It Could Happen Here Weekly

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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 compiletion 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. You crack open a doctor pepper.

(00:23):
You know it'll only make you more thirsty in the
long run, but you need some liquid in your mouth,
and you're saving your remaining fifteen gallons for a quick shower.
The U haul is finally almost packed up. You may
be able to make it down to San Francisco in time.
Living in Redwood Valley has been nice the last few years.
It's a beautiful place, but in August of two, the
drought became too much. Late last year, California's new far

(00:47):
right governor lifted all water restrictions on farmers. This sparked
a new statewide race to use what water was available
before it ran out. Lake Mendesino was already low at
the beginning of the year and for the first time
in your memory. It is now completely empty. San Francisco
isn't doing great either, but it's much better off than
where you live. The Russian River Watershed relies almost entirely

(01:07):
on rainfall and is isolated from state and federal aqueducts.
After the governor lifted water restrictions, new almond and pot
farms started sucking up ground water, and by the end
of the summer they started pumping from the river to
feed their thirsty crops. By mid July, your town implemented
a twenty five gallon limit per person per day. That's
about as much water as you go through during a

(01:28):
five minute shower. The first thing you sacrificed was your garden.
Then you stopped flushing after you peid. These tweaks added up, though,
and without water, the lifestyle you'd love to just stopped
being possible. Your brother in San Francisco offered to let
you move in with him. You weren't a fan of
the big city, but at least you'd be able to
shower again. And so you find yourself sipping an empty

(01:48):
soda can and loading up your last few boxes into
the U haul. You give your brother a quick call,
saying you're all packed up and about to head out.
He sounds worried and mentioned something about his school letting
new teachers go to to budget cuts. You can't really
afford to think about that. Now. You just need to leave,
since you're all sweaty from loading the U hall the
last few days. You decided to hop into the shower

(02:08):
one last time. You knew it wouldn't last long, but
you still seem surprised when the water turned off after
what felt like only two minutes. You quickly dry off
and grab some clean clothes from your backpack and throw
your damp towel into the passenger seat of the truck.
You say goodbye to your home of ten years and
to your old succulent plants, and begin the three hour
drive down to San Francisco. Water scarcity is a problem

(02:35):
you're probably already familiar with, especially if you live in
the Southwest. California has dealt with particularly brutal droughts over
the last twenty years, and the Golden States water problems
could be about to get much much worse, because in
just a few days, California might find itself helmed by
a far right governor with a near religious hatred of
water conservation. Electoral politics are not generally a big focus

(02:57):
on this show, but what's going on in the state
of California could have serious implications for many people, including
those outside the West Coast. The ongoing recall campaign against
Governor Gavin Newsom started out in June of twenty with
Republican politicians and activists unhappy with Newsom's handling of the pandemic.
Newsom's opposition to President Trump's cracked down on undocumented immigrants

(03:18):
also played a role. This is actually the fifth recall
attempt against Newsom since he took office in twenty nineteen,
but it's the first one to gain traction. It's fueled
in part by Newsom's own hypocrisy and hubris. On November six,
the recall effort gained court approval for a signature gathering extension,
and later that night, Governor Newsom went to a birthday

(03:39):
party for a Sacramento lobbyist and friend at French Laundry,
a pricing Napa Valley restaurant. Soon after, photo surface of
Newsom mingling massless at the packed restaurant. He faced heavy
criticism and apologized, but the damage was done. Republicans latched
onto this as an opportunity to finally push the recall
effort through. The recall petition, which had only fifty five

(03:59):
thousand of five signatures on the day of the dinner,
had nearly half a million a month after the November
sixth incident. California's recall process is probably the least democratic
one in the United States. Gathering signatures to authorize a
recall election is a pretty standard thing, but California has
among the lowest signature requirements and states that allow for
the recall of an official. Most states require that the

(04:22):
recall campaign must gather signatures equal to of the votes
cast in the last election. California requires just twelve percent
for executive officials. The l A Times notes quote that
might have been a high bar in nineteen eleven when
the population was scattered across the seven hundred and seventy
mile length of the state, But is it too low
in one when petitions for ballot measures are gathered and

(04:43):
moss by paid staff and parking lots. And That's not
the only questionable aspect of California's recall process. On recall
election day, voters will face two questions on the ballot, first,
yes or no on whether to recall Governor Gavin Newsom
from office. Second, and this one is technically option And
if so, who among the forty six candidates do you
want to take his place? The first question is decided

(05:06):
by a simple majority, just like other ballot measures, but
when it comes to the second question, the percentage requirements change.
The replacement candidate doesn't need more than fifty percent to win,
so if more than fifty percent of the voters say
yes on the recall question, Governor Newsom must step down,
even if he has more overall support than any other
individual challenger on the ballot. The replacement question is determined

(05:28):
by who gets the most votes among the challengers on
the ballot, which Newsom cannot be on. So forty nine
point nine percent of the voters can back Mr Newsom,
and he can still lose to someone who is supported
by only, say, twenty percent of the electorate, or even
a smaller fraction. For other California elections, including special elections
triggered by the death or resignation of an official, a
candidate cannot win without the support of a majority of voters.

(05:52):
If a candidate doesn't win over fifty percent outright then
the top to compete in a runoff election, not the
case for California's recall process. Organizers of the recall campaign
submitted two point one million signatures by the March seventeenth
filing deadline. One million, seven hundred nineteen thousand, nine hundred
signatures were ultimately determined to have been valid, which was
enough to trigger the recall. The deadline for casting your

(06:15):
vote is September fourteenth. If the recall succeeds, the new
governor would be in office for the remainder of mister
Newsom's term through January second, twenty twenty three, and that
leaves a lot of time for Executive Fuccory, especially considering
the new front runner. Far right radio talk show host
and frequent Fox guest Larry Elder, has emerged as the
likely candidate to replace Newsom in the event the recall

(06:37):
goes through. Elder, who was sixty nine, jumped into the
race relatively late in the game during mid July. At
that time, it was more of a toss up between
Republican candidates Kevin Falconer, a former San Diego mayre, and
businessman John Cox, who lost badly to Newsom. In the
twenty eighteen gubernatorial election, Assemblyman Kevin Kiley and former athlete
in media personality Caton Jinner pulled less well, but as

(07:00):
Larry Elder entered the race, he almost immediately became the
front runner in polls and raised lots of money from
small donors. In the three weeks after he announced his campaign,
he raised nearly four and a half million dollars, according
to fundraising disclosures. That's more than every other Republican challenger,
Sand's multi millionaire businessman John Cox, who's largely funding his
own campaign. Elder has been a central figurehead of the

(07:23):
right wing radio talk show scene since the nineties, but
has always been hesitant to run for public office, deeming
the state of California ungovernable due to its liberal supermajority.
But after talking with his friend and mentor Dennis Praeger
of the neo fascist propaganda outlet Praeger You, he figured
it might be worth a shot, and has expressed desire
to use the emergency powers of the governor to push

(07:44):
the state right words. Elder was born in Los Angeles,
but moved to Cleveland to attend law school and opened
his own firm in nineteen eighty. Elder's career began as
a bit of an accident. He'd been invited on a
Cleveland station as a guest. He did so well on
air that when the regular host went on accation the
following week, the program director asked Elder to fill in.

(08:04):
Soon enough, Elder had his own weekly time slot on
the Cleveland station. In the early nineties, a guest host
from Los Angeles, Dennis Prager, visited Cleveland. Elder quickly impressed
Praeger with his on air wit and talent, coupled with
the uniqueness of a black man openly expressing extreme conservative views.
Praeger persuaded his home station KBC in Los Angeles to
give Elder a shot. Quoting the l A Times, Elder

(08:27):
returned to his hometown in nine four, two years after
the civil unrest following the acquittal of the officers who
beat Rodney King and in the midst of the O. J.
Simpson murder case. The program director at rival KFI, David G. Hall,
felt KBC made a creative move bringing on this guy
from South Central who swung the other way on race.
Almost from the beginning. The self proclaimed sage from South

(08:49):
Central whipped up a fewer. He mixed soundbites from Representative
Maxine Waters with a recording of a barking dog. He said,
blacks exaggerate the significance of racism, while women did the
same in regards to sexism. For nearly four years, Elder
has slapped many members of his own race in the
face on radio, belittling them as whiners or losers, holding
himself up as a model of African American excellence. He's

(09:12):
become a darling of white listeners, who seemed to almost
gush when they telephone him on k ABC Talk radio.
They are astonished to find a black man who not
only isn't going to chastise them, but who also often
agreed with them, a black man who declared that race
was no longer a significant factor in American society. Elder
also doesn't believe that racial profiling exists. This is despite

(09:33):
telling The Times editorial Board that police pulled him over
between seventy five and a hundred times the first year
he had his driver's license. Elder's regressive, provocative content angered
Mine Angelinos and black citizens of California led a boycott
of advertisers on the show. It worked, and by the
late nineties the show had begun losing millions in AD revenue,
But thanks to syndication, changing networks, podcasts, and TV appearances,

(09:56):
Elder has been able to remain a central figure of
the right wing cont and sphere. He most recently starred
in a video series for far right propaganda organization and
literal cult, The Epoch Times. According to Elder's campaign, the
Central recall issues, He's focusing on our rampant crime, rising homelessness,
out of control costs of living, water shortages, disastrous wildfires,

(10:17):
rolling brown outs, and repressive COVID restrictions. For this show,
we'll be focusing on the last three as they relate
to the rapidly shifting and hostile climate. For the past
thirty years, Elder has been a classic conservative climate denier.
He had a whole section of his website devoted to
debunking the Gore bull warming myth. Like Al Gore bullshit
warming myth, Yeah, it's a bad pun. In a CNN

(10:40):
interview prior to the two thousand eight election, Elder called
global warming a false myth, while disparaging and making fun
of both John McCain and George W. Bush for discussing
global warming is a serious issue. However, more recently, Elder
has shifted his rhetoric around the climate. In an interview
last month, he expressed belief that some warming is taking place,
but by using old soft denialist talking points. Climate is

(11:02):
always changing. Of course, the climate is changing. The question
is what do we do about it? Do we deal
with the effects of it, or do we force feed
renewables based economy down the throats of people, jacking up
the price of energy a disproportionate pain for poor people.
But of course there's climate change, and the climate is
getting warmer, and maybe about a degree or so in
the last several years, and it will likely continue. He adds,
what I don't believe in is climate change alarmism. He

(11:22):
also said that he was not sure whether climate change
is making wildfires worse. Quote fires have gotten worse because
the failure of this governor to engage in sensible fire suppression.
Elder also blames California's rising housing costs on environmental extremists
that jack up the cost of housing so that developers
have to wait and wait and get sued over and over.
Agains that finally, when the home is built it's way
more expensive than otherwise it would be without these environmental

(11:45):
rules and regulations. Despite the slight back pedaling on climate
for better media optics, his potential policies on the topic
are just as horrendous as one might assume. In a
recent video news conference, Elder declared that he would in
the war on oil and gas and the attack on
the logging industry, while also reducing regulation on fracking and
stopping California's growing efforts to expand wind and solar power,

(12:06):
which he calls not very efficient. Elder did not mention
climate change during his news conference. Water scarcity will be
an increasingly severe concern for California in the coming years.
Drought is already a major political talking point among voters
and politicians, and it creates another rift between city folk
and rural farmers. Farmers are having a harder time growing
crops and feel threatened by water rationing. They're frustrated by

(12:29):
the thought that the Democrats running cities will always prioritize
pumping extra water into population dense areas. Meanwhile, people in
cities are concerned they will be forced to cut back
on personal water use as almond farmers suck up tons
of water to feed their droops. Just building more dams
and water catchment systems or aquifers may seem like a
solution and have done property. Some of those things might help,

(12:50):
but they can't make up for a lack of rainfall
and snow melt. Relying on river water has its own problems.
Pulling too much from fresh water that flows through rivers
allows for extra salt water to intrude from the bay,
and ocean salinity in the water negatively impacts local ecosystems
and dirties what is supposed to be a freshwater source.
Drought is simultaneously pushing migratory fish species like chinook salmon

(13:12):
and steelhead trout closer to the brink of extinction. Large
numbers of fish are dying off because the rivers they
rely on as spawning habitats are too warm or too low.
Anxiety around water, droughts, and crops as among the issues
driving some people to vote yes on the recall. A
poll conducted last July by the Public Policy Institute of
California found that residents sited drought and water supply as

(13:34):
their top environmental concern, with about twenty calling it their
chief concern. Which makes it pull well above the related
problems of wildfires, air pollution, and climate change. Republican politicians
have been using anxiety around drought to drum up support
for the recall by blaming the current situation on Newsom.
The original recall petition against Newsom from early warned that

(13:55):
the governor quote seeks to impose additional burdens on our state,
including rationing our water use. Last April, Governor Newsom did
declare a drought emergency into northwest California counties. The order
allowed state officials to restrict the amount of water diverted
from the Russian River and authorized the relocation of fish
stranded in drying puddles. The local county government asked residents

(14:17):
to use no more than fifty gallons per day per person,
but Newsom himself hasn't mandated water rationing for individual consumers,
though he has asked Californians to voluntarily cut consumption by
fifteen percent and has suggested that statewide restrictions could be
on the table if conditions worsened. Heading into the fall,
Newsom in the Department of Water Resources as a whole
do have ideas in mind for tackling this issue. Last year,

(14:41):
Newsom authorized an eleven billion dollar water infrastructure project building
a single thirty mile tunnel under the Sacramento, San Joaque
and River Delta. The project, which has been discussed for years,
is being pushed forward in hopes that it will protect
the Delta's existing wetland ecosystem and supply enough fresh clean
water to be diverted south for the rest of the state.
But the tunnel concept has faced opposition both locally and

(15:03):
from conservation minded folks. Some residents in the Delta regency
it is just a water grab to meet the demands
of southern California and the agriculture industry while the needs
of those up north are being ignored. Ecologically focused critics
say it could still increase salinity in the Delta and
result in notable harm for the ecosystem. Newsom has more
recently discussed other action and legislation to help mitigate the

(15:24):
continued drought, quoting the San Francisco Chronicle. In July, the
governor signed a state budget that includes five point one
billion dollars over four years for new water infrastructure and
drought preparation projects, including money to repair delivery canals help
farmers irrigrate crops more efficiently in start water recycling projects. Still,
Newsom's recent actions have done little to quell anger among

(15:45):
many farmers, who say the state's failure to plan for
another major drought just a few years after it exited
the last one has put them on the brink of ruin.
Ernest Buddy Mendez, a lifelong farmer in Fresno County and
Republican county supervisor, said he was forced to let hundreds
of acres where he used to o cotton and wheat
dry up this year after his allotment of river water
was slashed to zero. He's relying on groundwater pumped from

(16:06):
wells to keep his grove of almond trees alive. Mendez
said he hasn't decided whom to support as a replacement candidate,
and the recall just that he will vote Hell Yeah
to remove Newsom. Let's face at Newsom. Damn is a
four letter word, Mendez said, we haven't done anything in
twenty years about building storage. California already does have one
of the most extensive damn systems in the country, with

(16:27):
nearly fifteen hundred reservoirs. Building new on river dams would
cost billions of dollars if such efforts even survive legal challenges,
which are all but guaranteed amid the struggle to save
endangered fish species, there are not many areas left that
would make sense or be sustainable to build a new
large reservoir. One other, more cost effective solution could be
to store more water collected during wet years and underground aquifers.

(16:50):
One of the solutions to this problem is the same
as the solution to a number of other climate related problems,
which is that we simply have to cut the amount
of resources we're consuming, whether that means reducing our inner
ge use or cutting down on wasteful water use. You
can only build so many dams. The trend of California
farmers growing thirstier crops has made an existing problem much worse. Today,

(17:10):
the state produces three times as many acres of almonds
as it did twenty five years ago. With California most
likely entering a third straight year of disappointing rainfall and
snow melt, anxiety around drought and increased severity of water
restrictions won't get any better, And if the Lenina weather
pattern hits the West coast as it's poised to That
would mean the western US will have a drier and

(17:30):
hotter winter than average. Last August, water regulators made an
unprecedented move to begin cracking down on water use in
the sprawling Sacramento River in San Joaquin River watersheds, ordering farmers,
water districts, and other landowners, including the City of San Francisco,
to stop drawing water from the basins of the river
or face penalties of up to ten thousand dollars a day.

(17:51):
The city has enough water in its reservoirs to meet
demand for at least a couple of years, and stored
water is not affected by the state restrictions. Water agencies
also can seek an exemption from curtailments of human health
or safety or compromised. This does hit rural areas and
agriculture the hardest, because most cities have alternative supplies and
stored water to tap into. Looking to attract voters, Larry

(18:13):
Elder and other Republican challengers to Newsom have made it
a recurring point to say that farmers should not have
to endure such cuts, but they don't really give any
perspective solutions to prevent rationing. When water levels at reservoirs, lakes,
and wells are all plummeting. Larry Elder said drought is
not inevitable and said he supports building more reservoirs and
dams to store runoff, but he has also voice support

(18:34):
for permitting to salinization projects. The salinization devastates ocean life,
costs much more than other alternatives, and uses tons of energy. Also,
soon it will be made obsolete by increasing focus on
water recycling. Explaining to salonization quickly, ocean water is collected
and run through pipes to remove the largest solids, and
then pump through reverse osmosis filters to remove salt, while

(18:56):
fish and other creatures die upon being sucked in or
just from the force of the water flow. In a
report studying it is salinization plant in the early two thousands,
it was found that on average over a five year period,
nineteen point four billion larva were caught up at intakes
and about two point seven million fish, along with marine
mammals and sea turtles were killed by intake equipment. For
every gallon of drinking water to salinization leaves another gallon

(19:18):
of salty brine behind. The plants then just mix that
with two parts ocean water before pumping it back into
the ocean. These measures can negatively impact the environment for
this generation and generations to come. This type of resource
extract of thinking reflects how we got into the problem
in the first place. Battling over water allotments will only
get us so far when dealing with lackluster rainfall. What

(19:40):
can help is permaculture programs to help farmers learn ways
to irrigate more effectively and cultivate healthier soils that retain water.
Moving away from water heavy crops like almonds and towards
more sustainable and moisture efficient crops must also be done
if we want to stave off the worst effects. Putting
Larry Elder in office won't make it rain, but it
will put the state at least another year further behind
on taking the kind of action necessary to ensure California

(20:04):
remains habitable. The last few months in San Francisco have
been honestly better than you expected. Still hot and dry,
but now that you're in fall, the heat has become manageable.
In the Bay Area, at least, staying with your brother

(20:26):
has been actually really nice. The first few showers felt
like luxury, recently, he's had less of a good time.
He found out he was getting laid off right before
the school year started. He told me. Over fifteen thousand
other teachers have been fired as a part of the
governor's new reform schools program. The teacher's union is fighting it,

(20:47):
but your brother isn't too optimistic of regarding the outcome.
He's been looking for new work, and meanwhile, you've gotten
a shitty retail job to help with bills while you
decide on what hospitals you want to apply to. You
don't really miss your old MS job in Redwood Valley.
When you finally do get back into medical care, you
really prefer something in a hospital or clinic setting as

(21:07):
opposed to the extra stress inherent in emergency services. The
one chance you have had to use your medical skills
since moving was during the fires last September and October
back up north. They got really bad and hundreds of
thousands of people evacuated. Down South, some old activist friends
of yours from college made their own fire relief slash

(21:29):
Mutual Aid, set up to give out clothes and food
and to help people displaced by the fires. You haven't
talked much with your old college buddies in the past
few years, but upon hearing of the relief effort, you
happily offered up your skills to help with minor medical
issues in a smell medic tent they set up. It
was the first time you've helped with anything related to
protests organizing since you moved up to Redwood Valley ten

(21:51):
years ago. It was oddly refreshing. Politics hasn't been a
major part of your life since college. But speaking of politics,
mid term ms are finally this month. The past year
has felt like it stretched on forever. Your brother and
his union buddies have been doing canvassing for a few
progressive city council candidates that might actually get a shot

(22:12):
at getting in. You haven't had time to adjust to
San Francisco's local political scene, and honestly, you're not sure
if you really care to. You have been keeping half
an eye on the big state electoral races, though, which
feels kind of weird. You know, there's no way the
Republican governor will get reelected, not here in California. One
thing that has gotten you worried is the weekly anti

(22:34):
election fraud rallies that have been happening in l A.
Ever since October, the governor, surrounded by state troopers, has
made it down himself a few times to drop up
support from his fan base, and after the rallies, roving
gangs of far right extremists have gone around randomly attacking
homeless encampments. You heard that just last week after a
Sunday rally, three people had to be rushed to the

(22:56):
emergency room. It's now just a week before Action Day.
You're on the bus home from your job at the
vintage clothing store when you receive a message on signal
from one of your old college mutual aid buddies you
met up with again during the fire relief effort. The
message reads, hey, are you free on election Day? You
hadn't really thought about the day itself, You respond, maybe

(23:19):
nothing really planned yet. Your friend replies with a fat
wall of text. My affinity group and I are heading
down to l A on Tuesday. There's a big stop
the steel type rally happening, and where it is, lots
of proud boys are gonna show up. Comrades in l
A have put out some calls for support, so my
crew is going to go down and probably bring some

(23:40):
medical stuff. If you want to come, we got an
extra seat in the van. The thought of driving down
to Los Angeles to deal with proud boys doesn't excite you,
especially on an already stressful day. You think about it
for a few minutes. Images of the people maimed during
and after the recent rallies floods your mind. Your buddies

(24:00):
know more about organizing and protests than you do, but
you have more medical training. You decide you'll do it.
You reply, I'll come with and pack some extra effects
and tourniquets. Among the issues of Republican recall, challengers have

(24:20):
raised to attack newsom, forced mismanagement has leomed large among
the recent complaints. This type of thing hearkens back to
Trump's old habit of blaming the governor and not raking
enough leaves for California's fiery plight. On a larger scale,
this can be seen as part of an effort to
push all the blame of wildfires off of oil gas

(24:41):
and our transformation of the climate and onto a simple
lack of fire prevention measures. This narrative, of course, makes
the fossil fuel industry more happy. The thing is, all
of these things are contributing factors for California's wildfire problem.
Climate changed caused hotter temperatures and droughts makes fires easier
to catch and spread, and inadequate forest management, plus above

(25:04):
ground power lines do the same. Just because there are
bad faith attacks on Newsom doesn't mean there aren't actual
failures he's made as governor, especially in relation to the forests.
An investigation from CAP Radio and California MPR published last
June found out Newsom had grossly misrepresented and fled out

(25:25):
lied about his promises of new wildfire prevention efforts. Elements
of the piece were, of course, used by Larry Elder
and the Right to push for support of the recall,
but the article itself is a very fine piece of journalism.
Back when Newsom first took office in January twenty nine,
one of the first things he did was signed on
executive order overhauling how California handles wildfire prevention and forest management.

(25:50):
The measures included removal of hazardous dead trees, vegetation clearing,
creation of fuel breaks and community defensible spaces, and creation
of ingress and e dressed corridors. In January twenty a
year after Newsom's initial announcement. The Governor's office claimed in
a press release that under the Executive Orders Priority Projects,

(26:10):
ninety acres got treated with these fire prevention measures, but
according to data attained by CAP Radio and MPR, the
actual number of acres treated by these priority projects was
only eleven thousand, three hundred and ninety nine, just thirteen
percent of the number Newsome boasted about, quoting the piece
by CAP Radio quote data shows cal Fire's fuel reduction

(26:33):
output dropped by half and twenty twenty two, levels below
Governor Jerry Brown's final year in office. At the same time,
Newsom slashed roughly one hundred and fifty million dollars from
cow Fire's wildfire prevention budget. In four point three million
acres burned, the most in California's recorded history. That was

(26:53):
more than double the previous record set in eighteen when
the Camp fire destroyed the town of Paradise, ultimately killing
eighty five people. A decade ago, cal Fire was treating
a poultry seventeen thousand acres annually. That number has steadily climbed.
Though Newso misrepresented the number of acres treated in his
priority projects. The overall amount of wildfire mitigation work carried

(27:15):
out by cal Fire spiked in his first year of
office to sixty four thousand acres, but in fuel reduction
totals plummeted to less than thirty two acres, a roughly
fifty drop unquote. Multiple factors contributed to twenty twenties subpar
fire prevention and reduction efforts in the year, with the

(27:36):
large number of acres treated in recent history. The state
budget allotted for three hundred and fifty five million dollars
for wildfire prevention and resource management, but after the COVID
nineteen pandemic hit California in early Newsom cut the budget
down to two hundred and three million. On top of

(27:56):
the budget cuts, the fires themselves made prevention work more challenging.
Twenties wildfire season started out early, which resulted in less
time to do prescribed burns and thinnings because the same
teams that are tasked with prevention and fuel reduction often
also serve as firefighters once the fires break out. As
of MAE, cal Fire has treated over twenty three thod

(28:19):
acres throughout the year. This puts California on a trajectory
better than last year's total, but not as high as
the sixty thousand plus acres treated in Newsom has been
trying to make up for his missteps and gross exaggerations.
Quoting the Cap Radio report again, quote, Newsom is trying
to play catch up with the state enjoying an unexpected surplus.

(28:42):
Newsome proposed two billion in spending on wildfires and emergency preparedness,
with one point two billion going towards wildfire resiliency in
the upcoming budget. Experts say the increase in prevention spending
could help the state get closer to a less day
DRISS wildfire season over time, but they also expressed concern

(29:04):
over whether the state will sustain that commitment for years
to come. Unquote. Revelations about Newsom's and cow fires lies
and lackluster force management were quickly jumped on by Larry
Elder and other Republican challengers as an easy way to
attack Newsom and to move the conversation about wildfires away
from climate change. Elder has said he has quote unquote

(29:26):
no idea why more prevention and reduction measures aren't being done,
and when he becomes governor, he'll be a quote implementing
these common sensical kinds of plans so that we can
reduce the severity of these fires unquote. Elder has given
no concrete plans on what measures he'll be shooting to implement,
or any indication on how much money will be directed

(29:47):
to prevent or fight fires on the noted budgets. Elder
has said that the more recent spending on wind and
solar power has left quote less money for removing trees
and putting power lines underground, the kind of things that
would make these fires less intense unquote, And he promises
to drastically cut spending on renewables while also investing more

(30:08):
in oil and gas. To be clear, Newsom's upcoming budget
contains billions for both fire prevention, slash fuel reduction, and
renewable energy such as wind and solar. Whoever ends up
governing California is not only in charge of local politics.
Like governors at other states. What happens in California affects

(30:29):
people across the country and even globally, whether that's wildfire
smoke traveling across continents, or changes to supply chains and
industry rippling across the world. California is, after all, the
world's fifth largest economy. There are also political ramifications that
could affect the States as a whole. If Elder gets
in office, the Senate is currently a fifty fifty split

(30:52):
between Republicans and Democrats, with Vice President Kamala Harris getting
the tie breaking vote. One of California's senators is eighty
eight year old Diane Feinstein, the oldest active Senator. If
she dies in office or has to step down due
to medical reasons before her term is over, the governor
of California gets to appoint her replacement. If Elder appoints

(31:15):
a Republican, then the Senate will be back under geop
control and give it his connections to the far right
media sphere. The list of potentials that Elder could appoint
is frightening. This is by no means inevitable even if
Elder gets into office. If he does, Finstein does have
the brief opportunity to step down and put a replacement

(31:36):
in before the new governor has sworn into office. However,
Feinstein has said she has no plans of doing so.
Reports of her declining health have become only more common
in recent years, but like many politicians and judges, she's
not keen on stepping aside, even to possibly help prevent
a disastrous outcome. Changes in the Senate are not required

(31:57):
for horrible outcomes. In the wake of an even brief
Elder governorship, his anti VAX sentiments and planned to open
up the state and remove basically all COVID restrictions will
result in hospitals being pushed to max capacity. Elder has
said he has plans to appoint education officials similar to
former Secretary Betsy Divas, and judicial appointees like Conservative Supreme

(32:19):
Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Elder has stated his intention of
declaring states of emergency and using executive orders to push
through otherwise unpopular legislation. He has discussed plans to declare
an education emergency in order to fire upwards of twenty
one quote unquote bad teachers. Elder blames teacher unions for

(32:41):
quote protecting bad teachers, and in a recent interview stated,
quote someone told me that between five percent and seven
percent of public school teachers need to be fired. An
emergency declaration would give the power to get rid of
bad teachers faster than the system allows. Once you did that, automatically,
education would improve overnight unquote. Now, Elder is not specified

(33:03):
who had advised him on teacher terminations or how he
plans to weed out the so called bad teachers out
of the three thousand in the school system. He's also
touted plans to declare a homeless emergency, but his solutions
have nothing to do with actually helping homeless people. His
homeless emergency declaration would allow him to suspend the California

(33:25):
Environmental Quality Act, the long requiring environmental review of building projects.
Elders stated goal is to unleash developers and contractors without
environmental regulation, which he claims to quote tries developers and
contractors like criminals, unquote, and allows building projects to get
suspended indefinitely, ultimately raising the cost of housing in his opinion.

(33:49):
One of the more frightening aspects of Larry Elder is
his close ties to many far right propagandists. He's done
work for Praker You Epic times, and has been a
guest on Fox News at least two hundred and twenty
times in the past five years. In the last episode,
we discussed his friendship with Dennis Prager. Also Dave Reuben
just recently campaigned for Elder at a recent rally, and

(34:12):
a month and a half ago, Elder was on Candice
Owens Show discussing how the descendants of slave owners deserve
reparations for having their property i e. Black people stolen
from them when the slaves were freed. Those are his words,
not mine. What's probably most concerning is Elder's connection to
Stephen Miller. In fact, we wouldn't have Stephen Miller if

(34:35):
it were not for Larry Elder. Back in the late nineties,
a conservative student from Santa Monica High School would call
into Larry Elder's show to rant about his school's liberal culture. Reportedly,
the student would go around demanding staff and fellow students
regularly recite the Pledge of Allegiance. He railed against condom

(34:55):
giveaways and called Spanish language announcements quote a crup preventing
Spanish speakers from standing on their own unquote. Young Californians
calling into Elder's show and agreeing with him wasn't very common,
and Elder ate it up. He loved talking with the
students so much that he let the kid on basically
any time he wanted a platform to rant and rave.

(35:18):
You know where this is going. That student was Stephen Miller.
According to Miller, he appeared on Elder's show sixty nine times.
Throughout his time in high school and university, and calls
Elder quote the one true guide I've always had unquote.
Miller's appearances on Elder's radio show made him a recognizable

(35:38):
figure in the larger conservative media world, helping him connect
with Steve Bannon and eventually President Trump. By extension, Elder
was Stephen Miller's on ramp to the White House. In
an email to Miller in twenty sixteen, Elder told him quote,
I hope to live to see the day when you
become president. When media has brought up his friendship with

(36:00):
Stephen Miller, Elder tries very quickly to change the subject
when pushed on the topic. In a recent interview, Elder
shot back with quote, why would you bring up Stephen Miller?
I'm just wondering what the agenda here is? What's the point?
Am I somehow what a Nazi? A fascist? Unquote? I
think that says enough. The reason we haven't discussed the

(36:23):
other candidates in the recall election is because at this point,
if Newsom is recalled, it's absolutely certain that Elder will
be the one to succeed him. He has a twenty
point lead ahead other challengers, but that lead is still
only a tiny fraction of the total electorate, which demonstrates
the part of the problem in California's recall process. There

(36:43):
are other Republican challengers with concerning pasts and beliefs, lots
of anti mask, anti trans, anti vax, total disbelief, and
climate change people spouting q and on originated conspiracy claims
advocating the lie that the presidential election was stolen. And
there's even a Democrat challenger that plans to use the
National Guard to round up all homeless people and put

(37:05):
them in concentration camps. But Elder himself shares a lot
of those views and uses the fact that he's black
as a shield for criticism against his racist and nationalist
policies and ideas. We haven't even mentioned that last month
Elder's ex fiance came out and said that Elder was
extremely abusive and had threatened her with a loaded gun.

(37:27):
In early August, polls were showing pretty much neck and
neck for the first question on the ballot, yes or
no on the recall itself. A survey USA pull from
that time even had respondents vote no on the recall
and fifty one percent vote yes to remove Newsom Throughout
August and September, results started to flip the other direction

(37:48):
as ads against the recall hit the airwaves and internet.
The latest Survey USA poll has fifty four percent voting
No one the recall and voting yes. Other polls hover
around same ten to fifteen point lead for Newsome staying
in office. Now, with pools not going the way Elder
in the GOP would like, we're starting to see a new,

(38:11):
yet familiar narrative being prepared on on my on my website,
elect elder dot com. We have voter Integrity Project. We
have lawyers all set up, all ready to go to
foul lawsuits in a timely fashion. The reason the lawsuits
did not did not work in the election. We know
what happened there is because the lawsuits were filed too
late and many of them were dismissed one procedural grounds.

(38:32):
Of course, don't like to overturn an election. So when
did you hear of anything suspicious? We've heard a lot
of things that have been suspicious so far. Go to
elect Goda dot com. We're gonna sick our lawyers on
them foul lawsuits right away. They're gonna cheat. We know that.
Can I tell you what. So many people are angry
about the crime, about the homelessness, about the way he
shut down this state, About the fact that one third

(38:53):
of all small businesses, many of them are owned by
black and brown and Easian American people, that they hear about.
But the declining call of the schools, but the fact
that people are leaving, rolling BrownHouse, lack of water. So
many people are angry. The number of people that are
going to vote to recall this man is going to
be so overwhelming, So then even when they cheat, they're
still gonna lose. That's Larry Elder saying that if he

(39:14):
doesn't win, that means the election must have been stolen.
Fox News has been promoting the same idea the past month.
All of it is in the vein of the Stop
the Steel movement post presdential election, culminating with the attempted
insurrection on January six. Here's Elder again on Fox News

(39:35):
in early September. But you're right, I am concerned about
voter fraud, and that's why I'm asking people to go
to elect Elder dot com. That's my website. We have
a voter integrity project set up with a bunch of
lawyers ready to foul lawsuits if anybody sees anything suspicious.
Big election fraud conspiracy proponent and former House Speaker Newt
Gingrich was one of the first people to chime in

(39:58):
to stoke disinformation of at the recall election. And I
think this may well be the most rigged stay wide
election we've seen probably at least a half century. And
I think people should look carefully of this because it's
pretty good evidence that if Newsom is in a straight,
honest count, he probably has a good chance of losing.
But if they can stuff every ballot box in California

(40:21):
and they can cheat in every way possible, and of
course this type of propaganda has made it onto the
most watched cable news show on air, Tucker Carlson, California
does not get the credit it deserves for the corruption
that's endemic there. It's a one party state and they
act like it. And you've got to have concerns about
whether this recall election will be free and fair. Are
you concerned? Well, of course I'm concerned, Tucker. I'm involved

(40:45):
in election integrity efforts throughout the United States, and I'm
also member of the Republican National Committee, so we have
a team of lawyers that is ready to deploy throughout
the state here, and we are monitoring things every single day.
Just a couple of hours ago, I filed a lawsuit
to intervene a challenge to the constitutionality of the recall
statute because frankly, I don't trust the Secretary of State
or the Attorney General, who are both appointed by the governor,

(41:08):
to defend him in this regard, and so we are
going to be jumping on every potential opportunity to do
that and fight back against the Democrats. Of course, they
are playing fast and loose. We've seen some very alarming
scenes of three ballots bundled together in the car of
a person with a gun and some drugs, and so
we are definitely looking into all of these issues. But Tucker,
ultimately it's going to come down to how much do

(41:30):
people want to change in California. And I can tell
you even living in my latte sipping avocado toast, eating,
you know, Lululemon wearing neighborhood in San Francisco, people are
fed up with the crime, the drugs, the homelessness, the
intermittent electricity, and everything else that is wrong with California,
So people want to change here. It's just not working.
And this really is a test of whether our system works.

(41:53):
I mean, can people get better leadership? That's kind of
the question. Will there be election observers on a scene
so the rest of us can know this was fair? Well,
the problem in California is that the voting doesn't just
take place on election day like it would in a
normal place. It takes it's taking place now on a
rolling basis through mail in voting. It's a hundred percent

(42:15):
mail in ballots this time around, and it is going
to take place for thirty days after the election if
it's close, because they have thirty days to count the vote.
That's sixty days of voting. And of course a lot
of shenanigans can occur and ballots can disappear. So we
are going to be observing it very closely and demanding
accountability and filing lawsuits wherever we need to to hold
the Democrats accountable because we cannot trust them. Yeah, I hope.

(42:38):
So people want to believe the system works, that it's
real that they have powered their vote matters. So I
appreciate what you're doing, Harmydale. Thank you a lot of
what's said in that last clip is either extremely misrepresented
or just flat outlines. Those three ballots found in a car,
we're actually part of a larger mail theft thing not
related to the election at all. Voters have received new ballots,

(43:01):
and for this election, just like the last one, Californians
have the option to vote in person, to mail in ballots,
or deliver them in a dropbox. The deadline to drop
off mail or place your vote is September. Counting cannot
start till the fourteenth either, and like every election, there
will be observers throughout the entire counting process. Obviously, this

(43:24):
isn't the first time conservative media has hyped up election fraud,
the last presidential election being the biggest instance to date.
But what is concerning here is that they're setting up
a template to use for all future elections whenever Republicans lose.
Here's a Fox clip from September seven. The only thing

(43:44):
that will save Gavin Newsom is voter fraud. So, as
they say, stay woke, pay attention to the voter fraud
going on in California because it's going to have big
consequences not only for that state, but for upcoming elections.
It's safe to assume that stop the steal esque strategies
will be us almost every time a Republican loses in
an election going forward. We've seen exactly what this type

(44:06):
of rhetoric and propaganda leads to, and it ends in blood.
There were multiple attacks on state capitals during the Stop
to Steel rallies prior to January six. In some places
like Salem, Oregon, they succeeded in getting inside the capital.
Even if Newsom gets to stay in office, there will
still be many problems, electric conspiracies, and the possibility of violence,

(44:30):
like January six, just being one. We haven't wanted to
righteously defend Newsom here. He's a politician and inept in
many ways. He deserves plenty of criticism, especially on the
issues of climate change, but the criticism levied at Newsom
from the likes of Elder in the GOP are based
on bigotry, nationalism, and climate denial. Newsom should be our

(44:53):
punching bag, not theirs. Greetings and welcome to it could
happen here. I'm Garrison Davis. I am a researcher and
writer on the podcast team. Today we have a roundtable

(45:15):
discussion with a group of researchers who look into extremism
and political political violence that's usually stemming from far right
propagandists and people in that kind of whole sphere. So
we have a discussion relating to climate change and all
these other things. So that I was able to record
these fine people. It's split up into two sections, So

(45:38):
part one is coming out today, Part two is coming
out to tomorrow. Highly recommend you listen to both, maybe
maybe even back to back at some point because it
does really give a nice rounded out um view of
what we were talking about. So, without further ado, here
is my discussion with I kind of know, well not
not a dozen, but of a lot a large amount

(45:59):
of some researchers. As we are all uh in the woods.
As you will soon find out, welcome to it can
happened here the Daily Show. I am Garrison Davis, and
I am recording in an undisclosed location in the woods.
Um we are me and a few a few Internet

(46:21):
colleagues are all hiding from the world for a week
to reset our poisoned brains. But I'm gonna slightly re
poison us here for about an hour to have a
discussion about climate change and terrorism because all we have
a group of people here who are all well research
the bad thing online a lot. So I'm going to

(46:43):
try to try to use to take advantage of having
this uh unique group of people all in one location
to have this nice discussion for you guys. But yeah, specifically,
we want to we want to talk about how we
how each of us has an you know, quote unquote
expert in certain fields. Um see climate change impacting impacting

(47:04):
extremism and terrorism in the next in the next few decades. Um.
And yes, we are recording in the forest. So if
you hear sounds like we're in the forest, that's because
we are. Um. You you guys already know me, or
you probably do. But I'm gonna we're gonna go around
a circle, probably starting on my left, um, introducing the people.
And yeah, just give a brief a brief brief bio.

(47:25):
However detail do you want to get into. My name's
Matt Taylor. I'm a journalist and researcher focusing on cults, um,
conspiracy theories, and extremism. And to day is my birthday.
Happy birthday, Matt. In the in the past, my name's THEO.
I am a journalist and researcher as well. I mostly

(47:47):
focused on the American militia movement and paramilitary groups. I'm
toothpick Um with THEO Matt Emmy and Big New Houses.
Isn't here on terrorism bad? That's that's a that's a podcast,
by the way, self plug um. My research and reporting

(48:08):
focuses on mainly on conspiracy theories and where that overlaps
with political extremism and the focus on connections between US
in Europe, especially Germany. I'm Peter Smith. I'm a journalist
with the Canadian Anti Hate Network and the host of
the Unusual Show podcast. I'm Lily and I focus on

(48:33):
experimism and kind of terrorism and data analysis. And I'm Emmy.
I do digital propaganda and rhetoric. That that that is
our little crew. Um. Yeah, let's see what the first
thing we kind of want to talk about, I'm guessing
is how we see like small because like the podcast

(48:57):
is more about like smaller local collapses, So we don't
there's not gonna be one big collaps. We're just see
small things start to fall apart. And how we see
when small things all apart, what we do we see
filling in those gaps? Specifically, I think this will tie
into the militia movement a lot in a lot of ways. UM.
So yeah, you guys can start sprouting off your your knowledge. Yeah.

(49:19):
So one of the things that I've been thinking of
and following it. I don't know if this has made
as much of an impact in US media UM, but
in the last month UM, parts of Germany and the
Netherlands experienced UM really bad flooding UM that that literally
wiped out some villages in some towns UM. And one

(49:41):
of the things that we've seen in Germany is you know,
far right groups UM. There isn't really a militia movement
because of the law is there, but but far right
groups rushing in UM and collecting aid and going for
photo ops UH in those catastrophe areas UM. And what
that does make me think of And maybe THEO can

(50:02):
talk more about this as we've seen similar stuff in
the US with the militia moving marking themselves as you know,
emergency preparedness UM or marking them selves in that way
and positioning themselves where when you know the government is
unable to respond, that these groups are able to come
in UM and also using that for their messaging and

(50:23):
for their rhetoric. Yeah, so, I mean that is something
that you see in the US. The biggest example, Garrison
and I talked about this earlier, but during the wildfires
in Oregon last year, you saw checkpoints being established by
militia groups, whether are already formed militia groups are kind
of impromptu armed bands. And you also see that as

(50:47):
like a big marketing thing. I know a lot of
the Virginia based militias that I follow went out to
Tennessee two one or two years ago when the tornadoes happened.
I was gonna mentioned that, Yeah, they did a bunch
of kind of aid and photo ops. Yeah. So just

(51:08):
not to docks myself, but I'm from Nashville, and and uh,
the beginning of in March, right before someone just dropped
a toy gun. Great job, guys. Yeah. So in the
beginning of March of last year, right before COVID hit Nashville,
we had a huge tornado go through Nashville itself and
wipe out like two different neighborhoods and then a rural

(51:31):
town right outside of Nashville. But you saw a lot
of like so the community comes together in this really
nice display mutual aid to do all the cleanup basically
before any official cruise could get there. But with that
you also sell like these far right groups coming in
for photo ops and it just it normalizes their presence
in heavily impacted areas. And it was not not ideal. Yeah,

(51:55):
a lot of the American militia movement, especially the modern
kind of post tooth was an eight strain of it
is predicated on this idea of a complete breakdown of
order or a loss of civil order. However you conceive
of that. And um, these like climate disasters that are
going to hit areas are going to kind of provide

(52:17):
a self fulfilling prophecy for these people to step in
and say like, oh no, you need some sort of
armed force, You need some sort of group of people
to keep order and to keep law in whatever way
they conceive of that. I do think it's interesting you
guys talking about kind of like the photo op thing
that they do, because when the wildfire has happened in Oregon,
all of the the actual like relief work was done

(52:38):
by anti fascists. Like we like people in Portland, we
set up, you know, these these massive camps to help.
We know all these like you know, much more conservative
people who who have who ad to that wait their
back to their homes and they were all getting fed
and all like their closes that were coming from anti fascists,
and the all the right did was do the arm
checkpoints thing. But interesting that like in the South, where
there's less anti fascists, like you know, compared to the generals,

(53:00):
compared to the Portland Right, how some of those groups
actually do do some of the relief effort um and
that that's definitely not the case up here in the
in the West coast. Oh yeah, I mean last year,
I remember a few county level militias that I follow
in Virginia. We're like seriously doing relief work, Like they
were gathering food, they were taking out places affected by

(53:23):
flooding in North Carolina, but tornadoes and Tennessee. It's not
I wouldn't go so far as to call it mutual
aid because it lacks the kind of ideological framework for that.
But they are providing some sort of infrastructure for their guys.
Yeah yeah, with yeah, with with less of like the
theory side of mutually but like, and I'm sure there's
someone else who can speak more on this, but like

(53:44):
from my perspective growing up in a super weird church,
I see this in interacting, they see this like combining
with local churches a lot as well. Um, I'm not
sure there's anyone else here who could say something more
intelligently than me about how like religion will come line
with these like kind of militia efforts. Well, I would
like eco eco extremists, like on the far right, on

(54:08):
the very very fringe far right, can start to like
be very esoteric about there, you know, belief in climate change,
and they start to sort of frame it as like
a reason for the collapse. Um, that we need collapse,
are attacking infrastructure, like for the purpose of somehow saving

(54:32):
the planet, even though it's really not going to get
anywhere we really need to. We have to do with
a lot of our own work on the planet. We
can't just destroy everything and see if it working. Yeah,
we can definitely bring up accelerationists and accelerationism as a
as an over overarching thing that is, you know, not
just it not to be like horseshoe theory about it,

(54:55):
but the accelation is that pops up a whole whole
lot of areas, including areas of the left to where
it becomes very unuseful, um and it can lead to
like a lot of wasted time and some destructive tendencies.
I mean, I think that point kind of also provides
an interesting through line between more mainstream militias and like
the really esoteric brands of eco fascism or ecologically based extremism.

(55:20):
Is that, like they're both very influenced by like colonial
schools of thought, like eco fascism and all that is
kind of predicated on this idea of like Tera Noli's
like there is this perfect empty wild land that we
can have manifest destiny exactly, And like so much of
the ideas of order and um like peacekeeping that you

(55:42):
find within more mainstream militia movements come from this exact
same type of thinking, where it's like a colonial order
that you need to keep. Yeah. I know, there's a
lot of a lot of people on the left who
are in like the kind of like you know, green green,
like like ecosocialist or like green anarchists. Kind of strains
to get very frustrated when people talk about eco fascism,

(56:04):
which I can understand because no one really means the
same thing when they talk about it. Sometimes they just
mean any like any like quote unquote terrorism that has
like has like an environmental purpose. Some people, you know,
when they think of eco fascists, we think of like overpopulation. Um.
You know, there's a lot of different things they mean
mean by it. But I know we we've all had
talks about like what we personally view as like eco fascism,

(56:26):
because it's's it's it's not just eco streamism, like eco
streamism does not equal fascism. Like there is there's a
whole bunch of eco extremists who are very anti fascist, um.
And there is some who kind of bridge bridge the gap,
you know, like like like id S has some more
fascist tendencies, But I would not accurately call them fascist
based on the type of stuff they do with type

(56:47):
of right and they do. They do not have they
do not check all of the boxes. Um. But then
then we do have people who I would accurately describe
as eco fascists who have done who've done you know,
mass shootings, who have a lot of eco who have
eco fascist stuff either in the writing that they like
or their own manifestos. They bring up enough points it's like, yeah,
you kind of fall into this broad category. Just someone
here want to give their personal definition of ego fascism.

(57:09):
This isn't this not necessarily exactly what we use for
the pod, but I just I'm interested to here is
a lot of people with various backgrounds. Everyone has their
own specialized knowledge. What kind of when people say that, what,
what do you kind of put into that category? People
believe in like this organic law and like natural order,
and they believe that like there is a natural hierarchy
ingrained in everything. And I think that generally, like if

(57:35):
we return to like some kind of primitive society or like,
you know, they'll assume that like everything has uh its
own structure, and that there's going to be people who
rise to the top, people who just you know, uh

(57:55):
don't belong in that kind of society. It's going to
be really damaging for like the elder, for disabled people.
And they just sort of see it as like survival
of the fist um. And I think that's like a
much more eco fascist point of view rather than like
a more green anarchist point of view where things would
sort of even out um rather than become a hierarchical Yeah. Yeah,

(58:19):
I think hierarchy is an important part of that. And
how we you know, there is like a lot of
green anarchist who are focusing on like making their own
medication for for you know, people with diabetes and stuff,
and that'skind of stuff that is like really interesting to
look at and stuff that we should absolutely pursue because
will become less relianced with apply chains. And we don't
really see ego fascists doing that. We do not see
them focusing on making medication for people. Oh no, maybe

(58:42):
I can kind of set some people have to say
more stuff if I say, was real quickly. But one
of things that I always or that that is a
red flag for me is is just you know, bring
in this very traditional discussions of gender roles and and
relating that to the environment. Yeay of our rhetoric an example,
I mean, I don't we don't need to say names

(59:03):
of specific like writers are people, but there's definitely describe
the general sure, yeah, stop playing with the toy gun.
Oh my god. Um, just just like establishing and it
is kind of it can be kind of like an
older left thing too, but establishing you know, ecological discussions

(59:25):
within framework of traditional gender roles. Um. And kind of
like what is expected of people based on their sex. Yeah,
this is this is this is the dark side of
cottage core. That's one way to put Yeah, I mean
you want to get in here, Oh boy, Yeah, I

(59:47):
like parts of cottage courts not want intersect with a
certain strain of politics, like queer. Cottage core is extremely
cute until yeah, well until you're not queer, and listen,
you know, sometimes they still are. Now Here's the thing.
When we're when we're dealing with like traditional gender role stuff,

(01:00:08):
it's a really like slippery slope into more aggressive strains
of thought. So when we're when we're talking about the
the idea of of the class will it's mass birthday.

(01:00:30):
You asked to apologize. Yeah, yeah, ripped to the editor.
I wouldn't know. That's so good. So when they're talking
about the class and they want, you know, they think
the rod of modernity will be gone, society will be ended.
They can they can you know, rebuild from the ground
up smaller communities and uh, they can. They can build

(01:00:53):
the society they want, which is largely no nationalists. It's
not great. The the idea that there will be this
this supertraditional family structure you're going to have your this
combined strong warrior also homesteading man and your cool trad
life who never ages above thirty in this society. Like

(01:01:17):
I'm being generous here, assuming that at least like some
of these people have a little bit of like pre planning,
but they don't. They don't um, and they step on
each other a lot, right because they have this this
whole plan for this uh, this society free of industry um,

(01:01:40):
and they can't stop posting about it on the Internet.
It's really funny, right, Like they're not they're not good
at it. Yeah, they're like way too addicted to posting
to like actually commit to like the true off the
grid trad life. At least at least ten k was
off the grid. We don't gotta hand it. We don't
got a handed to it. You got ahead, do you?

(01:02:02):
Under circumstances? Got hit pod divided on how much we've
gotta hand it? Said, Kay. The official stands of terrorism
bad is a terrorism is bad When we just bring
them on, it is kind of a concern when they
do end up when they stop posting. I mean, yeah,
when they're posting, but it's kind of more concerning post
sometimes yeah. Yeah, if the same as like looking at

(01:02:25):
a kid that wants to be a firefighter or something
like they're just talking. They're not going to do it,
but you see something, I'm doing it, and when they're
doing the thing, the lifestyle influencer version of fascism. Yeah,
do you think that it's going to affect kind of
like laws about living off grid and laws about like
for for normal people. I just want to get the

(01:02:47):
funk out, Like I actually just read something about this.
There's some guys who've been living off gride in Pennsylvania
for like thirty years and I don't remember the details
of this, and we don't have internet out here. Burn
his house down. Yeah, he's in jail now. He's probably
gonna be in jail for the rest of his life.
And I think part of whether it comes from left
through the right, as people kind of start to try

(01:03:09):
to build resiliency within communities for disasters that are coming
and start to seek ways of living that do not
rely on supply chains and do not rely on the state,
the state will strike back against that as a consolidation
of power, because the more that people move away from it,
whether on the left or right, the less power the
state has, I mean, and utilizing counter terrorism an excuse

(01:03:30):
to do so. Yeah, because they're giving reasons and it's
not it's not going to get enforced equally. I'm sure's
gonna gonna focus uncertain people doing this and be slightly
more okay with other people doing it. Um. Yeah, what's so?
I would like to talk about Canada a little bit
because specifically climate change affecting Canada's can be veried. It's

(01:03:54):
going to be slightly different, and most of it to
go to the States because I've been I've been I've
been having my like waist deep in climate science books
for most of UM. And Canada's gonna probably see economic
boosts um. And they're probably the state's probably just gonna
a gap to get actually stronger because of how the
same thing with Russia. Both Canada and Russia are going

(01:04:16):
to get more economically powerful under climate change because of
how much more props are gonna get moved up. How
give me your thoughts to Canada, because Canada's my backup plan.
It's gonna gets too spicy in the States. I'm I'm
taking my Canadian passport and hiding in the woods. Um.
How How it's it's interesting to hear you guys talk
about American millistic culture because we we definitely are. Rhetoric

(01:04:39):
and propaganda that we see in Canada gets borrowed a
lot the talking points for the States, like the concepts,
but what we don't have are these strong organized militia groups.
We had three per centers for a while um and
who still exists, but they were they were big about
being off right, like they were the ones who weren't
posting for a long time. UM and it seems like

(01:05:01):
as much as all these people are still around, they've
largely deflated. Doubt his. Canada has made some some efforts
to call them terrorists right right. Very recently, we designated
them as a terrorist organization, which doesn't carry a criminal charge.
But if you if you do something involved with them,
you send them money like there is there are consequences

(01:05:21):
of that legal enhancements, UM. But are are kind of
militia culture focuses on the illegitimacy of the state that
Canada is founded. It's very kind of soft sit type rhetoric,
but that Canada's establishment, it's it's rules and especially with
all the public health measures, it's this growing Uh, this

(01:05:44):
growing kind of tired of thought in both the prairies
and largely out west. I grew up in Saskatchewan. Um,
most of my families in Alberta. I know when when
I look at when I because I keep a soft
eye on some Canadian hate groups just because I'm Canadian
to them popped up around Alberta. Um, where do you
see this stuff kind of like happening? Like do you
see any of this on the East coast? If those

(01:06:05):
it's smaller or is this mostly on the West coast?
Candrather thing? Well that like that conspiratory thought we've seen
kind of across the country, like on the East coast.
You know, just recently we had people setting up their
own version of checkpoints um as like a protest against
the the public health measures and like the whole eastern

(01:06:26):
part of Canada is in its own bubble right now. Um.
But yeah, you had this the conspiracy based movement forming
these actual checkpoints. And then the main part of it though,
is probably going to be out west. That is where
these ideas are the most popular or the most popular.
That makes sense where mainstream politicians are moving towards, you know,

(01:06:48):
amplify these type of talking points is do you see
that like is that is it? Is that a mostly
Alberta thing. It's mostly like Prairies Alberta the online. The
interesting part is that when you talk about groups, is
like in Canada, groups are an urban phenomenon. For the
most part, most of our organization takes place around the

(01:07:09):
city centers, and that is very different from the States.
With the States, that's it's usually the usually the opposite
in some there's there's always exceptions of two minament people live,
but generally we see it as more of as more
of a rule thing which troops organized, whereas cities are
more like liberal and that's what the anti fascist groups
are based UM. But it's kind of these like these
little ideological pockets that exist all over and certainly that

(01:07:31):
sentiment is probably shared, but the need to mobilize seems
to mostly focus on the urban centers. And then we'd
never have our groups. They don't providing any conveyed to
that's just or even checkpoints like that's beyond these like
very recent protest movements. You know, there has been no
more forest fires around bc UM, around you know what

(01:07:55):
Western Alberta UM. How do you see the government's was
sponse as to things right now and it can do
isn't in a particular situation with um, the Liberals having
a minority control. M you know, the Canadian poems parliamentary
system is probably confusing to let Americans that they don't
understand it already. Um. But yeah, how how what do
you what do you see on on that front? You know,

(01:08:16):
you know, trust and true both both true down Biden
talk the talk around like pipelines and stuff, but then
do the complete opposite. Um, how do you could have
seen this kind of stuff working right now? For for
like on the on the climate side of things, Well, yeah,
our our reaction to the firefighters or a reaction to
the wildfires. Um. I mean the government response has always
looked at on like, it's always looked at poorly. Um.

(01:08:38):
But none of these people are taking this as an
opportunity to kind of change minds and of do pr Um.
There's much less reaction to it. Most like the West. Also,
there's this incredible feeling of alienation because of the way
that government is set up. They have substantially less they
have substantially less voting power. Yeah, the same way the States.

(01:08:59):
How you know, there's like there's accelering states or states
in the Midwest, you feel like they don't really have
any power politically. Same things for almost the entire East,
entire West Coast of Canada, everything from like Manitoba to
Alberta and parts of BC. Everyone is very frustrated at
at at the at the federalise um and how they
really don't have control for what's happening. Like, yeah, people

(01:09:20):
in the East Coast are controlling and what what our
what our pipelines are, what our minds are doing, and
that does not fair to our workers, because yeah it is.
It does suck when you know, a mind closes and
then everyone in a small town is out of business,
like the part the part right in Canada, Almoight, Stanley
around them, you know, used to be you know, bustling
small towns that are basically all all the ghost towns

(01:09:40):
because stuff to close, people have to move to either
like Calgary, Edmonton, Regina. Don't laugh, um, so you know
all all these specific things, you know, and we see
pockets of this, we see pockets, we see pockets of this,
and like the good Western the States definately. I also

(01:10:01):
like manifest Destination because like they are a lot of
it started with people kind of moving outward to try
and gain more land and make their borders um larger
and like live further out to like try and uh,
I don't know, tom more territory um. And with the

(01:10:21):
like Canadian big surgeon like indigenous riots and the big
focus and shift to like sort of give them landback
or something. I'm not exactly clear on what the Canadian
stances are on that. Oh, just like I mean we
have a big movement from indigenous populations to they seem
very like the economent like, well, there's so many different

(01:10:42):
bands and tribes in different types of nations, um, like
we have unseated territory, and the dynamics with which the
government is supposed to deal with and has agreed to
deal with it actually does deal with them is all
vastly different. Um. But yeah, that that idea of this
focus on these particular issues, like indigenous issues, even our
attempts to you know, have a greener economy you know

(01:11:05):
for a place that for a long time and still
is an extraction economy. Yes, Um, how does that like
a fact an oil company with healthcare? More like extremist
far right groups who want to move out that way, um,
for the purpose of organizing. And you also have the
indigenous focus within the liberal government. So like, how do

(01:11:26):
those two groups do you think like interact? Uh? Like
the general conception is that the push for indigenous rights,
especially on the farther right is is for the dishent
franchiisement of white Europeans like it is um. And then yeah,
you do have this Western exodus where we have very

(01:11:48):
popular figures who are moving further west because they are
these stronger ideas of sovereignty. UM. I forget what exactly
was pulling, but when the Western Eggs it was started,
you know, there was a significant amount of popular or
at least like not strong support, but like existing support

(01:12:09):
there was there was there was a it was a
large amount of support. Yeah. Absolutely, It'll be interesting to
see what happens though, talking about collapse, like you know
in these small towns, in like cloistered communities, um, you know,
they already feel cut off from the government and not represented,
and then if you have a breakdown of infrastructure, you
know that will create why do we even have them

(01:12:30):
in the first place if they're not helping us? Which
is which which is true? Which is like a well,
real thing to think about what their solutions are wildly
different than the actual solutions to help people. And we've
already see how this plays out in the past as
well with UM, you know, places where uh, the infrastructure
starts to break down and then people who have weapons

(01:12:51):
kind of become the authority just based on the fact
that they have more power. Yeah. So one of the
things that I follow is a lot of kind of
like the more let's characterize it as boom Er esque
conspiracy theories, UM, especially with anti vax, anti public health
measures type thing UM. And one of the things that

(01:13:15):
that that really is noticeable to me is how much
more sovereign citizen stuff is creeping up into those areas
UM and especially you know, they're they're two really big
examples of you know, if there's an anti vax protest
in your city, it's probably one of these two networks
that both come from Europe UM that I'm not going

(01:13:38):
to name right now. UM. And those two networks also
you know, love to organize over the messaging app Telegram UM,
and Telegram is tell me if I'm stepping in it.
I mean, Telegram is where you know, so much of
this ideology this far right ideology is able to cross
mix and co mingle um. You know, I we we

(01:14:00):
talked about telegram from the pods. Okay, but people are familiar. Yeah,
I have been stepped in it yet keep going, Yeah,
adjacent to sting, but it's yeah, so so I mean, my, my,
the biggest frame we're going to talk about this a
lot is is telegram as kind of this technological body
of the cultic milieum because there is so like basically

(01:14:20):
no enforcement close to no enforcement on telegram and so
you know, these these more malicious actors know that, and
they know that they can find an audience who is
interested in, you know, opposing the mainstream conspiratorial thought in
these kind of like boomer tell boomers on Telegram and
conspiracy groups, and there are you know, militious actors planning

(01:14:41):
to go in and when these people over and you
know a lot of these militious actors are younger people
who don't have those resources, but they know that they
can win over these people who do have resources, who
own land, who have savings to kind of like fund
that movement. If yeah, oh, I was just gonna say,
I do think that the cultic miliuse like a really
important here stick for these kind of collapse scenarios because

(01:15:04):
the question of what happens when kind of infrastructure and
any sort of political guidance falls away is governed a
lot by that. And like this idea that there's there
are these ideas floating around in our society and once
people have nothing else turned to, these malicious actors will
bring this stuff in and uh yeah, to put it simply,

(01:15:24):
then we're pretty fucked. Yeah. Telegram also has recently started
to have to crack down people and um because of that,
you have this really interesting dichotomy of people who are saying,
like this means like get ready, get prepared, go off,
grig g gone, And you also have on the other
end people who are saying, you know, create all type
platforms and like create um more like self encryption and

(01:15:50):
like hello, I'm trying not to step in right now. Yeah,
I'm but to be able to to speak more peer
like peer to peer resources. And that wraps up Part
one of the Terrorism round Table discussion. Thanks so much
for listening. You can find us at happen here, pod

(01:16:13):
and cool Zone Media on all of the socials. Um,
you can find me at Hungry bow Tie Um, and
you can follow a decent amount of the researchers on
their podcast at Terrorism Bad. The podcast I think. I
think it's just at Terrorism Bad. Anyway, Thanks for listening
to Part one. Part two drops tomorrow, Stay tuned, m

(01:16:45):
Welcome to it could Happen here. I'm Garrison Davis. This
is part two of our terrorism round table discussion. If
you haven't listened to part one already, I would recommend
you scroll back, listen to the previous episode and then
continue on from here so you have kind of context
to exactly we're talking about. Anyway, this is part two
of our discussion in the Woods. I hope you enjoy.

(01:17:08):
Something that we've talked about earlier this year after January six,
was like should the government ban telegram? Right? That was
the thing, And there's a lot of a lot of
arguments are like no, absolutely not, and there's does it?
Does anyone want to speak on that? Because you know,
because like if I want to talk about the government's
response to these things, you know that's a very government
thing to do. Be like, oh, people are organizing this platform,

(01:17:29):
get out of the platform problem gone, and that's not
how that works. I mean one was talking that a
little bit. Sure. Um, yeah, so they're getting rid of
the platform doesn't necessarily help, especially when it's something that
is important such as like you know, encrypted communication, which
is something that more people than just Nazis need, um,

(01:17:50):
and that resource should not be cut off. And there's
also kind of a bad precedent to be said if
the if the government is deciding which uh forms of
speech it needs to have complete access to. I don't
love that. Um. The other thing is that if we
knew telegram, right, they don't disappear, they formed a networks.
They're still there. Still, they have to do more things

(01:18:12):
in person, still there, they're just harder to hard. People
are absolutely corrected when they say D platforming works because
it works for the platform, and a lot of people
just want that. A lot of people just don't want
to see Nazi ship and they're fine with you know,
D platform and they say this works, and they have
data to backup that it does work. But it works
for the platform. But the people still exist, yeah, still

(01:18:35):
boosting their own ship. And when they bring up building
their own all tech platforms, it only works there early yeah, yeah, yeah,
And there is elements that yeah, d platform is a
wider thing can were especially for like in person stuff,
but yeah, for your sort of the thing you're mentioning, yes,
it is. It is definitely not not that cut and dry,

(01:18:55):
you know. And telegrams really interesting because it is kind
of this middle space between social media and just a
messaging appease. The thing about it too, is that anybody
can look at these you know, the public channels, so
without without saying anything in the chat. So people could
be kind of completely invisible. Nobody, like nobody knows that
they're there. They're watching this stuff, and they're still getting

(01:19:16):
the same messaging, they're still getting the same dates for protests,
they're still like organizing. But they can be uh, sort
of just subscribe to a channel and you don't even
need to be subscribed, you can, yeah, just looking into
and getting that flow of information without ever having like
formal organizing so to speak. So it's really hard to

(01:19:36):
say that, like, you know, these people planned this because
there's a lot of plausible deniability and there's anybody was involved.
There's so much easy hyper linking between groups and channels
and everything, so it's so easy for someone to move
between ideology and to go from kind of like the
base level ship into the much deeper stuff extremely quick,

(01:19:58):
very quick. Yeah, Actually, like well that's like that's good,
and that's good for them. About Telegram is that you
have all of the people that are vulnerable to let's say,
new ideas in one place. Exactly, if you're trying to
plan a collapse, you're going to need a lot more
people than the numbers that the people who want the
collapse actually have. So the easiest way to kind of

(01:20:21):
move things along is desert inserting their ideas and their
discourses and kind of altering the vibe of certain digital
environments manually until they have um what we can kindly
call cannon fodder, yeah, or even starting their own and
saying like, you know, this is a mega platform and

(01:20:42):
it's actually just you know, a bunch of bunch of
acceleration ast Tomdad to recruit them because they saw attempts
of this with like Q and on. It's people who
are way more excelation is trying to use extreme It
was successful. People die, You're mean that. And then also
you've got like like the idea of the boogaloo, right

(01:21:03):
that's being co opted to try to appeal to leftists,
And I mean there's a really good article by Left
Coast Right Watch that goes into one of those chats
and they're basically like, yeah, really try to push these
ideas of really try to push talking points like black
lives matter and all this. We want to get these
protesters on our side. And then you also have um,
some blatant like white supremacist groups who are all using

(01:21:26):
the boogaloos, And how much of that too is like
how much that is sort of real genuine like I
am not racist, I believe in black lives matter, Like
I want to be part of this even though I'm
a bog or Like how much of it also is
um kind of reminiscent of what we were talking about
us and I also don't want stuff in it. But
like with you know, the idea of from Anson of

(01:21:49):
like Helter Skelter and like causing that race where it's
like they what they would do is like try and
frame black people for it and say like this was
you know, yeah, I like that. How much of it
is saying like this is black lives matter and they
want people to see that after they do the boogleoo
groups that showed up in Portland in January in July

(01:22:10):
when the particular heads were happening. Now that they showed
up and we're all like, yeah, we're here to support
black Lives matter and stand against the federal government and stuff. Um.
And they had some very suspicious patches that it took me,
took me about a year to figure out what they were.
And it's like this accelerationist like, um, it ties into
a whole bunch of like eco fascist propaganda stuff. Um.
And yeah, it's like they're they're saying these things, well

(01:22:33):
they have these very obscure patches, um. And yeah, this
is an important reason why we need people who are
not very smart, like I will say, Jimmy dor who
puts these gives these people platforms are some of the
worst and are going to cause a lot of problems
because they have no idea what they're doing or they
know what they're doing, and they're just bad. And like
that Boogle who think kind of serves a twofold purpose

(01:22:56):
in that you can bring people who stud to defy
his leftists into the movement, but you also have a
really good scapegoat for like actual Actually that was a
big thing that we saw in Minneapolis when things first
popped off and like precently was getting burned down, and
suddenly people on the internet start losing their minds about
the Umbrella guys. And there was a guy who was indicted.

(01:23:24):
He was a boo boo boy who was indicted for
um like headlines said, burning down the precinct. He fired
a weapon and he fired a gun on like near
the wall exactly, And so that at the same time
takes away agency from left wing movement and the States
able to be like, look, see, it's just it's okay
to crack down on them because they're all, you know,
wild white supremacists exactly. Just from any autonomous movie with

(01:23:46):
the forms of the people in the community that isn't
that we wouldn't necessarily for to his leftists just piste
off people. I mean, that's what we saw in every
single you know, everybody, the young kids who are fucking
piste off and are going to go smash it. And
it's like saying all of people from outside of the
town where it's like, yeah, it's a tale as old
as time, Like outside agitator has been used since before this.

(01:24:07):
It's a very old state talking point. Yeah, are you
going to say that, Um yeah, I was gonna say Also,
it's somewhat related to that we're talking about using like
human on his cannon fodder and also ties into the
sab sit conversation we're having. So my research I special
are not specialized. I focus on Christian identity, this white
supremacist ideology and how specifically how it's grown since the

(01:24:31):
nineties until now through like the Internet and all that
fun stuff. This whole point they've been pushing lately is
to like there this with Christian identity. The whole thing
is they are preparing for the apocalypse, which they call
the tribulations, and they see modern see I folks see
the boogaloo as like the tribulation that's coming. So what

(01:24:53):
they're trying to do is go off grid and really
try to like establish this new land or like to
protect their kids and everything from like pollution and all
that ship but also to be away from the collapse
and be able to start buy it. And then while
they're doing all that, like prepping homesteads and the compounds
and stuff, they're also like pushing like election fraud conspiracies

(01:25:17):
and all that on like Q and on in the
maggot crowd, not because they believe it, not because yeah right,
they don't believe it. They know it's bullshit, but they
can use it to accelerate collapse, just like January say, yes,
so exactly, I mean when I mean, there are groups
when Joe Biden won the presidency or won the election, whatever,
some groups being like, yeah, I really try to push

(01:25:38):
this theory of this conspiracy about election fraud, even if
you even if you don't believe in it, just push
it because that helps our cause. And that's that's something
to be really mindful of too. I forgot where else
I was going with that. Well, yeah, a lot of
them don't mean what they say. They'll say things that
will push other people to do something that they don't

(01:25:59):
necessary really want to do. And that's a lot of
a lot of like during January six, so much excitement
because they could see that the Q and on crowd
are actually mobilizing, and so they said to them, like
to themselves, like, you know, get them, get the mobilizing
for the white race, get the mobilizing for you know,

(01:26:20):
our cause. And they've really successfully been able to infiltrate
that and be able to get some people on board
with some of it just based on using their rhetoric. Yeah,
I know, I talked about this on our podcast, but
you could see it, like I reported on January six

(01:26:40):
in person, and like you could watch it happen. Someone
with a skull mask on or proud boy or an
oathkeeper would literally come back from the police line, grab
a group of people, yell something at them about que
and On or the storms upon us, and throw them
up to that riot line until they got did a
really good did really good vision investigation of how those

(01:27:01):
extremist cubes used mega people in q and On people
as their foot soldiers. Qua a folk que didn't really
can break down their mus podcast. Yeah, but it's also
with I mean not to link everything the Christian identity,
which I have a tendency to do, but it's it's
very ideologically similar to Q and On, like from a

(01:27:21):
Christianity point of view, like that's quan On is like
so close to the edge of Christian identity. It's very scary. Actually,
I talked about it on Jake hammer Hens Q Clarence podcast.
But it there's also like not only trying to accelerate
things through them, but also trying to recruit them through
these like very very similar talking points about like the
Synagogue of Satan and all that, saying that Christian identity

(01:27:44):
is an entry point for some of them. Some of
them bring it up as an entry point into further
like accelerationist Nazi ship. But like they will start with
Christian identity because I think that it's more pactual to
people who already believe and on. Yeah exactly. I mean,
like Will was saying, these there's a lot of this
comes from these kind of boomer conspiracies and anti vax groups,

(01:28:08):
and you're not going to be able to get you know,
memon pap pap into like wotonism or something like that,
if you try hard enough, you can't. But like Christianity
is something that's palatable, it's something that's normal to them,
and as you can kind of slowly tweak it through
to it on, you can get them to this much
wark stream. Oh yeah, talk about Christian identity. I think
we should, like maybe Matt, you could define it Christian identity.

(01:28:29):
It's this radical offshoot of Christianity that sees all white
people as the true Israelites from the Bible um. And
they also think Jewish people are all literally the spawn
of Satan. There's this really dumb theory they came up
with and like kind of rewrote the whole Bible off
of called can I name n z okay okay dual

(01:28:50):
seed line theory where they say, like the story if
you know about uh, like Adam and even all that
they had can enabled. Right, So they see, um Kane
was the offspring of Eve and the devil and he
was literally the spawn of Satan and then he intermingled
with all these races that were there before Adam and

(01:29:10):
Eve and created this demonic race. And it's really really
fucking dumb, but it's still here. It's been here for
tone's probably gonna keep going. It's gonna get worse calling
it now, it's gonna get worse. Yeah, but uh, And
the whole thing is they essentially like worship like a
Nazi Jesus. They see Jesus only was really only talking

(01:29:35):
to the white race, and that Christianity and like God
only is able to be perceived by the white race.
And before you start laughing at people, because yes it
does sound very silly, keep in mind that these are
extremely dangerous, Like, right, this is this is one problem
with two and on when liberals just start laughing about
how crazy it is, and then they're so surprised at
January six, we're like no, no, like it's yeah, like

(01:29:58):
they're actually dangerous. Yeah, he's mentioned in a lot and
he's chricially that has been mentioned in various manifestoes linked
to you has warned very like organized, like I mean
historically a big part of like with Christian identity with
a lot of these kind of like a lot of

(01:30:20):
them based their like whole historical context of like arianism
on this rewriting of history based on UM a fake
study that was done in Nazi Germany about uh where
some proto Indo European languages came from. And so they
believe that like white people came from uh an area

(01:30:44):
that's you know, you could generally say it's sort of
near the Black Sea. UM, and that it's based on
this like strange idea that like Sanskrit is not the
oldest language, but like are you pointing the gun at
me because I'm stepping in you, I think it actually

(01:31:11):
is useful and yeah, there there is actual They really
tried to push this. They made UM a lot of
fake studies that you could spend a lot of time
researching this and believe that it's true, um, because there's
just so much written about it. And I think this
is like a tactic that they really tend to do

(01:31:32):
with historical revisionism allat is just crank out essay after essay,
even if it's wrong, even if it's totally like based
on false data or just skew data. If they don't care,
they just write about it, and that they think that
like having more written about it makes it more legitimate.
And if that's what we are talking have been talking

(01:31:52):
about this this whole time we've been not recording, is
there's just an overflow of content that is so easy
to access, you know, not necessarily from these specificers they're
talking about, just from the further right. In general, I
just overflow the content. It's like always the top ship
on Facebook. To give an idea of how pervasive even

(01:32:16):
that idea of like where Indo European languages came from,
Like when I still went to college, I took the
Religions of South Asia course and we had to spend
like multiple days where a professor went through these myths
about like what was the Arian invasion, which like was
there are arian people that that is a thing historically, Yes,

(01:32:38):
they're not white people, but like going through a definition
of white people. Sure, based on language, they think of
arianism as like referring to a linguistic pattern. Yeah, but
like in a university course, we still had to go
through and like debunk these myths because they've gotten so
pervasive within the culture. Yeah. And another thing I want

(01:33:00):
to say is that kind of these more entry level
conspiracy ideas, it is hard to over emphasize how small
the spaces between the entry level stuff and the much
harder stuff. It can happen extremely extremely you know, I'll
give I'll give an example. I went to you know,
I was reporting on an anti vax protest and they

(01:33:24):
went straight into talking about New World Order and and
Project locks, Lockstep and and the raw Childs and the
Builderers and like the Sabbatines and David Ice ship just
me and this is this is the middle of the day,
and like a metropolitan area with a bunch of boomers
and trump Paths who are getting this like hardcore ship
pumped at them where you uh, we shall sell that

(01:33:46):
a lot with the national bombing too, like immediately it
was like, oh, it was actually an attack on dominion,
and also it was orchestrated by the roths Childs to
destroy evidence of voter I forgot that that and then
also there as a whole like there a bunch of
stuff that came up later is a big conspiracy that
it was actually a missile strike. I had to talk
my grandpa down from that. There was a video that

(01:34:08):
circulated for a while about that. I had to get
into a conversation with my grandpa, but at the time
was super isolated because of COVID and that's a whole yeah,
And I had to like talk him down and show
him like, no, here's uh, here's a video from somebody
I knew who was like somewhat in the area and
saw the explosion and like, and there was not a
missile anywhere. They One of the data studies that I've

(01:34:32):
done is UM and worked on is using big pool
and small pool discord servers of far right extremists UM,
far right militia groups and UM very very accelerationist skull
mass that network UM and looking at the big pools
and the small pools and seeing the app mentioned between them. Yeah,

(01:34:55):
and there was not one person who was more than
three nodes away from anybody else. So it's very it
can't be overstated how close people are from entry to
very very very extreme h types of goals and andy

(01:35:16):
explicit ideologies that explicitly pushed violence. And you know, another
point I want to bring up is um like, yeah,
there's been much said about Qunan isn't going away, It's
just not called qun On anymore. Um with with these
anti vax mobilizations, those mobilizations and groups aren't going away.
They're just going to continue to shift in evolve their focus.

(01:35:37):
And the networks say they're planning for it like they've
they've they've they've designed it that way. So I sometimes
I find the normal stuff first, sometimes I find the
crazy stuff first. But I mean, not even that long ago,
I came across a particular social media profile but was
explicitly calling for acts of terror and attempting to organize

(01:35:58):
act of terror, displaying ACCEP tear, which is like an
immediate problem that needs to be dealt with. However, they
had multiple alternate accounts that you follow that path, and
on their other accounts they're sharing like Tucker Carlson stuff
like things that your grandparents are going to watch right like,
and that is done on purpose to try to like
siphon people out of um more quote unquote mainstream versions

(01:36:23):
of like conspiratorial thinking directly into like you should start
exploding things, and even even more even more let's say,
left of center conspiracy thinking ties into this what does
and it's not. You know, conspiracy theories are not solely
a thing of the right, which which pass me off
to no end. No, I just want to back you

(01:36:44):
up on that, Like I think there's this maybe this
like implicit idea that the left is immune to conspiracy theories,
when it very much is. Yeah, I just wanted to
emphasize that point that I yet though of like never
being that far from the serious stuff is something that's

(01:37:05):
really really observable, even beyond like a data level. I
I used to like consult with local newsrooms on how
to report on things, and one of the big points
I always tried to drill in was like, if you
fuck this up and you frame this the wrong way,
it will have consequences. And if this is stepping in
it too much, we can cut But like the um

(01:37:31):
Dylan Roof Dylan Roof started his journey to radicalization by
reading about Trayvon Martin in local news websites and local
newspapers and then googling black on white crime and his
first result comes up exactly and like it does not.

(01:37:53):
It did not take long for him to go from
I am reading local news articles that are framed this
specific way to I am killing people. That's not normal,
of course, like a lot of people are not going
to be reading local news and then suddenly start to
think this way, but like there is a concerted effort

(01:38:14):
by some very specific people who would like to make
that pathway easier. It's well, it's interesting because we don't
we can't like define it really as terrorism. What are
they doing. They're really just they're just saying things. They're
just encouraging people to do things, and like they're not,

(01:38:37):
like they're not doing anything wrong. We can't really call
it terrorism. The most dangerous people in this game are
usually not the ones doing the shooting, people behind the
scenes trying to go on these paths in the first
looking for people who are willing and then so they
see somebody reading local news maybe and they want to
make that pathway easier. For to go from local news

(01:38:57):
and Dylan Roof like because that's not a normal jump.
But they really want to find people who are looking
at local news like that and then say to them like, well, okay,
you look at this, now look at that trying to
try respect to climate change. How do you see do
you see a similar pathway instead of instead of someone
googling no black white crime, like googling stuff about collapse

(01:39:18):
and and like modern motion. Eric Stryker, I don't know.
Eric Striker has been on about this, and I think
that he's a i mean relatively like middle point that
people get to like fairly like average people do listen
to things like Eric Stryker entry level explicit Nazi. Yeah.

(01:39:42):
And another thing, cut me off if we don't want
to go in this direction. But you know, one of
the biggest places where we see young people getting into
conspiracy theories is TikTok alright, TikTok cut that cut that

(01:40:03):
cut that we're not we're not cutting that. That is
that is with the pod. Yeah. I mean, the biggest
entry points I've seen for a lot of things remains crisis. Yeah.
And the thing is this, our upcoming climate scenario is
going to give people an easier jumping on point. Well, yeah,
that's so. I mean we were talking about how like

(01:40:23):
the mythology of like like black on white crime and
all this stuff. They're trying to create a situation that,
you know, with the urgency that justifies fascism, which on
its own is unjustifiable and ridiculous. But when there's a crisis,
climate change is the existential threat that they've been trying
to artificially create, and they no longer have to. They

(01:40:44):
now get to skip a lot of steps and save
a lot of energy by just planting at the fact
that everything is literally on fire and that like that
that makes it so much quicker. State, we have to
do something. We have all the guns. Now would be
great time to join it in our power. This kid,
this this is our Mr Era hyper inflation type ship.

(01:41:06):
I mean, this is like when you're when you can't
get food from the grocery store anymore because of supply
chain problems, or when everything around you is on fire.
You don't need like a grace, you don't need a
great replacement theory. No, you don't need anything. You don't
need to say that the Rothchilds are behind you. You
haven't just need to wait, you have you have enough

(01:41:27):
things that you experience yourself, and it's much scarier when
you can't because I can't, Like like how do we
how do we stop? Yeah? I can't. It's hard. It's
literally on fire. It's it's a problem and something needs
to be done about it. I don't like your solution,
but something needs to happen. So what what what do
you think on this path? And this is gonna get

(01:41:48):
a whole lot more speculative, but like, what can we
do to make people falling down those pathways less often?
Like like, yes, that is that, that's that's one of
the things that we're trying to do on the PA
is making sure that people do not fall full down
the the doom or path because yeah, this that that
does get people along down em like against like like

(01:42:11):
against most types of extremism. Eco extremism is mostly logical.
Like you look at it and you say, we need
a radical change right now, and that's correct. Um, it's
just the way that they go about it is very
very different, and that's why, like you know, eco fascism
is very different. It's its own type of eco extremism,
and there's in green anarchy, that's a very different type

(01:42:33):
of eco extremism. Like these are all different parts of
something that almost has the same goals but wants to
go about them very very very differently. And it's so
easy to just look around and see how everything's on
fire and think like the government's doing nothing about it.
The government starts doing something about it, and then suddenly
it's the state's two bigs were in communism, you know.

(01:42:55):
So they all of like different goals and it's very
conflicting on how to how to deal with and like
even the very different tactics between green anarchy and like
fascistic you extremism, they also will get two different endicals, right,
like you like your your basic amprim what's a very
different life than you're you know, very you know, very

(01:43:16):
stepping in it pilled fascist? Right. A collapse can only
benefit the right. A collapse can only benefit the people
who already have power, who already able bodied, who already
stocked up on guns, who already like, yeah, that does
frustrate me with their being anarchists who are like rooting

(01:43:36):
for the e collapse because you're not gonna win, like
you're just going somewhere, Yeah, well, they have very strict
ideas of which people count as human and the goal
of the majority of fascist movements is to you know,
purge the ranks of the people they see is lesser,
and they have they have they have very precise ideas
about who they plan on letting to survive the collapse.

(01:44:01):
So let's let's I think it's time to start talking
about and tell me if I'm taking this in the
long direction. You know what the funding someone who's listening
to this, Yeah, no, stop recycling, it's it's all getting
buried in the Oregan force. Just vote. Let mean, like,

(01:44:22):
what made you start local? Find a local group, find
a local direct action group. Investigate that group and see
who is behind it. But find start locally. It has
to start at the local level. Because when I'm t say,
I'm gonna say, if the collapse comes or like or
the collapse like local local collapses, disasters, confusis disasters are

(01:44:46):
gonna affect at the local level. No, talk to your
talk to your neighbors, neber talk to your family, Like,
let's try to get your family on these paths that
lead to helping your neighbors instead of you know, making
friends with the church. Militia. Before you buy a gun,
learn how to fucking garden. Yes, but buying a gun
and that sort of thing is is good. It's good

(01:45:08):
to know how to use firearms. Basic preparedness, yes, but
learn learn how to put on our turn to learn
how to feed yourself. Learn how to grow some fucking food.
Learn how to cook that fucking food. Get an effect.
All that comes before, like you get to be a
follow up character. Yeah, oh yeah, an individual first aid kit.

(01:45:28):
You can buy them on the stores. You can. You
can buy them in like some pawn shops. Yeah, I
like North American Rescue or North River Rescue. I'm sure
we'll find what I attacks more on the poduct. Well there, Look,
there are two big things. One, we all have a
moral obligation to consistently counter the black pill doom er ship.
Everything is coming to an end, like it doesn't have to.

(01:45:50):
That's optional. Like weed. Things are going to get bad,
but there's degrees of that. We can stop it from being.
And you don't need civilizational We don't need civilizytion to
end like that can be done. Step two. We also
have an obligation to counter the individualist stuff and and
and focus our efforts more towards towards community and relationships.

(01:46:11):
That is so so important because every idiot that's gonna
buy a gonna have a bunker not only is not
gonna make it, it's gonna screw the rest of us.
Like this has to be a communal effort and a
civilization thing, Like we do need the civilization to change,
like we need human society, as we lay out, we
as has a lot of problems. I understand people's critiques
of human civilization. We still need a society, but yeah,
we we need we need places that you know, people

(01:46:32):
are going to Catherine and people, you know, provide the
things that we have. Um. I noticed that that can
be a loaded word on certain political circles. So I'm
not you know, we're not getting into like civilization theory
and that kind of anything. I was gonna say, I
would argue any ideology or ideas just the boogaloo that
uh kind of hypes up a collapse is generally one.

(01:46:53):
You should stay away from anything that makes the collapse
sound like it makes it sound sexy and personal story.
As think it's important to remember, like if there was
some massive civil conflict that happened, I think the people
who would suffer the most or the noncombatants talk about
to deal with it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll talk about
kind of episode of terrorism. Bad. Um, well we'll do
plugs of the end. Hold put the gun back in

(01:47:15):
your pants together. I was talking about historical precedent earlier,
about things we've seen in the past with collapses and
how people with guns and people who with training end
up being the ones who gained power. Um. Something that
like I was specifically reading about that was, um, like
the Rwandan genocide. If you know, it was just three

(01:47:36):
months where most of the Fusie people were wiped out. Um.
There are conflicting numbers, so I'm not gonna specifically say
any but um, you know the more recently like this year.
Earlier this year, Um was only when Rwanda admitted what
it was, that it was a genocide. And um, the people,

(01:47:57):
the armed forces were the ones who came like the
leaders and then they were backed by the government. That
can't happen in America. Yeah, and it's like it can't
happen here though we are we are immune to this
in our spot of the world called it will not

(01:48:19):
happen here. And the other thing is look at where
you get your information from. Seriously, no matter who you are,
take a long, hard look at who you get your information,
even if you're on the left, especially if you're you're
on the left. You know, if you want to hear
about something that's happening in an area, look at the
people who are actually on the ground reporting. People don't
just rely on like news aggregators. Especially on Twitter. There's

(01:48:44):
been a lot of bad, very bad faith news agreators
on Twitter who are posing a leftist. This has been
a huge problem. Even leftists who just don't do that
just do a very bad job. People call themselves like
car extremism or counter terms and researchers, and they are
really talking about anti They say that they are counter

(01:49:06):
extremism researchers, and they pose that way, and they look
sometimes like they could be Sometimes I think not they're not,
but like you know, vary varying degrees of life, legitimacy,
but like they focus only on like the left wing stuff.
They don't think they don't it has to be this

(01:49:30):
idea of like keeping it balanced right, like not making
it just like a far right issue, which I would argue.
I think a lot of other people would that this
kind of stuff is more concerning issue and there is
like merit definitely to looking at left acceleration which is
not for the record, like left accelerationism is not talking

(01:49:55):
about anti fascists. But um, that's out time to get
like we left accelerations and will will be its own episode.
But what what some people do posing as um, you know,
people who have credibility and are able to um kind

(01:50:17):
of sway opinion, They are not really doing what they
say that they're doing. They're really just trying to shift
the narrative form of racially motivated violent extremism, which is
a big obviously having to being like BLM is racially
motivated violent extremism, and they want to push that narrative

(01:50:39):
further and further. I think let's let's let' let's go,
let's kind of price start to like wrap up and
say our final thoughts on you know, this whole this
whole topic. Um, I know, we we didn't. We didn't
we did, we did We did not get to talk
about like eco defense very much. Anyone has any final
thoughts on that and how they see it kind of
growing and how they see the state's response to it. Um,

(01:51:00):
that might be worth briefly mentioning. But yeah, let's kind
of let's just kind of go around in a circle
and give kind of everyone's you know, final thoughts on
the on the subjects. Um, I think collapse is is
bad and I think that well, I mean that's my
main my main thing. But anything that's appealing to you

(01:51:22):
and on like an ecological level that's collapse related to
something you should be very wary of. And I think
you should be ware very wary of, like generally everything.
I feel like it's kind of like a butchered be
careful about everything. Um. Yeah, I guess in my opinion,
the idea of total collapse is very misleading because it's

(01:51:42):
easy and disasters don't work like that. You're not gonna
suddenly reset one day. Um, everything is going to suck
and you're going to need to fight for whatever semblance
of a society that you want to see in the world.
Talk to you fucking neighbors, that kind of people in
your city, in your nighborhood. There are people doing good
ship in whatever city town you live in. Most likely,

(01:52:05):
if not, you can start it. Look at your local
mutual aid network, Look at the people who are taking
action around and get involved seriously. You know it could
be going out into a park Saturday mornings and just
like giving out food, talking to the people who are
most affective people. Seriously, if every once a person you
need to talk to touch grass people. If you need,

(01:52:26):
like the most basic thing to start on any sort
of mutual aid work trying to find a food not
ball chapter. And they're well organized, they're easy to join.
You don't have to put on block and fight a cop.
It's yeah, it's a good entry point and it's it's great.
It's great training for for disaster relief. If you have
money and you want to help, seriously, just give pass

(01:52:47):
to on house, people on the street, give money, give
money to people, give money directly to people. Yep. Uh.
My last thoughts are just that I think the idea
of collapse or whether actual collapse themselves and mental or otherwise,
will always be something to rally behind, Like it is
always an entry points as well as motivator from from
all for all sides, from all sides. Um. But it's

(01:53:10):
like when these things become very silent, like was mentioned before,
when they're outside of your door, that's when you know
that's when like the ideology kind of hits the pavement,
like what is actually going to play out, what is
actually gonna happen, and how that's gonna affect People's very real.
So building community, you know, building connections, um, and just
understanding you know, who is in your community. It's probably

(01:53:32):
one of the most important things. Yeah, the idea of
collapse is a romantic and ridiculous notion. Uh, come up
with people who are like really into like apocalyptic thinking
and the version of themselves if they get to be
the main character. So first and foremost, take care of
each other. There are a lot of people out there
who want to manipulate you and want to change the

(01:53:54):
way you think about things, and they really really want
you to buy in to the end times and you
don't have to because you're smarter than that. Yeah, it's
it's not hopeless. We really have to move away from
hierarchical thinking. Our society really incentivized this hierarchical thinking and thinking.
You're saying to a sac like we, um, we really

(01:54:15):
need to just be focusing on people, like if things
people because you know, somebody doesn't have to you know,
earn you know, respect and earn humanity. For some reason,
we try and make it seem like that. But people
are people. Um, people are in different circumstances because of

(01:54:36):
usually because of just the way that the world is.
And um, yeah, you need to just you need to
organize locally. You need to help your own people, and
stay away from the internet. Ship stop posting. Don't stop
posting a stop posting, even though I We'll keep doing
it because because I'm the good poster who wants who

(01:54:58):
wants to pluck the pot your product? Follow terrorism bad?
We're on that s What is the plot? Like? What what?
What do you? Yeah? We go through, um, portrayals of
terrorism and extremism and conspiracies and conspiracies in popular media,

(01:55:19):
and we look at it from the perspective of people
who studied this and say, did this succeed in portraying
these things or did it as it more often does
problems completely fail and cause us all personal problems become propaganda?
And like, did you make terror propaganda? Or did you
make good media about that is a thin line? Such
a thin line made a career out? That is that

(01:55:41):
is the thin terror line? Yeah, do you want to
plug your fantastic group? Yeah? Absolutely with you can read
anything I write at Anti Hate dot c A. And
we do just general reporting on h far right extremism
in Canada as well as infiltration if I oh, and
I also host a podcast called The Unusual Show. Yeah,

(01:56:04):
if you want to keep up to date on extremism
in Canada. Their group is one of is probably the
best one around right now in my opinions. And yeah,
and you do, you do, you do very good work.
You keep your eye on my home country where my
family lives. So thank you for that. Um, and I'm
very happy to be talking with you guys in the
beautiful woods where we have no cell service. We can't

(01:56:25):
post um and that's good and we're gonna continue doing
that and stop using this microphone. So goodbye. UM. Yeah
and Terrorism Fat the podcast with that that wraps up
the Terrorism round Table Forest Discussion episodes. Thanks for listening

(01:56:46):
to all of us rant about our specific weird niche
focuses and hopefully trying to have it within the useful
context of climate change. You can follow me at Hungry
bow Tie. You can follow the podcast Happen Here pod
and cool Zone Media on Twitter and I believe Instagram,

(01:57:06):
you can follow some of the researchers I interviewed UM
on their podcast at Terrorism Bad. So that wraps up
this discussion. Thanks for listening, See you later in the
podcasting verse, the pod verse. Okay, goodbye. What's a problem

(01:57:38):
here the show where I'm a problem. I'm on vacation legally,
You're not on vacation allegedly legally, But okay in Shelah,
I'm drunk. Garrison, you're in charge, now figure it out. Great, Hi,
it could happen here today. We are talking with somebody.

(01:58:00):
If you've listened to the past two episodes, you should
actually know, uh, THEO who is a journalist and researcher,
and we are going to be discussing plans for an
upcoming rally in Washington, d C. That's has a lot
of that seems good. Yeah, this is Uh. Things never happened? When?

(01:58:22):
What happened? What happened last time? But half the last time,
I don't I I historically only pay attention to things
that happened after May and before December. So I'm unaware
of anything bad ever happening in d C. Well, something
bad stuff happened there last time. It got it got
a little spicy, um, okay, spicy, but it's not like

(01:58:46):
they tried to overthrow the government murder elected leaders, right,
that is what they are actually having too much fun. Yeah,
they're just boys. They were just proud of their boys.
A little carried away building. All of the build that
big hanging contraption whatever it's called gallows gallows. Yeah. Anyway,
we're talking THEO. Do you want to do? You want

(01:59:07):
to introduce yourself? Yeah, Hey, guys, I'm theo UM idealist
and a researcher. I'm based out of Virginia. Allegedly I
end up covering a lot of events in DC because
of that, and that's my plans for this weekend. Yeah,

(01:59:27):
do you want to do? You want to give us
like an overview of what rallies in DC have been
like the past, Let's say like the past year. Um
oh boy do I yeah? Let's just for background. Yeah, so,
like pretty much immediately post election, as the whole kind
of stop the Steel thing got kicked into gear. Um,

(01:59:51):
November fourteen, there was a rally in d c um
and then there was one December twelve, and then there
is finally one as most are probably aware, on January six.
January six, you know, obviously got the bulk of the
media coverage. UM, but November fourteenth and especially December twelve
were very violent situations in general. UM proud boys, General

(02:00:20):
Chud's a bunch of oathkeepers, bunch of people's confused memas
and pat paps showed up. UM would kind of wander
around the Yeah yeah they did, Yeah, pretty pretty fucked up.
I know some people who were there when they did,

(02:00:41):
and it's I don't know, it's sad, like it's really bleak.
I was there with the people that you know Ubert,
Oh good, yeah, so you I mean, it's just it's
so fucking um. I don't know the extent of the disinformation, right,
It's hard when you're talking about this to like express

(02:01:02):
a lot of sympathy for some of these people. And
I'm not sympathetic towards their aims. I'm not trying to
do the New York Times like let's talk to the
Trump voter down the street. But like a lot of
them are just like they're fucking dumb people who bought
into some bullshit and it it destroyed them and their
relationships with their families and in some cases cost them
their lives and like you don't have to sympathize with

(02:01:26):
them to be like, yeah, that's bleak as ship, you know. Yeah,
And I think you see that with the dc rallies
really more so than like, uh, Portland's Proud Boy event
for example, that is not at all a gathering of
like the masses. That's that's a specific group of pieces
of ship. Yeah. Yeah, And like you'd have absolutely like

(02:01:47):
units of Proud Boys or oath keepers. We had three
per centers some local Virginia militias and they'd kind of
be wandering around. But during the day itself you'd normally
see like speakers. Alex Jones was there, Um to meet him.
That was fun. Um, that's always a meeting Alex. He's

(02:02:07):
a great guy. It was really fun. He's his neck.
It's hard to exaggerate how how he is just as
red in person. He's so red. And as a guy
who's good at strangling, it seems like he would be
hard to strangle. Oh, nearly impossible. Like that's so big,

(02:02:28):
it's such like it's like a fucking train car. Like
it's ridiculous how big that man's neck is. Look, most
people aren't hard to strangle. Alex Jones would be that's
not praising him, that's just being honest. So during the
day there would be speakers, you know, Alex Jones, and
you kind of see people split up into whatever they're
specific brand of fucker he is. There's like groups of

(02:02:51):
nerdy looking gropers. Um, there were some trad cats wearing
road Those guys were fun meant, but yeah, a lot
of it's you know, confused, like boomers on Facebook and
kind of to Roberts point, like I normally didn't go,
you know, wearing press credentials because I value knives being

(02:03:11):
outside of me and not inside of it. Yeah, it's
it's good to not get stabbed. Most people appreciate that. Yeah, yeah,
it's one of my favorite things. And so I'd get
to like talking to these people, especially the older ones,
because I take the Metro into the city and they
are they're just confused, old people who have gotten in
over their heads. But yeah, then like the sun would

(02:03:33):
set and that's when the Proud Boys would really start
getting into ship. November they stabbed. I don't know if
I'm remembering this correctly, so feel free to fact check me,
but I believe there was two people on the Uh,
they cracked a girl's skull and then on December twelve,

(02:03:57):
they stabbed one other person and Jeremy Burtino got blayed
on the street. He shared it, he shared it, and
the fucking d A elected not to prosecute because that
was the clearest case of self defense I have ever
seen in my life. Um. Yeah, so like, like the
dude literally tried to flee three times, he drew his

(02:04:17):
knife after by the third time he was blinded by
having a shirt puld and assaulted by a group he
had no other choice. Yeah, he did exactly what you're
supposed to do in that situation and repeatedly tried to
flee and when he did, and he stabbed a motherfucker.
And you can't, I I can't. He did nothing wrong
in my in my opinion, all the d a's opinion. Yeah,

(02:04:38):
we're all probably better off for it. But yeah, there's
this kind of established Uh, there was this established sort
of cycle of show up, a bunch of weird Republican
politicians that you've never heard of before, give speeches. Uh,
you go and kind of wander around, and then the
proud Boys come out and they funk around and sometimes

(02:05:00):
other groups too, Like January the night before January six,
there were people from NSC one one who were hanging
out trying to cause trouble, getting in altercations all their
normal ship and so yeah, there's this kind of like
general mix of groups. January six shifted the paradigm on

(02:05:23):
that a lot. And I think that's the big thing
for this weekend is we don't really know what it's
gonna look like. Yeah, can you talk about kind of
what has kind of the event promotion looked like from
the right, Like what have they what messages have they
been putting out to promote this event with? So yeah,
a lot of like the bigger groups have been fairly

(02:05:46):
explicitly saying like don't go officially. Unofficially is a bit
of a different story and fairness, It's worth noting that
prior to UM the United Rally and Charlote, so the
Proud Boys were saying don't go, and an awful lot
of their most violent members were at Unite the Right
in Charlottesville. You know, it's some some of this is

(02:06:08):
a plausible deniability game. Yeah, So like the official Proud
Boys telegram channel was like, oh, this is I mean
in different words, but we're pretty much like this is
a honeypot, this is a trap, this is an op
don't go. Um. But also like we've seen activity that
really suggests otherwise. UM, whether it's like smaller, more local

(02:06:31):
groups saying that they want to go or UH streamers
and journalists using the word lightly to UH who have
pretty close relationships with these groups, hiring extra stringers for
the weekend, or looking like they're preparing to report on
something big. Yeah, the kind of the I know, we've

(02:06:53):
talked a little bit um online with some of our
colleagues and there's definitely a mixed a mixed, a mixed
opinion on how big the event is going to be
and who's all going to be there and what kind
of their goal is, which makes kind of everything all
the more tense because you know, it's almost easier to
when we know what it's going to be, like we

(02:07:14):
like we have a good grasp and what's gonna happen,
and this we're not really sure? Um do you do
you know, has there been any kind of response from
like local DC officials, like like law enforcement or anything
about what they're gonna do at this gathering? So I
did see Capital Police is planning to put the fence
back up. Um. Probably a good idea, yeah, which like

(02:07:37):
will cover the capital. But there's also a problem with
the fence going up, which is the back of the
fence goes right up to the end of the Black
Lives Matter Plaza in d C, which has been used
as kind of a rallying point for uh anti fascist activists,
and when that fence is up, it's just it's a funnel.

(02:08:02):
The so it goes like this is an of visual medium.
There's a street, uh, and that's where Black Lives Matter
plause is and there's only two exits, and both those
exits lead to hotels that Proud Boys and Chud's love
to stay in. So what happens almost without fail is
people go and hang out in the plaza. You know,

(02:08:24):
Chud's come down the streets. Police form a line, and
it's pretty much a pre made kettle, right. So that's
like not good. Uh, it's good for the capital, but
it's not good for the people that will be on
the ground, yeah, because they're also as is most of
these events, UM, there has been some organizing locally and

(02:08:45):
even you know UH anti fashions from around kind of
the country. Trying to like put out advice and feelers
and like what to do for the specific gathering. UM.
And I know there's been there's been a decent amount
of you know, there's there's always like debate eighteen conflict
of around how much to show up, where to show up,
you know, how proact people should be. Um. But because

(02:09:08):
this is the first big rally since J six, I
feel like there's a lot of people. I feel it's
much more important and like the people have like you know,
there's there's there's like there's like a heightened sense around
the specific thing. Um. Do you know, like how many
people are kind of roughly planning to show up on
like the anti fascist side. It's really hard to tell,

(02:09:29):
um d c anti fascist actions. I've seen you know,
a couple dozen people in block towards close to a hundred.
I would um, from what I've heard, the kind of
main counter demo that's happening is uh definitely less radical

(02:09:50):
and it's kind of trying to establish sort of a
community space thing. Uh. So I would say, I don't know,
expect around forty to fifty like people who are there
to throw hands, Yeah, and a lot more people who
are just kind of there. I mean, it's it's this uh,

(02:10:12):
it's this thing we saw. I was in d C
for Unite the Right too, you know, the second rally,
and it it didn't turn into much of a thing,
you know. I think because of the preparation, the expectation,
and I guess I'm interested in if you think I'm
wrong on this, but my current expectation is that maybe

(02:10:32):
that might be the most likely outcome because because of
the degree of and the unexpected event already occurred and
was awful, I'm not expecting anyone will be given free leash,
you know. Yeah, I could definitely see that sort of
Unite the Right to scenario playing out, especially because it
is very similar, like there was this massive shocking event

(02:10:56):
that kind of yeah Lee's attention, Yeah, and so then
people will I think the only big difference is, like
in the aftermath of Unite the Right, you kind of
saw at times of misguided media focus, but still a
media focus on anti fascist activists as playing a unique

(02:11:19):
role when you didn't have that for January six, And
I think that's that's really one of my bigger worries
is less so kind of clashes between Chud's and uh
anti fascists, which is still I mean, you know that's
always a thing that may happen. But also like you
have to think these chuds that are coming. When they

(02:11:40):
look at DC police, they see someone, they see the
people who killed Ashley Babbitt. When the DC police look
at these chudd's, they're the people who beat someone, beat
one of their co workers to death. And you know,

(02:12:00):
like there's Capital Police not same as DC Metro Police,
but like in the minds of both these groups, that
doesn't really matter. And I worry about the tension there.
I like, I don't care if they mace each other.
You know, if the Proud Boys and cops mace each other,
then that's a great day for me. But if it

(02:12:24):
escalates further, and you know, we're seeing that more and
more the past, was it past two kind of major
right wing rallies in the Pacific Northwest have had shots fired. Yep, yep, ye.
Every every reason PW protest has involved gun fire. Yeah,

(02:12:47):
and like the one, the August two one had, I guess,
I guess you could call it a legitimate change, Yeah,
a casual gunfight. I mean, the the start of it
was not legitimate. The right winger who fired was not legitimate. Um,
but the two people on the left who responded, we're

(02:13:09):
doing so in self defense. Now, what happened a couple
of weeks later, from the video that's come out was
not self defense. It was a guy shooting at somebody
pursuing them from like fifty feet back, you know. It
was not legally what you would call self defense for
certain Yeah, and that kind of the precedent that that's set,
which I think it's happened a few enough times that

(02:13:31):
we can't really say that it's it's the norm or
anything like that, but it's still it's an escalation. It's
something absolutely did Like if that, if that had happened
in when Unite the Right happened like that would have
been unprecedented. It's very frightening, you know, and it it

(02:13:54):
should be. It doesn't matter what you think about the
morality of shooting tiny you know, or what ever. Exchanges
of fire becoming more common is a threat to everybody,
and it is something that should concern everybody. Yeah, I mean,
it reminds me a lot of and this was kind
of the impetus of the first season of It could

(02:14:16):
happen here but like the early days of something like
the Syrians of Award where it went from protests to
exchanges of gunfire too, you know what it is Now?
Do you think DC specific gun laws um will make
gunfire in DC a little bit less likely? Do you think?

(02:14:39):
I don't? Like? Still like the police always have that
capacity if they feel, um, you know, if if they
choose to. But more specific on like the right between people.
I don't know, it's like no boogs are going to
show up or whatever. Um, what kind of talk do
you see around firearms? So yeah, kind of just from experience,
I think my worry with DC's gun laws is only

(02:15:01):
one side will be armed. Every time that Ched has
come to d C. I mean they are obviously carrying.
I mean, every single one of them is print is printing.
You can tell that they have firearms on them. They
don't really try to hide it, and none of them
have ever I mean, I guess apart from Tario getting

(02:15:23):
arrested for illegal magazines, like, none of them have really
faced any consequences for that. And the general fear among
people on the left is well, even if I do
come and I carry for self defense, if I get arrested,
for something unrelated that will enhance whatever charges I get. Yeah, No,

(02:15:47):
it's sketchy and it's um. I don't I'm not convinced
in the situation d C is in specifically, that showing
up with a fucking firearm is the right call. You know.
I'm not in this business to lecture people, but I'm
not convinced that's going to help. In the Pacific Northwest,
we've seen situations where people with weapons, as on the
twenty two, defended themselves and others. And we've seen situations

(02:16:11):
in which people on the web with weapons on the
left escalated things. So it's not a it's never a
zero sum game, you know, it's not. It's not a
simple issue. Is a neutral tool, you know. Yeah. And
I don't want to, like, I don't want it to
come off like I'm encouraging, you know, every person in
block to show up with a long gun like that,

(02:16:33):
because that would be a fucking disaster most likely. But
also like, I don't like the idea of, you know,
looking at a line of Proud Boys or something and
knowing every single one of these people has a gun,
and I do not. That's an imbalance of force that

(02:16:54):
I don't like when things if things do escalate. No,
that that's completely reasonable in my opinion. But yeah, I
mean I think the big thing is just there's so
many unknowns. Uh, you know, we've never really there's not
much of a historical precedent for group tries to overthrow

(02:17:15):
the government, group shows back up in d C months later,
or elements of the same kind of ideology, and yeah,
we just don't know. I mean even like I think
that Unite the Right to example, is similar but also
like markedly different enough that I don't know if it's

(02:17:40):
an all encompassing tool for like this is what it's
gonna look like. Yeah, is there any like specific players
that you know is going to show up or or
have like said that they're going to show up. So
one that I kind of worry about is um, oh
I'm gonna get fucking tweets or this God damnit. Um.

(02:18:02):
So there's a group in Virginia that you may have
heard of, b LM seven five seven. Yeah, I know
you're talking about. Yeah. Uh. They are based out of
the Virginia Beach area and they're the biggest pain in
the ass ever um they work with. They claim to

(02:18:22):
be a Black Lives Matter organization. The local Black Lives
Matter organizations have denounced them. They work with Boogloo boys.
They were very tight with Mike Dunn before he uh
snitched and off the face of the earth. Yeah. Um,
And then yeah, they come And I don't like the

(02:18:43):
idea of them coming to a town that is not
familiar with them, because like they come to Richmond, for example,
and people are like, oh, there's b l M seven seven.
We don't funk with them, but they come, you know,
they come to a town or groups like this, like
uh n f a C. The Not Not Fucking Around
Coalition tried to come to d C. And I these

(02:19:06):
groups that are gonna be armed, are gonna want to
escalate and are gonna kind of try to slide in
to like a counter demo or stick around like the
more left leaning parts of the crowd, and then could
very quickly escalate things. So they're one that I'm worried about.

(02:19:27):
Some local Virginia militia movement players have been chatting about it.
I haven't seen really that much in the way of
like definitive statements that they're gonna go. Um, and those
guys don't really worry me, there a bunch of nerds
who like to play dress up in the woods mostly,

(02:19:50):
but yeah, it's again it's just like these kind of unknowns. Yeah,
so just like not knowing who's going to show up
and what they're gonna do and where'll they're be and yeah,
well yeah, like and this was a thing. Definitely. It
reminds me a lot of the first stop, the Steel Rally,
where we had more concrete groups saying we're gonna be there.

(02:20:13):
There's a lot more chatter about it on social media,
but it was still kind of like I don't know,
like what range of the sort of right wing ideological
spectrum will be here, Like I know, you know Q
and on your Q and on uncle will be there.
But like, for example, on November four, uh, Jason Kessler

(02:20:33):
was there, the organizer of Unite the Right. I literally
bumped into Jason Kessler, like I was walking and my
shoulder hit him and I looked up and I was like,
oh sorry, dude, and then I just kind of stopped
and I was like, oh, ship, I recognize you. Yeah,
you're that famous piece of ship. Yeah. But yeah, so

(02:20:55):
like it's kind of that same thing where we don't
we really just don't have that much intel, and it
seems like, you know, people with access to more streams
of information than us, like the FEDS have been saying
for I guess a couple of months now, like we're
monitoring this situation where like preparing to stop another January six,

(02:21:21):
which take it with a grain of salt. It is
the FEDS, but also like part of me, A lot
of the worry I get from this is people that
I know no more than I do, reacting to it,
like chud streamers hiring stringers, FEDS saying like announcing months

(02:21:42):
before that it's a situation that they're preparing for a
lot of people are very interested in what's going to happen.
I think people are definitely preparing for a lot of
different different outcomes, and that makes any kind of resistance
to it hard because you don't know if you're over,
if you're overpreparing, underprepared, ring, you don't know if you'll
have what you'll do. Your preparations too aggressive and not

(02:22:04):
aggressive enough, yeah, yeah, and always trying to like you know,
feel it out. Once you're there is more scary because
once you're there in person, a lot of communications breakdown
between other you know other activists that that's what happened
in like the last big rally in Portland is people
try to know, change up plans once they got to
the spot, and it kind of made everything a lot
a lot more challenging because it's hard to a lot

(02:22:26):
of a lot of people in block don't have their
phone on them. It's just it's hard to get ride.
It's you know, any kind of any kind of impromptu
organizing at the site, it's always gonna be way more
challenged than trying to figure this stuff out at home.
And yeah, that's just kind of I don't know, it's
it's I think I think the United the right to
background is useful for like a big event after you know,

(02:22:47):
a previous event that had a lot of coverage and
had a lot of talk about it because it had,
you know, a disastrous outcome. And then I think looking
at you know, looking at November fourteen in December ten,
um are also they are also kind of valuable indicators.
Has there been any have you seen anything around the
grapers or like any of the Fuentes crew showing up

(02:23:10):
to this or they are they trying to just are
they are they trying to like keep good optics. I
guess I've as far as I've seen, they're mostly trying
to keep good optics around us. Um they as They
also kind of fall in through the category of like people,
I'm not super worried about like some of them. Yeah,

(02:23:33):
but in like a street fight situation, in a street
fight less so I'm not worried about a groper. Yeah.
The most violent encounter I've ever had with a groper
was one that was probably five ft tall, following me
around and calling me a soy boy for thirty minutes. Yeah.
What I'm more concerned about is is Graper is kind

(02:23:53):
of following the insal terrorism tradition of you know, skinny
of skinny white guys get access to weapons and than
than doing something with the gun is dangerous. Yeah. Yeah,
and they're not going yeah, here finished what you were saying. Yeah,
I'm just saying, like, you know, all all of the

(02:24:14):
grapers I've seen, they're not going to beat me in
a fist fight because they're all even even more not
even more like because your fastest ship. But yeah and
and that and that. Yeah, Yeah, I think that's kind
of another thing that's you know, it's always a possibility
of these things. Like I always say, like the worst
possible outcome is someone someone starts shooting, like a firefight

(02:24:39):
is always the worst way this could go. But with
the sort of optics surrounding this, I I think there's
definitely space for more extreme people, uh, specifically more accelerationist
minded people who try to start something to try to

(02:25:02):
cause some ship. I mean, uh, like I said, I'm
in Virginia. I think of the Richmond gun rally in
the lobby day in what was that twenty nineteen beginning
of I Forget All Time is a flat circle to

(02:25:22):
me now, But um, the members of the base that
we're intercepted on their way to Richmond, Uh, I think
about that situation and how other people and other groups
that we will not talk about on pod could see
an opportunity here. Yeah, and I think that's I think

(02:25:45):
that's more likely happening in somewhere like DC than it
is in Portland's right, because in Portland we have a
pretty good grip on who shows up and why they
show up. The East Coast, the south um northeast, south East,
they have a lot more groups with interest with you know,
obscure ideologies that are more think more prone to those

(02:26:08):
types of to those types of like, um, more insurgent attacks.
And I think people are on the West coast. Yeah,
And I think another thing that kind of amplifies that is,
like you said, like Portland has kind of an established
infrastructure of chud fuckery, you know. I mean, I'm on

(02:26:31):
the other side of the country, and I know the
familiar faces of Portland's bullshit, and we we do have
that to an extent. But d C brings people from
all across the country. I was meeting people on the
metro from everywhere from Tennessee to Kansas to California. And

(02:26:54):
when people are coming in from such a broad range
of places, there's a lot more uncertainty. Yeah, well, I'm
not sure and anything else you want to mention about
kind of what you expect at this rally and any
I don't know, general advice has since you've been at
the past three versions. Yeah, so, I mean, if you're

(02:27:15):
in the DC area or you're nearby, and you're comfortable
with it and physically able to do so, I show up. Um.
The one thing that we do know for sure about
these events is that the more bodies we have, the
less likely it is for people to be able to

(02:27:37):
pray on someone walking home from work or houseless person
just trying to sleep. Yeah, the more bodies that we have,
the better it is. Um, if you are either unable
to come or you don't feel comfortable coming, I know
that there will be jail support, mutual aid efforts UH

(02:28:02):
and Garrison. I can send you to some links to
local d C orgs. If you want to throw it
in the show notes, sure, um, but yeah, just and
if you're gonna go, be prepared, have have a buddy, UH,
lock up, bring UH, bringing I fac and get ready

(02:28:26):
to party. Yeah. I think that's one of the things
you mentioned is like more numbers helps in the case
of it's less likely they'll be like roaming attacks, because
that's what we've seen at a lot of these rallies
is that sometimes they don't ever like actually cause trouble
at where people are, you know, like where the where
the people are. They wait until people are walking away

(02:28:47):
or going back to their car, or if there's no
one like that, they just find some random person on
the street. You know. We saw a lot of that
in d C of of Proud Boys just finding kind
of people in the area that they thought looked like
Antifa quote unquot out and then just attacking them. Um.
So you know, the less scattered people are, um, the
less likely to get kind of those roaming attacks. Yeah,

(02:29:10):
I think. I mean, it's it's always hard to speculate
on the event, on an event that hasn't happened yet.
But um, I believe by the time, by the time
they see airs, it will be happening tomorrow. So as Saturday,
THEO do you want to plug anything? Yeah, you can
find me on Twitter, um at THEO Hansen THEO with
a zero. Uh. Listen to my podcast Terrorism Bad. We

(02:29:36):
look through portrayals of terrorism and extremism in popular media.
See how it holds up to the real world. Um.
Trying to think of anything else. I'll be there on Saturday.
I'll be live tweeting the event. I'm not live tweeting
that dead or otherwise incapacitated or I don't have cell service.

(02:29:57):
Service is always horrible at these things. Oh it's awesome. Yeah,
it's a constant problem. Yeah. They were blocking signals on
January six on the Capitol lawn and when I stepped off,
I had like thirteen texts from all my friends that
were like, hey, text me if you're still alive. It's
really hard to tell what's going on, you know, when
you're when you're like whether or not it's like a

(02:30:19):
cell signal problem, or if it's somebody like targeting you
in particular, it's frustrating. Yeah, all right, well, thank you, Cel,
thank you for giving us the rundown on Saturday's activities. Um,
I hope you don't get shot. Thank you. I hope
I do not as well. That's my general feeling towards
anyone who shows up on uh, you know, on the

(02:30:42):
eighteenth in d C. I hope you don't get shot.
Do your best. Yeah, and if you do get shot,
you know what to do about it? Well? Yeah, I
have a have a care a minute, you know, have
some cell locks. Yeah, that's ideal, but not getting shot
is better. So you cannot remember what try not to

(02:31:03):
get shot? All right, Thanks for having me on guys.
Nice to meet you, Robert and Sophie. Thanks to meet you.
You can follow us that Happened here pod on Twitter,
Instagram and at cool Zone Media for all the things.
And we'll be back on Monday. Hey, we'll be back Monday,

(02:31:24):
with more episodes every week from now until the heat
death of the universe. It Could Happen Here is a
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