November 5, 2021 • 36 mins
In part two we look at the modern origin and continued organizing efforts against "critical race theory", vax/mask mandates, and anti-LGBT+ presence in schools.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
What second? My part of this episode on right wing
attempts to attack and dominate school board meetings in order
to further their ability to do violence on marginalized groups
and also erode democratic institutions from the ground. Uh. Stage title, Yeah, yeah,
(00:27):
that'll that'll click. Well Ah, I'm solutely glad. We don't
have to worry about clicking and titles. And that took
up a lot of my mind back in the day, Garrison,
back when, back when the internet was different. Now we
don't have to worry about that anymore. But we do
have to worry about our mobs of fascists attacking school
board meetings. It happens every week, keeps happening more often.
(00:49):
School boards are calling for assistance. That they seem pretty,
they seem pretty not thrilled. Yeah, they seem not psyched
about that. So we're we're we're. When we left off,
I was talking about some things I found on the
gram Telegram. Uh, Garrison, what's next. I'll go into my
preliminary research on Telegram and particularly response. Basically, I looked
(01:13):
through every single Telegram post and all of the main
fascist channels I lurk on that mentioned school boards from
like the past two weeks. Um, So like yeah, this
is like current current stuff on ongoing. Um. I got
to a lot of the channels I was already familiar with,
like you know, the Western Shapnist channel, which is uh
subs um, the Standard Students channel, which was a when
(01:35):
I was less familiar with, specifically dedicated to this school
board issue. Um. One of one of the posts I
we have on there is h says your enemy isn't
some far off ship whole country. Your enemy is just
down the street at your local school board meeting, teaching
your kids to hate their ancestors, you and themselves. So
(01:55):
like again, that is a very much white supremacist dog
whistle just right there, um talking about producing Hollywood movies
writing they're not whistle basically, it's basically just a whistle. Um.
So yeah. They then they, you know, the same post
talks about you know, masks and shuting down businesses and
the vaccines and stuff and saying the fight is here
and the fight is now. So just in terms of like, yeah,
(02:17):
they're really wanting to hype people up for doing this
thing at school boards. They're trying to really hammer down
the school board points. So like I found this. I
found this post. This is This is a post from
the Standford Students channel um and I saw this one
re shared in a lot of different channels. One of
the other first ones that I saw pop off was
from Ron watkins channel like Code monkey z. He is
(02:40):
one of the one of the architects or one of
the you know people who really pushed Q and on
stuff into He's the guy who ran like the physical
infrastructure of a chan and eight coon for years. Yeah.
He and he's trying to pivot into being like having
his just his face be like a kind of alternative
right wing figure right now. Uh, he's gonna be running
(03:01):
for office in Arizona, I believe. Anyway, he has a
very popular telegram channel, um and he he made he
made this post that had over a thousand, over a
thousand comments on it, which is a lot for telegram.
A thousand comments on telegram post, especially telegram post of
of code mackezs size. I't see how many subs does it?
So Ron, just for his context, Ron Watkins has four
(03:24):
hundred and thirty two thousand subscribers on his on his
Telegram channel. So yep. Anyway, Uh, CRT is being rebranded
as s e L a social emotional learning. If you
are attending school board meetings as you should be, do
what you can to make sure you stop both s
(03:44):
e L and CRT and keep them and make sure
that they are banned in your school districts. So again,
just direct calls to action for getting people to show
up to these school boards. And also, social emotional learning
is not CRT, and of course T is not even
taught in schools. I think everyone who listens to this
podcast knows that SRT, actually critical theory isn't taught in schools.
(04:07):
This isn't an actual thing. It's it is like a
legal theory. We'll get into more of how this gout,
like pushed towards the end. I think Chris has some
stuff prepared on that. Yeah we yeah, yeah, it's again
these none of these things are actually real. It's a
complex legal theory. What they're really mad about is their
people are teaching that racism is like an issue that's
built into a lot of American institutions and it's an
(04:27):
ongoing thing. It's not a thing of the past. That's
what they're actually mad about, and they just call that CRT.
Some some of the comments from the Ron Watkins post,
stuff like these snowflakes are so annoying. I'm about to
start cutting power to any school in my community that
teaches this. Um so yeah, more Again, that's just a direct,
direct threat of doing terrorism. Should I mean less of
(04:50):
a threat and more of a promise? Yeah? Do that
it be? No? Sure it doesn't. All right, Well I
don't understand things the same way you zoomers do. Please continue. Yeah,
a lot of a lot of posts being a shipped
around from channel to channel, including this full Nazi channels
were like trying to trying to of course, like a
lots of Nazis are actually you know, I thought it
(05:11):
was pretty funny that the that the school board union
put in a call to assistance to the federal government
to deal with this issue. They of course they thought
that was funny. But they're gonna use this to like
spread networks to be like, hey, the government wants to
stop you. They're calling you a terrorist. You like regular
folk are being called terrorists because you're showing up with
school boards, right, That's the kind of message that they're
going to shoot out. So they a lot of Nazi
(05:31):
channels crafted a lot of posts like that that got
shared around a lot. Yeah, in trying to basically all
time critical race theory and if you approached against critical
race theory, they're calling you a domestic terrorist. That that
type of thing. And this got this got shared in
the school boards channel and a whole bunch of whole
bunch of other stuff being being talking about how if you,
(05:52):
if you stand up, you're gonna be a domestic terrorist.
You have to be brave and do this. A few
days after the school board uh, not a few days,
I guess this. This this was in like in October
um the school Association retracted some of the some of
the words that they used in their letter because of
this BackFlash that was created. And this was also shared
(06:12):
in shared in uh lots of fascist channels. The main
one who was shared in that I saw was the
Honk Pilled channel UM, which is just another type of
peppe meme um uh, one of the other one of
the other big, big kind of groups active in this
in this whole sphere. And this this has been a
group going on for a while and we haven't talked
(06:33):
about on the pod, but we probably should do something eventually.
Is this group called White Rose so this is a
White Rose is a COVID conspiracy group that has been
very uh successful in creating on the ground organizers who
are regular people, and they do a lot of like
sticker bombs and lots of neighborhoods. If you have if
you ever seen anti like COVID or COVID conspiracy stickers
(06:54):
in your neighborhood, it was probably a White Rose sticker. UM.
These are all over the States and basically every university.
As a quick heads up, the original White Rose was
a student protest organization that existed in Nazi Germany UM
and protested illegally, and its organizers were executed by the Nazis.
And I think it was the mid forty I mean
(07:14):
it would be like like forty three, maybe maybe forty four. UM.
Sophie Shoal was the person most associated with them. So
they they're they're they've taken the names of these these heroes,
UM in order to it's just disgusting, it's very gross.
There's there's a decent amount of decent amount of researchers
in this field thinks that there's like actual bad people
(07:37):
behind White Rose. Of course, with like bad people because
they're spending COVID stuff, but like like wait, like like
more like bad actors use basically astroturfing this thing, but
White rosters its own piece later. But because they have
such a big following on telegram, they are of course
using using this to using the school board thing to
gain more support they have about subscribers to their specific
(07:59):
telegram channel. They shared a post a few weeks ago
saying thank you to all the brave parents going out
to their school boards and standing up for the children. Um.
And they try that, you know, get people to do
sticker bombs and stuff, but the fact that there's like
specifically calling out people in school boards is like an
extra step of like beyond just putting stickers up in
(08:19):
your neighborhood. Um. Another another another white right Rose post.
They shared a shared a video UM that was captioned
as concerned parent absolutely destroys school board with facts. The
school boards are the battlefield of our time. This is
how it's done, and just the increasing rhetoric around like
(08:40):
battle fields, this is where like the fight is at
all that kind of stuff. Um. There was another another uh,
the white White Chauvinist channel shared a video from Fox
News UM and they they the Western Chauvinist channel, which
is again it's one of the most shared ones in
this whole network. They captioned this saying, parents and virgin
here are trying to fight back against the school board
(09:02):
that is anti white. Um, every every school district in
America needs to have an anti mandate pro right parents
running for the school board. So that's just the It's
this type of stuff all over and this this this
post was got it has like an eleven eleven thousand,
eleven thousand views. Um, So these things are spreading to
(09:25):
a lot of a lot of these specific networks. And
I mean, I I have so many of this kind
of stuff. I'm not going to go through every single
one in detail. There's ones that are way more like
openly anti Semitic, uh, you know, saying, you know the
Jews that run you know, ex school board, um are
trying to force vaccinations on every student over twelve. Um.
Other another Uh, there's this fake this is this this
(09:45):
fake Clint Eastwood channel on Telegram that's pretty popular. Someone
who's pretending to be Clint Eastwood that spread far right stuff. Um.
He had a post that was shared a lot that
started by saying starts taking over school boards, start taking
over city council, start to ing over city boards. Um,
start to start being pull watchers, start being poll workers,
start taking over sheriff's departments. It's not enough just to vote.
(10:08):
So this, this is the other thing that we're going
to see a lot more of, is rhetoric around voting.
Isn't enough. You need to start doing more things. Um,
there is one of it. Yeah, here, here's here's one.
This is gonna this is a referencing some of the
trans stuff. I'll discussing a bit, but I just want
to tie it in now. A post from the Western
Chauvinist Channel saying there is no political solution, which is
(10:30):
a direct Nazi, a direct Nazi lie. I mean that.
That's what I did an article early this year on
Riley Williams, the Nazi who stole Pelosi's laptop during the
Capitol riot, and then like the video that we were
able to identify her as a sig hiling Nazi, and
that's how she opened her quote, there is no political solution.
It's a very common catchphrase among like the the fast right. Yeah,
(10:55):
so there's been a lot of stuff around harassing, like
specific school board members harassing specific teacher. Was there was
this teacher in uh, I think in California that was
trying to like introduced like like anti fascist type rhetoric
and talking about how fascism is a modern thing. They
got absolutely bashed um and like docs um, and they
got it I think fired because there was like hundreds
(11:15):
of parents organizing on on apps like telegram to harass
this one teacher at school board's like you know, they
took over massive school board meetings and just talked about
this one teacher endlessly. Um. And it was even It's
interesting because like all the parents were like, yeah, Mike,
my I got worried because my student actually really like
liked the teacher and said that they were doing like
giving really interesting points about like systemic issues. And the
(11:37):
parents were like and they brought their kids to the
school board meeting. There's the kids are just standing in
the back as their parents are ranting about this and
talking about how the kids actually, like I thought, they
were learning things about systemic issues. And then that got
people mad. So you know what else gets people mad? Uh?
This is advertisements. H And we're bad. We're gonna we're
(12:14):
gonna touch on the uh the specifics like all the
stuff we've been talking about. Most of the modern most
most of the current organizing is a lot of it's
around like mask mandates and vaccine mandates. Um, Like all
of this called like you know this the stool board channel.
All of this kind of stuff is usually around vaccine,
vaccines and mask stuff. Uh, of course there's critic Royce
(12:36):
theory was the way more popular thing a few months ago.
Right now is the vaccine thing. The other kind of
like ever present thing is being upset that trans kids
exist and being very fearful that that there are trans
kids around your kids. Uh. This is a thing that's been,
you know, a thing for years that people have been
fighting against. And since the school board things becoming more popular,
(13:00):
people are are starting to, uh bring vasically do these
kind of flash mobs specifically around trans issues. Um. One
of like the more like astro turf type things was
people getting mad that there were like two specific books
available in certain high school and some middle school libraries.
Um that one of it was like a like one
(13:22):
of it was the memoir that Robert mentioned. The other
one was like a graphic novel memorial about someone realizing
their gender queer. So these are books that are not
in curriculums. These are just books that are available at
the library. Um. And basically there was people who just
who found these out and got turned it into like
(13:43):
like a meme on telegram essentially, like people like sharing
information about this. Then you like look it up, see
if it's in your library. So then we have all
of these like coordinated attacks on school boards by these
mobs of people all about these same two books. Um.
And the goals to not only just get the books
like banned, but they're also trying to like fire or
arrest the teachers and school board members for allowing these
(14:03):
books to happen. There has been school boy members who
have like stepped down because of just how much harassment
is about these things. Quote from the Western Chavinist channel,
Jesus Christ straight up pedophile books in our children's schools.
Once again, the Jewish school board member gets mad and
try to shut them down. How can you not connect
the dots here? There's no political solution. Voting will not
remove these people. Um. There was the mayor of Houston,
(14:26):
uh So in the mayor of Houston, Ohio heard about
this and he went to a school board meeting and
instructed all of them, all of the board members to
resign um quoting the quoting the Proud Boy right wing
organizing channel Western CHAVINIZTA. This comes after some of the
degenerate parasites in the system called educators, instructed kids to
describe a sex scene that they wouldn't show their mom.
(14:47):
Of course this didn't happen. This is this is they
these these things are not are not. These books are
not used in any kind of curriculum anyway. So even
even if they were that that we were not even
we're not even in that reality. Um. So the mayor
of this town basically got these instructed these instructed all
of these people to resign um. Earlier, I think in
(15:10):
mark No. In August of this year, pride flags were
banned at a at a school school district inside south
west Oregon. Um, I think around I think around Newburgh.
The Newberg school district banned but banned pride flags. So
all this kind of stuff and and of course that
is in a lot of states. But the again, the
(15:32):
fact that it's in like Oregon, a blue state, is
people got made like you know, there's like you know,
NBC articles about it. Because it's it's Oregon. It's not
it's it's it's not it's it's not a red state.
So it's all big, it's all Portland, it's all Antifa,
right yeah. Yeah, so again the stuff is not not
not like contained to one thing. And like yeah, if
you google the stuff around these books, if you google
(15:52):
like gender queer book, uh school boards, you'll find this
in so many school districts. You'll see just mobs of
people lined up yelling and screaming um and like like
printing out giant, like giant cardboard prints of of this
comic book showing like like with like you know, there's
(16:13):
like a dick on it, Like there's like a drawn
a drawn dick, because that's what human bodies look like.
Like you can look at like a lot of like yeah,
they're like what are you know, banned the statue of
David because he has this dick out too, like like
come on. And also these are the same people who
talk about like oh they're you know, banning books, burning books,
you know, right, there was that there was that tweet
(16:34):
from like James Woods about like these are the books
that people want banned. That means they're the most important ones.
But these people love. These people love like burning books.
These people love banning books. They love cancel culture. That
the cultures that I was that I was in as
a kid, they would have like massive like book and
like c D and DVD burnings for like unlike unholy
and sinful media that you would like bring in and
(16:54):
like throw like your sinful music onto this giant fire. Like.
These people love love burning book because they love they
love banning stuff. They love cancel culture. Um, but they
just like that. Yeah, So that was that was most
of my stuff around the kind of the ongoing queer
and trans stuff. Of course, you know, this ties into
the bathroom stuff as well, with the people showing up
(17:16):
to school board meetings to scream about you know, kids
going ship in the bathroom that they want to and
feel comfortable in. Um. You know. And again like it
doesn't it's not gonna stop with trans people either, right
as soon as they ban trans people, the next thing
is going to be oh, gay students, right it is
it never it's never stops, it always keeps going. Um.
And it's just an ever present problem that it's gonna
(17:37):
require a lot more, a lot more dealing with and
again with all of these flash mobs, like no one,
no one's gonna stop them because they're like the people
in power, They're the people that have all of the privilege.
There's no really effective counter organizing for these school board
meetings right now. Um, the cops aren't gonna do ship.
Security guards are't gonna do ship. Uh, and regular libs
(17:58):
and regular regular people are going to do shit either.
And it's hard to figure out how to actually combat
this because there's a lot of times that the people
in school boards were like, no, we don't want this
to turn into a giant like fistfights, Like don't don't
come in mass to start fistfighting them. But there needs
to be something to combat, whether that be you know,
running running for school boards, just showing up outside school boards,
(18:19):
having just more people there in, having more presence there
so that it's not as overwhelmed by like a mob
of two hundred anti mask people showing up. Right there
needs to be some type of thing happening because no
one else needs to be countered and yeah, you know what,
they might need to get the ship kicked out of them.
I'm sorry, but like I don't like I don't think
(18:40):
that would actually help in this instance, probably, but like
there needs to be fucking something like they they are.
The level of boldness that they have is evidence that
they feel they are confident that there is no counter
to what there is going to be done. And perhaps
if they were being met by a wall of people
(19:04):
in the community who were willing, if they tried to
force their way into fucking throw down, you know, to say,
you're not entering this building without a goddamn mask, You're
not shutting down this meeting. Um, I don't know, maybe
that would do something. I don't actually know what would
do something. If it was people just as regular people,
I think that would be. Yeah, it's certainly not going
to help if it's antifa, Um, for the love of God,
(19:25):
don't show up in fucking black block at a school
board meeting. Um, Like what would work is a bunch
of other middle aged parents showing up and being willing
to confront these people if and like everything that is
worth mentioning is that a lot of the people at
these protests like are not parents at all. Like they're
not they're not they're not even in the same school district.
(19:45):
They're just sort of like this this is just how
this is just how the sort of right wing outrage
machine has worked, and this is where they're drawing people. Yeah,
I mean and again like it's it's a lot of
the people in there, there's gonna be big do dudes
who want to fight, but a lot of the people
like screaming are are like you know, middle aged women.
The people who are like really like leading the charge
(20:07):
on this because they're able to use their privilege because
like no one's gonna stop them, right, So that that's
like when they're leading the charge of two people who
are gonna like scream and harass and chase out the
black security guards, chase out, chase out the all of this,
all the school remembers no one's they're they're very effective
at using their privilege to gain political ground by just
(20:28):
like doing stuff on the ground. It's like, you know,
it's like this is like the January six thing. It's
like the January six thing. This is the new future
of political action is just showing up in mass two
places where no one's gonna stop you because you're like
you're the you know, the good, relatable you know everyday
Yeah you're anyway, That's that's the stuff I had, will
(20:49):
probably have an ad break and then talk about maybe
some of how this stuff started. Speaking of using your privilege,
you know, what is the greatest privilege being able to
purchase the products that Yeah, that's exactly right. There's no
privilege higher than being able to engage with these consumables.
(21:22):
And we're back, all right, Chris, you want to close
this out. Yeah, So the last thing I want to
talk about that is interesting about this whole thing is,
you know, we we've we've mostly been focusing on the
very furthest right elements of this, but a lot of
the school board stuff is tied to I mean just
(21:42):
straight a Republican party operatives and people who work in
this sort of you know, I mean there's there's literally
bunch of people who work for the Republican parties we'll
get into. And then there's also this sort of network
of of Republican think tanks, republicans sort of yeah, dark
money dumps, that's a lot of a lot of AstroTurf
groups and that kind of stuff. Yeah, And and so
I want to talk about a few of these people
because I think they're interesting. Um, I think we can
(22:07):
start with Nicole Nelly who's an interesting person. She's so
she she most recently founded Parents Defending Education. Who are they?
They're one of the big groups to sort of like
spreads this this sort of attack on school board stuff
over the country. They have chapters, they organize people, and
they also, you know, they do this thing where they
collect incident reports from from school districts that they you know,
(22:28):
just distribute to all these people and they put it online.
They have all of these they they they have a
lot of stuff they do. They do a lot of
anti mask mandate stuff. So they have these like template letters,
like template like fakely performing letter things that you can
send to schools that if you don't want to wear
a masks. That's the staple of this type of organizing. Now. Yeah,
and and the interesting thing about Nicolenelly is that so
(22:49):
this is not like her first organ like three years
eighteen back in the Halcyon Days of of I you know,
I I'm not quit going to say it was before
the mask fully came off, but it was well the
mask was like a little bit more on. She she
previously founded a speech first. Yeah you might remember. Yeah,
(23:11):
speech was the big talking point. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And so she ran that for a while. Now she's
you know, organizing with the holy people who just wants
to Yeah, they just move on, they move on to
the new things. It was, it was free speech, it
was christ theory. Right now it's anti mask stuff. Next
up is gonna be trans stuff going real hard. Just
today we had the fucking person who BBC platforms, the
(23:35):
fucking lincum. Yeah, Lily K, the rapist Lily K manifesto
where she details which specific trans women she wants to
personally kill. Yeah, I used to know Lily Um. Oh yeah,
yeah yeah, uh real dark turned Um, I don't know.
I guess it's not super surprising. She was definitely interviewed
(23:57):
her for a documentary and it was a bit off putting. Uh,
didn't realize this was going on. I mean, yeah, there's
there's a lot of a lot a lot of reports
of people in like the sex book industry of talking
about her, like raping people in bathrooms, which again it's like, yeah,
the people it's always screaming about, Oh no trans woman
or in bathrooms. Yeah, the people. The person screaming about
(24:17):
this is an actual rapist. Like and like when when
we say rapist here, like she she she raped so
many people that, like on Twitter, like I was scrolling
through my feet and I saw multiple people who were like, oh,
I know this person she assaulted me. Yeah, it's really bad.
The people who the turfs are like pushing. Yeah, this
is the BBC was platform. You're so like, yeah, like
(24:38):
trans stuff is as soon as as soon as the
anti mask anti vax stuff like dies down in the
next five months or whatever. Uh, I foresee a massive
pivot towards specifically anti anti trans antiqueer antique stuff because
that's gonna be the new thing. Yep. And and and
I think it's it's worth bearing in mind that this stuff, yeah,
(24:58):
you know with with the cold NAILI epically. So she
she worked she like worked at the Cato Institute, which
is like Murray Rothbart and Charles Cokes. Now it's it's yeah,
it's it's it's basic. It's basically this is a slight
over supplication, but it's basically one of the Cokes sort
of like money laundering like money operation things. She also
worked at Freedom Works, who yeah, yeah, this is great.
(25:19):
So um, this is this is one of the fun
parts of this, which is that so Freedom Works is
another one of the Coke's sort of dark money laundering
machine things and Freedom Works are basically the people who
created the Tea Party, Like there are people who turned
the Tea Party from like a bunch of weird guys,
like like six weirdos into like, you know, the basically
(25:40):
the the the the entirety of the pre Trumps conservative
political machine who like built Republican Party after it was
like completely discredited um in into two thousand's. And this
is true of a lot of the people who are
in charge of these big organs have connections like this,
um the person you found in No Left Turn, which
is No Off Turn, No One for an education. They're
(26:04):
they're they're They're not one of these big sort of
anti school bird things. I mean they they are the people.
They're one of people who like they have a list
of books on their website that they want banned. Wow, yeah,
it's great cool And their founder rights for the heritage
foundations like magazine, So they're there. There's there's all of
this stuff. And I think maybe the most implematic one
is this guy is Mark Ruffo who Rufo. Yeah, so
(26:26):
so he's he's the guy who just created the whole
critical race theory thing out of nothing. He like threw
together a bunch of like in just like these incredibly
tenuous connections. Like there's a bunch of sort of old
cultural Marxism conspiracy stuff in there. Yeah, it's a lot
of like Frankfurt's school type ship. Yeah. Yeah. And and
(26:48):
but but what I think is interesting about him, it's
less his ideas, which are just pseudo intellectual. Yeah, he doesn't.
He's not actually super smart in what he says. That
there's a lot of videos of him talking to actual
philosophers getting led about what rice theory is. Like, he's
actually not that intelligent in this, in this side of things.
But but you know that the thing is that there's
nothing more dangerous than an idiot with a trick up
(27:09):
his sleeve exactly. And you know, and then the trick
basically is Fox News. And you know, the reason the
reason this whole thing exists is that this was you know,
Mark Ruffo, He's very very explicit about this, that this
this this was his solution to the George Floyd uprising
was that oh, we we need we need to we
need to find this thing to stop the medicinum of
this uprising. And this is this is who Tucker Carlson
(27:31):
brings on and starts bring on and this blows up,
and he immediately gets hired by the Manhattan Institute, which
is a very not that old but they're from the eighties,
but a very an old, extremely powerful conservative thing tank
that I don't think. I think it's less known than
things like the Heritage Foundation or the kid who wants
to Yeah, I would say so, yeah, but he gets
they hired him like immediately because you know, the sort
(27:53):
of mainline of the Republican Party very quickly is like
this is the thing that we can use as like
a hammer, right, And so the mentatt the Institute publishes
this group of work for them. Now I can't I'm
not actually sure if you I don't know if you
specifically wrote this or he was just involved in it.
I think it's it's the bye line is just the
Manhattan Institute. But they have this incredibly detailed tool kit
(28:16):
explaining how you know, both both explaining what the sort
of right wing like line on critical race theory is.
They have like a bunch of explainers, have like list
of terms. Have you ever seen Yeah, yeah, it's actually yeah,
if you've ever seen like list of terms of people
want banded, Like it's all just pulled from this document, right,
so this add stuff. Um no, But but the interting
part of about this is the other thing is this
(28:37):
this is an organizing manual, right, It's it's as specific
thing that tells you how to go and how to
find other people, like other other people. You know, if
if you're like an incensed right wing like freaking one
of these school districts, it's like, okay, well here's here's
how you like talk to other people in your districts.
Here's here's a list of options of like things you
can do going public. And then there's a very interesting
(28:57):
thing part of this that that I think is really
disturbing and outlines like really what's going on here, which
is there's this whole like freak out thing about this
thing called minority rule, where like, oh, the left has
this like they have this like militant minority that that
will compel the majority to follow them by because they
keep on showing up and they keep on doing things.
(29:18):
And if they if this minority like it keeps keep
keeps you know, being more in transient than everyone else,
then they will inevitably win. And this the three quarters
of this section is this like weird fearmongering thing about it.
But then the last part of it is a bunch
is the thing that's saying, oh, we need to do
this ourselves, right, this is how we win. We win
by being more in transient. We will by showing up
(29:39):
more often of course. Yeah, and you know, and this
is this is the other thing is this is from
like last year. I think this is like this summer.
So yeah, okay, that's sorry. This is this is this
is really this year. But it's interesting because it's like
this is the sort of you know, this, this is
this is the Republican Party essentially, I mean, the institutes
(29:59):
very very main stre Republican Party. This yeah, this is
this is how they do effective in person organizing. We we
we talked about this a bit in our episodes um
about the like in the aftermath of the abortion ruling
in Texas and how and how like the religious right
ring organizing has worked in local districts. Yeah. This this
is how they're able to get things done, which is
why there's been so many school by members who either
got fired, who have had to step down, who have
(30:20):
been harassed off the job and are now there's people
you know, a lot of a lot of like people
I would describe as people holding very extreme views are
now running and taking these spots. Um because if you
can do if you can do this type of like
again it's not grassroots, but it's it's it is it
is like asturp so like it appears grassroots. But if
you can do this type of like faux grassroots organizing,
(30:42):
you can gain a lot of power over specific areas
and make a lot of people's lives a lot more miserable.
And that's that's that's what the goal is, right, The
goal is to make the trans kids lives miserable. The
goals they get people to not wear masks and dive
COVID like that, those are the results of these actions. Well,
I think I think they're they're They're an interesting interplay
here though, because I think because so freedom works, like
(31:04):
like even even a lot of the specific protests that
are happening, and this is especially true of the very earlier,
earliest ones. I thinks like when when like the very
first school board protests that were happening, Yeah, like like
a lot of these sumiler to follow is when they
started start up. Yeah, and and those a lot of
those were directly organized by by people who work for
Freedom Works. And and this is this is what a
(31:26):
lot of the RT ones yeah yeah, yeah, they see
the crt ones or for every specifically freedom works. And
this is what I think is interesting about this is
that you know, okay, freedom Works. It's like, okay, so
what does Freedom Works out of this? Freedom Works wants
the T party again, right because you know that this
is this is what Freedom Works does. Right there. They're
they're they're basically the group that comes in when when
the Republicans start losing election cycles, they're like, okay, well
now we need to get the bounce of power back.
(31:47):
We need to bring drawn the Democrats own. So they're
they're they're largely trying to build a sort of electoral base.
And and again like this, this this will look familiar
to people who remember two thousand and ten because it's
the same thing except and this is the thing that
I I I this is the part where I genuinely
they can't tell whether the Freedom Works people, whether the cokes,
whether that whether this sort of dark wening network either
(32:09):
I don't I can't tell whether they understand what they're
doing and like it or they're just incredibly naive. But
you know, this is not two thousand ten, right. You
can't when when you start mobilizing people, like mobilizing people
on the right wing to go to a place, they
don't just like sit there and hold signs anymore. You
cannot You cannot contain them at this point. You cannot
(32:32):
control the spread like you have once you've you've opened
this can, and there's no way of putting them back
in because as soon as they start organizing on appside telegram,
they're one step away from skull masks. And then they're
being okay with cheering around people that are going to
go beat up that are going to go beat up
people in these meetings. Yeah, and this is this is
this is really the thing that I think it's it's
(32:53):
not just January six that we live in the shadow
January six, but it's also about you know, if you
look at how how the anti lockdown protest went, right,
you a bunch of people showing up with guns, the
capitals and that stuff was extremely effective. And that in
the combination between that in January six has you know,
it's open the floodgates and now that was that was
(33:13):
six being possible. Is the more and more protests around
capitals of people showing up in mass to overwhelm anyone,
and because they're all white and because they're all like
middle class conservatives, no one's gonna stop them. Yeah, and
and you know, and this is the thing, right, you know,
the Cokes. I I genuinely don't know what the Cokes
want out of this. My guess is that the thing
(33:35):
that they want is a new based Republican voters. But
that's not what they're creating. The thing that they're creating
is a new core fascist street fighters. And you know it,
at some point, it doesn't it literally doesn't matter whether
or not this is what the Cokes are trying to
do or like not trying to do, because they're in
the end it's it's just pushing people towards thinking there's
no political solution. It's still only only violence and overwhelming
(33:58):
people in mass is the only way to get the
change that they want. The change they want is to
have trans kids not exists. And yeah, just more more
and more like fecistic policies, um, whether that be you know,
banning books that mentioned gay people existing or what it's
like to be a gay person, whether that be teaching
people that racism is still an actual thing that exists,
(34:21):
or that be putting a masculine so you don't kill
your grandma or whatever. Yep. Well, and you know, and
I think I think one last thing, right, you know,
we saw what happened last time they were in power, right,
and it was you know, and like you can you
can talk about how a lot of the worst stuff
is still happening. Was like, yeah, they put a bunch
of people in concentration camps, right, and if they if
(34:45):
they take back power again, and there's a good chance
that they're going to because you know, the Democrats are
being they they you know, the Democrats never want to
be in power. The thing they want to be minority oppositions.
They can do fundraising, right and if you know, when
when when these people, if these people take power again,
it's going to be even worse than it was last time. Yeah.
(35:07):
The thing looking at looking at the Virginia election, the
night of recording is a great example of that. Yeah. Uh,
in terms of yeah, it turns out when democrats just
do nothing and just sit around in office, you don't
convince young people to want to vote for them because
they're not actually doing anything, so then they just sit out.
Then the Republicans actually do vote in people. Then we
get uh we anti c R T person elected to
(35:28):
be the governor of Virginia. And that's the episode. Good Times. Well,
I hope everybody's optimistic feeling nice. Well, um, we'll be
back with something else. Research your school boards, who is
in it, and just protests around it and maybe show
up with some of your I don't know buddies with
(35:49):
your lattes and stand in front of the building and
be like, no, we don't want you, we don't want
you to shut stuff down because no one else is
going to stop them. It has to be just like
regular people. You can't going to be the oposite. It's
not going to be any elected democrat and honestly, like,
you can't rely on teens and black block to do
this that this isn't this isn't what they need to
be doing. It should be like yeah, it'd be like
(36:10):
millennials and Gen X need to be like, hey, no,
we're not gonna we're not gonna have you doing this. Well,
that's the that's the episode. That's the episode It Could
Happen Here as a production of cool Zone Media. For
more podcasts from cool zone Media, visit our website cool
zone media dot com, or check us out on the
(36:30):
I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here,
updated monthly at cool zone Media dot com slash sources.
Thanks for listening.
What second? My part of this episode on right wing
attempts to attack and dominate school board meetings in order
to further their ability to do violence on marginalized groups
and also erode democratic institutions from the ground. Uh. Stage title, Yeah, yeah,
(00:27):
that'll that'll click. Well Ah, I'm solutely glad. We don't
have to worry about clicking and titles. And that took
up a lot of my mind back in the day, Garrison,
back when, back when the internet was different. Now we
don't have to worry about that anymore. But we do
have to worry about our mobs of fascists attacking school
board meetings. It happens every week, keeps happening more often.
(00:49):
School boards are calling for assistance. That they seem pretty,
they seem pretty not thrilled. Yeah, they seem not psyched
about that. So we're we're we're. When we left off,
I was talking about some things I found on the
gram Telegram. Uh, Garrison, what's next. I'll go into my
preliminary research on Telegram and particularly response. Basically, I looked
(01:13):
through every single Telegram post and all of the main
fascist channels I lurk on that mentioned school boards from
like the past two weeks. Um, So like yeah, this
is like current current stuff on ongoing. Um. I got
to a lot of the channels I was already familiar with,
like you know, the Western Shapnist channel, which is uh
subs um, the Standard Students channel, which was a when
(01:35):
I was less familiar with, specifically dedicated to this school
board issue. Um. One of one of the posts I
we have on there is h says your enemy isn't
some far off ship whole country. Your enemy is just
down the street at your local school board meeting, teaching
your kids to hate their ancestors, you and themselves. So
(01:55):
like again, that is a very much white supremacist dog
whistle just right there, um talking about producing Hollywood movies
writing they're not whistle basically, it's basically just a whistle. Um.
So yeah. They then they, you know, the same post
talks about you know, masks and shuting down businesses and
the vaccines and stuff and saying the fight is here
and the fight is now. So just in terms of like, yeah,
(02:17):
they're really wanting to hype people up for doing this
thing at school boards. They're trying to really hammer down
the school board points. So like I found this. I
found this post. This is This is a post from
the Standford Students channel um and I saw this one
re shared in a lot of different channels. One of
the other first ones that I saw pop off was
from Ron watkins channel like Code monkey z. He is
(02:40):
one of the one of the architects or one of
the you know people who really pushed Q and on
stuff into He's the guy who ran like the physical
infrastructure of a chan and eight coon for years. Yeah.
He and he's trying to pivot into being like having
his just his face be like a kind of alternative
right wing figure right now. Uh, he's gonna be running
(03:01):
for office in Arizona, I believe. Anyway, he has a
very popular telegram channel, um and he he made he
made this post that had over a thousand, over a
thousand comments on it, which is a lot for telegram.
A thousand comments on telegram post, especially telegram post of
of code mackezs size. I't see how many subs does it?
So Ron, just for his context, Ron Watkins has four
(03:24):
hundred and thirty two thousand subscribers on his on his
Telegram channel. So yep. Anyway, Uh, CRT is being rebranded
as s e L a social emotional learning. If you
are attending school board meetings as you should be, do
what you can to make sure you stop both s
(03:44):
e L and CRT and keep them and make sure
that they are banned in your school districts. So again,
just direct calls to action for getting people to show
up to these school boards. And also, social emotional learning
is not CRT, and of course T is not even
taught in schools. I think everyone who listens to this
podcast knows that SRT, actually critical theory isn't taught in schools.
(04:07):
This isn't an actual thing. It's it is like a
legal theory. We'll get into more of how this gout,
like pushed towards the end. I think Chris has some
stuff prepared on that. Yeah we yeah, yeah, it's again
these none of these things are actually real. It's a
complex legal theory. What they're really mad about is their
people are teaching that racism is like an issue that's
built into a lot of American institutions and it's an
(04:27):
ongoing thing. It's not a thing of the past. That's
what they're actually mad about, and they just call that CRT.
Some some of the comments from the Ron Watkins post,
stuff like these snowflakes are so annoying. I'm about to
start cutting power to any school in my community that
teaches this. Um so yeah, more Again, that's just a direct,
direct threat of doing terrorism. Should I mean less of
(04:50):
a threat and more of a promise? Yeah? Do that
it be? No? Sure it doesn't. All right, Well I
don't understand things the same way you zoomers do. Please continue. Yeah,
a lot of a lot of posts being a shipped
around from channel to channel, including this full Nazi channels
were like trying to trying to of course, like a
lots of Nazis are actually you know, I thought it
(05:11):
was pretty funny that the that the school board union
put in a call to assistance to the federal government
to deal with this issue. They of course they thought
that was funny. But they're gonna use this to like
spread networks to be like, hey, the government wants to
stop you. They're calling you a terrorist. You like regular
folk are being called terrorists because you're showing up with
school boards, right, That's the kind of message that they're
going to shoot out. So they a lot of Nazi
(05:31):
channels crafted a lot of posts like that that got
shared around a lot. Yeah, in trying to basically all
time critical race theory and if you approached against critical
race theory, they're calling you a domestic terrorist. That that
type of thing. And this got this got shared in
the school boards channel and a whole bunch of whole
bunch of other stuff being being talking about how if you,
(05:52):
if you stand up, you're gonna be a domestic terrorist.
You have to be brave and do this. A few
days after the school board uh, not a few days,
I guess this. This this was in like in October
um the school Association retracted some of the some of
the words that they used in their letter because of
this BackFlash that was created. And this was also shared
(06:12):
in shared in uh lots of fascist channels. The main
one who was shared in that I saw was the
Honk Pilled channel UM, which is just another type of
peppe meme um uh, one of the other one of
the other big, big kind of groups active in this
in this whole sphere. And this this has been a
group going on for a while and we haven't talked
(06:33):
about on the pod, but we probably should do something eventually.
Is this group called White Rose so this is a
White Rose is a COVID conspiracy group that has been
very uh successful in creating on the ground organizers who
are regular people, and they do a lot of like
sticker bombs and lots of neighborhoods. If you have if
you ever seen anti like COVID or COVID conspiracy stickers
(06:54):
in your neighborhood, it was probably a White Rose sticker. UM.
These are all over the States and basically every university.
As a quick heads up, the original White Rose was
a student protest organization that existed in Nazi Germany UM
and protested illegally, and its organizers were executed by the Nazis.
And I think it was the mid forty I mean
(07:14):
it would be like like forty three, maybe maybe forty four. UM.
Sophie Shoal was the person most associated with them. So
they they're they're they've taken the names of these these heroes,
UM in order to it's just disgusting, it's very gross.
There's there's a decent amount of decent amount of researchers
in this field thinks that there's like actual bad people
(07:37):
behind White Rose. Of course, with like bad people because
they're spending COVID stuff, but like like wait, like like
more like bad actors use basically astroturfing this thing, but
White rosters its own piece later. But because they have
such a big following on telegram, they are of course
using using this to using the school board thing to
gain more support they have about subscribers to their specific
(07:59):
telegram channel. They shared a post a few weeks ago
saying thank you to all the brave parents going out
to their school boards and standing up for the children. Um.
And they try that, you know, get people to do
sticker bombs and stuff, but the fact that there's like
specifically calling out people in school boards is like an
extra step of like beyond just putting stickers up in
(08:19):
your neighborhood. Um. Another another another white right Rose post.
They shared a shared a video UM that was captioned
as concerned parent absolutely destroys school board with facts. The
school boards are the battlefield of our time. This is
how it's done, and just the increasing rhetoric around like
(08:40):
battle fields, this is where like the fight is at
all that kind of stuff. Um. There was another another uh,
the white White Chauvinist channel shared a video from Fox
News UM and they they the Western Chauvinist channel, which
is again it's one of the most shared ones in
this whole network. They captioned this saying, parents and virgin
here are trying to fight back against the school board
(09:02):
that is anti white. Um, every every school district in
America needs to have an anti mandate pro right parents
running for the school board. So that's just the It's
this type of stuff all over and this this this
post was got it has like an eleven eleven thousand,
eleven thousand views. Um, So these things are spreading to
(09:25):
a lot of a lot of these specific networks. And
I mean, I I have so many of this kind
of stuff. I'm not going to go through every single
one in detail. There's ones that are way more like
openly anti Semitic, uh, you know, saying, you know the
Jews that run you know, ex school board, um are
trying to force vaccinations on every student over twelve. Um.
Other another Uh, there's this fake this is this this
(09:45):
fake Clint Eastwood channel on Telegram that's pretty popular. Someone
who's pretending to be Clint Eastwood that spread far right stuff. Um.
He had a post that was shared a lot that
started by saying starts taking over school boards, start taking
over city council, start to ing over city boards. Um,
start to start being pull watchers, start being poll workers,
start taking over sheriff's departments. It's not enough just to vote.
(10:08):
So this, this is the other thing that we're going
to see a lot more of, is rhetoric around voting.
Isn't enough. You need to start doing more things. Um,
there is one of it. Yeah, here, here's here's one.
This is gonna this is a referencing some of the
trans stuff. I'll discussing a bit, but I just want
to tie it in now. A post from the Western
Chauvinist Channel saying there is no political solution, which is
(10:30):
a direct Nazi, a direct Nazi lie. I mean that.
That's what I did an article early this year on
Riley Williams, the Nazi who stole Pelosi's laptop during the
Capitol riot, and then like the video that we were
able to identify her as a sig hiling Nazi, and
that's how she opened her quote, there is no political solution.
It's a very common catchphrase among like the the fast right. Yeah,
(10:55):
so there's been a lot of stuff around harassing, like
specific school board members harassing specific teacher. Was there was
this teacher in uh, I think in California that was
trying to like introduced like like anti fascist type rhetoric
and talking about how fascism is a modern thing. They
got absolutely bashed um and like docs um, and they
got it I think fired because there was like hundreds
(11:15):
of parents organizing on on apps like telegram to harass
this one teacher at school board's like you know, they
took over massive school board meetings and just talked about
this one teacher endlessly. Um. And it was even It's
interesting because like all the parents were like, yeah, Mike,
my I got worried because my student actually really like
liked the teacher and said that they were doing like
giving really interesting points about like systemic issues. And the
(11:37):
parents were like and they brought their kids to the
school board meeting. There's the kids are just standing in
the back as their parents are ranting about this and
talking about how the kids actually, like I thought, they
were learning things about systemic issues. And then that got
people mad. So you know what else gets people mad? Uh?
This is advertisements. H And we're bad. We're gonna we're
(12:14):
gonna touch on the uh the specifics like all the
stuff we've been talking about. Most of the modern most
most of the current organizing is a lot of it's
around like mask mandates and vaccine mandates. Um, Like all
of this called like you know this the stool board channel.
All of this kind of stuff is usually around vaccine,
vaccines and mask stuff. Uh, of course there's critic Royce
(12:36):
theory was the way more popular thing a few months ago.
Right now is the vaccine thing. The other kind of
like ever present thing is being upset that trans kids
exist and being very fearful that that there are trans
kids around your kids. Uh. This is a thing that's been,
you know, a thing for years that people have been
fighting against. And since the school board things becoming more popular,
(13:00):
people are are starting to, uh bring vasically do these
kind of flash mobs specifically around trans issues. Um. One
of like the more like astro turf type things was
people getting mad that there were like two specific books
available in certain high school and some middle school libraries.
Um that one of it was like a like one
(13:22):
of it was the memoir that Robert mentioned. The other
one was like a graphic novel memorial about someone realizing
their gender queer. So these are books that are not
in curriculums. These are just books that are available at
the library. Um. And basically there was people who just
who found these out and got turned it into like
(13:43):
like a meme on telegram essentially, like people like sharing
information about this. Then you like look it up, see
if it's in your library. So then we have all
of these like coordinated attacks on school boards by these
mobs of people all about these same two books. Um.
And the goals to not only just get the books
like banned, but they're also trying to like fire or
arrest the teachers and school board members for allowing these
(14:03):
books to happen. There has been school boy members who
have like stepped down because of just how much harassment
is about these things. Quote from the Western Chavinist channel,
Jesus Christ straight up pedophile books in our children's schools.
Once again, the Jewish school board member gets mad and
try to shut them down. How can you not connect
the dots here? There's no political solution. Voting will not
remove these people. Um. There was the mayor of Houston,
(14:26):
uh So in the mayor of Houston, Ohio heard about
this and he went to a school board meeting and
instructed all of them, all of the board members to
resign um quoting the quoting the Proud Boy right wing
organizing channel Western CHAVINIZTA. This comes after some of the
degenerate parasites in the system called educators, instructed kids to
describe a sex scene that they wouldn't show their mom.
(14:47):
Of course this didn't happen. This is this is they
these these things are not are not. These books are
not used in any kind of curriculum anyway. So even
even if they were that that we were not even
we're not even in that reality. Um. So the mayor
of this town basically got these instructed these instructed all
of these people to resign um. Earlier, I think in
(15:10):
mark No. In August of this year, pride flags were
banned at a at a school school district inside south
west Oregon. Um, I think around I think around Newburgh.
The Newberg school district banned but banned pride flags. So
all this kind of stuff and and of course that
is in a lot of states. But the again, the
(15:32):
fact that it's in like Oregon, a blue state, is
people got made like you know, there's like you know,
NBC articles about it. Because it's it's Oregon. It's not
it's it's it's not it's it's not a red state.
So it's all big, it's all Portland, it's all Antifa,
right yeah. Yeah, so again the stuff is not not
not like contained to one thing. And like yeah, if
you google the stuff around these books, if you google
(15:52):
like gender queer book, uh school boards, you'll find this
in so many school districts. You'll see just mobs of
people lined up yelling and screaming um and like like
printing out giant, like giant cardboard prints of of this
comic book showing like like with like you know, there's
(16:13):
like a dick on it, Like there's like a drawn
a drawn dick, because that's what human bodies look like.
Like you can look at like a lot of like yeah,
they're like what are you know, banned the statue of
David because he has this dick out too, like like
come on. And also these are the same people who
talk about like oh they're you know, banning books, burning books,
you know, right, there was that there was that tweet
(16:34):
from like James Woods about like these are the books
that people want banned. That means they're the most important ones.
But these people love. These people love like burning books.
These people love banning books. They love cancel culture. That
the cultures that I was that I was in as
a kid, they would have like massive like book and
like c D and DVD burnings for like unlike unholy
and sinful media that you would like bring in and
(16:54):
like throw like your sinful music onto this giant fire. Like.
These people love love burning book because they love they
love banning stuff. They love cancel culture. Um, but they
just like that. Yeah, So that was that was most
of my stuff around the kind of the ongoing queer
and trans stuff. Of course, you know, this ties into
the bathroom stuff as well, with the people showing up
(17:16):
to school board meetings to scream about you know, kids
going ship in the bathroom that they want to and
feel comfortable in. Um. You know. And again like it
doesn't it's not gonna stop with trans people either, right
as soon as they ban trans people, the next thing
is going to be oh, gay students, right it is
it never it's never stops, it always keeps going. Um.
And it's just an ever present problem that it's gonna
(17:37):
require a lot more, a lot more dealing with and
again with all of these flash mobs, like no one,
no one's gonna stop them because they're like the people
in power, They're the people that have all of the privilege.
There's no really effective counter organizing for these school board
meetings right now. Um, the cops aren't gonna do ship.
Security guards are't gonna do ship. Uh, and regular libs
(17:58):
and regular regular people are going to do shit either.
And it's hard to figure out how to actually combat
this because there's a lot of times that the people
in school boards were like, no, we don't want this
to turn into a giant like fistfights, Like don't don't
come in mass to start fistfighting them. But there needs
to be something to combat, whether that be you know,
running running for school boards, just showing up outside school boards,
(18:19):
having just more people there in, having more presence there
so that it's not as overwhelmed by like a mob
of two hundred anti mask people showing up. Right there
needs to be some type of thing happening because no
one else needs to be countered and yeah, you know what,
they might need to get the ship kicked out of them.
I'm sorry, but like I don't like I don't think
(18:40):
that would actually help in this instance, probably, but like
there needs to be fucking something like they they are.
The level of boldness that they have is evidence that
they feel they are confident that there is no counter
to what there is going to be done. And perhaps
if they were being met by a wall of people
(19:04):
in the community who were willing, if they tried to
force their way into fucking throw down, you know, to say,
you're not entering this building without a goddamn mask, You're
not shutting down this meeting. Um, I don't know, maybe
that would do something. I don't actually know what would
do something. If it was people just as regular people,
I think that would be. Yeah, it's certainly not going
to help if it's antifa, Um, for the love of God,
(19:25):
don't show up in fucking black block at a school
board meeting. Um, Like what would work is a bunch
of other middle aged parents showing up and being willing
to confront these people if and like everything that is
worth mentioning is that a lot of the people at
these protests like are not parents at all. Like they're
not they're not they're not even in the same school district.
(19:45):
They're just sort of like this this is just how
this is just how the sort of right wing outrage
machine has worked, and this is where they're drawing people. Yeah,
I mean and again like it's it's a lot of
the people in there, there's gonna be big do dudes
who want to fight, but a lot of the people
like screaming are are like you know, middle aged women.
The people who are like really like leading the charge
(20:07):
on this because they're able to use their privilege because
like no one's gonna stop them, right, So that that's
like when they're leading the charge of two people who
are gonna like scream and harass and chase out the
black security guards, chase out, chase out the all of this,
all the school remembers no one's they're they're very effective
at using their privilege to gain political ground by just
(20:28):
like doing stuff on the ground. It's like, you know,
it's like this is like the January six thing. It's
like the January six thing. This is the new future
of political action is just showing up in mass two
places where no one's gonna stop you because you're like
you're the you know, the good, relatable you know everyday
Yeah you're anyway, That's that's the stuff I had, will
(20:49):
probably have an ad break and then talk about maybe
some of how this stuff started. Speaking of using your privilege,
you know, what is the greatest privilege being able to
purchase the products that Yeah, that's exactly right. There's no
privilege higher than being able to engage with these consumables.
(21:22):
And we're back, all right, Chris, you want to close
this out. Yeah, So the last thing I want to
talk about that is interesting about this whole thing is,
you know, we we've we've mostly been focusing on the
very furthest right elements of this, but a lot of
the school board stuff is tied to I mean just
(21:42):
straight a Republican party operatives and people who work in
this sort of you know, I mean there's there's literally
bunch of people who work for the Republican parties we'll
get into. And then there's also this sort of network
of of Republican think tanks, republicans sort of yeah, dark
money dumps, that's a lot of a lot of AstroTurf
groups and that kind of stuff. Yeah, And and so
I want to talk about a few of these people
because I think they're interesting. Um, I think we can
(22:07):
start with Nicole Nelly who's an interesting person. She's so
she she most recently founded Parents Defending Education. Who are they?
They're one of the big groups to sort of like
spreads this this sort of attack on school board stuff
over the country. They have chapters, they organize people, and
they also, you know, they do this thing where they
collect incident reports from from school districts that they you know,
(22:28):
just distribute to all these people and they put it online.
They have all of these they they they have a
lot of stuff they do. They do a lot of
anti mask mandate stuff. So they have these like template letters,
like template like fakely performing letter things that you can
send to schools that if you don't want to wear
a masks. That's the staple of this type of organizing. Now. Yeah,
and and the interesting thing about Nicolenelly is that so
(22:49):
this is not like her first organ like three years
eighteen back in the Halcyon Days of of I you know,
I I'm not quit going to say it was before
the mask fully came off, but it was well the
mask was like a little bit more on. She she
previously founded a speech first. Yeah you might remember. Yeah,
(23:11):
speech was the big talking point. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And so she ran that for a while. Now she's
you know, organizing with the holy people who just wants
to Yeah, they just move on, they move on to
the new things. It was, it was free speech, it
was christ theory. Right now it's anti mask stuff. Next
up is gonna be trans stuff going real hard. Just
today we had the fucking person who BBC platforms, the
(23:35):
fucking lincum. Yeah, Lily K, the rapist Lily K manifesto
where she details which specific trans women she wants to
personally kill. Yeah, I used to know Lily Um. Oh yeah,
yeah yeah, uh real dark turned Um, I don't know.
I guess it's not super surprising. She was definitely interviewed
(23:57):
her for a documentary and it was a bit off putting. Uh,
didn't realize this was going on. I mean, yeah, there's
there's a lot of a lot a lot of reports
of people in like the sex book industry of talking
about her, like raping people in bathrooms, which again it's like, yeah,
the people it's always screaming about, Oh no trans woman
or in bathrooms. Yeah, the people. The person screaming about
(24:17):
this is an actual rapist. Like and like when when
we say rapist here, like she she she raped so
many people that, like on Twitter, like I was scrolling
through my feet and I saw multiple people who were like, oh,
I know this person she assaulted me. Yeah, it's really bad.
The people who the turfs are like pushing. Yeah, this
is the BBC was platform. You're so like, yeah, like
(24:38):
trans stuff is as soon as as soon as the
anti mask anti vax stuff like dies down in the
next five months or whatever. Uh, I foresee a massive
pivot towards specifically anti anti trans antiqueer antique stuff because
that's gonna be the new thing. Yep. And and and
I think it's it's worth bearing in mind that this stuff, yeah,
(24:58):
you know with with the cold NAILI epically. So she
she worked she like worked at the Cato Institute, which
is like Murray Rothbart and Charles Cokes. Now it's it's yeah,
it's it's it's basic. It's basically this is a slight
over supplication, but it's basically one of the Cokes sort
of like money laundering like money operation things. She also
worked at Freedom Works, who yeah, yeah, this is great.
(25:19):
So um, this is this is one of the fun
parts of this, which is that so Freedom Works is
another one of the Coke's sort of dark money laundering
machine things and Freedom Works are basically the people who
created the Tea Party, Like there are people who turned
the Tea Party from like a bunch of weird guys,
like like six weirdos into like, you know, the basically
(25:40):
the the the the entirety of the pre Trumps conservative
political machine who like built Republican Party after it was
like completely discredited um in into two thousand's. And this
is true of a lot of the people who are
in charge of these big organs have connections like this,
um the person you found in No Left Turn, which
is No Off Turn, No One for an education. They're
(26:04):
they're they're They're not one of these big sort of
anti school bird things. I mean they they are the people.
They're one of people who like they have a list
of books on their website that they want banned. Wow, yeah,
it's great cool And their founder rights for the heritage
foundations like magazine, So they're there. There's there's all of
this stuff. And I think maybe the most implematic one
is this guy is Mark Ruffo who Rufo. Yeah, so
(26:26):
so he's he's the guy who just created the whole
critical race theory thing out of nothing. He like threw
together a bunch of like in just like these incredibly
tenuous connections. Like there's a bunch of sort of old
cultural Marxism conspiracy stuff in there. Yeah, it's a lot
of like Frankfurt's school type ship. Yeah. Yeah. And and
(26:48):
but but what I think is interesting about him, it's
less his ideas, which are just pseudo intellectual. Yeah, he doesn't.
He's not actually super smart in what he says. That
there's a lot of videos of him talking to actual
philosophers getting led about what rice theory is. Like, he's
actually not that intelligent in this, in this side of things.
But but you know that the thing is that there's
nothing more dangerous than an idiot with a trick up
(27:09):
his sleeve exactly. And you know, and then the trick
basically is Fox News. And you know, the reason the
reason this whole thing exists is that this was you know,
Mark Ruffo, He's very very explicit about this, that this
this this was his solution to the George Floyd uprising
was that oh, we we need we need to we
need to find this thing to stop the medicinum of
this uprising. And this is this is who Tucker Carlson
(27:31):
brings on and starts bring on and this blows up,
and he immediately gets hired by the Manhattan Institute, which
is a very not that old but they're from the eighties,
but a very an old, extremely powerful conservative thing tank
that I don't think. I think it's less known than
things like the Heritage Foundation or the kid who wants
to Yeah, I would say so, yeah, but he gets
they hired him like immediately because you know, the sort
(27:53):
of mainline of the Republican Party very quickly is like
this is the thing that we can use as like
a hammer, right, And so the mentatt the Institute publishes
this group of work for them. Now I can't I'm
not actually sure if you I don't know if you
specifically wrote this or he was just involved in it.
I think it's it's the bye line is just the
Manhattan Institute. But they have this incredibly detailed tool kit
(28:16):
explaining how you know, both both explaining what the sort
of right wing like line on critical race theory is.
They have like a bunch of explainers, have like list
of terms. Have you ever seen Yeah, yeah, it's actually yeah,
if you've ever seen like list of terms of people
want banded, Like it's all just pulled from this document, right,
so this add stuff. Um no, But but the interting
part of about this is the other thing is this
(28:37):
this is an organizing manual, right, It's it's as specific
thing that tells you how to go and how to
find other people, like other other people. You know, if
if you're like an incensed right wing like freaking one
of these school districts, it's like, okay, well here's here's
how you like talk to other people in your districts.
Here's here's a list of options of like things you
can do going public. And then there's a very interesting
(28:57):
thing part of this that that I think is really
disturbing and outlines like really what's going on here, which
is there's this whole like freak out thing about this
thing called minority rule, where like, oh, the left has
this like they have this like militant minority that that
will compel the majority to follow them by because they
keep on showing up and they keep on doing things.
(29:18):
And if they if this minority like it keeps keep
keeps you know, being more in transient than everyone else,
then they will inevitably win. And this the three quarters
of this section is this like weird fearmongering thing about it.
But then the last part of it is a bunch
is the thing that's saying, oh, we need to do
this ourselves, right, this is how we win. We win
by being more in transient. We will by showing up
(29:39):
more often of course. Yeah, and you know, and this
is this is the other thing is this is from
like last year. I think this is like this summer.
So yeah, okay, that's sorry. This is this is this
is really this year. But it's interesting because it's like
this is the sort of you know, this, this is
this is the Republican Party essentially, I mean, the institutes
(29:59):
very very main stre Republican Party. This yeah, this is
this is how they do effective in person organizing. We we
we talked about this a bit in our episodes um
about the like in the aftermath of the abortion ruling
in Texas and how and how like the religious right
ring organizing has worked in local districts. Yeah. This this
is how they're able to get things done, which is
why there's been so many school by members who either
got fired, who have had to step down, who have
(30:20):
been harassed off the job and are now there's people
you know, a lot of a lot of like people
I would describe as people holding very extreme views are
now running and taking these spots. Um because if you
can do if you can do this type of like
again it's not grassroots, but it's it's it is it
is like asturp so like it appears grassroots. But if
you can do this type of like faux grassroots organizing,
(30:42):
you can gain a lot of power over specific areas
and make a lot of people's lives a lot more miserable.
And that's that's that's what the goal is, right, The
goal is to make the trans kids lives miserable. The
goals they get people to not wear masks and dive
COVID like that, those are the results of these actions. Well,
I think I think they're they're They're an interesting interplay
here though, because I think because so freedom works, like
(31:04):
like even even a lot of the specific protests that
are happening, and this is especially true of the very earlier,
earliest ones. I thinks like when when like the very
first school board protests that were happening, Yeah, like like
a lot of these sumiler to follow is when they
started start up. Yeah, and and those a lot of
those were directly organized by by people who work for
Freedom Works. And and this is this is what a
(31:26):
lot of the RT ones yeah yeah, yeah, they see
the crt ones or for every specifically freedom works. And
this is what I think is interesting about this is
that you know, okay, freedom Works. It's like, okay, so
what does Freedom Works out of this? Freedom Works wants
the T party again, right because you know that this
is this is what Freedom Works does. Right there. They're
they're they're basically the group that comes in when when
the Republicans start losing election cycles, they're like, okay, well
now we need to get the bounce of power back.
(31:47):
We need to bring drawn the Democrats own. So they're
they're they're largely trying to build a sort of electoral base.
And and again like this, this this will look familiar
to people who remember two thousand and ten because it's
the same thing except and this is the thing that
I I I this is the part where I genuinely
they can't tell whether the Freedom Works people, whether the cokes,
whether that whether this sort of dark wening network either
(32:09):
I don't I can't tell whether they understand what they're
doing and like it or they're just incredibly naive. But
you know, this is not two thousand ten, right. You
can't when when you start mobilizing people, like mobilizing people
on the right wing to go to a place, they
don't just like sit there and hold signs anymore. You
cannot You cannot contain them at this point. You cannot
(32:32):
control the spread like you have once you've you've opened
this can, and there's no way of putting them back
in because as soon as they start organizing on appside telegram,
they're one step away from skull masks. And then they're
being okay with cheering around people that are going to
go beat up that are going to go beat up
people in these meetings. Yeah, and this is this is
this is really the thing that I think it's it's
(32:53):
not just January six that we live in the shadow
January six, but it's also about you know, if you
look at how how the anti lockdown protest went, right,
you a bunch of people showing up with guns, the
capitals and that stuff was extremely effective. And that in
the combination between that in January six has you know,
it's open the floodgates and now that was that was
(33:13):
six being possible. Is the more and more protests around
capitals of people showing up in mass to overwhelm anyone,
and because they're all white and because they're all like
middle class conservatives, no one's gonna stop them. Yeah, and
and you know, and this is the thing, right, you know,
the Cokes. I I genuinely don't know what the Cokes
want out of this. My guess is that the thing
(33:35):
that they want is a new based Republican voters. But
that's not what they're creating. The thing that they're creating
is a new core fascist street fighters. And you know it,
at some point, it doesn't it literally doesn't matter whether
or not this is what the Cokes are trying to
do or like not trying to do, because they're in
the end it's it's just pushing people towards thinking there's
no political solution. It's still only only violence and overwhelming
(33:58):
people in mass is the only way to get the
change that they want. The change they want is to
have trans kids not exists. And yeah, just more more
and more like fecistic policies, um, whether that be you know,
banning books that mentioned gay people existing or what it's
like to be a gay person, whether that be teaching
people that racism is still an actual thing that exists,
(34:21):
or that be putting a masculine so you don't kill
your grandma or whatever. Yep. Well, and you know, and
I think I think one last thing, right, you know,
we saw what happened last time they were in power, right,
and it was you know, and like you can you
can talk about how a lot of the worst stuff
is still happening. Was like, yeah, they put a bunch
of people in concentration camps, right, and if they if
(34:45):
they take back power again, and there's a good chance
that they're going to because you know, the Democrats are
being they they you know, the Democrats never want to
be in power. The thing they want to be minority oppositions.
They can do fundraising, right and if you know, when
when when these people, if these people take power again,
it's going to be even worse than it was last time. Yeah.
(35:07):
The thing looking at looking at the Virginia election, the
night of recording is a great example of that. Yeah. Uh,
in terms of yeah, it turns out when democrats just
do nothing and just sit around in office, you don't
convince young people to want to vote for them because
they're not actually doing anything, so then they just sit out.
Then the Republicans actually do vote in people. Then we
get uh we anti c R T person elected to
(35:28):
be the governor of Virginia. And that's the episode. Good Times. Well,
I hope everybody's optimistic feeling nice. Well, um, we'll be
back with something else. Research your school boards, who is
in it, and just protests around it and maybe show
up with some of your I don't know buddies with
(35:49):
your lattes and stand in front of the building and
be like, no, we don't want you, we don't want
you to shut stuff down because no one else is
going to stop them. It has to be just like
regular people. You can't going to be the oposite. It's
not going to be any elected democrat and honestly, like,
you can't rely on teens and black block to do
this that this isn't this isn't what they need to
be doing. It should be like yeah, it'd be like
(36:10):
millennials and Gen X need to be like, hey, no,
we're not gonna we're not gonna have you doing this. Well,
that's the that's the episode. That's the episode It Could
Happen Here as a production of cool Zone Media. For
more podcasts from cool zone Media, visit our website cool
zone media dot com, or check us out on the
(36:30):
I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here,
updated monthly at cool zone Media dot com slash sources.
Thanks for listening.
It Could Happen Here News
Host
Robert Evans
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