October 20, 2022 • 46 mins
Robert and James are joined by Steven Monacelli and Snow from Yellow Peril Tactical to discuss a recent Cato Institute panel on armed groups, and the history of armed resistance to white supremacy
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
You should never say how I mistook one party can
send those on a recording, rubb it. It's okay. It's
with a president, so it can't be there. Um, you
shouldn't have done. That's Jimmy Corton. Dude. Well he's never recovered, man. Yeah,
you can see it in his eyes when he tried
to rebuild those houses. Welcome to It could happen here
the podcast where one of us committed a crime against
(00:28):
Jimmy Carter, former President of the United States. Um, that
might actually get us in trouble with the Secret Service.
But you know what it's happening. It's happening James. Well,
they're gonna have to figure out which one it was. Yes,
and that of course second voice, James Stout, who might
wind up in Guantanamo for this because he's not a
(00:49):
US citizen. But I feel pretty safe, and I feel
like our guest for today is pretty safe. And I
would like to introduce Stephen Manicelli. Stephen, you work for
and are an editor at Protein Magazine. You've written for
The Rolling Stone, You've written for a bunch of People,
Dallas Voice, a number of different um news websites, magazines,
(01:13):
and you have been spending a big chunk of the
last year or so in the streets and Dallas reporting
on the escalating series of well, hopefully not escalating. I
guess time will tell on that. But the series of
right wing UM, I don't even want to I don't
want to dignify them by calling them protests, but like
right wing organized attempts to intimidate UH and spark violence
(01:38):
at LGBT events in the DFW area, and some of
the left wing protest counter against that, which has involved
groups like the elm Fork John Brown Gun Club, who
we've had on the show a few times, and has
involved groups of armed leftists kind of UM in opposition
to groups of armed right wingers UM. Now, Stephen, the
(02:00):
specific reason we're talking today is you were just the
other day part of a panel put on by the
Cato Institute, which is a libertarian think tank, titled Domestic
Extremism and Political Violence the Threat to Liberty UM. Your
fellow panelists were Mike German. Mike is a former FBI
agent who went undercover against the far right UM and
(02:23):
now works for the Brennan Center, and Christopher Wiles, who
is a professor of English and a director of American
Studies at the University of Connecticut and wrote the u
s Anti Fascism Reader. Um. Now, this was interesting for
a number of reasons. Kind of in the lead up
to this event, the Kata Institute published a graphic that
showed a number of domestic armed organizations. Um. And so
(02:44):
in the same graphic you had groups like the Proud
Boys and Patriot Front, as well as groups like Yellow
Peril Tactical and the Elm Fork, John Brown Gun Club
and the Socialist Rifle Association. Prior to the event, this
sparked a bit of frustration the left and some people
suspecting that this was going to be kind of geared
towards attacking left wing armed groups and smearing them, you know,
(03:09):
as violent extremists in the same way that the Proud
Boys are. Uh, that is not what happened. Um, And
I'm gonna open the floor up to you, Stephen, thank
you for being on the show. Hey, thanks for having me.
And I'm glad that this is not sort of a
critics criticism session that I'm gonna be sitting with y'all on.
In terms of yeah, my participation with a hestitate to
(03:29):
even use the word libertarian because of the historical definition
of the term. But you know, conservative libertarian whatever, big
L versus small L. I don't. Yeah, we could call
them a right libertarian think to their rough bodies, right
like literally founded by rough body. Yeah, they love them
some Rothbard. Um didn't they like excommunicate him or something,
(03:52):
though at some point I couldn't. I don't. I'm not
deep on the lower One thing, if doing my favorite
meme with the two hands meeting in the middle middle
left libertarians and right libertarians have excommunicating members of Murray
(04:13):
Rothbart is on an io exile Murray Rothbart and Mary
Books and United and cancelation. So yeah, I guess I'm
not being canceled, which is good. Um. And so yeah,
they had reached out to me in September about being
on this panel, and they had mentioned, um, the other guests,
and frankly, I was intrigued because you know, if people
(04:37):
want to pay attention to the growing threat of fascism,
I think that's pretty neat. And it seemed like an
opportunity to do the thing that Glenn Greenwald claims that
he does when he goes on Tucker Carlson, which is
like reaching out to an audience that doesn't already agree
with the things that I think UM, because he just
(04:57):
goes on because their pals and they already all agree.
So UM, I digress. I thought it was maybe an
interesting forum, and and I was really interested to hear
UM from the other panelists, in particular UM, because I
had looked at what Mike German had written after his
service in UM the FBI and as well as the
(05:19):
author of the Anti Fascist Handbook, and I thought, well,
if if Kato has invited all three of us, it's
it's not gonna go too off the rails in terms
of UM, you know, sort of the false equivalency problems,
or it just becoming a session to bash on groups
that aren't really the part of the problem. Interestingly enough,
(05:39):
the primary amount of bashing that went on was Mike German,
former f by FBiH, repeatedly viciously criticizing the police and
the FBI for their complicity with far right street movements. Yeah,
Mike's been pretty consistent. I spoken this for like a
couple of years, and I'm sure you people are probably
aware of his presence by now, but he's been pretty
(06:00):
consistent on bashing defense for failing to act on white
supremacy for decades, and it's very It's there's a number
of reasons this is interesting that we'll we'll be getting
back into. But I really do recommend people take a
listen to this conversation between y'all. Among other things, there's
there's some good history in there. We'll talk about a
couple of things that got introduced that I don't a
(06:22):
hundred percent agree with. That there's some good history in there,
and I think more to the point, you get um
a lot of updates from your reporting in Dallas and
a lot of kind of summaries of that which I
find very valuable and think will be valuable to people
who have maybe been following it less. And then also
it's really interesting to get Mike's perspective as someone he
was in it was late eighties, early nineties, he was
(06:43):
doing a lot of undercover stuff in the West Coast
and neo Nazi movements, UM, and so hearing him discuss
the way in which the FBI's programs targeted at the
far right work and don't work was really interesting to me.
Oh absolutely, that was the sort of the side of
the story that I knew the least about UM. Christopher Viles,
(07:05):
the professor, the guy who wrote the handbook. UM. You know,
I think he provided a very important set of historical
information that kind of helped iron out some of the
issues in terms of the framing craps and some of
the inconsistencies which I think we can dive into a
little bit, or rather inaccuracies that kind of got slipped
by UM and we weren't really able to address in
(07:28):
the course of the conversation. But hearing him just put
it so bluntly kind of took the wind out of
me in a good way where I was like, I
don't I don't have anything else to add here, no notes, UM,
because he really made the point that yes, some of
these organizations were candon glove with police officers at the
(07:49):
local level, even at the federal level. He's witnessed it.
He has a number of experiences that he cited where
the FBI is basically saying, uh, do not talk about
your case is involving white supremacists and these similar type
of groups. Because there are people in the agency who
are sympathetic UM. And I think that's kind of why
(08:12):
I ended up on the panel because in part the
story that I've been covering around here with this harassment
campaign over the past few months of lgbt Q groups
and events. Part of the story is that policing has
not really done anything to prevent uh you know, this
incitement and harassment from continuing and occasionally turning violent. Not
(08:38):
in the sense of weapons being used other than bear
me so far, but in the sense the physical violence
and uh you know, slurs and violent threats being hurled
at people. Um so, I I think that Mike's points
for really timely and well said, and frankly, he's the
kind of person that they needed to come from, because
(09:00):
as otherwise, they just kind of get smacked away as
a leftist talking point by people who probably have some
internal biases or prejudices, prejudices that prevent them from engaging
with it when it comes from the wrong person in
the wrong way. And there were a number of interesting
(09:20):
kind of discussions happening. One thing that I was happy
about is that, well, the initial framing, I think there
was a lot of fear that all of these left
wing groups are going to get lumped in with groups
that have, to put it bluntly, tried to overthrow democracy.
Um right, we should point out that that's how the
FBI does do it, right, like they for instance, the
(09:42):
group white supremacists with like black identity groups, is racial
identity extremists or statistics that way like that, That's that's
how the FEDS see this. But yeah, they didn't, which
is which is good. It's like a form of obfuscation
to do so. And um, you know, why would they
do that. Well, maybe there's a few reasons they might
do that, especially if you ask someone like Mike. Um.
(10:06):
And you know, it's such a blind spot for obvious
the ideological reasons for so many people involved. Yeah, and
it's it's Um. It was interesting because there was this
bit in the middle of it where Mike, you know,
being a former FED, walked through kind of like, well,
it makes sense to me given the fact that law
(10:26):
enforcement is is not able to be trusted in a
lot of instances and often is working hand in glove
with these far right groups that want to harm marginalize people,
that they would seek to arm themselves. Um. And that
prompted from the the fellow who was actually um kind
of the organizing the the event, Patrick Eddington, who's a
(10:49):
senior fellow at the Cato Institute him to point out,
and he was I would have to say broadly fair um,
And generally he seemed a little bit kind of um uh.
He he had this attitude you you get sometimes around
libertarians where he was like, there was a moment where
he was like, well, I'm glad some on the left
to finally started accepting the Second Amendments and stuff like that. Um.
(11:13):
But but he had a he had a moment where
he expressed a concern, um, which was his fear about
the possibility that if you keep having these events, at
some point you're going to have two groups of people
who are armed shoot at each other. Um, which is
we have We've been right up to that line. You
(11:33):
have had exchanges of fire, just thinking. In Portland, you
had a moment where a single right wing individual with
a handgun fired into a group of people, thankfully didn't
hit any Two people in the anti fascist side fired
back and forced him to flee. Um. You had a
moment earlier this year in Portland where a right winger
(11:54):
shot into a group of unarmed people doing traffic security,
killed a sixty one year old woman, wounded I think
five other people, and then was shot and stopped by
a leftist. Um, you obviously had um a proud boy,
while a member of Patriot Prayer shot and killed during
(12:14):
an altercation, but not an exchange of fire. The only
person who fired was the person who killed that that individual.
So none of those are quite two groups of people
with guns exchanging fire, you know, in a sustained way. Um,
none of those even entirely approached kind of what happened
at like Greensville. But they're all on that spectrum. And
(12:35):
and while I think this guy there's a degree to
which he's kind of spooked at seeing leftists with guns,
I do think that that's a reasonable thing to be
concerned with, because when and if we hit that point,
it's going to be an inflection moment for I think
the entire country. Right right, I think the reality is
that most normal people, whatever you want to use the
(12:58):
word to describe them, people aren't brain poisoned and plugged
into the Internet and about all these things or or
having to deal with them and are affected by them
in real life. They might see these groups and just
cast them all under the same umbrella. You know, there's
a good me I chuckled at that came out afterwards,
where it had had the slide showing on all of
(13:21):
the groups the right when groups and the left and
groups sort of armed groups in you know, the United States,
and then replacing them all with just domestic cleaning products. Like, yes,
they all have something in common. They have weapons, and
they're armed to some degree, but beyond that, they all
have distinctions and we shouldn't drawn equivalency. And I think,
(13:44):
you know, Mike did a very elegant job of drawing
that distinctionaries as these people not only have a right
to defend themselves, but they probably have a good reason
to given all of these things. He was basically writing
the lyrics to arrage against them en song and um,
I was a little astonished by that, and he made
(14:06):
a very clear point to say, like, yeah, there are
people who are aggressors and there are people who aren't.
We can find a distinction in that. And if we're
just now getting concerned about this violence, well maybe we
should ask why we've had such a big blind spot
for so long. And he got right to the core
of it. It's these ideologies deeply baked into our institutions
of white supremacy, right supremacy. UH basically all the way
(14:30):
back to colonization, and you know, dealing with that is
necessary for us to deal with the broader problem. And
I think he was very clear to say, like the
things that were required to get to that point of
like a potential shootout would be a total breakdown in policing.
(14:51):
And so he played place the blame at the feet
of the police practically said it's there goddamn fault that
people feel the need to do this, because if they
just focused on the crimes that proud boys commit in
the Dallas area, uh, you know, basically minor assaults and stuff,
they would trace it back to the people that are
(15:12):
committing them, and they would cut down on these escalations
because the same people are the ones that show up
to these events time and time again. It's worth like Robby,
(15:32):
you're talking about like an inflection point, right And we
spoke about like failures in policing too. I think part
of the reason that we see things as super duper
exceptional right now is the way that we teach history
in schools here and part of the things we don't
teach like that this has happened before, right, like the
Battle of Haze Pond being a paramount example, if we
(15:53):
look at the like the standoff at Wounded Knee or
the Second Battle of Woundednee, or whatever you want to
call it, and throughout the civil rights movement. Right there's
a book by Rob Williams about a contemporary book about
the use of firearms and the civil rights movement that
people can read like all of this stuff did happen then,
And this same tension that we're feeling now about like
(16:13):
a society putting itself apart and when it leads to
a civil war also happened then and people felt this
then two and we we well, the progress was made
at that time. We didn't fix everything, right, Like that's
why we're having this discussion now. But like, I think
the fact that we've removed so much of that, specifically
the violence and the use of guns from our discussion
(16:34):
with the civil rights movement sometimes leads us to see
what's happening now is like really particularly exceptional, and it's
not like, yeah, it's always been the case of marginalized
folks that have resorted to the same tools that are
used to oppress them to defend themselves. And why wouldn't
they write, like like Mike said, like Steve said, there's
a very good and clear reason for oppressed people to
(16:55):
want to defend themselves and their communities. The only analog
that we were able to bring up in the conversation
is like the pink Pink panthers, pink panther control, which was,
you know, something that a lot of people don't know about.
And we did get a little bit of opportunity to discuss,
you know, the black Panthers and how community defense is
(17:16):
a different set of reasons for arming yourself and having
knowledge of the Second Amendment and all those sorts of things.
Then you know, going outside in an event hosted by
an organization you have no interest in belonging to wearing
your guns on your body to send a message that's
a very menacing form of free speech. And I think
(17:39):
another good moment to bring up when we talk about
this would be the Red Summer of nineteen nineteen, which
was a series of race riots targeting black people in
the United States that also involved large groups and communities,
particularly in cities, of Black Americans taking up arms and
defending themselves um and and was fairly enormous and it's
deftal hundreds and hundreds of people were killed. Um, it's
(18:02):
it's really a pretty nightmarish moment in history. But it's
the thing when you have groups, and we're about to
have someone on from from Yellow Peril Tactical, when you
have groups that are specifically organizing and saying like we
are organizing, we are teaching skills for people to become
armed because we are afraid that we and people like
us will be victimized. It's stuff like the Red Summer
(18:25):
that they're directly looking at. It's not theoretical, you know. Yeah,
you're Frank Karl from Arranged TV. Have some good videos
about a lot of these different things if people are
interested in looking them up. Yeah. Um, and I think
probably we should bring on our next guest for tonight,
and and Stephen will be staying on as well. Snow
(18:46):
from Yellow Peril Tactical. Snow, do you want to introduce
yourself and your organization for folks who may not be
as as familiar with the stuff as we are. We
we briefly covered y'all a little bit earlier in this
but yeah, thanks for having me. My name is Snow,
my pronouns the sheet or they, and I am one
(19:06):
of the many members of Yellow peril tactical. We are
a collective of leftist Asian Americans under the shared ideology
of being anti authoritarian um. And we talked about all
sorts of things, but particularly how to develop firearms skills
and also community defense and the occasional ship post and uh,
(19:31):
first questions, because we're talking about this Cato Institute thing
that Stephen was on. Have you had a chance to
listen to that yet? Since y'all watched it twice I
have or paid notes? Yeah? Yeah, why why don't we
start here? Yeah? Go off? You know, Okay, Like the
chat was lit. When we first saw that we were mentioned,
(19:54):
we were like, wow, we fucking made it because originally
we started as a ship post account and then we
were like, oh, people actually care, um. And this is
just one of those moments where, uh, I don't know,
it felt like really surreal that Kato would even give
a funk about us because we do all of this
in our free time. You know, this is like nobody
(20:16):
pays us, right, um. And so we had a lot
of skepticism going into it, um. And in a sense, uh,
we're a bit on the defensive, kind of preparing for
a lot of false equivalence, rhetoric um, and a lot
of just like I don't know, maybe like orientalism as well, um,
(20:39):
just given the history of how like Westerners have viewed
Asian culture. UM. But ultimately, like the consensus has been
that we were pleasantly surprised of how balanced it was.
I thought, overall it was very intriguing, and I got
some good some good quotes written down, But I don't
know if you want to go into those now or
later or what can we start with having I really
(21:01):
want to like anchor this in having you explained what
community defense means, like so people can understand why, and
then we can go from what people say to you. Yeah, UM,
so earlier y' all we're talking about like, um, the
nineteen nineteen riots and actually reminded me of like the
Pacific Coast Race riots of nineteen seven, and a bunch
of were like murdering and committing violence against Asian people, right,
(21:25):
And nineteen oh seven was not that long ago. Um,
And in a sense it never has gone away. Um.
And you know, I think, um, Chris Files said it
like put it nicely when he was like, you know,
in the backdrop of a lot of anti Asian violence. Um,
it's just that it's been a lot more prevalent among
(21:48):
Asians specifically. That doesn't stop you know, like Boba liberalism,
identity politics from happening where there's not like a grand
division of like what's going on at large. Um. But
we know that like our communities are under attack and
the cops don't give a funk about us, and if anything,
(22:09):
they just make it worse most of the time. Uh.
And so it's truly up to us because you know,
cops don't prevent crime, They come after and they funk
it up. Um. And it's not something that has come
easily to me personally. I've been in denial about it
for a lot of years around thinking like if I
(22:30):
just avoid going out late at night, if I am
always walking with a buddy, if I just you know,
spend twenty minutes looking for a closer parking spot, it'll
prevent me from being harmed. And ultimately, like that's just
me being in denial, um. And part of it. Another
realization is like being strapped, I can seal Carrie every day,
(22:56):
that's not going to deter someone from attacking me because
of how I look without dosing myself I just look alternative, right, um,
And knowing that that puts me at risk has never
deterred me from wanting to express myself with how I look.
But I know the risks, and that doesn't stop people
(23:16):
from me. But part of it is like I'm not
going down without a fucking fight. Like my ancestors have
come too fucking far. We kicked out the French, we
kicked out the US, right uh, and now I'm in
their turf. I've infiltrated the wire. But that doesn't mean
but you know, it doesn't mean that it's going to
stop them from harming US. Um. And you know, we
(23:39):
know that we can't live in a fever dream where
every single fascist on this planet will be gone. Um.
But at the very least, like my life goal is
to make them think twice. And I'm scared a little bit.
It's interesting because you you bring up sort of what
I think is a really good point, which is that
(24:00):
like even if you're if you're in your day to
day life, the fact that you're carrying a gun isn't
going to stop somebody from starting, you know, an interaction
with you that could turn violent because you just look
the way that you look, I do want to talk
a little bit about what's kind of the opposite thing,
and it is sort of part of why I think
folks were a little on edge when this event got
announced and you know that graphic came out that had
(24:22):
as we've discussed, the Yellow Peril tactical alongside you know,
these these these other groups. And there's one of the
things that kind of results from the way gun culture
works is that there's a very recognizable kind of um
uniform um that you see particularly you've seen it with
(24:43):
the Boogle Boo Boys, you see it with groups like
the Proud Boys. It's the it's the thing where you've
got a plate carrier, a belt, you know, an a
are some other kind of long gun helmets and and
usually other tactical gear on it um. And this kind
of this outfit, so to speak, has kind of evolved
over time. It really is a result of the War
on Terror, and it's both an aesthetic choice and there's
(25:05):
a huge number of companies that exist, particularly on the
right to provide people with aesthetic options for kind of
having all of this gear that are are sort of
ideologically simple simpatica with them UM. But it's also just
actually a practice. Well, some of this stuff is less
practical than others, but the basics of the of the
get up exist because it's what worked. Right. There's one
(25:28):
of the things people noted when the Taliban took back
over in Afghanistan is that all of their special operations
guys were dressed the same way that US fighters, just
because it's just what works. You see the same outfits
on Ukrainian and Russian spec ops guys um. And one
of the things when we when we're looking at kind
of domestically, when you have people who are organizing and
(25:49):
going out in the world armed as part of a
public event, is that to people who are not familiar
with what's going on, it can be hard to tell
them apart sometimes. And that is that strikes me the
thing that the left particularly needs to deal with because
both in kind of in the media and also out
in the field, you don't want to be mistaken for
(26:11):
groups like the Proud Boys and Steve and I want
to start kind of with you here because I think
you're you're reporting has always done a really good job
of kind of making that difference clear. If you kind
of have any thoughts on that, and then we'll go
back to you, Snow. I think that's a really interesting problem,
the proliferation of tactical UM aesthetics and the ideological sort
(26:35):
of turn in the production of weaponry and accessories. I mean,
there's like goddamn tactical eight so the franchises, which is
making me lose my mind for a number of reasons.
UM and that is a is a real distinct thing
(26:56):
that I see all the time around here, and and
I think there's subtle things at groups do to try
to distinguish themselves. Obviously are patches, but in order to
see a patch, you have to be close enough to
someone in order to even find it legible. So then okay,
you have flags, but then you also have to know
what these flags are. Something that some groups around here
(27:18):
have done when they're you know, sort of protecting an
LGBTQ event is still have UM flags affiliated with the
LGBTQ movement, but once again you have to know what
those are. And one more people know what those are
these days. So that's a way in order to distinguish themselves.
But it still takes a second for you to see
a group of armed people and then process you know
(27:41):
exactly all of these sort of semiotic markers of who
they are and what they're doing. Um. Because if they
have a different set of those things, it can be
a very different set of conclusions that you can walk
away from if you identify them. Uh. And in Texas,
the right does love carrying these flags and wearing these patches,
(28:01):
so it makes it very clear who has consistently shown
up to these events. Um. But like the reaction of
normal people if a group of armed people are leading
a protest is to kind of be like, what the heck?
Double take? Maybe they will start filming it because it's
the craziest thing that they've seen that week. Um. And ultimately,
(28:23):
you know, they have to kind of know some contextual
clues in order to even make these distinctions, particularly when
you're talking about groups like um, you know, John Brown
Clubs or Yellow Peril, where you're there's concerns around op
sack or info sack and you don't want to necessarily
reveal your identities because you're already a part of a
group that's facing violence at a disproportionate rate and maybe
(28:48):
you're you know, potentially targeted by the FBI at a
disproportionate rate, like the former FBI officer interestingly noted during
the conversation that, yeah, you may have an even harder
time sort of distinguishing yourself and in making it known
who you are. UM, So it's an interesting challenge. I
don't know if I have uh, sort of any lessons
(29:09):
from it other than that, you know, these classic signifiers
also seem to work. Sometimes they're kind of kitchy or um,
you know, seem ridiculous, but it's kind of the same thing,
like you said about the spec op stuff, like it's
been used for centuries. Stuff like this has been used
for a long time because it works because you immediately
(29:30):
can comprehend is this person with a gun here to
kill me or to protect me? Yeah? Yeah, that's that's
really interesting because I I, obviously I have a complicated
history with flags, but there's few better ways to inform
other people about what a group of folks is doing
than having one. Um. Yeah, as long as you're not
conducting an ambush and that's an offensive maneuver. And then
(29:53):
suddenly you know, it's like, as long as you're cool
with being like, we're here and this is what we're doing.
A flag is exactly the thing that you might want.
So No. One of the things I've always paid attention
(30:13):
to and appreciated about yellow perils the way and what's
y'all social media and y'all's kind of forward face is
both unapologetically focused on firearms, focused on training, and also
feels completely different from any of the sort of right
wing kind of groups that that focus on some of
the state, even when you're doing stuff that's like videos
(30:35):
of people shooting and training. UM, do you want to talk?
I mean, it's just anything in general on this subject
that you've you've felt. But that's something I've always particularly
noticed about y'all. Yeah, so thank you. UM, we try
really hard. You should see the group chat um. But
it's it's something that you know, when historically Asian Asians
(30:59):
represent it in firearms culture tend to be conservative folks
who fit within the norm or you know, proximity to whiteness,
and that's something that we are not at all interested in, UM,
and we know that comes at a risk. That's why
one of the reasons why are identifiable tattoos are clothing
(31:22):
and our faces are always blurred. One because we don't
want cult of celebrity around individuals. UM. But too it's
like part of that is a lot of folks generally,
but especially on the right, will kind of have this
very grandiose, uh I don't know, uh, buffer sense of
(31:42):
legitimacy just because they have cool you know, video editing,
they have like the nicest guns, they have a lot
of guns. Um. And our thing is like, you don't
need all that. What you do need is to train
with what you got and are target audience are folks
who don't know ship about firearms or just getting into
(32:03):
it and needs some more reputable to go. Um. And
we take that very seriously, um, because I only got
into firearms like two years ago, um, and so that
is fresh in my memory, and I know very well
what that's like, um and how intimidating it could be.
So a lot of our work is to try to
demystify it and really break it down to a way
(32:24):
that like it doesn't like we don't make people feel
like they have to be at a certain level already
to even enter into the firearms world. Like, we want
to meet people where they're at and encourage people. So like,
you know, do our drill of the month and like
tell us your score and then do it next month
and tell how to tell us how you did better,
(32:44):
and so it's really encouraging people to get better on
an individual basis. Um, we encourage people to go out
with their friends. Um, but we also try to throw
in like community international solidarity with our fundraisers in there too.
So it's we try do a lot of different things.
But at the end of the day, like if we
help just eapen a handful of shooters get better at
(33:07):
defending themselves or their community, like, it's all worth it.
Thank you. I want to ask next and I'll ask
you both again kind of same question. Where do you
see the armed left moving? Particularly in this next year's
we kind of get through our last or start go
through our last blessed year before election. Um, what are
(33:31):
some things that that are on your radar? What are
some things that you're sort of expecting to see? What
are some things that you're worried about? Saying a lot,
it's a big ques trying to keep it to a year, right, Yeah,
but you know, I like I worry a lot. I
(33:51):
try not to get too caught up in it because
life will surprise you, you know. Um, But I think ultimately,
like where I live, we are facing down a really
tight governor race in which if the Republican candidate wins UM,
a lot of work that has been put to you know,
codify abortion rights, workers rights, things like that, will be
(34:11):
reversed by this governor um. And it's something that a
lot of people are worried about, myself included, and where
I live, even within city limits, there are white supremacists flags,
Confederate flags even just like a couple of miles from
my house, and so there's a lot of fear around
(34:34):
that becoming even more emboldened. Even though we managed to
fight back a lot and deterred, it doesn't mean that
they're not taking this moment the right, the fast right
to restrategize and to recalibrate what they want to do
next um. And so it kind of feels like we're
(34:54):
in the calm before the storm. Oh man. Uh, not
like the J six storm, That's not what I mean,
but like genuinely what it will actually look like, because
I don't think it's gonna be. I don't think there's
gonna be Like, you know, we meet at the football
field and we have like our drummers out and like
our little pipe players out and then we have about it.
It's gonna be like urban like warfare, is what I think. Um,
(35:18):
And a lot of other people think that too. And
you just throw in climate change as a treat like
we don't know what the literal climate is going to
be like, um, And so it really just feels like
there's multiple fronts right now. But it seems like climate
change or the fascists will kill me before my smoking
habit will And a lot of people think that too. Yeah,
(35:42):
I mean I I do anecdotally know a lot of
people who justify their cigarette use with like, look, there's
wildfires all around my house. I'm not worried about the
mar Brea's it is. It is October and the city
of Portland is blanketed and smoke. I don't know if
the cagrets are going to get me. Stephen, did you
(36:03):
did you want to go next? Yeah? Well, I mean,
you know, the fact that a ship posting account gained
some traction, maybe there's hope yet. Um, I don't know,
but ship posting will save us in the end. It's
it's another one on the board for ship posting. Let's
(36:24):
put it that way. So looking forward to what are
we dealing with well, Texas is uh deep in it
right now. Um, we're one of the sort of laboratories
of fascism in the United States at the moment, sort
of a spear tip of a lot of really bad
stuff really just like you know, codifying in the state,
(36:49):
oppressive things, things that they just talk about in other states. Um.
And so yeah, our governor's race, uh basedly it doesn't either,
you know, kind of split things because our lieutenant governor
runs independently of the governor, and you know, the House
is a whole other thing. Yeah, if it goes far right, um,
(37:13):
which a ton of money has been spent, billions and
billions from people in the industry that's primarily responsible for
destroying the planet, are um, pushing that to make it happen,
and so that all works their way, then yeah, we're
probably going to get some uh seriously bad laws, really
(37:35):
bad state sponsored violence, a variety of forms. And yeah,
people are already thinking to themselves like do I want
to live in this state anymore? Um? But that's also
basically what the extreme people on the right want is
to either just get rid of these people one way
(37:55):
or another. Um. And so some people don't want that Obviously,
some people don't have a choice to leave because it's
expensive to move and they may be tied to their
families and other sorts of things. So, uh, I don't
like to predict the future because history is we keep
(38:16):
pumping shells into it and it keeps getting back up,
and uh, it's just gonna happen, and I don't really
know exactly. I just I'm very thankful that there are
people and groups in my state that are trying to
protect vulnerable people, um, and people working to hopefully make
it not super bad. Um. So I think like the
(38:39):
optimistic view is that it won't be all totally terrible horrible,
but it'll be still kind of same, same, you know. Yes, Yeah,
that's kind of like how I see broad speaking, you know,
the big projection cone. Otherwise, UM, I'm not sure. Yeah,
it's gonna be fucked up, but at least we'll have friends.
(39:02):
Hopefully it'll be wavy and it will be about the
friends that we make along the way. Yeah, I do
either of you have anything else you'd like to to
talk about or or or bring up or say before
we kind of bring this to a close. I guess
I'm just like I was kind of surprised how decent
(39:24):
that the panel went. Um. You know, the anti fascist
coalition can be broad because it is a sort of
anti thing. It's not necessarily positivist. But you know, maybe
that's another episode to describe, you know, why it's important
to also perhaps have a positivist message along with what
you're trying to do in response to fascism. Um. And
(39:49):
you know, like more discussions like this hopefully will happen,
and I think they could be improved by like not
all four panels being white dudes. That would probably be helpful.
Um as a thought. Yeah, uh well, yeah that that
was actually the first thing I wrote on my my
(40:11):
note page is that it was for for what I
should have said that earlier, So you never, I'm just playing.
But I think one thing I want to add is like,
similar to what you were saying, Stephen, was kind of
like what is the pro positive thing? And ultimately like
to me, it's like the city that I live in,
(40:32):
there's a lot of decentralized mutual aid groups that got
a lot of people through the pandemic and still provide
daily relief to people consistently. Like I'm in like a
million fucking signal chats where people post a need and
it gets met eventually. UM. And it's like I'm pro
that mutual aid and like it's something that I mean,
(40:54):
maybe it's the only thing that will really get us
through whatever is to come. UM. And that's just like
pro commune to be building UM and coalition building whatever
that looks like in your community. Maybe if we want
to talk about mutual aid, you can. I know, you
guys do a lot of fundraiser I think that's a
really cool thing. Certain distinguishes you from a lot of
other gun clubs. So maybe do you want to talk
(41:16):
about a couple of those, Maybe plug those? You know,
I would plug our Fondward patches, but we just sold
out of the second patch. It's a it is. We
didn't think people would care that much, especially the first round,
and so the second round we only ordered a hundred
and it's pulled out in a day. Those are supporting
(41:37):
the resistance in Myanmar, right, Yes, yes, people are getting
them by donating directly to liberate me and mar and
then someone sends them a cool forward patch. UM. And
it's one of many fundraisers we've done. We recently have
done a couple for folks in Ukraine. UM, we helped
them fund an ambulance out there. UM. I can't remember
(42:01):
the Instagram handle right now. UM. We've also done a
bunch for like a group in Portland for example, Black
and Beyond the Binary. UM. I think we've done to
actually for Liberate Me and mar UM. But it's just
something that you know, we don't do this for money,
and we also want to support other groups doing things
that we support, especially like popular fronts that are fighting
(42:23):
back against authoritarian regimes UM and hoping that you know,
if ship hits the fan here, that people will do
that for us to UM, because we really value international
solidarity and you know, as corny as it is, we're
you know, we're like we got us, you know, we
fend us, not George Soros, but UM, you know it's
(42:44):
something that brings us joy to be able to help
and UM, as mostly anarchists, we really believe that, like
we are all that we have and we can't wait
for someone else to to you know, a benefactor to
come and save us, because that ship is just not
going to happen. Yeah, it's great. WHA can folks find
(43:05):
you on the into web? They want to follow along.
We can find us on Instagram at Yellow dot Peril
dot Practical. You have to spell it out, I think,
because I think we're shadow band right now. Our Twitter,
regrettably is ypt actual. We also have a website just
(43:25):
Yellow Peril Tactical dot com. We just took it so
no one else could. Um, but that's where you can
mainly find us. We are primarily on Instagram, um, but
most of our stuff is on Twitter. If you really
want to see a ship post, go on Twitter. We
recently got into it with this person and Oregon over
(43:46):
the gun control measure. Um, and let me tell you
it was a heat but also a little like maddening
because this guy, this guy actually ties into how we
opened the episode because he was he's a local liberal
uh thought leader guy who uh saw two pictures of
(44:07):
people with guns, one of them being fascists and one
of them being one of y'all and was like, clearly
these are the same thing. Um, it was a good
time vote no on one fourteen in my opinion, uh,
if you're in the state of Oregon. But we'll talk
about that at a later point. Stephen Um, you want
(44:28):
to plug you first off, obviously really good work, UM
on the panel. I want to plug that for folks
because I think it is really worth a listen. Um,
as everyone is here said, there's a lot of good
historical information in there and uh and and your contributions
are invaluable, So folks can check that out. If you
(44:49):
just google Cato Institute Domestic Extremism and Political Violence, you'll
find it. And how else can people find you? Stephen?
You can also find me on Twitter. UM, I will
make sure that my handle is there. It's at Steve
van Zetti. Ste van Zetti as in the you know,
(45:11):
one of the two that got killed by the state unjustly,
um because it's anti Italian discrimination, so UM I digress um.
The you can find me there. Prodian is obviously something
that I work with, and I would say check that
out as well. It's at Prodi and mag uh that
has a website Prodian mag dot com. Um and anything
(45:34):
else that you want to know about me you can
either find on Twitter or Google. There's really only like
two guys named Stephen Monticelli in the entire state United States,
and the other ones like a c P A in
his sixties, So it's just not that one. Um, and
yeah you can find me there. Excellent. Um, well I'm
(45:55):
glad we got to end on a Sacco and Vanzetti reference.
And uh yeah, everybody go help somebody. 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 I
(46:16):
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.
You should never say how I mistook one party can
send those on a recording, rubb it. It's okay. It's
with a president, so it can't be there. Um, you
shouldn't have done. That's Jimmy Corton. Dude. Well he's never recovered, man. Yeah,
you can see it in his eyes when he tried
to rebuild those houses. Welcome to It could happen here
the podcast where one of us committed a crime against
(00:28):
Jimmy Carter, former President of the United States. Um, that
might actually get us in trouble with the Secret Service.
But you know what it's happening. It's happening James. Well,
they're gonna have to figure out which one it was. Yes,
and that of course second voice, James Stout, who might
wind up in Guantanamo for this because he's not a
(00:49):
US citizen. But I feel pretty safe, and I feel
like our guest for today is pretty safe. And I
would like to introduce Stephen Manicelli. Stephen, you work for
and are an editor at Protein Magazine. You've written for
The Rolling Stone, You've written for a bunch of People,
Dallas Voice, a number of different um news websites, magazines,
(01:13):
and you have been spending a big chunk of the
last year or so in the streets and Dallas reporting
on the escalating series of well, hopefully not escalating. I
guess time will tell on that. But the series of
right wing UM, I don't even want to I don't
want to dignify them by calling them protests, but like
right wing organized attempts to intimidate UH and spark violence
(01:38):
at LGBT events in the DFW area, and some of
the left wing protest counter against that, which has involved
groups like the elm Fork John Brown Gun Club, who
we've had on the show a few times, and has
involved groups of armed leftists kind of UM in opposition
to groups of armed right wingers UM. Now, Stephen, the
(02:00):
specific reason we're talking today is you were just the
other day part of a panel put on by the
Cato Institute, which is a libertarian think tank, titled Domestic
Extremism and Political Violence the Threat to Liberty UM. Your
fellow panelists were Mike German. Mike is a former FBI
agent who went undercover against the far right UM and
(02:23):
now works for the Brennan Center, and Christopher Wiles, who
is a professor of English and a director of American
Studies at the University of Connecticut and wrote the u
s Anti Fascism Reader. Um. Now, this was interesting for
a number of reasons. Kind of in the lead up
to this event, the Kata Institute published a graphic that
showed a number of domestic armed organizations. Um. And so
(02:44):
in the same graphic you had groups like the Proud
Boys and Patriot Front, as well as groups like Yellow
Peril Tactical and the Elm Fork, John Brown Gun Club
and the Socialist Rifle Association. Prior to the event, this
sparked a bit of frustration the left and some people
suspecting that this was going to be kind of geared
towards attacking left wing armed groups and smearing them, you know,
(03:09):
as violent extremists in the same way that the Proud
Boys are. Uh, that is not what happened. Um, And
I'm gonna open the floor up to you, Stephen, thank
you for being on the show. Hey, thanks for having me.
And I'm glad that this is not sort of a
critics criticism session that I'm gonna be sitting with y'all on.
In terms of yeah, my participation with a hestitate to
(03:29):
even use the word libertarian because of the historical definition
of the term. But you know, conservative libertarian whatever, big
L versus small L. I don't. Yeah, we could call
them a right libertarian think to their rough bodies, right
like literally founded by rough body. Yeah, they love them
some Rothbard. Um didn't they like excommunicate him or something,
(03:52):
though at some point I couldn't. I don't. I'm not
deep on the lower One thing, if doing my favorite
meme with the two hands meeting in the middle middle
left libertarians and right libertarians have excommunicating members of Murray
(04:13):
Rothbart is on an io exile Murray Rothbart and Mary
Books and United and cancelation. So yeah, I guess I'm
not being canceled, which is good. Um. And so yeah,
they had reached out to me in September about being
on this panel, and they had mentioned, um, the other guests,
and frankly, I was intrigued because you know, if people
(04:37):
want to pay attention to the growing threat of fascism,
I think that's pretty neat. And it seemed like an
opportunity to do the thing that Glenn Greenwald claims that
he does when he goes on Tucker Carlson, which is
like reaching out to an audience that doesn't already agree
with the things that I think UM, because he just
(04:57):
goes on because their pals and they already all agree.
So UM, I digress. I thought it was maybe an
interesting forum, and and I was really interested to hear
UM from the other panelists, in particular UM, because I
had looked at what Mike German had written after his
service in UM the FBI and as well as the
(05:19):
author of the Anti Fascist Handbook, and I thought, well,
if if Kato has invited all three of us, it's
it's not gonna go too off the rails in terms
of UM, you know, sort of the false equivalency problems,
or it just becoming a session to bash on groups
that aren't really the part of the problem. Interestingly enough,
(05:39):
the primary amount of bashing that went on was Mike German,
former f by FBiH, repeatedly viciously criticizing the police and
the FBI for their complicity with far right street movements. Yeah,
Mike's been pretty consistent. I spoken this for like a
couple of years, and I'm sure you people are probably
aware of his presence by now, but he's been pretty
(06:00):
consistent on bashing defense for failing to act on white
supremacy for decades, and it's very It's there's a number
of reasons this is interesting that we'll we'll be getting
back into. But I really do recommend people take a
listen to this conversation between y'all. Among other things, there's
there's some good history in there. We'll talk about a
couple of things that got introduced that I don't a
(06:22):
hundred percent agree with. That there's some good history in there,
and I think more to the point, you get um
a lot of updates from your reporting in Dallas and
a lot of kind of summaries of that which I
find very valuable and think will be valuable to people
who have maybe been following it less. And then also
it's really interesting to get Mike's perspective as someone he
was in it was late eighties, early nineties, he was
(06:43):
doing a lot of undercover stuff in the West Coast
and neo Nazi movements, UM, and so hearing him discuss
the way in which the FBI's programs targeted at the
far right work and don't work was really interesting to me.
Oh absolutely, that was the sort of the side of
the story that I knew the least about UM. Christopher Viles,
(07:05):
the professor, the guy who wrote the handbook. UM. You know,
I think he provided a very important set of historical
information that kind of helped iron out some of the
issues in terms of the framing craps and some of
the inconsistencies which I think we can dive into a
little bit, or rather inaccuracies that kind of got slipped
by UM and we weren't really able to address in
(07:28):
the course of the conversation. But hearing him just put
it so bluntly kind of took the wind out of
me in a good way where I was like, I
don't I don't have anything else to add here, no notes, UM,
because he really made the point that yes, some of
these organizations were candon glove with police officers at the
(07:49):
local level, even at the federal level. He's witnessed it.
He has a number of experiences that he cited where
the FBI is basically saying, uh, do not talk about
your case is involving white supremacists and these similar type
of groups. Because there are people in the agency who
are sympathetic UM. And I think that's kind of why
(08:12):
I ended up on the panel because in part the
story that I've been covering around here with this harassment
campaign over the past few months of lgbt Q groups
and events. Part of the story is that policing has
not really done anything to prevent uh you know, this
incitement and harassment from continuing and occasionally turning violent. Not
(08:38):
in the sense of weapons being used other than bear
me so far, but in the sense the physical violence
and uh you know, slurs and violent threats being hurled
at people. Um so, I I think that Mike's points
for really timely and well said, and frankly, he's the
kind of person that they needed to come from, because
(09:00):
as otherwise, they just kind of get smacked away as
a leftist talking point by people who probably have some
internal biases or prejudices, prejudices that prevent them from engaging
with it when it comes from the wrong person in
the wrong way. And there were a number of interesting
(09:20):
kind of discussions happening. One thing that I was happy
about is that, well, the initial framing, I think there
was a lot of fear that all of these left
wing groups are going to get lumped in with groups
that have, to put it bluntly, tried to overthrow democracy.
Um right, we should point out that that's how the
FBI does do it, right, like they for instance, the
(09:42):
group white supremacists with like black identity groups, is racial
identity extremists or statistics that way like that, That's that's
how the FEDS see this. But yeah, they didn't, which
is which is good. It's like a form of obfuscation
to do so. And um, you know, why would they
do that. Well, maybe there's a few reasons they might
do that, especially if you ask someone like Mike. Um.
(10:06):
And you know, it's such a blind spot for obvious
the ideological reasons for so many people involved. Yeah, and
it's it's Um. It was interesting because there was this
bit in the middle of it where Mike, you know,
being a former FED, walked through kind of like, well,
it makes sense to me given the fact that law
(10:26):
enforcement is is not able to be trusted in a
lot of instances and often is working hand in glove
with these far right groups that want to harm marginalize people,
that they would seek to arm themselves. Um. And that
prompted from the the fellow who was actually um kind
of the organizing the the event, Patrick Eddington, who's a
(10:49):
senior fellow at the Cato Institute him to point out,
and he was I would have to say broadly fair um,
And generally he seemed a little bit kind of um uh.
He he had this attitude you you get sometimes around
libertarians where he was like, there was a moment where
he was like, well, I'm glad some on the left
to finally started accepting the Second Amendments and stuff like that. Um.
(11:13):
But but he had a he had a moment where
he expressed a concern, um, which was his fear about
the possibility that if you keep having these events, at
some point you're going to have two groups of people
who are armed shoot at each other. Um, which is
we have We've been right up to that line. You
(11:33):
have had exchanges of fire, just thinking. In Portland, you
had a moment where a single right wing individual with
a handgun fired into a group of people, thankfully didn't
hit any Two people in the anti fascist side fired
back and forced him to flee. Um. You had a
moment earlier this year in Portland where a right winger
(11:54):
shot into a group of unarmed people doing traffic security,
killed a sixty one year old woman, wounded I think
five other people, and then was shot and stopped by
a leftist. Um, you obviously had um a proud boy,
while a member of Patriot Prayer shot and killed during
(12:14):
an altercation, but not an exchange of fire. The only
person who fired was the person who killed that that individual.
So none of those are quite two groups of people
with guns exchanging fire, you know, in a sustained way. Um,
none of those even entirely approached kind of what happened
at like Greensville. But they're all on that spectrum. And
(12:35):
and while I think this guy there's a degree to
which he's kind of spooked at seeing leftists with guns,
I do think that that's a reasonable thing to be
concerned with, because when and if we hit that point,
it's going to be an inflection moment for I think
the entire country. Right right, I think the reality is
that most normal people, whatever you want to use the
(12:58):
word to describe them, people aren't brain poisoned and plugged
into the Internet and about all these things or or
having to deal with them and are affected by them
in real life. They might see these groups and just
cast them all under the same umbrella. You know, there's
a good me I chuckled at that came out afterwards,
where it had had the slide showing on all of
(13:21):
the groups the right when groups and the left and
groups sort of armed groups in you know, the United States,
and then replacing them all with just domestic cleaning products. Like, yes,
they all have something in common. They have weapons, and
they're armed to some degree, but beyond that, they all
have distinctions and we shouldn't drawn equivalency. And I think,
(13:44):
you know, Mike did a very elegant job of drawing
that distinctionaries as these people not only have a right
to defend themselves, but they probably have a good reason
to given all of these things. He was basically writing
the lyrics to arrage against them en song and um,
I was a little astonished by that, and he made
(14:06):
a very clear point to say, like, yeah, there are
people who are aggressors and there are people who aren't.
We can find a distinction in that. And if we're
just now getting concerned about this violence, well maybe we
should ask why we've had such a big blind spot
for so long. And he got right to the core
of it. It's these ideologies deeply baked into our institutions
of white supremacy, right supremacy. UH basically all the way
(14:30):
back to colonization, and you know, dealing with that is
necessary for us to deal with the broader problem. And
I think he was very clear to say, like the
things that were required to get to that point of
like a potential shootout would be a total breakdown in policing.
(14:51):
And so he played place the blame at the feet
of the police practically said it's there goddamn fault that
people feel the need to do this, because if they
just focused on the crimes that proud boys commit in
the Dallas area, uh, you know, basically minor assaults and stuff,
they would trace it back to the people that are
(15:12):
committing them, and they would cut down on these escalations
because the same people are the ones that show up
to these events time and time again. It's worth like Robby,
(15:32):
you're talking about like an inflection point, right And we
spoke about like failures in policing too. I think part
of the reason that we see things as super duper
exceptional right now is the way that we teach history
in schools here and part of the things we don't
teach like that this has happened before, right, like the
Battle of Haze Pond being a paramount example, if we
(15:53):
look at the like the standoff at Wounded Knee or
the Second Battle of Woundednee, or whatever you want to
call it, and throughout the civil rights movement. Right there's
a book by Rob Williams about a contemporary book about
the use of firearms and the civil rights movement that
people can read like all of this stuff did happen then,
And this same tension that we're feeling now about like
(16:13):
a society putting itself apart and when it leads to
a civil war also happened then and people felt this
then two and we we well, the progress was made
at that time. We didn't fix everything, right, Like that's
why we're having this discussion now. But like, I think
the fact that we've removed so much of that, specifically
the violence and the use of guns from our discussion
(16:34):
with the civil rights movement sometimes leads us to see
what's happening now is like really particularly exceptional, and it's
not like, yeah, it's always been the case of marginalized
folks that have resorted to the same tools that are
used to oppress them to defend themselves. And why wouldn't
they write, like like Mike said, like Steve said, there's
a very good and clear reason for oppressed people to
(16:55):
want to defend themselves and their communities. The only analog
that we were able to bring up in the conversation
is like the pink Pink panthers, pink panther control, which was,
you know, something that a lot of people don't know about.
And we did get a little bit of opportunity to discuss,
you know, the black Panthers and how community defense is
(17:16):
a different set of reasons for arming yourself and having
knowledge of the Second Amendment and all those sorts of things.
Then you know, going outside in an event hosted by
an organization you have no interest in belonging to wearing
your guns on your body to send a message that's
a very menacing form of free speech. And I think
(17:39):
another good moment to bring up when we talk about
this would be the Red Summer of nineteen nineteen, which
was a series of race riots targeting black people in
the United States that also involved large groups and communities,
particularly in cities, of Black Americans taking up arms and
defending themselves um and and was fairly enormous and it's
deftal hundreds and hundreds of people were killed. Um, it's
(18:02):
it's really a pretty nightmarish moment in history. But it's
the thing when you have groups, and we're about to
have someone on from from Yellow Peril Tactical, when you
have groups that are specifically organizing and saying like we
are organizing, we are teaching skills for people to become
armed because we are afraid that we and people like
us will be victimized. It's stuff like the Red Summer
(18:25):
that they're directly looking at. It's not theoretical, you know. Yeah,
you're Frank Karl from Arranged TV. Have some good videos
about a lot of these different things if people are
interested in looking them up. Yeah. Um, and I think
probably we should bring on our next guest for tonight,
and and Stephen will be staying on as well. Snow
(18:46):
from Yellow Peril Tactical. Snow, do you want to introduce
yourself and your organization for folks who may not be
as as familiar with the stuff as we are. We
we briefly covered y'all a little bit earlier in this
but yeah, thanks for having me. My name is Snow,
my pronouns the sheet or they, and I am one
(19:06):
of the many members of Yellow peril tactical. We are
a collective of leftist Asian Americans under the shared ideology
of being anti authoritarian um. And we talked about all
sorts of things, but particularly how to develop firearms skills
and also community defense and the occasional ship post and uh,
(19:31):
first questions, because we're talking about this Cato Institute thing
that Stephen was on. Have you had a chance to
listen to that yet? Since y'all watched it twice I
have or paid notes? Yeah? Yeah, why why don't we
start here? Yeah? Go off? You know, Okay, Like the
chat was lit. When we first saw that we were mentioned,
(19:54):
we were like, wow, we fucking made it because originally
we started as a ship post account and then we
were like, oh, people actually care, um. And this is
just one of those moments where, uh, I don't know,
it felt like really surreal that Kato would even give
a funk about us because we do all of this
in our free time. You know, this is like nobody
(20:16):
pays us, right, um. And so we had a lot
of skepticism going into it, um. And in a sense, uh,
we're a bit on the defensive, kind of preparing for
a lot of false equivalence, rhetoric um, and a lot
of just like I don't know, maybe like orientalism as well, um,
(20:39):
just given the history of how like Westerners have viewed
Asian culture. UM. But ultimately, like the consensus has been
that we were pleasantly surprised of how balanced it was.
I thought, overall it was very intriguing, and I got
some good some good quotes written down, But I don't
know if you want to go into those now or
later or what can we start with having I really
(21:01):
want to like anchor this in having you explained what
community defense means, like so people can understand why, and
then we can go from what people say to you. Yeah, UM,
so earlier y' all we're talking about like, um, the
nineteen nineteen riots and actually reminded me of like the
Pacific Coast Race riots of nineteen seven, and a bunch
of were like murdering and committing violence against Asian people, right,
(21:25):
And nineteen oh seven was not that long ago. Um,
And in a sense it never has gone away. Um.
And you know, I think, um, Chris Files said it
like put it nicely when he was like, you know,
in the backdrop of a lot of anti Asian violence. Um,
it's just that it's been a lot more prevalent among
(21:48):
Asians specifically. That doesn't stop you know, like Boba liberalism,
identity politics from happening where there's not like a grand
division of like what's going on at large. Um. But
we know that like our communities are under attack and
the cops don't give a funk about us, and if anything,
(22:09):
they just make it worse most of the time. Uh.
And so it's truly up to us because you know,
cops don't prevent crime, They come after and they funk
it up. Um. And it's not something that has come
easily to me personally. I've been in denial about it
for a lot of years around thinking like if I
(22:30):
just avoid going out late at night, if I am
always walking with a buddy, if I just you know,
spend twenty minutes looking for a closer parking spot, it'll
prevent me from being harmed. And ultimately, like that's just
me being in denial, um. And part of it. Another
realization is like being strapped, I can seal Carrie every day,
(22:56):
that's not going to deter someone from attacking me because
of how I look without dosing myself I just look alternative, right, um,
And knowing that that puts me at risk has never
deterred me from wanting to express myself with how I look.
But I know the risks, and that doesn't stop people
(23:16):
from me. But part of it is like I'm not
going down without a fucking fight. Like my ancestors have
come too fucking far. We kicked out the French, we
kicked out the US, right uh, and now I'm in
their turf. I've infiltrated the wire. But that doesn't mean
but you know, it doesn't mean that it's going to
stop them from harming US. Um. And you know, we
(23:39):
know that we can't live in a fever dream where
every single fascist on this planet will be gone. Um.
But at the very least, like my life goal is
to make them think twice. And I'm scared a little bit.
It's interesting because you you bring up sort of what
I think is a really good point, which is that
(24:00):
like even if you're if you're in your day to
day life, the fact that you're carrying a gun isn't
going to stop somebody from starting, you know, an interaction
with you that could turn violent because you just look
the way that you look, I do want to talk
a little bit about what's kind of the opposite thing,
and it is sort of part of why I think
folks were a little on edge when this event got
announced and you know that graphic came out that had
(24:22):
as we've discussed, the Yellow Peril tactical alongside you know,
these these these other groups. And there's one of the
things that kind of results from the way gun culture
works is that there's a very recognizable kind of um
uniform um that you see particularly you've seen it with
(24:43):
the Boogle Boo Boys, you see it with groups like
the Proud Boys. It's the it's the thing where you've
got a plate carrier, a belt, you know, an a
are some other kind of long gun helmets and and
usually other tactical gear on it um. And this kind
of this outfit, so to speak, has kind of evolved
over time. It really is a result of the War
on Terror, and it's both an aesthetic choice and there's
(25:05):
a huge number of companies that exist, particularly on the
right to provide people with aesthetic options for kind of
having all of this gear that are are sort of
ideologically simple simpatica with them UM. But it's also just
actually a practice. Well, some of this stuff is less
practical than others, but the basics of the of the
get up exist because it's what worked. Right. There's one
(25:28):
of the things people noted when the Taliban took back
over in Afghanistan is that all of their special operations
guys were dressed the same way that US fighters, just
because it's just what works. You see the same outfits
on Ukrainian and Russian spec ops guys um. And one
of the things when we when we're looking at kind
of domestically, when you have people who are organizing and
(25:49):
going out in the world armed as part of a
public event, is that to people who are not familiar
with what's going on, it can be hard to tell
them apart sometimes. And that is that strikes me the
thing that the left particularly needs to deal with because
both in kind of in the media and also out
in the field, you don't want to be mistaken for
(26:11):
groups like the Proud Boys and Steve and I want
to start kind of with you here because I think
you're you're reporting has always done a really good job
of kind of making that difference clear. If you kind
of have any thoughts on that, and then we'll go
back to you, Snow. I think that's a really interesting problem,
the proliferation of tactical UM aesthetics and the ideological sort
(26:35):
of turn in the production of weaponry and accessories. I mean,
there's like goddamn tactical eight so the franchises, which is
making me lose my mind for a number of reasons.
UM and that is a is a real distinct thing
(26:56):
that I see all the time around here, and and
I think there's subtle things at groups do to try
to distinguish themselves. Obviously are patches, but in order to
see a patch, you have to be close enough to
someone in order to even find it legible. So then okay,
you have flags, but then you also have to know
what these flags are. Something that some groups around here
(27:18):
have done when they're you know, sort of protecting an
LGBTQ event is still have UM flags affiliated with the
LGBTQ movement, but once again you have to know what
those are. And one more people know what those are
these days. So that's a way in order to distinguish themselves.
But it still takes a second for you to see
a group of armed people and then process you know
(27:41):
exactly all of these sort of semiotic markers of who
they are and what they're doing. Um. Because if they
have a different set of those things, it can be
a very different set of conclusions that you can walk
away from if you identify them. Uh. And in Texas,
the right does love carrying these flags and wearing these patches,
(28:01):
so it makes it very clear who has consistently shown
up to these events. Um. But like the reaction of
normal people if a group of armed people are leading
a protest is to kind of be like, what the heck?
Double take? Maybe they will start filming it because it's
the craziest thing that they've seen that week. Um. And ultimately,
(28:23):
you know, they have to kind of know some contextual
clues in order to even make these distinctions, particularly when
you're talking about groups like um, you know, John Brown
Clubs or Yellow Peril, where you're there's concerns around op
sack or info sack and you don't want to necessarily
reveal your identities because you're already a part of a
group that's facing violence at a disproportionate rate and maybe
(28:48):
you're you know, potentially targeted by the FBI at a
disproportionate rate, like the former FBI officer interestingly noted during
the conversation that, yeah, you may have an even harder
time sort of distinguishing yourself and in making it known
who you are. UM, So it's an interesting challenge. I
don't know if I have uh, sort of any lessons
(29:09):
from it other than that, you know, these classic signifiers
also seem to work. Sometimes they're kind of kitchy or um,
you know, seem ridiculous, but it's kind of the same thing,
like you said about the spec op stuff, like it's
been used for centuries. Stuff like this has been used
for a long time because it works because you immediately
(29:30):
can comprehend is this person with a gun here to
kill me or to protect me? Yeah? Yeah, that's that's
really interesting because I I, obviously I have a complicated
history with flags, but there's few better ways to inform
other people about what a group of folks is doing
than having one. Um. Yeah, as long as you're not
conducting an ambush and that's an offensive maneuver. And then
(29:53):
suddenly you know, it's like, as long as you're cool
with being like, we're here and this is what we're doing.
A flag is exactly the thing that you might want.
So No. One of the things I've always paid attention
(30:13):
to and appreciated about yellow perils the way and what's
y'all social media and y'all's kind of forward face is
both unapologetically focused on firearms, focused on training, and also
feels completely different from any of the sort of right
wing kind of groups that that focus on some of
the state, even when you're doing stuff that's like videos
(30:35):
of people shooting and training. UM, do you want to talk?
I mean, it's just anything in general on this subject
that you've you've felt. But that's something I've always particularly
noticed about y'all. Yeah, so thank you. UM, we try
really hard. You should see the group chat um. But
it's it's something that you know, when historically Asian Asians
(30:59):
represent it in firearms culture tend to be conservative folks
who fit within the norm or you know, proximity to whiteness,
and that's something that we are not at all interested in, UM,
and we know that comes at a risk. That's why
one of the reasons why are identifiable tattoos are clothing
(31:22):
and our faces are always blurred. One because we don't
want cult of celebrity around individuals. UM. But too it's
like part of that is a lot of folks generally,
but especially on the right, will kind of have this
very grandiose, uh I don't know, uh, buffer sense of
(31:42):
legitimacy just because they have cool you know, video editing,
they have like the nicest guns, they have a lot
of guns. Um. And our thing is like, you don't
need all that. What you do need is to train
with what you got and are target audience are folks
who don't know ship about firearms or just getting into
(32:03):
it and needs some more reputable to go. Um. And
we take that very seriously, um, because I only got
into firearms like two years ago, um, and so that
is fresh in my memory, and I know very well
what that's like, um and how intimidating it could be.
So a lot of our work is to try to
demystify it and really break it down to a way
(32:24):
that like it doesn't like we don't make people feel
like they have to be at a certain level already
to even enter into the firearms world. Like, we want
to meet people where they're at and encourage people. So like,
you know, do our drill of the month and like
tell us your score and then do it next month
and tell how to tell us how you did better,
(32:44):
and so it's really encouraging people to get better on
an individual basis. Um, we encourage people to go out
with their friends. Um, but we also try to throw
in like community international solidarity with our fundraisers in there too.
So it's we try do a lot of different things.
But at the end of the day, like if we
help just eapen a handful of shooters get better at
(33:07):
defending themselves or their community, like, it's all worth it.
Thank you. I want to ask next and I'll ask
you both again kind of same question. Where do you
see the armed left moving? Particularly in this next year's
we kind of get through our last or start go
through our last blessed year before election. Um, what are
(33:31):
some things that that are on your radar? What are
some things that you're sort of expecting to see? What
are some things that you're worried about? Saying a lot,
it's a big ques trying to keep it to a year, right, Yeah,
but you know, I like I worry a lot. I
(33:51):
try not to get too caught up in it because
life will surprise you, you know. Um, But I think ultimately,
like where I live, we are facing down a really
tight governor race in which if the Republican candidate wins UM,
a lot of work that has been put to you know,
codify abortion rights, workers rights, things like that, will be
(34:11):
reversed by this governor um. And it's something that a
lot of people are worried about, myself included, and where
I live, even within city limits, there are white supremacists flags,
Confederate flags even just like a couple of miles from
my house, and so there's a lot of fear around
(34:34):
that becoming even more emboldened. Even though we managed to
fight back a lot and deterred, it doesn't mean that
they're not taking this moment the right, the fast right
to restrategize and to recalibrate what they want to do
next um. And so it kind of feels like we're
(34:54):
in the calm before the storm. Oh man. Uh, not
like the J six storm, That's not what I mean,
but like genuinely what it will actually look like, because
I don't think it's gonna be. I don't think there's
gonna be Like, you know, we meet at the football
field and we have like our drummers out and like
our little pipe players out and then we have about it.
It's gonna be like urban like warfare, is what I think. Um,
(35:18):
And a lot of other people think that too. And
you just throw in climate change as a treat like
we don't know what the literal climate is going to
be like, um, And so it really just feels like
there's multiple fronts right now. But it seems like climate
change or the fascists will kill me before my smoking
habit will And a lot of people think that too. Yeah,
(35:42):
I mean I I do anecdotally know a lot of
people who justify their cigarette use with like, look, there's
wildfires all around my house. I'm not worried about the
mar Brea's it is. It is October and the city
of Portland is blanketed and smoke. I don't know if
the cagrets are going to get me. Stephen, did you
(36:03):
did you want to go next? Yeah? Well, I mean,
you know, the fact that a ship posting account gained
some traction, maybe there's hope yet. Um, I don't know,
but ship posting will save us in the end. It's
it's another one on the board for ship posting. Let's
(36:24):
put it that way. So looking forward to what are
we dealing with well, Texas is uh deep in it
right now. Um, we're one of the sort of laboratories
of fascism in the United States at the moment, sort
of a spear tip of a lot of really bad
stuff really just like you know, codifying in the state,
(36:49):
oppressive things, things that they just talk about in other states. Um.
And so yeah, our governor's race, uh basedly it doesn't either,
you know, kind of split things because our lieutenant governor
runs independently of the governor, and you know, the House
is a whole other thing. Yeah, if it goes far right, um,
(37:13):
which a ton of money has been spent, billions and
billions from people in the industry that's primarily responsible for
destroying the planet, are um, pushing that to make it happen,
and so that all works their way, then yeah, we're
probably going to get some uh seriously bad laws, really
(37:35):
bad state sponsored violence, a variety of forms. And yeah,
people are already thinking to themselves like do I want
to live in this state anymore? Um? But that's also
basically what the extreme people on the right want is
to either just get rid of these people one way
(37:55):
or another. Um. And so some people don't want that Obviously,
some people don't have a choice to leave because it's
expensive to move and they may be tied to their
families and other sorts of things. So, uh, I don't
like to predict the future because history is we keep
(38:16):
pumping shells into it and it keeps getting back up,
and uh, it's just gonna happen, and I don't really
know exactly. I just I'm very thankful that there are
people and groups in my state that are trying to
protect vulnerable people, um, and people working to hopefully make
it not super bad. Um. So I think like the
(38:39):
optimistic view is that it won't be all totally terrible horrible,
but it'll be still kind of same, same, you know. Yes, Yeah,
that's kind of like how I see broad speaking, you know,
the big projection cone. Otherwise, UM, I'm not sure. Yeah,
it's gonna be fucked up, but at least we'll have friends.
(39:02):
Hopefully it'll be wavy and it will be about the
friends that we make along the way. Yeah, I do
either of you have anything else you'd like to to
talk about or or or bring up or say before
we kind of bring this to a close. I guess
I'm just like I was kind of surprised how decent
(39:24):
that the panel went. Um. You know, the anti fascist
coalition can be broad because it is a sort of
anti thing. It's not necessarily positivist. But you know, maybe
that's another episode to describe, you know, why it's important
to also perhaps have a positivist message along with what
you're trying to do in response to fascism. Um. And
(39:49):
you know, like more discussions like this hopefully will happen,
and I think they could be improved by like not
all four panels being white dudes. That would probably be helpful.
Um as a thought. Yeah, uh well, yeah that that
was actually the first thing I wrote on my my
(40:11):
note page is that it was for for what I
should have said that earlier, So you never, I'm just playing.
But I think one thing I want to add is like,
similar to what you were saying, Stephen, was kind of
like what is the pro positive thing? And ultimately like
to me, it's like the city that I live in,
(40:32):
there's a lot of decentralized mutual aid groups that got
a lot of people through the pandemic and still provide
daily relief to people consistently. Like I'm in like a
million fucking signal chats where people post a need and
it gets met eventually. UM. And it's like I'm pro
that mutual aid and like it's something that I mean,
(40:54):
maybe it's the only thing that will really get us
through whatever is to come. UM. And that's just like
pro commune to be building UM and coalition building whatever
that looks like in your community. Maybe if we want
to talk about mutual aid, you can. I know, you
guys do a lot of fundraiser I think that's a
really cool thing. Certain distinguishes you from a lot of
other gun clubs. So maybe do you want to talk
(41:16):
about a couple of those, Maybe plug those? You know,
I would plug our Fondward patches, but we just sold
out of the second patch. It's a it is. We
didn't think people would care that much, especially the first round,
and so the second round we only ordered a hundred
and it's pulled out in a day. Those are supporting
(41:37):
the resistance in Myanmar, right, Yes, yes, people are getting
them by donating directly to liberate me and mar and
then someone sends them a cool forward patch. UM. And
it's one of many fundraisers we've done. We recently have
done a couple for folks in Ukraine. UM, we helped
them fund an ambulance out there. UM. I can't remember
(42:01):
the Instagram handle right now. UM. We've also done a
bunch for like a group in Portland for example, Black
and Beyond the Binary. UM. I think we've done to
actually for Liberate Me and mar UM. But it's just
something that you know, we don't do this for money,
and we also want to support other groups doing things
that we support, especially like popular fronts that are fighting
(42:23):
back against authoritarian regimes UM and hoping that you know,
if ship hits the fan here, that people will do
that for us to UM, because we really value international
solidarity and you know, as corny as it is, we're
you know, we're like we got us, you know, we
fend us, not George Soros, but UM, you know it's
(42:44):
something that brings us joy to be able to help
and UM, as mostly anarchists, we really believe that, like
we are all that we have and we can't wait
for someone else to to you know, a benefactor to
come and save us, because that ship is just not
going to happen. Yeah, it's great. WHA can folks find
(43:05):
you on the into web? They want to follow along.
We can find us on Instagram at Yellow dot Peril
dot Practical. You have to spell it out, I think,
because I think we're shadow band right now. Our Twitter,
regrettably is ypt actual. We also have a website just
(43:25):
Yellow Peril Tactical dot com. We just took it so
no one else could. Um, but that's where you can
mainly find us. We are primarily on Instagram, um, but
most of our stuff is on Twitter. If you really
want to see a ship post, go on Twitter. We
recently got into it with this person and Oregon over
(43:46):
the gun control measure. Um, and let me tell you
it was a heat but also a little like maddening
because this guy, this guy actually ties into how we
opened the episode because he was he's a local liberal
uh thought leader guy who uh saw two pictures of
(44:07):
people with guns, one of them being fascists and one
of them being one of y'all and was like, clearly
these are the same thing. Um, it was a good
time vote no on one fourteen in my opinion, uh,
if you're in the state of Oregon. But we'll talk
about that at a later point. Stephen Um, you want
(44:28):
to plug you first off, obviously really good work, UM
on the panel. I want to plug that for folks
because I think it is really worth a listen. Um,
as everyone is here said, there's a lot of good
historical information in there and uh and and your contributions
are invaluable, So folks can check that out. If you
(44:49):
just google Cato Institute Domestic Extremism and Political Violence, you'll
find it. And how else can people find you? Stephen?
You can also find me on Twitter. UM, I will
make sure that my handle is there. It's at Steve
van Zetti. Ste van Zetti as in the you know,
(45:11):
one of the two that got killed by the state unjustly,
um because it's anti Italian discrimination, so UM I digress um.
The you can find me there. Prodian is obviously something
that I work with, and I would say check that
out as well. It's at Prodi and mag uh that
has a website Prodian mag dot com. Um and anything
(45:34):
else that you want to know about me you can
either find on Twitter or Google. There's really only like
two guys named Stephen Monticelli in the entire state United States,
and the other ones like a c P A in
his sixties, So it's just not that one. Um, and
yeah you can find me there. Excellent. Um, well I'm
(45:55):
glad we got to end on a Sacco and Vanzetti reference.
And uh yeah, everybody go help somebody. 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 I
(46:16):
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
Hosts And Creators
Robert Evans
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James Stout
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