January 24, 2020 • 40 mins
Katy, Cody, and Robert get together to debrief on the Virginia Gun Rights Rally detailed in the previous episode of Worst Year Ever.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Worst Year Ever, a production of I Heart
Radio Together Everything, so don't don't, Okay, welcome back to
(00:22):
Worst Year Ever. My name is Costons, not Cody Johnston,
and this year is not very good so far. I'm sorry.
What was your name? Robert Evans, Rob Robert Evans, Rob Roberts,
Rob Roberts, Robert. I know we named our podcast Worst
(00:44):
Year Ever, but I for one him shocked that it's
a terrible year. Like how presient that was, Like how
quickly it was that, like day one and then day
two and then day three and just every single day.
It's like, oh, yeah, this is bad still January, and
we should have put money on this year being terrible. Yeah,
(01:06):
we really should. I don't know. You know, we're recording
this h the week that I went to the Virginia
Richmond gun thing of a jig malicious, that's what we're
calling them. They got me sick, they got me horribly sick.
So I have I had. It's the it's the I'm
(01:26):
convinced it's the dreaded CORONAVIRUSS. Not so peaceful of the protest, now,
is it? Yeah? The warfare there, I am a terrorism. Yeah,
you're you're in the rock. Thank you. Yeah. So hopefully
most of you guys have had a chance to check
out Robert's very well done episode that he put together
(01:49):
after going to the Welcome protest earlier this week. Thank you.
We all wanted to go, only one of us got permission.
Robert is the logical choice, and so here we are
too debrief about your experiences there and talk about what
(02:11):
we feel in our hearts in the mind phone. Yes, yes,
I mean I want to start by saying I have
never had so many people point guns at me without
meaning to, like a shocking a shocking lack of guns
basic gun safety. Um, it was pretty astonishing. Yeah. Yeah,
(02:34):
I would say about six of people were very safe.
But people, no, that's not enough. Like I weird, like weirdly,
I kind of thought that there would like the like
there would be more people who were adhering to that
general gun safety because that's the whole idea, is that like, no,
(02:54):
we're safe, secure gun I mean, you know, on the
surface of that with what they want to present. Um,
so you think that the policing each other, I'm like no, no,
come on, like watch your watch, your finger something, that's
the thing you know, it's it's um. I attend a
lot of protests and have for years, and one thing
that you always see at the left wing protests is
(03:15):
people who are I shouldn't essentially acting as like you know,
they they're doing rounds within the protests, trying to like
deal within our personal issues, arguments, fights, trying to like
stop things from getting out of hand, hall monitor and
ship but like good, yeah, helpful, but like good. And
there really should have been people doing that if you're
(03:36):
going to have continued armed protests. There's already one set
up for Washington in the near future. They're gonna keep
doing this. These people really need to have folks doing
the rounds and being like, hey, you shouldn't have a
twelve gage shotgun shoved in the water bottle bottle holder
of a backpack. This was proud of people that would
be receptive to that kind of feedback. Yeah, it's um.
(03:59):
It's very even if it's just like on an optics level,
like ideally they're doing that because they actually care about safety,
but even just on a level of like, no, that
doesn't look great for us and what we're trying to
say and do here. Well, And one of the things
that was like really frustrating to me was like I
posted a very large and fairly popular, you know, Twitter
(04:21):
threat with like pictures from the rally going through it,
and I would take pictures of people doing unsafe things
with guns, and folks would, like right wing pro gun
people would get in there and like argue with me
about basic facts of gun safety, like the guy who
had a shotgun in the water bottle and his gun
was like wildly wobbling around to the point where it
was just at the edge of falling out, and they
(04:43):
were like, well, it's probably not loaded, And I was like,
but the first rule of gun safe as they all
are like that, And there was another guy that's not
how we do this, probably isn't gonna cut it for me. No,
I don't know, like it's, uh, I'm not inherently against.
(05:06):
I think it's actually some of the most revolutionary protest
actions in American history. Like if you look at like
the Black Panthers and Hue P. Newton Um where we're
armed marches um in a armed protests, But if you
look at like footage of the Black Panthers, they're very like, yeah,
they're they're they're very safe. With their file. Yeah yeah, um,
(05:31):
I would. Yeah, so that was like outside of the
ideological stuff that was unsettling, Like the shocking lack of
fox given about safety was was very concerning anyone any
other ones that like stuck out to you of like, well,
that's terrible. Yeah. It was a guy who had he
was holding his shotgun up on his shoulder to a
point where like the barrel was just an inch or
(05:53):
two above people's heads, and had his other hand he
was had his phone in it and he was looking
at his phone and walking blindly into the crowd with
the twelve gay shotgun. Guys, I'm sure it wasn't loaded.
Robert would be like posting pictures from like hunters safety
courses where people hold shotguns on their shoulders and be
(06:15):
like no, this is okay, And I was like no,
no, no no, no, no, I've been through I've gotten hunting
licenses before. This is fine if you're in the forest
and you're not staring into your smartphone in a crowd
of literally thousands of people. Yeah, um, but nobody got shot. Yeah,
I mean it seems like that's like that's part of it,
(06:38):
like the shotgun on the shoulders, Like, oh, this looks cool.
This is meaning my cool gun, being a cool guy.
Like a lot of the things you're you saw that
we're unsafe, we're sort of fueled by just like the
image of having a gun. Did you get that sense
at all? You know? It just careless. Yeah, it was
just carelessness. Most of the people who were there to
(06:59):
look cool, well, no, like that guy. Like the most
famous picture that got out is the dude who had
a fifty caliber Barrett sniper rifle, which is a ten
thousand dollar rifle UM, and he was just like he
was holding it like a walking stick after day with
like the barrel into this guy, which isn't the worst
way to carry it. Um. But like, as a general rule,
(07:20):
the guys who were like really heavily kidded out were
the ones who were at least a little better at
at not sweeping everybody with their that happened. There was
a great picture going around of like a pile of
rifles next to the porta potties with like just one
guy sitting there watching them. I wonder how many people
got beamed in the head with the button. I think
(07:44):
it was a Daily Best article. It might have been
vice where like the journalist like walks into a guy's
the barrel of a guy's gun, and like then he
apologizes and tells her she's okay and they have a conversation,
and it was one of those like she clearly didn't
know quite enough about guns to is upset with that
is yah. Um, but yeah, that's like I guess that's
(08:10):
the non ideological stuff, just the things that like concern me,
that are basic safety things, and like, um, yeah, I'm curious,
like what y'all thought about the episode? I did. I
think it's interesting, you have questions to go from there? Yeah,
very interesting. And I saw some interactions on Twitter that
might be a good jumping off point uh one specifically
(08:31):
about someone was saying like, well, what exactly was the
point of this episode or are you advocating that we
shouldn't have gun laws? And no, But like, the episode
to me was intriguing and frustrating at the same time
because it poses this dilemma of yes, we have this problem,
(08:53):
the how do we how do we handle it without
because you have to you can't get rid of all
guns we live in America, And how do you work
with people that are willing to kill to protect they're
they're right to have a gun. Um, how do you negotiating? Um?
And and the laws that on the surface that sound
(09:18):
like a good answer to us, we'll actually have all
of these other unintended repercussions. What happens, Like, yes, the
Democrats have taken Virginia, um, but now that to them,
to to a lot of the citizens there, that makes
it feel like there's been like there's some like there's
a real person, Like there's somebody that you have to
(09:40):
fight against the man is oppressing them. Um. And so
it's a whole bunch of It's a very interesting conversation
to have, and I think it goes well in line
with our whole goal here, which is to talk to
different groups of people and to get a snapshot of
America other than the one that we see from inside
of our bubble. And uh could is to you Robert, Yeah,
(10:03):
and you know, to to kind of answer that question,
because I did, you know, I made sure to quote
Representative Lee Carter talking about what he thought was was
reasonable gun control laws. And I made a point about
things like universal background checks, which I feel the same
way that that's a reasonable gun control law. UM. Their
laws to that that's a little we'll talk about registering later. Yeah. Yeah,
(10:30):
reporting lost firearms within you know, a very short period
of time. Um Mandating that people secure their firearms, particularly
if they have children in the house. I think these
are all There's definitely a chunk of the gun rights movement,
including some people I talked to in Richmond who are like,
no gun control laws are justified. But if you look statistically,
even some of like seventies something percent of an r
(10:51):
A member support universal background checks. Those things that I
just listed you can absolutely get people on board with,
and those laws would reduce some of the of the
of the firearms deaths that we have in this country.
That's not the end of what needs to be done,
but in terms of like things that I think we
should start with, those are good rules that well, a
lot of folks would whine about them and be conspiratorial
(11:12):
about them, and it would certainly get demonized to an extent.
At the end of the day, none of those laws
would lead to police officers being asked to confiscate firearms.
None of them wouldn't be like like, and so you're
not going to have the same kind of violent reaction
to that. Even though a chunk of people will be
unhappy with them. And I do think there's a degree
of if you have if you pass some reasonable gun
(11:34):
control laws that you can even get most gun owners
on board with and it doesn't lead to mass confiscation
and it reduces gun violence, I think it makes it
easier to push for more gun control um again of
certain types. Another thing that I think we have to
be careful about but could be very beneficial as red
flag laws, and we have to find a new name
for them. The name red flag law has been demonized
(11:56):
too much by the right wing media to to work anymore.
Like they don't the conversation is just over about the
very basic idea of where where the the impulse comes from.
Even it's just like, no, we're not going to talk
about that because a red flag a term used for
fire days in Los Angeles, so a little confusing from
(12:17):
but I think, you know, there's there's good points that
they do have in terms of why they think red
flag laws would be dangerous, which is like most of
the laws that have been the red flag laws that
have been proposed are actually really vague, and you could
have people having their weapons taken from them for political reasons,
for example, which is a reason a lot of leftists
(12:38):
don't get on board red flag laws because they're like, well,
I live in a red state and they're going to
use these laws to disarm left wing organizations. Mean that
in your in the episode, there's that person who's like, yeah,
I think flag laws are good as long as it's
like about comis and Antifa, so I can kill them
so and I I think one significant way to to
(12:59):
get the most benefit out of the thing that red
flag laws should be um without having as high odds
of of flipping some of these people out, is to
focus on taking a focus on in the name of
the law and in the letter of the law, taking
firearms away from domestic abusers and have specific laws tailored
just towards if you beat your spouse, if you beat
(13:19):
your kids, you don't get to have a gun anymore. Yeah, well,
that's part of and that's part of what I think
you'd have trouble getting a lot of liberals on board with,
because we would then have to grapple with the fact
that statistically, between twenty and of police officers and domestic
abusers and police officers abuse their spouses at a higher
rate than members of any other professional in the United States.
(13:41):
It's unsettling. Yeah, but I very much support disarming roughly
of US police officers could start. Um, So I do
think there's actually quite a lot that cannon should be done. Um.
I think one of the more dangerous things that we
have in the gun control debate right now is a
(14:02):
certain subset of Democrats who are like, really obsessed with
the idea of gun confiscation. Betto Rourke is the obvious example,
and people would point out, well, he only got about
two percent of the vote, and they'll point that out
is to be like, well, but he's not really a
serious like mind in in the Democratic Party, and so
folks shouldn't focus on it. But I'm telling you, like
the right wing is focused on and it's not just
(14:25):
Beto Rourke. One of the big viral stories from last
year is Representative Eric Swawell of California UM has also
been talking about mass gun confiscation, and he got into
a Twitter fight with some gun rights guy where the
gun rights guy said, how are you gonna enforce the
confiscation of firearms? Like, you know, people will take to
the hills and fight the government and he was like, well,
the government has nukes, and it was like, that's not
(14:47):
how you did. That's the wrong way to go. And
that's raising the temperature and making its convincing these people irrationally,
but it's convincing them that there is this massive secret
plot betwein the Democrats people. And you're like, well, nuque
if you Oh my god, I'm not I'm not like you.
(15:10):
I don't like guns. They freaked me out. I don't.
I don't really, I don't want to hold one. I
don't want to see one. Um I will because I
probably is a smart idea for me to take you
up on your offer to go to a shooting range sometime.
But at no point does the idea of gun has
the idea of gun confiscations seemed reasonable, even though though
(15:33):
my ideal utopia world is one where we're not having
these conversations at all because we don't have them, but
um uh, it doesn't seem like in our in our world,
in this climate. It just even if we did, even
if we did somehow pass that, um, how would you
logistically do it? What? And then the reaction that people
(15:54):
would have to it, and again raising the temperture of
everything it just doesn't seem like the or is it
helpful in this conversation having that rhetoric thrown around, especially
well and stuff that you're trying were like the things
that people generally agree on are often lumped in with that.
So if you lump in like, oh, and also a
gun confiscation, then like, well, none of the things that
you said am I on board with? Now? Even though
(16:16):
if you isolate them, they basically all sort of generally agreed,
like yeah, like universe background checks, sure, um, but yeah,
if you blump it in with because that's the thing
they're most afraid of, is like, well, I'm going to
lose all my guns, you know? Yeah, and it's you know,
I think. Um. So, like the things that I try
to emphasize is number one that even though the mass
(16:38):
confiscation thing is an actually a sizeable chunk of democratic politics,
folks on the right are convinced it is, and people
like Swallow and well, I know, everybody that I talked
to that's pro gun rights and everything is like, you
guys want to take away our guns, And every time
it's a conversation of no, actually that's a few people
have said that, But you're buying into the narrative that
(16:59):
that's what everybody wants to do. Yeah, And I think
one of the bigger issues is that there's this you know,
it's one of the things that that Lee brought up. Uh,
there's this chunk of the mainstream Democratic party that has
so much faith in our institutions, um that they think
(17:20):
those institutions. Yeah, they think that like because they won
an election, that that matters more than the tens of
thousands of people who are willing to kill over something. Um.
And it it doesn't like. Force is a reality in
American politics now, and the fact that a chunk of
(17:40):
this country is willing to kill for their beliefs is
a reality. And we have to be very careful when
we deal with that reality. Which doesn't mean we don't
do anything. It doesn't mean we give them everything they want.
It doesn't mean we ignore, like we don't push for reasonable,
sensible gun control. But it does mean we have to
be careful because forces a reality that you have to accept.
(18:01):
And you know, the people that I think a lot
of liberals would rely on to protect them from these militias,
the police are way more sympathetic for those delicious kind
of people in them than they are the liberals. Well,
that feels like a really good time to stop for
a quick ad break. I would love to. Would you
like to? We all need an ad plane together? Everything
(18:33):
all right, we're back? Well, yeah, boy howdy. I do
love products services. I just will not shut up about products.
Good product. Mm hmmm. So um, I kind of wanted
to ask, like you guys have anything else like you
particularly wanted to get into questions or like things that
(18:53):
really struck you that you'd like explained about. Like I
feel like part of one of my jobs in this
uh uh in general is to try and because I
grew up in you know, as very conservative and we
spent a lot of time in American gun culture, is
to try to be sort of a translator for that
that community, um, because I do understand them pretty well, um,
(19:15):
even though there's certain things that you just can't explain
to people who don't who don't I didn't grow up
in it, but like you know, I I'm I'm here
to answer those questions. Yeah, I mean, I'm I'm I
was kind of curious you read that, um that leftist
uh pamphlet left leaning the left Libertarian Yeah, um, and
I was kind of curious if you had if you
(19:35):
spoke to anybody who like read it and it was
affected by it or like considered it, because I feel
like that like a lot of we're talking about it's like, yeah,
we understand that there's like a way to talk about
this and a way to sort of separate different aspects
of gun control. So it doesn't like freak these people
out that they're gonna get nouked if they resist or whatever. Um,
(19:56):
But if on their side, if there's any of like
understanding of of of that viewpoint, I think there's a
little bit. So there was like a dinner that some
of the militias held that the John Brown Gun Club
was invited to after the rally, which I think is
a good sign. Um, there's certainly a sizeable chunk of
(20:18):
rally attendance that have no desire in in talking with
these people. But there were also like you know, one
of the things that I probably could have stood to
focus on a little bit more is there were a
handful of sort of left wing pro gun demonstrators in
the crowd, including like trans firearm rights people, gay firearms
rights people, like waving signs, and I there was never
(20:38):
any kind of violence or aggression towards them. UM. There
was a very small contingent of kind of a group
of people calling themselves black Panthers. It's a different than
the original organization. I think there's some problematic aspects towards
this new organization. I don't know enough about it to
get into it in detail. But one of the things
that was really interesting to me that I I haven't
(21:00):
really talked about yet, UM, that I want to is
there's a strong left wing anti fascist activist community in Virginia,
UM that has been really galvanized and mobilized as a
result of the seventeen Unite the Right rally. And I
spent a decent chunk of the day with those people.
And number one, they made a very conscious decision not
to protest, not to counter protests, in part because they're
(21:21):
all pretty pro gun. But they were there, UM, and
they were they were very intelligent about what they did.
So Number one, they had people you know, just with
guns walking through the crowd, UM, communicating with each other
through like radio and text to like, you know, when
they got worried if there was like an argument going
on between different groups of demonstrators, they had medics seated
(21:43):
throughout the crowd. Yeah, they and and the medics are
a separate group that's working with some of the anti
fascist contingents. They're not the same organization, but they worked
together today. One of the places I saw was a
hidden trauma clinic where they basically occupied a space. I
don't want to get any more hail than that, but
it was they found an empty building to occupy and
(22:05):
they set up a clinic for dealing with gunshot wounds
and whatnot like that that was hidden in in secret
um and did not wind up needing to be used, thankfully.
But there was a lot of preparation from that community
and a lot of understanding that like this is certainly
not the time to counter protests UM, but it is.
We we should be a part of this. And one
(22:25):
of the things some of their activists were doing was
going through the crowd and looking for explicit neo Nazis
that they recognized. I was actually there for one of
those confrontations with a guy named Jovie Vault where um
an anti fascist activist named god Gatsby called him out.
Vale is somebody who has warned Swastika as a marches before,
who I didn't. I mean, he admitted to being a
national socialist. He was like yeah, okay, and um, you know,
(22:55):
there was no it was actually like it was going
really well. There were a group of proud boys who
clearly seemed to be more on Jovi's side, but most
of the pro gun demonstrators like nobody threatened goad um
and a couple of them started yelling at Jovi once
he admitted to being a national socialist, including one guy
who was calling him a liberal, like get out of here, Nazi,
(23:17):
You're just a liberal and liberal to him. No, he
was like he's on the right like us. I love that. Yeah,
they're just like following around like making sure like no, no, no, no, no,
don't worry he's not. And it was it was weird
because like that guy was committed to the end to
calling Jovia liberal but was also like he's a fucking
(23:37):
Nazi and fuck Nazis. I'm not listening to you. Like
I just heard him say he's a national socialist and
I'm not okay with that. I think he's like easy
for us all too. That just made me think to say,
these people who are veryly adamantly pro guns all this
are kind of all right, Like in my mind, it
starts to get lumped together and it's very distinctively not
you know that, I don't assume that everbody that's progne
(24:00):
isn't all right. I'm just saying that in these big
um protest situations, with everything heightened, you start to paint
people with a brush my point, And yeah, I think
there's a lot of like there's a lot of misinformation
and propaganda purposefully out there to blur those lines. And
so like you'll get a guy who's like, oh, you're
a Nazi. That means you're a liberal, because that's what
(24:22):
a lot of people say that nazi means, um. And
it's interesting to see those interactions where they realize like, oh,
oh no, this is who I'm aligning myself with. They
if they realize it, like that guy didn't obviously, but
to see to see the reaction of like, you're you've
(24:43):
got these sort of like fascist leaning opinions and then
someone's outright like, oh, by the way, I'm a national socialist. Um.
I'm just always interested to see the process, the thought
process that reacts to that realization. Not always great, and
you know, again, usually means that they think that they're
(25:03):
liberal or something like that. But yes, I'm always it's
fascinated to see those, uh, those lightbulb moments, even though
they're kind of rare. Yeah, and it's you know, I
can't say that I think a huge number of people
were convinced or change their minds on anything as a
result of sort of those pamphlets being pratt passed up
(25:24):
highly gun club. Um. But I think it's a start,
and I think it's good that those conversations are being had.
And you know, one of the things that's tough. I
think there is the potential for a reduce like reduced
conflict between left and right as the result of this
growing left wing gun culture that's really surged in. But
(25:46):
I think there's really no way it's going to take
off until something is done about this right wing media ecosystem, um,
because it is an impenetrable wall of lies that the
inevitable end if we don't find a way to break it,
is war. I I really do think that, Like I
(26:06):
don't think it's inevitable that there's going to be some
sort of civil war, but if we don't find a
way to beat this thing, I do think it's inevitable. Yeah,
it's the logical conclusion of what they're saying and perpetuating.
Like I don't think it's like yeah, I don't think
it's like going to happen. But there is an element
of like, well that what are they saying? What are
they what are they pushing people towards? How do they
(26:29):
how do they constantly talk about this topic? Um? And
then you have yeah, like all these like just writing
fingers talking about I mean, they don't use the word boogaloo,
but they talk about how the left ones a civil
war when actually that's what they're talking about, that's what
they're craving. And there's guys and you know, thankfully Alex Jones,
he's important to talk about. He is much less of
(26:49):
a factor than he used to be because his his
d platforming is really cut down on his audience. But
he is part of this crew of folks for who
the only the only future he and a cadre of
his his fellows have is if there's a civil war,
because if things get de escalated, if things if we
(27:10):
are able to build some sort of coalition of sanity
in this country. Again, Um, not only are they doomed.
But they're going to wind up and continue spending the
rest of their lives in court until they have nothing left,
which is where Jones is right now, which is part
of why he is so heavily pushing for a civil war.
He was talking about like stomping the governor of Virginia's
(27:32):
skull into the ground, like while driving around in a
tank and calling for seventeen seventy six again up now
like it's he's he's it is election year. But and yeah,
and like that, if if it does de escalate, then
he loses that sort of relevance and his hold on
(27:53):
that group of people. Probably a lot of media, but
a lot of right wing media relies on hysteria to
keep their viewership engaged. A yeah, but I mean specifically,
he's obviously selling like you know, like combat wipes and
stuff and like all the survivalist gear uh and pushing
(28:16):
for the for the use of that. Yeah. And that's
there's two sides to this because on sort of the
the left wing side of this, there is this need
to pretend that everything is fine and that both sides
of this political equation are equally rational. Um, I had this,
I had an interview with the BBC the night of
(28:37):
the Richmond thing. They saw my Twitter threat. I have
a decent connection with them, and like the the the
the the reporter on BBC Radio who I was talking
with kept going back to like, but it was a
peaceful rally, right, So like, why are you worried? And
I was pointing out, like, well, the people with right
wing death squad patches and the people fantasizing about a
civil war and the people saying that, like I just
want a war to start, those people worried, especially when
(28:59):
they're arching with right Also in our episode, your episode
of our show. Part of the reason it was peaceful
is that the FBI did a lot of work, Yeah,
the plan, Yeah, and the the specific thing that was
not the information was not out when I wrote that episode,
but it came out the next day, which is that like,
(29:20):
the FBI busted those members of the base as while
their car was loaded up with survival supplies, AMMO and
firearms on their way to Richmond with the goal of
assassinating some gun owners or cops with high grade equipment
taking it and then firing at counter protesters or just
into the crowd or throwing fireworks into the crowd to
(29:42):
spark a panic and get people shooting, and it huge
numbers of people could have died, and I don't normally
find myself on the side of I'm really happy the
FBI had it shipped together, a very good job about
dealing with this, and I'm very glad they're taking it seriously,
um because takes this one incident like that, like it's
the like, yeah, the thinking behind all these accelerationists, like, well,
(30:06):
you do this one thing and then it's a powder keg.
Yeah they I'm glad they did what they did, and
I think they saved a shipload of lives by doing it.
In contrast, when they urged him to kill himself. Yeah,
well you know, they've you know, if you look, if
you want to look at it as like a hero's journey,
(30:28):
they definitely had a positive arc. I I'm glad. I'm
glad they did what they did. I am concerned because
these rallies are going to keep happening, and yeah, it's
only January. This will happen several more times this year
and God knows, Like one of my nightmare scenarios is
(30:48):
that there winds up being whoever winds up being the
Democratic candidate decides that part of their election strategy is
going to be advocating for an assault weapons ban, and
a group of white right wing demonstrators in a state
where it is legal to open carry protests outside of
that candidate's rally, and there is a confrontation between them
and liberal demonstrators and things get very ugly. But I
(31:12):
don't like this what if no, you know, one of
the things that is it's it's really interesting because like
I was just giving a lot of praise to the
FBI because I think they saved a lot of people's
lives by having their ship on the ball. I have
nothing but condemnation for how that kind of nations not
the right word, are very frustrated with how the Richmond
police handled this demonstration because the Richmond police in specific,
(31:36):
whenever there are left wing demonstrators who do not demonstrate
with firearms, they are extremely violent, um with tear gas,
with sticks, with shoving with like like like like they're
like they they use a huge amount of force and
it's a felony in Virginia to protest to like obscure
your identity with a mask, and they arrest left wing demonstrators.
They tackle them like, they go all out, they use Yes,
(32:03):
there's one person that it was cold, and the one
person who was arrested at this rally was a left
wing demonstrator. I didn't deeply infuriated. There's yes, members of
them UM and the police could not have been more
(32:23):
hands off. The only time I saw them intervened directly
was when Goad was arguing with jovie Val and there
was no violence. Nobody was shoving each other and nobody
was pointing guns at each other. But the police did
the thing where they all ride their bikes into the
middle and wall everyone off, and it was like, these
are two groups of people talking, what are you doing?
And like again, I spent a lot of time with
(32:44):
these street medics who were UM. These with both different
groups of street medics and separate groups of anti fascists,
and the only people I saw followed by police for
blocks in some cases were street medics, unarmed street medics. UM.
You could watch the police fall allowing them sometimes for
like a half mile or more, just like staying a
block or two away. But it was just like what
(33:05):
are you doing? These people are just carrying medical supply.
It was very for us, all cops are behind the
bastards fans. I will say one of the lessons of
this rally that maybe some folks on the left might
take is that it certainly seems that if you have
a huge, heavily armed protest, the police stay the hell
(33:26):
away um, which was seen at the Stone Mountain. One
of the things that happened last year's there was a
KKK rally plan for a place called Stone Mountain, Georgia,
where there's a giant monument to the clans leaders and
an alliance of anti fascist groups from the south and
the East Coast got together to march on Stone Mountain
and they marched with guns, and there were like four
(33:48):
hundred of them, all with with firearms, and the KKK
refused to show up, and the police stayed the hell
back while they went up marched up to the side
of this monument and burnt Confederate flag um and there
was no intervention and it was very peaceful rally, and
the clan was not allowed to march um. And I
(34:10):
do think there might be It's one of those things
where I also suspect that if this had been armed leftists,
maybe there would have been a bigger crackdown, or maybe
the governor would have would have done more to try
to stop it. I don't know. There's not a simple
answer here, but I can say I have never seen
police in this part of the country be this hands
off with the protest of this size yetive, especially about yeah,
(34:33):
like the I mean, the mask thing is something that
they take advantage of in most demonstrations of recent years
that I've seen. Not great, Yeah, not great, very frustrating.
Um So, I don't know, it's a there was a
mix of It was really kind of inspiring to see
(34:55):
the these different medical collectives and anti fascist collectives who
had done a very intelligent job of setting up self
defense structures throughout the city in order to protect people
at this rally without them knowing it. And the level
of organization that I saw there and the level of
planning that I saw there was very inspiring. And I'll say,
(35:16):
I mean, there certainly are some some takeaways that you
can can be inspiring. Um. For me, I feel like
I have a little bit of a better understanding of
this topic and how to talk about it with people.
I think that's going to be really important for the
next always. Um. But yeah, and and also, yeah, your
conversation about the you know, the left libertarians and how
(35:38):
they are having that conversation. That is something positive that
we can focus on. Yeah, and the and the medic
thing too, because that's I mean, that's true of all
of these protests. Like the narrative is always like all
these violent antifa folk they always bring medics and have
have that apparatus ready in case something goes wrong. And
I always see people like de escalating sits your way
(36:00):
aations and trying to to not have these sort of
like little scuffles are like little acts of violence pop up,
and uh, that's I wish there was more about that,
because leading up to this, there's always like, oh, like
the media is making out this big thing like, oh,
there's gonna be all these like right wing like not
like fascist marching um and the left is are gonna
(36:22):
go and they're gonna cost trouble. It's gonna be this
big thing. And then when it's peaceful, Uh, it's presented
like all the media made it all up. It's like
the you know, I don't know, it's very it's very
frustrating with how it's framed. And then after the fact,
it's presented as this like, oh no, just all these
like reasonable people showed up, but like as you saw
all these folks with like right wing death squads like
(36:44):
these like people wanting violence but not necessarily doing it.
And then on the left you have just these quiet
groups of people who are trying to de escalate and
trying to make sure if anyone gets hurt, we take
care of them. And that always seems to happen at protests,
but it's always framed as like the violent left, and
it's just it's that's just very frustrating, um to see,
especially a lot of the figures like the right wing,
(37:05):
like vlogger ecosystem or like I say, right wing, I
mean like people presenting themselves as like I'm a classical liberal,
but really am I'm not? And I yeah, I just
I understand why it needs to be sort of covert,
but also I wish more people knew about it because
it's playing into what the media wants to be seen. Yeah. Yeah,
(37:30):
and the media, I think, more than anything, always wants conflict. Um.
I mean, when The Joker came out, they were like,
there's still not a shooting in a Joker screening, and
there was this also this one of the most frustrating
pieces of coverage of this prior to the event was
a Vice article saying that a Virginia area Antifa group
was going to be marching at the rally and support
(37:53):
of of the rally and gun rights, and the actual interview,
they were like, well, we're not going to be showing
up there because there's a lot of racist militia's there
and we don't want to support that. We're also not
against gun rights, we tend to we think these laws
are bad too. Um, We're just not going to show
up there. And Vice like just lied basically, uh and
made it look like these guys were going to be
(38:13):
demonstrating with these militias. Um. And so suddenly they got
deluged in press requests from guys who wanted to hang
out with Antifa at this rally, and that had to
be like, we're not that's not what we said. This
article was terribly written and basically just lying. It was
very frustrating. Yeah, yeah, and all always stuff like that,
like even like, oh, they're all these like Antifa, they're
(38:34):
gonna go and they're gonna pretend to be part of
the right wing marks and they're gonna cause trouble to
like frame them and I don't know, it's just it's
so easy for those things to snowball and then get
lost in the truth. And yeah, well I think that
about does it for us today. Unless you guys have
anything else to throw out there, I couldn't agree with
you more for us today. I agree with you completely
(38:58):
about that. Um. Thank you. Guys. Can find us online
at Worst Year Pod on the socials. On the socials,
I'm speaking specifically about his Instagram and Twitter. I don't
know why I'm saying it like this. It doesn't matter,
but we'll be back next week, so don't worry about
(39:18):
that's true. It is true, Robert, Thank you so much. Yeah,
I really really appreciate you and and the work you
did on this. We love you and miss you. Yeah,
I miss you all too. Well. We'll have to go
have us a party, uh at one of these events
next maybe sea packet that sounds yeah, party at um,
(39:43):
take ecstasy and talk to Tucker Carlson. It's gonna bring
us all together. I would enjoy that. Yeah. Yeah, let's
do that, all right. We have a great weekend, guys.
Everything so dumb. It It's Not Again. I Tried Daniel.
(40:08):
Worst Year Ever is a production of I heart Radio.
For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i
heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Welcome to Worst Year Ever, a production of I Heart
Radio Together Everything, so don't don't, Okay, welcome back to
(00:22):
Worst Year Ever. My name is Costons, not Cody Johnston,
and this year is not very good so far. I'm sorry.
What was your name? Robert Evans, Rob Robert Evans, Rob Roberts,
Rob Roberts, Robert. I know we named our podcast Worst
(00:44):
Year Ever, but I for one him shocked that it's
a terrible year. Like how presient that was, Like how
quickly it was that, like day one and then day
two and then day three and just every single day.
It's like, oh, yeah, this is bad still January, and
we should have put money on this year being terrible. Yeah,
(01:06):
we really should. I don't know. You know, we're recording
this h the week that I went to the Virginia
Richmond gun thing of a jig malicious, that's what we're
calling them. They got me sick, they got me horribly sick.
So I have I had. It's the it's the I'm
(01:26):
convinced it's the dreaded CORONAVIRUSS. Not so peaceful of the protest, now,
is it? Yeah? The warfare there, I am a terrorism. Yeah,
you're you're in the rock. Thank you. Yeah. So hopefully
most of you guys have had a chance to check
out Robert's very well done episode that he put together
(01:49):
after going to the Welcome protest earlier this week. Thank you.
We all wanted to go, only one of us got permission.
Robert is the logical choice, and so here we are
too debrief about your experiences there and talk about what
(02:11):
we feel in our hearts in the mind phone. Yes, yes,
I mean I want to start by saying I have
never had so many people point guns at me without
meaning to, like a shocking a shocking lack of guns
basic gun safety. Um, it was pretty astonishing. Yeah. Yeah,
(02:34):
I would say about six of people were very safe.
But people, no, that's not enough. Like I weird, like weirdly,
I kind of thought that there would like the like
there would be more people who were adhering to that
general gun safety because that's the whole idea, is that like, no,
(02:54):
we're safe, secure gun I mean, you know, on the
surface of that with what they want to present. Um,
so you think that the policing each other, I'm like no, no,
come on, like watch your watch, your finger something, that's
the thing you know, it's it's um. I attend a
lot of protests and have for years, and one thing
that you always see at the left wing protests is
(03:15):
people who are I shouldn't essentially acting as like you know,
they they're doing rounds within the protests, trying to like
deal within our personal issues, arguments, fights, trying to like
stop things from getting out of hand, hall monitor and
ship but like good, yeah, helpful, but like good. And
there really should have been people doing that if you're
(03:36):
going to have continued armed protests. There's already one set
up for Washington in the near future. They're gonna keep
doing this. These people really need to have folks doing
the rounds and being like, hey, you shouldn't have a
twelve gage shotgun shoved in the water bottle bottle holder
of a backpack. This was proud of people that would
be receptive to that kind of feedback. Yeah, it's um.
(03:59):
It's very even if it's just like on an optics level,
like ideally they're doing that because they actually care about safety,
but even just on a level of like, no, that
doesn't look great for us and what we're trying to
say and do here. Well, And one of the things
that was like really frustrating to me was like I
posted a very large and fairly popular, you know, Twitter
(04:21):
threat with like pictures from the rally going through it,
and I would take pictures of people doing unsafe things
with guns, and folks would, like right wing pro gun
people would get in there and like argue with me
about basic facts of gun safety, like the guy who
had a shotgun in the water bottle and his gun
was like wildly wobbling around to the point where it
was just at the edge of falling out, and they
(04:43):
were like, well, it's probably not loaded, And I was like,
but the first rule of gun safe as they all
are like that, And there was another guy that's not
how we do this, probably isn't gonna cut it for me. No,
I don't know, like it's, uh, I'm not inherently against.
(05:06):
I think it's actually some of the most revolutionary protest
actions in American history. Like if you look at like
the Black Panthers and Hue P. Newton Um where we're
armed marches um in a armed protests, But if you
look at like footage of the Black Panthers, they're very like, yeah,
they're they're they're very safe. With their file. Yeah yeah, um,
(05:31):
I would. Yeah, so that was like outside of the
ideological stuff that was unsettling, Like the shocking lack of
fox given about safety was was very concerning anyone any
other ones that like stuck out to you of like, well,
that's terrible. Yeah. It was a guy who had he
was holding his shotgun up on his shoulder to a
point where like the barrel was just an inch or
(05:53):
two above people's heads, and had his other hand he
was had his phone in it and he was looking
at his phone and walking blindly into the crowd with
the twelve gay shotgun. Guys, I'm sure it wasn't loaded.
Robert would be like posting pictures from like hunters safety
courses where people hold shotguns on their shoulders and be
(06:15):
like no, this is okay, And I was like no,
no, no no, no, no, I've been through I've gotten hunting
licenses before. This is fine if you're in the forest
and you're not staring into your smartphone in a crowd
of literally thousands of people. Yeah, um, but nobody got shot. Yeah,
I mean it seems like that's like that's part of it,
(06:38):
like the shotgun on the shoulders, Like, oh, this looks cool.
This is meaning my cool gun, being a cool guy.
Like a lot of the things you're you saw that
we're unsafe, we're sort of fueled by just like the
image of having a gun. Did you get that sense
at all? You know? It just careless. Yeah, it was
just carelessness. Most of the people who were there to
(06:59):
look cool, well, no, like that guy. Like the most
famous picture that got out is the dude who had
a fifty caliber Barrett sniper rifle, which is a ten
thousand dollar rifle UM, and he was just like he
was holding it like a walking stick after day with
like the barrel into this guy, which isn't the worst
way to carry it. Um. But like, as a general rule,
(07:20):
the guys who were like really heavily kidded out were
the ones who were at least a little better at
at not sweeping everybody with their that happened. There was
a great picture going around of like a pile of
rifles next to the porta potties with like just one
guy sitting there watching them. I wonder how many people
got beamed in the head with the button. I think
(07:44):
it was a Daily Best article. It might have been
vice where like the journalist like walks into a guy's
the barrel of a guy's gun, and like then he
apologizes and tells her she's okay and they have a conversation,
and it was one of those like she clearly didn't
know quite enough about guns to is upset with that
is yah. Um, but yeah, that's like I guess that's
(08:10):
the non ideological stuff, just the things that like concern me,
that are basic safety things, and like, um, yeah, I'm curious,
like what y'all thought about the episode? I did. I
think it's interesting, you have questions to go from there? Yeah,
very interesting. And I saw some interactions on Twitter that
might be a good jumping off point uh one specifically
(08:31):
about someone was saying like, well, what exactly was the
point of this episode or are you advocating that we
shouldn't have gun laws? And no, But like, the episode
to me was intriguing and frustrating at the same time
because it poses this dilemma of yes, we have this problem,
(08:53):
the how do we how do we handle it without
because you have to you can't get rid of all
guns we live in America, And how do you work
with people that are willing to kill to protect they're
they're right to have a gun. Um, how do you negotiating? Um?
And and the laws that on the surface that sound
(09:18):
like a good answer to us, we'll actually have all
of these other unintended repercussions. What happens, Like, yes, the
Democrats have taken Virginia, um, but now that to them,
to to a lot of the citizens there, that makes
it feel like there's been like there's some like there's
a real person, Like there's somebody that you have to
(09:40):
fight against the man is oppressing them. Um. And so
it's a whole bunch of It's a very interesting conversation
to have, and I think it goes well in line
with our whole goal here, which is to talk to
different groups of people and to get a snapshot of
America other than the one that we see from inside
of our bubble. And uh could is to you Robert, Yeah,
(10:03):
and you know, to to kind of answer that question,
because I did, you know, I made sure to quote
Representative Lee Carter talking about what he thought was was
reasonable gun control laws. And I made a point about
things like universal background checks, which I feel the same
way that that's a reasonable gun control law. UM. Their
laws to that that's a little we'll talk about registering later. Yeah. Yeah,
(10:30):
reporting lost firearms within you know, a very short period
of time. Um Mandating that people secure their firearms, particularly
if they have children in the house. I think these
are all There's definitely a chunk of the gun rights movement,
including some people I talked to in Richmond who are like,
no gun control laws are justified. But if you look statistically,
even some of like seventies something percent of an r
(10:51):
A member support universal background checks. Those things that I
just listed you can absolutely get people on board with,
and those laws would reduce some of the of the
of the firearms deaths that we have in this country.
That's not the end of what needs to be done,
but in terms of like things that I think we
should start with, those are good rules that well, a
lot of folks would whine about them and be conspiratorial
(11:12):
about them, and it would certainly get demonized to an extent.
At the end of the day, none of those laws
would lead to police officers being asked to confiscate firearms.
None of them wouldn't be like like, and so you're
not going to have the same kind of violent reaction
to that. Even though a chunk of people will be
unhappy with them. And I do think there's a degree
of if you have if you pass some reasonable gun
(11:34):
control laws that you can even get most gun owners
on board with and it doesn't lead to mass confiscation
and it reduces gun violence, I think it makes it
easier to push for more gun control um again of
certain types. Another thing that I think we have to
be careful about but could be very beneficial as red
flag laws, and we have to find a new name
for them. The name red flag law has been demonized
(11:56):
too much by the right wing media to to work anymore.
Like they don't the conversation is just over about the
very basic idea of where where the the impulse comes from.
Even it's just like, no, we're not going to talk
about that because a red flag a term used for
fire days in Los Angeles, so a little confusing from
(12:17):
but I think, you know, there's there's good points that
they do have in terms of why they think red
flag laws would be dangerous, which is like most of
the laws that have been the red flag laws that
have been proposed are actually really vague, and you could
have people having their weapons taken from them for political reasons,
for example, which is a reason a lot of leftists
(12:38):
don't get on board red flag laws because they're like, well,
I live in a red state and they're going to
use these laws to disarm left wing organizations. Mean that
in your in the episode, there's that person who's like, yeah,
I think flag laws are good as long as it's
like about comis and Antifa, so I can kill them
so and I I think one significant way to to
(12:59):
get the most benefit out of the thing that red
flag laws should be um without having as high odds
of of flipping some of these people out, is to
focus on taking a focus on in the name of
the law and in the letter of the law, taking
firearms away from domestic abusers and have specific laws tailored
just towards if you beat your spouse, if you beat
(13:19):
your kids, you don't get to have a gun anymore. Yeah, well,
that's part of and that's part of what I think
you'd have trouble getting a lot of liberals on board with,
because we would then have to grapple with the fact
that statistically, between twenty and of police officers and domestic
abusers and police officers abuse their spouses at a higher
rate than members of any other professional in the United States.
(13:41):
It's unsettling. Yeah, but I very much support disarming roughly
of US police officers could start. Um, So I do
think there's actually quite a lot that cannon should be done. Um.
I think one of the more dangerous things that we
have in the gun control debate right now is a
(14:02):
certain subset of Democrats who are like, really obsessed with
the idea of gun confiscation. Betto Rourke is the obvious example,
and people would point out, well, he only got about
two percent of the vote, and they'll point that out
is to be like, well, but he's not really a
serious like mind in in the Democratic Party, and so
folks shouldn't focus on it. But I'm telling you, like
the right wing is focused on and it's not just
(14:25):
Beto Rourke. One of the big viral stories from last
year is Representative Eric Swawell of California UM has also
been talking about mass gun confiscation, and he got into
a Twitter fight with some gun rights guy where the
gun rights guy said, how are you gonna enforce the
confiscation of firearms? Like, you know, people will take to
the hills and fight the government and he was like, well,
the government has nukes, and it was like, that's not
(14:47):
how you did. That's the wrong way to go. And
that's raising the temperature and making its convincing these people irrationally,
but it's convincing them that there is this massive secret
plot betwein the Democrats people. And you're like, well, nuque
if you Oh my god, I'm not I'm not like you.
(15:10):
I don't like guns. They freaked me out. I don't.
I don't really, I don't want to hold one. I
don't want to see one. Um I will because I
probably is a smart idea for me to take you
up on your offer to go to a shooting range sometime.
But at no point does the idea of gun has
the idea of gun confiscations seemed reasonable, even though though
(15:33):
my ideal utopia world is one where we're not having
these conversations at all because we don't have them, but
um uh, it doesn't seem like in our in our world,
in this climate. It just even if we did, even
if we did somehow pass that, um, how would you
logistically do it? What? And then the reaction that people
(15:54):
would have to it, and again raising the temperture of
everything it just doesn't seem like the or is it
helpful in this conversation having that rhetoric thrown around, especially
well and stuff that you're trying were like the things
that people generally agree on are often lumped in with that.
So if you lump in like, oh, and also a
gun confiscation, then like, well, none of the things that
you said am I on board with? Now? Even though
(16:16):
if you isolate them, they basically all sort of generally agreed,
like yeah, like universe background checks, sure, um, but yeah,
if you blump it in with because that's the thing
they're most afraid of, is like, well, I'm going to
lose all my guns, you know? Yeah, and it's you know,
I think. Um. So, like the things that I try
to emphasize is number one that even though the mass
(16:38):
confiscation thing is an actually a sizeable chunk of democratic politics,
folks on the right are convinced it is, and people
like Swallow and well, I know, everybody that I talked
to that's pro gun rights and everything is like, you
guys want to take away our guns, And every time
it's a conversation of no, actually that's a few people
have said that, But you're buying into the narrative that
(16:59):
that's what everybody wants to do. Yeah, And I think
one of the bigger issues is that there's this you know,
it's one of the things that that Lee brought up. Uh,
there's this chunk of the mainstream Democratic party that has
so much faith in our institutions, um that they think
(17:20):
those institutions. Yeah, they think that like because they won
an election, that that matters more than the tens of
thousands of people who are willing to kill over something. Um.
And it it doesn't like. Force is a reality in
American politics now, and the fact that a chunk of
(17:40):
this country is willing to kill for their beliefs is
a reality. And we have to be very careful when
we deal with that reality. Which doesn't mean we don't
do anything. It doesn't mean we give them everything they want.
It doesn't mean we ignore, like we don't push for reasonable,
sensible gun control. But it does mean we have to
be careful because forces a reality that you have to accept.
(18:01):
And you know, the people that I think a lot
of liberals would rely on to protect them from these militias,
the police are way more sympathetic for those delicious kind
of people in them than they are the liberals. Well,
that feels like a really good time to stop for
a quick ad break. I would love to. Would you
like to? We all need an ad plane together? Everything
(18:33):
all right, we're back? Well, yeah, boy howdy. I do
love products services. I just will not shut up about products.
Good product. Mm hmmm. So um, I kind of wanted
to ask, like you guys have anything else like you
particularly wanted to get into questions or like things that
(18:53):
really struck you that you'd like explained about. Like I
feel like part of one of my jobs in this
uh uh in general is to try and because I
grew up in you know, as very conservative and we
spent a lot of time in American gun culture, is
to try to be sort of a translator for that
that community, um, because I do understand them pretty well, um,
(19:15):
even though there's certain things that you just can't explain
to people who don't who don't I didn't grow up
in it, but like you know, I I'm I'm here
to answer those questions. Yeah, I mean, I'm I'm I
was kind of curious you read that, um that leftist
uh pamphlet left leaning the left Libertarian Yeah, um, and
I was kind of curious if you had if you
(19:35):
spoke to anybody who like read it and it was
affected by it or like considered it, because I feel
like that like a lot of we're talking about it's like, yeah,
we understand that there's like a way to talk about
this and a way to sort of separate different aspects
of gun control. So it doesn't like freak these people
out that they're gonna get nouked if they resist or whatever. Um,
(19:56):
But if on their side, if there's any of like
understanding of of of that viewpoint, I think there's a
little bit. So there was like a dinner that some
of the militias held that the John Brown Gun Club
was invited to after the rally, which I think is
a good sign. Um, there's certainly a sizeable chunk of
(20:18):
rally attendance that have no desire in in talking with
these people. But there were also like you know, one
of the things that I probably could have stood to
focus on a little bit more is there were a
handful of sort of left wing pro gun demonstrators in
the crowd, including like trans firearm rights people, gay firearms
rights people, like waving signs, and I there was never
(20:38):
any kind of violence or aggression towards them. UM. There
was a very small contingent of kind of a group
of people calling themselves black Panthers. It's a different than
the original organization. I think there's some problematic aspects towards
this new organization. I don't know enough about it to
get into it in detail. But one of the things
that was really interesting to me that I I haven't
(21:00):
really talked about yet, UM, that I want to is
there's a strong left wing anti fascist activist community in Virginia,
UM that has been really galvanized and mobilized as a
result of the seventeen Unite the Right rally. And I
spent a decent chunk of the day with those people.
And number one, they made a very conscious decision not
to protest, not to counter protests, in part because they're
(21:21):
all pretty pro gun. But they were there, UM, and
they were they were very intelligent about what they did.
So Number one, they had people you know, just with
guns walking through the crowd, UM, communicating with each other
through like radio and text to like, you know, when
they got worried if there was like an argument going
on between different groups of demonstrators, they had medics seated
(21:43):
throughout the crowd. Yeah, they and and the medics are
a separate group that's working with some of the anti
fascist contingents. They're not the same organization, but they worked
together today. One of the places I saw was a
hidden trauma clinic where they basically occupied a space. I
don't want to get any more hail than that, but
it was they found an empty building to occupy and
(22:05):
they set up a clinic for dealing with gunshot wounds
and whatnot like that that was hidden in in secret
um and did not wind up needing to be used, thankfully.
But there was a lot of preparation from that community
and a lot of understanding that like this is certainly
not the time to counter protests UM, but it is.
We we should be a part of this. And one
(22:25):
of the things some of their activists were doing was
going through the crowd and looking for explicit neo Nazis
that they recognized. I was actually there for one of
those confrontations with a guy named Jovie Vault where um
an anti fascist activist named god Gatsby called him out.
Vale is somebody who has warned Swastika as a marches before,
who I didn't. I mean, he admitted to being a
national socialist. He was like yeah, okay, and um, you know,
(22:55):
there was no it was actually like it was going
really well. There were a group of proud boys who
clearly seemed to be more on Jovi's side, but most
of the pro gun demonstrators like nobody threatened goad um
and a couple of them started yelling at Jovi once
he admitted to being a national socialist, including one guy
who was calling him a liberal, like get out of here, Nazi,
(23:17):
You're just a liberal and liberal to him. No, he
was like he's on the right like us. I love that. Yeah,
they're just like following around like making sure like no, no, no, no, no,
don't worry he's not. And it was it was weird
because like that guy was committed to the end to
calling Jovia liberal but was also like he's a fucking
(23:37):
Nazi and fuck Nazis. I'm not listening to you. Like
I just heard him say he's a national socialist and
I'm not okay with that. I think he's like easy
for us all too. That just made me think to say,
these people who are veryly adamantly pro guns all this
are kind of all right, Like in my mind, it
starts to get lumped together and it's very distinctively not
you know that, I don't assume that everbody that's progne
(24:00):
isn't all right. I'm just saying that in these big
um protest situations, with everything heightened, you start to paint
people with a brush my point, And yeah, I think
there's a lot of like there's a lot of misinformation
and propaganda purposefully out there to blur those lines. And
so like you'll get a guy who's like, oh, you're
a Nazi. That means you're a liberal, because that's what
(24:22):
a lot of people say that nazi means, um. And
it's interesting to see those interactions where they realize like, oh,
oh no, this is who I'm aligning myself with. They
if they realize it, like that guy didn't obviously, but
to see to see the reaction of like, you're you've
(24:43):
got these sort of like fascist leaning opinions and then
someone's outright like, oh, by the way, I'm a national socialist. Um.
I'm just always interested to see the process, the thought
process that reacts to that realization. Not always great, and
you know, again, usually means that they think that they're
(25:03):
liberal or something like that. But yes, I'm always it's
fascinated to see those, uh, those lightbulb moments, even though
they're kind of rare. Yeah, and it's you know, I
can't say that I think a huge number of people
were convinced or change their minds on anything as a
result of sort of those pamphlets being pratt passed up
(25:24):
highly gun club. Um. But I think it's a start,
and I think it's good that those conversations are being had.
And you know, one of the things that's tough. I
think there is the potential for a reduce like reduced
conflict between left and right as the result of this
growing left wing gun culture that's really surged in. But
(25:46):
I think there's really no way it's going to take
off until something is done about this right wing media ecosystem, um,
because it is an impenetrable wall of lies that the
inevitable end if we don't find a way to break it,
is war. I I really do think that, Like I
(26:06):
don't think it's inevitable that there's going to be some
sort of civil war, but if we don't find a
way to beat this thing, I do think it's inevitable. Yeah,
it's the logical conclusion of what they're saying and perpetuating.
Like I don't think it's like yeah, I don't think
it's like going to happen. But there is an element
of like, well that what are they saying? What are
they what are they pushing people towards? How do they
(26:29):
how do they constantly talk about this topic? Um? And
then you have yeah, like all these like just writing
fingers talking about I mean, they don't use the word boogaloo,
but they talk about how the left ones a civil
war when actually that's what they're talking about, that's what
they're craving. And there's guys and you know, thankfully Alex Jones,
he's important to talk about. He is much less of
(26:49):
a factor than he used to be because his his
d platforming is really cut down on his audience. But
he is part of this crew of folks for who
the only the only future he and a cadre of
his his fellows have is if there's a civil war,
because if things get de escalated, if things if we
(27:10):
are able to build some sort of coalition of sanity
in this country. Again, Um, not only are they doomed.
But they're going to wind up and continue spending the
rest of their lives in court until they have nothing left,
which is where Jones is right now, which is part
of why he is so heavily pushing for a civil war.
He was talking about like stomping the governor of Virginia's
(27:32):
skull into the ground, like while driving around in a
tank and calling for seventeen seventy six again up now
like it's he's he's it is election year. But and yeah,
and like that, if if it does de escalate, then
he loses that sort of relevance and his hold on
(27:53):
that group of people. Probably a lot of media, but
a lot of right wing media relies on hysteria to
keep their viewership engaged. A yeah, but I mean specifically,
he's obviously selling like you know, like combat wipes and
stuff and like all the survivalist gear uh and pushing
(28:16):
for the for the use of that. Yeah. And that's
there's two sides to this because on sort of the
the left wing side of this, there is this need
to pretend that everything is fine and that both sides
of this political equation are equally rational. Um, I had this,
I had an interview with the BBC the night of
(28:37):
the Richmond thing. They saw my Twitter threat. I have
a decent connection with them, and like the the the
the the reporter on BBC Radio who I was talking
with kept going back to like, but it was a
peaceful rally, right, So like, why are you worried? And
I was pointing out, like, well, the people with right
wing death squad patches and the people fantasizing about a
civil war and the people saying that, like I just
want a war to start, those people worried, especially when
(28:59):
they're arching with right Also in our episode, your episode
of our show. Part of the reason it was peaceful
is that the FBI did a lot of work, Yeah,
the plan, Yeah, and the the specific thing that was
not the information was not out when I wrote that episode,
but it came out the next day, which is that like,
(29:20):
the FBI busted those members of the base as while
their car was loaded up with survival supplies, AMMO and
firearms on their way to Richmond with the goal of
assassinating some gun owners or cops with high grade equipment
taking it and then firing at counter protesters or just
into the crowd or throwing fireworks into the crowd to
(29:42):
spark a panic and get people shooting, and it huge
numbers of people could have died, and I don't normally
find myself on the side of I'm really happy the
FBI had it shipped together, a very good job about
dealing with this, and I'm very glad they're taking it seriously,
um because takes this one incident like that, like it's
the like, yeah, the thinking behind all these accelerationists, like, well,
(30:06):
you do this one thing and then it's a powder keg.
Yeah they I'm glad they did what they did, and
I think they saved a shipload of lives by doing it.
In contrast, when they urged him to kill himself. Yeah,
well you know, they've you know, if you look, if
you want to look at it as like a hero's journey,
(30:28):
they definitely had a positive arc. I I'm glad. I'm
glad they did what they did. I am concerned because
these rallies are going to keep happening, and yeah, it's
only January. This will happen several more times this year
and God knows, Like one of my nightmare scenarios is
(30:48):
that there winds up being whoever winds up being the
Democratic candidate decides that part of their election strategy is
going to be advocating for an assault weapons ban, and
a group of white right wing demonstrators in a state
where it is legal to open carry protests outside of
that candidate's rally, and there is a confrontation between them
and liberal demonstrators and things get very ugly. But I
(31:12):
don't like this what if no, you know, one of
the things that is it's it's really interesting because like
I was just giving a lot of praise to the
FBI because I think they saved a lot of people's
lives by having their ship on the ball. I have
nothing but condemnation for how that kind of nations not
the right word, are very frustrated with how the Richmond
police handled this demonstration because the Richmond police in specific,
(31:36):
whenever there are left wing demonstrators who do not demonstrate
with firearms, they are extremely violent, um with tear gas,
with sticks, with shoving with like like like like they're
like they they use a huge amount of force and
it's a felony in Virginia to protest to like obscure
your identity with a mask, and they arrest left wing demonstrators.
They tackle them like, they go all out, they use Yes,
(32:03):
there's one person that it was cold, and the one
person who was arrested at this rally was a left
wing demonstrator. I didn't deeply infuriated. There's yes, members of
them UM and the police could not have been more
(32:23):
hands off. The only time I saw them intervened directly
was when Goad was arguing with jovie Val and there
was no violence. Nobody was shoving each other and nobody
was pointing guns at each other. But the police did
the thing where they all ride their bikes into the
middle and wall everyone off, and it was like, these
are two groups of people talking, what are you doing?
And like again, I spent a lot of time with
(32:44):
these street medics who were UM. These with both different
groups of street medics and separate groups of anti fascists,
and the only people I saw followed by police for
blocks in some cases were street medics, unarmed street medics. UM.
You could watch the police fall allowing them sometimes for
like a half mile or more, just like staying a
block or two away. But it was just like what
(33:05):
are you doing? These people are just carrying medical supply.
It was very for us, all cops are behind the
bastards fans. I will say one of the lessons of
this rally that maybe some folks on the left might
take is that it certainly seems that if you have
a huge, heavily armed protest, the police stay the hell
(33:26):
away um, which was seen at the Stone Mountain. One
of the things that happened last year's there was a
KKK rally plan for a place called Stone Mountain, Georgia,
where there's a giant monument to the clans leaders and
an alliance of anti fascist groups from the south and
the East Coast got together to march on Stone Mountain
and they marched with guns, and there were like four
(33:48):
hundred of them, all with with firearms, and the KKK
refused to show up, and the police stayed the hell
back while they went up marched up to the side
of this monument and burnt Confederate flag um and there
was no intervention and it was very peaceful rally, and
the clan was not allowed to march um. And I
(34:10):
do think there might be It's one of those things
where I also suspect that if this had been armed leftists,
maybe there would have been a bigger crackdown, or maybe
the governor would have would have done more to try
to stop it. I don't know. There's not a simple
answer here, but I can say I have never seen
police in this part of the country be this hands
off with the protest of this size yetive, especially about yeah,
(34:33):
like the I mean, the mask thing is something that
they take advantage of in most demonstrations of recent years
that I've seen. Not great, Yeah, not great, very frustrating.
Um So, I don't know, it's a there was a
mix of It was really kind of inspiring to see
(34:55):
the these different medical collectives and anti fascist collectives who
had done a very intelligent job of setting up self
defense structures throughout the city in order to protect people
at this rally without them knowing it. And the level
of organization that I saw there and the level of
planning that I saw there was very inspiring. And I'll say,
(35:16):
I mean, there certainly are some some takeaways that you
can can be inspiring. Um. For me, I feel like
I have a little bit of a better understanding of
this topic and how to talk about it with people.
I think that's going to be really important for the
next always. Um. But yeah, and and also, yeah, your
conversation about the you know, the left libertarians and how
(35:38):
they are having that conversation. That is something positive that
we can focus on. Yeah, and the and the medic
thing too, because that's I mean, that's true of all
of these protests. Like the narrative is always like all
these violent antifa folk they always bring medics and have
have that apparatus ready in case something goes wrong. And
I always see people like de escalating sits your way
(36:00):
aations and trying to to not have these sort of
like little scuffles are like little acts of violence pop up,
and uh, that's I wish there was more about that,
because leading up to this, there's always like, oh, like
the media is making out this big thing like, oh,
there's gonna be all these like right wing like not
like fascist marching um and the left is are gonna
(36:22):
go and they're gonna cost trouble. It's gonna be this
big thing. And then when it's peaceful, Uh, it's presented
like all the media made it all up. It's like
the you know, I don't know, it's very it's very
frustrating with how it's framed. And then after the fact,
it's presented as this like, oh no, just all these
like reasonable people showed up, but like as you saw
all these folks with like right wing death squads like
(36:44):
these like people wanting violence but not necessarily doing it.
And then on the left you have just these quiet
groups of people who are trying to de escalate and
trying to make sure if anyone gets hurt, we take
care of them. And that always seems to happen at protests,
but it's always framed as like the violent left, and
it's just it's that's just very frustrating, um to see,
especially a lot of the figures like the right wing,
(37:05):
like vlogger ecosystem or like I say, right wing, I
mean like people presenting themselves as like I'm a classical liberal,
but really am I'm not? And I yeah, I just
I understand why it needs to be sort of covert,
but also I wish more people knew about it because
it's playing into what the media wants to be seen. Yeah. Yeah,
(37:30):
and the media, I think, more than anything, always wants conflict. Um.
I mean, when The Joker came out, they were like,
there's still not a shooting in a Joker screening, and
there was this also this one of the most frustrating
pieces of coverage of this prior to the event was
a Vice article saying that a Virginia area Antifa group
was going to be marching at the rally and support
(37:53):
of of the rally and gun rights, and the actual interview,
they were like, well, we're not going to be showing
up there because there's a lot of racist militia's there
and we don't want to support that. We're also not
against gun rights, we tend to we think these laws
are bad too. Um, We're just not going to show
up there. And Vice like just lied basically, uh and
made it look like these guys were going to be
(38:13):
demonstrating with these militias. Um. And so suddenly they got
deluged in press requests from guys who wanted to hang
out with Antifa at this rally, and that had to
be like, we're not that's not what we said. This
article was terribly written and basically just lying. It was
very frustrating. Yeah, yeah, and all always stuff like that,
like even like, oh, they're all these like Antifa, they're
(38:34):
gonna go and they're gonna pretend to be part of
the right wing marks and they're gonna cause trouble to
like frame them and I don't know, it's just it's
so easy for those things to snowball and then get
lost in the truth. And yeah, well I think that
about does it for us today. Unless you guys have
anything else to throw out there, I couldn't agree with
you more for us today. I agree with you completely
(38:58):
about that. Um. Thank you. Guys. Can find us online
at Worst Year Pod on the socials. On the socials,
I'm speaking specifically about his Instagram and Twitter. I don't
know why I'm saying it like this. It doesn't matter,
but we'll be back next week, so don't worry about
(39:18):
that's true. It is true, Robert, Thank you so much. Yeah,
I really really appreciate you and and the work you
did on this. We love you and miss you. Yeah,
I miss you all too. Well. We'll have to go
have us a party, uh at one of these events
next maybe sea packet that sounds yeah, party at um,
(39:43):
take ecstasy and talk to Tucker Carlson. It's gonna bring
us all together. I would enjoy that. Yeah. Yeah, let's
do that, all right. We have a great weekend, guys.
Everything so dumb. It It's Not Again. I Tried Daniel.
(40:08):
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