01:11):
some kind of corn riot um. You could have a
riot over order Lan. That would be a unique kind
of riot. Don't think anyone's ever rioted over that. That
bird that that's such a beautiful songbird. That eating it
as a sin, so you have to like hide your
shame underneath a sheet so God doesn't see you eat it.
Have a riot over one of those, you know, Yeah,

(01:01:31):
I do that. I love how often the Holocaust has
been trending over the last year. Um, that's good. That's

(01:01:55):
the thing you want to see trending in um It's
it could happen here, all right, Chris, continue with your
bread riots. Yeah, we're back. There's more riots. Uh now.
Last episode we talked about historians declaring the end of
the bread death of the bread riot, and like in
the sixties and early seventies, Like I think that this

(01:02:15):
is this is one of the ways you can tell
that period people genuinely thought the world was going to
get better. It was that like they genuinely believed that
like the centralized state and like capitalism can always provide foods.
You want u bread riots anymore you get market You
if you were born in that period, you like grew
up and people were fleeing from dynonic as is in
the street and like getting getting eaten by woolly mammoth's

(01:02:39):
And then by the time you're forty, you've got the telegraph.
So I get it, right, I get why people think
that that progress was really go back in those because
they got they wiped out the dynonic as. This is. Yeah,
you have seen how wear'd taff building the pyramids exactly
exactly exactly you have you have you have seen the
future rise up literally and rent of view, and they

(01:03:01):
went from eating mud to Hershey's chocolate. It's it's an
incredibly impressive sort of sort of period of modern historical evolution.
And you know, and one one of the things you see,
like like you'll see like Marxists calling bread rice primitive
rebels doing like populist mob politics that's been like displaced
by proper Marxist class politics. And then like every single

(01:03:22):
one of these people was like the most wrong anyone,
like basically from that period until until the moment the
end of history. Guy starts writing, they are the most
wrong people like on the planet. Well, it's also funny
to hear that idea that like there was something primitive
about these people's class analysis, because like the Brothers Gracky

(01:03:43):
and Ancient Republican Rome a lot of this ship they're saying,
it's not at all primitive class analysis like this, it's
it's pretty developed. Yeah, And I mean, like the Marxist
will do some long argument about how like oh they
they have they have false consciousness, they're not trying to
abolish the class system or whatever, and it's like, well,
I mean, like I look at the Martin the Marxist
in demolish classist them either. So like yeah, like yeah,

(01:04:07):
like that these are these are very The's something we're
gonna be coming back to a lot this episode is
that the people doing this are incredibly sophisticated political actors.
And one of the sort of modern version of this
is in the nineteen seventies, not only did bread riots
not and there's a new kind of bread riot and
these riots are collectively known as the I M. F
Riots um. From from from January nine, seventy six to

(01:04:30):
October nineteen ninety two, there are riots in Peru, Egypt, Ghana, Jamaica, Liberia,
the Philippines, a year, Turkey, Morocco, Sierra Leon, Sudan, Argentina, Ecuador, Chile, Bolivia, Brazil,
Panama to Tunisia, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, El Salvador, Costa Rica,
Guadibala in Mexico, Yugoslavia, Zambia, Poland, Algeria, Romania, Nigeria, Hungary, Venezuela, Jordan,
the Avery Coast, nigeri, Ron, Albania, India, and Nepal. Were

(01:04:54):
you just do like the wacko the whacko Warner's song,
It's that's literally all the play I found the chart
that has all of them is like, there's just so many.
They just keep happening. And again that's only like they
they're they're still happening. And the ever thing I should
mention is those are just the ones that are called
the I m F riots. There's a bunch of other riots,
some of which are bred riots, that aren't called the

(01:05:16):
I m F riots because they're not really sort of
like directly involved with the I m F. And and
that that this raises the question of what the fund
is an IMF riot? Uh, And the answer is that, unfortunately,
to to understand why people are throwing ball atops through
bank windows, we have to talk about banking a little bit. Um.
I I have talked, I guess at length. Yeah, I

(01:05:38):
I apologize, but we will we will get back to
the riots, damn, But I promise we just have do
a little bit of banking. So yeah, I've talked extensively
on the show about the crisis of the seventies. And
you know, the short version is that in a thing
that is completely unrecognizable today, the global economy collapses, inflation skyrockets,
countries across the global South start taking out these suggestable
right that they've been taking out these suggestable right owns,

(01:06:00):
and then suddenly the interest rate spike and they started
faulting on these loans. Here's our free markets and food
riots talking about it. Although the causes of the crisis
run deeper, by the nineteen seventies, many smaller nations began
to feel the strains of insolvency as a result of
a world wide recession, successive oil price shocks, declining world
commodity prices, and accelerating debt service obligations. So but basically,

(01:06:23):
like if you're a small country, right, the price of
everything you need to buy, like oil, is going up,
and the price of what you can sell, which is
like commodities like copper tin, is collapsing, and these lead
to what are like these massive what are called balance
of payments crises, And so we should we talk about
what about what a balance of payments crisis is? And
this one is up being really important here there's the

(01:06:43):
story about che Guevara, like right after like literally right
after the Cuman revolution, is he so he goes to
the US and he's in a he sits he's in
this meeting with a bunch of bankers, and he's trying
basically to get Cuba's gold reserves and cup us sort
of like foreign exchange reserves out of the S. The
U S doesn't steal it. And it was funny about
it is all the bankers who are talking to him,

(01:07:05):
like all of them report afterwards like, woll wow, this
guy talks like a banker, not a communist. And the
specifically the reason they were like, oh hey, this guy
talks like a banker is that he knew what balance
of payments was. Um. The short answer is at a
balance of payments crisis is when there's more money flowing
out of the country than there is coming into it.
And the results of this is that you run out
of money, and particularly the thing you run out of

(01:07:27):
as American dollars, which is the thing that you need
to like buy oil. So you get these countries that
are massively in debt and they run out of money,
and the only thing they could do is turn to
like is turn to the International Monetary Fund and the
i m F, who like the only description of the
i m F that I have is that like they're
they're they're basically like if the cartoon Bank of Evil
from Despicable me like ran the entire world economy. They

(01:07:49):
you know, so the I m F shows up to
these countries and is like loll lamau each ship, and
they forced these countries to implement like in order to
get loans. They forced him to implet what are called
stabilization programs because of the quote conditionality of the loans
that they have. All these like this really technical boring
like neoliberal like legal language for it, the like the

(01:08:12):
this this is all sort of banker speak for if
you wanted other loans you can buy food, You're gonna
have to rob every single person you know and hand
them and hand us all your money. Uh. This eventually
becomes now to structural adjustment programs. There's all of this
sort of technical language disguise what's going on. But what's
actually going on is that in order to pay off,
in order to pay the bankers for these loans, they
are taking food for the moles of children. Um. Yeah,

(01:08:34):
here's a more technical, I guess explanation of what's happening here.
Austerity programs include stern measures or shock treatments that trigger
market mechanisms to stimulate export production and increased government for
exchange reserves. So, according to the theory, currency devaluation make
three world exports more competitive in the international market. Reduced

(01:08:56):
public spending curbs inflation and saves money for debt repayments.
Privatization of state owned corporations generated more productive investment and
reduce public payrolls. Elimination of protectionism and other restraints on
foreign investment lurns more more efficient export firms. Cuts in
public subsidies for food and basic necessities helped to get
prices right, benefiting domestic producers. Wage restraints and higher interest

(01:09:19):
rates reduce inflation and enhance competitiveness, and import restrictions can
serve form exchange for debt servicing. So this has winners
and losers, and the losers are like everyone in the
country that is happening to and this is and this
is pretty cost cross class. Like these policies they hir workers,

(01:09:39):
the hir peasants, the hair small shopkeepers, the middle classes
annihilated just like people who are consumers you buy goods,
and even the sort of like the local capitalists just
get screwed by this because what the I m F
is doing is forcing everyone to have lower wages, taking
massive benefit cuts and massively spiking the price of food.
And you know, I I I want to get remind

(01:10:01):
everyone that this this is explicitly what the Federal Reserve
is trying to do to us right now, Like this
is this is the kind of stuff that they're talking
about in order to curb inflation, is to just make
the pay everyone less, make everyone take benefits cuts, and
then increase the price of ship. So the winners of
this are like six bureaucrats, international investors, and like a

(01:10:21):
class of like absolutely horrific large agricultural landowners. And this
this has about the effect that you would expect it
to um. Between nineteen seventy six and late nine two,
some a hundred and forty six incidents of protests occurred,
reaching a peak from nineteen eight three to nine, continuing
to the present without attenuation. Now, the authors who are

(01:10:45):
writing this right, they're writing this in nineteen four So
when they say they continue to the present without tentation,
they four, The thing is the last one of those
riots ended like a week ago. Oh yeah, yeah, they're
still they're still going um so, and you know, and

(01:11:05):
these these riots are slightly different than the the sort
of like classical bread riots, right, because they are about
the increasing price of food, it's also about the increasing
price of fuel or sort of broader austerity measures or
cuts to services and stuff like that. Um here, here's
there's a quote about like what these things actually look like. Um.
Demonstrations and riots typically target specific institutions perceived as responsible

(01:11:27):
for the depredations. Marches and protesting crowds converge on major
thoroughfares and government buildings, such as the treasury or the
national bank, or the legislature, the presidential palace. Looters attack
supermarkets and clothing stores. Where fuel and transportation subsidies are
part of the austerity package, busses and gasoline stations are burned.
The international dimension of austerity are recognized symbolically in attacks

(01:11:50):
on travel agencies for and automobile's, luxury hotels and international
travel agencies or all that too, but also international agency offices.
And you know this is gonna sound familiar from the
last episode. It turns out that just like the eight
Touch of People, that the attacks of these things are
are very targeted. The sort of like forms of resistance
have changed over time, because you know, this is now

(01:12:12):
we we we do have modern political organizations. Right, Like
we get general strikes, you get sometimes you get just
noble bread riots. Sometimes you get these just things that
are like large protests and then they turn into riots.
And what's interesting about them is that these are very
sort of these are very sort of cross class movements. Right.
You have your sort of classical sectors of the urban poor.

(01:12:34):
You have, like particularly in the global South, you can
you have your shanty dwellers, you have unemployed youth, you
have small street vendors or like a crucial sort of
element of these things you have like just your guy
selling cigarettes on the street. Um, you get you also
get like parts of the industrial working class. You get
sometimes you get unions. A lot of times you get students,

(01:12:55):
you get public employees. Sometimes you get professional groups. One
of one of the interesting things that's reading about this,
I've read like a few books in this EREA who
were talking specifically and this this isn't like the nineties, right,
We're specifically talking about professional groups in Sudan. And it's
like it's like, Okay, it's it's people are talking to
professional groups and Sudan backing rioters against the government. It's
two thousand and nineteen. People are talking about professional groups

(01:13:18):
backing protests against the government. It's like it's I don't know,
Like there's this extent to which all of these things
that the I m F riots have just been happening
over and over and over again for about fifty years,
and a lot of the elements are incredibly similar. One
of the other things that's going on here is that
these protests are driven are driven by mass organization. Typically,

(01:13:42):
austerity protests were precipitated by dramatic overnight price heights resulting
from the termination of public subsidies on basic goods and services,
proclaimed by the government as a regrettably necessary reform, urged
by the I m F and international lenders as conditions
for new and renegotiated loans. Five deaths in the first
Peruvian protests to get a pattern of violence. Peru remained

(01:14:02):
a hotbed of austerity protest, with students and workers demonstrating
against increased food prices in followed by followed in by
a march of public employees over state layoffs. This protest,
so cheered by other public workers watching from surrounding the
office buildings, was dispersed by police tear gas. So like
that that's that's a very sort of yeah, yeah, like

(01:14:24):
we did. I mean, this is this was happening. This
is happening in Peru like last year, right, actually was
it last year? Was it earlier this year? I don't know.
Time is fake. And that's actually like the other thing
that sort of startling about this is like the places
that riot are still the places that are rioting, and
like it in an enormous number of cases, it's it's
the same places sometimes it's the same people. Um. I

(01:14:48):
think probably the most famous protests of the sort of
era is it's called the caracaso I'm pronouncing nice really badly,
by my apologies in Venezuela, which is reaction to a
nine like increase in train and bus fairs. And there
are these are like these are massive riots. Um at

(01:15:10):
least a hundred and probably like a couple of thousand
people are like gunned down by the army. And three
years later, a relatively unknown colonel named Hugo Chavez tried
to overthrow the government that had carried out the price increases. Travis,
you know, Travis is better known for his other works,

(01:15:30):
but he's the sort of tie between the I M.
F Riots and the sort of next phase of political
resistance to this stuff, which is called the antique, which
is like known as the anti globalization movements in sort
of the nineties and nearly two thousands. And the thing
that's interesting about these things is that I don't know,
the I m F rights don't go very well, like

(01:15:51):
either they lose or at best, what they were able
to get was like temporarily stall some of these reforms,
and I say like reforms quote unquot like the serve
and the olive old like slashing benefits. So they were
able to pause them a bit and then they would
sort of get restarted after people left the street. But
in the late nineties and the thousands, people start winning
um Argentina is sort of famously forced to like tell

(01:16:13):
the I m F to funk off and they default
on their loans. After this like enormous autonomous uprising two
thousand one that like very nearly overthrows the government enforces
that like five heads of state. There's the whole sort
of pink tide in Latin America. The I m F
gets like driven out of a bunch of countries in
East Asia, and then she doesn't eight the entire world
economy collapses, which it turns out is bad for everyone.

(01:16:37):
And this does This does two things for our story.
The first is that like countries are suddenly going broke again,
and because they're like just completely broke, the I m
F is just back and is able to sort of
enforce programs on places like Greecent Spain. And the second
thing it did was set off an enormous wave of
bread riots and uprisings. And I think, like most people,

(01:16:59):
if if you tell them that two eight set off
like an enormous wave of like protests, they're They're immediately
going to go, oh, you mean the Arab Spring And
I am talking about that, But that's actually not specifically
what I'm talking about here. There there's there were like
immediately in twos and immediately after there was another massive
wave of bread riots that every like just everyone is
completely forgotten unless the thing that you do specifically is

(01:17:21):
study bread riots. Um. Here here's from. Here's from the
piece called a Political Economy of the Food Riot. In
two thousand and seven and two, the world witnessed a
return of one of the oldest forms of collective action,
the food riot. Countries were protests occurred range from Italy,
where pasta protests in September seven were directed at a
failure at the failure of the Prodi government to prevent

(01:17:43):
a thirty percent rise in the price of pasta. To Haiti,
where protesters railed against presidents provolves impassive response to the
doubling of the price of rice over the course of
a single week. Other countries in which riots were reported
including the Uzbekistan, Morocco, guianam Are, Titania, Senegal, India, Indonesia, Zimbabwe, Burkina,

(01:18:04):
Fossil came Ruined, Yemen, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Mexico, and Argentina,
and some commentators have estimated that thirty countries experienced some
sort of fruits some sort of food protests over the period.
Now we've been talking a lot about like food consumers
in this because that's mostly the people who are involved
in bread riots. But you know, as was happening in

(01:18:27):
seventeen huntres with this sort of original stuff like this
whole time this is going on, there's there's a sort
of massive shift in the global food economy happening where
and this has been happening for a long time now,
but it's it's sort of it's been accelerating the last
about half a century, which is that the number of
people who are like peasants and who produced food for
themselves has been massively declining, and people are getting forced
into cities. And this means that there's you know, there's

(01:18:52):
there's been a number of other things that have gone
along with this. Uh, there's been this massive increase in
like cattle production, for example, you get all these monocol
yours um. And another thing I think I've mentioned before
is that the World Trade organizations like Agreement on Agriculture
like outlaws agricultural subsidies for the global South, but you know,
the US is still allowed to have like farm subsidies,

(01:19:13):
which means that you know, if when you're when you
enter these free trade agreements, you get all of this
like enormously cheap food from the U. S has dumped
into all these other countries, and you know, if you're
a Mexican farmer, suddenly you can't compete with all of
this food from the US because the food from the
US is cheap because the American government subsidizing it, but
the Mexican government can and this just like absolutely annihilates

(01:19:34):
any attempt by a country to maintain food security by
like producing food for themselves. And this this sort of
class of like self sufficient peasant farmers who had been
you know, they support themselves by producing their own food
and selling to the market. These people just can annihilated
and they get forced into what's called sort of casualized
labor that they you know, they the later version of

(01:19:54):
this is like uber right, but that they're forcing to
gig work. They're kicked out of sort of the noble economy,
and you know, because they don't have sort of fixed
contracts or you know, it's a lot of people are
working with for no contract with with no contracts at all,
they're enormously insecure. And once the people are forced into
the labor market, like changes in the global economy can
make them like almost immediately unable to afford food because

(01:20:19):
you know, like if the less sort of economic and
secure you are, the more the more you're affected by
price increases. Which is obvious, but it's worth saying because
it dictates a lot of like who does bread riots
and yes, and so governments are not entirely like blind
to this, and they're concernings that they're gonna get overthrown,

(01:20:40):
and so you see a bunch of governments trying to
respond with sort of price stabilization stuff. I think the
most famous example of this is that like the Egyptian
army like literally controls like an enormous number of easips
bakeries and they like directly run them, and they directly
run them, so like you control the price of bread
to try to like stop revolutions from happening. But and
she doesn't. Eight they just kind of stopped working. Um,

(01:21:02):
here's the political economy of the food riot. Again, over
the year between two thousand and seven and two eight
hundred and thirty increase in the global price of maze
and the sevcent increase in the price of rice, with
similar price increases and soybeans and other major food commodities. Um, yes,
there there are these massi food price increases, and this,
you know, this does the thing that massive food price

(01:21:24):
increases does. Right, there's there's and there's immediately enormous riots,
and there's the cycle that happens where the protesters, you know,
the protesters immediately blamed the government for the crisis, and
then the government is like, well, it's actually not our
fault because you know that it's happening because the things
outside of our control, and the protesters are like, oh,
it doesn't matter who we elect, they do the same things,

(01:21:46):
and like they're both kind of right, Like the government
is just like sucking these people. But it's also true
that the sort of like the whole food system is
designed to take like the means of food production out
of the hands of like the workers who need the
food and putting them in the hands of like, you know,
enormous corporations and as people in places like Sri Lanco,
which you're gonna talk more about later, continually emphasize like this,

(01:22:08):
this food sovereignty issue is as much as a political issue,
Like it's an incredibly political issue, and it's it's it's
as much like what's at steak in these bread riots
as the sort of imfinosterity stuff. Okay, this is probably
a good place for an ad break, but I can't
think of a transition. Uh yeah, you know who isn't
allowed to eat is the products and services that support

(01:22:31):
this podcast, all actively starving to death. So get these
deals now while you still can, and we're back. So
all right now we're gonna talk a little bit about
the Arabs Spring. We're not gonna talk an enormous amount
about it because that's the whole thing. Um. But if if,
if you've been following like the stuff people have written

(01:22:54):
about the Arab Spring, there's an enormous number of people
who spend like a lot of their time arguing about
whether or not it was actually sparked by food prices.
And you know, you'll get a lot of analysts to
argue that like food prices in Tunisia where the air
spring starts, like, weren't really higher than normal, And what
you're seeing instead is like, well, it's not actually food prices.

(01:23:15):
It's just that there's a generation of people who've been
farmers but like can't support themselves anymore, who've been forced
into like fighting non existent wage labor in cities and
like that. That is part of what's happening. But I
think there's there's a sort of like fundamental misunderstanding if
what causes a bread right, right, Like you know, as
as you talked about like in the first episode, one
of the things that causes bread riots is it's not

(01:23:36):
actually necessarily the magnitude of the price increase that causes them, right,
What sets What sets off bread riots is people is
people feeling like they're not getting what they deserve. Now. Obviously,
like if the price of bread increases, you're going to
get a lot of people going like, fun, this, I
work my ass off and now I can't feed my family.
We deserve better in this is time to riot. But
sometimes even if red prices are stable, you can you

(01:23:57):
can get it. You can get a thing where everyone, like,
you know, the amount of bread is bad, everything is expensive,
and one day someone wakes up and just goes funk,
this I deserve better and they do a bread riot
and and this is the case. And you know, and
when when that kind of thing is happening, right when
when when you're dealing with you know what like moral
economy stuff, when you're dealing with with this gap between

(01:24:18):
like what people think, like like what people think their
life should be versus the fact that their lives which
is absolutely terrible. Even if you like decrease the price
of bread, that's not actually necessarily going to like stop
people from rioting. And if you look at like occupy
for example, to like you know, that's also happening in
this period, like what brings people there isn't necessarily strictly

(01:24:39):
the price of food. It's the sense that like, yeah,
I've been screwed by and I've been screwed by the
ruling class, and I deserve better than this, and and
this is this is what you see Indonesia. And one
of the things what you see in sort of Phoenicians
Syria is that like a lot of the uprisings, like
they have this huge sort of rural core with with
this population of the population to people who've been kicked
out the agricultural sector, and you know, and like that

(01:25:02):
that is a bread riot, right, And it's a bread
right in the sort of double sense of like it's
the people who are involved who used to be involved
in in grain production and now can't be. And then
also that like you know, people, people have hit the
sort of expectation gap thing. And what I think is
sort of interesting about this is that these bread riots,

(01:25:23):
these rural bread riots, are like they're they're the closest
thing we have to sort of the classical twenty century revolution, right,
Like that that's one of that's the thing that causes
like the twenty century revolutions are the first generation of
people who are like but maybe in the first like
two or three generations, people who come from the countryside
into the factories of the people who do revolutions um.
And but the thing is this is this is this
is the century, not the twentie century. Like if you

(01:25:44):
get kicked out of your farm, there's there's no job
in a factory, like you're just unemployed, and you know,
and this changes the dynamics of of sort of everything.
And I think, okay, like people like broadly know the
course of like the Arab Spring and a teen wave
of uprisings, they happen, they get crushed largely. But there

(01:26:05):
was another wave of these sort of riots, protests and
uprisings that started in Haiti and like in eighteen over
this massive field price hike. And here is a partial
list of places that like people have like rioted in
in large numbers since a dozen in eighteen Haiti, Sudan, Algeria, Hunduras, Chile,
and Rock, Hong Kong, Iran like four times, Lebanon, like

(01:26:26):
three times, Columbia, like three times. A couple of things
happen in France. There was Puerto Rico, there was popular
There's there was Indonesia, where in our second Ecuador one.
Now there's Catalonia. Like people righted in the US there
there were massive digits, roadblocks like in Canada, ukimedia Kampa
went up where there was stuff. It's a culture. Like
there were two different ways of protests. In India, there

(01:26:48):
was like Belarus, there's Kazahstan, there's Kyrgystan, there's Usbekistan. There's Molly.
There's stuff in Nigeria or stuffing o Libya, like there's
stuff in Sri Lanka. We're about to get to this.
This whole thing has has been happening like everywhere, and
it's been intensifying the lasting the last year of like
three or four years. Um, we're not basically like year
four of this cycle. And and you know, obviously, like
every single one of these protests has their own like

(01:27:09):
local political conditions, and like a lot of these aren't
even sort of loosely about the price of bread. They're
just about sort of other stuff that's happening. But like
like of the operations that I mentioned, like something like
fifteen of them are directly about the price of food
or the price of like transitive fuel. And we're gonna
talk a little bit about sort of two of the
most recent like protest waves. We're gonna talk about equa word.

(01:27:30):
We're gonna talk about Sri Lanka because they're there are
two very different kinds of protests, even though they're both
kind of bread riots or at least there, I mean,
they're both very much the modern equivalence of it. Um
but they look very different. And there there's just I
think and I don't know, I think it's like interesting
reasons why. Um yeah. So so we're gonna start with,

(01:27:53):
like with Sri Lanka um on. On a very basic level,
of Sri Lanka has a giant balance of payments crisis.
This is you know, it's just like that. This is
a sort of like large scale political version of famines. Right, Like,
there's plenty of food and fuel in the world, but
the government sharlocket does not have dollars to buy it with. Now,
the reason the government doesn't have dollars to buy fuel

(01:28:13):
with is because the government is basically like an incredibly
corrupt sctatorship that keeps like imputting lujury goods it didn't need.
And they did a bunch of like tax breaks at
rich people, and suddenly the government was broken. Everyone was
like wow, how did that happen? It must have just
been the pandemic and it was like no, you like
you gave all the money to rich people. And then

(01:28:34):
as the crisis sort of went on, um, they the
government decided to ban fertilizery imports and so this just
meant that people couldn't get fertilizers. So it's like farmers
just didn't plant food because curious decision. Yeah, it's like
it's it's one of those things you look at it.
It's just like like like who thought this was a

(01:28:56):
good idea? Yeah, what was the positive end of that
game in here? I mean it's like the only like okay,
So like I I think what they were thinking is that, like,
fertilizer costs dollars, right, we're running out of dollars, so
we're gonna stop people from spending their dollars like on
buying this stuff so we can keep more dollars in
the economy. But like, what what are you what is
your long term plan here if you don't have like

(01:29:19):
anything to get dollars with or and you also don't
have food. So this, to the surprise of exactly zero people.
Lookcept I guess the government of Sri Lanka causes a
food crisis, food shortage. Um. And this is a kind
of classic like this is the kind of classic like
situation in which the I m F we intervene in

(01:29:40):
the seventies and they're interviing now and you know this,
this is a classic like struggle against this starting right,
you have the ruling class blowing up the entire economy
by like fueling debt money into pointlet's infrastructure projects. And
now they're doing these like massive austerity measures and trying
to get loans to b I MF. This is you know,
this is this is this is this, this is this
is this is stuff we understand that we've seen before. Um.

(01:30:00):
But this is also this is also a food softigy problem, right.
The SriLankan government has just completely screwed their farmers, which
means you have to import even more food and and
you know the result of this is months and months
and months a very impressive sort of clock cross class
protests with like basically every social sector in the streets.
And that's both a good thing and also a thing

(01:30:21):
that is kind of a mess because you know, like
there's civil war. The civil war ended like less than
a decade and a half ago. Right, so you have
people in the streets from sectors who like do not
like each other at all, and I don't know, and
you know, you get the thing that happens here, right,
You get these moments of like incredible solidarity and then
moments of incredible like what the funk are you guys doing?

(01:30:44):
And you know, like one of the things that happens
a lot in these protests, like in all all protests,
like this is like okay, the protests are like pre
tame for literally months, right, Like it's just people doing protesting,
and then I cops and and people like allied with
the government start attacking their testers, at which point people
like burned down the house of the ruling family. They
start throwing people. I think people probably saw the videos

(01:31:06):
people like throwing cars of like government ministers in the rivers,
which was a good time, and like yeah, like that
that stuff was, you know, a direct reaction to sort
of like the government's violence. Right. Um, you know, okay,
I can't give like a full, like detailed political history
here because, like dear god, it is incredibly complicated and
I don't understand it very well because you know, I

(01:31:30):
don't study Sri Lanka. Um, if you want to go
to account of this. Brohini Hensman's political dimensions of the
crisis in Sri Lanka is a really good sort of
like short like look at what's going on here, um,
And and this is the sort of like this is
you know, this is a broader trend and like all
these protests right, like like every single bread right takes
place in its own unique context, Like Sri Lanka, for example,

(01:31:51):
Like Sri Lanka used to have the world's best and
largest like mass Trotskyite party, like they were the Trotskyites
is like the only place on earth the Trotskates like
a real like mass political party, and they were like
a part of the real political process. And then they
like sold out the working class and entered a bunch
of governments that like did terrible stuff. And you know,
okay that that that's like a local context, doesn't happen

(01:32:11):
anywhere else. But you know, every single one of these states,
right is embedded in global capitalism. And that means that
every state is affected by the sort of like broader
economic trends and sort of beerocratic structures to hold everything together.
They're affected by the i m F, the World Trade Organization,
the World Bank. And the thing that this means is
that the timings of uprisings and riots tend to synchronize

(01:32:32):
with each other, and we actually just sort of brought
her up like economic forces. And the product of this
is way is these sort of like periodic ways of uprisings.
And so the closest out we're gonna talk about the
most recent of these. Well, it might actually not be
the most recently these by the time this goes up,
but yeah, yeah, we're we're gonna talk about Ecuador. Um.

(01:32:54):
The situation Ecuador is very different from what's happening in
Sri Lanka. The biggest difference, I guess is that instead
of sort of like waiting for conditions to get bad
enough that like an uprising happens like more or less spontaneously,
which is kind of what happened he doesn't nineteen an Ecuador.
There there's a there's a there are huge protests there, um,
but they were largely spontaneous. But instead of like waiting

(01:33:15):
for people were just like what if we just called
one of these And by by people here, I specifically
mean the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador or Kona,
and you know, okay, okay. As we've seen through this
whole sort of thing, right like bread riots like adapt
to the political organizations around them. And in Ecuador we're

(01:33:37):
dealing with a quick essentially modern form political organization, which
is the Indigenous Confederation. And I guess I should sort
of like preface this a bit with like the specific
form of indigenous confederation in in Latin America that emerges
in this period is like a different thing than older
ones because there have been indigenous confederation for a long time.
This is like a this is this is a very

(01:33:58):
specific like political thing that emerged across Latin America in
in sort of the seventies, and the really really started
string up in the eighties as results of like a
lot of things, one of which was like how shitty
the old like Marxans lends vanga groups like we're on
indigenous issues. And one of the one of the groups
that forms in this period is kana and Kanae is

(01:34:19):
one of the world's most bilitants like indigenous federations, and
since they're founding in in six they've called half a
dozen uprisings against neoliberal governments, and I think I think
they knocked off like three presidents, which is a pretty
impressive track record. And on July two, faced with skyrocketing
inflation on like basic consumer goods and a like really

(01:34:41):
shitty like far right government, they stage another one um
and this is another sort of I don't know. The
thing is interesting about this is that it's it's part
general strike, like part street protests, part riot, and part
just like mass mark for the from the sort of
periphery of Ecuador to the core. And by periphery and cora,

(01:35:03):
I mean in the sort of metaphorical sense, like it's
a bunch. It's a bunch of indigenous peasant groups from
all over the country, just like marching on descending on
the capital Keto. And this is a this is a
complicated process like that, you know. Okay, like the left
everywhere has like political divides and mostly they're kind of
nonsense in a lot of way, like okay, like that
there's ideological divides and this personal divides and whatever. But

(01:35:24):
like Ecuador's left has has real political divides, and these
aren't these aren't like sort of petty ideological like personal stuff,
like they're like they were caught under the sort of
previous like old like leftist, pink tight governments of Raphael Carrera.
Like there are like soldiers and cops who are beating
the ship out of indigenous echological protesters. And you know

(01:35:47):
this means that like yeah, you know, okay, So so
Carrera is like parties running for president again. Careers are running,
but careers parties like running in an election, right, And
you know this means it's like, yeah, okay, like maybe
you're both leftist right, but you know a lot of
people who are like, oh, fun, no, like I'm not
voting for these guys. These are the guys who like
sent the army against our anti mining protests. And so

(01:36:08):
you know, the thing the thing that is interesting here
is like like these protests don't even pull together the
entire recordorian left. Um, there's like other stuff going on
here too, like the there there's some of the unions
that went on strike in nineteen, like don't go on
strike this time because of some political stuff that's happening.
But the thing, the thing about KNA that's really impressive
is that they're still organized enough and they still like

(01:36:31):
they're organized enough that they're able to just take control
of parts of cities and they have a lot of
allies supporters amongst the students and workers and keto. And
this means that when the government makes this enormous mistake
and arrests karas like kind of Newish leader. Ah okay,
this guy's name. This guy's name, I guess in Spanish,

(01:36:51):
it's like Leonidas is that. This guy's name is leonitis Um.
He's the head of I use the Distance Federation Um
and he sees a protest leader. He was protested leader
in twenty nineteen. That's how we got elected to like
head this organization. And they arrest him on day two
of the protests. And this is a catastrophic mistake. The

(01:37:14):
protests just like explode and you know, bye bye bye
by like a week in. I think that the government's
claiming they were doing fifty million dollars a damage a day,
which I'm not actually sure I believe that because governments
and corporations to this too, and they're talking about like
losses from like strikes as they tend to overra emphasize
how much damage has done because it makes them like
look better in the press, and that makes the protesters

(01:37:35):
look worse. But they they they they're able to damage
like significant parts of the economy, and by June, like
they kind of win. Basically, the government's forced to negotiate
with them, and they don't get all of their demands,
but they get price decreases for like fuel and gasoline,
which is like a huge part of why this happened
in the first place. They get bans on mining and

(01:37:56):
drilling and indigenous and protected areas. They get like strength
and price controls. They it likeal rural loan forgiveness, like
interest rate decreases. They get subsidus for farmers, they get
subsdues for families, they get they manage to get the
government to declare a state of health emergency over COVID.
It's like this is this is impressive stuff, and you know,
and the other part of this is that they're like, Okay,
the agreement is that we will stop protesting if you

(01:38:18):
do this, and if you don't do this, we're gonna
do this again. So yeah, I guess I guess my
sort of wrap this up. There's there there's an American
proverb that is really common amongst sort of like American
China watchers, which is that I so supposedly the Chinese

(01:38:39):
word for crisis is composed of two characters, danger and opportunity.
And it's like not true, as likes to get at
the polo logical analysis of China that that's not what
that's not what the characters made. But everyone, like everyone
in the US, like political stamishment, like believes this right,
and you know, but like as as an analysis of China,
it is completely useless. As an analysis of the US

(01:39:01):
of the American psyche, it's incredibly valuable, right because this this,
this is the way the American ruling class thinks. It's
it's every single crisis is both a danger and an opportunity.
And that's something that we in some sense also have
to do because that's you know, these are the sort
of situations that we're in, right, bread, riots are a
thing that just they happen, Right, they will continue to happen.

(01:39:23):
They have been happening for thousands of years, like presumably
they will happen for thousands of more years. And there's
no use sort of like either pretending that they don't
happen or making these sort of moral or tactical arguments
like for against them, because they just happen. And the
question that we're that we're faced with is what are
we actually going to do about it? Right? Are we

(01:39:44):
going to set them out? Are we gonna side with
the state and repressing them in the name of sort
of like stamping out color revolutions, are like providing order
a stability, or like protecting small businesses? Or are we
going to you know, take to the streets and fight
alongside them to sort of break the system that creates them.
And this is the second question from here is if
we're going to do this, how what what what we've

(01:40:06):
seen from Ecuador in the past month or so is
that if you take the fight to them and you're
sufficiently organized, you can win. And that means the question now,
as our food prices continued to increase, as food prices
are only going to continue to increase, what are we
going to do? And Yeah, that that's all I got.

(01:40:29):
I have. I have a single question, yep, what are
we going to do? Well? I'm kind of bummed we
never brought up are good friend Pete Buddha j Edge
in his uh bread his bread preci fixing ordeals? Yeah,

(01:40:51):
I mean that that that that's kind of a sign
of just like how kind of like I guess you
could say masculalized, like our culture has been that people
didn't riot over that because like that is a thing
like if if if if if you said, Pete Buddha
jedge back to like a late Frets village and she
tries to do this thing like he does the systematic

(01:41:14):
like bride bread price fixing, right, like all of these
people would have been getting hit by rocks. So yeah,
I do that again. Yeah, do that again. Wow, Barons,
this brazen incitement. Yeah, yeah, that's great. Well that is
it for us today. We love to incite things, folks.

(01:41:37):
Until next time, go incite yourselves. Welcome to it could
happen here. The podcast that's increasing about things that are

(01:42:01):
actually kind of already happening of and today it's gonna
be it's gonna be one of those. And we're talking
about in the kind of the uptick in rhetoric around
queer exterminationism that's happened. Most of the stuff is what
this is discussions and legislative proposal and rhetoric that was

(01:42:21):
really kicked off last month during Pride months, specifically because
of the Rovy Wade ruling that really opened the door
on a few not good possibilities. UM. But because we're
gonna be talking about some more grim stuff today, we're
gonna we're gonna open with something slightly more funny. Um
And that's a friend of the Pod, Dr Jordan B. Peterson.

(01:42:44):
UM now with with me today is is Chris and
James greetings? All right, So Peterson, he got he got
really mad at Elliott Page. Um and now does not
really have a Twitter account. And it's pretty funny. Uh And,

(01:43:04):
a few days after he was banned for continuing to
miss gender Elliott Page, he released a video that can
only be described as a super villain monologue um as
as a part of his new partnership with Daily Wire Plus,
the hit new streaming service. Um And, just because I
think it's funny, We're just gonna we're just gonna play

(01:43:27):
a few clips of of this of this evil supervillain
monologue because it's really funny, and then it'll circle back
to kind of our topic towards the end. So ah speaking,
speaking a friend of the Pod, Peterson, here's here's our
here's our one of the clips that's you've probably already
heard if you're if you're terminally online. But it's incredibly funny.

(01:43:52):
If I'm required to acknowledge that my tweet violated the
Twitter rules? What rules you songs of good old, good
old Peter said, You know the thing, I've always been
sort of like that clip in particular, It's like, I
don't know if I was trying, I don't know if
I could emulate just the it's sounding like you've edited

(01:44:16):
together sixteen clips. If you my tweet violated that Twitter rules,
that's like it's his speech pattern is so bizarre. And
also like in the the video was like nine minutes long,
like proceeding that line, he explained what rule he broke
around miss gendering and harassment, so like he explained the

(01:44:40):
exact rule. Ah, but we always get more, Peter said,
if you ask for it, yours woke moralists, we'll see
who cancels. Who like funny. He's actually sneering as well.
If you watched the video, like yeah, yeah, he's he is,

(01:45:02):
he's he's going all in on the bit. He's doing
like Ozzi Mandius but hammed up. It's it's frankly impressive.
This is this one's also also a decent one. I
am employing this awkward and impossible naming style because it
is now apparently mandatory and and probably doing it wrong. Nonetheless,
as you're doing it wrong is the whole point of

(01:45:25):
what has been made mandatory. But also I'm trying to
make a point. I've essentially been banned from Twitter as
a consequence. I say banned, although technically I have been suspended,
but the suspension will not be lifted unless I delete
the hateful tweet in question, and I would rather die

(01:45:47):
than do that. That means that you have a healthy
relationship to the platform of Twitter. Um. There's also this
this great clip of him talking about, like, I'm actually
happy how my Twitter account has gone. Now Twitter is

(01:46:08):
insignificant in the final analysis, and you're like, what the
fund does that mean? What? What fun What final analysis
are you talking about? What do you what do you mean?
The final analysis analysis of what? Like? What is? Oh uh,
it's it's pretty funny. There's there's two more clips from

(01:46:32):
this rent that I want to do, which kind of
are going to get more to the heart of our
issue today. Um, They're they're not great. They actually are
kind of they kind of suck. So without further ado,
here's their good doctor friend. And finally with regard to
the final phrase criminal physician, I must say that I've
had some postcoital so to speak, regrets about that phrase.

(01:46:56):
It is clearly the case that the surgical operation performed
by the butchers who butchered Elliott slash Ellen was legal.
So was it criminal or not? Were the operations undertaken
by the fascist physicians who carried out the Nazi medical
experiments legal Yes, under the laws of the time, But

(01:47:21):
were they criminal? I'll leave that question up to you
to answer. So that's pretty gross for a lot of reasons.
Um One, the kind of historical context of using Nazis
too compare to your own transphobia is a little dicey
when you consider how with the Nazis did to trans

(01:47:43):
people into like queer books. Like, yeah, he's advocating for
the Nazi position here. Yeah, there's been so many bands
on queer books this Like just in the past two years, Uh,
the Library Association tracked almost six d books that were challenged,

(01:48:04):
in the highest number since the organization began tracking book
bands in the past twenty years. So talk talking about
like the Nazi scientists, they're like you like you have
is his his historical context of obviously is incredibly lacking,
or he's just or he's just a grifter. I think, honestly,

(01:48:25):
he's just kind of I think he's just kind of
lost it. I think I don't even think he's fully
a grifter. I think he's just kind of not understanding
what's going on anymore. Of because you can watch like
interviews and stuff where people can try to use reasoning
and logic with him, and you can watch his brain
start to process it. But it's just like otherwise, he

(01:48:45):
just doesn't think in any sort of logical manner, put
his words or his like stream of consciousness into any
historical context. He just says what he wants, and he's
used to people just taking that as a fact. Um,
he's used to like regurgitating bad Joseph Campbell and people
be like, oh, yeah, you sound smart. Would know he's
actually not, he's of but man, it's it's yeah. The

(01:49:11):
whole Germany Nazi scientist experimentation thing is incredibly incredibly frustrating. Um.
I don't even know what else to like say about
a say about that, because I mean even that that
line you could focus on for a while, like compare
how like the history of medical documentation of like transitis

(01:49:36):
and the Nazis. How that's like such a big thing
is that the Nazis destroyed so much medical research on
gender transitions, losing like like decades and decades of research
that we're only now starting to regain. Incredibly incredibly gross.
But there's this one, one, one, last one, last clip.
I wanted to play of of of our of our

(01:49:56):
good doctor and are we degenerate, you know, profoundly threatening manner?
I think the answer to that may well be yes.
So that's not great. He really is like just advocating
for the Nazi position every turn, Like, yes, he's just
continuing to advocate for fascistic reasoning of fascistic views of

(01:50:21):
decadence and degeneracy insomuch as it is a threat to
civilization and a threat to Western society. And then he
goes on in this clip to justify Russia's invasion of
Ukraine because the US is helping Ukraine, which makes Ukraine
degenerate by proxy, so Russia is doing a war on degeneracy.

(01:50:42):
And that's like, that's his arguments, Like that's his level
of logical reaciting yea, which which is funny because it's
like if if you ever heard any of the like
radio because every wants a while, there will be radio
clips are just like Ukrainian Russian soldiers yelling at each
other and it's just both of them calling each other
gay over and over again. It's just like, we like

(01:51:06):
bring back that level of discourse to America. Well, um,
we're gonna take a quick break and then we will
come back to talk about our other really close friend
of the pod, uh Matthew Walsh. So stay stay tuned
for that. God Okay, I have I have one question

(01:51:28):
for everyone here. Um what what? How? How? Woman? What?
What is? What is that featherless biped? Okay, behold. So
when we're talking about Matt Walsh, obviously, last month he

(01:51:50):
released a pretty poorly made transphobic documentary that was basically
just a clipse of him getting owned by like actual
doctor there for not understanding like basic ontology and medical reasoning. Um,
the documentary was just uh. Other friend of the po,
JK Rolling, just expressed support for the documentary. So if

(01:52:13):
that's if that's on an indicator that like turfism is
just like a direct preamble to open fascism. I don't
know what is because I mean, Matt. Matt Walsh jokingly
describes himself as a fascist, but that's because his his
beliefs actually are fascistic. Like he said, it's one of
those jokes that only is funny because everyone agrees on
the central premise, like it's it's that, it's that, it's

(01:52:35):
that type of humor. Um so like J. K. Rowling
just endorsing an open fascist. So I'm not going to
talk about the documentary in depth here because it's not
that good and it doesn't really make any points that
need to be refuted. It it talks about how like
it talks about how how puberty blockers are um sterilization

(01:52:58):
uh drugs, which is not the case long term when
you're on them, Yes you cannot, you cannot do that
because it's obviously inhibiting your your hormones. But once you
go off puberty blockers you can procreate again, which which
also I just want to take a second here to
to look at this position, which is that, Okay, so

(01:53:18):
puberty blockers are sterilization things, right, I like, okay, so
this is the arguments and sterilization, right, Who are you
giving puberty blockers to children? Why the fuck do you
care well like children, and it's like, wait, I mean
they arguing it's like that, but it'll make them, it'll
make them permanently sterilized, like like you're castrating these kids

(01:53:39):
by giving them pumanity blockers, which no, that's not how
that works. You're you're just arguing in bad faith. It
doesn't matter. But anyway, I don't want to talk about
documentary in length because it's not interesting enough to talk about.
But this the documentary real quick? Is this the one
way he like goes to like quote unquote the country
of Africa asks people translates extremely racist. Yeah, great to

(01:54:04):
see j k Rowling, like known non racist lining up. Yeah,
like behind the descentitist tropes of African creator the creator
Kingsley shackle Bolt. Yeah, just the most cringe. Yeah, that's
what we call a rich white woman moment um. Yes,

(01:54:26):
all right, So but we are to talk about some
other things Matt Walt has been doing, specifically how he
has increased exterminationist rhetoric into his discussions around trans people.
So we're open to talking about de transition ers. So
the vast majority of real de transitions, which are very rare,

(01:54:49):
like there's very few of them, especially considering there's already
very few numbers of trans people but like or something, Yeah,
it's it's it's very very few. Um But the vast
majority of people who do make the choice to de
transition are usually due to experiencing aggressive transphobia. Um and
and the idea of the de transition or has been

(01:55:11):
inflated and used as a straw man to attack the
trans community just by and large, with with many documented
cases of turfs or far right activists creating like fake
stalk Papa accounts pretending to be de transition ers to
write horrifying but fictional stories that that that happens a lot.
There's a really famous case on Reddit of an alleged

(01:55:31):
de transition er who has found out to just be
like an alt right troll. Um And this all really
sucks because the people who do de transition because they
realize it's just not for them are generally pretty rad
people who continue to be very much pro trans because
they do understand the fluid nature of gender and gender
expression through this entire process. Like but and anyways, when

(01:55:56):
quote tweeting an alleged de transition or expressing regret medical
decisions that they made, Matt Walsh said this quote, we
can't just oppose the transition of children. Yes, that's particularly evil,
but it's also evil to do it to anyone of
any age. This young woman was nineteen, a legal adult
when she was mutilated. Does that make it okay? Obviously not.

(01:56:19):
Put it another way, it should be illegal for doctors
to do this to anyone of any age. It should
be illegal for anyone of any age to transition period.
So this demonstrates the jump from no one's like that,
that the rhetoric of no one should transition until they're
an adult, to no one should be allowed to transition

(01:56:40):
at all. And it came just as quickly as the
trans community was telling you it would. This This jump
is not a big one. It is very easy to
say no no hormones until you're eighteen to saying no
no hormones at all, um. And that's that's what we're
entering into. Walsh's rhetoric is increasingly exterminationist, um and eliminationist,

(01:57:05):
just saying that, like his all of his preferred policies
would result in the total prohibition of trans identity and
the criminalization of any gender firm in care. Um. These
people are fundamentally opposed to having any agency of your
own body, whether that's hormones, whether whether that's abortion, right, Like,
all of these people get mad just when they see

(01:57:26):
someone with colored hair, Like they don't like someone's ability
to have bodily autonomy. That's there, that's one of their
core politics. And you see this a lot, especially when
it comes to like trans men, because there's this notion
that there that their bodies exist in service of SIS
straight men, right, and anything that gets in the way

(01:57:46):
of that is an attack on SIS men in general
and all the patriarchal society. It's like very very very
much like regular misogyny, but with an added bonus of transphobia.
Conservative activist Christopher Ruffo made a tweet a few days
ago with a picture of Elliott Page pre transition, with
the caption that says, this is what they took from you, right.

(01:58:07):
It's it's like this notion that their bodies belong to
you assists man, and by them choosing to change their
bodies as they see fit, that's an attack on their
body's access to you. Um, it's it's it's it's it
redes a whole bunch of misogyny. Does. It does a
whole bunch of really bad transphobia. Um, it's a really

(01:58:31):
gross package, but it it It hits on a lot
of points of like this type of patriarchal conservative brain.
And I think this this this even carries out into
like hatred of trans women, as you know, as trans
women are seen as predators, so they hate trans women
to protect siss women, right, like you it's all of

(01:58:53):
this like possession, right, It's it's it's this possession of
the body of a female, so you need to protect
it against the creepy trans women. Right, It's like it's
it's all of this idea of like owning women's bodies
is central to a lot of these ideas of transphobia.
So we're gonna see a lot more stuff about how

(01:59:13):
it's going to change from no hormones, no transition until
you're eighteen, to no hormones, no transition until you twenty five,
to no hormones and no transition at all. This past year,
we've seen many proposed felony healthcare bands for trans youth.
Um said bills have passed in multiple states like Alabama,
which means that it's going to forcibly de transition teens
across the state. In Missouri, there's a similar bill in

(01:59:36):
the works titled the Save Adolescence from Experimentation Act Um,
which currently applies to individuals younger than eighteen, but Missouri
physicians and healthcare providers under the bill would be prevented
from recommending gender firm in care to patients who are
under eighteen, and there's already been discussion in legislative sessions
to extend the bill past the age of eighteen. While
debating the bill, seeking to restrict access to gender firm

(01:59:58):
and care, so lawmakers suggested that the medical interventions like
hormones be withheld from transgender and non barinary individuals until
they're twenty five years old. And during a public hearing
for the House Bill to six nine, a psychologist, Lorie
Hayes testified that she believes in adults under the age
of twenty five are unable to fully comprehend the traumatic

(02:00:22):
and drastic and irreparable quote unquote changes to their bodies
that will they will undergo if they receive gender affirming
medical treatments like puberty blockers and hormone therapies also will testifying,
hay Is uh the psychologist said that she supported conversion therapy.
So that's surprising too, nobody, Uh, or it shouldn't be.

(02:00:44):
It also takes those people to the point where they're
not necessarily edigible for their parents healthcare. Right, So, like
I think twenty six is the time when you can
do when your to you age out. Yeah, so it's
it's again like it's a backdoor like prohibition on transitioning
for other people. Yeah, yes, it's it's just trying to
stop it at all. It's you can't you can't take

(02:01:05):
their word for it. They just they just don't want
you around. That's it. Like they want you to to
kill yourself. They or they want you just to go
away or not be tread like that's that's that's what
they want. It's obviously I'm gonna do a few just
Journal of American Medical Associations found the gender affirming healthcare

(02:01:28):
include including puberty blockers and hormones between the ages of
thirteen and twenty, was associated with lower odds of moderate
or severe depression and seventie lower odds of suicidality. Now.
They study published last year by the Trevor Project found
that among transgender non binary miners hormone therapy associated with
nearly lower odds of recent depression and suicide attempts. So

(02:01:50):
they just want to ban the things that make you
more likely to live, right. They just don't want you around.
That's the actual message. So back back to just kind
of extra speaking of just not wanting you around. UM
that we're gonna do some updates on Protect Texas Kids.

(02:02:11):
The extremely open, extremely transphobic, openly Christian fascists that there
are words not mine group based in Texas who organized
a lot of events to harass either drag shows or
harass Pride events last month. It's leader Kelly Needered. I'm
gonna that's what I'm gonna say it, um tweeted a

(02:02:33):
few weeks ago. Quote let's start rounding up people who
participate in Pride events. I wonder what she means by that.
I wonder, I wonder what. I wonder what that means.
Surely doesn't mean she just wants to kill all gay people.
Oh oh it does, okay, um And another tweet from

(02:02:55):
the main Protect Texas Kids account was today's protest went.
No children seemed to be in the drag show, but
there were a bunch of adults wearing mouse ears and
watching the men dressed up as Disney princesses dance around
totally normal and not weird. Right, So it's obviously not
about protecting kids, right, Like, it's they that's not the focus.

(02:03:18):
That's not even that's not the focus of their tweet.
That's not the focus of what they want, right, Protecting
kids quote unquote is a cheap excuse just to want
to hate gay people and want gay people to go away.
That's that's all. That's all it is. We've been like,
it's we're kind of retrunning the same ground here, but man,
it's it's so it is still frustrating how many people

(02:03:40):
like fall for the bit it's not. It's not not
about protecting kids, not about saving kids from groomers. You
can look at all of the sexual abuse in Evangelical churches,
Catholic churches, it's Christian summer camps. Whatever, it's not it's
not about protecting kids. They don't give a single fuck.
It's about wanting gay people to go away. Now. But
with Kelly Needers and protect Texas Kids accounts, which they

(02:04:03):
used to organize their Christian fascist events, both of those
got banned in mid June Kelly has got banned for saying,
let's start rounding up people who who participate in Pride events.
But this, this extends beyond Texas, extends beyond Twitter dot com. Right,
Obviously these people were just using Twitter to organize, so
it are already stended out into the real world. But
it's not it's it's not It's not just Texas either.

(02:04:25):
See I think it's A congressional candidate Mark Burns, who
is a pro Trump pastor, was running for South Carolina
House district. He called for the execution of LGBTQ and
trans people by using grooming rhetoric, and then he laid
out exactly how executions could legally be done. So this

(02:04:46):
type of like state enforced a genocide. Let's let's play this.
Let's play clip. The lgbt transgender grooming our children's minds
is a national security threat because it is ultimately the
zigon to destabilize the republic we called the United States
of America. That's why when I'm elected, I don't want

(02:05:07):
to just vote. I want to start holding people accountable
for treason to the Constitution. I am going to push
to reenact WHUAC. WHOAC is the House of an American
Activities Committee. It was a real committee that was formulated
back in the fifties, and it's a committee that we
should re enact that starts holding these people accountable for treason.

(02:05:28):
You need to hold people for treason, start having some
public hearings, and start executing people who are found guilty
for their treasonous acts against the Constitution of the United
States of America, just like they did back in seventeen
seventy six. You know what, South Carolina, this is our guy.

(02:05:50):
It was an amazing the way he misspoken called it
the House off on American Activities. It's like a fun place.
So that's not ideal, is it? Of that kind of stuck. Yeah,
that was really out there. He's yeah, kid advocating. It's

(02:06:11):
just it's just it's mainstream. It's trying. They're trying to
mainstream the political ability to advocate genocide, right, and some
of them it's not some of them, it's not fully
catching on yet. Right, It's we're on the on ramp
to this um. The South Carolina pastor was defeated by
the incumbent Representative William Timmins in the GOP primary for

(02:06:33):
the state's fourth congressional district. But Pastor Mark Burne's still
received of the vote, So that's still a lot of people.
That's still a lot of people voting for that, and
that number, I don't think it's gonna shrink. Yeah, and
like and it's also it's also worth doing that, like
everyone loses him, Like it is so unbelievably hard to

(02:06:55):
beat an incumbent in Yeah, i'mory, Like it's just it's yeah,
so like even even if he was just a normal
guy with like regular politics, you would have lost the election.
So still, yeah, it's not actually a referendum on his popularity,
like the popularity of what you're saying, it's percent of
the vote. Yeah, it's worth noting that. Like even here

(02:07:18):
in southern California, right where it's supposedly like very liberal,
we had a candidate for sheriff's office who is that
was a deputy city attorney and was endorsed by the
Union Tribune just openly spewing like transphobic groom of stuff
yeah a public meetings and getting endorsed by the local newspaper.
They were rescinded their endorsement later. But this isn't just

(02:07:40):
like a red state thing. If people think that that
is that No, that's obviously there'd be a lot more
common the people who run for sheriff, who generally tend
to be more conservative because they're running for sheriff. Yea true.
All right, Well, let's let's have an add break and
then we'll come back to talk about Wait, talk about

(02:08:02):
Roe v. Wade and the attack on future rights, including
the ability to have same sex relationships. Oh wow, what
a fun time we have today. All right, we are
we are back. So after the Supreme Court overturned a rov.
Wade last month, there was an immediate push for anti gain,
anti trans legal challenges using the same legal logic against

(02:08:24):
the right to privacy based off of the the traditions
deeply rooted in our nation's history quote unquote. So this
was like undoubtedly gonna happen, right, we've been We've been
proposing that this was a possibility for a while, but
it was definitely made worse by Justice Clarence Thomas front
of the Pod, who argued in a concurring opinion that

(02:08:46):
the Supreme Court should quote reconsider its past rulings quodifying
rights such as the right to use contraception, the right
to have a same sex relationship, and same sex marriage.
Invoking Griswold, Lawrence and Oberfeld, three cases having to do
with americans fundamental right to privacy, due process, and equal protection,
Thomas wrote, quote, we have a duty to correct the

(02:09:09):
error regarding these established in those precedents, which pretty grim,
pretty grim framing there, because that's a bad sign um,
and we are already seeing stuff like this in effect. Actually,
we don't need to wait for the Supreme Court to
make rulings states that are starting to do this exact thing. Uh.

(02:09:30):
In an ongoing Alabama lawsuit that cites dabs overturning Roe v.
Wade about medically detransitioning all trans teenagers, there is this
deeply threatening turn of phrase quote, no one adult or
child has the right to transitioning treatments not deeply rooted
in our nation's history and tradition. Ha ha, interesting how

(02:09:51):
they put adult or child there? Isn't that isn't that intriguing?
And it's also fun and how the deeply red our
nation's history thing is now just sort of like here
here is the word that you say to let you
do fascism, And it's like oh, hey, do you know
what it is deeply rooted in our in our nation's
uh traditional history, shooting congressman. This is the thing that
has been done many times, like I mean again, like

(02:10:13):
like this, it's like like this is this is the
whole like this whole thing. It's just like it's it's
so the whole thing is it's so incredibly sort of
nakedly transparent and cynical and like this is you know,
it's it's a centerd fascist thing, right. We're like we're
going to create some sort of mythical past and then
we're gonna like resurrect whatever fucking things existed back then.
It's like, oh, hey, what actually existed back then? I
don't know. People try to kill the government all the time.

(02:10:34):
They're really they're really playing from like the lower Keith
t traditionalist framework here. Um, They're they're doing all the
bits we thought they would do. It's not great. Uh.
Late last month, during the end of Pride, Texas Republican
Party unveiled it's updated official position on lgbt Q issues,

(02:10:55):
definding homosexuality as quote an abnormal lifestyle choice unquote and
also opposing quote all efforts to validate transgender identity. The
party's new official stance on lgbt Q issues wasn't veiled
during Pride Month and as advocates fight against record number
of anti lgbt Q bills introduced in states across the

(02:11:16):
country this year, more than three hundred and forty bills,
according to the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest lgbt
Q advocacy group on the legal front. Thousands of Republican
activists met at the party's biennial convention in Houston in
mid June to agree to the party's platform on a
range of issues, including the rejection of the election results

(02:11:38):
and a call to a repeal the nineteen Voting Rights Act,
which was in acted to prevent discrimination against black voters. Ah,
this is I would say this is a mask off moment,
but they've never had the mask on in the first
People like, that's that's like that that's specific one. That
is a thing, like like half of the Republican Party's

(02:12:02):
platform has been people suing about the Voting Rights Act
exact exactly. It's not actually a mask off. It's just
that they're doing it louder than they were doing it before.
The section titled Homosexuality and Gender issues, UM had the
party stating that LGBTQ people should have no legal protection
from discrimination and in fact suggested intent to ensure people's

(02:12:24):
ability to do hate speech and hate crimes. Part of
the forty page resolution reads, quote, homosexuality is an abnormal
lifestyle choice. We believe there should be no granting of
special legal entitlements or creation of special status for homosexual behavior,
regardless of state of origin. And we oppose any criminal
or civil penalties against those who oppose homosexuality out of faith, conviction,

(02:12:47):
or belief in traditional values. Ha. I just I just
want to put it on the record here that like
the number of a number of my friends who have
been attacked like in the last three months is it's
a lot. I got, I got called I got, I

(02:13:10):
got called a faggot for the first time in the
Straights of Portland a few months ago. It's it's, it's,
it's it's it's it's accelerating, it's it's going, it's it's
it's going. Um. But yeah, I mean, specifically, I think
a lot of this, the last part of that resolution
there about you know, opposing any civil penalty is against
those who oppose homosexuality out of faith. I think that's

(02:13:31):
that's probably definitely a referencing Steadfast Baptist Church, the church
that just opens that openly advocates the genocide of queer people,
which we've talked about in our in our last City
of Hate episode. I think I think they're also trying
to go back to like the whole like cake bullshit thing.
Oh yeah, obviously stuff like that. It's like, it's we honestly,

(02:13:54):
we are so past the cake problem now because now
they just want to know there's murder. They just wanted
to like mass, they just want to do mass. Gend
as side, like, I'm so overcakes. Like and in the
trend of increasing the age barrier of gender affirming healthcare
into adulthood, the Texas Republicans called for the ban of

(02:14:15):
gender affirming healthcare, including the distribution of huberty blockers or
hormone supressing therapies and the UH and the performance of
gender affirming surgeries to anyone under the age of twenty one.
So that is the new Texas Republican official position is
that these things should be banned UH for under the
age of one. And that's not a that's not a
hard cap. They're gonna keep raising that cap as often

(02:14:37):
as they can, and as proof, I will offer up
the past thirty five minutes an episode, like everything we've
said in the past thirty five minutes is supporting the
opinion that that cap they wanted to go up. Yeah. Uture.
They also simultaneously advocate for like heterosexual relationship age of
consent to just dromp oh yeah, like twelve years old.

(02:15:01):
Yeah um. Speaking of speaking of Texas, near the end
of June, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who sent us
office home in the celebration of the overturning of Roe v. Wade,
said that he will defend Texas anti sodomy law. It's
a Supreme Court revisit's lawrence view Texas. I'm gonna play

(02:15:23):
extremely frustrating clip here, here's a fun time. I'm sure
you read uh Justice Thomas's concurrence where he said that
there were a number of other of these issues grizz wald,
uh lawrence and ogofell that he felt needs to be
looked at again. Obviously, the lawrence case came from Texas.

(02:15:43):
That was the what outlawed sodomy? Would you, as Attorney
general be comfortable defending a law that once again outlawed
sodomy that questioned Lawrence again, or Griswold, or gay marriage
that came from the state legislature to put to the test.
With Justice Thomas said, yeah, I mean, there's all kinds

(02:16:03):
of issues here, but certainly the Supreme Court has stepped
into issues that I don't think there was any constitutional
provision dealing with. They were legislative issues, and this is
one of those issues, and there may be more. So
it would depend on the issue and depending on what
state law it says at the time, And just just
for the sake of time here, you wouldn't rule out

(02:16:24):
that if the state legislature passed the exact same law
that that Lawrence overturned on sodomy, you wouldn't have any
problem then defending that and taking that case back to
the Supreme Court. Yeah. Look, my job is defend state
law and I'll continue to do that. That is my
job into the Constitution, and I'm so First of all,

(02:16:46):
in this clip of Kenpacton, he looks like a zombie.
I don't know what's going on with his face, but
his ECUs twitching in a way that looks really uncanny.
He looks like he like, look at look at this
man's face, Look at what is going on. That's an

(02:17:09):
unfortunate pause. No, he looks aet in motion too. It's
not an unfortunate pause. He just looks. There is something
going wrong with Ken Paxton. We need you to the
bottom of this. But also all of that stuff about
make enforcing laws against sodomy, making gay sex illegal, they

(02:17:31):
don't want gay people to find because what they're actually saying, um,
and if you do, they want to send you to jail. Um.
So that's something that Ken Paxton wants wants to do
um wrapped in very flowery language about defending the laws
on record, that laws that you are enforcing, therefore you're

(02:17:52):
making the laws in effect. Um ha. So one one
aspect of this that I want to touch on again
before we close out in our in Our City of
Hate episodes about the Christian fascists in Dallas attacking drag
shows and Steadfast Baptist Church, and even in some of
the stuff that we've gone over in this episode, right,

(02:18:13):
there's a lot of talk about like government approved extermination um,
whether that be like for treason, for Unamerican acts, executions
based off Biblical law, rounding up people for degenerate or
deviant behavior, arresting doctors for performing gender affirming surgeries. There's
there's a lot of like talk around, like the government's

(02:18:36):
ability to legally gen side people. Um. But the other
aspect of this is like the vigilante justice angle of
people wanting to just do physical violence themselves. And there's
a way that these two things can intersect in a
really interesting way. I'm gonna play one one last clip here.

(02:18:57):
You know some teachers pushing X values on your third grader.
Why aren't you going to thrash the teacher talk to
an orongal person's kids about sex in kindergarten? You get
beaten up. You should be beaten up. Please. If I
was a parent and my fifth grade daughter had had
to sleep and shower in some kind of cabin at
some summer camp that I paid money to send my

(02:19:18):
child to, and there was a man calling himself a
woman sleeping in her cabin, my husband would have beat
him into the ground. Where are the men actually standing
up against these men who think they are women that
are trying to compete in these females. Sports shouldn't put
up with it anymore. You need to intervene. You need
to show up to the sporting like this is not happening. Actually,
there is almost nothing that can be done. Uh that

(02:19:40):
is uh, that is over the line to stop that.
It's disgusting. There was a time in this country of
just a little more decency where if someone even voiced
the idea of taking your kid to a drag show
to be arrested, they are underqualified to have children. They
should have their children taken away from them because it's
child abuse. So that's a lot of stuff, but rent
you know, it fluctuates between talking about people taking this

(02:20:03):
into their own hands in a very like obviously like
misogynistic and transphobic way. Again, it's about like the access
to you know, protecting access to the feminine body um,
and then a lot of other stuff around, you know,
the government arrested people and try it's about it. It's
a mix between like doing stuffy yourself, you know, in

(02:20:25):
a form of like the vigilante um um or you know,
eventually advocating for the for the government's ability to do this. Now,
we we've covered a number of incidents of like a
violence or of things that that we're escalating to the
point of that right before it stopped. UM. Across you know,
the Dallas area, we talked about stuff in Boise, Idaho

(02:20:48):
with Patriot Front. We talked about the Proud Boys who
stormed the library outside of San Francisco. UM, I think
those are in our in our I think I talked
about most of those across a few of the city
of haid episode. UM. Then we have uh there's but
there there is other incidents outside of just those cities. UM.
In Atlanta, a youth justice group was forced to cancel

(02:21:11):
their rally in support of trans rights after an organizer
received a specific quote vulgar death threat. In Calama, Washington,
a school was put on lockdown after an anti transit
student threatened a mass shooting following a broad student walkout
in support of a trans classmate who had been assaulted. UM.
People graffited pervs work here on an elementary school in

(02:21:35):
Venture County, California, following a local right wing papers story
about a third grade teacher who affirmed a trans students
name and pronouns. In the lead up to Pride Month,
and anti LGBTQ activist named Ethan Schmidt Crockett vowed to
hunt gay people and trans people and their allies at
target stores um following the story's decision to celebrate Pride.

(02:21:57):
He made the same threat a month before. In June,
he attended the counter protest of a pro gun control
March of Our Lives demonstration carrying an a R fifteen.
In Kiel, Wisconsin, schools are forced to shut down and
go virtual after bomb threats were made in response to
the district's investigation of anti trans harassment by three students.
Something I've been thinking about a lot the past few

(02:22:20):
weeks is that even before Roevwade was overturned, multiple states
enacted laws for like vigilante bounty hunters to do the
work of the state that the state wasn't legally allowed
to do yet like directly right, And so they were
getting regular people to combat and intimidate providers into not
doing abortion procedures. And we're already seeing an increase in

(02:22:43):
physical attacks targeting queer people. And I think many more
regular people are waiting for the state government's permission to
do the same thing. We don't need to wait for
the Supreme Court to say gay sex can be made illegal, right.
States can already start doing this stuff now. And there's
already people waiting in the wings, and as soon as
they get to go ahead, they will jump at this opportunity.

(02:23:06):
I'm gonna play one final clip that is pretty pretty grim.
I just said a man tell me in public that
he can't wait until he's legally able, until he's legally
able to hunt me. Now, I had a man in

(02:23:32):
public he can't wait until he can legally hunt us down.
This is not okay. This is not okay. So that

(02:23:53):
was a queer person who lives in Oklahoma talking about
something that happened to them last month. M and I
try to when I make these episodes, I try to
not just lay out a whole bunch of bad things
to be like, here's a problem, all right by everybody,
like because that sucks, but also I don't know what

(02:24:13):
the solution here is, because this sucks. Of The California
House and Senate just passed bill uh S B one
oh seven. This bill would provide many protections for families
fleeing states like Texas and Alabama. It would protect them
from extradition, from out of state investigations and from out
of state custody judgments based on providing gender affirming healthcare.

(02:24:38):
The bill is currently in review by the California Committee
on Appropriations, and then it would need to be signed
by the governor. If your state doesn't have a trans
sanctuary law on the docket, maybe it's time to ask
your representative about that. UM, preferably maybe when they're like
out at dinner or at church. UM. But also like

(02:25:00):
even getting to the point where we're making plans to
flee to other states, when trans people are forced to
make plans to flee out of country, when you're investigating
what kind of citizenship you can get based on your
ancestral family history. Once we're at that point, it's really hard,
like it's it's and in my discussions with queer friends

(02:25:24):
the past few like the past few weeks, we've been
having more and more conversations about that, more and more
plans about when things really do fully breakdown, where do
we go what do we do? Like and it sucks
because there's so many people who live in states like Oklahoma,
like Texas right where that's people's homes, that's where that's
where these queer people are living, and they shouldn't be

(02:25:46):
forced to leave like they that that shouldn't happen. And
we have great folks like the Elm Fork John Brown
Gun Club, to think, are providing a really good example
of how queer people can work together to start doing
community defense your own areas. Uh to say no, this
is our home too, and we're gonna fucking walk around
with rifles to defend it if we have to. Um. Obviously,

(02:26:08):
not everyone mentally is able to do that, right, but
there's there's there's other ways to get in, get more
connected to your local community, to strengthen like queer areas
inside you know states where these things are happening. The
other thing I see a lot with queer people that
makes me really sad is that fighting the state right,

(02:26:29):
fighting these types of big homophobic institutions who want to
kill us, that's hard and scary. We feel so powerless.
We we want to feel like we have any agency,
want to feel like we have any power at all,
because there's so many people with power who are hurting us,
and it's hard to actually fight back against those. But
we feel powerless, so we want to feel like we're able.

(02:26:50):
So instead we turn on other people who are within
our own communities because it's easier to attack people who
are like us. It's it's it's it's easier to to
to do to do that, right, it still gives you
a sense of having agency. But they're trying to murder
us all like personally disagreements on politics or whatever aside,
Like it would be really nice if we stop just

(02:27:14):
doing nonsense fighting with each other and doing dumb like
click drama, dumb discourse like they're trying to they're trying
to kill us. Can we not? Can we not do that?
I know you want to find some way to push
back on something so you feel like you have an
ability to do anything. And doing it against the police,
doing against your state governments, doing it against the Supreme Court,

(02:27:37):
that's much harder, right, It's easier to do it against
you know, a friend of yours or someone who used
to be friends with that's so much easier. But that's
not helping in their attempts to just do genocide. So
I think making plans to get out of where you are,
if you have to, making plans is necessary. Sometimes I've

(02:28:02):
I've thought of this, I've been even me in the
Pacific Northwest have had have have had many thoughts about that.
It's also very important to start strengthening your relationships with
other queer people in your communities and starting to put
together ways to work with them. UM, to make a
show for uce and say hey, we're here, We're not

(02:28:24):
gonna we're here to stay right now. You can't you
can't scare us out right now, because there needs to
be some way to combat it, because these people they're
trying to do they're trying to be regressive right like there,
we are already at a point that we progressed far
enough that there. They are scared of how much progress

(02:28:45):
has happened, so they're trying to turn the clock back.
Our challenge is to keep the change coming and push
back against these people who are trying to hold on
to the dead twentieth century. Right. The fear of change
and the fear of the future is driving their return
to the asked, we don't need to just run away,
because we should. We should be winning this fight in
some ways because we already hold We already hold the

(02:29:09):
ground that they want to take away from us. So, yeah,
bad stuff is coming, but just because bad things happened
in history doesn't mean they need to happen again, like
we there is ways to intervene to stop this, UM,
should you keep your passports renewed? Yes, you obviously should. Um,
But we don't just need to run away because we

(02:29:31):
actually have ground to stand on here. So yeah, and
I think I think one thing is also important to
remember is that the people who got us here we're
facing way way worse solids than we are. Yeah, people
who had to do this. Yeah, And so like, like
the job that we have is incredibly intimidating, it is
also easier than the stuff that has already been done.

(02:29:54):
We already we already got to this point facing extremely
harsh condition and we already got there. Um. I don't know,
it's just it's always struggling to try to find ways
to think about this that gives you a little bit
of like, you know, it's just like it's so easy
to be a duomer. It's so easy just to say
we're all funk, we all need to move away. That's

(02:30:16):
the simple solution. But there's most simple things are also
usually incomplete and wrong. So just trying to find other
ways to think about this problem. Because we don't need
to tell for people to run away, um, and you
don't need to tell them they have to fight either. Um.
You know, people can make their own decisions and offer

(02:30:37):
their own resources and start operating in a network that
helps the survival of all of us and increasingly challenging times.
And I should also say, like non queer people like,
look that the defining characteristic at this moment is that
there is a silent, silent majority that supports crew rights. Yeah,

(02:30:57):
and if if the the the the the only way
that we actually lose this is if is if that
majority does nothing. But if that, if that majority moves,
if this is people who actually believe in this stuff,
and if the non queer people who actually believe that
we should have rights and we should be able to
live our lives do stuff, we will fucking crush these people.
They will be remembered as a fucking grain of dust

(02:31:19):
in the sand that was crushed by the tide of history.
And we can do that. We can destroy them. We can,
we can, we can, we can make it for we
can make this moment in history a incredibly brief blip
where people are like, oh, hey, that was wasn't it
weird when homophobia came back for like three years and
then it was just gone again. That that that that
is in our power. We just have to do it yep,

(02:31:42):
all right, well, strength and community relations. Stop stop doing
nonsense in fighting for no good reason because you want
to feel powerful, put that effort into actually finding the
people that are trying to hurt you, or put that
effort into making friends. That does it for us today.

(02:32:08):
That was my episode on the increase in queer extermination.
Is um um Yeah, see you on the other side. Hello,

(02:32:31):
and welcome to it could happen here a podcast about
things that could happen, or, in today's case, are about
to happen. I want to talk to you today about
the Friendship Park, which exists between San Diego and Tijuana.
If you haven't spent time at the border, it's difficult
to understand how, despite getting bigger and uglier every year,

(02:32:53):
it feels at once omnipresent and non existent. Friendship Park
was always one of the places where the boarder loomed,
but it never quite managed to beat out the tremendous
feelings of goodwill you could experience there on a Saturday morning,
on a piece of sand next to a steel fence
that demarcates the end of the United States. Boarders exist
to control us, not to protect us, and it is

(02:33:16):
never more apparent than it was at Friendship Park, where
you could watch grandparents meeting grandkids, dreamers checking in with
their parents. A Friendship Park, half century old institution that
allowed family divided by the border to meet across the
French The borders certainly didn't make anyone feel safer, but
over time, people who had never set foot on the

(02:33:37):
two miles of sand and Imperial Beach that many families
walked across weekly to be together made laws that would
make it even harder for those families to be together.
For decades, the park was the only places mixed immigration
status families could come together. People flew from across the
US to meet relatives who are trying to make the
crossing north to join their friends and loved ones. It

(02:34:01):
was an emotional place, but most of the time it
was a happy place. You could see kids having parties
on the Mexican side, and sometimes concerts would take place
with the band split between two countries, with playing one
tune on the Tijuana side, the fences covered in murals.
At moments it felt like a small victory over the
pointless cruelty that happens here on a daily basis. The

(02:34:24):
park itself was opened by pat Nixon in At the time,
she said, I hope there won't be a fence here
too long. Since then, the US government has built a
secure fence in the nineteen nineties under Bill Clinton, then
are supposedly more secure fence following nine eleven. Then it
built the secondary wall. In two thousand nine, gate was

(02:34:47):
installed to allow people to enter at certain times on
weekends and meet their families, separated by just one barrier.
Now there are plans to replace that secondary war by
building a thirty ft wall under the pretense that the
current structure is unsound. This new wall made it a
Trump design, but built under Biden's instruction, will not have

(02:35:08):
a gate, and the last place in the country that
families could touch and heal will be gone forever. Customs
and Border Protection blocked access to Friendship Park in February.
Have you reigned? That year fourth State officials to temporarily
closed border Field State Park, the larger park in which
Friendship Path is nestled. Since then, Border patrol has not

(02:35:33):
opened the gate that lets people unite briefly with their families,
they claim, and influx of migrants has prevented them from
having the staffing required to open the park, but on
weekends agents are posted up right by where the park
gate is anyway, in case people try and make the
crossing without permission in order to see the families that
many of them have been separated from for over two years.

(02:35:54):
Throughout those two years, I've crossed the Tijuana and to
report on the growing number of people come around the
world from Haiti, from Central and South America, or Ethiopia,
and recently Ukraine, to name but a few countries. Despite
the heartbreaking stories of danger, fear and loss, and separation
from the people they love, they haven't been able to

(02:36:15):
file asylum claims due to the Trump administration's spurious use
of public health laws to severely and illegally limit asylum.
I don't have time here to explain the entirety of
the Migrant Protection Protocol and Title forty two, and I
don't really want to either, because the justification behind them
isn't what's important. The cruelty they manifest is what's important.

(02:36:38):
Joe Biden, who came to office promising a kind of approach,
has defended some of these policies in court with his
Department of Justice, and a particular cruelty of Title forty two,
which allowed authorities to expel migrants who arrived at uth
Land borders, has persisted despite Biden's recent change of heart,
because several states managed to sue successfully to keep it

(02:36:59):
in place. In the midst of all this, more and
more people have been separated by the border. Now the
Biden administration is looking to permanently close the wantedtle island
of Hope that remained on a beach at the end
of America. Obviously, a park with a massive fence doesn't
solve a broken system or make the cruelty any less cruel.

(02:37:21):
But it was a place for healing and kindness and
love and families, and now that place, too is under threat.
I cut up with Robert Vard, friends of Friendship Park,
to talk about the park, the threats to it, and
what you can do to help. Robert, would you like
to start off just by introducing yourself and explaining sort
of where you fit in this uh, in the Friendship

(02:37:43):
Park world and in the world of the border more generally. Absolutely,
my name was Robert. We're in a part of the
friends or friendship or leadership group. And you know the
reason I'm so involved with Friendship parking Bay Friendship Piker
so important to me, uh is because I was actually
one of those uh family members uh that at one

(02:38:07):
point in my life I was deported and the only
way that I was able to see some of my
family um was through the border wall there at Friendship Park.
In particular my son, who is active duty military, and
because of the military status, um, you know, I was

(02:38:29):
not able to come across the border, or it was
very difficult for him to secure authorization from his command
uh to be able to cross the border, and therefore
the only type of visit um that I could have
with my son and my my granddaughters was through that
border wall. So firsthand I understood very well, uh the

(02:38:53):
importance of allowing on the weekends, uh at least for
you know, a few hours on the weekend, that opportunity
for families to uh to be able to uh to
meet there at Friendship Park. Yeah. So perhaps we should
explain for people who aren't here in San Diego what
the what Friendship Park is, right, or perhaps what it

(02:39:16):
was in say before it was shot absolutely uh back
prior to COVID. Friendship Park is a by national park
separated by a border while actually by two border walls
on the southwestern tip of the United States bordering Mexico.

(02:39:43):
It's a border between Imperial Beach and Tijuana Beach. And
the Friendship Park is actually a strip of land inside
Borderfield State Park. And that strip of land is in
between UM two border walls boarder fences, if you if
you say so, UM, and that part is considered to

(02:40:08):
US friendship part, which is the area where UH person's
families uh mixed status families from both sides of the
border with meat. But it wasn't only a place for
families to meet. There's also a place for people of
good nature of the United States and Mexico to be

(02:40:30):
able to meet and UH and also extend their friendship
between the two countries and the two communities. UH. You know,
back up fifty almost fifty one years ago. This is
the area that then First Lady pat Nixon UM actually
inaugurated as International Friendship Park and actually went as far

(02:40:56):
as cutting a part wire or having the Secret Service
at the barbed wire there at the park so she
could reach across to the Mexico side and hug the
people of Mexico. UH. Because of the the you know,
the sentiment, the feeling of of that friendship between the

(02:41:16):
two countries, and you know her very famous words, uh,
that she wished that there would no longer be a
fence here to separate these two great countries. And of
course we know that fifty one years later, almost fifty
one years later, Uh, that has taken an opposite course
of direction, where we now have two border walls. Plans

(02:41:41):
are to direct to even higher, uglier eight walls to
divide our two great countries. Yeah. So perhaps again, I
think people have a very uh the way that people
see the border when they don't live on the border
is very different to the way we see the boarder
when we live on the border, right, And I think

(02:42:02):
part of that is in this understanding of walls and
fences and barriers and the various things which we have
already along the border. Right. So, um, maybe you could
give us a little sort of potted history of the
different Uh. I think you're right there secure fences right
that were built through the Friendship Park and across the

(02:42:24):
sort of San Diego Tijuana area. Right. Well, Uh, you know, again,
for the longest time, the only fence that used to
separate the two countries was that that strand of barb
wire UH. However, after Operation that Gatekeeper nine eleven UM,

(02:42:44):
it was decided to to build the sturdier fence and
then in two thousand and eleven the secondary fence UH
was erected and at that time the threat of the
being closed again because of the advocacy of friends or

(02:43:05):
Friendship part UM, it was negoty negotiated with with Order
Patrol UH that the the park would continue to remain
open with a limited access of at that time persons
UM at a time on Saturdays and Sundays from ten

(02:43:27):
o'clock in the morning to two o'clock in the afternoon. UH.
That second wall was erected when the federal government um
UH claimed eminent domain from the state of California and
acquired that piece of land UH which is UH now

(02:43:48):
considered the enforcement area and to us UH is the
area that were better known as Friendship Part right, and
so UM, what's see, there's a threat to the park now, right,
there's a there's a new threat, and I think people
UH again it might not have realized that we're continuing

(02:44:10):
to build border wall, border barrier order DIKE. It's sometimes
called UH depending on which part of the country you're in.
But can you explain how, despite Joe Biden having signed
this executive order saying what he claims saying not one
more mile of wall, how are we still having this
threat of building a bigger, uglier wall, right, And you know,

(02:44:32):
I think that's uh, that's precisely the question, Uh that
French or Friendship park paracity that why is it that Uh?
If President Biden has stated that he would not build
one more intro Trump's border wall, all of a sudden
now has decided uh to finish the construction of Trump's border, Well,

(02:44:59):
it's a question that that that we all ask, uh.
And there's part of the the petition that we have
reached out to uh Border Patrol as to the inclusion
of the public and in those plans on continuing the

(02:45:20):
replacement of the that while with thirty foot fallered fencing. Yeah,
and that thirty footballered fencing, that's what people will be
familiar with as the Trump wool, right, That is correct,
something that you know, the fenishing that exists right now. Uh.

(02:45:41):
You know, it's it's there. And I guess even though
we we may not like what it is and what
it represents. Um, you know, but it is there. But
now to go even further and further desecrat our part
with two thirty foot walled style defenses just completely uh

(02:46:05):
obstructs the the aesthetics of the park, desgrades our part.
Yeah and so yeah, with this sort of further threat
to the park cluoming you touched on it earlier, but
I'd like to go back to like what the park means,
especially to families who are separated by the border right

(02:46:26):
and can't cross to see each other. Oh absolutely, uh,
you know, on on when the part was open on
on a weekly on a weekend basis. Uh, you know,
we would have families, uh you know, for example, grandmothers
that had never met their their grandchildren, you know, meet
their grandchildren for the first time route across that border wall.

(02:46:47):
You know, mothers that hadn't seen their their kids in
twenty thirty years. Uh, you know, the joy of you know,
of being able to at least see them across that
border all and just you know, a couple inches away
from them. And even though you know, nothing could pass
through through that barrier. Um. The only thing that was

(02:47:10):
able to pass through the um the orifice there on
the wall or the fencing was the tip of your finger,
which is why uh we kind of uh uh created
what we call the peak kids because that's the only
thing that would reach across and that's the only way
we would be able to hug and kiss our loved

(02:47:31):
ones on the other side of the border. UM very significant.
And you know something that uh that we hope more
people would understand is that you know, by heavy the
part open and families allowed to be able to visit
across that fence, it would allow people, even though it's

(02:47:53):
not the best scenario, but at least it would give people.
It would give families the opportunity to remain being a family,
to have a little bit of contract with their loved ones.
Something very important. We keep hearing about reasons for you know,
a border walls and more uh check h TEG and

(02:48:16):
and security and so forth, because incursions, Well, Todd, this
is one of the reasons why, uh, you know, we
have more incursions because people get desperate from losing contact
with their loved ones that they're willing to risk their
own life to be able to reach their loved ones.

(02:48:37):
That's why you have increase in people trying to swim
across the border. Wall. That's why you have people reaching
out to further points in the desert trying to reach
their loved ones. That's why you have people climbing, uh,
some of these thirty foot walls and falling and uh
uh you know, bravely injuring themselves out because you get

(02:49:01):
to the point that your family is everything in your
life and you're willing to risk your life to reach
that family. When uh order uh, when Friendship Part was open, Uh,
we had a lot of conversations with a lot of
people that came to the part to visit their families,

(02:49:23):
and in speaking to them, uh, they would tell you that,
you know, being able to see their their families, their
loved ones and sharing those moments together with very comforting
and bettery energizing and motivating to continue to fight to
search for a legal opportunity to be being able to

(02:49:46):
reunite what their loved ones. Yeah, and I think we
should point out that, like, since since the park has
been closed, it's not just the park being closed which
has created like a hostile environment for people seeking asylum
or seeking to reunite with their family in the United States,
where we've had the Migrant Protection Protocol, which is better
known as Remain in Mexico, and we've had titled forty two,

(02:50:10):
sometimes called catch and Release, both of which do the
same things that you say, which is increased the amount
of people who cross in higher risk areas and increase
in danger to migrants chiefly. So there's this there's this
perception I think that things changed in January, but they didn't.
I think for most people, certainly people I've met, trying

(02:50:32):
to come to the United States to be safe, they
still can't. And as you say, they they still can't
see their families. And perhaps we should also mention that,
like sometimes we talk about um Friendship Park being binational,
but it's more than that, right, Like, it's not just
people from Mexico who come to meet their families of

(02:50:53):
Friendship Park. It's it's there's people from all around the
world who are unable to come to the United States
but are in on it right right absolutely, And uh,
you know it's not just you know, families that gather there. Uh,
it's friendships. It's an opportunity, um for people from any

(02:51:15):
part of the world to be able to make a connection,
make a friend right across that border while without actually
having to across the border. Uh if for whatever reason
they may be, they cannot uh come across to the
Mexico or to the Mexico site. Uh. You know, the

(02:51:39):
part is all about friendship. That's what why Uh to
first Lady Pat Dixon, We're so important the decks and
nation of the part in consideration of the great friendship
that existed and has always existed. And and you know what,
no matter what happens, UH, that is going to continue

(02:52:01):
because uh, in particular San Diego and Tijuana, we really
want to be unity. Um. There's a tremendous population in
San Diego that have relatives in Defuana and vice versa.
And it's not only you know, the family, but commerce. Uh.
You know, we're one community and one way or another,

(02:52:25):
you know, uh, people are are gonna stay connected. Uh
always figure out different ways to be able to to
remain connected and have that friendship. UM. And I think
part of uh the reason for that is because uh,

(02:52:45):
you know a lot of people see that that border
fence and they see a barrier, but uh, we see
that much more than that barrier is the barrier in
our heart and with you know the people of our community.
That barrier doesn't exist. The only barrier to us is
that that friends. The barrier in our heart does not

(02:53:09):
exist because we have respect for each other and we
consider ourselves friends and one community on both sides of
that border will yeah, yeah, definitely. I think it's yeah,
the border exists a lot more sort of on the ground,
and it doesn't in the community here. And I think

(02:53:29):
so many thousands of people cross every day, it's really
odd to have it presented as this hard, impenetrable thing.
And then it's also just an annoyance and the reason
that we set in our cars for hours trying to
cross north. I wonder if we can talk a little
bit about Because there's a Friendship Park, and then there's
the southern side, right part lamy Stad. What's the official

(02:53:51):
sort of set up in Mexico with regards to the park.
It's a little different from the US, right, Uh yeah, well,
you know, the big difference on the Mexico side is,
like our pastor John Fantasy says, on the Mexico side
is one big party, you know, one one big uh

(02:54:12):
friendly happy atmosphere, just like what you would expect to
find in any part where families gather on on the
weekend and now you know during summer vacation even during
the week UH, you know, a bustling UH beach city
with a magnificent friendly part, family oriented UH, family friendly

(02:54:38):
part where where people go to enjoy a a beautiful part. Um. Unfortunately, UH,
our our friends on the U S side, I cannot
enjoy the part as uh as much as UH our
friends on the Mexico side do because of these limitations

(02:55:00):
on the part. Yeah, it's it's a shame. Like you said,
it's very contrasting like the U. S side, it's kind
of difficult to get to and it's only open and
set now is It's what it's not open at all
post and we should explain that, right. So it was
closed in UH for COVID and then if I understand
right following that it remained close because border patrol were understaffed.

(02:55:22):
They claim, right, that is where we have been told
that Friends of Friendship part originally that it was close
because of COVID UH, and the understanding was that UH
when the COVID situation UH was over, then that their
plan was to reopen Friendship Part. However, now we're being

(02:55:45):
told that because of a lack of personnel that they're
not able to staff it accordingly to be able to
open it. Uh. You know you judged a little bit
earlier on the MPP program. Uh. You know, if there
has been increased in incursions into the US, a lot

(02:56:06):
of it has to do with the asylum process UH
that has been halted for so many for the last
couple of years. That uh, you know, forces people in
desperation uh to take their life at risk and try
to gain entry into the US. You know, UH, it's

(02:56:27):
not that difficult to understand if if you're living in
a country where crime and violence is widespread, and you
have a choice whether you leave your country and travel
three or four thousand miles to reach some kind of safety, uh,
to protect the life of your of your loved ones,

(02:56:49):
of your family. UH. You know, you're you're going to
You're gonna if you risk that, You're gonna you're gonna
risk you know, your life trying to get across it
and protect your family. And if the only way you
can do it is by jumping over that fence or
streaming around that ocean, uh, you know, that's what we've

(02:57:13):
seen happening, and a lot of that has got to
do with uh the asylum process. Uh that is been
shut down and continues to be shut down. Um, people
are gonna continue to try to to to save their
life and their life and their their family. Uh. That's

(02:57:33):
why we're hoping that, um the asylum process can be
reinstated as an international law requires calls for it. Uh
and UH that would would definitely uh show a decrease.
And now in incursions, um again you know a lot

(02:57:54):
of these incursions, uh are people trying to reach safety
for themselves, their in their loved ones. Yeah, and it's
been a very difficult situation in Tijuana for a lot
of people, a lot of people who have arrived since
MPP started. Like for a while people were camping at
the at the at the border crossing right but in

(02:58:14):
town like a head west they got cleared. Yeah. It's
it's also sort of forcing the all these shelters and
nonprofits in Tijuana to saddle the burden, which that they
do a very good job with largely. But this you know,
with this massive, richest country on the on Earth, and
we just could have should have shutting the door at

(02:58:34):
a minute and saying like you're not welcome, right that
that that is absolutely correct. So I know that you
you've been doing some events at the Friendship Park, right,
You've got a concert coming up. Could you tell us
about that? Yes, absolutely, we have a concert coming up
about four our fifty first anniversary. And the headliner for

(02:58:58):
the concert is a gentleman known as the the father
of Mexican rock and roll, uh, which begun here here
I'm saying here would be begun in Tijuana, Mexico, Vier
Baptist And uh. You know what what is really neat
is that Javier Batiez was actually the the mentor of

(02:59:23):
Carlos Santana. And you know we all love the music
of Carlos Santana, incredible performers. Uh. Well, he had his
start with Javier Baptiz. Uh at one point here in Tijuana, Mexico.
I keep saying here, I'm in San Diego, uh in Tijuana, Mexico.

(02:59:44):
And you know, Javier is is an icon of rock
and roll music, uh and of Tijuana. And you know what, uh,
what I think is really special about this concert UH
is speaking to Javier. Um. You know, his ideals are
very much along the ideals of uh what Friendship part

(03:00:08):
is all about. And you know friendship puts a smile
on people's face. And that was something that that you're
told me personally, Um, I love to play my music
because my music puts a smile on people's face, and
I like to make people happy. That's great, and and
you know that's the whole idea behind friendship, part to

(03:00:30):
make people happy, to have people enjoy a beautiful part,
enjoy their families, enjoy the friendship across the border that
we have. Yeah, exactly. And I think it's very sad.
The whole set of Cannad is very sad, right, like
the idea that, um, we don't have it. We have

(03:00:50):
enough money to build a giant steel barrier, but not
enough money to open this place up for you know,
a few hours a week for people to see their
families and enjoy themselves, enjoy that time to get it
just seems almost that pointlessly cruel, I guess, and which
I don't know. Sometimes a lot of the immigration system
seems pointlessly cruel to me. Yes, yes, absolutely, Uh, when

(03:01:14):
you separate a mother from a child, that is cruel.
When you won't allow a mother and a child to
even be able to gather for a couple hours a week,
separate from a barrier. That's very cruel. When you don't
allow people of good nature, of good will to visit

(03:01:37):
even though it is across a barrier, that is not good. Yeah,
I think it's important that people across the country like obviously,
like it can be really difficult to care about everything, right, Like,
it's it's a pretty difficult time, and with Supreme Court
decisions and the seemingly sort of NonStop mass shootings, it's

(03:01:57):
a difficult time for everyone, I think. But like, um,
I think it's important that people realize that the border
is where a lot of these policies get tried for
the first time. Right, these these things which like if
we look at the way that like privacy of people
living on the board has been eroded for a very
long time, and that's happening to other people. Happened, right,

(03:02:21):
It was a border patrol drone that was flying over
Minneapolis during the protests. And so if people want to
push back and to show solidarity and support, how can
they support the park and how maybe can they support
the people who are stuck in in Tijuana and want
to cross but are allowed to cross because of of
mp P or Title forty two or restrictive asylum sort

(03:02:44):
of legislation. Well, you know we're asking people to do it. Well, uh,
you know you're in the southern California area. UM, you
know rain or shine. Uh, we go ahead and continue
having events that Friendship Park on the U S side,
like our bike rides, our Native Flora workshops, our Border

(03:03:10):
Church on on Sundays at one thirty in the afternoon. UM,
we invite people to come and join us. Uh, come
and join us on a bike ride, come and join
us on border church and show your your support for
the need uh to continue uh the work that had

(03:03:31):
been done for so many years. That friendship part in
some port of our by national families and our by
national community. Also very important. Contact your your congressman, contact
your your senator, and if you're in California, of course
your your California senators. UH. Assembly persons. UM. We need

(03:03:56):
to urge them to uh uh to advocate for us
before Homeland Security, UM, before the Secretary of Homeland Security,
so they may understand the importance of the Friendship Park
offers not only to the families, but to to our communities.

(03:04:18):
You can secure a border a lot better through friendship
then through Uh, you know border walls that at a
given moment can be breached. Uh as we have seen
they have occurred. Um, the strongest security that anybody can
ever have is a good, strong relationship on both sides

(03:04:42):
of the border. Yeah. I think that's that's that's very
well well said. And so if people want to come
to Friendship Park, can you just explain how they would
get to one of these events and where they have
to go? Absolutely? Uh, but I would recommend is follow
us on We have Facebook, Twitter, Instagram accounts Friendship Part

(03:05:05):
and also saw our website friendship part dot org where
we have information on all the different events on our border.
Church on this way, you can join us uh on
on the U side, or do you want to come
to the Mexico side. Uh is wide open. You can.
You can go directly right to the monument area where

(03:05:29):
you can enjoy this, uh this great beautiful monument to
commemorate out uh the demarcation of the of the of
the two countries. You know, you can you can enjoy
it either either way. But we we do like uh
and we stress people that come out and join us
on the U s side. Uh, so that uh, you

(03:05:52):
know we're not forgotten, So that there's a beautiful piece
of land um on Borderfield State Park known as Friendship
part uh is not forgotten. And not only that, you know, uh,
enjoy the beauty of of of the park. We have
a beautiful park their Borderfield State Park uh adjacent to
Friendship part Um, something that very a few people are

(03:06:17):
being taken advantage of. Lately, We've had quite a few
more visitors out there, horseback riding, bicyclinge uh, a few
families out uh, you know, taking gift in the ocean. Uh.
But this is a beautiful pub beach that that we
have there on the U S side and welcome, you know,

(03:06:37):
our our community, We're San Diego to community to come
and enjoy it as well. And you know, as you
come and enjoy it, you support our efforts to demonstrate
the need to keep our part open. Yeah. Yeah, I
think that's a very uh. Yeah, it's not hard for

(03:06:58):
people to help, and I hope they will. How long
do we have? Do you think? How long do we
have before they break ground on this new wall? Right?
We're not sure how long we have. We were told
that it was a matter of weeks. Uh. Does that
mean two weeks, three weeks. It's hard to say, but
we know that it could happen at any at any time,

(03:07:21):
Uh lady, We've observed several uh crews out there doing
uh surveys and such of the area, so we know
that it's uh any moment they should be breaking ground,
and we hope that before that ground breaks that they
will consider our request and uh you know, uh public

(03:07:46):
uh uh for public support, for public input as to
what the park should look like. Uh you know, give
that consideration. Uh too. You know, if you're gonna you're
going to replace walls to make sure that uh you know,

(03:08:08):
the that gates are a lotted uh so that these
visits can continue, because we understand there's no provision at
this point for any kind of uh of gate for
uh you know, for person access for people access uh
into the area. Uh. That of course tells you that

(03:08:31):
there's no intention of continuing at one point to open
the park for the visits. UH. And of course that's
extremely concerning, yeah, especially for people separated by the border. Okay, UM,
so just to finish up, can you give us those
social media's and web addresses again where people can find
you and help Sure? Absolutely uh. We're website is www.

(03:08:55):
Friendship part dot org. Um the Facebook, you can find
us under friendship Art. You can also find information under
ordered Church. Great. All right, thank you so much for
your time. I really appreciate you taking the time to
talk and it's a busy time for you. You're very welcome.
Thank you for the opportunity to be here with you today.

(03:09:18):
Thank you. Hey, We'll be back Monday with more episodes
every week from now until the heat death of the Universe.
It Could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
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(03:09:39):
Happen Here, updated monthly at cool zone Media dot com
slash sources. Thanks for listening.