It Could Happen Here Weekly 5

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

(00:27):
here a podcast that is on the cycle of being
sort of Okayley introduced. When this episode goes out, it
will be Indigenous People's Day and so to to talk
about that more where we're gonna talk to Dalia Killsbach,
who is a member of the Northern Chyenne, has Northern
Cheyenne tribal citizenship and has sort of studied and worked

(00:49):
in federal India tribal policy. Dahlia, Hello, how how are
you doing? I'm doing well. Thank you for inviting me
here today. Of course Garrison is also here. Garrison, Hello, Hello,
I'm I'm currently also doing writing about indigenous stuff, but
within the context of Canada, which people should will probably
here later this week. Um so yeah, I guess first

(01:12):
thing I wanted to talk about is a little bit
is about what Indigenous People's Day is and why it
is that and not the other thing. UM. Yeah. So
Indigenous People's Day UM, as many people know, is replacing
I'm gonna say, Chris Christopher Columbus Day, UM that is

(01:34):
still like a federal holiday. But so multiple cities and
states have opted to use Indigenous People's Day instead UM.
And the reasoning for that is acknowledging the atrocities that
were committed by Christopher Columbus, who first of all did
not discover America UM, but um continue to UM not

(01:57):
only use slavery, but um commit different forms of genocide, rape, etcetera,
all of these terrible atrocities. And so rather than celebrating
UM somebody like that UM, Indigenous people say, UM has
been implemented in order to recognize the people who are

(02:17):
actually here first UM and indigenous people's across the America's
there histories, UM, cultures and contributions. Yeah, Columbus, real piece
of ship, worst Christopher, Like, yeah, it really cannot be
overstated how baddy that guy was, even you know, even

(02:41):
people in that era who had committed their own genocides
like Isabelle and Ferdinand, who you know, expelled the Jews
from Spain, where it's like, you know, if once you've
reached the sentence expelled the Jews from X like you
you're are, You're already in the ship lists of the
worst people in human history. And even they saw what
Columbus was doing, it was like what on Earth, bad
bad guy, bad name. Things are going to continue to

(03:05):
go badly? And yeah, that that was an everything that
I wanted to talk about, which is federal Indian policy.
And you know this this is an incredibly broad This
is an incredibly broad area spanning like three hundred years.
So we're not gonna be able to go into like

(03:25):
an enormous amount of depth in it. But I think
it's important that people have an understanding of, i mean,
aged what the US did and how everyone else has
had this sort of deal with it. And then also
the fact that this is something that changes over time
and has has looked different, It's looked it's been bad
in different ways. Yeah, and so when talking about federal

(03:49):
Indian policy, I always like to contextualize it within a
larger um sort of like Euro American, like Teley bology
of colonial conquests and then moving on to settler colonialism
and where we are with federal federal Indian policy currently.

(04:09):
Um So, how do we connect Christopher Columbus to where
we are currently? Um? And this is the history of
federal Indian policy and Western legal discourse and how UM
European powers throughout history have defined what it means to

(04:31):
be an Indian person in relationship to UM indigenous people's
rights to their own land and to self governance. UM.
So when we're looking at the different periods of federal
Indian policy UM, prior to their being the United States government,
we have the colonial period UM, which is fourteen ninety

(04:52):
two to seventeen seventies six. UM. This is how federal
Indian policy illegal scholars divide that UM. And it's really
important to kind of give the difference between what is
um a colonial state versus a settler colonial state when
you're talking about not just the United States government, but

(05:14):
also the Canadian government and UM different governments globally. UM.
But I want to talk just a little bit about
what I mean by the difference between a colonial government
and a settler colonial government, because they're tied together. UM.
So by a settler colonial government. I mean what I

(05:36):
mean is that it is defined by the d territorialization
of indigenous population populations. And so rather than in a
colonial government as you had with Christopher Columbus and the
Spanish and with the English, etcetera, UM is rather than
a state and sovereignty being conceived as all these resources

(06:01):
are going back to the metrical all these resources are
going back to England or to Spain, etcetera. And colonial
occupation is in is um conceptualized within this way. In
settler colonial governments, UM, the colonists come to these lands
and stay and they're what they define as sovereignty is

(06:24):
within this land that they define now as their own.
So and in order for that process to happen, UM,
there needs to be different forms of genocide of the
indigenous populations. And so that's what we saw with Christopher
Columbus and throughout history UM was just the depletion of
a lot of our indigenous populous UM. And so when

(06:46):
I mean about the United States UM being a settler
colonial state, I mean that this is current and ongoing.
And so when we talk about federal Indian policy, UM,
federal Indian policy is always in this conversation with what
started with Christopher Columbus as the doctrine of discovery and um,

(07:08):
so that's how we define the colonial period and feel
free to like stop me and ask me questions. Else
I'm just going to try to move quickly because there's
a lot. Yeah, I think we probably should briefly talk
about what the doctory discovery is m letasy before we
get to sit at the martial trilogy and stuff. For sure,

(07:30):
what does that actually mean legally? Um? So legally, UM,
it's the discovery of a quote unquote New found Land
UM by European colonial forces. And the reason why it's
called the doctrine of discovery was that indigenous peoples on
these lands were deemed unable to govern themselves and they

(07:54):
did not know how to utilize their land up to
the definition of what the European powers thought um land
use was that um, indigenous peoples didn't have the same
concept of property um, and same with their relationship with

(08:16):
resources and resource extraction. So when um, Christopher Columbus and
all of these other colonizers clunky clunkyst doors came to
the quote unquote New Land, UM, they saw all of
this rich plentiful resource and thoughts of themselves. Well, obviously
these people don't know what they're doing because there's just

(08:38):
so much they have not done anything with it. Um.
And we're going to take this back to two hours
because obviously their inferior beings and don't know what property is.
So um legally um it the doctrine of discovery conveyed
legal title to an ownership of Americans soil to European

(09:01):
nations um, a title that devolved to the United States
and so UM. This definition is expansive UM. And expansive
discovery implies that Native nations have a right to lands
as occupants or possessors, but they are incompetent to manage
those lands and need a quote unquote benevolent guardian such

(09:24):
as a federal government who holds legal title and UM.
So when we're talking about this legal title, it devolves
to the United States later on UM in history, after
the American Revolution UM, and so rather than being colonial
states um as the United States like thirteen original colonies,

(09:48):
given um the American Revolution and its own constitution and
its creation of itself as a nation state, then that
turns into a set colonial government. Yeah, I think we can, Yeah,
we can get to what happens next then, because yeah, yeah,

(10:09):
you have you have this elaborate legal framework that lets
you steal people's land and murder them and then control it.
And then the outgrowth of that is this sort of
weird event where the colonies go into rebellion and suddenly, yeah,
there's there's not a colony. They're not colonies anymore. They
just are the state. And so yeah, about what happens
next after the sort of formation of the United States.

(10:32):
So after the formation of the United States, Um, so
we have this period the American Revolution, it's all not
really dive that into. It is seventeen seventy six to
seventeen eighty nine, and it's called the Confederation period. But
next we have the Trade and Intercourse AFT era, which
is from seventeen eighty nine to eighteen thirty five. And

(10:55):
so this is defined with the United States Constitution and
Congress's exclusive right to regulate trade relations and make lands
since the land secessions, and enter into treaties with tribes.
So this is a treaty making era with the tribes
that only the United States federal government is able to

(11:17):
And there's a distinction there because there had been a
lot of contestation between states and the federal government as
to who is going to now deal with these, um,
these nations that are with our within our own settler
colonial borders. So whose job is that to solve this issue? Um?

(11:40):
So within the United States Constitution, there are three clauses
that define the United States legal relationship to American Indians.
And so these are the treaty making clause, the commerce clause,
and the property clause. Um. And so this this movement
from just relying on the doctrine of discovery and treaty

(12:03):
making processes between different European powers now is between the
United States federal government and tribes. And so what this
does is now tribes are located within the United States territory,
and this places Indians within the boundaries and jurisdiction of
the United States, and now there are a matter of
domestic interest something It leads it to one of the

(12:26):
sort of complicated questions that changes to this whole era,
which is about what does sovereignty mean for these tribes
and to what extent to the even continue to possess it?
And how does that even sort of how does that
work if you have when you have this new state
that's sort of just has his clean control here, right,

(12:47):
and also during this period UM, well, well later on
when we have UM, sorry jumping ahead of myself, when
we have the extermination of the treaty making process, and
this completely removes seeing tribes as independent sovereign nations. UM.

(13:08):
So I think that will kind of get more into
that later. But the thing with federal Indian policy UM
is that it's sort of self prophesizing. So as settlers
are moving across America, UM, the United States government also
has to create these policies UM in order to legalize

(13:31):
these land cessations and movements. And a pattern that we
do see here UM throughout history and throughout time is
that the United States federal government, as a settler state
is UM over the rights of over the um rights
to land and rights of indigenous peoples themselves. You have

(13:53):
a priority of the settler state in order to acquire land.
So that a lot of the reason why um, later
these treaties will be broken, etcetera, is because settlers are
moving into these lands and the United States is then
breaking these treaties in order to um have more more land,

(14:16):
more land secessions. Yeah, the laws are of just following
the violence, and it's just becomes a sort of retroactive justification.
For yes, it's it's a self justifying sort of sovereignty.
So this is the Removal period and what a lot
of people may have heard of. So it's from five

(14:36):
to eighteen sixty one. And what we have is the
extinguishment of Indian title to eastern lands and the removal
of Indian tribes westward. So UM. One of the most
notable acts is the Removal Act which was authorized by
President Andrew Jackson, which moved Um Indians from the east

(14:56):
to the west of the Mississippi River into what was
called Indian Territory UM. And what brought about this UM
Federal Federal Act UM was a series of three foundational
statutes within Federal Indian Policy UM dictated by Chief Justice
John Marshall. So first we have Johnson B. Macintosh Cherokee

(15:19):
Nation be Georgia and Worcester be Georgia. And I won't
go into too much detail, but what this these essentially
UM did and legally defined tribes as being domestic dependent nations.
And so it clarified more that again tribal nations are
underneath the federal government's overview, not the states. So yeah,

(15:44):
it placed tribes above state jurisdiction. And what this is
trying to do was UM solve some issues that tribes
such as the Cherokee Nation had with different states when
it came to land and UM jurisdiction over said land. Um.
But that is kind of the basis of a lot

(16:07):
of federal Indian policy and still remains truth day And
what is notable um in each one of these statutes um,
I believe, particularly in Worcester the Georgia, although it seems
that it was supporting tribal sovereignty in them and that
they were above state jurisdiction, a lot of these UM

(16:30):
statute sided racist president and the doctrine of Discovery. So um,
what you see for federal Indian policy is that a
lot of the found well all the foundation for federal
Indian policy based on President is the doctrine of Discovery,
which is reliant on the idea that American Indians were
savages and needed um federal benevolence and um paternalism in

(16:57):
order to regulate their own affairs. Yeah, and I think
that's well, okay, we should probably not just immediatelys's get
to allotment. But yeah, because there there's there's, there's there's
also Yeah, this is also the period of used. Yeah,
the thing you were talking about earlier, the thing you
helped me know about, which is okay, it's not true
to say this is when this starts, but this is

(17:17):
Indian Removal Act Trail of Tears territory. And one thing
that you know, I think one of one of the
sort of running themes of this is that you know,
the the law in this context is just sort of
it becomes a sort of retroactive excuse to do whatever
needs to be done from the perspective quote unquote of
the sort of of the settler state to just take

(17:39):
all of this land. Yeah. And I think maybe like
one of the keystones of this is Andrew Jackson just
straight up tellings between court to funk Off so that
he can do so he can do with Trail of Tears. Yeah. Um,
so the Removal Act have and after all of these

(18:01):
statutes that you already had that supported um, federal Indian sovereignty,
and so the Cherokees in Georgia were one of the
tribes that were removed. Um. And so you kind of
see what you talked about the the retrograde kind of
justifications for said removal despite um the statutes that are there.

(18:28):
So although that like Marshall UM in Worcester, g Georgia
determined that the State of Georgia did not have jurisdiction
over Cherokee territory, all this territory, although this territory was
in the state's borders. UM. Later on you see with
the Removal Act that although these statutes are still president

(18:49):
in federal Indian policy, those were noel in order for
UM there to be more UM expansion of settlers within
these areas. Is so when it was decided that, oh, wait,
we do need this land, and we don't actually want
these Indians here, let's put them to the side over
past the Mississippi so that they're out of side, out

(19:11):
of mind. Right, So we see more of this UM
justification for settler expansion. And so again we bring back
to these themes of like settler colonialism in order to
UM kind of gain more of this land. And a
lot of these statutes are still cited the doctrine of

(19:32):
discovery in them and rather than supporting tribal policy, the
relationship between the United States federal government and American Indians.
Um was not based on the rights of Indians, but
more that they can't they can't govern themselves, right and
so so and that's the whole issue. It is like

(19:53):
people are like they don't know what they're doing, so
we're gonna push them and like take their land again.
So I I I don't know if you want me
to go too much into the trail of tears, but um,
you're seeing a lot of patterns here, I think, different
forms of genocide, different forms of taking land. This was
This is all around the same time as the Indian

(20:14):
Acting Canada as well, which was did a very similar thing,
especially starting in the starting in the twenty century as
well with the like expansion of the like assimilation programs. Yeah,
and I think I guess the only thing I want
to point out about this is that, you know, so
one of one of the things that happens trailers tears

(20:35):
at the Streame Court like tells Jackson that he can't
do this, and j actually just does it anyways, And
I think that's a very interesting important moment because you know,
this is this is this thing right where the federal
government can tell there's Supreme Court to funk off right,
and there's nothing that streame courts could do about it.
And if you look at what they did it to do,

(20:56):
the thing they did it to do was genocide. And
it's I think it's it's just I think it's a
very sort of I don't know, this incredibly grim like
you know, encapsulation of like what this state actually is,
which is the sort of genocide machine and whatever sort
of you know, this is what sovereignty is, right, the
ability to break your own rules to sort of into
or to maintain the system. So you know, you break

(21:18):
your own laws and you know, as we're gonna get
you in a second, like you break your own treaties continuously.
And you do this because you know, the genoside machine
has to keep moving, right. And um there's a couple
of federal and new policy theorists, um Bindeler Jr. Who's
one of the most famous ones, and David E. Wilkins,
who talks about how there is no need for checks

(21:41):
and balances within the federal ding policy system. So you
have Congress that is able to um pass whatever act
they want, and and then you also have the Supreme Court,
and then you also have executive action, but it wasn't
really delineated at well UM within especially when it comes

(22:03):
to this period as to who is going to be
dealing with the Indians kind of thing UM. And so
this kind of confusion and not really completely defining what
it means to be a domestic dependent nation, I think
really just goes to show how much of a fragile
edifice like settler um colonial policy is for it is

(22:28):
within the system UM. But again moving on, it comes
back again to land. So the reservation area era in
eighteen sixty one to eighteen eighty seven UM has you
have a lot of westward expansion of non Indians UM settlers,
specifically to California. You also have the creation of Indian

(22:51):
reservations and resulting Indian wars UM. Uh. So during this
era what you see a lot a lot of UM
are different types of attempts that assimilation UM and a
lot of warfare. So you have a lot of the
Plains tribes my tribe for instance, UM, that are going

(23:13):
through all of these battles fighting UM forced removal onto
reservations UM. One of the most famous ones was UM
the Battle of Greasy Grass or a little big Horn
UM where General Custer was killed by Sue Cheyennes and Arapahos,
and different instances of battles such as those, and also

(23:36):
where a lot of tribes UM were forcibly removed to
areas that they weren't originally from. So like how the
Sheriffees were moved to Oklahoma, there was attempts of my tribe,
for instance, more than Cheyenne to be moved down to
Oklahoma as well, and that's why there's some Southern Cheyennes

(23:58):
in Oklahoma and and my tribes and norther Insurance in Montana.
Another UM. Another thing that is happening during this period
are boarding schools UM, the boarding school era. So this
attempt at assimilation through education UM, and assimilation is also
UM within within the settler colonial kind of structure. It's

(24:24):
it's defined as a process where indigenous people end up
UM conforming to different constructed notions of UM settler norms UM.
So if they're not absorbed within the state completely, then
their attempted attempt to be assimilated UM culturally UM through education,

(24:44):
through languages. In terms of economics and how you have
a bunch of different sort of bureaucratic structures on these reservations,
trying to make tribal governments appear to be UM or
constructed as as settler colonial governments are UM. So maybe

(25:08):
it's the three branches UM in ways that aren't just
compatible with different tribes culturally, and you also have the
attemptive eradication of different kind of spiritual and cultural practices,
and a lot of Christianity be cours not to different people,

(25:30):
and just kind of terrible things that UM. I think
more and more people are becoming aware of due to
due to current movements. But we'll get into that moment later.
Do we want to talk about a lot and briefly
because if I remember quickly, this is in the same period, yes,
a lotment period and UM course assimilation. So this is

(25:52):
like eighteen seventy one to nineteen thirty four, and so
this is the end of the treaty making process. So
the whole idea of UM trying to force tribes onto
reservations and signed these treaties were too again take land
and make sure that the United States has more land
and all the land etcetera that they possibly have UM.

(26:15):
So at this end of treaty making, UM federal allotment
of Indian lands also happened in the UM the Jaws
Act UM. And so what this was was an attempt
to UM further shrink the reservation lands that tribes are

(26:39):
already guaranteed within treaties UM. So during this period, I
think that somewhere like nine million acres were UM taken
from tribal reservations during the allotment process. So that what
the allotment process did was it counted each in every
individual Indian UM that was eligible. I think there were

(27:04):
adults UM. Yeah, adults that were eligible UM, and each
one of them were given a certain parcel of land,
a certain number of acreage UM. And once all of
this land was calculated, what you had was an excess
of land quote unquote excess of land that the tribes

(27:26):
obviously didn't need because they had still too too many people.
And so what the excess of land UM was utilized
force for pioneers and for settlers UM. If it didn't
go UM to the federal government, it was to UM
incentivized settlers to colonized, esscial settle on Indian lands. So

(27:53):
trying its hardest to not stay true to its treaty
making practices. I think the everything goes interesting to me
about this is that like because one of the other
goals of this is to sort of like, oh is
the civilizing mission. It's like, yeah, we're gonna turn them
into We're gonna turn these people into like like human farmers,
like true American fintiersman or whatever. And it's just like

(28:16):
it just doesn't work because economically it doesn't make any sense,
like breaking up all these like lands, It's like, it
doesn't you can't just give someone like a small patch
of like shitty land and have them farm like this
doesn't like this, it doesn't. It doesn't. Like they certainly tried,
and yeah, yeah, like that was one of the main things.
One of the main things in Canada was about getting

(28:36):
them to adopt like like European farming practices, which which
they already knew how to get their own food, right,
they were trying to change this whole system of of
like of of food growth to to this like to
this European way of of farming, and it just and
they were just forcing them to and there's yeah, it's

(28:58):
it's yeah, gets it gets it gets super gets super
like dark and horrible once you like look at like
the letters that were being written by like the heads
of these programs, um, like you know, instructing, like these
agents were stationed at these like reservations that to like
force people to be doing doing this horrible farming for
like all day every day. And I think, you know,

(29:22):
the sign that this was like like this is this
is so bad that even the US government eventually is
like wait this this like this is fucked up and
doesn't work. So I think that's yeah, you're transition to
sort of like the next phase. I guess, yeah, a
very short phase. Um. Yeah. So the next phase um

(29:46):
is the Indian Reorganization Act. And so this only lasted
six years from nineteen thirty four in nineteen forty um,
so this is when allotment ended. As you said, the
United States government was like, wait, this isn't working. Um,
what can we do? What? The Indians aren't dying off,
they're not assimilating, they're not a culturating. We don't know
what to do with them. UM, so maybe we'll we'll

(30:10):
have them adopt these constitutions and a lot of them
were just templates, so regardless of whether or not they
were um, I think compatible with tribal different tribes way
of life. They were like, you have these constitutions now, um,

(30:30):
now you're you're a tribe, and this is what each
tribe has to look like in order for us the
federal government to recognize you as a legitimate entity. Uh
and um. And then so you have the establishment of
these um tribal governments that consist of tribal councils and
the business committees, etcetera. However, this period is fleeting, very

(30:53):
fleeting UM. And next UM, you have the termination era.
So this is the period of time where the federal
government essentially even more so, wants to just get rid
of the quote unquote Indian problem, which is the existence
of indigenous peoples UM that are reminders to the government

(31:16):
essentially that um, they are a settler colonial force and
they don't know what to do with us because they
tried to commit genocide, they tried to remove us, etcetera, etcetera.
It's still not working. Um. They decided that our travel
governments UM aren't aren't legitimate, and they just decide, well,

(31:36):
it's too much to try to keep up with our
treaties and what we promised them. When it comes to healthcare, education, housing, etcetera, etcetera.
How about we terminate our federal responsibility, our trust responsibility
that are delineated in federal in the policy and in
our treaties, UM and give them off to this to

(31:58):
the states to decide what to do with and says.
During this period you see um sort of the federal
um dissolution of some tribes such as the monomy Um
and other ones um as well. So this is another

(32:21):
dark time there. The dark times just keep on coming.
And what federal policy scholars have UM characterized federal undw
policy as a pendulum the swinging swinging from side to
side between this terminal, this termination of tribes, So the
federal Indian government as trying to get rid of tribes,

(32:42):
especially as you can see in this era, and then
the pendulum of the other side of self determination. But
both of these are held within the context of goals
of assimilation. So um, this is just another phase of terribleness. Well,
I think this space also like one thing I think

(33:02):
that also like is important people understand is it like
like it's not like people aren't fighting this like the
whole time, I mean even going like even going back
to the stuff the Seventh Cafrey, like the Seventh Cavalry,
lose like bores. They lose bells all the time. People
are fighting constantly. And this is this period determination period

(33:23):
is also where you see the rise of the American
Indian movements. Yeah, a lot of these periods can be
like dovee into more and all of these different things, um.
And every instance, in every instance of federal Indian policy,
you have resistance, which we are not covering here right now, um,
but you have instances throughout history where indigenous peoples have

(33:47):
fought for their rights to land, to um, for their community,
to being sovereign nations, etcetera. And that's why the federal Indians,
the federal government, not Federal Indian government, the federal government,
it has not been able to eradicate us, much to
their dismay, um UM. And so now I'm going to

(34:08):
switch into the eraw that we are considered to be in,
which I have mentioned when I talked about the pendulum
of federal Indian policy. So now we are in the
self determination era, um, which began in nineteen sixty two, UM,
and we have um the right it's characterized with the

(34:29):
revitalization of tribal entities. So UM, going kind of back
to when there was the Indian Reorganization Acts that we
have our tribal councils. UM, there's restoration of some tribes
under federal recognition who are terminated, again not all of them.
We also have the Indian Civil Rights Act, so this

(34:51):
this kind of guaranteed individual Indians UM some rights UM,
not just characterized by their trib I've also the self
determination policy, so this is when UM Nixon condemned determination
policy and gave more control to Indians rather than the

(35:12):
Bureau of Indian Fairs, which is a federal bureau. And
just kind of like other policies that UM have given
the tribes more rights to UM determine for themselves in
their own trust, their own people, UM to a certain
degree underneath the federal government as a mess of dependent nations.

(35:33):
And again I think that we have seen a lot
more movement, but within the context of being within a
settler colonial state. UM. It's always I think a possibility
that the federal Indian government or the federal government I
keep saying Indian, the federal government will try UM to

(35:58):
take more and more and I think UM, for instance,
when it comes to issues of fishing rights, issues of
UM hunting rights with states, not even just with the
federal government. So you have a lot of states throughout
throughout history but still ongoing UM that attempt to encroach

(36:20):
on UM tribal treaties UM. And again, treaties are the
basis of federal Indian policy. Without these treaties, that lands
would have never been succeeded to the United States. And
so UM there's just this sort of like legal legal

(36:41):
conundrum I would say, of where all these all treaties
in the history of the United States with India, with
Indian tribes have been broken in some way, shape or
form UM. But still UM American Indians have to live
on their reservations instead of having their their land back.
And so nowadays a lot of movement has been towards

(37:05):
UM land back. What this means, what is this process?
And I think it means a lot of different things
for different people indigenous people because again there's there's seventy
four federally recognized tribes and so it's not one monolith
of ideas, the monolith of the beliefs. But but just

(37:26):
by saying land back, that's like recognition that this is
our this was our land first, and you're not keeping
your side of the deal and never have been. Could
you maybe go a bit more into land back with
the topic, because like specifically, like the past five years,
it has really gain a lot more like um popularity

(37:47):
as like a slogan UM. But I think for a
lot of a lot of people who chanted and here
it don't always really know exactly what it means. That
there's a lot of like mixed opinions on what it
means UM. Of course, on like the more like reactionary side,
it's like people be like, what you're going to like

(38:08):
kick white people out of these areas? Like that's kind
of that's what a lot of like the reactionary takes
on land back is UM. And I'm sure most people
are listening to this podcast that's not what they think, UM,
but they may not really know exactly what it means either. UM.
They may think it sounds like a good idea, but
they're not quite sure what it is. Do you mind
kind of talking about how land back is like developed

(38:30):
as as an idea and what like what like you
mean by it personally? At least, Yeah, I think I
can talk about more about like what I mean by
it personally and what I've understood it to mean to
other people, because I think UM land back itself, it
means like a lot of different things, and I don't

(38:51):
think that there has been a concrete kind of idea
of what it means. But I think a lot of
the movement I want to contextualize it within a lot
of the sort of act activism that we've seen in
their recent years. Um SO for instance, no Japple the

(39:11):
Dakota Access Pipeline in two thousand and sixteen, and kind
of I think that's one of the more recent events
that have really illustrated on a wide scale, like globally
about UM indigenous movements, UM sovereignty movements, and especially when
it comes to environmental justice. But what you saw there

(39:34):
was encroachment on tribal treaty land within UM that we
when it had to do with the Dakota Access Pipeline.
Um so, although it didn't cross some of the current
reservation borders, it was in treaty land, you know that
kind of thing. The same thing was Stop line three,
how it encroached on the hunting land and the farmland

(39:57):
that was not technically in that like residential sholl like
like um like like not in like the reservation area
where people live, but it's in the surrounding area that
is for hunting that is specified in the treaty. So
people trying to use these loopholes to get the pipelines
through right, right. And so I think what you see
is a lot of solidarity across tribes because this is

(40:20):
not new. This has never been new, and a lot
of tribes can relate to that. And what you've seen
and what I've hoped that I've highlighted throughout this kind
of very brief overview of federally new policy is the
different ways that indigenous rights to land and sovereignty has

(40:40):
been attacked in different forms by settler and colonial governments. Um.
And I think that the day and age that we
live in now has allowed for um, sort of more
widespread solidarity, especially over social media. UM. And so when
we say land back for me, how I interpret it

(41:02):
as what people mean when they're saying it is recognition
of our tribal sovereignty, of our right to this land
that has not been respected. And then I also think
that it means well, if these treaties aren't being respected,
then how is this treaty still UM valid? Right? How

(41:23):
come we aren't getting our land back because you're not
upholding your end of the deal. While some people also
might mean and recognize that this whole United States government
is a settler state, right based on the doctrine of discovery,
which is based on denying tribes and American Indians of

(41:46):
their rights to this land. UM, So some people might
take it to this whole other context of yeah, well
maybe this is this is all of our land, etcetera, etcetera.
But in practice, what does this look like? And I
think in practice a lot of people UM are seeing
it with reparations or people buying land back for tribes

(42:08):
and giving it back to tribes. And we have seen
some of that or um also just people interrupting the
narrative UM in their own mind of their euro American identity,
so non non UM American Indians and primarily European settlers
and their history of their own families taking part of

(42:29):
the settler colonial process, and how has that um what
about their lands? There's everyone who UM descends I guess
from these these settlers, and I want to be specific
when I'm talking about euro American settlers um, um, and
how they currently benefit from these systems. And I think

(42:50):
by saying land back, UM, it's we're able to highlight
this movement for tribal sovereignty and recognition on a global
scale instead of searching for justice within the quote unquote
like UM, searching for justice within the courts of the conqueror.
How how do we expect um for the conqueror to

(43:11):
be held accountable for all of these atrocities, attempts at genocide, assimilation,
et cetera. By taking it more towards a global scale,
such as no Adapple, highlighting these two other people as
these are injustices, UM, this is this is ongoing genocide.
I think that land back has many, like a plethora

(43:33):
of meanings in the in that sense. Yeah, yeah, I
hope that answers your question. I myself, UM might use
it in in some some different ways. UM, because land,
as we conceive it to be property kind of grew.
That concept grew in conversation with Euro American Yeah. Absolutely, yeah,

(43:58):
conceptions of property. So I think that UM, moving forward,
when we talk about de colonization as a process and
not like a metaphor, UM, that thinking of land back
not within that whole idea of your American property as well.
That's that's kind of another thing to consider. Yeah, I

(44:20):
think I think lend back would just be a whole
other thing that will pay someone more qualified than our
team to talk about on this show. UM. Because Yeah,
that's definitely, like you know, like all of the things
we've we've discussed, they deserve their own deep dives by
people that are uh not me, Robert and Chris. UM.

(44:44):
Let's see, is there any kind of resources either books
or stuff online that you would recommend for people wanting
to learn more about this history? UM? And then any
kind of ways to I don't know, I I guess
show support in these and these kind of like efforts
that are going on. Yeah, for sure. UM. So in

(45:06):
terms of resources and reading, UM, I have read Lorenzo
Verrocchini's UM Settler book on Settler Colonialism. UM. That's really
helpful when you're trying to understand that framework in terms
of getting to know kind of more of the basics
of like current UM issues impacting tribes. UM. The National

(45:31):
Congress of American Indians does a lot of work on
the federal level. UM. If you want to talk more
about UM kind of lived current lived experiences of American Indians.
There's illuminatives UM and getting more involved in those as well.
I think that they have some tips, but I would

(45:52):
recommend UM everyone getting more familiar with the land that
they are on currently, the tribes within their states and
what they can do UM, not just on the local level,
but on the state level to support tribal sovereignty UM,
because a lot of issues UH. For instance, I worked

(46:12):
on the on the state policy level in Washington and
in Montana, and both of those have a significant amount
of tribes UM, but you have a lot of legislation
that's trying to happen that infringes on tribal treaty rights.
And the thing is is UM as ugly as it

(46:33):
may be to say, but sometimes voices of non indigenous
people's are listened to more within those UM contexts. So
you need to get more involved on on those levels. UM.
What sort of like at UM nonprofit organizations UM work

(46:56):
with your tribes or and what sort of issues are
impacting tribes And again, these are all gonna probably be
surrounding travel sovereignty. So maybe it's UM fishing access, hunting rights, etcetera. UM,
I think that's a really good way to make some
more palate, UM tangible change, to feel like you're doing

(47:19):
something to support tribal sovereignty while you're also educating yourself
and making sure that their voices are at the forefront.
And that's also applicable to the federal level, especially with
as you already said, like stop line three in Minnesota,
contacting your legislators, etcetera, etcetera. And I think also with

(47:43):
when it comes to one of one of the larger
issues besides UM, environmental justice for indigenous peoples such as pipelines,
you have right now missing a murdered indigenous women UM.
So looking and looking into that UM a little bit
more and who you can support who's addressing those issues

(48:04):
along with UM. There is another movement with boarding schools
right now because there's been a lot of UM bodies
of young children UM that have been uncovered. And this
is not an issue that happened a long long time ago,

(48:28):
like for instance, my grandmother went to a boarding school. UM.
There's still schools that UM although they're not called boarding
schools right now that we're boarding schools, but are still
an operation under different names. Etcetera. UM, so kind of
familiarizing yourself with those histories. And then also there's a

(48:49):
UM national UM I think it's called the National Boarding
School Healing Coalition based out of Minnesota, and UM looking
into them and supporting their efforts UM with this issue
is also a good place to start. UM. Is there
anywhere that people can find you online? Yes? I don't.

(49:14):
I don't really use UM social media not much. Yeah, yeah,
I try not to. I don't know. If I want
people to find me, do not, don't, don't do it.
It's better that people don't find anyone online. It's better

(49:36):
we're all just just posting into the void. There's nothing not,
just just a void. Well that that is I think
going to wrap up what we have today, Chris do
want to close us out with a funny bit. I
light your local gas station on fire. Wow? Is christ

(50:01):
killing you? Oh my god? Jeez? Wow? All right, goodbye
for buddy. What's terrible? My me? This is it could

(50:22):
happen here a podcast about collapse And that's appropriate because
everyone's faith in me as a colleague has collapsed today
as the result of a series of horrific cluster fox
on my part I'm late to the meeting. I accidentally
left the meeting when they started recording just a just
a complete fucking ship show. Speaking of ship shows, my

(50:43):
co host Garrison Davis, how are you, Harrison, I'm the
one that saved this. I had to send the guest
to the zoom call. I know, I'm not even supposed
to be on this call. No you're not. You're not
even supposed to be working today. That's not true. But
you're not on this call, not in this call. But
here am saving. This is enough. This is enough witty banter.

(51:04):
This is a daily podcast. And now let's bring on
our guest for today, monsignor Alex new House. Alex, how
are you doing. I'm doing well. Thanks for having me.
I feel like I was pulled in off the street,
just like bundled into a van and then yeah, yeah,

(51:24):
we uh. You know how people used to get like shanghaied,
like like captured by it, allegedly allegedly and forced to
work on on on boats in like San Francisco and whatnot.
We do that with podcasts. I mean, that is actually
most of what I've done to the people who work
on your podcast. I think I think I've had everyone
from your show on our show now, and it has

(51:44):
been very much like I'm just pulling them on a string.
Speaking of which, Alex, you are one of the hosts
of the Terrorism Is Bad podcast, a very uh controversially
named podcast. Uh. And you work at the Middlebury Institute
of Internet National Studies at Monterey Center of Terrorism, Extremism
and counter Terrorism Center on not not of that would

(52:06):
be a different center, very important, very important. Yeah, and
we're not We're not bringing you on to talk about
how to make explosively formed penetrators, not this time. That
is someone else. Yeah, but you are also you were
also a actual games journalist. Yes, yeah, I got my
start in this weird space. How do you How do

(52:28):
you feel about ethics in the game journalism industry? Alex? Uh?
Always been fine, Like yeah, alright, anyway, that's the end
of that. Yeah. I do want to actually start there, Alex,
because you and I both have something in common, which
is that we we got our start writing in a

(52:48):
field that's wildly different from consulting with like governments on terrorism.
Like for me, it was I wanted to write like
Dick jokes on the Internet, and I just like stumbled
into a bunch of ices propaganda to that most people
weren't aware of. And and that started me like lecturing
at universities and ship and for you it was gamer Gates.
I'm interested in kind of you telling your story a

(53:09):
little bit to start us off. Yeah, so I was.
I was during undergrad. I enterned every summer at game
Spot video game website you may have heard of. It's
one of the two big ones along with I g
n UM. And when I was doing that, I was
So this was like right in the at the beginning
stages of of gamer Gate really popping off. And what

(53:30):
ended up happening is a lot of the people I
worked with, a lot of my colleagues and friends were
just in the blast zone. They were just targeted by
the absolute ons thought of of harassment. UM, and I
just had a curiosity started looking into some of those
people who were who are targeting my friends and colleagues,
and it ended up being a lot of the people
that were still talking about today. Uh you know, it

(53:51):
all all rolls back up to the bright bart metropolitan area,
if you will. And um, I don't know what are
the thing that made me want to I mean, obviously
I've been aware of your work for well, but the
thing that maybe want to specifically bring you on as
you started on a new project to create like a
video game that that will hopefully have an ability to

(54:11):
help like de radicalize people. And I'm I'm not entirely
certain like of the details of the project, but I
think it's a fascinating project because, as as you note
all too well, a lot of this stuff started in gaming,
not as a result of anything specifically about gaming, but
the kind of like socialization that occurs in those spaces
and the kind of like different communities, and it's been

(54:31):
like we have going back to the nineties evidence of
like different Nazi groups on the early Internet, like talking
about like these are specifically specific groups and subcultures that
you know will have an easier time radicalizing and whatnot.
But yeah, I'm interested in kind of what actually is
going on with this project, um, and and how you
think it's going to look at this stage. I understand
it's pretty early in development right now, so I'm not expecting, like,

(54:53):
you know, an E three walkthrough, Yeah, our E three,
I wish we had that. Um. We won a grant
from DHS and FEMA, their their Terrorism Prevention Grand Program
this year. We just got awarded it like literally two
weeks ago, so I have not even started work on
it at all. But the project will be a collaboration

(55:15):
between my center and a nonprofit games development company called
the Eye Thrive Foundation. UH. And basically what we are
going to do is like build digital scenarios, digital narratives
that can be engaged with UH within classroom settings. So
we're targeting high schools for rolling this out UH. And
the idea is that we're going to give students the

(55:35):
ability to take on roles that empower them to better
understand how extremism and radicalization work as mechanisms, which will
hopefully the idea is that it will it will improve
resilience and you know, civil integrity and all those fun
buzzwords within within high school communities. So we're not necessarily
trying to de radicalize already radicalize people, but we're really

(55:55):
trying to build community awareness, community resilience to too radicalization pathways.
I mean, this is something I think about constantly because
I get asked this a lot. You know, I'll get
I'll get emailed questions from people, sometimes as much detail
as like hey, I'm like a teacher and here's some
things this kid in my classes set or something he
put in an essay, and like, I'm growing really concerned
about him, and like, I, I, what do I do?

(56:17):
And my usual answer is, you know, there's a couple
of people who I respect that I'll try to direct
them to. But I I don't. I'm pretty good at
how people get radicalized. It's something I spent a lot
of time studying. I don't know how how you I
have trouble figuring out how to break down these pathways
because like, right, the the default for a lot of
people and for a lot of time has been will

(56:38):
you d platform? Right? You um, you get them off
of whatever. And there's there's still I do certainly think
there's there's utility in that. But there's also you know,
the toothpaste tube effect, the fact that when you you
squash these popular areas where they're able to spread them,
they filter off into increasingly isolated communities that developed new terms,
they find out ways to hide it, and that actually
increases you know, it may it may reduce the number

(57:00):
of people who get radicalized, but the people who remain
just get more and more extreme because they're even more
isolated from you know, everyone else, And I don't know,
how do you do how do you how do you
break that that radicalization cycle? Like, how do you how
do you stop that ship before it gets, you know,
to a tipping point? Yeah, I mean, in general, I'm

(57:21):
with you, I'm pretty skeptical of a lot of de
radicalization strategies. Uh. And it's it's like an incredibly difficult
task to to pull someone out who's already going down
these pathways. And then, like you said, it's also an
incredibly difficult task to make sure that when you are
disrupting the radicalization networks that they aren't just disappearing off
to some other corner of the Internet, which we know

(57:41):
they're doing. Like, one of the reasons why we're we're
working with a video game video game company is over
the last few years, we've noticed a big migration into
video game platforms, especially big social based video game platforms
like Roadblocks and Minecraft, which are not like, not even
remotely prepared deal with, you know, very well developed sophisticated

(58:03):
radicalization networks. They have moved over there, h both for
organization and radicalization reasons. Um, Since mainstream companies have started
taking more of an interest in deep platforming them. Uh
and so we're ending up like pretty wildly unprepared for
this sudden onslought of extremists being right in front of
kids as they're playing games or you know, teenagers or

(58:24):
even young adults. So our idea essentially is to use
that language, the same language that extremists are trying to
adopt the structures of video games three via the sort
of interactivity there, to better communicate the impacts of extremism,
what it looks like, how to identify it, and hopefully

(58:44):
how to avoid getting you know, falling into the traps
that are laid uh for for unsuspecting people. One of
the issues and I'm curiously thoughts on this because we
we we talk a lot about, like I think people
have become increasingly aware of how bad Facebook in particulars
is a problem with this. It's it's really well real
a lot of the boogaloo movement to and now this

(59:05):
stuff is coming out about like the data Facebook has
had on just and this isn't this isn't this is
adjacent to radicalization, Um, the mental impact that it's been
having on teenagers right, like the just how bad it
is for people, and UM, I'm wondering, like how do
you scale this stuff? I guess is the question like
how do you actually how do you make the social

(59:26):
internet less dangerous? Yeah? I mean that's that's going to
be extremely tough. And we are even starting very very small,
like we're building We're building on a narrative platform to
target three high schools right now. Um. But the hope
is that ultimately what we can do is build a
tool set and and a platform like literally a game

(59:47):
platform that can be used by high school teachers in
high school classes throughout the country or throughout the world. Um.
The idea will be to hopefully make a new sort
of package of different methods and interactive experiences that can
be reused into the future. But it is one of
the big open questions that we will hopefully come to

(01:00:08):
some sort of answer for throughout the project about how
do we actually scale this up? Um? But you know,
in general, it is again like one of the biggest
open questions right now. One of the reasons why I's
so skeptical of a lot of d RAD and CBE
techniques is they try to go for scale about effectiveness, um,
when in reality, one of the best and only de

(01:00:30):
radicalization pathways that we know of involves people that you
know and I know going out and meeting with these
people one on one and having intensive, frequent communications with them. So, um,
there's as far as we know, there's not a good
answer right now. This is a huge place of research
right now because we should just straight up do not
understand how to scale up um radicalization, prevention and de radicalization.

(01:00:54):
I mean in what you know, what you're trying to do,
and like reaching kids in high school in something it's
meant they're meant to be consuming while they're in school
is even such an additional challenge because I think you
and I are both young enough to at least remember
that like almost nothing that you put before kids in
that context in a school gets through. I can. I can.

(01:01:14):
I can think about like anti drug programs and stuff
when I was a kid, and how ineffective they were.
There was I had one one effective anti drug like
speech by a teacher and it was just a teacher
who whose son was part of this this There was
this one night and plane where like six kids indeed
on heroin. It was there was big Rolling Stone article
about it was a very famous moment, and her son
was one of the kids who nearly died and she

(01:01:35):
was and she like just explained like physically what happened
to him and begged us not to do heroin, And
that actually did stick with me. I've never never shot
up anything, um, but you know, like the a lot
of it doesn't work. And I think part of why
it's this thing I talked about when I tried to
explain like why isis propaganda was so effective, it's the

(01:01:55):
it feels more authentic than the than the counter narrative,
right the counter narrati of because it's it's usually focus grouped,
it's coming as the result of like some sort of
government initiative, a bunch of people working in together. It
feels focus grouped as opposed to there's something inherently more
compelling about something that just like feels like somebody who
really gave a ship, cares a lot put this thing together,

(01:02:17):
even if it's terrible. And I that strikes me as
a really because if you're going to be scaling something
and trying to reach a lot of people, it's going
to have to be something that is put together at
scale by an organization. And how do you. I mean,
I know this must be on your mind as you're
trying to figure out how to craft this thing. I'm
just interested in your thoughts on that. Really, yeah, I
mean that exact challenge challenges what led us to proposing

(01:02:37):
the project project that we are, so the idea behind it,
or the the impetus behind what we did what we
proposed is, um, the exact problem of students just don't
listen to people in whether that's anti drug programs or
anything like that. Often, my uh my uh feeling about
it is they are often resistant to it because it's

(01:02:59):
very negative. It's very don't do this, don't do this.
I'm setting up boundaries for for kids and analysts to
act within. It's all very declaratory, very you know, commanding. Um,
there's no there's no sense of treating kids like people
who have control, who have interests, who have motivations. It's

(01:03:20):
all attempting to restrict them. And so the idea is
that we're going to attempt to build a game platform
that actually empower students to operate within roles that have control,
that that have something to say, to give them, voices
to give them um and that sort of feeling of
being an established UM person within a within a certain scenario. Um.

(01:03:41):
The way that I've been thinking about it is that
we're basically merging video games with like the structure of
a model you in conference or something like that. Hopefully
we'll be a little less nerdy than Model U in conferences.
But that's the idea of giving people power to make decisions. Uh,
and and treat them like actual, you know, operating humans. Yeah,

(01:04:01):
I uh, I'm wondering do you have any kind of
models that you're looking at when you think of like
something that you see is is kind of worth I
don't emulating maybe the wrong word, but like, oh, these
people I think got it right and and this was effective?
Like or is this really a situation where you feel
like we're kind of in the fucking wilderness here. There's
not a lot of great models for what's effective. We

(01:04:22):
are very much in the wilderness. What I was expecting
you to say, Like, so much of CV and d
rad work of the last ten years has been directly
towards trying to essentially recreate that, like the Dare model
or the anti drug model, just in a different field. Um.
And so we're going to be pulling from scenario builders

(01:04:45):
and like mall un and debate and like all these
different models that seem to at least work to get
kids engage with like operating that sort of situation. But
it is going to be pretty I mean, at least
from what I understands, going be pretty new. We're going
to be out there really flying blind for a lot
of it UM, but we will. You know, we have

(01:05:06):
a pilot phase built in to try to bay to
test this with with UM some of the students were
incorporating students and instructors in the actual creation development stage,
so that'll be another hopefully good part of this will
we'll give some students experience with the game development process,
which I think will help engage them as well. That

(01:05:28):
strikes me as a particularly good idea of like giving
and also just giving them some agency. So it's not
like this is a thing that you are forced to consume,
Like this is the thing that you can like learn
something from. I think that's that's very important. I'm interested
in how you see how you see this because like
again we kind of both got in around the same time.
Gamer Gate is when I started paying attention to radicalization

(01:05:51):
to how do you think it's changed since then? How
do you think like the nature of of how, particularly
like younger people are being radicalized is changed. And I
guess I'm also interested because I get the feeling that
back then it was mostly younger people getting radicalized and
that's no longer the case. Just as we're talking, I
just came across the video on Twitter of a group
of anti vax protesters chasing parents and children away from

(01:06:12):
an elementary school and screaming at them that they're raping
their kids with a vaccine. So clearly the problem is expanded.
But yeah, yeah, And honestly one of the things that
keeps me up at night is when we start, if
you know, knocking movies are able to roll this out
to more schools, we're going to run into some probably
very resistant parents who have radicalized. Yum. Yeah, I mean

(01:06:33):
the big one is, like what you said, like the
radicalization demographics have vastly expanded to incorporate so many more
different types of people, so many more ages and even
ethnicities and genders. Um. But what we do know is
that the hardcore of the of the violent extremists are
still targeting adolescents. Um. We know accelerationists, for instance, hang

(01:06:56):
out and try to essentially black pill about of teens,
especially autistic teens, specially teens with mental health issues, UH,
and bring them into a more violent, more accelerationist posture. UM.
So I mean, I think that has sort of stayed
constant throughout all of this. One of the big UH

(01:07:17):
changes has been platforms. You know, ten years ago, it
was much easier for a neo Nazi to operate openly
on YouTube or Facebook, but that has thankfully changed. UM.
But they have spread out into like I mentioned earlier,
they've spread out into video games. They spread out into
other sorts of platforms where the social aspect isn't necessarily

(01:07:38):
the first part of the platform, but rather a secondary
aspect to it, and they try to engage UM adolescence
on their own turf on you know, in a Roadblocks
game or in a in a video game forum. Out there,
it's not even enough to say it feels like the
task of reducing radicalization or or not not even mentioned

(01:07:58):
pulling it back, just stopping the prod. This feels not
just like whack a mole, but like whack a mole
when you're surrounded by moles. UM and I guess that
is the thing that keeps me up at night the
most too, is that like the problem has gotten because
of how social media scales, I think, in large part,
has gotten so much worse than it ever was. And

(01:08:18):
the I see these crowds of adults, you know, assembling
in you know, places like Los Angeles and showing up
outside of schools to her ask people, and like, I
don't know what, I don't know what to do about that.
Like part of me thinks, um, part of me thinks

(01:08:41):
that the only effective long term answer is to mobilize
a larger number of people two show up to you know,
not necessarily confront those people, but make them make them
feel outnumbered, and maybe they'll stop, and that will start
a process where they they alter their thinking. Like I'm
thinking kind of back to in some aspects of the
civil rights movement here right where you would have these

(01:09:03):
people show up at schools just try to stop integration
and whatnot, and they would be opposed often by by
larger groups that they would see the size of the
marches in the street. And like, I don't know, I
don't even know if it works that way anymore. Like
knowing that you know, tend to one, people think your
stance on vaccines is stupid, and they're willing to show
up to like yell at you if that would do anything.
But I don't know what. I don't know what's going

(01:09:24):
to do. Like I guess I'm asking you, like, can
you have you figured this out? Because I don't know
what the funk to do? Um, But it's it's it's
not you can't we can't close our obviously you're someone
who's trying to confront it directly, but we certainly can't
keep ourselves like just pretend it's not going to get worse, right, No, totally,

(01:09:44):
And um, you know, I often feel like it's almost
too far gone. And you know, frequently I worry that
we've already passed some sort of you know, point of
no return on RODO causation, exploitation of social media. But
one of the other things I've also recognized is that
when you're in a space that is dedicated to one

(01:10:04):
type of confronting h one one method of confronting extremism,
very often they will forget about, or de prioritize, or
or even ignore the other types the other methods. And
one of the tasks before us, I think, before we
throw up our hands and give up, is trying to

(01:10:25):
tie together all of the different facets of resisting extremism,
from the hardcore confrontational doxing and showing up in the
streets counterprotesting, which I think is an essential part of it,
to UM working as hard as we can to try
to get tech companies to to realize what's going on UH,
and then also on the educational side, like what we're

(01:10:45):
doing with this with this project UM. Some of the
things that make me at least a little bit optimistic
is that there is obviously inertia, both intentional and unintentional
at tech companies, but frankly, they are still extremely far
behind in understand adding how to even do D platforming
on their platforms, how to even identify WoT D platform

(01:11:06):
like the majority of tech companies are still making contom
moderation decisions on a piece by piece basis, specifically looking
at content. Very few of them are doing actor analysis,
very few of them are doing several network analysis. Very
few of them are looking at even the links between
like off platform violence and on platform content like it's

(01:11:27):
the They are still very much in the stone ages
when it comes to contom moderation. And that's so so
key when I think about like what actually would reduce
the harm that these platforms are doing at scale. It's
focusing on the actors um and and not just like
the individual actors, which is part of the patterns that
let you tell whether or not someone is like that

(01:11:47):
same actor who's kind of like putting on a different
hat so to speak. Um, are you aware of like,
is there any I because I have not seen that
happen yet. I haven't seen Facebook take that seriously. Um,
and I have I have spent some time there. I
haven't seen certainly haven't seen Twitter take that seriously. Um,

(01:12:08):
I haven't really seen. I don't believe TikTok is like
they're they're they're they're just um, like you said, they're
going after they're taking it on a piece bay piece basis,
which is never there's too many pieces. That's never going
to handle the problem. Yeah, I mean take stock is
crawling right now. They're in their infancy. Um, they don't.
They don't have a data sharing uh, any sort of

(01:12:31):
data sharing systems set up for for researchers or anything
like that. Yet I've seen optimistic signals. So I think
Facebook's approach to q and On and boogleoo movement over
the past year has been probably the best, the most
positive development we've seen on the content moderation front because
they took an actual network based approach to it. It
was hands strung by a variety of different policy decisions,

(01:12:52):
but it was still from like a from like a
mechanics standpoint, the most sophisticated one any of the comedies
is actually talked about openly. Uh and YouTube has followed
in their path. They've started taking more network approaches um.
They they've taken moderation action against q and on on
a similar basis. But the thing that I want tech

(01:13:14):
companies to start looking at is applying a lot of
the techniques they're using for disinformation and in info ops
work to extremism and radicalization. It's very similar, but right
now it seems to be just easier politically or just
there further along with doing the large scale network analysis
approaches on this info um like Twitter is doing a

(01:13:36):
lot of that, but it's all on information operations and
take info yeah as opposed to yeah people Yeah. And
I I worry too because I'm paying attention to kind
of you know, you have this whistle blower from Facebook,
and how that's being politicized right, how the right is
kind of coming at this from a they're trying to say, like,

(01:13:57):
as Ben Shapira said, they're trying to to UM the
sensor alternative media voices and the like. And I I
worry tremendously about the politicization because number one, it means
that at best we've got like three years to get
something together before you know, who knows whose wides up
in the White House next. But also if it's just

(01:14:17):
this thing of like veering between who gets who gets
paid attention to UM based on like what is politically
viable for Facebook, we're never going to solve the problem.
And I I think I agree with you for the
most part on the Facebook's response to the boogle boo movement.
I mean, I guess I think the problem was that

(01:14:38):
by the time they developed a functional set of responses
to it UM, it had metastasized, it had grown, it
had grown strong enough to exist on its own, and
a lot of people have gotten exposed. What do you
think is the actual is reasonable to expect in terms
of response time from these people, because with boogle Ooo stuff,
it was about I want to say, about three months

(01:15:00):
be well, no, it was more like five. It was
about five months that it had from like December of
twenty nineteen was when I started really noticing it. And
then like you know, May at the when when stuff
really kicked off with the George Floyd protests, when you
started to see action taking the tail in the May. Yeah,
so I guess that I'm wondering, like, what is the
half life of this ship? Like how quickly do you

(01:15:21):
need to crack down on this stuff before it gets
to be impossible to contain? Uh? Yeah, I mean that's
the biggest limiting factor on that effectiveness of uh contemnation
in general, but also in particular these new approaches that
the tech companies seem to be experimenting with. UM, my
understanding is that part of the So I'm not I'm

(01:15:43):
not defending Facebook by any stretch. I'm not here to
be the Facebook rallying crew. But my understanding is that
they literally did develop an entirely separate approach to taking
down the biblie movements. So that explains at least a
little bit of the delay. But hopefully, you know, my
optimistic side hopes that they will be able to apply

(01:16:03):
it more quickly in the future. Um The problem is
a lot of the network approaches that have been developed
are have like these very high thresholds for attribution. So
it has to be like a dedicated network that has
crossed the line into criminal activity and is actively calling
for you know, political violence on like a network level,

(01:16:24):
and that like we all know that that isn't that
is like the end goal or the end point in
exactly right, Like that is the terminal point of the
development of these extremist networks. So you know, we're one
of the one of the things that we're working on
is trying to figure out a way to convince tech
companies that you can and should take action earlier before

(01:16:47):
it reaches that point. And it's going to be a
mosaic of things. It's going to be combining violent extremism
with hate speech, with even like c SAM child exploitation stuff,
with um all, you know, criminal criminal conspiracy network, Paul seas.
All of those things need to be sort of thought
of as pieces in a single, big, overarching umbrella that
we can use to take down networks earlier on. But

(01:17:09):
you know, it's a. It's a. That's one of the
biggest tasks is just convincing them to think about it
much much earlier. Yeah. Um, all right, well let's I
think most of what I wanted to get into today.
Is there anything else you really wanted to like, kind
of talk about while you're here? Um, those are the
those are the big ones for sure. We will hopefully

(01:17:30):
have more to talk about very soon. And how we're
approaching this project. Um, it's going to be a pretty
big project. It will take two years to implement, but um,
we're pretty excited to see what comes out of it. Yeah. Um, Well,
people can find you on Twitter at it's just at
alex new house, right, alex B new house, alex B

(01:17:52):
new house. Yeah, at alex b new House. Um, they
can check out where you work at seat E, C, M, I,
I s UM and yeah, I'm I'm excited to see. Well,
maybe we'll have you back on when you UMU, when
you you you actually put out the game. But I'm
really interested in looking at that. Oh yeah, it was

(01:18:14):
the last thing you brewed. Oh, I brewed a red
I p A and I'm currently brewing three gallons of
apple cider. Oh. Nice. We just um, we juiced ten
gallons of apples and pears that I just kegged after
almost four weeks of fermentation that I know. I've been
I've been looking at I've been looking at apple mills
like apple presses, and yeah I should I should just
buy one, And we found one to rent. Um. So

(01:18:35):
it's just like I don't know, thirty bucks for the day. Uh,
and we just gathered up all the apples on property.
But it's it was rab definitely very soon. Yeah, we
were juicing all of the apples the day that um
tiny got shot at that protest in Olympia. So it's
just like looking at the Twitter saying there's been a
shooting into protests and be like, yeah, I'm glad I'm
not working today. Yeah, I'm glad I'm not working today,

(01:18:59):
afternoon press and this is this is a more enjoyable
use of my time right now. All right, Well, Alex,
thank you so much for being on. Thank you for
what you're doing, and thank you all for listening. Go
with you know whoever, whatever deity up to you, it

(01:19:27):
could happen here, Mike is possibly anyway, I'm Robert Evans, Uh,
you know who I am because you're listening to this
show unless you stumbled upon this having never heard of
the internet before, in which case this is a show
about how things are kind of falling apart, and we
also try to talk every now and then about how
to maybe put them back together a little bit. My

(01:19:49):
co host is Garrison Davis. Garrison, say hello to the people. Hello, people.
I'd also like you to say hello to Sean Hi Shan. Yeah,
there's a Sean somewhere up there. There's probably a few shots. Yeah,
it was at least one or two. Garrison, What do we?
What do we? What do we? What? What? What are we? Well,
we're finally doing something I've been wanting to do for

(01:20:11):
a while, is branching off into kind of covering different
parts of like media and culture UM that kind of
relate to all of these topics UM. I know both
both me, but both me a little bit and and
Robert more so have worked for or have have written
for UM like an online investigative journalism website called belling

(01:20:33):
Cat that deals in open source UM like research and
one of the things that we're big fans of that
Belling Cat. I've talked with a few of the other
people is a game called Her Story, which is a
video game that has maybe one of the better better
depictions of kind of open source um investigations. Uh. It's

(01:20:54):
it's a it's a very it's a very good game.
I highly recommended. I played it a few years ago.
It was lovely and I recently Uh well, originally, when
I bought Her Story, I bought both that game and
like a spiritual sequel called Telling Lies, which I did
did not play for a while because I was too busy. Um.
And then I went to the Earth First Gathering this

(01:21:18):
summer and I and I came back and I had
some free time, so I played Telling Lies, And because
of the continent of that game, I found it really interesting.
Because I'm not gonna spoil tons of it, I think
you should play it for yourself, and part of it
is solving the mystery on your own. But but part
of it does take place to like green environmentalism activism setting,

(01:21:38):
and it has one of the more honest depictions of
environments like that. So I have we are we are
graced with bringing on the creator of both Her Story
and Telling Lies. Uh. Sam Barlow, Hello, Hey, exciting to
be here. Lovely interest yeah, I I am. I'm very

(01:22:01):
excited to talk with you. These games are some of
my favorite things. Um. First off, I guess I would
just like to kind of talk about your inspiration for
this type of detective game, because it is it is
unique to every other kind of investigative game out there. UM.
And it's you know, very much grounded in open source research. Um.

(01:22:23):
And like using computers in the real world. What what
kind of got you onto that kind of storytelling concept?
I mean, I think there was a whole bunch of
things that all kind of sparked off at once, Like
when I made Her Story. This was my first independent
video game. So I've been making video games for ten
plus years, um, working on other people's franchises, more traditional

(01:22:47):
things kind of when I started out working on like
Nicolas Cage movie tients and extreme sports games and all
these kind of things. Um. But at some point I
got to work on the Silent Hell franchise, which is
this this very cool psychological horror franchise, and it's one
of the certainly at that point in time, it was
one of the few kind of established gaming franchises that

(01:23:10):
had a story that was interesting and took place in
the real world and had characters and things, So kind
of from that point, I was really digging into kind
of a lifelong interest in storytelling, especially what we can
do with it interactively, and continue to be frustrated somewhat
by working for these bigger publishers, and at one point

(01:23:32):
I worked for three years I was directing and writing
this this big budget video game that got canceled, and
that kind of gave me a moment to kind of
sit and think, like, what what do I want to do?
Do I want to get on board another of these
big video games. I was very frustrated at the kind
of incremental change that you see in the kind of

(01:23:54):
bigger budget video game space. It feels like things happened
very slowly, which can be frustrating. So I was kind
of looking around. This was when like iPhones, people gaming
on their iPhones and stuff was kind of starting to
blow up. The fact that you could now distribute a
game individually digitally and reach an audience was sort of

(01:24:14):
changing the landscape. So I kind of felt like I
should get into that. And so at its conception her
story was was me going, what are all the things
I've wanted to do that that I wasn't able to
do when I was working with these bigger budgets, with
these more established kind of gaming templates. So from the
get go it was I wanted to deal with characters

(01:24:37):
that essentially lived in the real world, which is a
hard pitch. You know, if you're asking for big bucks,
every video game has to essentially be about superhero. It
needs to be some kind of wish fulfillment for a
teenage boy is generally what people are asking for. And
the big thing with her story was subtext as someone's
interesting storytelling. I was always trying to post how important

(01:25:01):
subtext is and the idea that there is. You know,
there are layers to a narrative that you're not spelling
out for the audience that they're going to extract through
performance or through whatever um And that was always a
hard sell when you were kind of dealing with these
kind of a bigger companies that had a very simple
idea of what their audience was. So I wanted to
prove that the audience was actually smarter than we were

(01:25:23):
giving them credit for, and that if you gave more
control to them, if you gave more of the kind
of work of piecing these stories together that that would
be not not just something they could do, but which
would actually be more interesting and more personal and um,
you know, and with her story, I had a kind
of lifelong love of like crime fiction and slightly more

(01:25:46):
kind of Gothic leaning crime fiction. And so it's like, right,
I'm going to create a video game which is in
that world and which kind of breaks a lot of
the established rules of how you might tell a story. UM.
And you know, a lot of that I was pulling from, Yeah,
my love of some of them more kind of avant

(01:26:07):
gode literally stuff interesting pieces of kind of movies and things.
But it was, it was, it was pulling from a
lot of different kind of storytelling traditions and ending up
in this this interesting place where, like you say, it's
kind of a game experience where you're essentially researching the
story yourself and kind of putting the pieces together. Yeah. Yeah.
For for people who don't know, it's like you're basically

(01:26:29):
on a virtual desktop, um, and you're sorting through like
a hard drive full of footage and the versatility of
the game, and you know, people learning how to use
like search terms, right, just like people try to use
like um in open source it's called like using like
Google operators. It's the same kind of the same thing. Um,
But also there's like the other side of things. I

(01:26:51):
think a belling Cat wrote an article about your game
where they like made like a Python script to scan
all of the videos for specific keywords and put them
into like different folders and files. So it's like you
can do the thing where you just like search it,
but you could like take this to a ridiculous level.
You're like breaking the game open and doing it like
you're actually like investigating this and you need to be
very quick. Um. So I think her story is is

(01:27:13):
a lovely intro to this type of game concept. And
then for Telling Lies, you kind of changed, you change
some things with it. Um, you made like I guess,
I guess like an expansion would be the way I
would describe it for how it like it takes the
same concept and pushes it further. And I think watching
these things now, it is very different after being like

(01:27:35):
two years on Zoom right, I'm I'm sure I'm sure
you've heard this from other people as well as like
you know, because because because of how Telling Lies operates,
it's like a lot of it is well you open
the game because you're basically cracking open and then I
say hard drive. So all of it is video from
like webcams and stuff. Um, so you know, watching people

(01:27:56):
talking to their computer camera like this after spending years
on Zoom definitely hits harder. I guess it was one
of those things where so when we were first working
on this and conceiving of it, which was I don't know,
maybe and something like that, Um, there was a leap, right,

(01:28:17):
and as a storyteller you allow yourself sometimes to take
that one leap that the audience will take with you.
And the leap there was like these people are using
video chat a lot. But I mean and as I
was starting to put it together, I would start noticing
people around that time doing video chat in the street
on their phones, which was something I was not used
to sing And I was like, oh, ship, maybe this

(01:28:38):
is not too big of a leap. But yeah, I
think I think it was The Virgin or somebody ran
an article that was like telling Lies is still a
great game mid pandemic, it's just real hard to play
now that like this Zoom thing is our lives. That
was like, yeah, that was that was a big thing.
I was interested in at the time, was like, what

(01:29:00):
is this doing to us? What is communicating over the internet,
how does that change how conversations and and things happen,
And was kind of looking into some of the research there.
So that, Yeah, that was wild. Was was was kind
of living in that world for several years putting the
game out and then spending two years on zoom Calls. Yeah.

(01:29:21):
I mean in a few ways, I think the game
has aged very well because of that, and because the
way people. People are more used to interacting with the
computer in that format now, so when they're you know,
trying to search for these like hundreds of video files,
I think they can understand it better. Um. So in
some ways I think it's not It's not necessarily a
bad thing. Um But yeah, let's see. So I think, well,

(01:29:45):
I want to talk a bit about kind of the
influences for kind of the surveillance aspect, because like her
story is filmed in like a police um interrogation room
for based basically basically the whole thing, whereas this pulls
video footage of people like in private moments essentially. Of course,
this was like after like the Snowden stuff and after

(01:30:06):
all of the other kind of after the you know,
surveillance became a bigger talking point. Um, but what what
got you to decide you wanted to kind of revolve
the game around this concept of internet surveillance. And then
you know, different three letter agencies kind of fighting each
other a little bit. So I think it was two things.
One was in making her story and making lots of

(01:30:30):
decisions somewhat intuitively kind of when it was finished and
it was a big success and I looked back on it,
and then kind of when a little bit of time
and passed, I then had this very different relationship where
I had forgotten that I was the person who had
made it and so could have opinions about it. And
I was really interested in how that that game established
a level of intimacy with the main character that Viva players,

(01:30:52):
that you're seeing being interrogated, despite the fact that it
is happening through a computer desktop, despite the fact that
there's none of what tradition really you know that the
agency you were traditionally having a video game, which you know,
conventional logic would be that's how you would establish the
idea that this person is alive and that you're in
contact with them. But the act of like digging into

(01:31:13):
all this video footage of Eva and seeing her on
screen talking essentially at you created this this interesting amount
of intimacy that a lot of people responded to. So
I was like, well, that's one of the things that
is interesting to me to take further, because it's it's
very rare that a video game creates this sensation of
kind of intimacy or of getting close to or understanding people.

(01:31:35):
And then it was Snowden m I think it was
one of the the early reports UM from from all
the various things that came out via Snowden. There was
a particular UM operation in the UK, which I think
was called Optic Nerve or something, and the idea there

(01:31:56):
was that they were spying on everyone's Internet traffic. And
I think it's a little bit easier to do that
in the UK than it is elsewhere. And this one
particular operation, I remember there was a PowerPoint slide that
was leaked that was like their internal presentation which proved that,
like in any leaked government PowerPoint will be the worst

(01:32:16):
power point you've ever seen, like the clip art and
just terrible nous, right um. But in this scheme, what
they did, and this blew my mind. Was for a period,
if I think it was two years, every single video
chat that went through Yahoo in the UK was captured
and recorded, and they had this issue, which I think

(01:32:37):
is if you want to talk about surveillance kind of
post nine eleven, the big problem with surveillance and the
extent to which is now used, is like what you
do with all this data? Like it's it's it's just
too much. So they they were capturing all this Yahoo
video chat and attempting to add the metadata and sort it,

(01:33:02):
which is kind of interesting because that's kind of, to
some extent kind of how something like her story worked. Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally.
And the biggest issue they had, and they put up
this power point and it blew my mind, was thirty
of all the video chat through Yahoo at this point
was sexual in nature, and they were concerned about the

(01:33:22):
feelings of their operatives who were doing the tagging of
all this data. So they'd put their best computer minds
on it, and they'd come up with an algorithm which
would detect an excessive amount of skin tone and would
then kind of flag and silo those clips. And I
just remember reading this and being like, what about the
feelings of the people whose skin tone you're capturing, right,
Like you weren't you weren't stopping to think like why

(01:33:45):
are we doing this? Shouldn't we be doing this? You're
you're you're solving for the problem of like how do
we stop our agents seeing all this newnity? And I
think there was there was a bunch of other anecdotes
right in the snowed and stuff of people alongside him,
like you know, looking through people's webcom data and stuff
and in a in a voyeuristic way, and just this
constant invasion of people's rights. So I think that it

(01:34:09):
was one of those things where I was like, oh,
this is this is like new, like you know, we
now have you know you you you worry about certain
levels of like your privacy being invaded, and you would
certainly worry if someone was letting themselves into your house
at night. But we suddenly found ourselves in this position

(01:34:29):
where we have these phones that we put by our
bedside at night, that have cameras and microphones that are
pretty much just running right and capturing, and just the
extent to which now technology has transformed surveillance, and that
that was really interesting to me because I um and

(01:34:49):
a big thing I wanted to do. You know, I've
made her story. And like, growing up, I loved cop shows,
and I particularly loved the good ones, like like Homicide,
Life on the Street in the US. There was a
show in the UK called Cracker Um and these were like,
you know, somewhat nuanced in how they with policing, but

(01:35:11):
you know, you're you're still you know, in this position
now where we're starting to ask deeper questions about whether
we should watch this many cops shows. Yeah, when they're
like the main thing on all television all the time. Yeah, exactly.
And that would be like when I made her story,
Partly I pitched the bigger publishers like we should do

(01:35:32):
the equivalent of a cop show like that, we should
do crime fictional cop show, video game. And they would
always be like nah, And I would say, well, look,
this is like the evergreen. If you're a book publisher,
you have a crime show, you have a crime book.
You know, if you doing movies, you're going to have
some movies with this genres. It works. And they would
always kind of push against that. So when I made

(01:35:52):
her story, that was in fact, like the arc of
of playing her story to some extent mirrors my ark
in that Like at the top of it, I was like,
I want to make an interesting detective game, and I
want to deconstruct how detective stories work. And I then
started to do a bunch of research whereas digging into, well,

(01:36:14):
how do actual criminal investigations work, how does one interrogate
the suspect doing all that stuff? And then I started
to pull up what at the time, like there was
a bit it was slightly ahead of like the true
crime explosion, but there was starting to be stuff on
YouTube and in various places where footage from real investigations
was online, and it was starting to get a bit

(01:36:35):
weird and interesting, and that people were kind of vicariously
watching these things. And yeah, that raised also of questions
they were trying to piece together their own kind of
conclusions based on these leaked or sometimes officially released interview segments. Yeah,
and and there was one in particularly got really into
the Jodi Arias case. It's just like a and and

(01:36:57):
the way the media spun that story and just really
dug into oh, there's like sex and murder and Mormons,
and there's this beautiful blonde woman who now when she
goes to court, has gone brunette, and they were endlessly
talking about on cable news like her parents and setting
her up as this kind of them fatal kind of

(01:37:20):
ice maiden. On the slip side of this, I think
there's like the thing with them the Making the Murderer documentary,
which I think I have some issues with how they
handle the main guy, but particularly how they showed the
totally immoral interrogation tactics used on used on Brandon the
kid Um, and that really cracked that whole thing open,

(01:37:40):
being like, yeah, the way the police are interrogating miners
without it was the lawyers is shocking, and that was
that was that was part of this transition for me.
Was was was going into her story with like the
hero of this is the detective. It's Andre Brower and
homicide life in the street. It's the genius detective that's
going to come in there and crack this case. And
the more I dug into in cases like Jody's where

(01:38:03):
um there word various um aspects to that case. She
definitely did murder her lover, but there are lots of
questions around whether the relationship itself was particularly healthy. Um
and by the end of it, like all of my
sympathy was with Jody, not with the interrogator who you

(01:38:24):
watch it and you realize that, like, the reason this
person is in this situation is because their life has
gone very badly, and the reason for that is everything
that's happened in their life prior to this, and they've
never spoken to anyone about any of this stuff. And
suddenly they're in this room with the homicide detective who's like, hey,
you can talk to me. I'm the first person that's

(01:38:46):
going to sit and listen to you, and all these
tricks that they use to just get people talking, and
it becomes very intimate and becomes kind of like therapy session.
But by the end of it so so for me,
like the hook of her story is, oh, you get
to solver murder, but really, by the end of it,
it's like a character portna. You should entirely be with

(01:39:07):
her that is less about seeing justice done right. So
I even but even coming away from that, I was like,
I still feel slightly uncomfortable with with kind of having
made this thing that is reveling in how much fun
it is to be involved in the police work or whatever.
And so I was definitely thinking about the snows and stuff,

(01:39:30):
thinking about that aspect and the extent to which technology
has just so empowered policing in general to the point
where it's there's this great um Like one of the
core themes that I wanted to dig into and telling
lies was that when you see people try and defend
this stuff and defend policing in general, is they try

(01:39:53):
and set it up so that you basically have They
talk in terms of families and very close relationships, so
they're kind of like, well, the government is your parent,
and they're trying to look after you. And you understand
as a parent, you're going to sometimes invade the privacy
of your children or sometimes you're going to inhibit their

(01:40:13):
freedoms because you're trying to protect them. And we all
understand that, and that's part of being human, and that's
all that's happening here with government, right We're trying to
protect you from the big bad, the evil sort of
like there's some tweet from the YPD the other day
that was like you'll be come, You'll come running when
evil is on your doorstep. Someone was saying something and

(01:40:34):
and and for me, once you you take that understanding
of how people relate directly to which they how families work.
The second you scale it to the size of government,
it breaks like that you cannot extend that metaphor. And
then when you add in tech, um, you know, the
extent to which uh, you know, privacy has been degraded

(01:40:57):
of freedoms. Um, you know, when you start just blanket
looking for crime, right, you start creating all the systemic
issues that we have just suddenly become amplified. Um. So
that that to me was kind of interesting. Um, well,
you know, here is like a means to explore that.

(01:41:19):
And I like one of the things that was interesting
to me about her story that in retrospect was the
extent to which it was about watching video, which seems
like a dumb thing to say, but like the choice
to use real video kind of inspired by watching all
these interrogation piece of footage from Jodi and people. Um,

(01:41:39):
you know, it was was kind of made Oh yeah,
that makes sense, and I just kind of got on
with it. But then looking back, I was like, oh, well,
it's interesting because people talk about this game as being
an interactive movie, but it's nothing like a movie. No no,
and it's not how movies work. It just happens that
it uses a video camera. Only similarity is that it
has live action footage that yeah, So I was like,

(01:42:01):
I really want to go even further into that texture.
And so I was just thinking about and when I
was starting to do my research, like the idea of
surveillance and and the commonalities between like classic old school surveillance,
I you know, someone sat in a car some binoculars
watching someone and and modern surveillance. The commonalities that it's

(01:42:22):
quite boring, right, there's just a lot of sitting and
watching nothing. Yeah, right. And but out of that, and
when you kind of read the first hand accounts of
the people doing the surveillance or some of the depictions
of this media, like there's a level of intimacy that
you get with the person you're surveilling right where you know,

(01:42:45):
if you're just sat watching them and you schef someone's life,
if you're listening to a bug in someone's kitchen and
just hearing all the just everyday ship in their lives,
or if you are you know, watching them through some
kind of technology, Um, you're just spending all this time
with them, and that's like a that's like a very
non cinematic thing. It's just like this that menu shy
and the time stretching out of just being present with somebody.

(01:43:09):
And that was kind of interesting to me of just
kind of putting you in that headspace and kind of
thinking about what that means. I think that totally gets
through because of the way you break up the conversations
and telling lies. You have to sit and watch these
characters as they're just doing nothing for sometimes like like

(01:43:30):
over five minutes. They're just like sitting there, um, and
you do get like very intimate with these characters, but
it almost like in a very like creepy way where
you like you feel like I shouldn't be here, which
is kind of the general feeling of telling us really
interesting because I like some people would have a very
and and this was you know, completely again like trying

(01:43:52):
to process how I felt watching the like the videos
of all the various police interrogations and stuff, was like,
this is fascinating because there's human beings were fascinated by
other human beings, and here is this extremely interesting dramatic
stuff where people are just really spilling their lives out.
It's why true crime blew up, right, But then you
have all these moral questions around it. And obviously with

(01:44:15):
telling lies, it's inspired by lots of real things, but
it's fake and you're watching actors act this stuff. But
still some people would have this real visceral reaction of
like I shouldn't be watching some of this stuff, and
I'd be like, I mean, you you can. It's like
that was that was where it became really not cinematic
to me, was like, you know, if you're watching a

(01:44:36):
you know, a noir film or you know, a thriller
and you have you know, or even like the The
thing for the domestic stuff for me was you know,
you could watch and a sitcom, watching any a normal
sitcom and the husband and wife are sat in bed chatting.
At no point do you feel like I shouldn't be
here because you're in the kind of classic Hollywood invisible

(01:44:58):
camera set up. You're this, you know, you have permission
to be there as the invisible camera spectator, and it
doesn't feel as weird as it would if you're hiding
in the closet of this comple's bedroom. Um So with
the setup I'm telling lies, you immediately feel like, oh,
like this I am in this position that I shouldn't be,
And so suddenly all those more domestic moments become charged

(01:45:23):
with like a very different vibe. Yeah, because you're watching
them and you're you're not invited, like right, you're you know,
you're sitting looking at this ns A hard drive and
you're like, yeah, I'm not supposed to be watching this
like this, this, this isn't They never invited me into
this conversation. Telling Lies very much feels like a much
more mature game than her story. Not in terms of
like has like more mature content, but like in terms

(01:45:44):
of like this concept growing up and like evolving and
gaining more depth. Um, particularly because you know, not only
just because it has way more characters, but because you know,
you get to all of your kind of games deal
with some degree of like characters lying to you and
like just doing like straight line to your face. That's
kind of a that's my read on a lot of
a lot of your games. Um, I mean, you're the

(01:46:05):
game is called Telling Lies, so so you definitely see
like elements of of you know, all of these trying
to figure out what is true and what is not.
I think it is interesting looking at like how easier
it is to lie via these technological platforms. UM, I
don't know to just like you feel like telling the
truth is just so much more work and you may

(01:46:26):
as well just get through this conversation by doing a
few white lives, which is that inspiral out of control. Um.
When you combine this with you know, law enforcement infiltration
and all this kind of stuff, he gets it gets
very complicated very quickly. Um. One thing that I think
you guys handled very well in Telling Lies was kind
of the activism side of things. So like when when
I play this game, like almost immediately after coming back

(01:46:47):
from the stop lining three protests, um, and like and
and like in Earth First Gathering, you know, everyone there
is always very people try to be aware of surveillance
to be like, okay, you know, you don't talk about
certain things if there's phones nearby and stuff. So so
that whole side of things was very interesting to like
play this game right afterwards because you have to see
like the other side of things, being like, okay, if

(01:47:08):
the the FBI is infiltrating this group, here's you know,
one of the ways that they do it. And like
that from my perspective being you know, in activism spaces
for a while not just like environmental ones, but you
know other ones like here in Portland. Um, you had
you handled this topic very accurately. Um, where what kind
of stuff did you pull from to kind of create

(01:47:31):
these like these you know environments and interactions between people.
Because I'm not sure if you have any experience yourself
and stuff like this or if you've got people onto
like like you talk to people who are more experienced activists.
What was kind of your inspiration for like, you know,
the opposite side of things, not on the law enforcement.
So that was that was like one of the big
initial jumping off points. So uh like in terms of

(01:47:55):
the kind of real life inspirations, Like the seed of
this whole thing was to remember when this was it
was I'm gonna say two thou could be completely wrong here,
but it was The Guardian in the UK I think
broke the story. But it was and we've recently had
some good progress in this this area, but broke the

(01:48:18):
story of this UK spy Cops operation, which was a
specific unit within the London Police whose job was to
infiltrate groups, to surveil them from the inside. And um,
it was horrific and they were like a couple of

(01:48:39):
things about it that were horrific. One of them was
that like, essentially their modus operandi was to find vulnerable
young women on the periphery of groups, target them romantically,
and then they would be the collateral to get, you know,
to have people then more solidly enter into these groups.
And then they had like a whole you know, stepped

(01:49:02):
plan of like once you're in, how you kind of
would would destabilized steer these groups from within UM. And
the the thing that really made this even worse UM
was the fact that most of the groups, I think
maybe all of the groups targeted with this particular unit

(01:49:23):
were green activists. There's this incredible, incredible, like you couldn't
make this stuff up. But there's a famous libel case
where McDonald's was suing these these two activists in the
UK right because they were putting up flyers exposing some

(01:49:44):
of the practices of McDonald's and the group that they
were members of, which I think at this point was
called Green Piece, but it was different to the kind
of more famous Green Piece in London. Prior to them
doing this big kind of mcd arnold's thing, UM was
losing members and it got to a point where there

(01:50:05):
were so few people in this group that it would
have shut down had it not been for the fact
that there were a large number of undercover cops in
this group. So you know, if you imagine at some
point there were actually more undercover cops and private security
people undercover in this group that actual activists, which has

(01:50:27):
enabled the group to continue. And in fact, the original
flyer that they put out was written I forget the
guy's name now by one of these undercover cops. He
wrote the copy for this flyer that went out and
then was you know, saw this these people dragged up
in court and was this huge you know, McDonald's won

(01:50:48):
the case, but in terms of pr it was hugely
damaging to them. But yeah, that that for me was
the thing that seemed even more a point because because
here you had this story of the state so actioning
the you know, one of the most terrible abuses. Like essentially,
you know, what was happening was pretty easy to to

(01:51:11):
kind of call it rape, right. There was women in
sexual relationships with people and thinking it was consensual, but
not realizing that they this was you know, what they
were getting into was not what they thought it was,
and so this was just so appalling and like from
a just to kind of base emotional level, just it

(01:51:36):
was so hard for me to imagine the pain of
Um and these women when relationships with these undercover officers
for years and then and and and part of the
modus operanda was when you were done, you had to
exit and disappear. And they had this whole plan where
the cops would claim that they were being followed and
that they were worried, and then they would disappear. And

(01:51:58):
then they would cool from some European country and say
that they've kind of fled the country because they were
worried that the cops were onto them, and then they
would slowly kind of disappear and this you know, some
of these were kind of pre modern Internet, so it
was easier for someone to kind of disappear. But this
stuff totally happened in the Green Scare in the States,
in you know, around this was around this was My

(01:52:21):
big question was was this you know, some of these
cases were kind of the original inspiration. And when I
started thinking about trying to tell a story inspired by
their originally it starts off and and and there's still
in based in the UK and based on these things,
and there was a particular, ah, a particular flavor to

(01:52:42):
it where the cops doing this work it was part
of the Matt Police, who were you know, that's the
more kind of gang story, Like there's there's a real
reputation that the Matt Police have. So these cops that
were chosen for this work were the ones that were
a bit more kind of Marcho and edge. Um, and
there were there was I mean, there was so much

(01:53:02):
stuff to it was horrific, Like they would only pick
cops that were married, um because they felt that that
h gave them some level of ability to be sleeping
with these activists and not lose themselves in it. Um.
But obviously the wives didn't know what was sending um.

(01:53:24):
And and there's just there's so many layers of this
that I just thought was it was awful, and coming
off the first story, I was like, well, I would
love to tell an undercover cops story in which we
acknowledged that the undercover cop is bad. They aren't, like,
you know, because because it's such a classic trope, is

(01:53:44):
the undercover cops story. Because you get to have your
cake and eat it, you get to see someone on
both sides the law you get, you get all the
tension and thrills of it. But usually, you know, whatever,
even if the if the movie or the story or
whatever has a bitter sweet ending, the protagonists always the
undercover cop. And ultimately, because they're the protagonist, they're the

(01:54:05):
one that your heart goes to, right. And the secondary characters,
whether that's like the wife in Donnie Brasco or Good
Fellows or something, you know, they basically serve as a
foil to the main character. So I was like, well,
can we tell a story where, um, we we treat
the wife and the activist who's being targeted and the
other people on the periphery of this guys think more

(01:54:28):
about their perspective on this world, and let's acknowledge from
our perspective that this is wrong. Everything that's happening is
wrong and it's not justified. And then let's just see
what the impact is on people. UM. So, once we
started developing it, and when I was speaking to Anna
partner about doing it, um, I felt like, oh, we

(01:54:49):
should move this to the States, um to make it
feel certainly as well, because the larger audiences American to
to kind of reiterate and make it feel kind of
more identifiable and have it be less quaint and British. Um.
So my number one question from day one was like, well,
does this ship happen in the States, and as such,

(01:55:10):
does it happen in the same way. And so we
brought on a researcher who then started pulling stuff up
and and the big thing for me was replacing the
undercover group the met with the FBI, and and then
I that became fascinating to me because then I started
digging into the FBI and understanding their history and everything

(01:55:32):
that's wrong there. But yeah, immediately I start seeing all
these great examples of of yeah, this explicit infiltration of
green groups um, some pretty horrific cases of entrapment um,
where you know, people infiltrate these groups and then encourage
them to do more extreme and violent things on the record.

(01:55:55):
It's the point where you're listening to like recorded FBI
stuff and and you can hear the group being like
I'm not sure about that, Like that doesn't sound like
a great idea, dude, And the the FBI person is
there going like, what, I don't know, I really do
think we should blow this bridge up. Guys, and it's

(01:56:16):
so obvious like when you listen to which is why
a lot of these cases have ultimately been thrown out.
But yeah, it was it was It was I guess
for the project, reassuring to see that all this stuff
was happening over here. Yeah. I mean, and the FBI,
like the specific FBI agent that we kind of follow

(01:56:36):
definitely feels very American and feels very real. Um. I
really like the actor that you got to play him. Um,
he definitely feels like a lot of kind of the
law enforcement dudes who kind of handle this side of things. Um.
That was that was That was definitely that was like
an FBI. He became like the fbiis of it became

(01:56:58):
very important to it. And it was interesting the way
that the FBI they had this brand, which is partly
reinforced by the media, Like they had the great idea
back in like forties or fifties to themselves fund and
support cop shows. So this whole idea we have through
the X Files, through pretty much every serial killer media whatever.

(01:57:19):
The idea of the FBI is being like the smartest
and the best, like that's put out by them. But
it's really interesting to see they believe that like they
are beyond approach and like they have higher standards for like,
you know, if you want to join the FBI, there
is in theory this kind of moral moral check that

(01:57:39):
you have to pass. But into abi age and flipping
backwards and shooting somebody when his gun falls out of
his pants at a clip. Well, then you read about
it and you're like, actually the experience, the lived experience,
and we were it was it was so bizarre because
I was like, I really want to understand what it's
like to be an FBI wife, and um let's find

(01:58:02):
let's reach out and the research I've done. Some of
the stuff we pulled up, I was like, oh it
it does sound pretty bad. Like there's a requirement if
you're an FBI agent you have to move every three
years or something. So if you're the wife to an
FBI agent, you essentially move every three years, and so
you never get a chance to build your own career
or to make roots. And so you're generally and the

(01:58:24):
wage is not great, which is why they're very vulnerable
to corruption. Really, um, so you're generally living. There's usually
kind of areas where all the FBI families live, so
it's this very insular world, and you you start to
see where some of these wives have come out and

(01:58:47):
spoken about it. They're like, it's really shitty because husbands
who believe themselves to be like you know, March of
superheroes get to disappear for three days at a time
and we can never ask where they are or what
they're doing. And there's this of internal code which you
seen a lot of law enforcement right where they will
cover for each other and protect each other. Um. And
you suddenly start to see that, like, ah, you know this,

(01:59:12):
this is not like And in fact, I remember reading
sort of the guy who inspired like Silenced the Lambs.
The TV show mind Hunter was based on him in
his book. Um, this guy who was one of the
early kind of serial killer profiling people within the FBI.
You read his book, it's a terrible book. When I

(01:59:35):
heard that Fincher was adapting us like, wow, good luck,
m But it's incredible the lack of self awareness he has. Um,
this guy is so sexist and so bad. Every time
he introduces a woman, it starts by from the legs up,
like he's describing and Um. At the very end of
the book, he reveals that his wife leaves him, and

(01:59:56):
he kind of writes as if this is a huge surprise,
and you're like, yeah, he's calling u. Chapter one and
he has the best buddy, So like the guy who's
who's the kind of number two in mind Hunter on TV,
there's like a real life version of him. And halfway
through the book, his wife hires an assassin to kind
of hitman to come in and kill him, and the

(02:00:17):
guy just narrowly avoids it. And the guy writing the
book is like what an evil woman like, oh my
poor friend, And you're like, well, hang on a minute,
what did your what was your friend? Like? Yeah, what
was going on? Yeah, there's there's there's probably something going
on there. So yeah, it was Yeah, that that sense
that which I think for me, expanded beautifully to the

(02:00:40):
bigger picture of like that character kind of believing that
he's the good guy absolutely, you know, he's the sheriff
in the Western. He's coming in and he's fixing problems
and he's saving the world. But and then apart and
and and his inability, like it's such a brittle worldview.
That's yeah, guys, he he is very once, yeah, once

(02:01:02):
he's exposed to thinking that the world is maybe different.
It just totally breaks him. Yeah. His specific arc I
think is extremely interesting. Um, but I don't want to
spoil it because I think it's it's it's too it's
too shocking. Once you get to the final piece of
his story, you're like, oh wow, um, I think that
was laid out in a really beautiful way. But it's

(02:01:23):
it's it's it's not like shocking away like oh this
this like doesn't make sense. It's like, oh no, yeah,
I can see that, I can see why he's doing this,
but it's still it's like you kind of slowly watched
this guy get broken down piece by piece. Um, you know,
because he starts he's very much like the superhero FBI agent.
He's like yeah, ha ha, I'm gonna I'm gonna stop
these terrorists or whatever, and then he just like yeah,

(02:01:44):
watching him progress throughout the story and you can see
like how pathetic he is. Sometimes there's a great uh
one of the UK spy cops. Um, I forget his name.
If we're doing this three years ago and I've had
all these names in my head, but he um uh
he was assigned and he was he infiltrated this green
group somewhere in the UK for a couple of years

(02:02:05):
had this relationship with this girl. Um was participating and facilitating.
The one detail that I loved and tried to make
sure he was accurate was all these cops would have
a van or they would have like a big truck
in the UK because they realized that, like in these
smaller groups like being the transportation was like your superpower.

(02:02:27):
So like if you are someone was like, oh, I'll
drive everyone to the thing, I'll get us all that
because I have this big van. UM, that was the
easiest way to just kind of make yourself useful. Um.
But this guy is doing all that. At some point, UM,
they decided to pull him and they pull him out.
He returns to his wife and his normal life back

(02:02:47):
in London. Um. But he can't go back to his
normal life, and so he starts and he's done all
the stuff of disappearing, but he just starts getting up
and driving and maybe he's in the north of England somewhere,
just just shows back up and he's like, oh, I'm back, guys,
and they're like, oh, ship, what happened? I thought you
had to like disappear because people are after you, and
he's like, no, it's all right, ah and just goes

(02:03:11):
back to living as an activist. UM. And at some
point one of his superiors notices that the mileage on
his police paid vehicle is huge, and they're like, why
is this guy doing so much? My legion is because
he's driving all the way back and continuing to live
this life and inhabit this character that he's set up. UM.

(02:03:35):
And at some point I think he gets found out
and it all goes horribly wrong because he no longer
has like the fake idea and stuff that they gave him.
But yeah, I mean that, and it's like that stuff
is interesting. But then you it was always important to
never be overly sympathetic. And when you see them struggling,

(02:03:58):
there is returns of life. There is certain points where
you see the FBI agents struggling because of how like
smug he is. You're like, yes, he's struggling, and you
like get excited when he gets like when he gets
like reprimanded or he you know, people are like mad
at him for various reasons, and it is very interesting
how you like how sympathies get pulled in certain directions
because like, by the end of the game, you definitely
have a much fuller perspective on who this guy is

(02:04:20):
and how his kind of psyche works, because he is
really in a lot of ways like kind of pathetic
as like a person. Um And he like needs to
like hype himself up for himself, to like make himself
feel like he's special. Then when that gets broken down,
he just completely collapses. I guess one of the last
things I want to talk about is like, throughout all

(02:04:41):
your games, you have kind of a through line of
like fairy tales. You kind of you bring in fairy
tale concepts into all of these games. Um And. I
like how a lot of your games are very open
ended in some ways. I think of her story being
much more open ended than than telling lies in some ways.
Um And, I really like that you kind of you
can't like look up, like what is the ending of

(02:05:03):
this game. It's like no, like you have to piece
it together in your own brain like that, and whatever
you think the story is, that's what it is for you.
There's no like definitive ending, especially like especially for her story.
Um And how this combines with fairy tales, I think
it's it's a really interesting way to like include like
mythology into these more modern stories. What's kind of your
pot process behind you know, kind of kind of including

(02:05:25):
mythology and fairy tales into these more like modern stories
of like you know, people interacting with like government, law enforcement,
and then just you know, breaking down their own psyches
under these heightened situations. Yeah, I mean I think it.
I think it came initially with her story of yeah,
thinking about that, the kind of meta storytelling nous of

(02:05:47):
these things, right, of the extent to which now experiments
and like how we tell stories, um, and but a
lot of times, like the myths and the the kind
of classic stories that people go to those right to
ryan understand the bigger questions or certainly like, um, I
guess partly came out of Ah, the start of first story,

(02:06:11):
I had like two youngest kids, and you're so you're
reading them all the classic stories, and you realize the
extent to it, these are just encoding our society's values. Right.
But I had this incredible book that was that my
parents got for me, and I tracked down and made
sure we still had when I had my kids. That
was called it was like folk Tales of the People's

(02:06:31):
of the Soviet Republic from like the early eighties, and
it was collected like a lot of people. I think
it was Ukrainian folk tales and they were amazing because
they were so dark. Like the message of each of
these stories was trust nobody. The rich will always win,
you will undet dead and unhappy, right, And each story

(02:06:53):
would start with the poor peasant his brother gets rich,
he asks for help. The brother like is horrible. Like
this is one story where this brother who's like, oh,
if you want some grain because you're starving, and then
gouge out your own eye and I'll give you some grain.
And then it comes back from are grain later and
he's like, gauge out your other eye. Now, chop off

(02:07:13):
your hand. And it's like they're so dark, and I'm like,
but this is reflecting what it was like to live
in that world and grew up and you're preparing people
for the realities. So um, you know, I think that
to me was really interesting and and her story tells
this story that kind of to some extent, grows out

(02:07:34):
of this childhood and then we're telling lies. Definitely, it
was part of this idea of of yeah, how Logan's
character David sees the world and relates to his part
in it, and like his utter inability to realize that
he's the bad guy in the story right and thinks
he's the good guy. Um, And and that was like

(02:07:57):
that was partly the key to breaking his character, I
think was his daughter. So he has this character who's
the six seven year old daughter, and that's like, you know,
he lets down and does horrible things to a whole
bunch of people. Um, but the thing he's not going
to be able to get over is knowing that he's
laid his daughter down, right, knowing that at some point

(02:08:17):
she will grow up and be an adult woman who
if she learns about what her father has done, we'll
we'll think less of it and you know, we'll realize
that he's the bad guy in the fairy tale whatever.
So um, that was like just interesting to me to
set him in that moment and have him reading those
stories and see see his relationship with his daughter, and yeah,

(02:08:42):
I think that that, Yeah, he end up just relating
those things back to what are these these kind of
base values and so much of those folk tales is
preparing you for the fact that people are going to
lie to you and trick you and you know all
those kind of aspects. Yeah, well a lot of them
do deal with, like, you know, failures of trusting people

(02:09:04):
and you know, getting getting let down and being misled.
A lot a lot of those do kind of follow
on these same same kind of rough templates. UM. Let's see,
is there anything you're working on now that you wanna
that you wanna plug? Um? And of course you know
people should pick up Telling Lies her story. UM. I
have them on Steam. I think they are best suited
to be playing on PC, but you can get them

(02:09:25):
on console. We can get them on iOS. But in
any anything anything upcoming? Yeah, we're working on currently. This
project is called Immortality UM, which is very ambitious. Uh.
It will be out next year. It deals with the
story of an actress who only ever made three movies

(02:09:47):
the latter half the twentieth century UM, and then disappeared.
And we have recovered footage from these three movies. UM.
It's been interesting because telling Lies, Like, I've always been
someone that when I think about the kinds of stories
I want to tell, I've always thought that I'm not
a capital P politics person, right, I tend to be

(02:10:09):
interested in how people relate to each other and some
of the kind of smaller politics. Um and once I
got to telling lies, it was like, oh, actually, like
there is some capital P politics want to present tied
to all this, and so dug into that was like, well,
so I want to do right by this. Right, So
we did involve speaking to lots of people, did involve

(02:10:30):
bringing in all the research and everything. Um. So coming
away from telling lies, and as I mean, it was
making the game was insane because it was during Trump, right,
Trump happens, and I remember going into it thing like,
we're making this story about the FBI being bad. That's
a pretty reasonable endpoint. And then once we hit Trump,

(02:10:52):
you had all that stuff of like the good FBI
agents and theory or THEBI might be the people that
bring Trump down, and suddenly they it was leaning into
the myth of the FBI and I was looked down
it and just everything getting worse, and it was like, oh,
this is like so intense to be making something and
speaking to some of these issues whilst this is all happening. Um. So,

(02:11:15):
finishing that, I was like, well, okay, for the next project,
we are definitely going away from talking about real life
issues and capital P politics, and then just accidentally it's
become because we're talking about an actress in the twentieth
century and what it means to make movies, and ah,

(02:11:38):
digging into that suddenly becomes about a whole other bunch
of systemic issues. So yeah, not not managed to avoid
the politics again, but it's I've been a really really
interesting project. I think. I think once you crack that
egg open of realizing that politics are kind of intrinsic
to every story we tell, it's hard to hand. It's
hard to kind of put that back in the box

(02:11:59):
because once you're realized you can use politics in a
very interesting and complex storytelling way that still doesn't alienate
a lot of audiences. It's like, oh, yeah, this is
just using another way to interact with the world. I
think that was that was one of the things that
were slightly disappointing. I guess we're telling lies was like
we we're working on it. I'm like, we want to
make sure we get these things right because like, these

(02:12:20):
are very important issues and there are some nuances and
so we you know, we don't want to accidentally say
something that is incorrect or we don't want to give
people the impression that we're you know, yeah, yeah, yeah wrong. Um,
So I was expecting some level of scrutiny in terms
of discussing the games themes and everything. Um and I
guess like the video games world is still not quite

(02:12:44):
ready for that. Like they're quite happy to talk about
the game mechanics and how this thing will works since
we big picture emotional responses, but no one's willing to
kind of dig deeper. And we had like as the
game was coming out and continues to be, you have
the bigger name developers being like, there's no politics in
our video games. As they're like to make a game

(02:13:05):
about you know, you know, being a black Ops unit
taking down communist countries. We're not gonna about politics. We're
gonna yeah that constantly a constantly just saying it's it's
possible that they'll always say we we both sides it right, Well,
we'll tell both sides and let people make the decision.
And something that was very adamant was very im porn

(02:13:25):
to me on telling lies was like, if we're making
this game, it is not the point of the game
is not to give you a mush of information and
have you decide the moral. Yeah, good or bad, something
like we're going into this with the assumption that we

(02:13:48):
in the audience or most of the audience believe that
people doing these things are wrong, and then we're just
And then I'm interested in what does it due to
the people, What what is it like to be in
this world? What are the consequences of ramifications? How does
one exist and continue to live a life after having
been involved in these things? So for me, a political
game is it can't be the political story in any media.

(02:14:12):
It can't be going back to first principles pretending we're
in debate club, because I just I think that's just
that's absolutely lies the audience. I think you can say
a political story is one which embraces and acknowledges the
reality of the various power struggles and inequalities that we
have and then has something to say about or has

(02:14:33):
a particular angle it wants to interrogate, or something it
wants to shed light on. But it's very childish, and
I think we're definitely struggling with this in video games,
to be like, oh, if it's about politics, then it
should be a big question and we should assume no answers, right,
and it's like, yeah, this is a completely bullshit and
and it kind of it can lead to some problematic ways,

(02:14:54):
which is why you see a lot of you know,
game footage in actual like harorist propaganda, like with like
like with like not sayings and white supremacist stuff. They
use a lot of game footage in their propaganda videos
when especially when it's like both sides of these issues. Yeah,
it's a I have I have a particular interest in
the intersection between like politics, extremism, and gaming because the

(02:15:15):
gaming is very important to our modern kind of extremist
ecosystem um, particularly around like four Chan and like you know,
like mass shootings. All of these things play into game culture.
Not not not saying games cause these events to happen, because
they don't, but like the way they interact with these
people is actually interesting. You know, this is very different
from like the way like this Senate is like, oh,
games are causing mass shooting because they're not. Yeah, I

(02:15:37):
think it's it's it's it's it's it's a completely separate thing.
It's it's there is there is a Fox News kind
of hysteria around gaming. But at the same time, like
and and clearly, you know, one way I pitched her story.
When I was telling people why it was interesting, It's like,
this is a game about listening. I was like, that's
cool because you know, whatever you think about the larger

(02:15:59):
politics of it, or or the question of whether video
games themselves are inherently harmful or anything like, the fact
that's still the stories we tell are about someone with
a gun in their hand or assault in their hand,
and the power dynamics and the story the types of
stories and the types of protagonists, Like, it's screwed up.
And I think to the same extent that the fact that,

(02:16:20):
like the Marvel Cinematic Universe is about a bunch of
glorified cops going around saying in the world, like, you know,
if you continue to reinforce these things, yeahbously, all of
the art we make are saying certain things about the world,
and we're reinforcing a certain narrative over and over again
and not really thinking critically about it. Yeah, that's a

(02:16:41):
problem with making art. I mean, I'm not trying to
conf as being anti gamer. I would play a lot
of games. I really like gaming. I just think some
some companies need to figure out why why certain games
are used in mass shooting manifestoes in certain games aren't
particularly around like politics, like the particularly talking about like

(02:17:01):
white supremacy, and how certain games kind of playing too
certain things. Because even even a game like wilfon Stein,
which I think handles this topic very well, still will
you know, get brought up in certain you know, propagandi
videos because they do have cool shots of Nazis walking around. Right,
that's the kind of the problem with some of these things. Um.
And you know, if they weren't killing if Nazis weren't
killing people as much as wouldn't be as much of

(02:17:21):
a problem. But because that's still a thing, that's still
a thing that needs to get talked about. Anyway, this
this this took a very sad sad turned towards the
end of anyway. Yeah, I will, I will, I will
just strongly recommend playing her story, playing telling lies. I
think these games, you know, interrogate our our predispositions about

(02:17:45):
about kind of police detective work, um, and you just
get to learn a lot. You get to learn a
lot about like people on characters because like a lot
of these games, you know where the setup is, like, oh,
solve this crime or mystery. But then by the end,
you're solving a very different mystery and you're kind of
solving what makes the person tick, and it's very You've
I really like the art that you have in your games.
They've brought me a lot of happiness. So thank you.

(02:18:07):
Thank you for that, and thank you for talking with
all of us, um about your work. I'm jo, thank you,
thank you for having me and uh yeah, like I say,
I was, I was hoping to have hundreds more conversations
about what Telling Lies was about and about these issues
when it came out. But it's uh, you know that,

(02:18:29):
it's I mean, it's hot just general media landscape now,
like you put something out there and it comes out
and people consume it, Yeah, move on, Like you don't
have that it's bad of like discussion that I don't know,
it feels like it used to used to be a thing. Yeah,
I think it definitely did did used to be a thing.
And definitely your games have had an influence on media

(02:18:52):
in certain ways. And I know there's been like a
few other like projects that like Netflix is doing that
is kind of taking your concept but not really doing
it correctly. Yeah, yeah, Yeah, there's definitely been a lot. Yeah,
people always send me them. They're like, oh, this sounds
a lot like a story, this thing, and it's like, oh,
but it's it's build non linear. Yeah, exactly like you

(02:19:14):
let people. I don't. Yeah. Usually it's like watch the
eight episodes. You can watch them in any order, which
isn't how her story works. No, yeah, like, yeah, there's
there's a yeah, there's a whole different thing going on.
But no, I mean it's it's interesting times for that
sort of stuff. But anyway, play these games on Steam
and that that doesn't for today. You can follow the
show on Twitter and Instagram, at Happening here pod and

(02:19:36):
cool Zone Media. Do you have Do you have a
social media that you would like to plug or would
your people? If people are on Twitter, that's where I
tend to be despite its despite yeah, I know, I am.
I am Mr Sambalow on Twitter, Mr sambal I will
say I I actually I actually do like your Twitter account.

(02:19:57):
You do. You do post some fun stuff every once
in a while. That's that's kind of a weird contescen
thing we think to say of anyway, by for Puddy,
that's gonna that's gonna be way too jarring to open

(02:20:17):
an episode ware, Well, we already did it, so keep moving. Yeah,
uh huh. Um, the episode is actually gonna start with
Garrison saying that's way too jarring to open an episode with,
and the listeners won't know that that is a much
easier opening. Um, alright, so we're doing I'm gonna be
I'm gonna be reading a thing today and then we're

(02:20:37):
going to talk about the thing that we're reading. Um,
and and and who are you? And who is here? Oh? Yeah,
this is it happen here, this is it could happen here.
I'm I'm Garrison, I am our resident Canadian. Yeah, that's Anderson.
That's Anderson the dog in here. We had we had
to hire a Canadian for a diversity quota. You don't

(02:21:00):
you do not anyway, we have Chris here, Robert Evans
as usual, um, and Sophie. So we're gonna talk about
We're gonna talk a little bit about about Canada today.
So in the in like descripted what if scenarios first
positive in the original it could happen here. Um. It
detailed what it might be like to live in the

(02:21:21):
United States during a modern civil conflict. And like one
of the stories that we kind of tell ourselves as
a culture is about you know, crossing up into the
safe haven of Canada whenever stuff breaks out in the States. Um,
whether that be like an escape from just the hell
that's us politics, um, or you know, going up into
the cold northern terrain better equipped to deal with climate change.

(02:21:43):
Canada is kind of just viewed as a bass gien
of like of liberal democracy in North America. UM. You know,
I've I've made jokes in the past about using my
Canadian passport to escape up into the forest of Alberta
when things get too dicey here in the States. But
this like weird utopian view of Canada, uh is not
just wrong about Canada's current political state, but also assumes

(02:22:05):
that Canada is like immune to the political shifts that
the States have gone through the past few years. Which
is it's it's very obviously not um so like Canada
internationally is and specifically in the States, it's it's used
as like, you know, Canada, it's it's used it's like
America's little brother, but it's you know, it's much more
you know, democratic, it's much more liberal. It's like it's

(02:22:28):
like this kind of ideal scenario for like what the
state's could be, and like Canadians have a weird view
of the States as well. Like Canadians, they're both like
the like they're kind of obsessed, Like a lot of
Canadians think no more about US politics and then they
know about Canadian politics, um, but almost in like a
way that we watch sports. It's it's like it's like

(02:22:49):
this thing that we like watch as entertainment, like like
some kind of like sick reality show. That's how I
think a lot of Canadians really view US politics, um,
because it's just so wacky compared to the kind of
more like civil parliamentary system that we have in Canada.
US politics just looks very, very bizarre, and there's always
this notion it's like, no matter how bad things can

(02:23:11):
get in Canada, at least we're not the States. At
least at least we're not at least we're not the US.
And that is kind of a lot of a lot
of how a lot of stuff can get really get
can just like surviving Canada longer, because it's just they
view it like at least, at least we're not as
bad as the other people. So that's how you know

(02:23:33):
it gives them kind of some kind of sense of security.
But in terms of like, in terms of Canada as
a country, you know, we we we've said that Canada
as a country is basically just you know, a few
mining companies in a trench coat, and the trench coat
is healthcare. Um. And that's that's really all they are
is as as as a country. UM. But today we're
gonna be talking about kind of Canada's slide towards farther

(02:23:56):
right wing politics, UM. Both you know, historically and then
more recently, because a lot of what we've seen in
the States has happened kind of in its own weird
Canadian way around the same time. UM. But before we
really before we really get started, I think it would
be remiss not to mention how the Canadian government has
historically treated Indigenous and First Nations people um, living on

(02:24:17):
that land. Of course, it's like not only just hundreds
of years ago, but a lot more recently as well.
Just in the past year, there have been thousands and
thousands of like hidden graves found across the provinces at
the sites of these residential schools. UM. And the process
of looking for these on Martin graves has like just
just started. UM. The Canadian Historical Association published a letter

(02:24:38):
this past Canada Day Canada Day is like Independence Day
but for Canada, UM, saying that it was abundantly clear
that Canada is guilty of is guilty of genocide. UM.
I know there's there's a few episodes behind the Bastards, UM,
and I think even worse here that that talk about
residential schools UM and and the genocide of Indigenous Canada.

(02:24:58):
So you can you can check those out. And I
this episode to be more focused on Canada's political shifts
the past five years. But since we're talking to be
talking about Canadian fascism, I thought it would be irresponsible
to not mention this upfront as like a thing responsible responsible.
So I'm gonna try to take us through aspects of
Canadians of Canada's politics chronologically. UM. You guys can button

(02:25:21):
and kind of ask questions and clarifications about stuff. UM.
But the first thing that we're gonna start with is
actually going to be on the First Nations side of things,
and that that's kind of how that that's what mostly
Indigenous people are called in Canada's First Nations. UM. Even
you know the Indigenous people up in Canada, most amuse
that term. So that's the term I'll be using for
some some of this stuff, just because that's the one
that's used up there. Um. So the the residential School's

(02:25:46):
program is where I'm gonna briefly mention a few things
about it, just because of how it kind of relates
to some of the stuff that we're gonna be talking
with for the rest of the episode. UM Yeah, I'm
gonna I'm gonna read someone. I'm gonna read some words
by by Duncan Can Bull Scott. Who was the department
Who was who was the Deputy Superintendent of Indian Affairs.
This was like a rank in the Canadian government. Um.

(02:26:08):
He served as the Deputy Superintendent from nineteen thirteen to
nineteen thirty two. UM. And he's arguably like the main
architect of the residential schools program. Um he was. He
was also good friends with the first Prime Minister of Canada,
John John John McDonald. So here's here's here's how this
guy the the architect of this program. This is this

(02:26:31):
is how he kind of talked talked about this in
letters to both his like his underlings and just like
openly quote it is readily acknowledged that Indian children lose
their natural resistance to illness by habituating so close in
the residential schools, and that they die at a much
higher rate than in their villages. But this does not
justify a change in the policy of this department, which
is geared towards a final solution for our Indian problem.

(02:26:55):
It is quite within the market to say that fifty
percent of children who passed through these schools did not
live to ben of fit from the education in which
they had received. So that's that's just what he calls it.
He he says, the final solution to the Indian problem.
It's very very very clear. What what like that? That's
just the language he uses. And this was like before
Hitler though, like this was this was attention to these Yeah,

(02:27:19):
yeah like this. This is just like this is the
mindset of all of these same people. This is all
of all of the same thing. Um. Another another another
quote from this dude is I want to get rid
of the Indian problem. I do not think of it
as a matter of fact that the country ought to
continually protect a class of people who are able to
stand alone. That's my whole point our objective is to
continue until there's not a single Indian in Canada that

(02:27:41):
has not been absorbed into the into the body politic,
and there's no Indian question and no Indian department. That
is the whole objective of this bill. The bill referring
to the residential schools program. So that's that's how he
talks about these things. Um. There there's other letters that
he's sent that's like telling is um his like agents

(02:28:01):
because he had like agents stationed at at Canadian at
Canadian reserves to like not let Indians do dancing because
both that's you know, that's doing their cultural practice, but
also it will distract them from learning how to do
Western farming. Um. Like they weren't allowed to go to
fairs or exhibitions or anything that you like that anything
that has like that is reminiscent of like any kind

(02:28:23):
of cultural tradition that is not white in European. Um.
So he he is, he is a pretty pretty pretty
bad dude. He probably deserves his own his own thing
that this this specific guy. But you can can you
can kind of see like these like fascist ideas and
rhetoric are not foreign to Canada. Um. And you know
it's been there since its infancy. Now, Canadian politics is

(02:28:44):
very different in a lot of ways compared to American politics. Uh.
Canada tries to kind of follow the European model, whereas
America is very much like the rebel state that tries
to play on its play by its own rules. Um.
Kind of the first main difference is that Canada isn't
a two party system. Um. It's it's more like a
two party plus system, because yeah, there still is the
main Liberals and the main Conservatives, but there are there

(02:29:06):
are other parties that actually can get elected. Um. And
it's it's not it's not like a strictly two party
system the same way the States is. So that makes
things more interesting. Um. And another thing that's really interesting
about like a cultural politics that's that's different from the States.
You know. Besides, you know, Canada obviously has like a
parliament and a prime minister. That's different, but that Canada

(02:29:28):
view and Canadians view nationalism and patriotism very differently, uh,
compared to to like United States. Um. Citizens patriotism and
in some ways nationalism have always been kind of more
of a liberal, progressive thing, um. You know, in opposition
to the states where it is not really seen as
a liberal progressive thing. Um. It's like, even under conservative leadership,

(02:29:52):
Canada kind of prides itself as as sort of like
liberal utopia. And that's where a lot of the patriotism
and celebration of Canada comes from among its you know,
mostly liberal and more socially progressive citizens. They like celebrate
Canada as like this great progressive nation, and that's where
a lot of the patriotism comes from, is like, oh,
look look how progressive we are. Um. Then the nationalism
part can be a bit more tricky, uh, because you

(02:30:14):
first need to understand like the English and French divide
which within the country, which I barely understand that to
be honest. I was I was, I was. I was
born in the Prairies. That was you know, much more
of like the Protestant English Ilish English settlement. You know,
I'm not from Quebec, but we'll be talking about Quebec
a lot here because it is very important to how
nationalism works in Canada. So the divide between the French

(02:30:37):
and the English make elections really interesting because the English
majority politicians usually need to court some of the French
Canadian population and and people in Quebec in order to
get enough parliamentary seats to have a majority government, because
Canada works on having a majority within the parliament. Um,
you can have a minority in in in the parliament

(02:30:58):
like the Liberals currently have. So even if you know,
someone doesn't win a plurality of votes, that can still
be in control of the government in an in a
minority or usually a majority capacity. We'll get into this
kind of stuff later. Um. But even though they need
to get seats from Quebec to have you know, a
decent control of parliament, Quebec kind of likes to act
like its own special country. Um. They even have their

(02:31:19):
own like federal political party, uh, the Block Kepuqua and
so like that. That that's a that's a federal party
that operates in forwarding the interests of Quebec. Sometimes it
functions as like a separatist party, but not really anymore. Um. So,
although the Block Keuqua is a lot is a lot

(02:31:40):
more secular and progressive than basically any any other major
party outside of the n d P UM but despite
them being much more like socially progressive that are also
like one of the biggest nationalist parties um in Canada,
and you know, the far right parties in Canada have
had always had their you know, brand of ethno nationalism,

(02:32:01):
but that was that's that's been much less pronounced than
the kind of like keep non French Canadians out of
Quebec and keep Americans out of Canada type of nationalism
that's common with like liberals UM and specifically you know,
progressives inside Quebec, which you can't blame them for wanting
to keep Americans no, yeah, like you can good sense.
If I could keep Americans out of America, I would

(02:32:22):
do it. Yeah. But so that kind of sentiment, you
can see how that connect, like you know, be used
to foster some not good things though that that that
that specific type of thinking of of like keeping nationals,
like you know, keeping four nationals out of your state. Yeah,
it's good to not have Americans there, but you know
that's going to get extended towards other people's unfortunate Yeah,

(02:32:45):
and and like so even though you know, the nationalism
can be a lot more progressive, that's not to say
as no nationalism does not come up within these sex
um which is going to bring us to uh when
when a briefly talk about something from the thirties call
the called the National Unity Party of the National Unity
Party of Canada. Um, the National Union National Unity Party.

(02:33:07):
That is a weird thing to say. Um was was
originally called the Canadian National Socialist Unity Party. Oh wait,
now that remindmate national socialism. That seems like a term
with a little bit of baggage. Yeah, remember correctly, yep,
it sort of does. Um so that this was a

(02:33:29):
party formed in nineteen thirty four by a little Nazi
shirt head named Adrian R. Khan. Um. Now that is
if you cannot tell that it's me trying to say
a French name. So he is from Quebec. This is
a lot of Canadian Nazi stuff originates inside Quebec because
it already has such nationalist tendencies. Um So. Our cohns

(02:33:50):
introduction into nationalism started around the turn of the century
amid fears in Quebec that Chinese immigration would threaten the
white French Canadian working class. Um, this is still a
big thing in Canada. Uh. Racism and nationalism against the
Chinese is still a big thing. We will talk about
this at the very end of this of this of
of these episodes because it's that's still a thing the

(02:34:12):
Conservative Party talks about a lot um. So, yeah, his
his internationalism was because of fears of Chinese immigration in
the early nineteen hundreds. Um the the anti his so
his anti immigrants upbringing, plus the fact that he attended
the Catholic school um that there there there was no
there was no public schools in Quebec until the nineteen sixties.
All of the schools were either Catholic or Protestant. Now,

(02:34:35):
this is also part of the cultural divide inside Canada,
where usually the English speakers are Protestant and they're usually
further west and the and the Catholics are usually you know,
French Canadians. There's a lot of that inside Quebec. Um,
so he went to a Catholic school, uh, which were
at the time very anti Jewish because what was happening
is the Jewish people in Quebec wanted to make their

(02:34:56):
own Jewish schools and the Catholics, like in charge, didn't
want that because then that'd be less people were inside
Catholic schools and they weren't you know, learning Catholicism. So
there's a lot a lot of stuff going on here
that is kind of extreme contributing. So he was you know,
already anti immigrant because of the Chinese and then he
got got exposed to anti Semitism inside its Catholic schools
UM and that you know, pushed him onto this specific path.

(02:35:17):
So in nineteen thirty our Khan made a deal with
the head of the Conservative Party R. B. Bennett that
in exchange for fifteen thousand dollars, which is like two
hundred and fifty thou dollars in today's money, our our
con would craft a smear campaign UM trying to assist
the Conservatives in basically smearing the Liberals to gain more
Conservative support inside the province of Quebec, which at the

(02:35:38):
time was majority liberal leaning. So our Kan got to
work and started prepping like pseudo fascist propaganda for the
Conservatives UM and by the nineteen thirty federal election it
absolutely worked UM Bennett and the Conservatives one they gained
twenty four parliamentary seats in Quebec, which is a massive success.
Like before they did not win any seats in Quebec,

(02:35:59):
So gain twenty four seats in for over the course
of just one election, massive win. UM. So after getting
the after getting the Conservatives elected, the Conservative Party dropped
our Khan because he was you know, a little hashtag problematic.
Um uh huh. So after he got dropped by the
Conservatives short shortly later, our Khan made contact with the

(02:36:19):
growing National Socialist Party in Germany. Um. And over the
next few years he just he started to gain more
fascist contacts around the world. He would exchange letters people
from people like Peteople, people from the German Nazis would
come over and meet with what and come over to
Canada and see what he was doing. He would travel
around meeting other other Nazis around the world. UM. So
it's kind of just like just gaining a lot, a

(02:36:40):
lot more contacts. So then in nineteen thirty four he
formed his own fascist party, which is the Canadian National
Socialist Unity Party. And within that year, so in in
the you know midnighteen thirties, it merged with other Canadian
nationalist parties that were more based in the west, so
you know, in the prairies like Alberta, Saskatchewan and BC.
So emerged a few other kind of nationalist groups and

(02:37:03):
started gaining traction, getting thousands and thousands of members. This
actually became an actual thing. You can find footage of
of his rallies and they're just terrifying, just like you know,
just it's it's the same thing whenever you see like
the Nazis, you know, rallying in Britain. You know, it's
it feels different than watching a Nazi rally in Germany
because you can feel a lot more, you know, if
it's it's it's the same feeling. But but come home

(02:37:24):
your own countrymen kind of do the same thing that
you associate with the old footage of dead people is exactly. Yeah.
So he was getting thousand numbers across Canada, um you know,
mostly in the provinces of of Quebec and Alberta. So
the two main provinces we're to talk about are going
to be Quebeca and and Alberta because that's where a

(02:37:44):
lot of a lot of the far right stuff gets
started out. Um So in ninety eight, so that's like
four years after he started this, Uh, the Canadian National
Socialist Unity Party merged again, this time with various nationalist
group groups and so called swastika clubs. Um in there
we're already inside like Ontario and Quebec, so on the
eastern side of Canada. So now he he united both

(02:38:07):
the Quebec stuff Eastern Canada and Western Canada, and then
he called that the National Unity Party um and Our
Khan appointed himself the Canadian fural Gosh, yes so, and
I'm going to quote from a time Time magazine piece
from July of nineteen. Our con scheduled Canada's first national

(02:38:29):
fascist convention for Kingston, Ontario. The mayor and city council
did not want a fascist convention held in their city
and called the police to prevent it. Defiantly, Leader Arkhan
slipped forty five of his leaders into a room near
police headquarters. It's this old tibe language held forth unmolested
for five and a half hours. Upon emerging, Leader Arkan

(02:38:49):
wired thanks to the mayor for his courtesy extended and
announced the formation of the new National Unity Party. A
flaming torch will be the new party's emblem, Canada for Canadians,
its slogan, and the upraised arm of its salute for
King Country and Christianity. Moving onto Ontario, Leader Arkhan, supported
by eighty five of his Blue Shirts uh he claims

(02:39:13):
there were eighty thousand members at the time, held a
meeting in Mancy Hall that there was attended by about
eight hundred sympathizers. More impressive, however, there were three anti
fascist counter demonstrations held simultaneously. Two outdoor anti fascist meetings
drew four hundred persons until broken up by police fearing
a clash, but at Maple Leaf Gardens the Canadian League

(02:39:34):
of Peace and Democracy attracted ten thousand so as was
the first big fascist rally in Canada. There was like,
you know, ten thousands of these more liberal people rallying
elsewhere and four hundred like anti fascists ready to you know,
beat up these Nazis, um, but then the police beat
them up. Because history doesn't change. Times of flat circle,
we're still doing the same thing. Now. Do you know

(02:39:56):
who won't rally eight hundred Canadian Nazis called the Blue
Shirts to sell you products? Tell us promise that yeah,
depending depending what Hello Fresh has recently been sending there.
Why do you always pick Hello Fresh? There are so

(02:40:17):
many worse brands that we can't ignore the fact that
they've been increasingly building their militant capacity for the last
seven years. Anyway, here's some ads. You have too much
to read, and we are back talking about the Canadian
Blue Shirts. Um. The Hello fresh hello shirt. Please continue

(02:40:40):
blue aprons, the blue Aprons. Thanks Chris, Thanks Chris for
saving the bit all right, thank you. Um. So next
year after his first rally, nine, World War two obviously
started to ramp up and the Canadian government arrested our
Cohn for plotting to overthrow the state UM and his
national In the party was banned from federal elections. Arkhan

(02:41:02):
was released from prison after the war, but he continued
his political aspirations. UM. He ran for federal election twice
in Quebec, once in nineteen forty nine and once in
nineteen fifty three. Both times he uh, he ran under
his National Unity Party banner, despite it being banned from elections.
I don't know how he did that, um, both times.
Laws are fake. Yeah, both times he placed second with

(02:41:24):
over five and a half five and a half thousand votes,
just about like thirty percent of of of the vote. Um. Actually,
but the second time he ran as he ran just
under a nationalist banner UM, and he got second as well.
But he got like the vote, so he did a
slight slightly better just running as a nationalist in Quebec,
not like the National Unity thing, because that was you
know more overtly Nazi, but he kept holding National Unity

(02:41:47):
Party public rallies until the mid sixties. His last rally
I think attracted like one thousand supporters, too many. I
was hoping you were going to say like three and
there was probably sad footage, but that's sad in a
different way. Yeah. So he finally died in nineteen sixty seven,
and with him also died the National Unity Party. I

(02:42:10):
So I bring this one up because it's one fund
up and interesting, um and too. It's like it's indicative
of the weirdness that can come out of Quebec's nationalist
political bent. Uh. We can see that now with a
modern fact, you know, neo fascist Canadian political party that's
based out of Quebec, which we will talk about shortly, um.
But even like the nationalist tendencies within Quebec's more mainstream

(02:42:33):
progressive population, Like I'm going to read some of the
policy positions of the block keebu Qua party. That's that's
that that's that's like the Quebec Sovereignty you know, party
that is still actually very very popular in elections specifically
in Quebec, and just ahead of this, if you're a
French speaker, and you're frustrated by Garrison's pronunciations or my

(02:42:54):
pronunciations of Quebecqua that your language isn't real and it's
and you're deed from the French. Yeah, and you're responsible
for this Nazi so unlike unlike English speakers who have
been responsible for Spanish. That's my take, okay, anyway, saying

(02:43:15):
Spanish here here, here is the progressive liberal block Kibuqua
policy positions UM Quebec sovereignty you know, up into independence.
But usually it's just you know them pushing the interests
of Quebec. UM environmentalism, abortion rights, you know, pro abortion
rights UM, l g l g lgbt Q rights, UM,
legalization of assisted suicide, UM, opposition to Canadian participation in

(02:43:39):
the Iraq war, UM abolition, abolition of the abolition of
the monarchy right UH forcing forcing immigrants to speak French
in Quebec. Lost lost blocking immigration to Quebec. You've also
lost me The Quebec Secularism law, which banned public workers

(02:44:00):
in positions of authority from wearing religious symbols primarily targeted
at Muslims, and seeks exemption Quebec's exemption from the requirements
of the Multiculturalism Act. Yeah, I mean, I don't know
the Multicultural Act, but I'm it's great. It's it's it's good.
So yeah, so you can kind of see how like
they have you know, all these like you know, pretty good,

(02:44:23):
pretty good progressive SIGs and then and then they get
really anti immigrant, right, so this is like, this is
kind of hard to explain to Americans, how like you
can be very like pro gay, pro you know, abolition
of the monarchy, but then also be like, no, but
we don't want those brown people in Quebec. Yeah. So yeah, anyway,

(02:44:43):
we're gon we're gonna move on from Quebec specifically, but
don't worry, we will be back because you're still a problem.
But there there are there are other things too, are
other things to discuss. So after our cons fascist Canadian movement,
there was a stint of like Canadian skinheads in the seventies,
you know, a on the same time as the UK
and the US UM in the seventies, there was an
unsuccessful Nazi party called the Nationalist Party of Canada that

(02:45:07):
spawned a skinhead gang called Heritage Front. Um. Heritage Front
disbanded around the mid two thousands because the Canadian FEDS
infiltrated it and kind of you know, cut that down.
So critical support to the Canadian Feds. But now we're
gonna move on to unite the right, not not not
the United Right that you're thinking of, the Canadian Unite
the Right movement from the ninety nineties and early two thousands.

(02:45:29):
That one probably wasn't problematic right there. It has no
lasting problems. So because of Canada, because of Canada's multi
multiparty system, there's more opportunity for ideologically similar parties to
split the vote, you know, of people leaning in a
certain direction. Um. Throughout most of the later half of
the twentieth century, they were multiple conservative right wing parties

(02:45:52):
that were operating at the same time, which did split
the right of center vote. This is in part what
allowed Canada to rise as like a liberal haven, because
for a while the Conservatives just couldn't get elected because
they were splitting the vote too many ways, leaving the
main liberal party to win the vast majority of elections. UM.
Obviously this frustrated right wing politicians and vote and voters
than in the ninety nineties there were there were there

(02:46:13):
were two main right wing parties, there was the older
Progressive Conservative Party. They're like a classically fiscal conservative party
with slightly less socially conservative beliefs, So you know, I
would rather take them compared to the alternatives here. Um.
The other major party was a right of center party
called the Reform Party, which was much more of like
a right wing populist and extremely socially conservative party, more

(02:46:36):
similar to like the Trump era Republican Party. You know,
they're they're they're they're much they're much more right wing populist,
they're way more socially conservative, kind of what we traditionally
think of as like, you know, like a racist Republican
that this this this is their party called called the
Reform Party. So after after loss after loss throughout the
nineties and during the turn of the century, conservative efforts

(02:46:56):
were being made between these two parties to unite into one.
In nineteen there was a Unite the Right conference held
in Toronto, Ontario, trying to bring together politicians and delegates
from these two main conservative parties. But they also brought
in some much more extreme Christian fascist parties, which there
was like four of at the time. There was a
lot of a lot of Christian fascist parties around this time.

(02:47:18):
Um So, the conference garnered a negative news coverage in
part to due to the inclusion of these far right
Christian extremist parties. And then after the conference, polls were
conducted that suggested that many of the Progressive Conservative supporters
would rather vote liberal than vote for the new kind
of merged more extreme right wing parties. So like a
lot of these a lot of these fiscal conservatives are like, no,

(02:47:39):
I'm not going to vote for all of this weird racism.
I just don't want there to be higher taxes. So
like I'm gonna I'm gonna rather vote for the liberals
than vote for these fucking weirdos, which I mean, yeah,
Like that's that. That's the conservative I would rather have.
Um So, the conference didn't sit well with the with
the Progressive Conservative Party. Um it's a politicians or or

(02:48:01):
the political leaders. So the merger plans were cut off.
They're like, no, we're not gonna do this. You guys
are too weird and racist. We're not doing this. Um
Then in two thousand to No, I think it's important
that this was after nine eleven. I think this is
really the reason why this happened. Um. One of the
original Reform Party founders that the Reform Party is the
more populist one. So one of the original founders named

(02:48:23):
Stephen Harper, took control of the populist Conservative Party and
worked to improve the optics of the more extreme sides
of his party. I think it's very important this. This
happened after nine eleven, and this is how the merger
actually worked. So in two thousand three, merger talks sort
of up again, and in August of that year the
two parties announced the merger had been completed. There was
a new United Conservative Party. Um. In the announcement, Harper

(02:48:46):
is quoted as saying, our swords will henceforth be pointed
at the Liberals, not to each other, and in December
Harper was voted in as the new party leader. The
work did pay off in the two US and six
Canadian federal election. The Conservatives gained a controlling minority government
among the electorate, with the former co founder of the extremist,
you know, populist Reform Party, Stephen Harper, becoming the new

(02:49:09):
Prime Minister of Canada. So this is how he got
from Reform Party to being the you know, the prime
Minister in through through the two thousand's um he was
the Prime Minister of Canada for most of the time
I lived there. That that that's who I think of
when I think of the Prime Minister of Canada's I
think of Stephen Harper. So Harper remained as Prime minister
until the two thousand and fifteen election that saw noted

(02:49:29):
black face appreciator Justin Trudeau elected under the Liberal Party.
So that's good. What a good system we have that
that that man like just your range of his black look.
Say what you will about the man, very careful. You

(02:49:50):
know you under no circumstances got to hand it to him.
You do not, in fact, have to hand it to him.
Well you have to hand him, uh the little the
towel that he uses to get the black face off
of his face. He can go into his work running Canada.
Uh huh, yep, cool country. So didn't find out that

(02:50:13):
like five of our governors all had black face photos.
It was it was. It was a big year for
black face. It really it's incredible because I can't picture
Like again, I grew up very right wing and definitely
had some said some uncomfortable things in my time. I
don't think there was ever a point at which I
would have been like, yeah, this seems like a good idea.

(02:50:36):
It's what the fuck? Like, Yeah, what is the joke there?
It's pretty it's pretty bad. Justin Trudeau liberal. Yeah, he
is incredible. He is the one all of the wind

(02:50:58):
Mom's thirst over. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, Um, Beyond making it
easier to vote in right of center candidates, what what
the Canadian unit the right accomplished was pushing the conservative
establishment much further to the right than what the previously
popular Progressive Conservatives had established, while maintaining the respectability and

(02:51:19):
civility the progressive Conservatives had cultivated. We are now going
to skip ahead to two thousand seventeen. UM. In January seventeen,
soon after the US President Donald Trump put into place
the travel band from from you know, seven Muslim majority countries,
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau delivered a message via Twitter to
those fleeing persecution, terror, and war, Canadians will welcome you,

(02:51:42):
regardless of your faith. Diversity is our strength hashtag welcome
to Canada. So Trudeau is like, if the US is
gonna be racist, we're gonna we're gonna let them in.
Um for this, uh, for this next part I'm going
to quote from the New York Times. Um Just hours
after watching the television reports suggesting Canada would accept immigrants

(02:52:04):
that were shunned by Trump, the twenty eight year old
political science student packed his glock, handgun and rifle and
trudged through the snow covered streets of Quebec to a
nearby Islamic cultural center. As fifty three men were finishing
evening prayers, he unloaded forty eight rounds. Six people were killed,
several of them with shots to the head, and nineteen
others were injured. One was paralyzed for life. In the

(02:52:27):
month before his rampage, the shooter tralled the Internet eight
hundred and nineteen times for posts related to Mr Trump,
reading his Twitter feed daily, and homing in on the
American president's travel ban on several Muslim majority countries. He
kept a cash of guns underneath his bed at his
parents house, and among his friends was just his twin brother.
The shooter told investigators that he wished he had killed

(02:52:48):
more people and he wanted to protect his family from
Islamic terrorists. Experts on radicalization say that in Quebec, the
French speaking province surrounded by an English speaking majority, The
anti immigrant far right offers fertile for fertile, imperious ground
for psychologically unstable youths seeking a sense of identity and
a scapegoat the head of the Canadian based Center of

(02:53:08):
Prevention of Radicalization leading to Violence that they said that
the Quebec mosque shooter was in part of it was
part of a growing number of educated, middle class white
youths in Quebec drawn to far right ideas, fueled by
the election of Mr Trump and fanned by fears of
immigration that threatens Quebec's identity. When the Anti Radicalization Center
was started in two thousand and fifteen, they dealt with
sixteen cases of youths in the province that we're getting

(02:53:30):
radicalized by the far right last year, which was like sixteen, uh,
this center had one d and fifty four such cases.
So this is this is kind of the the arc
of things. Really, Trump's Trump's election did spire did did
spur a lot of this growing like oh, these political

(02:53:50):
beliefs are acceptable now, right, Like this is something that
is like we are we are we are allowed to
do this, and that that did echo in Canada and
across a lot of the a lot of a lot
of other countries. Um. What what one of one of
the victims of the of the Quebec uh massacre his
his father said that he come to Canada from Algeria
in the to escape terrorism. Um. And he said that

(02:54:14):
like Quebec did not create the monster the shooter, but
the Islamophobia that is inherent inside Quebec gave him like
the motive. So this is really does relate to connate
to like the political situation of Canada. And it's very
it's it's it's not a coincidence that the majority of
these types of attacks are inside either Quebec, Toronto or um.

(02:54:35):
You know, if you're if you're a white, if you're
if you're in Alberta. It's said it's more tied to
like other other like conservative values, but like a lot
of it is around Quebec for a lot of these
like shootings and always acts of terrorism. Um. There was
like the there was the in cell guy who ran
over tons of people in Toronto with his car. Um.
Same same kind of thing of like of getting more

(02:54:57):
more used to these kind of having these far right
ideas be more loud um and then thinking them as
more of like a normalized thing. So that so the
Quebec mosque shooting, uh kind of well, couple a lot
of people in Canada's being like, oh, we're not immune
to this. This is like an actual thing that we
have to deal with. Two. Um. And the next few

(02:55:20):
months after Trade's January announcement, border crossings did see an
increase in Canada formally accepted more immigrants and refugees and
and not. And there was like the term in Canada
is like an irregular spike of border crossings. Um. The
fact the way Canadian media reported this, I think it's
very irresponsible, the way they tried to like frame this

(02:55:42):
as like after this announcement, We're getting so many irregular
crossings that only fueled this type of like this type
of anti immigrant sentiment. Um. It was. It was not
really great. A lot of the old articles I pulled
up for this for like, had really had really disgusting framing,
especially you know, viewing it now. So in March, the
Canadian Parliament passed a motion that condemns Islamophobia and request

(02:56:06):
that the government recognized the need to quell the public
of a climate of fear and hate, specifically around Muslims.
And immigrants. Um. The motion was non binding, so it
doesn't it doesn't mean anything. It's just the government saying
something nice. Um. But it's still it's it's still sparked
tons of outrage. Um. You know. It called on the

(02:56:26):
government to condemn Islamophobia and all forms of systemic racism
and discrimination. Uh. The the margin was passed by like
it was passed by a margin of like two hundred
two h two over ninety so people a lot of
a lot of the Conservatives in Parliament didn't didn't like this,
but it it's it's it garnered so much online backlash.

(02:56:48):
There were there were petitions and nationwide protests condemning this
bill as an attack on free speech. Um and Uh.
The person who introduced the bill um uh in an
MP named um Ikracalid, received death threats um on through
like their email and like they had like their private
private information leaked. And it turned in this very very

(02:57:10):
big kind of one of the first things where it
had like these like national protests in Canada that you know,
similar to how we had like the free speech thing
around to two and seventeen. This was like the Canadian
version of that and how this kind of started Um.
Then in December, Urdeau signed into the United Nations Global
Migration Pact. There's another non binding incentive designed to provide
understanding among nations, but how to deal with the global

(02:57:32):
immigration crisis. Again, all these things are just people talking. Um.
But it made people very, very mad, because if you're
talking about it, that means it actually is real and
it's actually gonna affect you, or it's just ignoring that
these problems exist. So really, after Trump's election, after the Quebec,
after after the Quebec Mosque shooting, then we have all
these bills. This kind of ignited a in person rallying

(02:57:55):
possibility and in person protests that Canada hadn't really seen
before for this type of like anti immigration sentiments. Um.
And we'll we'll talk more about these protests after after
we have a little little bit of an ad break.
You know, who doesn't get protested except for that one
time when they illegally overthrew the government of Ecuador. Uh

(02:58:18):
have to be more the the That's right, Garrison, our
sponsors only one time did they inside cause mass protests
as a result of overthrowing a sovereign government. That's pretty good,
Pretty good, are you? Trying to do like a Banana
Republic thing. What are you? What are you doing? I'm

(02:58:40):
just saying most podcasts three to four governments overthrown by
their sponsors. All Right, it could happen here, just the
one baby, Hello, welcome to Why Canada isn't a liberal
utopia and actually has a lot of the same systemic
problems that every other Western country does and it's not
immune to fascist infiltration and fact co option. So as so,

(02:59:06):
I know, we we've we've talked a lot about Quebec
and stuff, which is uh great because yeah, it is
a problem. But this exists in the western provinces as well. Saskatchewan, Alberta,
BC have a lot of these growing kind of things.
But they're not French Canadians doing this. They're more like
you know what we in America would you know recognize
as like rural conservatives. Um. So around all of this,

(02:59:26):
you know, increased discussion around immigration in two seventeen UM,
around the same time people in Western Canada had We're
facing a bit of an economic recession. They had you know,
significant job loss around this time UM, and projects that
traditionally brought work to the area, like pipelines were you know,
there was discussion of them getting stalled and people you know,
moving more towards renewable energy. This kind of increased a

(02:59:46):
lot of the political tensions between the Eastern you know,
liberal majority Canada and the western more rule Canada. Um
quoting an article from the CBC, uh, Toureau just keeps
giving away all of our money to immigrants. Samantha two boy,
that is a that is a French name. I'm not
even attempted that one. Samantha Frenchie anyway, this mother of five,

(03:00:10):
she attained a January fifth rally with a webster, her husband,
and two of their children. It was her first protest
for any cause we're stuck paying for all this money
that he wants to give away to everybody but Canadians.
My kids are growing up, and my grandkids and all
of their kids are going to be poor and stuck
in a hole that they're never going to get out of.
This is this is you know, very common type of thing,

(03:00:31):
like oh, we're getting taxed and taking all of our
money and giving giving away to immigrants. This happened after this,
after the Syrian refugee crisis, when Canada is sort of
accepting a lot of Syrian immigrants. That's that's around the
time that I left Canada. Um. But I totally remember people,
you know having very similar sentiments of like, why are
we you know, paying for all of these refugees, you know,

(03:00:53):
and and that that that's that's the thing that happens
in the States too, yeah. Um. So the economic tensions
developed in Western Canada, combined with the increase in anti
immigration sentiments among conservatives, were in part spurred by the
Trump presidency, led to the Canadian Yellow Vest movement. UM.
This is totally separate from the French protest movement. UM.

(03:01:14):
The Canadian version just stole like the working class branding
and just used it for their proto fascist crusade. Um.
So the Canadian yellow Vests were a a group of
connected protest movements over the course of nineteen that had
a lot of like impersonalities but also a lot of
online mobilization. It's kind of since tid out, but it

(03:01:36):
was a major force in pushing right wing extremism in
Canada and having it be accessible to like regular people.
Right It's it's not it's not like the Proud Boys
at all, where it's like you know, specific you know,
bad people doing this thing. It was like appealing to like,
you know, the oil workers, appealing to like the moms.
It was like it was, it was. It was primarily

(03:01:57):
used Facebook as a means of sting off this type
of information and making it seem you know, acceptable. UM
the Canadian Loovest's quoting an article from vice UM Canadian yelvests,
which had over a hundred thousand members on their Facebook
as of May, carries the greatest potential for radicalization leading
to violence in Canada right now, according to the executive

(03:02:18):
director of the Canadian Anti Hate Network UH. The group's
description says it says it was created to protest the
carbon tax and build that pipeline and stand against the
treason of our country's politicians who have the audacity to
sell our country's sovereignty over to the globalist u N
and their tyrannical policies. But concerns over Canadian soil sector
appeared to be a very little factor in the discussion

(03:02:41):
that goes on inside these groups. Instead, members are obsessing
over with the defending you know, Western civilization from Islam,
bashing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and spreading whatever you know,
far right conspiracy theory is trending at the time, and
I cannot overstate the amount that these people hate Trudeau.
But it's it's not for like reasons because he wore
black face. Like they find the most bizarre ways to

(03:03:02):
hate this man. Um A lot of these people think
that Justin Trudeau is the illegitimate son of Fidel Castro.
This is this is this is a very a very
popular conspiracy theory in Canada. It is like the way
that Trudeau is treated by Conservatives is baffling because like,

(03:03:23):
I hate Justin Trudeau, but I think I hate him
for like reasonable reasons, Like he made a lot bunch
of promises around you know, environment stuff that he didn't
follow through on. He doesn't do he doesn't do anything
he is. He does a lot of blackface. It's like
there's a lot of reasons to hate Justin Trudeau, but
not because he's the illegitimate son of Fidel Castro leading

(03:03:44):
us to like leading trying to sneak Canada into what
the socialist you end, Like, that's not that's not what
he's doing, Like, yeah, he was the illegitimate son of
Fidel Castro. There's a couple of those in the United States.
One of his daughters is now like a right wing
radio personality, and god, that makes so much sense. He
you know, he's castro. He did a lot of fucking

(03:04:04):
like who who would care? It's not your your fault,
who your dad is. It's just like this is it's
it's like it's like a weaker, like funnier version of birtherism. Yeah,
it is. It makes it. It is like the Canadian
version of that. Like it's very weird. He's like Justin
Trudeau is very cringe e. He lies about all of

(03:04:26):
his promises. Um, he talks about game, He does a
lot of virtue signaling. He does a lot of black face.
There's are all really good reasons to face. Um, yeah,
a lot of black face. But the way the ways
that they come up with trying to make him seem
like a bad dude or just baffling, um, very very bizarre.
So um. In an interview with somebody from the Yellow

(03:04:46):
Vests exposed Anti Fascist Research Team, which was a very
good Twitter account around it's it's it's inactive now, but
this this was a very good account, a very good
account that did really really solid research into the into
the Yellows movement UM. In an interview, they were asked
type of impact they think the yellowsts could have in
Canada and this was This was their response. The image
of the threat is no longer the skinhead, blood, blood,

(03:05:09):
blood and honor type. We're dealing with average people who
don't understand the impact of the rhetoric. They're calling for
the mass death of an entire religion, or they're celebrating them,
or they're celebrating the violence against that religion, or they're
celebrating violence against government officials. They are just one step
away from outright fascism, but they can't see that, and
they refuse to see that, which I think it's very
is a very good UM summary of like how the

(03:05:31):
yellow vests were a popular movement specifically on Facebook. UM.
Another part of it was the idea of like Western
separatism UM, Like you know, the people in Western Canada
feel ignored, They feel you know, put upon, they feel
oppressed not just for feelings, not not just for being Westerners,
but they honestly feel oppressed because they're white. They feel like, oh,

(03:05:52):
we're focusing on you know, only going to give money
to the brown people. That's the kind of thing that
they feel like in the West. UM, they're like, well,
you know, my right to free speech was taken away
because of the because of the non binding bill, and
refugees can just walk across the border and they make
more money than I do. So they they have they
have all these all these ideas that are not actually
based in reality, but they can believe them. UM. And

(03:06:14):
they you know, find these news sources that are just
echo chambers that reinforce this belief to the point where
they become radicalize themselves. UM. It's very it's a very
very common thing, especially around twenties nineteen. I was tracking
a lot of these Facebook groups around twenty nine as well,
just in my spare time, UM, because it's just interesting
to watch them interact. UM. I'm gonna give like, you know,

(03:06:36):
like a brief recap of like a typical yell yellow
best protest around like Edmonton, UM, based a bit off
of of of of of a few CBC articles. So
you know, protesters would gather around in front of UM
like the Legislative building, holding signs, wearing bright yellow vests. UM.
And they would do this like basically every every weekend

(03:06:58):
for you know, months and months and months on end. Um.
Some protesters when we stand at the podium showing conspiracy
theories about how powerful the Jewish families controlling the world are.
Um as one as one dude did at the Alberta
legislature um on like January. Um. Some may come sporting
red make Alberta great again. Hats uh this was very

(03:07:21):
very popular, very popular. Um. Others may proud the sidelines,
stress like they belong to a biker gang. Um. Instead
of only instead of Hell's Angels patches, they have patricks
that say Wolves of Odin and Canadian Infidels. Uh. I'm
gonna give you one, guests, what type of ideology the
Wolves of Odin have? Yeah? The the communists, Yeah, no,

(03:07:45):
they're not easy. Um. But most of the protesters voices
are not away from are not from the fringes. Most
of them just have jobs, um you know, you know
in like high rises, or they drive it for uber
or their teachers or pipe fitters or real estate agents.
And although their message is like muddled by all of
these other like you know, much more overtly extremist kind
of talking points, they all have one thing in common

(03:08:06):
that they feel like they're getting ignored and being left
behind by the liberals in the East. UM. This is
echoed by one of the person that got interviewed at
these rallies was named Lynn Smith, who was a former
oil and gas worker who now works in the school system. UM.
They were at a a yellow vest rally on in
January nine that was like the first first fourth protest

(03:08:27):
she attended. UM. She said, they're just giving away our country.
We have no rights anymore, they're taking them away. No
more Lord's prayer, but they're putting prayer, prayer rooms in
schools for Muslims. Um, Mary, Christmas, you're you're You're not
You're not allowed to say anymore. It's supposed to be
happy holidays. They're changing, they're changing our country, and we've
got to stand up and say something about it, because
because this is our country. I was born here, my

(03:08:48):
parents are born here. It's wrong. So, you know, I'm
sure people in the States they're familiar with this type
of rhetoric. Um, but just the the increased nature of
in Canada was surprising to a lot of Nadians, and
like president of a lot of like liberal Canadians, because
they're like, but you're you're in Canada. Why are you
doing the States thing? What? Why are you doing the
thing that they do in the States. Why are you

(03:09:08):
doing it here? Um? But you know the same reason
you know people do in the States is because they
feel ignored by politicians, you know, saying that's that's why
this happens in Saskatchewan and Alberta m NBC way more
than it happens in like Ontario, right is because you know,
the more farther away you are from you know, the
big cities, the less your interests are cared for by
a lot of politicians. So the ones that speak to
you are these like extremists who are trying to prey

(03:09:30):
on these actual you know, financial insecurities. Um so. A
lot some of the protesters say that they're not like
a post immigration but but most of the focus of
the Edmonton Yellow Best rallies has been has been about
who can come into the country and how they're allowed
to get here. Um uh. One one guy named Brett Webster,
the father of five, who works like a construction construction industry, says,

(03:09:52):
they're overwhelming our resources. We can't properly let these people
and make sure it's safe for them to come in
and make sure that they're skilled and assimilate into our
country and know our ways and our values. So most
of the extremest stuff in Canada outside of Quebec does
come from does come specifically from Alberta. You know, the
big big cities in Alberta are are Calgary and Edmonton.
This happens also in a lot of the more rural

(03:10:12):
areas that you know, mostly used to run on like
oil drilling. Um. After losing an election to the more
social democratic NDP party, UH, the two provincial Conservative parties
in Alberta had their own little mini Unite the Right
and merged together in to us in seventeen, leading to
their success in the polls in nineteen. So then the

(03:10:33):
Conservatives have since then, they've done a whole bunch of
stuff in Alberta, like cutting down their health care to
actually a lot of a lot of the Conservative voters
don't like, but like they voted for because that was
the platform. You just were being scared of brown people,
so you voted for the Conservatives. But now but now
your healthcare is cut. So that's that's how politics works. Um.
So that that's kind of a brief summary of the

(03:10:53):
Yellowist movement and how it how it gained a lot
of popularity. Um. They they would do rallies around like
polling centers, the would they would they would like they
would attack people. They would have you know, violent rallies
where a lot of like older older men who were
in the Yellows movement would be you know, pretty violence
towards you know and anyone in their area during a protest. UM.

(03:11:14):
But they kind of kind of around COVID, the Yellow
Vess kind of sput it out. A lot of the
people in these Facebook groups got you know, moved into
other conspiracy theory groups um, and the l S movement
kind of lost its train. UM. So that's where we're
kind of going to end for today, is with the
kind of the Eloss kind of fizzling out. And then
the next part we'll talk about what's happening from and

(03:11:37):
the election that year took like kind of the present
fascist rumblings um inside different sectors of Canadian politics. So yeah,
that is that's my that's my very very brief right
up of of right wing populism and extremism in Canada.
Uh pre p yep. It's fun. It's not, it's it's

(03:12:00):
it's it's it's upsetting. Um, and it's you know, it's
a lot of the same problems we have here of
you know, politicians really ignoring people in certain parts of
the country which provide provide very fertile recruiting ground for
a lot of extremists. I think it's going to all
end well, well, that is our that is our that
is our official policy, that everything is going to turn

(03:12:22):
out great. Yeah, it seems fine. I mean there's like
there is actual ways of preventing this from happening. Right,
it's not it's not it's not a hopeless thing. We
can actually do it if we want to. Just people
with power to do it, don't don't don't like doing it. Yeah,
well and good, that is the message of the pod Sophie.
Cool and good. So yep, that's that's Canadian fascism part one. Cool. Um.

(03:12:49):
I would recommend if people want to learn more about
the Canadian uh yellow vests, check out the yellow Best
Exposed Twitter account. Uh. There's also like there's also articles
about them. They were a very very good anti fascist
research team. Um. Yeah, I would just recommend if you
want to learn more about this the specific movement, all
of their work on it has been great. Um, so yeah,

(03:13:10):
shout out, shout out to yellow vests exposed. That's the pod. Alright,
Well go get your Tim Hortons and tomorrow, Yeah, I
go get your Tim Horton's and you're I don't know,
maple syrup and go find a moose, find and just
follow us. Zone Media or happened here? Pot on, the

(03:13:31):
twits and the inst against Bye bye everybody, a goodbye,
a hello. Nope, that's not it. Nope, that's it. Garrison

(03:13:52):
started the episode. Yes, has begun, It cannot be unbegun.
A oh that's all right. Let's let's roll right into it.
Let's talk so well, welcome. This says it could happen here.
Um today the today, the here is is Canada, that
is the that is where it could happen. Um. This

(03:14:13):
is gonna be part two of my little deep dive
into Canadian fascism and the far right rumblings in general
in the Great White North. And oh god, that is
a bad, bad nickname for Canada, the Great White North.
Did not really think that went through, oopsie doodle of
maybe the yeah, there's a good chance did anyway. Um,

(03:14:37):
the last episode we left off with the Canadian yellow vests. Um,
and you know of frightening increase in Islamophobia and anti
immigration rhetoric around late after Trump selection. And we started
the last episode by talking about one of Canada's first
fascist political parties. And we're gonna start to part two

(03:14:57):
but talking about Canada's new kne oh fascist political party
that also got started inside the province of Quebec, just
like the National Unity Party did. Uh. This one is
called the People's Party of Canada. Um. Before we get
into the People's Party, And first to give some background
on the founder of the party, Maxine Bernier. Um. And

(03:15:18):
that's how that's that's how I'm gonna say his name. Um,
No one at me, It's good enough. Um. Bernair was
born in Quebec in nineteen sixty three. On is the
son of a Conservative talk radio host turned politician. Isn't
that funny? Isn't that funny? How that keeps happening? Um? Yeah.
So Bernair entered politics into US in six um. He

(03:15:43):
ran as the Conservative Party candidate for the House of
Commons in the same writing district that his father had
represented in the eighties and nineties. Stephen Harper, leader of
the New United Conservative Party initially wanted Maxine's father to
re enter politics, but Bernair Senior was less keen on
that idea, and in dead told Harper that he that
perhaps his son should run in his place. Radio and nepotism,

(03:16:06):
radio and nepotism, yep, and politicians and yeah it is
it is starting great. Um. So at this point Bernair
was more like a free market libertarian, libertarian type guy,
you know, still with some of the same like conservative
immigration stuff that's that's common in Quebec, but he was
more of just like a libertarian dude. Berner easily won

(03:16:28):
the writing writings for what we call districts here in
the States, ranking at sixty seven percent of the popular vote,
which was the largest majority for a Conservative politician outside
of the province of Alberta. So he he did, he
did very well. Bernaer, who had a background in business,
quickly rose through the ranks of the Conservative Party. Within
the same year, he was appointed to be a cabinet

(03:16:49):
minister in the Harper government. Um and he worked as
a as an industry minister from to us in six
to US and seven before being promoted to a foreign
affairs minister and then in two thousands eleven, he was
appointed of he was appointed as Minister of the State.
So in in spring of after the fifth after the

(03:17:09):
federal election, uh Brennair put in his bid to be
the new elected Conservative Party leader. Um, so I'm gonna
briefly explain how Canadian elections work. You You don't vote
for a prime minister. You vote for a party within
your specific district if you if if your party wins,
they get a seat in parliament. Whoever has the most

(03:17:30):
seats in parliament, that's whose prime minister gets elected. So
whoever is whoever is the leader of the party, they
will be prime minister if that party gets in the
most seats. So in two as in sixteen, Burnair put
in his bid to be the new Conservative Party leader. Uh.
He got remarkably close to securing the spot as leader
of the Conservatives. In the final round of voting, he

(03:17:52):
received forty nine point zero five percent of the vote,
losing to Saskatchewan Conservative politician Andrew Sheer who got fifty
point nine percent, less less than two percent difference. He
was so close to becoming leader of the Conservative Party,
like ridiculous. So yeah, after his extremely slight loss, he

(03:18:13):
continued to work in Shear's Conservative Party for a few years. Um,
if you remember from the last episode, around this time
was when these homophobia and anti immigration talking points were
starting to gain a new popularity, and Berner followed along
with this trend. He would tweet out about the dangers
of extreme multiculturalism and he had like an increasingly racist

(03:18:34):
and divisive rhetoric, and that kind of caused some drama
within the Conservative establishment. So in August of eighteen, around
the same time the Yellow vest movement in Canada was
starting up, Berner resigned from the Conservative Party with the
stated intention of forming a new federal populist far right
political party. Um here here, here's a segment from his

(03:18:57):
resignation speech and he he does talk in a very
thick Utch accent. I am not going to do that. Yeah,
you're channel the energy. Um that was that was just
direct audio instead of leading as a principal Conservative and

(03:19:22):
defending the interests of Canada and Canadians. Andrew Sheer is
following the Trudeau Liberals. I was told that internal polling
is showing that the Liberals response to Trump is popular
and that in six months, if the polls change, the
party's stand may change to the same thing happened in
reaction to my tweets on diversity and multiculturalism. This is
another crucial debate for the future of our country. Do

(03:19:44):
we want to emphasize or ethnic and religious differences or
exploit them to buy votes as the liberals are doing,
or emphasize what unites us and the values that can
guarantee social cohesion. Just like other Western societies grappling with
this issue. A large number of Canadians, and certainly the
vast majority of Conservatives, are worried that we are heading
in the wrong direction. But it's not correct to raise

(03:20:05):
such questions. So yeah, and I think the honestly one
of the main reasons why Brenair hasn't been super successful
um is because of his accent. Like he is, it's
harder for Protestant white Canadians to support him because he
talks with a French Canadian accent. Um If if if

(03:20:27):
he talked in like good English, I think he would
have he would have won Conservative leadership um and his
Populist party would be way more popular than than than
it is now. So critical support to other French racism
is preventing the racist from being racist enough. Yes, you
love to see you certainly see it. We do, we

(03:20:52):
do see it. So Bernair faced some pushback from his
conservative colleagues, including Stephen Harper U of trying to divide
the right and split the right of center vote. UM
and some of the less socially conservative members of the
main Conservative party decried Berner's departure and subsequent New People's
Party as just a plain attempt to pander to xenophobia

(03:21:13):
and racist right wingers. But Berner went right to work
and ran enough candidates under his new party to secure
a spot in the federal election debates that were like that,
you know that how we watch presidential debates, same thing,
but these have you know, multiple candidates because there are
multiple parties, the same thing. But basically he was able
to get in the televised debates. Um, the PPC, which

(03:21:34):
is the People's Party of Canada. I'm just gonna say
the PPC now because it sounds funny. Um. They started
going viral on the internet after pictures of massive billboards
with Berner's face and big text that said say no
to mass immigration. This this this guy very is this
guy very Mimi around like these big these big PPC
billboards um I'm gonna I'm gonna read a bit from

(03:21:56):
a write up and it's going down by some local
um Montreal anti fascists. There have been suggestions that the
PPC spokesperson and architect of its public relations strategy, Martin Mass,
has been key to its embrace of the far right.
Mass was owner of the publisher of the Capucua Libre,
which is an online libertarian news outlet that shut down
in ten and that pp but that PPC's cozy relationship

(03:22:20):
with racist is primarily due to the influence of this
one person is highly doubtful. However, that's the PPC is
positioning itself as the option of choice for those who
find the Conservative Party insufficiently right wing. Racism is clearly
just one of the most effective tools for such a strategy.
Witnessing PPC billboards and tweets against mass immigration, also tweets
about being against Antifa and Bernara's Diet tribe, about radical

(03:22:44):
Islam being the biggest threat to freedom and peace and
security the world today, and how he complains about other
parties are are complacent and pandering to Islamists and promising
that the PPC will make no compromise with the tolitarian ideology.
A number of media articles have revealed all the far
right connections to people active in the PPC as organizers
and members whose signatures were used for the PPC to

(03:23:07):
gain official party status. UM. For instance, a Derek Horn,
the PPC volunteer and a security agent who accompanied Bernair
at a variety of offense and media interviews. He has
been revealed to be a founding member of the neo
fascist Canadian Nationalist Party, which we we briefly mentioned in
the last episode. UM. Sean Walker is an American immigrant

(03:23:27):
and organizer with the PPC in St. Catharine's UM, as
well as one of the people who signed on for
PPC to be an official party. He was revealed to
be the president of the National Alliance US, based in
the Nazi organization seven. He was also convicted. He was
also convicted of hate crimes at the time for violence
Stands People of Color UM. Following these revelations, Walker was
expelled from the PPC and Bernard claimed that he'd slipped

(03:23:50):
through the party's betting process. However, was also revealed that
Bernar follows him on Twitter. UM. Others who signed up
for the for the PPC to be an official party
include Janice Bulch, a founding member of the Patriotic Europeans
against the Islamification of Accent, and also Justin L. Smith,
leader of this of the Sudbury chapter of the Soldiers

(03:24:12):
of Odin. So a whole bunch of whole bunch of
fascist people are working work working for the party. Um
And unsurprisingly a number of a number of candidates have
made headlines. But there as there you know, social media
posts from the past and present have surfaced featuring like racism, Islamophobia,
and a lot of spreading of far right conspiracy theories.
You know that was just kind of common. There's too many,

(03:24:33):
honestly to mention. UM. And it's it's not just that
the PPC has a few bad apples in it. It's
like the whole the whole party is rife with these
kind of one of these kind of sentiments. UM. One
gauge of this and the sign and a sign that
like this is intentional is the as looking at the
candidates who have left the party or have been kicked out.
When it became clear that there would be no condemnation

(03:24:53):
of the far right from the upper ranks, there was
like and justin like twenty ninet alone, there was like
three candidates who were who left or were either kicked
out um because they you know, had objections to the
racism rampant within the party. They were like complaining about, hey,
these guys seem kind of racist, and then they were
kicked out of the party or or or or they left.

(03:25:15):
So yeah, that's that's a not a good problem to have. Um,
so in in uh finishing up this this little quote here. Um. Indeed,
a cursory, ac cursory look at the Facebook pages of
PPC candidates reveals what's been really noteworthy is how selective
the news stories about racist tweets or Facebook posts have been.

(03:25:36):
Almost every PPC candidate in Quebec has recently in repeatedly
shared articles from climate denialist sources, including many with a
conspiratorial bent. A candidate for Pap and You even produced
his own YouTube expose revealing how George sorrows it's behind
an international and global conspiracy theory to crash economies and
make money spending um panic about climate change. Secondary to

(03:25:57):
climate denial, there's a lot of fears around free speed
chin mass immigration, which are both recurring themes in the
PPC candidates, and roughly one in five have recently shared
news articles from what we would deem a national populist
or fall right sources, including less manchetz dot com, which
is the website of the French language of the French
language translator of the christ Church Um Manifesto um, and

(03:26:21):
that that the guy who ends the website is also
involved with organizing in the Montreal in the Montreal chapter
of the Yellow Bests. Um. Yeah, so he he both
translated the manifesto and he's also running the Montreal Yellowest movement.
So that's fun. Um, it's not fun, it's bad, um,
Andre Pietrie pipe poo wow. And it's so Remember so

(03:26:44):
I didn't learn French in Canada because I was in
a weird Christian private school. Otherwise I could be a
lot better at this job. But anyway, there's there's a
there's a there's a there's just like a far right
YouTube channel. But this guy called a studio who a
lot of his stuff was shared. Um. And there's a
more like eccentric and sporadic mix of of of other

(03:27:07):
news sources, including Unite the Right attendee Faith Goldie who
also ran for mayor of Toronto and got third place.
UM Quebec based que and on figure Alexus trudell Um
and the al right YouTuber black Pigeon Speaks. Of course,
the main yellow Vest page was shared a lot, and
also sources from the highly racist The Voice of Europe.
So yeah, a lot of a lot of a lot

(03:27:31):
of not not great news sources being being shared by
the PBC. UM. So that is the gist of the
People's Party as of twenty nine UM. Overall, their performance
in the election was kind of a flop. Bernair lost
his own seat in Quebec. No PC candidates got into
office and the party only managed to get one. Uh.

(03:27:53):
The party only managed to get one point six percent
of the total national popular vote, so that's good. It
only got one point six percent of all of the
votes in Canada. So we're gonna take a break from
the People's Party for now and we will circle back
towards it um at the end. But after after an

(03:28:15):
ad break, we will we will talk about the what
the main Conservative Party was up to during this time
and uh a little bit after the election, so yeah, yep,
and now the cats just blocking the whole thing. All right,
we're back. The cat is in the bathroom. I moved
my cats. They were blocking the camera. Hello. Um, people's

(03:28:36):
party not doing great in the first election. That's fun.
Let's see what the regular conservatives are up to. I'm
sure it was things that are just good and cool.
If I know anything about conservatives, it's that they're not
not hashtag problematic. Yeah, you just let's just go okay,
So I'll just be sad over here, and the audience

(03:28:58):
can know that I'm sad the whole time you're talking.
I would rather as episode not such a not such
a downer, but it's it's hard to make it. The
is kind of an upper I'll make a bargain with
the audience that if they listen, I will I will
do my French accent at least one more time. We'll
see doing the French accent. This is the happiest I
have seen Robert all day. Well, he does look very tired.

(03:29:21):
You didn't say earlier, Garrison, and this was very funny
that you'd be better at your job if you could
speak French. But given what we are here, it cools
ow mediate you would actually be much worse at your job. Um,
and in fact, if you if you were to speak French,
I would I would fire you immediate. It's actually requirement.

(03:29:42):
You can't pronounce things to certainly not French. There's other
languages you're allowed to know how to pronounce, but not French.
No oblo francaie. So let's pick up right after Maxine
Bernard lost the Conservative leadership to Andrew Sheer in um.

(03:30:05):
Sheer won the leadership on a on on like a
platform of classical financial conservatism and a slightly more socially
moderate platform um. When Sheer got into office, though, one
of the things he faced criticism for, even among the
Conservative caucus was his association with a little media with
was his association with a little media outlet called rebel Media.

(03:30:28):
Yeah so most most listeners may not know what rebel
media is, but you've certainly seen their stuff or felt
their effect. Yeah, it's like the rough draft of bright
bart and also Canadian and Canadian, Yes so Canadian. Uh so,
Rebel Media is a Canadian far right neo fascist propaganda

(03:30:48):
Outlet's start that has a lot of a lot of
bright Barti vibes um rebel media. Yeah, bright Bartesque, rebel media,
host thinking tribute years have included a white nationalist and
white genocide proponent, Laurence Southern UM and Proud Boy founder
Gavin McGinness um. McGinnis produced a quote satirical video for

(03:31:11):
Rebel called ten Things I Hate about the Jews. Yeah so,
and it's and it is worth noting that both Southern
and McGinnis are Canadian. Um, They're actually a lot of
alt figures that are Canadian. Of course we have we
have Lauren Southern, Gavin McGinnis, Um, we have Stephen Crowder,

(03:31:33):
uh Stefan malin you and of course Jordan Peterson. All
of those people are are Canadian and most of them,
most of them still live in Canada. Yes, he's still alive.
Made he made insane tweet the other day. God, he
made the most tweet. That tweet made it all worthwhile. Baby,

(03:31:54):
he got everyone to go check his Twitter feed. It
is amazing. You can you can hear his brain shorting
out when you read that tweet, Like you need to
find the tweet it is. It is just it is
the most beautiful piece of poetry of ever. It's like
somebody taught a stroke out of type. It makes no sense. God,

(03:32:17):
it's so good. Um, I'm going to quote an article
by a Global news dot c a on Andrew Sheer
and Rebel media. Quote. Despite a string of controversies faced
by Canadian right wing media outlet of The Rebel, including
allegations of downplaying the Holocaust movie minted, Conservative Party leader
Andrew Sheer has so far continued to make himself available

(03:32:37):
to the company that other prominent Conservative politicians have criticized
for its controversial reporting and activism. Shear's campaign organization also
has a direct connection to The Rebel. His campaign manager,
Hamish Marshall, is listed as a director of the company's
federal incorporation records, which show its most recent annual gathering
meeting was in February this year. Following the leadership election

(03:32:58):
in Toronto on Saturday, she granted one on one interviews
with a handful of major media organizations, including a face
to face interview with The Rebels Ottawa correspondent Brian Lily.
Prior to his convention interview, Sheer appeared on The Rebel
in February in a studio interview with host Faith Goldie
on her show on the Hunt. At the end of
the discussion, Goldie asked she Er if if he would

(03:33:19):
agree to go on a duck hunting trip with her
after after he wins the leadership on Canada Day, which
he agreed to. UM We briefly mentioned faith Goldie earlier
in her connection to the People's Party UM and her
brief campaign for the Toronto mayor, but here's some more
background on her UM and her coverage and her coverage
of the Unite the Right rally for Rebel media. Quoting

(03:33:42):
from Winnipeg Free Press, in the course of her dispatches,
Goldie argued the events in the Charlottesville were evidence of
a rising white racial consciousness that was going to change
the political landscape in America. She also wanted to she's
actually not wrong there. That was, Yeah, she's not wrong,
but I think she's she's on the other side of

(03:34:02):
the ai alat and whether this is a good or
bad thing. Yeah. She went to great lengths to laud
the twenty point Meta political Manifesto composed by White National's
leader Richard Spencer, a document that includes calls to organize
U states along ethnic and racial divides and celebrates the
superiority of white America. Faith Goldie described Spencer's manifesto as

(03:34:24):
robust and well thought out. Goldie was fired by Rebel
in mid August and seventeen, but not due to her
participation in Unite the Right. She was fired for appearing
on a Daily Stormer podcast to discuss Unite the Right.
So yeah, yeah, that's that's fine. So yeah, fine, nice

(03:34:44):
to have her. Interviewing Conservative leader Andrew Sheer asked for
his reaction to Unite the Right and Rebel media um
after what happened in Charlotte'sville in Sheer, who had previously
been interviewed by Rebel multiple times, finally di of ad
the outlets, saying, look, I believe there's a fine line
between covering events and giving a platform to groups who

(03:35:05):
are promoting a violent, disgusting point of view. I won't
be granting interviews going forward. So that's nice that it
took someone dying in Charlotte's Bill to realize that you
probably shouldn't talk to the fascist media source. Um. So,
in the aftermath of Unite the Right, the mainstream conservatives
kind of had to tread carefully around social issues because

(03:35:25):
it's like, oh, yeah, they're there's still not seas we
probably shouldn't be pandering to them. Um. But as more
time a distance led the air cool. Some Conservatives went
back to the same old rhetoric around the twenty nineteen
election um. For instance, in his twenty nineteen election campaign,
uh Tom Chemick, of the parliamentary representative of one of
the parliamentary representatives for Calgary, Alberta, wrote out and spread

(03:35:48):
flyers with the all claps with the all caps header
of crisis at the Border with text reading deer constituent.
The Independent Autor General of Canada has published a scathing
report confirming that the Ottawa Liberals have failed to safely
and responsibly manage Canada's borders since Justin Trudeau you responsibly
tweeted out that Canada would open sporers to anyone seeking entry.

(03:36:08):
The number of people illegally crossing the board into Canada
from the United States has surged past one thousand a month,
with almost twenty people illegally enteringen alone, and while speaking
to voters of CONAC repeatedly insisted that all the problems
of people illegally crossing the Canadian border isn't a symptom
of a failure of systems to respond to a growing crisis,
but merely a failure for border patrol. To with to

(03:36:30):
assert control over people. UM. Quotes and flyer courtesy of
about This Tom chemic Guy A courtesy of a. Dan
Olson of Folding Ideas. He's a great Canadian documentarian who
released a magnificent piece on Q and on and conspiracy
theories last year on his YouTube channel of Folding Ideas. Overall,
I really really like Dan. He makes very good stuff. UM,

(03:36:54):
so thank thank you to him for sending me those
those those flyers. UM. Anyway, during the twenty steen election,
Sheer led the Conservatives to gain a total of twenty
six seats in the party inside Parliament, going from ninety
five up to one hundred and twenty one, but they
did finish thirty six seats behind the Liberals despite beating

(03:37:14):
the Liberals in the popular vote by one point three percent.
So there was a thirty four point four percent for
Conservatives and thirty three point one percent of the popular
vote for Liberals. The margin was just over like two
hundred and forty thousand votes. UM. The Liberals lost twenty
seats in the election and the n DP lost fifteen seats,
and this was the first time since to UH since
nineteen seventy nine that a party won the most seats

(03:37:37):
without also winning the popular vote. Um. What what pushed
the Conservatives over on the popular vote was due to
you know, extremely high conservative turnout in uh in in
in various in various writings. So basically more Conservatives voted
in certain runnings than they usually do, so even if
the Liberals still win the district, there was still more
Conservative votes to be counted. Um. And also they based

(03:38:00):
really swept the Prairie provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan, where
they won seventy of the vote in sixties five percent
of the vote respectively. But their victories in those states
and their higher turnout did not convert into many seats
because the less population dense areas have fewer federal writings
and fewer available seats um. And the Liberals had to
rely heavily for seats in Ontario though, you know, the

(03:38:23):
most populous province that include cities like Toronto, um and
you know other a few other big cities. So you know,
Canada doesn't have the most democratic system like so the
same way you know in the States were familiar with
you know, people losing popular votes, um but still getting
elected president and stuff. You know, in Canadas, it's it's
it's a little bit different because of how you vote
for parties in your own little district. Um. But you know,

(03:38:46):
it's still not perfect, right because, like it is, it
does feel weird for the leader of the leader of
the country to not have his party to not have
also won the popular vote because of how you know,
districts work out and how higher turnout in some areas
doesn't mean that it's going to have more seats, um.
You know. But the other side of things here is
that like Canada also doesn't have ranked choice, so like,

(03:39:07):
still the majority of people voted for left of center
candidates if you include you know, the Green Party, the
n DP, and the Liberals. So even the Liberals lost
the popular vote, there's still like a majority left of
center voting. So if they if they had ranked choice,
maybe the results would have been different. So Canada's system,
it definitely is in perfect for how they do elections. UM,
I would I would prefer ranked choice, as you know,

(03:39:29):
basically basically I would prefer that for like every country
if they're gonna have elections. Um. So yeah, just kind
of explaining why they can lose the popular vote, but still,
you know, still win a majority controlling government. UM. So
after the election, Sheer announced he was resigning as head
of the Conservatives in December of twenty nineteen. UH. This
was after it was revealed that he had used party
funds for his children's own private schooling. So good for him, UM,

(03:39:54):
a new bid for Conservative leadership went into effect. We're
gonna mainly focus on two candidates here. There was an
erin o'tool and Derek Solan. UM. O'tool fancies himself as
another kind of like classic financial conservative and a social moderate.
He feels more like the old progressive Conservative candidates from
back before the two of US and three Unite the
Right merger. Um. We got some like John McCain vibes here, UM,

(03:40:18):
but Derek solan is more similar to the farther right
parts of the U s IS current Republican Party, like
anti abortion, anti LGBT, racist tweets, etcetera. UM. But as
a whole, Solon's extremism was rejected by the Canadian Conservatives.
UM he got only he got like only fourth. He
got fourth placed with fifteen percent of the vote during

(03:40:38):
the first round of voting. UM and ultimately o'tool one
leadership after three rounds of votes, um and o'tool now
has the has the new challenge of trying to appeal
to the Canadian Conservatives more moderate wing, as well as
the more Trumpian wing that's developed the past few years.
He's been relatively successful in crafting like a boring, polite

(03:41:00):
Canadian version of Trump's nationalism, with slogans like Canada First
and take Canada Back, um, you know, despite supporting trade
deals outsourcing Canadian jobs to cheaper overseas markets because they
never actually mean what they say, um and the and
As the Liberals have grown more aware of Canada's bloody
history and have like toned down the red and white

(03:41:21):
maple leaf patriotism, the Conservative Party under o'tool has seized
on this opportunity to make Canadian patriotism more of a
right leaning staple, just like patriotism is, you know, it's
more of like a right wing thing in the States.
So basically, after we were like, oh yeah, residental schools
were bad, Canada's kind of sucked up, liberals are like, Okay,
we maybe shouldn't be so we shouldn't be waving our

(03:41:42):
maple leaf legs everywhere. Maybe we're not a perfect country.
The Conservatives like, no, you have to be proud to
be Canadian. So they've kind of taken patriotism to be
their new thing. Well, previously it was much more of
like a liberal thing. The Islamophobia and overt religious bigotry
under a tool has been slightly trimmed down UM, and
climate change has at least been mentioned as a existing UM.
But there has also been increased discussion on trying to

(03:42:04):
hack down Canada's healthcare and privatize more aspects of it, which, yeah,
good job, guys, take away the only good part of Canada. UM.
Like Uh. The province of Alberta under Jason Kenny has
done this to a disastrous effect UM, raising the cost
of medical care for lower class people, many of whom
voted Conservative. UM. I have family in Alberta, and just

(03:42:27):
the past five years the changes to the healthcare system
there has been horrible. UM, it's not it's not great.
So basically, what what what o'tool wants is he he
wants he wants to ba just privatize more elements of it.
He has a specific term he uses like he wants
like a he wants to like split the fed like
the like the taxpayer healthcare and privatized health care into
two sections, and you can choose which one to join

(03:42:47):
in anyway, it's silly. Um. O'cheval did take a wee
little stance to distance himself from the more extreme wings
of his party when he decided to remove MP Derek
Solan from the caucus. Uh TOO announced that Solan will
not be allowed to run as a candidate for the
for the Conservative Party in the next election either, saying
racism is a disease of the soul, repugnance to our

(03:43:08):
core values. It has no place in our country and
has no place in the Conservative Party of Canada. I
won't tolerate it. Um. Also last year, O'Toole refused to
say whether he thinks systemic racism exists UM. But the
decision to remove Soland was made after it was revealed
that he accepted a donation from the Canadian Nazi Paul
from during uh during Soland's bid for a Conservative leadership

(03:43:33):
back in the nineties of From was a figurehead of
the Canadian far right movement, appearing at Heritage Front rallies
and also caught on video at a party celebrating Hitler's birthday,
which he lost his high school teaching job over well, look,
it's just polite to celebrate a guy's birthday, you know,
whether or not he's Hitler. Under no circumstances do you

(03:43:54):
got us celebrate this? This is a a hot take. Um. So,
there has been a bit of the there has been
a bit of a rift in the Conservative Party over
how much Trumpian rhetoric should be allowed in the Canadian
Conservative Party. UM and this kind of rift has definitely

(03:44:14):
increased after January six. UM. The problem for Conservative politicians
is that to win elections they need to appeal to
the largest swath of voters um and that includes more
socially conservative and increasingly far right rule folks. But if
they go too far, they'll lose the moderates to the
Liberal Party. So you have it's like this delicate balance.
But to kind of give you like an overview of

(03:44:36):
what the current state of the Conservative of Like votership
is UM four. Intent of the Conservative Party of Canada members,
So you know, people signed up to vote in the party,
you know, regular people UM four in ten would say
that they would have voted for Trump for intents, say
that they think Democrats told the presdential election and for
intents say that the Conservative and four intent believe that

(03:44:59):
the January six riot was staged or was done by
the Democrats, are done by Antiva. So that's kind of
the state of the Conservative Party in Canada for like
the for the voters. So you know, politicians have to
kind of in order to win, they need they need
to still still need to appeal to those people, but
they don't want to do that thing usually, like they

(03:45:19):
usually don't like usually there like a big talking point
is like rejecting the divisive politics of the of the
of the United States. Like that's a big thing people
say in Canada. Is that, like they don't want it
to become like, you know, like a fighting match because
like the other main difference between Canada's elections in America's
elections is like America is like always an election season,

(03:45:40):
right like every you know, even after each election, it's
like you feel like campaigns start right up again. Um,
Canada's campaigns only run like a few months before the election,
Like like it is not like those things you guys
do objectively better than a lot of the world does.
It's not just Canada. The idea that like, oh, elections
are terrible. We should spend this little time. It's like

(03:46:00):
it's like like two or three months of campaigning. That's it. Like,
it's not it's not like a two year, four year thing. No,
that is a thing that we should absolutely the election
should be about eleven minutes from from the start of
the campaign to the vote. Everybody gets a minute to
explain their their politics and then we vote and then
we throw them into the sea. Yeah, So trying to

(03:46:23):
trying to craft marketing to the divided right wing. It's
been interesting to watch. You know, there's like videos about
Tool walking through you know, downtowns with Pride flags in
the background and you know, featuring visible like minority Canadians intermingling.
But then you also have a tool like raally against
cancel culture feeling suggestions that the liberal government's pandemic response
is part of a socialist great reset and pulling out

(03:46:44):
the dog whistle on like China and the coronavirus, you know,
as often as you can. UM Tools in the past
also downplayed Canadians Residential Schools program UM and described the
efforts of activists pushing to removal of statues of the
of the Residentary of School architect as stupid. Um, so
I I do think o'tool prefers a Conservative party resistant

(03:47:05):
too far right branding, but he knows he needs to
appeal to its voters in order to win elections. So
it's it's it's it's just it's the thing that's not great,
but it's interesting to watch. Um. In August one, Justin
Trudeau noted black face appreciator called a snap election in
an effort to gain more parliamentary seats in hopes of
getting a majority Liberal government, something a prime minister should

(03:47:28):
not be allowed to do, by the way, like a
priva minister should not be able to decide when to
do elections. That is, like should totally not be a thing,
Like what, no, you shouldn't do that. But anyway, um.
As snap election ramped up, the Conservative Party under a tool,
made some extremely questionable choices for their marketings and their slogans. Um,

(03:47:51):
what does the phrase secure the future bring to mind? Anything? Yeah?
So that became the new tagline for the entire Servative
Party under a tool. Kay, sure, we got, we got,
we got, we got Secure the Future, billboards, we got,
we got, we got websites Conservative dot c a slash
Secure the future. We got mailer's magazine covers all emblazoned

(03:48:15):
with secure the future or secure our future. Um, and
you know what will secure our future? Garrison the Chevron
ads that keep popping up. We keep securing our future. Yeah. Great,
you're welcome. It's a great time. Chevron appreciators for everyone. Ah,

(03:48:35):
we're back and just appreciating Chevron, just like Justin Trudeau.
Appreciate Justin Trudeau. Yeah, so secure the future great slogan,
not a good slogan. Bad um. I'm going to read
a bit from a mailer that went out to Conservative
Party members after a tool one leadership quote. I firmly
believe Canada has everything. It has everything it takes to

(03:48:58):
recover from COVID nineteen and enjoy prosperous future if we
have a government that knows how to secure the future.
If the truth, if the Trudeau Liberals stay in power,
they'll continue spending taxpayer money at pandemic era levels long before,
long after the virus is behind us. The result, all
the things we love about Canada will be in serious jeopardy.
Our debt will become out of control, and they'll never

(03:49:18):
be able to get back the Canada. You and I
grew up in the kind of Canada our children and
grandchildren deserve. So later on in the page, oh tool
says we need to stand up to the Chinese Communist
Party and hold Beijing accountable for sabotaging our economy and
taking jobs from Canadian workers. Um And. On August sixteen,
the Canadian Conservative Party twitter account tweeted out and I quote,

(03:49:41):
Canada's recovery program will secure the future for you, your children,
and your grand and your grandchildren. So that's fun. Also, also,
guess how guess guess how many words is in that
last sentence? Yeah, yeah, we're going back to calling Canada
Calanada again. That's it's like a dog whistle, but except

(03:50:02):
for you know, a dog whistle, only dogs can hear it,
except everyone. It's just a whistle. It's just it's just
a regular whistle. Yeah, it's it's it's that he just
tweeted it tweet Yeah. So as anyway, um as O'Toole
was getting all secure the future piled um. Canada's actual
far right populist party, the People's Party, was gaining much

(03:50:23):
more popularity amid the pandemic and the anti mask, anti lockdown,
anti VAXX protests. The COVID nineteen pandemic was a gift
to the far right in general, as it allowed the
injection and proliferation of conspiracy theories to accelerate at levels
almost never before seen and provided fair recruiting ground to
gain new followers. The PPC latched onto this and was
extremely successful. They were you know, they sponsored protests, They

(03:50:46):
did a whole bunch of campaigns that are around like
anti mask stuff, anti vaccine, you know, all all of it. Um.
So the PPC was able to be not just a
safe harper for anti immigration, white nationalists and neo Nazis
and other far right groups, but also now more mainstream
anti lockdown, anti vaccine, anti government protesters as well as
you know, gun rights activists and some general rule workers

(03:51:06):
feeling left behind from even the Conservative Party. So the
PPC has changed from a niche right nationalist party to
a full blown far right populist force. What Bernar in
the and the PPC have done so effectively since the
pandemic is to use the broad concerns around COVID and
freedom and the more you know, mainstream concerns about economic anxieties,
job loss, lots of businesses, immigration and changing culture and

(03:51:28):
managed and managed to rule all of these things up
into one tight package, which is really appealing to a
lot of Canadians who are very anxious about the state
of their country, especially amid the COVID nineteen pandemic. So
the results of the September snap election, which was you
know last month, we're basically the same as the twenty
election UM, except the PPC went from one point six

(03:51:49):
percent of the vote to five percent of the vote,
A big, big change, uh. They That means they were
ranking above the Green Party and nearly tying the block
kebu Qua, So they made I know, like one of
five percent doesn't seem like tons, but like this is
a really big jump for a brand new party UM,
especially especially if they're ahead of the Green Party and

(03:52:10):
tying the Block Party. That is like a notable shift UM.
The University of Ghulaf Professor of of Political Science Tamra
Small said that said this after the results of the
last snap election. Quote, I think the only leader who's
a static about last night's results is Bernair. I don't
think they're going anywhere. I think it seems that he's
taken the populism and attached to far right politics, the

(03:52:32):
idea that Canada was immune to this sort of far
right populism, the idea that Canada was going to be
free from the populism that we saw in Europe, like
what Nigel Farage is in the UK. But I think
lots of people are wondering if Bernara is just gonna
say I'm not here to form an actual government, I'm
just here to challenge the system and use that as
a way of gaining massive support. Um. After a CTV

(03:52:52):
news emailed the PPC for comment for their post election story, uh,
the party spokesperson sent back a one line email response,
I don't respond to requests from leftists. Activists masquerading as
journalists get lost, so that's fun. Also in late September,
Bernard's Twitter account was temporarily suspended for encouraging his supporters

(03:53:13):
to attack journalists. Yeah just not like I'm okay with
criticizing journalists stuff, because most journalists are like not great.
But when you're using your political Twitter account to just
like tell people to just go attack the press, usually
it's a bad sign of of like a political party.
Usually it's just like, yeah, political parties when they do
that usually leads to bad things. UM, we are going

(03:53:35):
to talk about one kind of wrapping up here. We're
talking about one Ontario People's Party candidate named Mario Greco,
who was a another another high school teacher UM and
self proclaimed game developer UM of A few years ago,
I I see Chriss Vincent because like you know, this
can't lead to good things the gamers, it can't be good.

(03:53:57):
So a few years ago, Greco made a video game
called Happy Culture Shootout UM. Quoting an article from Press
Progress dot c A Happy Culture Shootout is a Space
Invaders style game that allows players to control spaceship that
shoots laser beams at caricatures of various identity groups. Quote
this game, it's about an alien order to invade Earth

(03:54:18):
and transport all humans to happy Land, Greco says on
his personal website, which includes other games that he authored,
like Die mar which is about a young, misunderstood hero
who sees to liberate post war Germany. Umo in in
asist in a since telated video obtained by Press Progress,
The People's Party Canadate delivered a presentation to university students

(03:54:38):
several years ago, offering his postmortem on the game UM.
Reco expressed surprise that his students and faculty reacted negatively
to the game, with one calling it the most racist
game I've ever played. Greco says his game is not
racist in the slightest, noting that he made fun of
his own Italian heritage. He also claimed that some students
thought his gay Pride parade level was hilarious. My friends

(03:55:02):
and I love people of all cultures, and we also
love humor of all types that includes harmless racist jokes.
Greco said in the video, the game was intended to
make a joke about how ridiculous cultural stereotypes are, so
we can laugh about it together and move on with
our lives. UM. During the presentation, the People's Party candidate
offered a interesting side note about the games Israel level.

(03:55:23):
According according to Greco, a faculty member at the university
strongly recommended that he removed Jewish stereotypes from the game.
He was like, no, get rid of it immediately. Don't
have any religious content whatsoever. I know that subject is very,
very touchy. So yeah, this is just a game where
you race shoot to minority people. UM. Anyway. In twenty
six and Greco posted a photo on Facebook of an

(03:55:46):
illustration of Pepe the Frog, which he said was drawn
by one of his students in in the white board
of his York Region high school. Um Peppe had a
little speech bubble that said free Kuekistan Gray yep. So
now nazis so. Currently Greco is spending his time tweeting

(03:56:07):
about critical race theory and trying to get into office
under the People's Party banner UM. In his Twitter bio,
he calls himself an egalitarian, libertarian nationalist, and he still
also teaches computer science at Ontario High School. Diferent call
themselves fascists. I know it's it's not fun. These people
are all all for the worst, most scum. Um. And

(03:56:31):
one one more thing before we sign off. UM. Last month,
right before the September election, I was forwarded some pictures
of some People's Party of Canada posters and flyers put
up linking to their campaign website. That someone came across
UM around town, not not Portland's, like somewhere in Canada.

(03:56:51):
UM under the PPC logo there was you know, pictures
of people's faces and big black text that said it's
okay to be white, right bad. So that's the liberal utopia.
Of Canada everybody, um, And basically, like the reason why
I wanted to put these episodes together, it's because like

(03:57:11):
we we lots of like, you know, we make a
lot of jokes about, you know, escaping to Canada as
the States gets too fascist, and I just want to
like say, like I'm not saying Canada's getting at the
same rate, but Canada is not immune to the same thing.
Like it's it's it's it's it's you can't you can't
run away from authoritarianism by moving, yeah to a country

(03:57:31):
with no history of authoritarianism, like I don't know Germany,
uh huh. Yeah. And I think the everything is important
with with Canada particularly is that like Canada is like
affected by American political trends. And you see this absolutely
like like one of one of the things that I
remember looking at when I was when I was looking
into sort of if you look at the history of
like anti astion riots for example, So there's a huge

(03:57:52):
wave and night No. Seven that goes like it goes
all the way up the West coast because a lot
of them, and it ends in Toronto, yeah, a lot
of you know, yeah, and you see you see that
like and you see that like today to where it's like, yeah,
the Toronto I think has the highest rate of anti
Asian attacks like in North America. That's not pretty impressive
considering like the absolute shit show going on in like

(03:58:14):
New York, in LA and Seattle, and it's like, no,
Toronto's worse. No, it's it's it's real bad. There's I
talk a lot about how the far right is getting
a lot, a lot more, a lot stronger of an
influence in Alberta, and it is spreading into other eastern
eastern provinces, not just inside Quebec. You know, there was
the insult attack in Toronto a few years ago that
killed like I think like a dozen people. Of course,

(03:58:36):
there was the Quebec mosque shooting. There's been a lot
of these kind of things popping off, and you know,
there's there's even more starting in like British Columbia as well,
which is which has a decent far right kind of
influence at least on the eastern side of BC, um
away from like Victoria and from Vancouver. UM. So yeah,
I just wanted to like place together and be like, hey,

(03:58:57):
you know, it's it's worth looking at these countries that
we usually view with you know, generally doing better and
be like no, like it's the same thing is happening there,
and it's all it's all part of the same overarching
slide right word that we've seen in both in the
UK we were even seeing it now in Germany, we're
seeing it, you know, in the obviously the States under Trump,
and in Canada, even though the Liberals have won the

(03:59:18):
past few elections, it's still scooting right word. So yeah,
I just wanted to put this thing together. If you
want to keep up to date on Canadian stuff, you
can check out the Canadian Antihit network, which does work
tracking extremism in Canada. And yeah, that is uh, that
is what I put together. Thanks Garrison. Yeah, you're welcoming
from You're welcome. Well, that's the episode that's gonna do

(03:59:42):
it for us here and it could happen here today,
come back tomorrow or you know whenever, and we'll talk
about another part of the world. Maybe I don't know Portugal.
Fuck it, I don't have stuff pulled for partures. No,
that's what we're doing now. Follow us on Twitter, on Instagram,
and it could happen here. Pod and Cools on media

(04:00:03):
leafive star reviews, whatever, Goodbye, Goodbye 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
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(04:00:24):
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