Speaker 1: Oh boy, welcome to It could happen here, and it
Speaker 1: sure do feel like it's happening, don't it. Um, thank
Speaker 1: you for surviving that last long, excruciating episode full of
Speaker 1: basically just like a bunch of hate speech that we
Speaker 1: were trying to be like, Hey, doesn't this look like
Speaker 1: hate speech? This is bad. Maybe platforms like Spotify, YouTube
Speaker 1: other podcast hosting platforms that I am somehow forgetting the
Speaker 1: name of, but perhaps they shouldn't be hosting all of
Speaker 1: this Daily Wire content that is explicitly calling for genocide. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I think it is interesting what the Daily Wire is
Speaker 1: trying to do here because they obviously saw what is
Speaker 1: a Woman the documentary, the quote unquote documentary by Matt
Speaker 1: Walsh last year get incredible traction online and boost their
Speaker 1: subscription service. So now they're they're they're doubling dead on
Speaker 1: this because this is how they're gonna try to make content,
Speaker 1: and they are trying out as many rhetorical styles and
Speaker 1: arguments as possible just to see what sticks. Like it
Speaker 1: really feels like they're just doing like the shotgun method
Speaker 1: of like throwing every single possible reason that trans people
Speaker 1: are ikey up against the wall and seeing which one
Speaker 1: like catches on like they're doing. They're doing a ban
Speaker 1: and transgenderism entirely, what is a woman? Groomers? They can't
Speaker 1: be genocided because they don't exist. Attacking transgenderism as a
Speaker 1: cover for trans people. Right, So it's all these all
Speaker 1: these various various tactics, all these different rhetorical strategies, calling
Speaker 1: them demonic it's, it's, it's it's very much trying to
Speaker 1: be like if we, if we, if we throw up
Speaker 1: as much stuff as possible, attacking and demonizing trans people.
Speaker 1: Some of these trends will catch on online, right, some
Speaker 1: of these will will catch on, will be spread to legislators.
Speaker 1: Eventually something will stick. And that that is that is
Speaker 1: very much the tactic that they are trying to use.
Speaker 1: And I think this is a point I wanted to
Speaker 1: make last episode, but I think it's still it's it's
Speaker 1: it's useful to hear now kind of in retrospect everything
Speaker 1: all of the like extremism that you heard in the
Speaker 1: last episode, all of these like very very fascist talking points.
Speaker 1: This is what conservatism is now, right, Like this is
Speaker 1: the mainstream new right. Sure you can call it fascist
Speaker 1: because by definition it is but sometimes that term fascist
Speaker 1: or fascism, it carries with it this false sense of foreignness.
Speaker 1: It has like this, it has like this displacement in
Speaker 1: the time. Right most people view fascism as something that
Speaker 1: happens elsewhere or something that happened in the past. By
Speaker 1: by by just referring to this stuff as fascist, it
Speaker 1: creates a distance in people's minds. This this like um
Speaker 1: exotic improbability. But this stuff is like the mainstream conservative
Speaker 1: platform that the up and coming leaders of the conservative
Speaker 1: movement are trying to normalize. That this was like the
Speaker 1: main talking point at Pack, which is like the biggest
Speaker 1: conservative convention in the entire country. It is this stuff
Speaker 1: is is what the conservative platform is now. Um, and
Speaker 1: I think it is. It is just as important to
Speaker 1: emphasize that this is what the modern conservative mainstream is,
Speaker 1: and it is it is. It is just as important
Speaker 1: to say that as it is to tie it and
Speaker 1: tie this rhetoric to the history of fascism, because the
Speaker 1: Overton window is certainly accelerating. Right, Like, this thing can
Speaker 1: both be heavily steeped in the history of fascist rhetoric
Speaker 1: and also be like the new, up and coming version
Speaker 1: of the conservative right that the Daily Wire and its
Speaker 1: allies are trying to normalize. And I just think that
Speaker 1: is that is something that I that I am trying
Speaker 1: to focus on a little bit more when I when
Speaker 1: I'm doing my writing and my research in these topics,
Speaker 1: is that we often will use terms like fascist because
Speaker 1: these things are are pretty fascist, and I want to
Speaker 1: make sure that doesn't like create this false distance in
Speaker 1: people's in people's minds when they when they think about
Speaker 1: these bills, when they when they think about this rhetoric. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think I think the way in which this
Speaker 1: is simply what the modern right is demands a different
Speaker 1: kind of response than a lot of what we've been
Speaker 1: seeing so far. Yeah, you can't simply try to catch
Speaker 1: them in their contradictions. You can't simply catch them in
Speaker 1: their hypocrisy. Every every tactic that liberals tried to use
Speaker 1: against Trump in the lead up to his election, and
Speaker 1: even Republicans try to use those tactics aren't going to
Speaker 1: be successful here because they weren't successful back then. Like,
Speaker 1: you can't you can't like outthink them in that in
Speaker 1: that in that way. Well, but the reason that you
Speaker 1: like when you when you call out say the governor
Speaker 1: of Tennessee or a lieutenant governor or whatever Tennessee for
Speaker 1: about his hypocrisy and how addressed dragon stuff. It's not that.
Speaker 1: The thing that that does to defend it a little
Speaker 1: bit to that calling out is it doesn't make his supporters,
Speaker 1: It doesn't change his mind, It doesn't expose him as
Speaker 1: a hypocrite to his base, but it does expose him
Speaker 1: as a hypocrite to his enemies. And I think it
Speaker 1: is worth understanding that are the people who have declared
Speaker 1: us their enemies. It's worth understanding that they are not
Speaker 1: like um morally consistent actors. You know, it is worth
Speaker 1: understanding that they don't believe the things they are saying.
Speaker 1: A lot of their base does. But so I actually
Speaker 1: do think that there is a point all of the
Speaker 1: shit talk on Trump or whatever. I think might be
Speaker 1: part of how Trump didn't get elected again is because
Speaker 1: he as he got more and more defensive, he looked
Speaker 1: more and more ridiculous, not to his base, but to
Speaker 1: the middle, which is basically the Democrats at this point. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was able to recruit like a growing moderate oppositional force,
Speaker 1: which was what beat Trump. Trump was not beaten because
Speaker 1: people liked Biden. He was beaten because he didn't like Trump,
Speaker 1: and I think you are you are right and having
Speaker 1: that that is a point to focus on. UM. I
Speaker 1: think it's it's important to mention that like fascists do
Speaker 1: not believe in the absurdity of what they say, UM,
Speaker 1: it is that that is not necessary to maintain fascism.
Speaker 1: And I think I think so the position that we're
Speaker 1: at right now is a very very strange one for
Speaker 1: the left, which is that we are in a position
Speaker 1: where you know, when when when the Republicans tried to
Speaker 1: run on this ship in in in twenty twenty two,
Speaker 1: they got destroyed. Right, this is actually have mass popularity.
Speaker 1: This is what I wanted to talk about next. I
Speaker 1: have this is this is the very last section I
Speaker 1: have written is on this topic. Because yeah, this off
Speaker 1: putting focus on like genocide and like the culture war
Speaker 1: stuff seemed to hurt conservatives in the last election cycle
Speaker 1: ly and yet again they are they are they are
Speaker 1: still doubling down on it. Um. Voters in some swing
Speaker 1: states were turned off by the focus on the regression
Speaker 1: of queer rights instead of like actually addressing material conditions.
Speaker 1: This strategy, though, is a core concept of the fascist
Speaker 1: project right. Instead of addressing material conditions under capitalism to
Speaker 1: improve people's lives, right wing populists will conjure up this
Speaker 1: culture war bilgie Man to blame all of like society's
Speaker 1: problems on and to to talk about the social war
Speaker 1: that is contributing to degeneracy. I also think that they're winning,
Speaker 1: unfortunately not winning in a broader sense, but in terms
Speaker 1: of um Yes, this is a very unpopular issue that
Speaker 1: they're doubling down on. But I think that you know,
Speaker 1: I've I've seen studies where like a higher percentage of
Speaker 1: the US population supports antitrans stuff than did two years ago.
Speaker 1: It's still a minority thing to hate trans people, but
Speaker 1: it is a growing minority, yes, which is why, like
Speaker 1: we're talking about how in a lot of ways it's
Speaker 1: easy to be trans in twenty fifteen than it is now.
Speaker 1: And kind of on that point, I'm going to play
Speaker 1: the very final clip of Michael Knowles. We will never
Speaker 1: have to hear his voice again, fully, his annoying little voice,
Speaker 1: but I'm gonna play a bit of a longer clip
Speaker 1: from him, and this is from his initial like band
Speaker 1: Transgenderism Entirely Rant and I'm only going to play this
Speaker 1: because he actually makes a point that we ourselves have
Speaker 1: made before when discussing this topic. The conservative right is
Speaker 1: desperately trying to play catch up. Right, Us who believe
Speaker 1: in like liberation and freedom have been winning historically, and
Speaker 1: the rights getting very scared and desperate. So in response,
Speaker 1: they're introducing all of these bills right, and they're they're
Speaker 1: accelerating these types of eliminationist rhetoric. But in this clip,
Speaker 1: Michael Knowles provides us with our pathway to victory. We
Speaker 1: cannot simply hold our ground on these issues. We have
Speaker 1: to keep pushing forward because as long as we keep
Speaker 1: going forward and get on the offense, the right will
Speaker 1: be stuck playing a ketch up forever. And it reminds
Speaker 1: us of eight truth and politics that Republicans all too
Speaker 1: often forget. You're either on offense or you're on defense.
Speaker 1: You're either making gains in the culture or you're losing
Speaker 1: ground in the culture. There's no standing still, there's no
Speaker 1: status quo, there's no neutrality. And what the Conservatives have
Speaker 1: screwed up on for at least fifty years now, probably more,
Speaker 1: is the Libs make some crazy aggressive play and then
Speaker 1: we try to dial it back by about five to
Speaker 1: ten percent, or worse, we try to slow it down
Speaker 1: by about five to ten percent. So the Libs attack
Speaker 1: the family through feminism, the fundamental political institution. They claim
Speaker 1: that men and women are basically the same. That takes
Speaker 1: the culture pretty far to the left. And then conservatives
Speaker 1: try to try to inch it back a little bit.
Speaker 1: But by the time they're even thinking about inching it back,
Speaker 1: the Libs push forward with the normalization of other sexual practices.
Speaker 1: They agree with this possi And then by the time
Speaker 1: the Conservatives are trying to dial all that back, they've
Speaker 1: lurched much further to left. They're trying to redefine marriage.
Speaker 1: Now they're saying, redefine marriage. Well, I don't know, I
Speaker 1: guess we could come to some kind of terms with
Speaker 1: a civil union. And by the time you say that,
Speaker 1: who they lurched even further to the left. Now they're saying, actually,
Speaker 1: we've got transgenderism. Actually, now a man can become a woman,
Speaker 1: a man can become a woman, okay, but but maybe
Speaker 1: we shouldn't do it till mine. By the time we
Speaker 1: say that, whop, oh my gosh, we're now we're all
Speaker 1: the way off the screen because now they're trying to
Speaker 1: trains the kids, and there are many conservatives never were saying, look,
Speaker 1: if you want, if you're a man and you want
Speaker 1: to put on address, that's fine, but just don't do
Speaker 1: it to children. Just don't make me pay for it. No,
Speaker 1: that is such an interesting little cliff. No, I mean
Speaker 1: it's funny because this is like kind of this is
Speaker 1: what I've been saying for a long time, since about
Speaker 1: twenty fifteen or so, like looking at the rise all
Speaker 1: this shit and you know, Trump and all that, is
Speaker 1: that we were winning culturally. I hate the word culture
Speaker 1: war and now I means something different. It means arguing
Speaker 1: about guns or whatever. But like we were winning on
Speaker 1: a cultural front very dramatically, and like I would point
Speaker 1: to Stephen Universe as the evidence that we are winning, right,
Speaker 1: you know, And then they basically had to play to
Speaker 1: their strengths, and he's talking about He's like, look, it's
Speaker 1: funny that so much of this is happening on a
Speaker 1: cultural front because it is not a conservative strength. They
Speaker 1: have some cards in their hand when it comes to
Speaker 1: cultural stuff, you know, the antimidarity stuff. When it does
Speaker 1: weird anti semitic, you know, almost anti capitalism or whatever.
Speaker 1: That's like a strong card they like pulling out all
Speaker 1: the time. But conservatives overall are not very good at
Speaker 1: the cultural thing. But they're good at is politics and violence.
Speaker 1: And so they're playing to their immediate strengths as hard
Speaker 1: and fast as they can because they're on their back foot. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: they are. They're they're defaulting to advocating physical violence and
Speaker 1: enforcing their worldview with violence and advocate and doing stuff
Speaker 1: on like the political legislative front, because they've realized just
Speaker 1: screaming about transpeople isn't enough. They have to actually start
Speaker 1: dedicating millions and millions and millions of dollars to pushing
Speaker 1: these through state legislative cycles, which is why The Daily
Speaker 1: Wire has spent the past month and a half harping
Speaker 1: on this so hard as the legislative cycle for twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three is starting to like ramp up. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I think there's another thing here, which is the sort
Speaker 1: of fundamental disparity, you know, the fact that they've chosen
Speaker 1: this front, right, there's a fundamental disparity in what they
Speaker 1: have to do versus what we have to do, right,
Speaker 1: And and this this, this is a giant sort of
Speaker 1: shift in a way that I don't think has we
Speaker 1: don't I don't think the left really has much experience with, right,
Speaker 1: which is, like, the thing that is happening in the
Speaker 1: US right now is that we are the cylent majority,
Speaker 1: Like this is this is true when when like consistently
Speaker 1: over and over again, when you when you look at
Speaker 1: polling on these issues, right, like just regular people are like,
Speaker 1: what the fuck are you guys doing? Right? The problem
Speaker 1: is that you know, we haven't those people haven't been mobilized,
Speaker 1: and you know, it doesn't matter if you're a majority
Speaker 1: as long as these sort of like you know, because
Speaker 1: because again like who the actual majority is in the
Speaker 1: US or like who actually what what what actual regular
Speaker 1: people believe has very very little impact on the kinds
Speaker 1: of policies that are that are that are sort of enacted.
Speaker 1: But you know, but there's a second sort of issue here, right,
Speaker 1: which is the conservatives have like, because of the fact
Speaker 1: that we are right now of the sort of silent majority,
Speaker 1: that we have a kind of I guess you know,
Speaker 1: the gram syn thing would be like hegemony, right, but
Speaker 1: like we have we have an advantage in just how
Speaker 1: average people behave. Right, they have to kill us. They
Speaker 1: have to fucking kill us. They have to make it
Speaker 1: legal for us to exist. And they could do this
Speaker 1: right there, there is a there is a real there
Speaker 1: is a real possibility that they can win. Right. They
Speaker 1: are winning on this rent right now. This is this
Speaker 1: is what they are, you know, in the places where
Speaker 1: they have power. This is what they are doing. All
Speaker 1: we really have to do is survive. Because if if
Speaker 1: we revive and we're able to stop them, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, even if we don't get sort of like
Speaker 1: Argentina style, like we're gonna have like like hiring mandates
Speaker 1: for trans people. Like even if we just hold the
Speaker 1: ground that we already have, we will win inevitably. Right
Speaker 1: Like the sort of march of where of where the
Speaker 1: culture has been going will favor us. Trans people will
Speaker 1: be able to sort of exist in public. Trans people
Speaker 1: will be able to survive unless they kill us right now.
Speaker 1: And that's that's that's sort of that's the sort of
Speaker 1: the key thing that that Knowles has realized, right is
Speaker 1: that this is the critical moments where either we win
Speaker 1: and we in trans people get to continue our lives,
Speaker 1: or they kill us I would argue that it's not
Speaker 1: just kill us. I think that even though we're listening
Speaker 1: to all this exterminationist rhetoric, I think that the odds
Speaker 1: are that most of these people don't actually envision a
Speaker 1: future where they're like rounding us up and putting us
Speaker 1: in camps and gassing us. I think that overall, it's
Speaker 1: a drive back into the closet. I actually I actually
Speaker 1: take them at their word that they want to destroy transgenderism,
Speaker 1: and if transgender people have to die along the way,
Speaker 1: that's on us. But if we, you know, put on
Speaker 1: appropriate clothing and shut the fuck up, like, I actually
Speaker 1: think that that would suit them just fine. So I
Speaker 1: actually think they have to kill transgenderism. I think that's
Speaker 1: true now, but I don't know how true that is
Speaker 1: as they keep actually having to implement. But there they
Speaker 1: don't think being trans actually exists though, right like they
Speaker 1: they think it just is people doing these things. So
Speaker 1: as long as trans people are able to, for one,
Speaker 1: maybe even not even realize their trans to like repress
Speaker 1: that and just live their lives as if they were
Speaker 1: as this person, that that that is all that that
Speaker 1: that's what conservatives think trans people already are and I
Speaker 1: think that that is a large part. That is a large,
Speaker 1: large part of it is making us just not able
Speaker 1: to be trans in public life at all in any capacity.
Speaker 1: I think that's true. But I don't I don't think
Speaker 1: they can. I don't think their political path allows them
Speaker 1: to maintain that position. Like I don't. I don't think
Speaker 1: they can, like I like, you know what, one of
Speaker 1: the things that's happening with with right right now is
Speaker 1: they're they're they're they're doing this feedback loop right where
Speaker 1: they get you know, like like where where they're they're
Speaker 1: sort of media people right or are continuously radicalized by
Speaker 1: their base, and their base radicalizes them back. And I
Speaker 1: don't I don't think they can maintain an equilibrium position
Speaker 1: that doesn't involve like we have to hunt all these
Speaker 1: people down to make sure they don't go after our kids,
Speaker 1: like I know, I don't don't think they're gonna I
Speaker 1: don't think they're doing that now. I don't think they're
Speaker 1: planning that now. But it's it's I don't know how
Speaker 1: they can keep up this cycle without eventually getting to
Speaker 1: something like that. Well, it's worth it's worth being prepared
Speaker 1: for that type of possibility, But The kind of thing
Speaker 1: that I feel like, really strongly about with all of
Speaker 1: this is to like really not like the sky is falling,
Speaker 1: but it's not falling the way that we sometimes say
Speaker 1: it is. And and when we say this guy is
Speaker 1: falling in a way that people look around, they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: just know how this guy is falling to me, then
Speaker 1: people get like, well, actually, I think you all are
Speaker 1: being hyperbolic, right, And so I think that we do
Speaker 1: need to be really clear that they are open to
Speaker 1: the possibility of mass murdering us, and they are actively
Speaker 1: discussing individual acts of violence being very justified against us.
Speaker 1: But currently I believe the thing that they are trying
Speaker 1: to do is eradicate the concept of being trans as
Speaker 1: a thing you can do in American society. And of course,
Speaker 1: like there's a lot of people who believe in death
Speaker 1: before detransition, and all fucking power to I don't even
Speaker 1: know where I fall in all this shit. I'm not
Speaker 1: trying to. I literally don't want to opine about it
Speaker 1: because I don't want to give anyone. I don't want
Speaker 1: to tell anyone to do about that shit. Right, Everyone
Speaker 1: makes their own decisions about closeting, not closeting based on
Speaker 1: their own positions, you know, But I think we do
Speaker 1: have to be like careful about it. And I think
Speaker 1: one of the reasons because from my point of view,
Speaker 1: they have picked trans people not because they care so
Speaker 1: much about us, but because we're a wedge issue. You know.
Speaker 1: We saw this in like, um, actually I don't want
Speaker 1: to name them because I don't want to get or whatever,
Speaker 1: like different large coalitions of LGBT people were perfectly willing
Speaker 1: to drop the T twenty years ago if in order
Speaker 1: to get certain like equal rights ship passed. They just
Speaker 1: like straight up like trans people did all this fucking
Speaker 1: work organizing for this ship. As soon as it got
Speaker 1: to like higher up level in the government, they were like, oh,
Speaker 1: trans people, that's gonna be a problem. Well it, We're
Speaker 1: gonna take them off of there, right And you know,
Speaker 1: and because we are a wedge issue, and we always
Speaker 1: have been, and I think the Nazis used us in
Speaker 1: a very similar way. But even within US there's transit sory,
Speaker 1: there's wedge issues within that, and so sports was the
Speaker 1: first wedge issue. I actually believe I was reading this earlier,
Speaker 1: but I wasn't reading it for this, So I didn't
Speaker 1: take notes. I believe that the majority already of Americans
Speaker 1: do not believe that trans people should be able to
Speaker 1: compete in high school sports based on their preferred gender.
Speaker 1: I'm under the impression that is a minority position to
Speaker 1: be trans supportive of trans athletes in school, and so
Speaker 1: that is the wedge issue that they used to open
Speaker 1: up this divide in order to then come at us.
Speaker 1: But we're still just a wedge issue. And one of
Speaker 1: the reasons I think it's so important for people to
Speaker 1: understand us as a wedge issue is so that people understand,
Speaker 1: like really clearly that they are not fucking stopping with us.
Speaker 1: You know, this is like absolutely about like you can
Speaker 1: hear it and that guy talking because one of the
Speaker 1: other things he's talking about is he's talking about like
Speaker 1: women need to get back in the kitchen and be
Speaker 1: obedient to their husbands and shit. And one of the
Speaker 1: reasons that trans people scare them so much is because
Speaker 1: we like, like it's so funny because like largely, by
Speaker 1: and large, like trans men are left out of this
Speaker 1: discussion and trans women are seeing these like evil monsters
Speaker 1: or whatever, right, but trans men are absolutely part of
Speaker 1: it because massive massive threat, absolutely, because it's stealing women
Speaker 1: from them. It is stealing their fucking wives that they
Speaker 1: want to have. They want to fucking own women, and
Speaker 1: like so they can't handle the idea of anyway whatever.
Speaker 1: I know a lot of a lot of the things
Speaker 1: they get so mad about is when they see a
Speaker 1: young transgai on TikTok and they're like, look, sorry, this
Speaker 1: is going to be like gross, but like, look at
Speaker 1: this potentially beautiful woman who's now been ruined, Like just horrible, horrible, horrible, right,
Speaker 1: But that is we have so many grown men, like
Speaker 1: thirsting over fourteen year old like a fab people who
Speaker 1: are who are deciding that hey, maybe I want to
Speaker 1: start HRT, maybe I want to use different pronouns, maybe
Speaker 1: I want to have a binder and this they get
Speaker 1: so so mad at that. And I think a big
Speaker 1: part of not not simply I think I think it
Speaker 1: is truly not enough just to hold our ground. We
Speaker 1: have to keep going forward, and a big part of
Speaker 1: that is having more intersectionality with transmasculine people. A big
Speaker 1: part of that is having a much much more of
Speaker 1: a focus on gender nonconforming people and non binary people.
Speaker 1: Um because we have we have to keep pushing it forward.
Speaker 1: We cannot simply hold our ground on this because if
Speaker 1: if we simply hold our ground, they can pull out
Speaker 1: the rug from from under us. UM. So I think
Speaker 1: that is that is that is a massive part of this,
Speaker 1: and I think I do believe that we will win.
Speaker 1: I fundamentally do because if you look at if you
Speaker 1: look at like the rights of which young people Zoomers
Speaker 1: and even the generation younger than Zoomers, I do not
Speaker 1: know what they're called, um, but if you look at
Speaker 1: the aunt amount of amount of us who are who
Speaker 1: who self identify us non binary, trans or gender nonconforming,
Speaker 1: it is so much bigger than any previous generation people.
Speaker 1: Once people experience a form of freedom, it is hard
Speaker 1: to take that freedom away. There are so many people
Speaker 1: who are entering their teens and are realizing they can
Speaker 1: be so much more free and they don't need to
Speaker 1: be limited to these weird, draconian like dualistic notions of gender.
Speaker 1: And that's a If you look at a whole new
Speaker 1: wave of like actors and actresses and people in the
Speaker 1: entertainment industry, almost all of our non binary, like the
Speaker 1: person who plays Ellie in the in the Last of
Speaker 1: us is trans. Um. I believe they identify TRANSU, non
Speaker 1: binary or some sort of of gender queer. But this
Speaker 1: doesn't play Ellie like that too anyway. I just like absolutely,
Speaker 1: but this is something that that keeps happening. We are
Speaker 1: going to win this because there's so many of us
Speaker 1: and we know that it rules to exist like this
Speaker 1: and we're not going to let them take it away.
Speaker 1: And I think that that is a big part of
Speaker 1: not only standing our ground, but continuing to move forward
Speaker 1: with the confidence that we will win in the long run. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think that we can. And I think that
Speaker 1: like a lot of the stuff, including myself, right um,
Speaker 1: I'm famously armed. I'm someone who you know, believes in
Speaker 1: self defense and um and all of these things, right um.
Speaker 1: But I think we always need to like focus on
Speaker 1: our strengths when it comes to being especially on the offense. Right.
Speaker 1: And so when I think about like strategizing how do
Speaker 1: we win the stuff that you're talking about about staying
Speaker 1: on the offensive makes so much sense. And I think that,
Speaker 1: to misquote the art of war, you attack your enemy
Speaker 1: where they are weak and you are strong, you know,
Speaker 1: and so like, and they are weak at cultural creation
Speaker 1: and I don't mean culture wars and culture war issues
Speaker 1: really like art, like creativity. Yeah, and so like we
Speaker 1: win because we say because our ideas are good, and
Speaker 1: when we express them, people are like, oh that sounds sick.
Speaker 1: I want to be free right yeah. Um. Now, at
Speaker 1: the same time, we need to shore up our weaknesses.
Speaker 1: And I think our weaknesses at the moment are in
Speaker 1: the political sphere, which we're at on a back We're
Speaker 1: on the back foot right now because of all the
Speaker 1: I guess I don't track this stuff as much, but
Speaker 1: like all the judges and shit that got put in
Speaker 1: under Trump, and we are also not at our strongest.
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to call us week here, but like
Speaker 1: far few of us, fewer of us are like weird
Speaker 1: gun nuts and like no you know, militant strategy protect
Speaker 1: e type people. And I we've seen us shoring up
Speaker 1: that weakness and that rules. But I think it's always important.
Speaker 1: Maybe not always, maybe there would be a time when
Speaker 1: this would shift, but overall, I don't think that's our strength.
Speaker 1: That's not where we go on the offense. That is
Speaker 1: where we stay, like protecting ourselves, yes, and no defense
Speaker 1: like drag defense, square defense that has defense in the
Speaker 1: name exactly, it is crucially important. Exactly. It also terrifies
Speaker 1: the fascist rights. The fact that the fact that like
Speaker 1: like that, on one hundred and forty pounds, Twink can
Speaker 1: carry an aar and defend a drag show terrifies fascists.
Speaker 1: It utterly destroys their brains. You know. For sequalizations a
Speaker 1: hell of a thing, Sorry, buddy. The trigger pole is
Speaker 1: two and a half pounds. Yeah, you know what else
Speaker 1: is a forkey force, equalizer swords, for the force of advertising,
Speaker 1: and pole arms. As long as we don't have an
Speaker 1: ad for Rabbit Air, who has an office in Pasadena, California,
Speaker 1: I'm fine. So I think if you've listened to the
Speaker 1: show a lot, they're They're one of the sort of
Speaker 1: sub themes of a lot of the writing that I
Speaker 1: do is thinking about what we owe the dead. And
Speaker 1: on the face of it, it's a sort of nonsensical question, right,
Speaker 1: you can't have any kind of reciprocal relationship with someone
Speaker 1: who's dead, because well, you know they're dead. And this
Speaker 1: this question, this question of what we owe the dead,
Speaker 1: is a question board of grief, of a kind of
Speaker 1: sort of raw and immaculate anguish that comes to the
Speaker 1: memory of people who are like you in every way
Speaker 1: except that you're here and they're not. And this was written,
Speaker 1: you know, this has written seven weeks ago. The people
Speaker 1: this is written for aren't even the same people that
Speaker 1: you know that that that like that that is for
Speaker 1: now right, The question in some sense becomes, what do
Speaker 1: we owe the people who have died and were thus
Speaker 1: denied to live, denied the chance to live the lives
Speaker 1: that we do. You know what, what do we owe them?
Speaker 1: What do we owe these people that we failed to
Speaker 1: keep alive? And this has an answer, this has this
Speaker 1: has a very very definite political answer. We owe them
Speaker 1: the destruction of the world that killed them. We owe
Speaker 1: them a future that we owe them the future that
Speaker 1: they should have had. And we owe them, we owe
Speaker 1: them a world where they never take another one of this,
Speaker 1: another one of us. Again. The world is already fucking burning.
Speaker 1: It is time to start the counterfire. Now. One of
Speaker 1: one of the things that you that you will hear
Speaker 1: a lot, and this, this is this has been this
Speaker 1: has been one of the sort of dominant responses, for
Speaker 1: better or for worse, from how people are thinking about
Speaker 1: these laws, is that these laws you know these anti
Speaker 1: trans laws are unconstitutional and that does not matter. That
Speaker 1: does not matter for shit, right like oh oh, our
Speaker 1: old friend the constitution ha ha, Like I just, I just,
Speaker 1: I need. I need everyone to understand that the ability
Speaker 1: of the Supreme Court to strike down a law is
Speaker 1: not in the Constitution. None of this ship matters. They're
Speaker 1: making all of it up. The only thing that actually
Speaker 1: matters is power. And to understand why the law is
Speaker 1: about power and you know, and why legality is not
Speaker 1: actually a tool that we can rely. I want to
Speaker 1: I want to tell the story. I'm not sure if
Speaker 1: I've told this story on this podcast before, but I
Speaker 1: want to tell the story of the worst mistake I
Speaker 1: ever made as an activist. So the year is two
Speaker 1: thousand and seventeen. Donald Trump's Executive Order one three seven
Speaker 1: six nine huocally known as the Muslim Ban, has prevented
Speaker 1: people from Iran, Iraq before they drop a rock later, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria,
Speaker 1: and Yemen from entering the country. Now, almost immediately after
Speaker 1: the Muslim Ban is announced, um there is a spontaneous
Speaker 1: wave of airport occupations that sweeps the country. And these
Speaker 1: protests have two goals. Their immediate goal is to free
Speaker 1: the people who have been taking captive by immigration authorities
Speaker 1: before they can be deported, and the second goal is
Speaker 1: to end the Muslim ban more broadly. This was this
Speaker 1: was actually this is my first Irrel direct action. Um
Speaker 1: I you know, I remember I was in this train
Speaker 1: car on the Blue Line to O'Hare, which is our
Speaker 1: our airport in Chicago. And you know, I'm on this
Speaker 1: train and it's packed and everyone is completely silent, and
Speaker 1: you know, everyone thinks people are going to get off.
Speaker 1: And as we get to this airport, we realized that
Speaker 1: the entire train is completely full of protesters. Like everyone
Speaker 1: on there's a protester, and it goes on and on
Speaker 1: and on, and we get off the train right and
Speaker 1: we're walking through the airport. And the way this airport
Speaker 1: is structured is there's like this overpass that you walk
Speaker 1: over where you can see the trains coming in and
Speaker 1: every single train is full of protesters and the trains
Speaker 1: keep coming and they keep coming in, they keep coming,
Speaker 1: and you know, every everyone and every time a train
Speaker 1: shows up, everyone starts cheering. It is like it is,
Speaker 1: you know, like one of the most amazing things I've
Speaker 1: ever been a part of and you know, and we
Speaker 1: we start moving and there are just two. You know,
Speaker 1: this is a fucking this is an airport, right like,
Speaker 1: this is one of the most heavily policed places in
Speaker 1: the world. There are not not enough cops to stop us.
Speaker 1: And you know, they make this one token attempt to
Speaker 1: try to clear us, and they can't do it. And
Speaker 1: they pull back. And now we are holding the airport,
Speaker 1: and we do it. We beat them, We win. The
Speaker 1: airport releases the detainees. They've they've been negotiating with the
Speaker 1: a CLU. The ASU have been trying to get me released.
Speaker 1: And the person from the person from the ALU, like God,
Speaker 1: comes on the mic and announced that they've they've released everyone,
Speaker 1: and everyone chairs and then and then the person on
Speaker 1: the ALU person on the mic says they're going to
Speaker 1: beat the Muslim band in court and everyone goes home.
Speaker 1: It takes a few hours, but by the end of it,
Speaker 1: everyone goes home. And here's the thing. The a CLU
Speaker 1: several years later lost that case at the Dream Court.
Speaker 1: The Muslim band continued the entire fucking chump administration. Right,
Speaker 1: it wasn't repealed until Biden took office. We could have
Speaker 1: stopped it there, right, we held that fucking airport. Airports
Speaker 1: across the country, like dozens and dozens of states were
Speaker 1: being held by protesters, and we could have stopped them,
Speaker 1: but we didn't, and we didn't because we trusted the courts.
Speaker 1: Right we went home, We trusted the slu and they
Speaker 1: lost because again, the law is not about the law.
Speaker 1: The law is about power, and millions of people suffer
Speaker 1: the consequences of that. And this is what's going to
Speaker 1: happen if we if we leave this fight to the courts,
Speaker 1: either either we actually sort of like stand up and
Speaker 1: actually fight not in the courtroom but in the streets,
Speaker 1: in schools, in salons and shop floors, in the places
Speaker 1: where we have power, or we are going to die.
Speaker 1: That is my intro to this, which is that we
Speaker 1: cannot we literally like, if we try to leave this
Speaker 1: to the people who have been acting right now, right,
Speaker 1: if we leave this electorialists, if we leave this to
Speaker 1: sort of legal institutions, and if we purely fight self
Speaker 1: defense battles, we are going to lose. Yeah. So the
Speaker 1: question from there is how do we hit them back?
Speaker 1: And the thing that I specifically wanted to talk about
Speaker 1: first is I wanted to talk about this thing called
Speaker 1: power mapping. Now, Okay, the moment you went you say
Speaker 1: the word map around leftists, people immediately start talking about
Speaker 1: how the map is not the terrain. And that's true, true,
Speaker 1: the map is not the terrain. They're different things. Nope,
Speaker 1: but both are useful. Yeah, like, yeah, you still want
Speaker 1: a map when your hiking, even though it's not. Actually
Speaker 1: the rains spash the maps, spash the maps. Walk situation
Speaker 1: is practice, walk around the city without a map, but
Speaker 1: mess up the maps. It sabotaged the masks. Yeah, don't
Speaker 1: walk through the forest about a fucking map. The forest
Speaker 1: is dispassionate and cruel and will kill you. So all right,
Speaker 1: So what is power mapping? So there there is a
Speaker 1: normal version. There is a version of this that gets
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's part of sort of like what
Speaker 1: I guess you would call like the liberal version of
Speaker 1: organizer training one oh one, which is this like pure
Speaker 1: NGO thing, which is you know, I guess you could
Speaker 1: you could argue it's from like a like like from
Speaker 1: Salo Lynsky or whatever the fuck um and and this
Speaker 1: this version about it is this this version is about
Speaker 1: finding and pressuring quote unquote stakeholders. This is almost completely
Speaker 1: useless to us. It's largely politically bankrupt, and tactically it
Speaker 1: is simply not going to work, right, Like, there is
Speaker 1: some value in mapping out which specific like legislators and
Speaker 1: which specific governors are going to like sign bills, right yeah,
Speaker 1: but like, okay, NGO style pressure campaigns are not going
Speaker 1: to stop this. This is simply not going to work. Um.
Speaker 1: And the strategies that people have been employing to sort
Speaker 1: of stop this, right which is you know, relying on
Speaker 1: our suffraget our pain and relying on medical expertise that
Speaker 1: that doesn't that doesn't work. It's weigh them. It lacks
Speaker 1: the diversity of tactics. Yeah, the only language people understand
Speaker 1: is power. So okay, having said all this, we can
Speaker 1: strategically use other groups like NGOs or sympathetic lawmakers to
Speaker 1: do their own pressure campaigns. But that that that is
Speaker 1: not what I'm talking about here. We can leave. We
Speaker 1: can leave those people in their terrain. They're paid to
Speaker 1: do it. Don't get sucked up into it. But you know,
Speaker 1: and I will say, like, okay, sometimes very strategically right, like,
Speaker 1: you can you can show up to people's events and
Speaker 1: embarrass them because you know who they are and what
Speaker 1: they're doing, and then that that that can be useful sometimes,
Speaker 1: like I I you know, I sci shame can be
Speaker 1: can be a useful tactic sometimes. Yeah, Like I know,
Speaker 1: I know people who've done union campaigns where like things
Speaker 1: have turned around when they like showed up to like
Speaker 1: some NGEO person's fund raiser and they're like, hey, you
Speaker 1: guys aren't paying us, and they're like everyone was like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, But you know, what what what what?
Speaker 1: What are we? What are we actually doing here? And
Speaker 1: what what? What? What? What? What I'm specifically talking about
Speaker 1: is powermapping in the context of direct action and in
Speaker 1: the context a sort of offensive direct action. And when
Speaker 1: when you're thinking about power mapping here, there's two kinds
Speaker 1: of mappings that are useful. One is physical mapping, and
Speaker 1: this is something that people don't do enough. I don't
Speaker 1: know why they don't do this more. But first of
Speaker 1: one of one of the things that made the Hong
Speaker 1: Kong protest work is that Hong Kong had really really
Speaker 1: detailed maps right they were you know, they had apps
Speaker 1: for this that were very very detailed maps of Hong
Speaker 1: Kong City streets. They would map where the police were,
Speaker 1: they would map where the police were moving to, they
Speaker 1: would map where protesters were. And you know, obviously there
Speaker 1: are sort of security and tactical considerations to this, but
Speaker 1: if we know the terrain better than the police do,
Speaker 1: we can do a lot of things. This is this
Speaker 1: is something that people are successfully employing in the city
Speaker 1: of Atlanta, yep, yep. And anyway, and this this, this,
Speaker 1: this is the thing where we have we actually do
Speaker 1: have an a legitimate advantage in in large cities, which
Speaker 1: is that like the cops who are in large cities
Speaker 1: are not from like those those cities, right, you know,
Speaker 1: And and I think I think we squander this advantage
Speaker 1: a lot by just like in fucking Chicago, there's this
Speaker 1: one plaza right like pretty close to Trump Tower where
Speaker 1: every single protest starts. And that's like it's in the
Speaker 1: middle of fucking downtown, so I guess people sort of
Speaker 1: know the way around there, but like, I fuck, nobody,
Speaker 1: like nobody lives there who doesn't make like fucking seven
Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollars a year, right, Like you're you're you're
Speaker 1: kind of squandering whatever tactical advantage you haven't. Also, you know,
Speaker 1: and and another sort of another reason to do mapping
Speaker 1: and stuff is is so you know, you can you
Speaker 1: can plan things out ahead of time. Right, you can
Speaker 1: plan out where your lines of retreat are. You can
Speaker 1: figure out where choke points are so you don't get kettled,
Speaker 1: a thing that like I swear to God, no one
Speaker 1: who arranges the protest in the US fucking ever does,
Speaker 1: Like I mean, I know some people do it, but
Speaker 1: like Jesus Christ, you can you can figure out on
Speaker 1: a map where you're gonna get kettled, Like you can
Speaker 1: do this, yeah, and you know, and you you can
Speaker 1: do other things too with maps, right, you can you
Speaker 1: can figure out where the locations are of infrastructure that
Speaker 1: is particularly vulnerable. You can figure out what roads will
Speaker 1: will cause the maximum a matter of sort of economic
Speaker 1: damage if you shut them down. You can figure you know,
Speaker 1: you can figure out things like can you learn the
Speaker 1: police into places where they can't use their numbers very well? Right?
Speaker 1: Can you spread them out over one hundred different areas
Speaker 1: and neutralize their effectiveness? And this is a kind of
Speaker 1: These are the kind of terms that we need to
Speaker 1: be thinking about in terms and when when we're physically
Speaker 1: mapping and physically trying to understand an area, which is
Speaker 1: that we need to be thinking in very direct, tactical terms.
Speaker 1: We need to figure out what kind of places you know?
Speaker 1: And this also this also works defensively, right, we need
Speaker 1: to be figuring out you know, okay, so we have
Speaker 1: a drag show that's under attack, right, we need we
Speaker 1: need to figure out what kinds of places if people
Speaker 1: are attacking, we need to figure out how we can
Speaker 1: defend them. And we need to be thinking again not
Speaker 1: not just like showing up to a place and being like, okay,
Speaker 1: we're hearing these people across the street right like before
Speaker 1: that happens and be like before a protest stars, before
Speaker 1: an actually starts. There needs to be like work put
Speaker 1: in to make sure that we that the actions that
Speaker 1: we're doing are effective, are as effective as possible. So
Speaker 1: that that's that Yeah, that that that that that that's
Speaker 1: that's one part of this kind of mapping stuff. You know,
Speaker 1: if if if you if you want more sort of
Speaker 1: inspiration for this stuff, there's a bunch of oh my god,
Speaker 1: I'm not forgetting the name of every book, probably should
Speaker 1: have actually written the books in here, but they're they're
Speaker 1: some of the some of the Italian Autonomous will talk
Speaker 1: about this stuff, and they have all of these like
Speaker 1: really wild sort of tactical stuff about like things you
Speaker 1: could do in a city, like you can mess up
Speaker 1: stop lights, you can like I don't know, like they
Speaker 1: they they they did a lot of stuff and like
Speaker 1: moving signs around there. There's a lot of very weird
Speaker 1: things in a city that you can do that we
Speaker 1: don't think about because we've limited our tactical arsenal to
Speaker 1: like people show up at a place and yell yes,
Speaker 1: stand stand outside of a building and yell at a
Speaker 1: building end of protests. Yeah, and that that doesn't work.
Speaker 1: Like we need to have tactics that are sort of
Speaker 1: like that are beyond that. I guess, I guess part
Speaker 1: of the reason that I'm I'm starting here is that
Speaker 1: I want people to like literally go back very much
Speaker 1: to square one of thinking about what our response needs
Speaker 1: to be before we start moving, because you know, like,
Speaker 1: and I'm not this this is not a sort of
Speaker 1: criticism of the people who've been doing dract defense, Like
Speaker 1: they've been doing a great job, right, but our standard
Speaker 1: protest arsenal is not enough. It has not been working,
Speaker 1: and we need to reevaluate what we're doing. It needs
Speaker 1: to expand, and we need to see a better understanding
Speaker 1: of what diversity of tactics means. I also think that
Speaker 1: on this particular issue, until fairly recently, our primary threat
Speaker 1: vector was non state actors threatening physical violence, and so
Speaker 1: the community defense model is actually a very effective response
Speaker 1: to that threat and has been incredibly effective on numerous times.
Speaker 1: Now that we are looking at the threat coming from
Speaker 1: the state in terms of legislative at legislative action and
Speaker 1: all that stuff, it does open up a lot more
Speaker 1: tactical possibility. Like what you're talking about, um, and that's cool,
Speaker 1: and people should realize that. Yeah, No, I think you're right.
Speaker 1: We should go back and look from the ground up
Speaker 1: and like come to new conclusions, new ideas. And I
Speaker 1: think I think the the the other thing of going
Speaker 1: back to sort of like basics rights, going going back
Speaker 1: to the kinds of going going going back to changing
Speaker 1: how we think about the world around us so that
Speaker 1: we can actually so that we can more effectively take
Speaker 1: action in the other kind of thing that we need
Speaker 1: to do is social mapping. It's figuring out the resources
Speaker 1: that we have the resources that they have, where they are,
Speaker 1: how they function. And this is something that Margaret, you've
Speaker 1: you've talked about in your in your threat about this,
Speaker 1: which is very good. Yeah, but one of the things
Speaker 1: that we need to figure out very quickly is what
Speaker 1: skills do we have and what resources do we have?
Speaker 1: And you know this this expands into a lot of
Speaker 1: into a lot of different sort of fields, right, Um,
Speaker 1: you know there's some of this is sort of territorial, right,
Speaker 1: Like it's about thinking about like what kinds like what's
Speaker 1: physically what spaces are safe for us and which ones aren't,
Speaker 1: and how can we sort of leverage the spaces that
Speaker 1: we have that are safe and you know, maneuver in
Speaker 1: the ones that are How is this changing? There's also
Speaker 1: something that I I want to sort of think about here,
Speaker 1: which is this old this is old tradition. Do you do?
Speaker 1: You do you know what workers inquiry is? I don't know? Okay,
Speaker 1: So this is this is a very old Marxist tradition. Um,
Speaker 1: it means a lot of different things to a lot
Speaker 1: of different people. Like Marx was attempting, So the origin
Speaker 1: of this is Marx was trying to like send out
Speaker 1: surveys to like workers to figure out what their conditions were,
Speaker 1: and people over time took this into more interesting directions
Speaker 1: of you know, but it turns into a kind of
Speaker 1: like like a worker's ethnography of you know, workers sitting
Speaker 1: down and writing or doing interviews about just literally like
Speaker 1: what what their work day is, like, what the sort
Speaker 1: of like labor processes they're involved in are, How does
Speaker 1: how does that work? Like? Who? Like, how do their
Speaker 1: bosses work? How how are they being managed? How are
Speaker 1: they resisting them? And you know, and you you there
Speaker 1: there are other things you can sort of use this
Speaker 1: for that are very useful to us, which is, for example,
Speaker 1: figuring out things like what does the what does your
Speaker 1: local economy depend on? What are the sort of important
Speaker 1: logistics lines in that local economy, you know, who is
Speaker 1: physically doing the labor that the economy depends on, who
Speaker 1: is doing the care labor, because that's another side of
Speaker 1: this that gets sort of brushed over a lot. But
Speaker 1: for example, this this this is a large part of
Speaker 1: why teachers are enormously powerful, because teachers are doing a
Speaker 1: shit ton of care labor that is is necessary for
Speaker 1: the necessary for the entire economy to function. But isn't
Speaker 1: really seen that way, right, and you know, and and
Speaker 1: you you you can ask other questions like you know
Speaker 1: what what what like literally, what are the physical conditions
Speaker 1: under which you and the people around you are working?
Speaker 1: A lot of this stuff's come to you, like person
Speaker 1: who works a job, right, Um, there there is an
Speaker 1: advantage that we have as people who do this stuff,
Speaker 1: which is that we we will understand the terrain of
Speaker 1: our own workplace is better than the people who are
Speaker 1: sitting at the at the top of the power structure,
Speaker 1: because we're on the bottom of it, right the people
Speaker 1: who are above us and and and this This is
Speaker 1: another thing that that's important about this kind of transphobia
Speaker 1: is that it's it's very much an elite thing. This
Speaker 1: is I think especially noticeable in the UK, where like
Speaker 1: you can literally track who is going to be a
Speaker 1: turf by like what kind of like elite schools they're
Speaker 1: going to. But but like literally like if someone goes
Speaker 1: to eat, like you know, it's like who goes to
Speaker 1: eaton right, Like this is this is the thing. It
Speaker 1: tracks who the ruling classes and who and who is
Speaker 1: a turf and who's not going to be a terf?
Speaker 1: Right and then, but this is this is also true
Speaker 1: in the US, where, like I mean again, if you
Speaker 1: look at the media people who are pushing this, it's
Speaker 1: a bunch of people sitting on like an unbelievable amount
Speaker 1: of trust fund money and getting a bunch of sort
Speaker 1: of writing billionaire money. Yes, my experience has been that
Speaker 1: since Trump's election, the random folks around me have become
Speaker 1: substantially less favorable towards me. And I think antitrans stuff
Speaker 1: is is popular across class, but I don't know, I
Speaker 1: think that's I think that's true, but I don't think
Speaker 1: it matters that much because like, like the the the
Speaker 1: ordinary person in your neighborhood who has become transphobic isn't
Speaker 1: the person who has the capacity to get these laws passed. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's fair. And the things that they know are not
Speaker 1: the things that the actual people running these campaigns know. Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1: And and that that that that I think is what
Speaker 1: is sort of important about this, is that like legislatures, right,
Speaker 1: or like you know, the people who are funding who
Speaker 1: are funding these campaigns, the people who donate to these
Speaker 1: who donate literally literally donate to sort of political campaigns, right,
Speaker 1: These people do not understand what our jobs are. They
Speaker 1: don't understand what we do, they don't understand how the
Speaker 1: economy works very well. What the version of reality that
Speaker 1: they can see is a sort of bureaucratic image of
Speaker 1: it produced by their subordinates. And you know that there's
Speaker 1: a real problem with that, which is that a lot
Speaker 1: of the time, right, the more powerful person is, the
Speaker 1: more likely it is that the version of reality that
Speaker 1: they're getting is the version of reality that is just
Speaker 1: being told to them by the people by the people
Speaker 1: below them. And you know, and this this means, like
Speaker 1: the more powerful the people we're dealing with, the less
Speaker 1: capacity they actually have to understand. Is this is true
Speaker 1: even with for organizations to have like an enormous amount
Speaker 1: of raw intelligence that you know, they're sort of spy
Speaker 1: and surveillance networks have assembled, right, they're you know, they
Speaker 1: have all this information, but they don't understand and they're
Speaker 1: sort of buried in trying to like trying and often
Speaker 1: failing to sort through all of the information that they have. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they try and map it to their worldview. It's
Speaker 1: how you always end up with like we found the
Speaker 1: like I have a friend who is investigated as the
Speaker 1: leader of international anarchism, and it took them a really
Speaker 1: really long time before they were like, I don't think
Speaker 1: that's a thing. Yeah, well, it's like they don't they
Speaker 1: don't understand how our networks work very well because yeaheah,
Speaker 1: they have stuff like that. But but this is also true,
Speaker 1: especially like on the level of the workplace, right, Um,
Speaker 1: there is a bunch of stuff that we know that
Speaker 1: cannot be replicated by the people on the top of
Speaker 1: the org chart. And a lot of that stuff has
Speaker 1: to do with we know how to make things stop
Speaker 1: working in ways that they don't, okay, and and that
Speaker 1: that is that that that is very sort of useful
Speaker 1: information to have because if you know how something works,
Speaker 1: you can make it stop working. And this is this
Speaker 1: is the sort of you know, this is a lot
Speaker 1: of what the Marxist tradition sort of was, right. It
Speaker 1: was an attempt to understand like what workers are doing.
Speaker 1: The distinction I would make is they were trying to
Speaker 1: figure out what workers are doing because they were trying
Speaker 1: to figure out how capitalism works. And I don't care
Speaker 1: about that enormously like that that's that's that's not a
Speaker 1: thing that actually sort of like I don't know. Whatever
Speaker 1: I do, I don't I don't care about whatever esoteric
Speaker 1: value debates they were having. The decision I would make
Speaker 1: here is that, you know, the Marxist version of this
Speaker 1: has a tendency to collapse and develop production into just
Speaker 1: like incredibly bitter and minute debates about Marxism. We are
Speaker 1: not trying to do that. The thing we're trying to
Speaker 1: do with our version of this is stop agendicide. Right.
Speaker 1: Our our version of inquiry means attack and when when? When?
Speaker 1: When I say when? When I'm talking about this kind
Speaker 1: of stuff, right, I'm talking about like you and finding
Speaker 1: the other people in your workplace who are supportive of
Speaker 1: this stuff. And you know, I mean literally just on
Speaker 1: like a very very basic level. And this is something
Speaker 1: that you get in union organizing, right, It's like just
Speaker 1: figuring out what the fuck they do because like manage,
Speaker 1: it doesn't know what you do, right, Like I I
Speaker 1: I have I have worked in a lot of of
Speaker 1: of places. I have talked to managers a lot. They
Speaker 1: have no fucking idea what what anyone is actually doing.
Speaker 1: And if if you if you can build up and
Speaker 1: this is this is you know, this is all going,
Speaker 1: This is all kind of abstract. But if if you
Speaker 1: can figure out how your workplace works, and you can
Speaker 1: figure out how the workplaces of the people around you work,
Speaker 1: and how how the workplace is that like actually genuinely
Speaker 1: matter to the people who are doing this stuff, you
Speaker 1: suddenly have. You suddenly have leverage that you normally that
Speaker 1: you know, a sort of like traditional like protest thing doesn't.
Speaker 1: And this means, for better or for worse, trying to
Speaker 1: get unions involved. Um, there are upsides and downsides here.
Speaker 1: The downside is that there just aren't the many unions
Speaker 1: and there aren't the many people in unions as I
Speaker 1: just have like a middling faith in them. Yeah, working
Speaker 1: on it. I mean yeah, I mean some of them,
Speaker 1: I'm sure good and and I want to challenge all
Speaker 1: of them too, and if they do, I will eat
Speaker 1: my shoe whatever the saying is. Um, so yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it's like they're not going to do unless they're
Speaker 1: forced to, right, Well, I depending on the I think
Speaker 1: some unions do. Now I'm like suddenly one eighteen, I mean,
Speaker 1: like talk on unions like that whatever anyway continues, So okay,
Speaker 1: So the thing part of the the other reason that
Speaker 1: that I'm focusing specifically on unions, and I'm specifically I'm
Speaker 1: focusing a lot and workplace organizing stuff. Is that Okay?
Speaker 1: One of the inherent problems of trans organizing is that
Speaker 1: trans people are not a large enough minority to enter
Speaker 1: the most sort of like cynical, like numerically determinist accounts
Speaker 1: of who matters enough to support right, like not not yet,
Speaker 1: not right, But as as if right now we're like
Speaker 1: maybe two percent of the population now will change it
Speaker 1: is it is grown. If the Zoober numbers continue, we're
Speaker 1: gonna be We're gonna be quite quite the problem. I
Speaker 1: remember marching with my my first boyfriend, and this this
Speaker 1: bashback march where we're chanting one in ten is not enough. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And it's just funny because it's like there's more of
Speaker 1: us now. Yeah. Yeah, And this is trans are really
Speaker 1: good at recruiting at LGBT because and literally, you cannot
Speaker 1: think I'm cute and be heterosexual. There's no way of
Speaker 1: making that happen. True. No, this is like legit legitimately.
Speaker 1: One of the reasons that I figured out that I
Speaker 1: wasn't like a sistet straight dude was I was dating
Speaker 1: an un binary person I was like, shit, Okay, it's um.
Speaker 1: There are places where trans people are like enormously overrepresented,
Speaker 1: right and and and there are places where we exist
Speaker 1: in numbers enough that we actually statistically matter. And unions
Speaker 1: are one of those places because the people to people
Speaker 1: who are organizing unions, like trans people are so unbelieved,
Speaker 1: pably fucking overrepresented in all of that stuff. And this
Speaker 1: is this is as much true of I mean, okay,
Speaker 1: so this this is true really, especially of any kind
Speaker 1: of sort of new unionism, like particularly things like grad
Speaker 1: student unions. Right, but it's also true of like like
Speaker 1: all all of the fucking service sector unions that are
Speaker 1: getting organized, and this has been true for like twenty years.
Speaker 1: All of the people organizing that, whether they realize it
Speaker 1: or not, are trans. And you know, but this this
Speaker 1: means that we actually have leverage there, right, because this
Speaker 1: is this is a part of the economy where if
Speaker 1: we stop doing our job, shit will actually fall apart, right,
Speaker 1: Like you know, actual sort of large scale union campaigns
Speaker 1: like cannot work without us. And that means that we
Speaker 1: actually we have the ability to pressure them into doing
Speaker 1: shit in a way that's not necessarily true. And I'm
Speaker 1: talking here, like specifically about like you the listener who
Speaker 1: is trans, which is like statistically statistically like you the
Speaker 1: listener is not trans. If you are, congratulations, Um, if
Speaker 1: you're not, I also suspect they are slightly overrepresented that
Speaker 1: definitely still probably not a majority. Well, I guess I like,
Speaker 1: I also want to say that, like, um, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's funny because the way to define SIS allyship is
Speaker 1: literally just if you're willing to car yourself CIS, you know,
Speaker 1: because it's like not actually a slur, it's just a description.
Speaker 1: It's just a you know, like the not trans word, right,
Speaker 1: and it's not bad at all. Yeah, and now that
Speaker 1: that's a battleground word, it's like pronouns and profile or whatever.
Speaker 1: You know, It's like it's actually fairly easy to make
Speaker 1: it clear where you stand on this kind of issue. Um,
Speaker 1: And I I will say, I mean, obviously trans people
Speaker 1: do a lot of this organizing, but I think that
Speaker 1: we have a lot, an awful lot of SIS people
Speaker 1: with us, And so you, the CIS listener, we also
Speaker 1: fucking love and respect you because if you've made it
Speaker 1: into an hour of us talking about how much this matters,
Speaker 1: it clearly matters to you too. You know, this is
Speaker 1: probably our like three or whatever the fuck and both
Speaker 1: episodes and soon you won't be allowed to wear pants
Speaker 1: if you're a fab So you know this is gonna
Speaker 1: hit everyone. Yeah. Yeah, and I think you know all
Speaker 1: of the stuff that I've been saying right about, you know,
Speaker 1: And like another part of this also is is literally
Speaker 1: just like a thing that you can do that is
Speaker 1: organizing that will help in this stuff is literally just
Speaker 1: talking to your friends, yeah, and being like, hey, here's
Speaker 1: my eight friends or whatever, here are things. How do
Speaker 1: you feel about this? You know, and then and then
Speaker 1: and then try and then you know, using using this
Speaker 1: kind of stuff, using this kind of mapping stuff, and
Speaker 1: you know, using using what you can learn about how
Speaker 1: you know this this this this, this part of it
Speaker 1: has been kind of abstract, but I think intentionally so
Speaker 1: it's like we we we are, we are in a
Speaker 1: place where we need to very rapidly build up capacity
Speaker 1: for a kind of movements that can actually do things.
Speaker 1: And I think this is this this is sort of
Speaker 1: like the planning phase for that is Yeah, but you know,
Speaker 1: like the these are things that are going down to
Speaker 1: be created very quickly. These we're we're going to have
Speaker 1: to very quickly figure out, you know what what what
Speaker 1: levers can be like pushed. Right. And one of the
Speaker 1: things about like the first bathroom bill in North Carolina, right,
Speaker 1: it didn't get repealed, but it got like amended to
Speaker 1: be slightly less bad. Yeah, And it got amenaged to
Speaker 1: because to be slightly less bad because the state it
Speaker 1: very quickly ran into trouble with a bunch of corporations
Speaker 1: who were like, you know, because an initial push that
Speaker 1: they were like, We're like, Okay, we're gonna we're gonna
Speaker 1: pull out of events in this state. We're gonna pull
Speaker 1: out of like backing your giant Like we're gonna pull
Speaker 1: out of having our giant like fucking sports tournaments here.
Speaker 1: We're gonna pull out of like advertising for like retails
Speaker 1: off and that. And that got them to sort of
Speaker 1: like run away very very quickly, right, And that's been
Speaker 1: the one big thing they've been actually scared of. And
Speaker 1: I think this is part of why they've been pushing
Speaker 1: this sort of like quote corporation like anti Disney stuff
Speaker 1: so hard. Is that like the kind of backlash that
Speaker 1: can very quickly get these people to flip is the
Speaker 1: kind of backlash that starts actually hurting. If these kinds
Speaker 1: of bills start hurting their bottom line, these a lot
Speaker 1: of these people will flip because a lot of a
Speaker 1: lot of even the legislators who are voting for this
Speaker 1: art as hardline as the sort of like daily wire people,
Speaker 1: and if their campaign funders are like, hey, you gotta
Speaker 1: fucking turn this around so the economy can go back
Speaker 1: to normal, like they they, they will flip on this stuff. Okay,
Speaker 1: That's all I was talking about is about things that
Speaker 1: you can do to begin to mount pressure campaigns and
Speaker 1: mountain direct actions. I also wanted to talk about sort
Speaker 1: of like just survival network stuff because that also was
Speaker 1: going to be a part of this. And yeah, Margaret,
Speaker 1: you had a lot of very very good stuff in
Speaker 1: a thread that you wrote about this. Yeah. I wrote
Speaker 1: a threat a week or so ago about all this
Speaker 1: stuff as I woke up and doom squirrelled for a while,
Speaker 1: and you know, and I was just thinking a lot
Speaker 1: back on the organizing that I know people are doing
Speaker 1: and stuff like that and trying to put things together,
Speaker 1: and so some of it's just kind of like tips, right,
Speaker 1: And I want to say like again, well again to
Speaker 1: the threat not to something I've said here. I think
Speaker 1: that we need to focus on what unites us and
Speaker 1: not what divides us. Right now, I think that this
Speaker 1: is not a time for public facing internal conflict. It
Speaker 1: is not a time for interpersonal conflict to be aired publicly.
Speaker 1: Not to say that interpersonal conflict doesn't matter, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: We need to you know, I believe mediation is actually
Speaker 1: one of the most important skills. Actually, frankly, literally, if
Speaker 1: you're listening and you have any mediation skills, I think
Speaker 1: it is the thing that the revolution needs more than
Speaker 1: anything else. Off the top of my head, but overall, basically,
Speaker 1: there's something that mc soul said, I don't know if
Speaker 1: his own podcast might have been Twitter or a a long
Speaker 1: time ago, and it's really stuck in my head, which
Speaker 1: is that we need to focus on we need to
Speaker 1: de escalate all conflict that isn't with the enemy, Which
Speaker 1: isn't to say that the conflict doesn't happen, is that
Speaker 1: we need to look how to de escalate it and
Speaker 1: bring it down in pressure, except when it's with the enemy,
Speaker 1: like with someone who's trying to murder all the trans people,
Speaker 1: or someone who's like a white nationalist or whatever right.
Speaker 1: We are not looking to de escalate that conflict. We
Speaker 1: are probably looking to escalate that conflict. We are looking
Speaker 1: to make it very clear the way in which we
Speaker 1: are not that person. But and I'm as guilty this
Speaker 1: as anyone else. I have a lot of pet peeves
Speaker 1: that people who listen to my show are very aware of. Also,
Speaker 1: this fight will happen on multiple fronts, using multiple tactics.
Speaker 1: There's this magical phrase diversity of tactics, and we have
Speaker 1: to mean it. And diversity of tactics usually means like
Speaker 1: kind of like, no, it's just support my tactic. Like
Speaker 1: especially if you're like tactic is like riots or something.
Speaker 1: You know, you often say diversity of tactics, and what
Speaker 1: you really mean is like my shit rules and your
Speaker 1: shit sucks. We actually have to straight up mean it.
Speaker 1: We need to support the people who are focused in
Speaker 1: legislative action. Even though it's not where we are strong,
Speaker 1: it is a place that needs to be shored up.
Speaker 1: We need to focus. We need to support the people
Speaker 1: who focus on community defense. We need to focus. We
Speaker 1: need to support the people who are doing illegal things.
Speaker 1: We need to support the people who are doing organizing
Speaker 1: in all kinds of different ways, and if we build
Speaker 1: organizations that accept diversity of tactics and don't expect to
Speaker 1: have a sort of hegemony over the movement, we can
Speaker 1: create a very strong movement. Most of my personal infighting
Speaker 1: is with people who do want to have a geminy
Speaker 1: over a movement, and so you get I fall into
Speaker 1: this like trap where I'm like, how do we fucking anyway? Whatever? Okay,
Speaker 1: other things that people can do if you are not
Speaker 1: visibility LGBT and you feel like it is safe to
Speaker 1: do so, or you feel like it is dangerous to
Speaker 1: do so, and you're willing to be a little bit
Speaker 1: fucking danger because we are in complicated fucking times, be
Speaker 1: publicly clear that you support lg LGTP, whatever us and
Speaker 1: like the day that I wrote the clear yeah, support
Speaker 1: the queers, Like the day that I wrote this. I
Speaker 1: live in you know, I live in West Virginia. I
Speaker 1: go to Lows and you know, I'm having a bad day.
Speaker 1: I'm like fuck, I'm like, you know, at what point
Speaker 1: is it going to be a crime for me to
Speaker 1: go to Lows? Right? And the like guy, just the
Speaker 1: fucking metal head guy who seemed kind of like super
Speaker 1: masculine metal guy tattoos, and he had his fucking like
Speaker 1: trans ally support pin on. And if we were in
Speaker 1: like a big major city, it might have almost seemed
Speaker 1: like cringey because it said like ally or whatever on it, right,
Speaker 1: And I'm fucking overworrying about what's cringe e. I'm like, no,
Speaker 1: thank you. I I went up and I thanked him
Speaker 1: right because it like fucking helped my day. And that
Speaker 1: kind of shit is going to matter because it is
Speaker 1: now actually a fairly dangerous in some places to be
Speaker 1: visibly in support of us. And I absolutely appreciate the
Speaker 1: people who are doing it. And another thing that we
Speaker 1: need to support this is the kind of thing that
Speaker 1: you've talked a little bit about, is that, Okay, we
Speaker 1: need to have support networks. We need to have networks
Speaker 1: that are protecting trans people, families that are leaving environments.
Speaker 1: There's so many families that want to leave these states
Speaker 1: where their child is no longer safe, will be forced
Speaker 1: to detransition, will not be allowed to transition. There are
Speaker 1: transparents in Florida who might be at risk of losing
Speaker 1: their children. All of these things, people are going to
Speaker 1: want to move. We need to support people materially who
Speaker 1: are trying to move, and there will be organizations that
Speaker 1: are doing this. If they don't exist yet, you can
Speaker 1: start them. And if you wait for them to start,
Speaker 1: that's also sometimes okay. If you're played is full, you
Speaker 1: can support those organizations in a lot of different ways.
Speaker 1: We can also support and not shame people who choose
Speaker 1: to live in Red States as though, Like, as a
Speaker 1: state transperson, I think about this a lot about like
Speaker 1: because like I'm not planning on moving right. You know,
Speaker 1: it helps that I'm an adult. I'm like settled whatever,
Speaker 1: Like my mental health is strong, you know, but I'm
Speaker 1: not planning on going anywhere. And that's why we can't
Speaker 1: give up these spaces, right. I think that one of
Speaker 1: the things I kind of mentioned earlier but is that,
Speaker 1: like we are not in normal times. We need to
Speaker 1: take this seriously. We also need to not assume that
Speaker 1: all this is a foregone conclusion. We need to not
Speaker 1: assume that this will go down like Nazi Germany. However,
Speaker 1: we need to be aware that it might, and we
Speaker 1: need everyone This is not a trans people thing, This
Speaker 1: isn't everyone thing. We need to think about what that
Speaker 1: actually means. You know, there's that cliche that is true
Speaker 1: right now. That is like, if you want to know
Speaker 1: what you have been doing in Germany in nineteen thirty three,
Speaker 1: it's what you're doing right now. And like that's true.
Speaker 1: This is a time for to be the kind of
Speaker 1: person that we want to be. We are in dangerous
Speaker 1: and complicated times, and it is times that we need
Speaker 1: to be brave, and we need to be brave for
Speaker 1: each other. Bravery is not the absence of fear. Bravery
Speaker 1: is doing things despite fear. Bravery is the presence of courage,
Speaker 1: not the lack of awareness that things are scary and bad. Yes,
Speaker 1: And that's kind of like my main thing is I
Speaker 1: want us to not panic, right, to not assume that
Speaker 1: we're going to lose, to realize that they are acting
Speaker 1: this way because they're on their back foot. This was
Speaker 1: always going to happen in the fact that in a
Speaker 1: way we kind of started this fight by like existing
Speaker 1: and like coming out of the closet and shit. But
Speaker 1: we basically were like, no, we're allowed to be here,
Speaker 1: and most people were like, yeah, okay, I guess that tracks.
Speaker 1: I guess you're allowed to be here. And then some
Speaker 1: small portion we're like these are demons from hell sent
Speaker 1: to ripe tits off of the children I'd like to marry.
Speaker 1: The freaks like Matt Walsh are the ones who declared
Speaker 1: quote unquote war on trans people, right because we were
Speaker 1: coming for their way of life, not their way of
Speaker 1: life in terms of like heterosexual marriage, that gets to
Speaker 1: still exist, that's fine, like, but compulsory heterosexuality and compulsory
Speaker 1: sis sexuality is the thing that we are coming for.
Speaker 1: And their way of life is hegemony. Their way of
Speaker 1: life is being the only force of power. And so yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess the other stuff is that we just Okay,
Speaker 1: what would you do in Nazi Germany? That's what you're
Speaker 1: doing right now, and you should think about what skills
Speaker 1: you have and how they apply to different things. And
Speaker 1: then the kind of final point to a lot of
Speaker 1: this is as a specific issue and it's a pet
Speaker 1: issue of mind, and that could be completely wrong. I
Speaker 1: have a lot of bias about this, but I would
Speaker 1: fucking love it if liberals would shut the fuck up
Speaker 1: about guns. Right now. It is very hard for me
Speaker 1: to find a state that is not either in the
Speaker 1: process of trying to tell me that I can't wear
Speaker 1: a dress, or to find a state that is trying
Speaker 1: to tell me that I can't carry the means to
Speaker 1: protect myself from the violent bigots who want to kill
Speaker 1: me because I wear a dress. It is incredibly hard
Speaker 1: to find states that are not pushing in one of
Speaker 1: those directions or another, and it is embarrassing. It is
Speaker 1: embarrassing that this, of all times, is the time that
Speaker 1: liberals are focusing so hard on gun issues, which is
Speaker 1: a culture war bullshit thing for them. They don't fucking care,
Speaker 1: They didn't fucking care about abortion. They just want your
Speaker 1: fucking votes. And we are probably entering a very bad
Speaker 1: and hard time. However, we can do it. We have
Speaker 1: done it in the past, and my reading of history
Speaker 1: it basically is this cycle I kind of don't quite
Speaker 1: believe in, like a forward progress. Everything gets better, things
Speaker 1: ebb and flow. And however, we will survive this, not
Speaker 1: necessarily all of us as individuals. Probably probably there won't
Speaker 1: be like large numbers of killings as a result of this,
Speaker 1: but it is possible, right, But they it is impossible
Speaker 1: to stamp out homosexuality, It is impossible to stamp out transsexuality.
Speaker 1: We have always been here, we will always be here,
Speaker 1: and so yeah to to quote my final quote in
Speaker 1: that particular threat, I definitely went off threat. But we
Speaker 1: need to find each other. We need to stop fighting
Speaker 1: with each other about bullshit. We need to defend each other.
Speaker 1: We need to be brave. And then I will cite
Speaker 1: the anarchist's prayer, which is that I ask not to
Speaker 1: be safe from my enemies, but dangerous to them, because
Speaker 1: all right, this is what we're fucking doing, and like,
Speaker 1: we all want to be safe, but that's not something
Speaker 1: that we're guaranteed. What we are guaranteed is that we
Speaker 1: can choose how to handle the situation that we're in.
Speaker 1: And then almost done, almost done. You talked to earlier
Speaker 1: about what we owe the owe the dead. I really
Speaker 1: liked your way phrasing that. I really liked a lot
Speaker 1: of what you were talking about about all of that.
Speaker 1: And one thing that I think about we're talking about
Speaker 1: like the Catholic Church and shit, right, one thing that
Speaker 1: I owe the dead is I owe Sister Dominic, a
Speaker 1: Catholic nun, to not fucking go back into the closet
Speaker 1: because when my cousin came out as trans, this woman
Speaker 1: who is literally married to God. She died a couple
Speaker 1: of years ago maybe ten years ago now before I
Speaker 1: came out, but my cousin came out before me, because
Speaker 1: it's a contagion now because we were always fucking trans
Speaker 1: and she was completely supportive, completely and immediately in my like,
Speaker 1: you know, and just this is a woman who dedicated
Speaker 1: her entire life too well to God and Saul literally
Speaker 1: no problem, was the most immediately accepting person. Immediately said,
Speaker 1: you know, I bet she's always felt that way, and
Speaker 1: so I personally owe it to her to tell these
Speaker 1: Catholics to shut the fuck up, because fucking Jesus's wife says,
Speaker 1: it's fine. Fuck you, That's what I got. Thank you, Margaret. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was fantastic. Where where can people find you and
Speaker 1: some of your other work across the across the web. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I just finished a four part series on Stonewall and
Speaker 1: the stuff that came before Stonewall, the riots that kind
Speaker 1: of brought us this movement, and how it was all
Speaker 1: different types of queers and even some hat people working
Speaker 1: together to bring us as far as we've got. And
Speaker 1: you can find that on my podcast Cool People who
Speaker 1: did cool stuff. It's with it could Happen here host
Speaker 1: Sharine as my guest and You can also find me
Speaker 1: talking about the end of the world on Live Like
Speaker 1: the World Is Dying as another podcast that I'm a
Speaker 1: co host of. And my most recent book is called
Speaker 1: Escape from Insel Island, and it is not non fiction.
Speaker 1: It is not something about how people should get better.
Speaker 1: It's literally about someone of the shot on new Lands,
Speaker 1: on an island full of insults and has to get
Speaker 1: out alive. Fantastic. Well, thank you for listening through all
Speaker 1: the way. If you are still here, hopefully, hopefully you've
Speaker 1: learned something interesting across these these these two pretty pretty
Speaker 1: heavy episodes. We will we will see you on the
Speaker 1: other side. It could Happen here as a production of
Speaker 1: cool Zone Media. Well more podcasts from cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1: Visit our website cool zonemedia dot com, or check us
Speaker 1: out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
Speaker 1: listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could
Speaker 1: Happen Here, updated monthly at coolzonemta dot com slash sources.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.