Speaker 1: Cool media.
Speaker 2: Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let
Speaker 2: you know this is a compilation episode, So every episode
Speaker 2: of the week that just happened is here in one
Speaker 2: convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to
Speaker 2: listen to in a long stretch if you want. If
Speaker 2: you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
Speaker 2: there's going to be nothing new here for you, but
Speaker 2: you can make your own decisions, all right.
Speaker 3: This is the last night of the DNC episode or
Speaker 3: reporting from our homes now, which is great because I
Speaker 3: feel like death. Garrison Davis is here, I'm Sophie Lichterman,
Speaker 3: Robert Evans is here.
Speaker 4: We more or less survived the DNZ. SOPHI took a
Speaker 4: few hits there at the end. So the DNC is over,
Speaker 4: it's wrapped up, it's all finished, Thank goodness. Tiring in
Speaker 4: a very different way than the RNC, and I mean
Speaker 4: obviously a very different demographic. And this is something that
Speaker 4: I noticed just as soon as they got to the air,
Speaker 4: Like when I got to the gate for the RNC,
Speaker 4: it was like, oh, I'm here for the RNC, And
Speaker 4: when I got to the gate for the DNC, it
Speaker 4: was Oh, this is just a regular airport gate.
Speaker 5: This is just normal people.
Speaker 4: There's a very broad demographic that you know, pretty fairly
Speaker 4: would represent whatever city you happen to come from. And
Speaker 4: in calling these people normal, that's not saying they're necessarily
Speaker 4: good people, but they're normal people. Sure, they're into politics,
Speaker 4: maybe a little bit more than your average person, but
Speaker 4: by and large they are kind of regular people and
Speaker 4: including shitty in a lot of the ways that regular
Speaker 4: people are shitty about politics, whether that be their views
Speaker 4: on Palestine, Gaza, queer people. But it's a pretty pretty
Speaker 4: normal demographic base.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's the difference between like when something I showed
Speaker 2: up at our gate for the RNC, we took off
Speaker 2: our masks because the threat at that point was being
Speaker 2: on a mask surrounded by Republicans, yes.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, it was like the risk to our lives
Speaker 3: was greater than the risk of COVID.
Speaker 6: To our lives safe few eyes, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Whereas we just kind of treated the flights to and
Speaker 2: from the DNC like normal flights, like like you'd handle
Speaker 2: the normal precautions just regular people.
Speaker 6: Some of that has to do with the fact that
Speaker 6: Chicago's like a much larger city.
Speaker 1: Yeah, sure, but yes.
Speaker 4: But I mean I got into the conversation with a
Speaker 4: delegate from Georgia who was sitting right next to me,
Speaker 4: you know, young guy, mid twenties. Very clearly everyone on
Speaker 4: the plane was going to the DNC, at least for me,
Speaker 4: And yeah, I mean you just had like a regular conversation.
Speaker 1: Was it little John?
Speaker 5: No, no, Sophie, it was not okay, cool?
Speaker 2: So if he little John as a senior citizen, now it's.
Speaker 1: Little John, thank you so much.
Speaker 4: But no, he was this this young, kind of nominally
Speaker 4: progressive democrat who is excited. This is I think, I
Speaker 4: think his first time going excited to vote for Kamala
Speaker 4: and much more excited about her than Joe. He also
Speaker 4: just finished his college program to get a criminal justice degree,
Speaker 4: so it's like, yeah, this is this.
Speaker 5: Is who the democratic area.
Speaker 4: Yeah, random, kind of kind of queer, but definitely sis dude,
Speaker 4: like I said, gay dude, bisexual, whatever, but yeah, it's
Speaker 4: gonna reform, reform that criminal justice from the inside. Yeah, anyway,
Speaker 4: kind of I just wanted to descry about talking with
Speaker 4: this kind of those kind of general convention demographics because
Speaker 4: that's basically the same.
Speaker 5: It felt well inside the convention as well.
Speaker 2: Yes, a lot more. What I will say is a
Speaker 2: lot more women who are like middle aged at the
Speaker 2: d NC, like that was the overwhelmingly most common demographic
Speaker 2: on like at the convention that I noticed.
Speaker 4: And probably more racial diversity than a lot of than
Speaker 4: a lot of cities probably Honestly, Yeah, I guess that's
Speaker 4: a good general sign, but it's not a great sign
Speaker 4: just in and of itself, right, I guess it's it's
Speaker 4: good for kind of the general future of this country,
Speaker 4: but it doesn't it doesn't really affect many of the
Speaker 4: biggest problems that were kind of addressing, whether that be
Speaker 4: you know, gazo that, whether that be police brutality, whether
Speaker 4: that be all all of these other things, LGBTQ issues,
Speaker 4: the economy, right, like that does not necessarily equal over
Speaker 4: onto any of those, at least at the DNC. But
Speaker 4: you know that is that is a general trend that
Speaker 4: that that the country is heading towards.
Speaker 7: It seems.
Speaker 5: So there you go, and my god, was there a
Speaker 5: lot of people there was.
Speaker 3: There was such an unhinged amount of people, like I
Speaker 3: can't even.
Speaker 2: It was so much bigger and so much more crowded
Speaker 2: than the d r n C.
Speaker 3: I set this online when right wingers were trying to
Speaker 3: be like there was nobody there, which was like, you're
Speaker 3: you're so dumb.
Speaker 2: It was vastly more crowded, but like.
Speaker 3: At the R and C, most of the time, we
Speaker 3: generally had an entire road to ourselves.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was always easy to find seating, super eased
Speaker 4: to find a spot to sit any time during the
Speaker 4: R and C. Not true for the DNC, very challenging
Speaker 4: to find a seat. And this kind of brings us
Speaker 4: to the last day of the convention, horrible.
Speaker 5: The three of us wrap up.
Speaker 4: A very nice dinner with mister Vermin supreme lovely, possibly
Speaker 4: the most ethical presidential candidate this year.
Speaker 2: The only presidential candidate who has been maced with a
Speaker 2: member of the cool Zone media team. We can say
Speaker 2: that much.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so we have a great to dinner with them.
Speaker 4: We walked over to the DNC, massive massive lines coming outside, terrible,
Speaker 4: and then we get told it's okay, there's a special
Speaker 4: press entry, so we bypass all those lines. We are
Speaker 4: feeling great, We are feeling like gods, just passing by
Speaker 4: hundreds and hundreds of people waiting waiting line to get
Speaker 4: in the DNC. It was a very powerful feeling. I've
Speaker 4: never felt that empowered before.
Speaker 2: Oh Garrison, oh you sweet summer child.
Speaker 5: It was wonderful.
Speaker 1: It was really a rush that can't be described.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I almost didn't want to let you guys know
Speaker 2: that the whole venue is at capacity.
Speaker 4: So we get up to the door after just breezing through,
Speaker 4: going past all of those lines, and we get to
Speaker 4: the door and all.
Speaker 5: The doors are shut.
Speaker 4: Yeah, their secret service at every entrance saying that nobody
Speaker 4: can get in because the venue.
Speaker 5: Is at capacity.
Speaker 4: And the crash, oh my god, the crash that we
Speaker 4: had from our high so so bad.
Speaker 2: I talked to a couple of police officers outside the
Speaker 2: venue who were like, yeah, the fire marshals are here,
Speaker 2: like's it was literally I do think that it from
Speaker 2: and from everything I've read since, I think their reboarding
Speaker 2: was accurate. Yes, Like there were just more people than
Speaker 2: were allowed to be in the building.
Speaker 3: They definitely let more people in than they should have. Yeah, However,
Speaker 3: there was a group of journalists with Garrison and myself
Speaker 3: that were waiting to be let in, and there was
Speaker 3: like triple the amount of people to journalists that left
Speaker 3: in the time that we were standing there, which was
Speaker 3: a very long time. And let me just say, the
Speaker 3: Secret Service officer really enjoyed telling a bunch of journalists
Speaker 3: that we couldn't come in. He was having a g night,
Speaker 3: ruining our night.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's nothing that makes me happier than making
Speaker 2: a journalist miserable. So I actually do feel some solidarity there.
Speaker 2: You know, I would love to tell a bunch of
Speaker 2: journalists fuck you.
Speaker 4: I was certainly skeptical because of just how many people
Speaker 4: were getting let out, because I really wanted to see
Speaker 4: how full the venue actually was. And after waiting for
Speaker 4: nearly for two hours, two hours.
Speaker 6: Two hours, two hours, I went home.
Speaker 5: Pablo's speech already started.
Speaker 3: I abandoned you, and then some media logistics person from
Speaker 3: the Secret Service entrance every five minutes would point at
Speaker 3: ten people like they were the chosen ones to let them.
Speaker 1: Into the arena.
Speaker 3: And on round three or four, Gary and I did,
Speaker 3: in fact get in and run up like seven or
Speaker 3: eight flights of stairs, which I'm still feeling.
Speaker 2: You made the cut. You made the cut.
Speaker 7: We did.
Speaker 2: I bet Tim Walls whispered your very names into the
Speaker 2: ears of that Secret Service agent.
Speaker 3: Although I do feel like a piece of me is
Speaker 3: still on those stairs because it was brutal.
Speaker 5: It was bad.
Speaker 4: And then we got up to kind of the floor
Speaker 4: of the arena that we usually entered into and they
Speaker 4: were not lying. It was way too full. There was
Speaker 4: not a single seat available. People were standing in the
Speaker 4: fire exits, people were standing on the stairs and the
Speaker 4: hallways inside the actual arena. It was, in fact a
Speaker 4: real safety hazard.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I do really feel the need to emphasize not
Speaker 2: one of those things where the cops were fucking over
Speaker 2: the press or whatever for their own It was a
Speaker 2: serious issue.
Speaker 4: No, we saw, We saw firefighters inspecting the hallways and
Speaker 4: letting a whole bunch of fire code violations fly. Yeah,
Speaker 4: we were not supposed to be standing in the middle
Speaker 4: of tent stairwell. And yeah, we got inside just in
Speaker 4: time for the foreign policy, border patrol, and geopolitics section
Speaker 4: of Kamalis's speech. And we will talk about her speech,
Speaker 4: including those aspects, right after we come back from this
Speaker 4: ad break.
Speaker 5: All right.
Speaker 4: The final speech of the DNC arguably the most important one,
Speaker 4: Although the DNC just went on for so long that
Speaker 4: I was so checked out by that last day.
Speaker 3: Honestly, it was just Bill Clinton's nine hour speech where
Speaker 3: he just was just the oldest man who's ever lived.
Speaker 2: No, he's convinced me. You know, I watched last night
Speaker 2: several episodes of the show about him committing a sex
Speaker 2: crime as the president, and it really reminded me. Boy
Speaker 2: slick Willy's gotten old.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thank you for music. My dad's nickname for Bill
Speaker 3: Clinton on Mike Click Willy.
Speaker 2: That's every dad's nickname for Bill Clinton.
Speaker 3: My dad loves to call him that. Anyways, Garrison, we
Speaker 3: got up there. We are standing in a crowd of
Speaker 3: journalists just trying to get a glimpse of what's going on.
Speaker 3: And is there any particular part of the speech you
Speaker 3: want to talk about, because there's a few things that
Speaker 3: come to mind for me.
Speaker 4: I mean, yeah, I have notes on like the whole speech,
Speaker 4: just you know, a few lines from each little section.
Speaker 4: And I think this speech was more important than most
Speaker 4: of Trump's speeches, because we've heard Trump speak, you know,
Speaker 4: a bajillion times.
Speaker 8: Now.
Speaker 4: I will say Trump's R and C speech was important
Speaker 4: because this was his first speech after getting shot at
Speaker 4: in the head. And similarly, I think this speech for
Speaker 4: Kamlo was extremely important because this is basically her second
Speaker 4: presidential speech. The speech she's been using for her campaign
Speaker 4: trail has been the same stump speech for the past month.
Speaker 4: It's been the same one delivered many times, which is
Speaker 4: not a regular But this is the first time we've
Speaker 4: really heard her do a new speech, and this is
Speaker 4: her introduction as a presidential candidate to the entire world.
Speaker 4: As she took the stage, there's obviously tons of cheers
Speaker 4: chants of usay. She opened by praising Biden's record and
Speaker 4: his character, saying that that history will will prove him
Speaker 4: to have such a great record and character. And then
Speaker 4: she framed her own personal story as like a template
Speaker 4: of like the American journey, right, saying, quote, I'm no
Speaker 4: stranger to unlikely journeys unquote.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 4: She talked about her mother as an immigrant, saying her
Speaker 4: parents met at a civil rights gathering and then her
Speaker 4: dad taught her to be fearless, although her dad also,
Speaker 4: I guess probably failed to teach her how to be
Speaker 4: a good Marxist, but she did not bring that part
Speaker 4: up in this speech.
Speaker 2: Complicated relationship, but we all get to have one.
Speaker 4: Yes, But her parents taught her and her sister about,
Speaker 4: you know, different different civil rights leaders, including civil rights
Speaker 4: lawyers that fought civil rights in court, and Kamala said,
Speaker 4: this is what inspired her to go to law school.
Speaker 4: Although you know, very famously, she did not become like
Speaker 4: a civil rights lawyer.
Speaker 5: She became a prosecutor.
Speaker 4: And Kamala said that this was inspired by her high
Speaker 4: school best friend getting molested by her stepfather and that's
Speaker 4: what got her to want to go down the prosecutor path.
Speaker 6: That was the first time that I had ever heard
Speaker 6: her talk about that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I hadn't heard that either.
Speaker 5: She literally did a few other times, obviously not on
Speaker 5: that large of a stage.
Speaker 4: Yes, no, No, There was a lot of talk about that,
Speaker 4: and a lot of talk about her focus on like
Speaker 4: familial sexual abuse, molestation and other sex crimes as a prosecutor,
Speaker 4: like basically framing that as like her specialty, and that
Speaker 4: was a good part of what she focused on, which
Speaker 4: he was a courtan prosecutor.
Speaker 5: The line that she.
Speaker 4: Used to refer to her work in the court was
Speaker 4: that quote, everyone has a right to safety, dignity, and justice.
Speaker 4: So that was kind of the introduction to Kamala and
Speaker 4: her background. That was like who she was, where she
Speaker 4: came from. And then the speech pivoted to talking about
Speaker 4: orange Man Bad, which worked very well in twenty twenty,
Speaker 4: and I think we're going to see more of that.
Speaker 4: The closer we get to the election.
Speaker 2: One way or the other is the last time you're
Speaker 2: gonna get to make hay out of it, and so
Speaker 2: you might as well do that while the sunshine.
Speaker 3: Yes, honestly, that was the general theme of the DNC
Speaker 3: speeches for me, was like orange.
Speaker 2: Man bad, we got one last shot.
Speaker 3: We can be good for you, be good with us,
Speaker 3: We're good orange Man back.
Speaker 4: It's even less that they want to be elected to
Speaker 4: make any actual progressive change. It's that in order to
Speaker 4: do that in the future, we first need to beat
Speaker 4: Donald Trump. And that was kind of the guiding the
Speaker 4: guiding principle of most of the DNC and commalist speech.
Speaker 4: She called this election a fight for America's future.
Speaker 2: It's infuriating that, like we deal with this again right
Speaker 2: where we have to like sit down and knock the
Speaker 2: Republicans out and end a chunk of the conservative ideology
Speaker 2: in this country because literally nothing can progress without doing that,
Speaker 2: and we still can't handle the more fundamental problems. But
Speaker 2: you know, that's the way it is.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And she talked a lot about voting rights, saying
Speaker 4: that Trump tried to throw away your vote and when
Speaker 4: that didn't work, he directed an armed mob to the
Speaker 4: capital to overthrow the election. She talked about how Trump
Speaker 4: wants to deploy the military against protests, although she said
Speaker 4: he wanted to play the military against quote our own citizens,
Speaker 4: but this was in reference to him wanting to deploy
Speaker 4: the military against protests. And she framed the Supreme Court's
Speaker 4: new ruling to give president's immunity in court from criminal
Speaker 4: prosecution as imagining Trump but now without any guard rails,
Speaker 4: which of course is very scary. And part of this
Speaker 4: is Project twenty twenty five again trying to reiterate this
Speaker 4: as the Republican's playbook in case Trump is able to
Speaker 4: get back into office. Mentions of Project twenty twenty five
Speaker 4: starting a series of we are not going back chance,
Speaker 4: which I think is probably some of the best messaging
Speaker 4: the Democrats have the opertion of deploying this go around.
Speaker 4: I know there was an upper Democratic strategist who has
Speaker 4: been meeting with the Kamala team who said that this
Speaker 4: messaging doesn't work because it's too vague and too negative
Speaker 4: and not enough focused on the future, and thankfully the Democrats,
Speaker 4: or at least Kamala's team, did not listen to that guy,
Speaker 4: because that is the most wrong a man has ever been.
Speaker 4: This messaging has been played very well in person at
Speaker 4: all these rallies, and especially at the DNC. Kama talked
Speaker 4: a little bit about economics, saying, quote, we are charting
Speaker 4: a future towards a strong and growing middle class unquote,
Speaker 4: and quote, we will build an opportunity economy where everyone
Speaker 4: has a chance to compete and a chance to succeed unquote,
Speaker 4: which I guess is fine.
Speaker 5: I don't know.
Speaker 4: I have a few kind of issues with this, mainly
Speaker 4: like what happens when you don't succeed and what happens
Speaker 4: to the lower class. Throughout the entirety of the DNC,
Speaker 4: there's been a lot of talk about growing a strong
Speaker 4: middle class and a big focus on the middle class,
Speaker 4: but very little focused on actually helping the people that
Speaker 4: are having it the hardest in this country instead really
Speaker 4: really catering to like the middle class voter. And I
Speaker 4: don't know, it's it's like there's a lot of talk
Speaker 4: about labor. There's a lot talking about like working people,
Speaker 4: like workers' rights, that stuff all has a pretty big
Speaker 4: spotlight at the DNC this year, but very little mentions
Speaker 4: of how we can actually improve life for the lower class.
Speaker 5: She did talk about, you know.
Speaker 4: Very vague gestures towards lowering the cost of everyday needs,
Speaker 4: but so far she's kind of yet to unveil any
Speaker 4: actual solid policies. Really we have that first time home
Speaker 4: buyers like twenty five K.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she's proposed some details on like how to help
Speaker 2: increase the number of first time home buyers and build
Speaker 2: an additional like three million homes in the United States,
Speaker 2: Like there's been some but it is all kind of
Speaker 2: vague at this point.
Speaker 8: Now.
Speaker 2: One thing that they do have going for them is
Speaker 2: when the dim say, like we're going to cut inflation.
Speaker 2: You know, we've seen inflation drop from the post pandemic
Speaker 2: highs over the last couple of years to the point
Speaker 2: where it's at now, so like that is that, you know,
Speaker 2: there's a leg to stand on there. And in general,
Speaker 2: I actually think one of the better economic points was
Speaker 2: made by Clinton during his speech, which is that, like
Speaker 2: the vast majority of jobs that have been created over
Speaker 2: all of our lifetimes have been created under democratic presidents,
Speaker 2: and you know if you can't, if like that's your
Speaker 2: voting issue. The polls are also moving in the direction
Speaker 2: of that. People seem to be trusting Kamala more on
Speaker 2: the economy. Yan, they trusted Biden even though there's not
Speaker 2: really a perfectly logical reason to do that. But this
Speaker 2: is elections aren't about logic, right, Like.
Speaker 5: No, They're about vibes.
Speaker 2: They're about vibes in a lot of ways. They're about vibes.
Speaker 2: And I do think the dims. I think the dims
Speaker 2: have that actually, like the good headwinds on and now
Speaker 2: a lot can change in the next seventy days or so.
Speaker 2: What I really saw with this speech and with this
Speaker 2: convention as a whole, was the Democratic Party embracing the
Speaker 2: middle and some conservatives. And yeah, they tried not to
Speaker 2: be too directly abrasive to progressives and the left.
Speaker 5: But they weren't catering to them.
Speaker 2: But they were not catering to it.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Kamala did attack Trump on taxes, specifically saying that trumpill
Speaker 4: do tax breaks to his billionaire friends, it'll add a
Speaker 4: five trillion too the national debt, and she called Trump's
Speaker 4: tariff proposal basically a national sales tax, or a Trump
Speaker 4: tax that will raise costs for middle class families by
Speaker 4: up to four thousand dollars a year, which is in
Speaker 4: line with the whole bunch of economists' predictions if Trump's
Speaker 4: tariffs do go through, and then again gesturing to kind
Speaker 4: of vague policy ideas without actually proposing strict policies, saying
Speaker 4: that quote, we will provide access to capital for entrepreneurs,
Speaker 4: small business owners, and founders, warning that Trump will ban
Speaker 4: abortion pills and enact in national abortion ban and force
Speaker 4: the states to report on people's abortions and miscarriages, and
Speaker 4: instead of common will sign into law a bill that
Speaker 4: protects abortion access nationally, as well as calling to pass
Speaker 4: the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and the Freedom to
Speaker 4: Vote Act, and more kind of vague gestures towards protecting
Speaker 4: the freedom to love who you love, to have clean
Speaker 4: air and clean water, and the freedom that unlocks all others,
Speaker 4: the freedom to vote. So that's kind of the most
Speaker 4: of the domestic policy section of the speech, and that
Speaker 4: is the part of the speech that we missed. And
Speaker 4: then we came in right started talking about the border,
Speaker 4: saying again that, like many others have talked about the
Speaker 4: DNC how the Democrats and Republicans worked together to write
Speaker 4: the strongest border bill in decades, and Kamala said that
Speaker 4: this bill was endorsed by the Border Patrol which it wasn't.
Speaker 4: It was endorsed by the Border Patrol.
Speaker 5: Union, but who cares.
Speaker 4: And Kamma talked about how Trump called Republicans to kill
Speaker 4: the bill so that Democrats couldn't take credit, and she
Speaker 4: promised that she will bring back this bill and sign
Speaker 4: it into law, saying that, quote, we can create an
Speaker 4: earned pathway to citizenship and.
Speaker 5: Secure our border unquote.
Speaker 4: So again, this is one of the areas that Democrats
Speaker 4: I think have lost the most amount of ground on
Speaker 4: the past like eight years, and they are still kind
Speaker 4: of willing to seed it. And then in terms of
Speaker 4: like geopolitics and foreign policy, one line of kammalist that
Speaker 4: has kind of cotton some flak, but also I don't know,
Speaker 4: I'll just read it, we can talk about it. She
Speaker 4: said that quote, I will ensure America always has the
Speaker 4: strong I guess to most lethal fighting force in the world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so did you guys, what did you think by
Speaker 2: the use of that language.
Speaker 3: I think she was trying to appeal to the voters
Speaker 3: that don't think a woman can lead.
Speaker 1: That's the end of my sentence.
Speaker 5: Agreed.
Speaker 2: Oh interesting, I feel very differently.
Speaker 4: I found this as being a reaction to right wing
Speaker 4: and centrist attacks kind of questioning her strength as a leader. Yea,
Speaker 4: So she went for very very like intense language on this.
Speaker 2: So I feel very differently about that. And I think
Speaker 2: this may be just due to the fact that I've
Speaker 2: kind of some more experience with how people in the
Speaker 2: NATSK space speak, because the phrasing that she used, it's
Speaker 2: been lampooned a lot online. We've all had a couple
Speaker 2: of some bits about, you know, talking about I don't
Speaker 2: want a lethal the most lethal military in the world.
Speaker 2: I want this or that, but like that's what the
Speaker 2: military does. No, no, Well, lethality is also a meme term, right,
Speaker 2: Like that's the way it is used in this space.
Speaker 2: Like if you go to like speeches where people who
Speaker 2: are involved in any level as contractors in the military
Speaker 2: industrial complex making arms working for like, it is all
Speaker 2: about when they're talking about like improving efficiency within the
Speaker 2: air Force, it's about lethality, right, we are increasing lethality,
Speaker 2: Like that is our goal. That's what we're doing here today,
Speaker 2: because that is the measure by which you determine the
Speaker 2: success of the organization. So what I saw Harris as
Speaker 2: doing by using that specific terminology was not I am
Speaker 2: trying to talk extra hard in order to burnish my
Speaker 2: credentials because conservatives are going to attack me. It was
Speaker 2: Trump is actually kind of weak on the national security stuff,
Speaker 2: especially within the community of people who are like Natsek
Speaker 2: gools Yeah, right, within people who are members who have
Speaker 2: are born and raised members like my family, a lot
Speaker 2: of them, of the military industrial complex, the people who
Speaker 2: have their professions in that space, right, they actually don't
Speaker 2: all like Trump a lot. And some evidence of that
Speaker 2: was recently he made some statements where he essentially insulted
Speaker 2: Medal of Honor recipients that like the VFW came out
Speaker 2: and attacked Trump, which is wild, like absolutely unpaced.
Speaker 1: I do think it's a little bit.
Speaker 3: I definitely agree with you, Robert, but I do think
Speaker 3: it's a little bit of what gar and I were
Speaker 3: talking about as well. An another thing that I'm just
Speaker 3: thinking of, as Robert saying that, is just how often
Speaker 3: Trump has said that, you know, the war, the war
Speaker 3: in Ukraine wouldn't happen if he was in office, that
Speaker 3: like he putn't scared of him and things like that,
Speaker 3: as like one of his main reasons why we should
Speaker 3: re elect him is because he commands authority and nobody
Speaker 3: did anything bad when he was in power. And I
Speaker 3: think a lot of that has to do with Kamala's
Speaker 3: language choice.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's it's she said what she said because
Speaker 2: it was a way of expressing like.
Speaker 4: Like an internal signifier to other people in the NAT
Speaker 4: sock space.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it was. It was.
Speaker 5: It was a way of saying that I am not
Speaker 5: just I'm not an outsider.
Speaker 2: I am a professional. I understand and speak about this
Speaker 2: the same way that you guys do.
Speaker 5: Yeah yeah, yeah, right, No, I can I can see that.
Speaker 2: You know, the whole speech I kind of saw in
Speaker 2: those terms. It was very much calculated. I could see
Speaker 2: who they were trying to get with that speech. There
Speaker 2: was a bit in there for everybody, uh, and they
Speaker 2: were trying to get kind of those moderate chunks of
Speaker 2: every group, including moderate chunks of the people whose like
Speaker 2: primary issue is gaza, right, because there is a chunk
Speaker 2: of the people who's who are are mostly concerned to
Speaker 2: this election with what the fuck we're going to do
Speaker 2: about Gaza. But also are not you know, hardline communists
Speaker 2: or whatever? You know, are people who like the uncommitted folks,
Speaker 2: really want to embrace the Democratic Party, and are maybe.
Speaker 5: People who still believe in the system want to just.
Speaker 2: Need a little bit of a lie that they can
Speaker 2: go along with to vote right, Like Kamala was attempting
Speaker 2: to kind of give because she didn't announce a substantive
Speaker 2: change in policy. No, her verbiage on Gaza in this
Speaker 2: speech was the same as the kind of stuff that
Speaker 2: like Obama was saying, honestly, like ten years ago.
Speaker 6: Sure, Gary, do you have a quote of what she said? Yeah,
Speaker 6: let's talk about it. But first let's head to our
Speaker 6: last ad.
Speaker 1: Break real quick.
Speaker 4: All right, let's talk about her closing remarks relating on
Speaker 4: foreign policy and Palestine. I guess there's a few other
Speaker 4: kind of general foreign policy things. Yeah, saying that under
Speaker 4: her watch, quote, we will lead the world into the
Speaker 4: future on space and artificial intelligence, America, not China will
Speaker 4: win the competition for the twenty first century unquote. She
Speaker 4: framed Trump as an ally of Russia and Putin, and
Speaker 4: she claimed that she will help us quote stand strong
Speaker 4: with Ukraine and our NATO allies. And then finally, one
Speaker 4: of the last things she talked about was Israel Palestine, saying, quote,
Speaker 4: President Bien and I are working around the clock. Now
Speaker 4: is the time to get a hostage deal done and
Speaker 4: a ceasefire deal done. This had a decent sized cheer.
Speaker 4: She followed this up by saying, quote, we will always
Speaker 4: stand for Israel's right to defend itself and ensure Israel
Speaker 4: has the ability to defend itself unquote. And I think
Speaker 4: this signals mostly to people that it's unlikely she will
Speaker 4: adopt anything resembling an arms embargo, And there was a
Speaker 4: lot of internal pressure from the uncommitted folks, people who
Speaker 4: got into the DNC trying to push on this topic,
Speaker 4: specifically because Democrats are now kind of adopted kind of
Speaker 4: vague ceasefire rhetoric. Now, the goalpost does need to be
Speaker 4: shifted towards something that will actually stop the bombing of
Speaker 4: families inside Gaza, and that is an arms embargo, some
Speaker 4: kind of conditions on the way that bombs and weapons
Speaker 4: are going to be used. And I think this line
Speaker 4: signified that that is probably not going to take place,
Speaker 4: at least before the election.
Speaker 1: No, definitely, not before the election.
Speaker 2: Wait, that's very clear at this point.
Speaker 4: And she kind of both sides this issue. Yeah, Her
Speaker 4: last quote was quote, what has happened in Gaza over
Speaker 4: the past ten months is devastating. So many innocent lives lost, desperate,
Speaker 4: hungry people fleeing for safety. Why over and over again,
Speaker 4: the scale of suffering is heartbreaking.
Speaker 2: Whom is making them do this?
Speaker 4: President Biden and I are working to end this war
Speaker 4: such that Israel is secure, the hostages are released, the
Speaker 4: suffering in Gaza ends, and the Palestinian people can realize
Speaker 4: their right to dignity, security, freedom, and self determination.
Speaker 5: Unquote. And this was.
Speaker 4: Followed by what I would call the biggest cheers of
Speaker 4: the entire night.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I was.
Speaker 6: I was about to say the crowd reaction was massive to.
Speaker 4: That people lost it so much, bigger cheers than saying
Speaker 4: we will ensure Israel has the ability to defend itself.
Speaker 4: This closing line about dignity, security, freedom, and self determination
Speaker 4: for the Palestinian people gotten by far the biggest years.
Speaker 5: And but like, what does it mean? Like what are
Speaker 5: you actually saying?
Speaker 1: It means nothing?
Speaker 2: I mean, what all of that means to me? Is
Speaker 2: that like Democrats because they are normal people, they're not Republicans.
Speaker 2: They know how bad all this is. They hate it.
Speaker 5: They are mad at at and Yahoo.
Speaker 2: You only really need to see a couple of war
Speaker 2: crime videos to know that, like what happened is happening
Speaker 2: over there is ghastly. They also aren't willing to like
Speaker 2: nuke their lives and a lot of other people's lives
Speaker 2: to let Trump back in, right.
Speaker 4: And I do believe they genuinely view Israel as an
Speaker 4: extremely important ally in the Middle East.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they think that this could be fixed, right
Speaker 2: because like we did some awful stuff in Iraq, but
Speaker 2: then we elected Bobama and everything got better, right or
Speaker 2: something like that. Yeah.
Speaker 4: No, I mean like they don't like Netan Yahoo, the
Speaker 4: batting admin doesn't like that Yahoo because he's not efficient
Speaker 4: at war. He's efficient at doing like like an ethnic cleansing,
Speaker 4: he's efficient at doing wide civilian casualties, but he's not
Speaker 4: gonna actually like fighting this war very well. This is
Speaker 4: something that like Biden's team has consistently not been thrilled by,
Speaker 4: but they're not gonna do much about it. Kind of
Speaker 4: the last foreign policy line that she had was quote,
Speaker 4: I will never hesitate to take whatever action is necessary
Speaker 4: to defend our forces and our interests against Iran and
Speaker 4: Iran backed terrorists, and will not cozy up to tyrants
Speaker 4: and dictators like Kim Jong un who are rooting for
Speaker 4: Trump unquote. And I think basically this ties into a
Speaker 4: whole bunch of rhetoric that I've seen throughout the DNC,
Speaker 4: including from speakers, speakers who are either vets or active military,
Speaker 4: that seems to be kind of slowly preparing the Democratic
Speaker 4: Party for another war, for some kind of on the
Speaker 4: ground activity in the Middle East, whether that be in Lebanon,
Speaker 4: whether that be in Iran.
Speaker 5: It's like they're slowly just.
Speaker 4: Prepping us for the possibility of war or invasion.
Speaker 1: Oh, that does seem likely.
Speaker 4: This is a big part of like the Democratic Party's
Speaker 4: official like policy platform on Phalesteine, which they did release
Speaker 4: during the DNC, and a big part of that is
Speaker 4: about is talking about how important Israel is as a
Speaker 4: Middle East ally.
Speaker 2: Where will we fly our planes over.
Speaker 4: If they ever need to put troops on the ground.
Speaker 4: And I think that is so much of why they're
Speaker 4: unwilling to budge on anything resembling like an actual ceasefire
Speaker 4: or an arms embargo. Is because they view this as
Speaker 4: like a real possibility. Anyway, that was that was this speech.
Speaker 4: The balloons dropped. Everyone lost their minds. Yep, it's not
Speaker 4: a cult in the same way.
Speaker 2: But there's there's you can see one building.
Speaker 4: Maybe the party is a cult, but it's not a
Speaker 4: Kamala cult the same way the GOP is now a
Speaker 4: Trump cult, right, like the Republicans are now a Trump cult.
Speaker 10: It is.
Speaker 4: It is not a cult of like who is the
Speaker 4: leader in the DNC, but it is more of a
Speaker 4: cult of like ideology, which I guess the Republicans just
Speaker 4: don't even have anymore.
Speaker 2: It's not even that it's it's a cult of I
Speaker 2: think I would describe it as defensive cult making. Democrats
Speaker 2: have been so bewildered and frightened by the momentum that
Speaker 2: and his people have had over the last decade, and
Speaker 2: they have like responded in part by adapting some aspects
Speaker 2: of like the cultic milieu to wrap around these ideas
Speaker 2: that like are safe to them like that. That's a
Speaker 2: big part of the appeal of that don't go back
Speaker 2: champ right, which I think is a smart bit of
Speaker 2: politics and I think actually it has the potential to
Speaker 2: save quite a bit of lives, particularly at least of
Speaker 2: like queer trans people in the United States. So I'm
Speaker 2: not saying this is bad politics, but there is a
Speaker 2: level of cultiness to that where you are kind of
Speaker 2: enrapturing people with this possibility of constant forward motion that
Speaker 2: we all know doesn't feel as true as it felt
Speaker 2: in twenties fifteen or fourteen, you know, it doesn't feel
Speaker 2: as possible as it felt in twenty twelve or two
Speaker 2: thousand and eight. That they're kind of trying to sell
Speaker 2: people on if we can just get over the hurdle
Speaker 2: of these Republicans, right, we can get back to the
Speaker 2: period where like things felt like we were all moving
Speaker 2: in the right direction, and that's magical thinking, Yeah.
Speaker 5: We can get back to a period of steady progress.
Speaker 2: I try to be even about this because as I
Speaker 2: wrote that episode, the fucking don't panic episode, because I
Speaker 2: was looking at people's talking on Reddit and Twitter and
Speaker 2: just in real life and being like, I think some
Speaker 2: folks might kill themselves soon, yeah, out of fear of
Speaker 2: the Republicans. So I really hope no one reads what
Speaker 2: I'm saying is like, ah, these stupid libs and their
Speaker 2: hope fetish It's like no, no, no, but it's still
Speaker 2: a cultic belief. It's not rational. It may be necessary
Speaker 2: sometimes irrational beliefs are necessary, sure, but there's not a
Speaker 2: good reason for it yet. And don't fall too far.
Speaker 2: Like fall, try not to fall further down that hole.
Speaker 2: Then you need to fall in order to keep yourself
Speaker 2: alive for the next eight months.
Speaker 4: So, even though Trump has spoke a lot the past
Speaker 4: eight years, his speech at the ER and C I
Speaker 4: think was important because it was the first one post assassination.
Speaker 4: His viewership for that speech peaked at twenty eight point
Speaker 4: four million. Viewership for Kamala's speech Thursday night peaked at
Speaker 4: twenty eight point nine million. So she edged him out
Speaker 4: just barely, at least in terms of peak numbers, by
Speaker 4: about five hundred thousand views.
Speaker 1: Very even, very even, yeah.
Speaker 5: Very even.
Speaker 4: And again like Kama's not spoken tons, there's a lot
Speaker 4: of people of tuning in to see what she sounds like,
Speaker 4: kind of for the first time on a big national platform.
Speaker 4: And meanwhile, I think people are just briefly tuning into
Speaker 4: Trump just to see what he's like after getting shot
Speaker 4: in the head. And I will read a few of
Speaker 4: Trump's tweets of.
Speaker 2: Well, he's not doing well. He's not doing well at all?
Speaker 1: Man, was he spiraling? Oh my god?
Speaker 5: From Kamala's speech? He just started by all caps, is
Speaker 5: she talking about me?
Speaker 2: Excellent, incredible stuff, Donald, buddy, I can tell you're slipping
Speaker 2: because four years ago, if you'd tried to tweet that out,
Speaker 2: you wouldn't have had to hear it from someone. There
Speaker 2: would have been a voice in your own head before
Speaker 2: you pressin that would have been like, don't do that, Donnie,
Speaker 2: come on, Donnie, come on, come on, You're better than.
Speaker 4: This quote too many thank yous, too rapidly said what's
Speaker 4: going on with her? Followed by one minute later in
Speaker 4: all caps, where's Hunter see again?
Speaker 2: His prime? It would have been something. It would have
Speaker 2: been something like loopy harror, shit, some shit. He would
Speaker 2: have made some sort of insulting remark about her personal
Speaker 2: appearance and ignored the rest of the speech.
Speaker 4: One one minute later, Walls was an assistant coach, not
Speaker 4: a coach.
Speaker 2: That's such a weak.
Speaker 1: Very funny, very funny.
Speaker 5: Oh my god.
Speaker 2: Most American men have been on a sports team, and
Speaker 2: we all know you just call them all coach. Everyone
Speaker 2: is like coach, They're just all coach. You don't say
Speaker 2: assistant coach. No player in a football team is everything like, hey,
Speaker 2: assistant coach, could you come over here? Like that's just
Speaker 2: not the way people are.
Speaker 1: No wow, anything else.
Speaker 4: A few months ago, we did an episode talking about
Speaker 4: kind of polls that is now largely outdated because Biden's
Speaker 4: no longer in the race, but we did talk about
Speaker 4: how most people's pick for president was literally anybody else.
Speaker 4: We saw one booth at the DNC protest that was
Speaker 4: literally anyone else themed booth, And oh boy, do I
Speaker 4: have news for you, buddy.
Speaker 7: Good news.
Speaker 4: But we do have some polling data kind of on
Speaker 4: how satisfied people feel based on their choices for this
Speaker 4: presidential election. Now, obviously there's there's a small post convention
Speaker 4: bump for Harris, but that that that kind of usually
Speaker 4: tapers off. But in terms of their satisfaction of the
Speaker 4: candidacy options, in May, only fifty five percent of Democrats
Speaker 4: said they were satisfied. Now seventy nine percent say they're satisfied.
Speaker 4: Massive and for Republicans, back in May, sixty eight were
Speaker 4: satisfied and now seventy four are satisfied, so but both
Speaker 4: are moving towards higher satisfaction. And obviously the giant shift
Speaker 4: in Democrat numbers is because is because of Kamala now
Speaker 4: and they're more satisfied with her than Republicans seem to
Speaker 4: be with Trump, which is which is an interesting stat
Speaker 4: And this is based on a New York Times Seata
Speaker 4: College poll of registered voters in Arizona, Georgia, Nomada, Michigan, Pennsylvania,
Speaker 4: and Wisconsin.
Speaker 5: So that's just.
Speaker 4: A few a few interesting a few interesting little notes
Speaker 4: there as we close out this week talking about the DNC.
Speaker 4: And then finally I have one kind of little funny anecdote.
Speaker 4: As we were leaving the DNC after Kamala's speech, means,
Speaker 4: Sophie was walking around this area of Chicago trying to
Speaker 4: get far enough away from the convention center to get
Speaker 4: nuber and I saw this guy maybe in his like
Speaker 4: oh so funny, probably in his twenties, who is either
Speaker 4: about to block up or just de blocked.
Speaker 5: And you can tell because he's wearing the pants he's wearing.
Speaker 2: Doc Martins Scarrison is referring to someone who has just
Speaker 2: taken off their black block as in the traditional kind
Speaker 2: of anarchist protest garb and put on normal street clothes
Speaker 2: so as to escape from a police cordon.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so this guy was walking around, either about to
Speaker 4: go to the protest or just left still had the
Speaker 4: Doc martins On, had like the backpack full of his stuff.
Speaker 4: And as he walked by me, I just almost instinctively,
Speaker 4: like without thinking at all, this was this was this
Speaker 4: wasn't on purpose, Just instinctively, I kind of muttered to myself,
Speaker 4: I know what you are and and he heard this
Speaker 4: and like turned around, looking kind of like confused or concern,
Speaker 4: and I just had to I had to turn around.
Speaker 4: I just gave him a smile and a thumbs up,
Speaker 4: and he smiled back and kept and kept walking on.
Speaker 4: And that was my last interaction at the DNC, just
Speaker 4: like this a little bit of using to me. There
Speaker 4: was a protest of around similar numbers to Mondays, so
Speaker 4: maybe like three thousand, two thousand people for kind of
Speaker 4: the last march on the DNC last Thursday. So there
Speaker 4: was another one of these big kind of coalition led marches.
Speaker 2: Quickly. It was not far from Monday's numbers actually, which
Speaker 2: was impressive.
Speaker 4: Pretty close, pretty close, but they did not reach the
Speaker 4: fence on like last time, a small section of them
Speaker 4: did not break off from the protest marshals and bypass
Speaker 4: a section of the fence on onlike Monday, which did
Speaker 4: cause significant disruptions, but disruptions were not needed because the
Speaker 4: DNZ disrupted itself by overbooking the venue and having way
Speaker 4: too many people.
Speaker 5: So there you go. That was the DNC.
Speaker 6: I'm really glad it's over me too.
Speaker 2: I'm really glad it's over too. And I can't wait
Speaker 2: until twenty twenty eight when we all get to be
Speaker 2: together again to cover the next election. If there is.
Speaker 4: One, Comrade AOC proudly takes control. She raises the red
Speaker 4: flag on stage.
Speaker 2: Comrade AOC with her vice presidential candidate, the literal bones
Speaker 2: of Leon Trotsky running versus just an open chasm to
Speaker 2: the pit of Hell, an actual crack in the earth
Speaker 2: through which you can see the ephemeral forms of demons
Speaker 2: roiling in the magma below. That's gotta be a great
Speaker 2: gotta be a great one. Really excited for those conventions.
Speaker 1: And or Donald Trump Junior.
Speaker 2: Eric Trump and Donald Trump Junior, finally the Dream Team.
Speaker 5: I believe they could open up a chasm to Hell.
Speaker 8: I do.
Speaker 2: I think what would be more likely is if Eric
Speaker 2: Trump and Donald Trump Junior are on the same team
Speaker 2: with a bunch of secret Service agents, that we finally,
Speaker 2: finally have a presidential election decided from a fentanyl overdose.
Speaker 2: They get some tampered coke.
Speaker 1: Anyways, the podcast is over.
Speaker 11: I'm gonna go die now goodbye.
Speaker 10: When therefore, a man is told you your inner being
Speaker 10: are so and so because your skull bone is so constituted,
Speaker 10: this means nothing else than that we regard a bone
Speaker 10: as the man's reality. To retort upon such a statement,
Speaker 10: The retort here would properly speaking, have to go to
Speaker 10: the link, so breaking the skull of the person who
Speaker 10: makes a statement like that, in order to demonstrate to
Speaker 10: him in a manner as palpable as his own wisdom,
Speaker 10: that a bone is nothing of an inherent nature at
Speaker 10: all for a man still less his true reality. Welcome
Speaker 10: to knapp here. I'm your host, Bia Wong. That was
Speaker 10: the man himself, George Wilhelm Frederick Hegel from the Phenomenology
Speaker 10: of Mind.
Speaker 7: I'm gonna go full Ceesar shape post here like that's not.
Speaker 10: Hegel lovely and with me is as you as you
Speaker 10: have just heard is Emmie Flores, a queer socialist in
Speaker 10: Mexico City who's we've had on the show before talk
Speaker 10: about Mexican turfs, who's worked with Zapotisea Networks, And we are,
Speaker 10: once again, I think, delving into the terrifying, extremely well
Speaker 10: organized world of Mexican turfs. And I guess this is
Speaker 10: kind of a they're eating a bit of shit episode,
Speaker 10: which is good.
Speaker 7: We have good news in this show.
Speaker 10: Who very rare occurrence we have. We have a little
Speaker 10: bit of good news. Yeah, also, welcome to the show.
Speaker 10: Excited to have you back.
Speaker 7: I love it. I love the show, and I'm happy
Speaker 7: to update because last time we left on a real
Speaker 7: sour note, and this time, I mean, it's not exactly
Speaker 7: fantastic news, but things are looking up in this specific part,
Speaker 7: and I think you're going to introduce us to a
Speaker 7: massive dolly we just got worldwide.
Speaker 10: Yeah, so we ended up not doing a full episode
Speaker 10: on this, but one of the big sort of stories
Speaker 10: for the last few weeks.
Speaker 5: And I don't know.
Speaker 10: When this episod is gonna be coming out, so maybe
Speaker 10: this is gonna be ancient news by that point. But
Speaker 10: the day we're recording this is like one day after
Speaker 10: the Aegerian boxer in mon khalif I'd won the gold
Speaker 10: medal of the Olympics. She has been I mean, this
Speaker 10: story has been sort of beaten to death, but like
Speaker 10: she's been like accused of being a man and being
Speaker 10: like transgender, and like all of this shit from a
Speaker 10: whole bunch of like, I mean everyone from like Elon
Speaker 10: Musk to like jk Rowling to Meggan. Kelly's losing her
Speaker 10: mind about it. I forgot she even existed until this,
Speaker 10: but she's apparently around and doing this, you know. So
Speaker 10: so I think people sort of know the basics of
Speaker 10: this story, but there's a part of the story about
Speaker 10: sort of you know, I will, I guess we'll probably
Speaker 10: get into a little bit of this about how a
Speaker 10: lot of this is sort of manufactured by a bunch
Speaker 10: of incredibly sore losers and like weird transphobes in a
Speaker 10: incredibly corrupt like Russian ran boxing association, right right. But
Speaker 10: the other side of this, it has gotten absolutely zero
Speaker 10: coverage anywhere. Is that a huge amount of the attacks
Speaker 10: against against her were started by the Mexican Turf Network.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and so presently one of the few coverages I've
Speaker 7: seen has been in Mexican like feminist news, which is
Speaker 7: like part of the things that have changed since then,
Speaker 7: like Mexican and Latin American feminists have realized, oh, we
Speaker 7: fucked up, and we're trying to fix our mistakes. But sadly,
Speaker 7: I think the world suffered one of our latest mistakes.
Speaker 10: Yeah, so can you tell us about sort of how
Speaker 10: this whole thing started, which I think is like several
Speaker 10: years earlier than most people seem to really like understand.
Speaker 7: I think the corruption angle that we might expand a
Speaker 7: little bit more, that is the beginning of it. And
Speaker 7: I think it was a little bit and it was
Speaker 7: like in the wrong place at the wrong time. Let's
Speaker 7: be real, she won gold. I was not betting on
Speaker 7: her winning gold. Like, she's really good, but she's not
Speaker 7: like the buffiest out there. It's pure racism and convenience
Speaker 7: that she's been labeled and targeted the way the wish
Speaker 7: is because like you see her opponents and there are
Speaker 7: the buffiest girls I've ever seen in my life. They're incredible,
Speaker 7: Like every single athlete up there is amazing. And took
Speaker 7: pictures of her and say, you're telling me, this is
Speaker 7: not a man like she's like a little bit skinny honestly,
Speaker 7: Like she's really tall, so she has to be skinny
Speaker 7: to be competing that way.
Speaker 10: It's like have you had people ever seen a boxer before,
Speaker 10: Like it's just bad.
Speaker 7: Like one of the boxers that defended her, like she
Speaker 7: was offended, Like you're telling me that I've been in
Speaker 7: money before, and like I didn't even qualify for these
Speaker 7: year's Olympics. Like she's not invincible, even if this is
Speaker 7: probably her best best performance. Yea, she really show on
Speaker 7: the spotlight. I love her, but like she's not extremely
Speaker 7: muscular or anything. Not that being muscular is masculine, but
Speaker 7: like this was really just both racism and convenience. But
Speaker 7: part of that is uh. One of the first people
Speaker 7: who started complaining about this after the corrupt Russian Russian
Speaker 7: Oligor glad box in federation that got disqualified from the Olympics.
Speaker 10: Yeah, like again I want I want a plause here
Speaker 10: and everyone like take note of this. Do you understand
Speaker 10: how corrupt of an organization you have to be for
Speaker 10: the fucking Olympics to stop working with you, Like you
Speaker 10: have to make the Chicago fucking machine look squeaky clean
Speaker 10: for for the Olympics to network.
Speaker 12: Like when we're talking about every single other sport is
Speaker 12: also wind shit like this, Like they just went to
Speaker 12: greedy like they like in some Russian oligarch that got
Speaker 12: into fights with people during the war in Ukraine, and
Speaker 12: then they didn't stop doing corruption shit, Like they couldn't
Speaker 12: just take a year break.
Speaker 7: They had to push. Yeah, like they had to play
Speaker 7: two dirty. So at the end of the day in
Speaker 7: Manica disqualified with like trust me, pro levels of citations
Speaker 7: for her. No one knew for a while what what
Speaker 7: was the thing that disqualified her? What was it? Hormones, chromosomes, vibes.
Speaker 7: It turns out it's mostly vibes. Yeah, and uh so
Speaker 7: when when she got disqualified from a not an Olympic event,
Speaker 7: but uh corrupt Russian arclead event. A former boxer who
Speaker 7: lost against her, who's from Mexico, who sucks ass like
Speaker 7: she's really dog shit. She started posting pictures of her
Speaker 7: ruses after the match, and honestly, she reminds me of
Speaker 7: the Italian boxer that also got her ship rocks. Yeah,
Speaker 7: because they keep she did perform very well in Many
Speaker 7: at the at the end when when she got gold,
Speaker 7: but the very first like matches she got were against
Speaker 7: like how did these people get here?
Speaker 10: Yeah, like that that Italian boxer, Like this is the
Speaker 10: only time I will ever say this about something that
Speaker 10: happened in the Olympics.
Speaker 5: It's like the Italian boxer threw the.
Speaker 10: Worst punch I've ever seen and then instantly got punched
Speaker 10: by like the most obvious punch of the entire world
Speaker 10: in the face.
Speaker 5: It's like, wait, what are you doing? How did you
Speaker 5: get here?
Speaker 7: Like, and like I won't go deep into why why
Speaker 7: Brianda Tamara sucks so much as because that would have
Speaker 7: been the episode we ended up not doing, but suffice
Speaker 7: it to say, like she's just not in that level.
Speaker 7: She didn't qualify for a reason this time. But and
Speaker 7: also I noticed that she was waiting to do her
Speaker 7: proterview right now, like something fill planned about all of this. Yeah,
Speaker 7: Like she she announced that she retired from amateur boxing,
Speaker 7: which you not, honestly is the more legit boxing, don't
Speaker 7: at me. And she she's going bro which means she's
Speaker 7: now charging for tickets. And she announced her ProView the
Speaker 7: same day that this whole like bundle started for international
Speaker 7: people watching the Olympics. Like she very much knew that
Speaker 7: the people were gonna try something.
Speaker 10: Yeah, so she so she's using this as like boxing promoting, yeah,
Speaker 10: pretty much, which is like the shady ship.
Speaker 7: Yeah, boxing promoting in Cinela, which like if you know
Speaker 7: anything about Mexico, that's that's gonna be a couple of
Speaker 7: red les, oh boy. But so the thing is, why
Speaker 7: did she knew that she was gonna happen? Really says
Speaker 7: a lot about how international terms are operating nowadays, right,
Speaker 7: like I don't want to get all fucking Russia Gate
Speaker 7: and like like have my fucking persecure body pillow like
Speaker 7: some leaves have. But terms are trying to get money
Speaker 7: and influence anywhere they can, and some of them are
Speaker 7: trying to get in from Russia, right like yeah, it's
Speaker 7: if they're already putting people in concreation camps in China,
Speaker 7: like they say, hell, yeah, I want me some of that.
Speaker 7: And you know the Brits are something too focused on Britain.
Speaker 7: You need something international to make the money flow down
Speaker 7: to Latin America, especially out of Spain. Spain kind of
Speaker 7: hawks it all for themselves. The first new site that
Speaker 7: took the years ago translated to English is called Redox
Speaker 7: magazine like that, I think it's a Canadian joint reados.
Speaker 7: It's the only side I've seen in all of like
Speaker 7: the urf landscape that only publishes in English and Spanish. Like,
Speaker 7: it's very clearly a fulcrum for like terf organizing in
Speaker 7: Latin America and in the anglosphere. And I don't think
Speaker 7: it's a coincidence that this story broke quote unquote, Like
Speaker 7: the first people who commented on this and like renewed
Speaker 7: the accusations of Umana being trans was Redocs and then
Speaker 7: other like transphobic boxing coaches from Italy and England and
Speaker 7: the United States started picking up the story. But that
Speaker 7: was after like the more diplomatically minded Mexican turfs and
Speaker 7: Spanish turfs that usually don't work together. Again, they don't
Speaker 7: like to share. Listen, Mexico don't have the best relationship
Speaker 7: with Spain for obvious reasons. Yeah, But even then, like
Speaker 7: ass spaces for TERFs in Mexico had been closing, they're
Speaker 7: looking for funding from other places. Right, the turf gambit
Speaker 7: didn't work quite well in Mexico, so they're trying to
Speaker 7: look for international sponsor sponsorships, and they thought they had
Speaker 7: hit a big one here. They had the attention of
Speaker 7: the entire world. People were sharing Breanda's photos because like again,
Speaker 7: Brianda doesn't have it's not a good boxer, so she
Speaker 7: looks like a young short, pretty lated like beer Verista,
Speaker 7: and put her against like someone who's like a head
Speaker 7: taller that beat her ass because she she sucks. They
Speaker 7: couldn't ask for a very propaganda. Yeah, but it really
Speaker 7: backfired when the entire world went, what what are you
Speaker 7: talking about? Yeah, but I think it worked for Mexican turfs.
Speaker 7: I think they might get like a couple of grants
Speaker 7: here and there. They're back in the railar at least internationally,
Speaker 7: and that's why I think coming here is really important
Speaker 7: because we didn't win precisely, and we'll get to that,
Speaker 7: but at least we're in a stalemate, and I think
Speaker 7: they're trying to look for either allies or honestly job
Speaker 7: s elsewhere. They might just want a spot in Ridos magazine,
Speaker 7: like to get into like be able to move to
Speaker 7: Britain or shit like that.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 10: I think is something that is important about the Mexican TERFs,
Speaker 10: which is like unlike in the US, where there's just
Speaker 10: this like unbelievably large pot of money that you can
Speaker 10: tap into from like the Heritage Foundation and like all
Speaker 10: of these sort of like right wing think tanks. It's
Speaker 10: like the funding is a lot harder to come by.
Speaker 7: We all have troubles getting funding.
Speaker 10: Lot.
Speaker 7: Yeah, any type of small grant that would be a
Speaker 7: nothing burger in America goes a long way here, right,
Speaker 7: And so the far right has been really smart and
Speaker 7: pushing stuff, but it hasn't really paid divends. And it's
Speaker 7: all gonna write up for a while, honestly, especially with
Speaker 7: like how the economy is going. I think in the
Speaker 7: Age of infinite money of twenty twenty, like they were
Speaker 7: willing to throw more money at like a long shot
Speaker 7: that in Brasil or Mexico right now. They got to
Speaker 7: bring something to the table, and they tried to bring
Speaker 7: in money, and they I think they fucking ate shit.
Speaker 10: Hell yeah, So okay, you know what else brings something
Speaker 10: to the table? It is the products and services that
Speaker 10: I put food on my table.
Speaker 5: I guess.
Speaker 7: God, all the other pros of this.
Speaker 5: Here are these.
Speaker 13: Ads and we are back.
Speaker 10: So I wanted to kind of move to talking about
Speaker 10: what's been happening in this sort of Mexican feminis scene
Speaker 10: in in terms of sort of what's what's been going
Speaker 10: on with her since the election of the new Mexican President,
Speaker 10: Claudia Shamebaum, Who's I don't know, like I think a
Speaker 10: lot of Americans, I think the conception of her is
Speaker 10: that she's like significantly further left, and she actually is.
Speaker 7: Oh yeah, like I you know what, I felt so
Speaker 7: much Scott and Freud when like people started talking about
Speaker 7: Kamala like she was gonna end Aparth type and the
Speaker 7: general side, and I was like, how does see it?
Speaker 7: Fucking feel sorry, I'm really angry at every single article
Speaker 7: no one caocked her correctly, like both the far right
Speaker 7: and the left thought she was significantly to the left,
Speaker 7: like everyone said like, oh, finally a feminist Jewish woman,
Speaker 7: and like the Jewish Party is gonna play a part
Speaker 7: because like I do, feel we're gonna see a rise
Speaker 7: in anti Semitism in Mexico, a big one, Like say,
Speaker 7: I feel like a Birther style movement from when Obama
Speaker 7: was elected coming up and it's gonna play again. I
Speaker 7: see Claudie shamebamb She's not just an extension of Amelo
Speaker 7: and she is I would say, not further to the
Speaker 7: left than and there's whatever, but she has less right
Speaker 7: wing things about her, right, It's not like she's better
Speaker 7: than Handload, she's just less worse. She's she because like
Speaker 7: almost like an old Christian guy, like and I do
Speaker 7: mean Christian, Like this is a Catholic country, and Nanload
Speaker 7: is like I think it's he's like Pentecostal or something
Speaker 7: like he's never needed like what his relatives said, but
Speaker 7: he did do like weird right wing things, especially culturally,
Speaker 7: well I mean not everywhere right, Like we got hell
Speaker 7: of militarized, like half our infrastructure is owned by the
Speaker 7: military now, which is like just Jack Carton metoying ourselves
Speaker 7: like for free. And he goes on rants about how
Speaker 7: drugs are caused by valuing video games and like like
Speaker 7: he like for for a week, try to like say
Speaker 7: we should ban Fortnite. That didn't know anywhere, and I
Speaker 7: think it was just because his son didn't stop playing it.
Speaker 7: Maybe he overspent on the family credit card. But like, yeah,
Speaker 7: he's very like he has a very Christian morality, and
Speaker 7: it's a weird fit with Mexicans Catholic one in the
Speaker 7: weirdest way. Like he's very like work Will, like very
Speaker 7: Protestant ethics guy, and people didn't talk about that, and
Speaker 7: now they think Claudia is gonna bring like Jewish ethics.
Speaker 7: And no, she's like just like a Mexican scientist, like professional,
Speaker 7: like she's very much a scientist at least that's her
Speaker 7: self conception and how she operates. And she I think
Speaker 7: a lot of people underestimated her, like they just saw
Speaker 7: her as an appendage of Handlow, like with no real
Speaker 7: political document or skill of herself. She doesn't really have
Speaker 7: a base of voters. Again, she's like an academic like
Speaker 7: her bass voters are college graduates left lining college garrets,
Speaker 7: but not too left learning because otherwise you'll see like, hey,
Speaker 7: please stop militaries in our country. And yeah, so we
Speaker 7: didn't expect her to to win with like the margins
Speaker 7: that she did. She won with historic margins more both
Speaker 7: than a lookout. It's just she's so fucking shrue. And
Speaker 7: this ties to the TERFs because like four years we
Speaker 7: were really worried because like we thought she was a turf,
Speaker 7: Like we straight up thought she was a turf, even
Speaker 7: though she passed some of the largest like trends positive
Speaker 7: legislations in Mexico City. That was more like momentum from
Speaker 7: Mexico City being like this progressive center of Mexican politics,
Speaker 7: and like I know, I participated in getting that law pass,
Speaker 7: like like she wasn't happy about that. She basically was
Speaker 7: trying to get some Heritage Foundation funded folks to sit
Speaker 7: in a table and like have a big discussion, like
Speaker 7: a very very centristing thing of like let's listen to
Speaker 7: both sides. And it's because she had like some of
Speaker 7: the og TERFs from Mexico, like from some some of
Speaker 7: them like that started in the seventies, Like people who
Speaker 7: knew Jenny's raim when she was young were literally in
Speaker 7: Morena structure. Like during twenty twenty, like the women's agenda
Speaker 7: for Morena was set by turfs, by some of the
Speaker 7: the worst turfs, like some of the most internationally well
Speaker 7: connected turfs too, right, and that was a huge problem.
Speaker 7: We managed to push back against that with protests with
Speaker 7: like talking to politicians like not really begging, we just
Speaker 7: you know, that's a nice win do you have there?
Speaker 7: That would be a chief having too. And also that
Speaker 7: by like my collective, like we started focusing on like
Speaker 7: oh god, I don't want to say anymore because like
Speaker 7: since since Ukraine, like saying, oh, since soul Craine. But
Speaker 7: like we started like investigating and like tracking, like these
Speaker 7: people start showing up in like government positions. That was
Speaker 7: really worrying. Yeah, some of them were like very clearly
Speaker 7: affiliated with the far right, but some of them were
Speaker 7: they came from like union jobs on and she like that,
Speaker 7: or they like they were the anarchists throwing bricks at
Speaker 7: walls like a year ago, and we started seeing them
Speaker 7: get co opted slowly, and we were really scared. But
Speaker 7: then I think we underestimated that Claudia was playing us,
Speaker 7: but she was also playing them, Like she is a
Speaker 7: really shrewd political operator, and she gave TERFs enough to
Speaker 7: get them to do what terms do best, which is
Speaker 7: break up feminist organizing. Yeah, so whatever Cloudy could not
Speaker 7: directly co opt to like get like leaders, there were
Speaker 7: some like black Blocks in Mexico whose leaders like literally
Speaker 7: had in their linkedins that they were like doing like
Speaker 7: black blook shit.
Speaker 5: Oh my god, I know.
Speaker 7: It's incredible, And it just gave everything away because the
Speaker 7: same person who did that had in her LinkedIn like
Speaker 7: a year previously that she was like an eighty for
Speaker 7: a Marina congress woman. Oh my god, and h yeah,
Speaker 7: I think what Marina. They was infiltrate a lot of
Speaker 7: black blocks to neutralize them because during twenty twenty two
Speaker 7: years after Amlo got elected, like Mexican feminists were I
Speaker 7: would say, the biggest fire in social movements in Mexico,
Speaker 7: like with the Sapatistas getting surrounded by state sponsored narco
Speaker 7: cartels and stuff, like they were really paralyzed and with
Speaker 7: COVID and everything like that, like a lot of other
Speaker 7: organizing got real damaged. But feminists were like they were
Speaker 7: trying to get abortion passed, and they succeeded for most
Speaker 7: of it. But like institutional feminists succeeded banning abortion and
Speaker 7: more independent or street anarchists, socialist based feminists, they suddenly
Speaker 7: didn't have anything to demand. So they either got kushi
Speaker 7: government jobs or they got arrested or they helped the
Speaker 7: police arrest people, like by being like clearly just like
Speaker 7: you know the classic like eight people get arrested and
Speaker 7: one of them gets out in like a week and
Speaker 7: it's like ah yeah. And so like feminists got are
Speaker 7: road awakening, and before they were more permissive like cool feminists,
Speaker 7: like real leftists, socialist and queer feminists, were more permissive
Speaker 7: of TERFs during like the twenty sixteen two twenty twenty
Speaker 7: two because they thought, like, we need unity within feminism,
Speaker 7: we need to like get a version passed, we need
Speaker 7: to like combat both the far right and an lost conservatism.
Speaker 7: And well they won and a bunch of their leaders
Speaker 7: got co upted. We have an epidemic of like feminist
Speaker 7: activists passing laws with their names. Like the one movement
Speaker 7: that got defeated the worst is anti car solo feminism.
Speaker 7: Like forget about abolitionism in the carsonal sense. It's no
Speaker 7: one gave a shit about that. Even anarchists were trying
Speaker 7: to pass laws to like lay Olivia to scalp thats
Speaker 7: who haven't paid child support, Like they really at everything
Speaker 7: on punitivism. And that's the thing that united like every
Speaker 7: single segment of feminism, including rat friends centers, Like they
Speaker 7: love putting people in jail. It's their whole entire deal.
Speaker 7: And so but the thing is that's the way you
Speaker 7: get you co opt someone, You just tell her okay,
Speaker 7: instead of like being an archopunk like doing tagging government buildings.
Speaker 7: What if I just give you a shit a lot
Speaker 7: of money, and I pay for you to go to
Speaker 7: fancy hotels in every state and like talk about how
Speaker 7: important it is that we throw your X into a
Speaker 7: into a meat processing machine for like breaking up with you. Yeah,
Speaker 7: and I mean I'm being believed, like there's horrible shit,
Speaker 7: like we have to pass a lot to like give
Speaker 7: more time to people who threw acid at women's faces. Right,
Speaker 7: but like that's already legal. It's already legal. I don't
Speaker 7: know if it's gonna work that well, especially because like
Speaker 7: I think one of the most biggest cases of like
Speaker 7: a literal trafficker just got off jail this week and
Speaker 7: he literally tortured one of Mexico's biggest rod fims. And
Speaker 7: it's like, what did it?
Speaker 2: You did?
Speaker 7: Did this all for nothing? Like you're just gonna like
Speaker 7: lock up more poor people and like rich assholes are
Speaker 7: gonna work free. Yeah, and so yeah, that was twenty twenty.
Speaker 7: Then it got co opted and just like Claudia gave
Speaker 7: us some loss for trans people, she put turfs in
Speaker 7: government positions. We protested that, and then she dropped them,
Speaker 7: like she really did a andy with Woody, Like I
Speaker 7: don't want to play with you anymore. Like once she
Speaker 7: neutralized the feminist movement, once there were like there was
Speaker 7: no threat of escalation, she really didn't need the black
Speaker 7: the fake black blocks. She just you know dropped them.
Speaker 10: Yeah, And speaking of fake black blocks, you too could
Speaker 10: buy a fake flack flock from Products and Services.
Speaker 5: And we are back.
Speaker 10: Yeah, So let's get into what's been happening in kind
Speaker 10: of present day. The thing that's really interesting to me
Speaker 10: about like about the way that sort of Mexican turf
Speaker 10: stuff works is that they in a way that's kind
Speaker 10: of I don't know, American TERFs kind of work like this,
Speaker 10: Like they really function in a very similar way to
Speaker 10: like left social movements, right, except that they're like newer
Speaker 10: world social movement for evil. But it's like like they
Speaker 10: have a lot of the same kind of like strengths
Speaker 10: and weaknesses that that like conventional like social movements have,
Speaker 10: which I think ties into a lot of what's going
Speaker 10: to happen to them and the fact that you can
Speaker 10: you know, and in the same way that you can
Speaker 10: co opt to social movement, like they're also vulnerable to that.
Speaker 7: Yeah. Well, when money dr I saw and like the
Speaker 7: options are stop organizing as a feminist, Like I cannot
Speaker 7: tell you how many lesbian services serve are married and pregnant. Now,
Speaker 7: it's like they just dropped that shit like Shaman dropped them,
Speaker 7: like Shama didn't do it of the kindness of her heart.
Speaker 7: I think she realized that this was a vulnerability. She
Speaker 7: needed to convince like the Jacobins of the world that
Speaker 7: she was this socialist president like Amblo but even better
Speaker 7: now in feminist form, and she really couldn't do that
Speaker 7: if there was like these huge like people who didn't
Speaker 7: even pay attention to Mexican politics but just jk rowling.
Speaker 7: Like this was just a huge vulnerability. She also didn't
Speaker 7: want this mostly to be a debate. I heard rumors
Speaker 7: and I buy them completely, Like that she pushed for
Speaker 7: no treans women being legislators in our congress. Ye, because
Speaker 7: we had we had two before. One of them supped
Speaker 7: ass and the other one was kind of fine, like
Speaker 7: just normal lefty centrist woman. The other one was just horrible.
Speaker 7: So it's honestly, I'm going with it.
Speaker 10: Yeah, that's wish you were about to have here. We're like,
Speaker 10: we're gonna get our first traps over a congress but
Speaker 10: she's absolutely dog shit like terrible ziists, Like yeah, now.
Speaker 7: They were night to work with, they consistently. I think
Speaker 7: they were just there to like waste her fucking time,
Speaker 7: like you would have a meeting with them. It should
Speaker 7: so should we like pass this legislation saying that you
Speaker 7: can have like no gender on your voter ready, And
Speaker 7: that took the whole six years Jesus Christ, And I
Speaker 7: didn't even want it, like I haven't even changed my
Speaker 7: legal thing, so like it's not my priority. But it
Speaker 7: was a lot of people's priorities, and they kind of
Speaker 7: wasted our whole community's time. But even that was not enough.
Speaker 7: I think Chama just didn't want headlines, Like she was
Speaker 7: content for others, other people to handle the quote unquote debate.
Speaker 7: She didn't want anything to do with it because she
Speaker 7: it only cost her. Like the reason she defended some
Speaker 7: terms is that some of them were like loyal to her,
Speaker 7: and that's what she wanted. She wanted loyalty because she
Speaker 7: needed party loyalty to like have a tight grip on
Speaker 7: Morena because what she knew she could win pretty easily.
Speaker 7: She didn't need to appeal to the right or the
Speaker 7: center right and good for her, Like I'm an antil electoralist,
Speaker 7: but like electoralist should not fucking listen to suburban moms,
Speaker 7: Like who gives a shit? Yeah, going more to the
Speaker 7: left is, to a certain extent, is better electorally. Like
Speaker 7: just look at the numbers between Paris and buy them.
Speaker 7: And it's just vibes. It's not even like real policy,
Speaker 7: but just the vibes. Like you don't need you don't
Speaker 7: need to listen to pant voters because they're pant voters.
Speaker 7: They're not gonna vote for Morena. And like the right
Speaker 7: here in Mexico is really weird because like they have
Speaker 7: this really like neo liberal view, but their culture is
Speaker 7: so aristocratic. It's kind of like what if them's were
Speaker 7: like very stories, Like because they they hate for people,
Speaker 7: not like Republicans hate for people, like because they also
Speaker 7: pretend to be Panistas, don't They lost half because Shane
Speaker 7: Bawn really took hold of Morena structure and mobilized it
Speaker 7: to vote in a way that was unprecedented, even more
Speaker 7: than Amblos's vote. And because like Panista just couldn't shut
Speaker 7: up about how racist they are. They were just constantly
Speaker 7: saying the most horrible shit about Morena voters. And there
Speaker 7: were campaigns by saying go vote because they thought that
Speaker 7: like Amlo is like a dictator, because they really think
Speaker 7: that everyone is addicted. Everyone that's to the left of
Speaker 7: Mussolini is a dictator and almost a dictator. So go
Speaker 7: out and vote. They thought, like citizen participation is gonna
Speaker 7: destroy the Amblo regime from We're gonna be back to
Speaker 7: Mexico instead of being not and so. But the thing is,
Speaker 7: when you send most of the population to vote, they're
Speaker 7: not gonna vote for like the most repugnant, classiest people ever.
Speaker 7: And the candidate they chose was not a candidate like
Speaker 7: such a Galavis was an indigenous woman. Like they thought
Speaker 7: they were gonna outflank shame and with that, but they
Speaker 7: didn't like she success such a tool. She's not far right.
Speaker 7: She used to be in Perade, which was also an
Speaker 7: um lost party, but she was part of like when
Speaker 7: when Pang got into power in two thousands, she was
Speaker 7: the one in charge of the negotiation with the Elene
Speaker 7: and she betrayed the Sapatistas.
Speaker 2: Jesus Christ.
Speaker 7: She was not gonna get an indigenous vote like so
Speaker 7: this is the first time the right does this right,
Speaker 7: like Pan did the fucking classic damn thing of like
Speaker 7: offering a wired down version of the the other candidate,
Speaker 7: and they lost enormously and a lot of turfs. To
Speaker 7: get back to the topic, a lot of ters beat
Speaker 7: on both of them. They were really hedging. They wanted
Speaker 7: to be especially more institutional terms. They said, as long
Speaker 7: as we get a women president, we're gonna be cool.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 5: That like backfired on them.
Speaker 7: Yeah, oh yeah, like Shambah, Like I said, what she
Speaker 7: cares about is loyalty. She didn't care about broad fence
Speaker 7: because she believed in them, just like she didn't care
Speaker 7: about trans people because she believed in us. She wanted
Speaker 7: loyal like loyal dogs. And if you are hedging your beds,
Speaker 7: yeah you and she wins with sixty percent, you're not
Speaker 7: going to see a single cent from the arms.
Speaker 13: Yeah.
Speaker 10: She kind of Okay, this is like, this is an
Speaker 10: absolutely deranged comparison. But she kind of reminds me of
Speaker 10: jijiin Ping in the way that like the way the
Speaker 10: way that Chijinping does politics is by.
Speaker 7: Every single momenta geopolitics, not just fainted. When you say that,
Speaker 7: she's a lot.
Speaker 10: Of the same no, because like Chijin Ping's like political
Speaker 10: style is sort of you know, he's been he's been
Speaker 10: very very good at like like centralizing the bureaucracy around
Speaker 10: him and sort of like neutralizing social movement. And this
Speaker 10: has been a classic like a sort of long range
Speaker 10: like post culture revolution like Chinese companies party thing of
Speaker 10: like we need to make sure there's not treat movements
Speaker 10: we need to sort of neutralize. Yeah, it's also amusing,
Speaker 10: you know, yeah, but it's also like you know, Jiji
Speaker 10: Ping sort of very much is also like a loyalty guy, right,
Speaker 10: He's like, you know, he he will he will sort
Speaker 10: of set up antic corruption things like per people who
Speaker 10: are like aren't loyal to him, because that's you know,
Speaker 10: that's that's the way that this kind of like centralizing
Speaker 10: politics works, and it's it's church is really interesting that
Speaker 10: like we're seeing.
Speaker 5: This with we're saying this with the TERFs.
Speaker 10: Route was like, well, you guys, like I'm sorry, you
Speaker 10: guys weren't fucking loyal enough. So like each ship you're
Speaker 10: gonna get get ed corruption campaigned.
Speaker 7: There's people that we proted that are super close to
Speaker 7: shameebelnd that we were really scared would get government positions
Speaker 7: and we're TERFs. They didn't get shipped. There's no like
Speaker 7: trans legislature, but there's also no terf legislators. Yeah, there's
Speaker 7: a world where that could have happened that we would
Speaker 7: have been fucked. I think without our protests, like not
Speaker 7: just the ones we organized from my collective, the rather
Speaker 7: decidence that we were focused on some of the closest
Speaker 7: to Shamebelin but like every transperson knew that like this
Speaker 7: was something real that and we kind of to stop
Speaker 7: to it. But and they don't been a stalemate because again,
Speaker 7: what Shimun did was defend her loyal terms and she
Speaker 7: moved them to positions outside of the spotlight honestly more
Speaker 7: suited to their to their italients. Like her TERFs were
Speaker 7: not really charismatic. She was trying to set them up
Speaker 7: like as influencers and like they just had theirs.
Speaker 10: There's no juice at all, is a classic Jesus, like
Speaker 10: just being the most juiceless motherfuckers and no planet.
Speaker 7: Absolutely and like really in concuring politics, yeah, because like
Speaker 7: they again they were they were kind of like they're
Speaker 7: more like lefty in discourse. They were very nationalists obviously,
Speaker 7: but also like they were hyping how feminist she was
Speaker 7: and like, oh, we're gonna confront American imperialism and while
Speaker 7: at the same time like being obsessed with like British TERFs,
Speaker 7: so like that it was really contradictory. So Moina calls
Speaker 7: their movement like the forty the fourth Transformation, which is like,
Speaker 7: just I won't even get into it. It's just such
Speaker 7: a fucking bizarre thing.
Speaker 5: Has a third transformation or something? Was he also doing
Speaker 5: the fourth Transformation?
Speaker 7: It's like no, no, it's like the Independence when we
Speaker 7: kicked Francis ass and then revolution. Those are the three
Speaker 7: and then and then the fourth is him right, like
Speaker 7: he's saying like I'm I'm Benitaquaras reborn and uh yeah, cringe,
Speaker 7: but like it's stuck. Honestly, I use it because like
Speaker 7: it's such a good shorthanded because morena is so large,
Speaker 7: such such a big word, and it's also cringe because
Speaker 7: like morena, which means morena means like brown skin, so
Speaker 7: and also like becon morena, which is like Mexico's virgin mary,
Speaker 7: so very creene. Even for quarter is even less cringe.
Speaker 7: So yeah, sure, whatever, but like one of the most
Speaker 7: famous Mexican Mexican feminists started calling them the Quadra.
Speaker 10: Oh my god, that stocks it's really I fucking look
Speaker 10: like it.
Speaker 7: So that stuck. But basically the quarter there is not
Speaker 7: out of power. Like the most ambitious ones and the
Speaker 7: most purely TERFs got quick kicked out, and the loyal
Speaker 7: dogs got sent to do like other jobs. Like they're
Speaker 7: now talking to academics about like green progressive socialism and shit,
Speaker 7: Like they're just doing talksing like with like eighty year
Speaker 7: old tenured professors and like that is still real skin.
Speaker 7: There's we're still watching them. But I think Shimun told them,
Speaker 7: like I'm gonna protect you, but you need to shut
Speaker 7: the fuck up. You better not say the word rands
Speaker 7: for six years, go go knots afterwards. But you're gonna
Speaker 7: have a job and you're gonna have a possibility of
Speaker 7: returning and that I'm not gonna help you. That's on you,
Speaker 7: and like, honestly, at least that's a fair playing field.
Speaker 7: I'll take it. I'll fucking take it.
Speaker 10: So yeah, I guess like the state of things seems
Speaker 10: to be that the deal is we're just gonna take
Speaker 10: like trans people as a political issue off the table
Speaker 10: for Yeah, what I have many years.
Speaker 7: Well, I think we're we're gonna she's gonna let like
Speaker 7: states handle it, like a trans law passes in a state.
Speaker 7: She's gonna let it. And I don't think anti trans
Speaker 7: laws are gonna have a good time interesting trying to
Speaker 7: pass because the right age ship. Yeah, they really thought
Speaker 7: they were gonna at least have a competitive edge, and
Speaker 7: no one voted. And again like there's a lot of
Speaker 7: Turfs that were more aligned with the far right, but
Speaker 7: they were not acting like it. The rhetoric didn't look
Speaker 7: until a couple of months ago, like the rhetoric that
Speaker 7: Britain or the US turfs have both types of US
Speaker 7: turf that I think there's we have every single type
Speaker 7: of derf here in Mexico. If you can think of
Speaker 7: a type of trf, we have it. I think Britain
Speaker 7: is mostly wine moms and the US is both angio
Speaker 7: freaks and like hippie where those like ex anarchists, the
Speaker 7: brain resistance types right like.
Speaker 10: Yeah, well I need to draw the light, you're damn it.
Speaker 10: But the decree resistance people were never anarchists. They were
Speaker 10: always they were always weird primitivist, but like vague like
Speaker 10: vanguar is primitivists.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I know. I love that article by Julie who
Speaker 7: accompanied me in less episode about someone fining a hot
Speaker 7: dog and it fucking rules. But yeah, right, like we
Speaker 7: had that, Like we even have like a deep rear
Speaker 7: system to Mexico thing going on for like a couple
Speaker 7: of years. So Mexican terms here that align themselves with
Speaker 7: the far right are gonna see both less resources because
Speaker 7: the far right is healing some Bruce Eagles, so they're riding,
Speaker 7: aren't gonna have to go full fascist, which oh.
Speaker 5: They will, Yeah, many such cases.
Speaker 7: Yeah, they can no longer get money from like your
Speaker 7: center right, like respectable democracy people who are basically are
Speaker 7: just right. They don't they They spend most of their
Speaker 7: time like just complaining how like Maduro and Amlow and
Speaker 7: like treating like everyone's the same thing, because the only
Speaker 7: thing they want is like just they want new liberalism
Speaker 7: and I'm tired of we have new liberalism. Yeah, like
Speaker 7: my I is just newly realism with a little bit
Speaker 7: of just enough like welfare state to like keep everything
Speaker 7: from blowing up. So yeah, this that's the case here.
Speaker 7: They ate ship. They don't have money, so they either
Speaker 7: have to find local fascists with which they have or
Speaker 7: they have to appeal to Brits with things like the
Speaker 7: boxing scandal.
Speaker 10: Yeah, and that sort of brings us full circle to like,
Speaker 10: I guess literally the present day, as in like the
Speaker 10: time this is being recorded, where their big attempts to
Speaker 10: like generate a bunch of revenue for themselves and like
Speaker 10: bring themselves back into the spotlight has kind of blown
Speaker 10: up with their faces.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and listen. One of the few good parts of
Speaker 7: like Moderna's co option of feminism is that some previously,
Speaker 7: like I don't want to say controversial, but like there
Speaker 7: were really a lot of campaigns to try to remove
Speaker 7: prestige from any any prominent trans inclusive feminists in Mexico,
Speaker 7: like Mexican academia and Mexican like high feminism really started
Speaker 7: to go full Wratham in twenty sixteen, and it started
Speaker 7: by trying to attack any single prestigious feminist that was
Speaker 7: not a TERRF. Chief amongst them is Marta Lamas, who
Speaker 7: I love her. She's extremely live, but like I still
Speaker 7: love her because she she comes from a history of
Speaker 7: like not quite radical but not quite radical Mexican academia
Speaker 7: that like says she like reformist in method radical in objectives.
Speaker 5: Sure, sure, but she at least.
Speaker 7: Thinks it's true and lives by it. And she is
Speaker 7: if you want to read stuff by her. She has
Speaker 7: one of the best accounts of the history of sex
Speaker 7: work in Mexico Food Water and a nache a fantastic book,
Speaker 7: fully recommended.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we'll put a link to that in the description.
Speaker 7: Yeah, so she got into like the mayor of Mexico
Speaker 7: City is a team. She is now in Clara Brugada's team,
Speaker 7: and Clara is like the front runner for the next
Speaker 7: presidential candidate. She is not Chamberin's friend. So my suspicion
Speaker 7: is that Shaman is keeping her terms on reserve to
Speaker 7: push back against Clara. Oh interesting to find another female
Speaker 7: candidate and proper up as the feminist successor to Claudia
Speaker 7: or a male candidate like she needs like feminists on
Speaker 7: her side on reserve to combat like Clara. Who Clara Again,
Speaker 7: it's further to live than Chamblain and she doesn't come
Speaker 7: from an academic background. She comes from a grassroots urban
Speaker 7: movement background in the like thehood of Mexico City, in turn,
Speaker 7: Brugada needs more institutional and like legit support. And Marta Lamas,
Speaker 7: while she was controversial because of TERFs smearing her, but
Speaker 7: she is Marta Fokin Lamas and she is white as hell.
Speaker 7: So Clara got her in her team and now she
Speaker 7: gets to be the chief leftist feminists in Mexico because like,
Speaker 7: if Kaalia starts tucking too much about feminism, well she's
Speaker 7: a Google search away from like turf scandals.
Speaker 5: Yeah yeah.
Speaker 7: And Nata really pushed back against turf influence in Moena,
Speaker 7: which I'm really frank, like, if you're gonna be co
Speaker 7: opted this, that's the least amount of like allyship you
Speaker 7: need to do.
Speaker 10: All right, Yeah yeah, even push the turfs out from
Speaker 10: your like fucking mansion.
Speaker 7: We can push X to the to the left, Well,
Speaker 7: then do it. I people love saying they want to
Speaker 7: push politicians to the left, and then don't push push
Speaker 7: politicians to the left. They just want to lose the
Speaker 7: critical power.
Speaker 5: Yeah yeah. Is there anything else that you want to
Speaker 5: make sure we get you before we wrap up?
Speaker 7: I think wrapping up to the Readogs magazine. Keep an
Speaker 7: eye on like those kinds of places that are trying
Speaker 7: to connect things, because we already saw that this can
Speaker 7: spill over from Mexico or Brazil or Korea. I think
Speaker 7: Korea is gonna be bad.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 10: Yeah, So the thing about Korea I haven't done much about.
Speaker 10: We probably will at some point cover this stuff in Korea.
Speaker 10: Korea is having a really really sort of unbelievable sort
Speaker 10: of anti feminist backlash. But this has also had the
Speaker 10: impact of like really empowering the rad fems. Yeah, and
Speaker 10: it's it's a complete catastrophe.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 7: I would really advise against idealizing feminist movements elsewhere. Yeah,
Speaker 7: do your research. Don't just accept on face value that
Speaker 7: like a face you know from a third world country
Speaker 7: is gonna be like the voice of the Global South.
Speaker 7: That's just not fucking true. Like, if you hear a
Speaker 7: face of the Global South, it's probably because there's money
Speaker 7: behind it. Like, yeah, unless you're really deep and know
Speaker 7: your shit, the first thing that's gonna show up is
Speaker 7: gonna have money behind it. So be really careful with
Speaker 7: other feminist ones. I saw how people idealized Mexican feminism,
Speaker 7: not knowing just how deeply both infiltrated by the government
Speaker 7: and paid by fire red groups, and that really backfire,
Speaker 7: like one of the only survivors of right leaning but
Speaker 7: left presenting feminists that called Brujazma. Yeah, they're probably the
Speaker 7: only europe that's going to survive during the shameband presidence.
Speaker 2: Yeah, big turf group.
Speaker 7: Yeah, they never tried to get close to Shamba. But
Speaker 7: also they are they never dropped the mask fully and
Speaker 7: they're one of the biggest pushers of the name in anything,
Speaker 7: not the originators. Those are the more internationally connected, but
Speaker 7: they were the biggest pushers of it. They have the
Speaker 7: most followers. They really pushon narrative. They were featured in
Speaker 7: Times one hundred, like AARUSIONDA was Times one hundred from Mexico.
Speaker 7: So be really careful of who you think are supporting. Yeah,
Speaker 7: because this is going to be happening. I think it's
Speaker 7: It might be over for now in Mexico and we
Speaker 7: I think we didn't win, but maybe we can stop
Speaker 7: them from researching in five years or so, and then
Speaker 7: I think that would really steal the deal. But this
Speaker 7: is gonna be happening everywhere where. You're gonna see it
Speaker 7: a lot in like African feminist movements in South Southeast
Speaker 7: Asian feminist movements. You're gonna see it pop up all
Speaker 7: over the world. Take a lesson from Mexico and look
Speaker 7: for trans folks over there, ask them, Hey, is this
Speaker 7: person cool?
Speaker 5: Yeah, just the.
Speaker 7: Minimum, do the diligence before, like sharing gofundsman ship like
Speaker 7: a please for the love of God. Again, a dollar
Speaker 7: goes a long way here. So if feel like you
Speaker 7: give something that would barely cover rent for someone in
Speaker 7: the United States, that's enough to set up an organization here. Yeah,
Speaker 7: and really fuck local politics for years to come. So
Speaker 7: I don't know, Please be careful.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 10: So if people want to find you and the stuff
Speaker 10: that you do that is not ship, where can they
Speaker 10: find you?
Speaker 7: Well, I'm on X everything app as a Flores And
Speaker 7: also I have a podcast called Fatista's Knkrema. It's a
Speaker 7: really good one in Spanish, trust me. And I'm also
Speaker 7: trying to launch a project that's gonna be like a
Speaker 7: sort of media watchdoggy thing. Again, we were working with
Speaker 7: like sense here, so it's gonna take a while. Yeah,
Speaker 7: keep an eye out if I don't know, if you
Speaker 7: if you wanna learn more stuff about Mexican like what's
Speaker 7: going on beyond, like either far right news like that
Speaker 7: saw Shambone in a photograph with a transflag and friked out,
Speaker 7: or just like people who take everything at face value
Speaker 7: and believe that Chambon is the second coming of Marx.
Speaker 7: So I don't know, I'll try to keep folks posted
Speaker 7: because it's complicated, Like, yeah, we it took us an
Speaker 7: hour to talk about even just one topic.
Speaker 10: Yeah, things complicated. Who who could possibly have guessed that?
Speaker 10: You know, it's it's difficult to understand, very comflue to
Speaker 10: political configurations.
Speaker 7: Yeah. So yeah, for now I'm only on xicus and
Speaker 7: YouTube again for I do I stream on Twitch. Honestly,
Speaker 7: this is gonna sound maybe you're gonna gonna call this,
Speaker 7: but I really admire y'all, Like I honestly, I both
Speaker 7: that are a little bit of envy. Uh. I wish
Speaker 7: there's not a really an ecosystem of like content creation
Speaker 7: or or news from a leftist perspective here. Like most
Speaker 7: of the people again, a lot of them also got
Speaker 7: co opted. A lot of friends I had in like
Speaker 7: independent leftists publishing and news in Mexico are now like
Speaker 7: full on like just modern spokespeople, or they went insane
Speaker 7: and anti vax and like now they're far right.
Speaker 10: Well, yeah, many such cases. Yeah, so this is to
Speaker 10: take it out here. You can find us in the places,
Speaker 10: and until then I defeat your local TERFs.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and don't become gumnor.
Speaker 9: Hi everyone, and welcome to the show. It's just James
Speaker 9: today and I'm joined by doctor Sink. Doctor Sink's an
Speaker 9: educator based in California, and we're talking today about the
Speaker 9: recent attempted assassination of a Sikh activist and this now
Speaker 9: years long tendency of India to attempt to assassinate sick
Speaker 9: activists in the United States and in Canada and probably
Speaker 9: not the place is too.
Speaker 5: Welcome to the show, dot to Sink.
Speaker 8: All right, thank you, thank you for having me. Yeah,
Speaker 8: you're welcome.
Speaker 9: And so I think people listening to this for the
Speaker 9: first time might not be super familiar with the situation
Speaker 9: in India and also like what Kalistan is and what
Speaker 9: that means. So I want to get into both of
Speaker 9: those things to start with. I think could you maybe
Speaker 9: explain kalistan, Explain it means. Maybe people have seen this
Speaker 9: yellow and green flag or heard the word, but they
Speaker 9: might not know what it means.
Speaker 5: So could you break that down for US.
Speaker 8: Sure, sure. So Kalistan is essentially a freedom of liberation
Speaker 8: movement that starts in Punjab, so it's north of India,
Speaker 8: and Punjab is a region that is populated primarily of
Speaker 8: six though the population numbers are changing, and so Kalistan
Speaker 8: is essentially sovereignty freedom, it's its own homeland, so it's
Speaker 8: labeled as the Sick Homeland. However, there will be many
Speaker 8: different ethnicities, many different people of religious backgrounds in Kalaistan,
Speaker 8: so it is an ongoing movement. The Indian state of course,
Speaker 8: it's not in their best interest to lose a chunk
Speaker 8: of land, and to lose especially a prosperous chunk of land,
Speaker 8: so they're doing everything in their power to silence those
Speaker 8: that speak about it, to oppress the people there so
Speaker 8: that they don't have enough willpower to fight back. So
Speaker 8: that's a very very brief introduction to it.
Speaker 9: Yeah, so let's zoom out a little bit and talk
Speaker 9: about the history of sick people in India and then
Speaker 9: the recent tendency with mody to sort of define Hinduism
Speaker 9: and Indianism as the same thing. And you can't be
Speaker 9: one without being the other. So maybe we can start
Speaker 9: with that history of sick people within India. We can
Speaker 9: pick it up, like I guess wherever you want. You
Speaker 9: can start in nineteen thirties, or we can start a
Speaker 9: little bit later.
Speaker 8: Yeah, well, actually I think it's important to start even
Speaker 8: earlier than that. The origins of Six are in the
Speaker 8: region our faith was started in fourteen sixty nine Gift,
Speaker 8: which is in now the Pakistan region. So that's where
Speaker 8: our faith was started, and our people have essentially been
Speaker 8: fighting an existential battle since the faith was formed. So
Speaker 8: different rulers of the time, different kingdoms in that area
Speaker 8: would attempt to kind of wipe Six out, and Six
Speaker 8: have always been fighting back and fighting for their existence.
Speaker 8: So a small example of this is in seventeen thirty
Speaker 8: eight and up until the seventeen seventies, there was mass
Speaker 8: water of six and we're talking thousands killed on a
Speaker 8: single day period we referred as the Vudine shot Lugata,
Speaker 8: which is basically in our history, the largest population of
Speaker 8: six decimated in a single day was in seventeen thirty eight.
Speaker 8: In seventeen seventies as well, so we went from that
Speaker 8: circumstance to essentially forming our own kingdom, forming our own
Speaker 8: country in seventeen ninety nine was formally established under Mahda
Speaker 8: Dada Djidsing, though the six were operating independently even before
Speaker 8: that and kind of governing their own regions. But in
Speaker 8: seventeen ninety nine the Sick Confederacy kind of joined and
Speaker 8: became what is now known as the region of Punjab.
Speaker 8: So the British came to colonize. They colonized India relatively
Speaker 8: quickly after arriving, and then when they approached the Sikh Kingdom,
Speaker 8: not only could they penetrated, they had to sign a
Speaker 8: treaty with Mahaa Rdit Singh, who was the ruler of
Speaker 8: Punjab at the time, and saying that we won't cross
Speaker 8: to this side of this river and you don't cross.
Speaker 9: To the seven.
Speaker 8: So they essentially signed a treaty saying we can coexist,
Speaker 8: but we won't come to your side because they feared
Speaker 8: the repercussions of what that would lead to. And then slowly,
Speaker 8: as they have with many empires, they have kind of infiltrated.
Speaker 8: They paid folks, they sign traders, and they broke down
Speaker 8: the annexed Punjab in eighteen forty nine. So we have
Speaker 8: a period of colonization from eighteen forty nine, officially till
Speaker 8: nineteen forty seven, and in nineteen forty seven the Radcliffe
Speaker 8: line is drawn. That is where Pakistan and now what
Speaker 8: we see as Pakistan and now India is what we
Speaker 8: see as India, though before it was all together and
Speaker 8: a large region of it was Punjab. When nineteen forty
Speaker 8: seven what Indian would refer to as independence, though it
Speaker 8: was actually a transfer of power. The gandhis of the
Speaker 8: time are kind of credited with the independence movement, but
Speaker 8: they were working with the British for decades before that.
Speaker 8: They kind of knew that they would receive the reins
Speaker 8: once the British left the region, So truly it wasn't
Speaker 8: independence movement. It was a transfer of power from the
Speaker 8: British to them. So in nineteen forty seven, by creating
Speaker 8: kind of relationships through some false promises, the Hindu leaders
Speaker 8: of the time essentially guaranteed six that you guys know
Speaker 8: how to fight for your rights if we were ever
Speaker 8: to infringe upon them, you guys are allowed to be
Speaker 8: in the Punjab region, it's essentially going to be autonomous.
Speaker 8: So after independence, essentially they immediately renagged on all of
Speaker 8: their previous assurances and six have essentially kind of been
Speaker 8: fighting an independence movement since nineteen forty seven. They were
Speaker 8: not allowed to speak their language. There was a Punjabi
Speaker 8: suba movement in nineteen fifty five where they even had
Speaker 8: to fight for their native language to be able to
Speaker 8: speak their native language in their region. And so now
Speaker 8: moving many iterations later, what we see is Modi kind
Speaker 8: of the I wouldn't say final form because we haven't
Speaker 8: lived to the end yet, but he is the latest
Speaker 8: iteration of Hindu nationalism, of what extremism looks like. So
Speaker 8: he has now taken the work of the gandhis and
Speaker 8: all of the prime ministers of India and kind of
Speaker 8: the Indian deep state agenda and now transformed it to
Speaker 8: saying that we want to be a nation of one language,
Speaker 8: of one religion, of one kind of people, and there's
Speaker 8: really no space for minorities in there, though they won't
Speaker 8: say it openly because they want to carry the moniker
Speaker 8: of the world's biggest democracy. They are not a secular nation.
Speaker 8: And under Modi, we've seen massacres. We've seen, you know,
Speaker 8: very genocidal violence which he himself allowed and which he
Speaker 8: was not even allowed to go into many Western countries
Speaker 8: because they held him accountable and responsible for leading the
Speaker 8: massacre of Muslims in two thousand and two of a job.
Speaker 8: But once he became Prime minister, they kind of backed
Speaker 8: away from that stand and chose financial relationships. So today
Speaker 8: we are in a place where six being less than
Speaker 8: two percent of the population in India are continuing their
Speaker 8: struggle for liberation, and the Indian state kind of consistent
Speaker 8: with their agenda since nineteen forty seven, doesn't have room
Speaker 8: for that difference, doesn't have room not only to give
Speaker 8: them their rights, but liberation entirely. That's that's the next
Speaker 8: step beyond that. So that's where we are today.
Speaker 9: Yeah, there's a significant Sikh community, especially on the west
Speaker 9: coast of the USA, and I've met probably hundreds of
Speaker 9: sick people in the last year crossing the border for
Speaker 9: the reasons you've just outlined, and others, of course deciding
Speaker 9: the nearly all coming from India, right and Punjab, and
Speaker 9: they have told me some really terrible stories, right, some
Speaker 9: really upsetting things. I've heard from those of other people.
Speaker 9: It's not unique to them, but there's a significant sick
Speaker 9: population on the west coast of the US. And Canada too,
Speaker 9: So can you explain I know that sick people here
Speaker 9: have been organizing for Kalustan for some time. There was
Speaker 9: even like a vote recently ventstand correctly, So can you
Speaker 9: explain like that history of the Sick dy aspirin how
Speaker 9: they've been really important in getting the word out and advocating.
Speaker 8: First, Yeah, I'm glad we touched on migration. Actually, mass
Speaker 8: migration out of Punjab is not a natural phenomenon. It
Speaker 8: is the outcome of very genocidal violence. Yeah. And further
Speaker 8: than that, it's the continued violence and oppression through different ways.
Speaker 8: So one example is there's a strong drug nexus in
Speaker 8: that area and anyone who is distributing drugs is protected
Speaker 8: by the Indian state, whether through bribery, whether through their
Speaker 8: agenda in general of keeping Punjab kind of addicted and
Speaker 8: away from liberation, So that is one aspect of it. Further,
Speaker 8: bung Job for the listeners, Bungjob means the land of
Speaker 8: five rivers, Bunge means five and ob means water, so
Speaker 8: its name is literally created on river water and the
Speaker 8: Indian state has now taken those river waters diverted them
Speaker 8: to different states of India and Punjab gets no royalty
Speaker 8: for those as opposed to any other state of India.
Speaker 8: If they have a natural resource, they get to sell
Speaker 8: it and their state gets the benefit of that. So
Speaker 8: Punjab at this point has been giving trillions of gallons
Speaker 8: of water to different states for free, and Punjab is
Speaker 8: there's different numbers out there, but sixty to sixty five
Speaker 8: percent and agrarian society, so everyone is essentially farming. And
Speaker 8: what the farmers of Punjab are being forced to do
Speaker 8: is dig underground for water, even though they have natural
Speaker 8: river water that should be going through Punjab itself which
Speaker 8: they can redistribute. So there's a huge farmer suicide problem
Speaker 8: happening in Punjab because they are unable to get out
Speaker 8: of debt. They are viewing farming as an unprofitable kind
Speaker 8: of a dead end business as opposed to farming in
Speaker 8: many other places, so it's very profitable. They're sick farmers
Speaker 8: in California who are multi multimillionaires, so it's not an
Speaker 8: unprofitable business. However, the state has made it that way
Speaker 8: understanding that if we can cripple farming their water supply
Speaker 8: and get their next generation addicted to drugs, then they'll
Speaker 8: be forced. So the mass migration we see is not natural,
Speaker 8: it is the outcome of that. And I'm sorry, I
Speaker 8: think I forgot the second part of your question, something
Speaker 8: about six in the Western Yeah, No, that's.
Speaker 9: Okay, there's a really good explanation. It's really important. I
Speaker 9: think we should just take a little advertising break here,
Speaker 9: all right. Yeah, So the second part I wanted to
Speaker 9: ask about was the importance of this diaspora community in
Speaker 9: organizing for Kalistan. Right because in addition to all these
Speaker 9: Indian government policies that you've outlined that are having these
Speaker 9: impacts in Punjab, and like we shouldn't discount the climate
Speaker 9: change is also having impacts there right, absolutely across the
Speaker 9: whole indeed subcontinent. But in addition to that, right, there's
Speaker 9: a very powerful and developed Khalistan movement in the United
Speaker 9: States and in Canada that has been advocating for the
Speaker 9: issue and raising i think awareness, and that's what's been
Speaker 9: targeted now, right.
Speaker 8: Yeah, absolutely, because they understand that if you say that
Speaker 8: word Carlostan with in Punjab, the police is working with them,
Speaker 8: the judicial system is working with them. Every single facet
Speaker 8: of any organizational institution is working for them. So I mean,
Speaker 8: there's been many people that do mention it and they
Speaker 8: end up dead, they end up in jails, They you know,
Speaker 8: are silenced in one way or another. So despite that, though,
Speaker 8: still many more folks that believe in Coligistan in Punjab
Speaker 8: than they are anywhere else in the world, and they
Speaker 8: are willing to say it openly despite the consequence of that,
Speaker 8: which is essentially jail or death in the millions. So
Speaker 8: what happens is when six are a forced to migrate
Speaker 8: out or migrate out for any reason, they still hold
Speaker 8: those aspirations with them. They still remember the plight of
Speaker 8: their people in Punjab. So they have freedom of speech,
Speaker 8: which is what you should have in democracies, which they
Speaker 8: don't have in India. So when they have freedom of speech,
Speaker 8: they express those aspirations to the point where there are
Speaker 8: people being killed all over the world. We named Canada
Speaker 8: and the US, but there was an activist poisoned in
Speaker 8: the UK just last year. There's been folks killed in Pakistan,
Speaker 8: which is on the other side of the border for India,
Speaker 8: and they tried to assassinate sick in New York and
Speaker 8: as recently as a few days ago, they tried to
Speaker 8: asassinate a stick here in California. So, I mean, the
Speaker 8: movement is very much alive and it's on the up,
Speaker 8: and I think the Indian state understands this, but they're
Speaker 8: having a tough time kind of wrapping their head around
Speaker 8: how to silence folks outside of their borders. That's really
Speaker 8: where we are, because within their borders it's full on suppression.
Speaker 8: You can't say it. Folks within pajob When they leave
Speaker 8: Punjab and they come to different countries, their eyes kind
Speaker 8: of finally open as to why they were in the
Speaker 8: conditions they were in. It's almost like when you're in
Speaker 8: the middle of a storm. You don't know who you're
Speaker 8: in a storm, but when looking on the outside in
Speaker 8: you're seeing, hey, this is a very intentional and systematic
Speaker 8: genocide that is happening against our people. So that is
Speaker 8: one aspect of it. But it's becoming more organized, and
Speaker 8: you know, there's a referendum, there's intellectuals, there's differences happening,
Speaker 8: there's grats, roots organization and so fix have. The concept
Speaker 8: called chardvikola and Chardikaala is essentially ever rising spirits, is
Speaker 8: that no matter the dire conditions that you may be under,
Speaker 8: you still keep the hope for sovereignty and liberation alive.
Speaker 8: And we've seen that in our history where our population,
Speaker 8: due to the oppression and the massacres, dwindled down to
Speaker 8: the hundreds and they were living in jungles, and even
Speaker 8: then they would exit the jungles fight work to free
Speaker 8: those being captured by the muguls at the time, or
Speaker 8: the people in the region, and they would die fighting oftentimes.
Speaker 8: And so now we're in a position where there's you know,
Speaker 8: millions of us. We have no excuse. We keep the
Speaker 8: aspiration for sovereignty alive, and we see it kind of
Speaker 8: thriving in places where we're allowed to express ourselves.
Speaker 9: Yeah, so I think we should talk about this kind
Speaker 9: of transnational repression. It's not by any means unique to India.
Speaker 9: I mean, famously Russia loves to do this too, right,
Speaker 9: But let's talk about some of these incidents. There was
Speaker 9: a foiled assassination attempt in November of last year, right
Speaker 9: that the DOJ arrested in India national for There was
Speaker 9: a successful assassination in Canada, and an attempted assassination just
Speaker 9: this week, as you say, in northern California.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I mean transnational repression is not a new phenomenon,
Speaker 8: But what we'd like to do is actually have it
Speaker 8: addressed for what it is. Why is it that the
Speaker 8: American public understands or the Western public understands, that Russia doesn't.
Speaker 8: But when it comes to India, it's almost seen as
Speaker 8: this kind of yoga chai te, peace loving place, where
Speaker 8: in reality, anyone from there and anyone that's been on
Speaker 8: the other end of kind of oppression understands what India
Speaker 8: truly is. So I think what we'd like to do is,
Speaker 8: I don't think it it's unreasonable. This is a nation
Speaker 8: that is very openly going on to other sovereign nations
Speaker 8: land and targeting their citizens of any religious background. So
Speaker 8: I think it's something that these governments should be taking seriously.
Speaker 8: And the fact that it continues to happen, I think
Speaker 8: is a reflection of how not seriously it's being taken.
Speaker 8: If it was, you know, if there's you know, some
Speaker 8: sort of public statements, sanctions, if there was you know,
Speaker 8: a full on effort to say that this is a
Speaker 8: violation of our sovereignty, it would perhaps slow down. But
Speaker 8: it's continuing, and it's continuing rapidly, where we're seeing gunshots
Speaker 8: and you know, even though Indian nationals are being extraed
Speaker 8: added to the States, it's not stopping. So I think
Speaker 8: more aggressive action is needed, and the fact that it
Speaker 8: keeps happening is is just a reflection of how lacks
Speaker 8: these governments have been as a result of these actions.
Speaker 9: Yeah, you don't see it referred to in the terms
Speaker 9: of transnational oppression or really like by the US of
Speaker 9: them at least as this this consolidated program. It seems
Speaker 9: to be seen as like these incidents where then you know,
Speaker 9: joining the dots and being like, yeah, this this is
Speaker 9: an attempt at repression, you know, the murder of US
Speaker 9: citizens in me these two cases, right, I know this
Speaker 9: just happened with other diaspora communities sometimes the like DJ
Speaker 9: or someone within that has reached out to people in
Speaker 9: the community, especially people who are prominent, and been like,
Speaker 9: there is a legitimate risk of someone trying to kill you.
Speaker 9: Has that happened within the sick community?
Speaker 8: Oh yeah, absolutely. There's been multiple folks warned here in California,
Speaker 8: in Canada, all over the US that you know, there
Speaker 8: is legitimate threats to your life. Though it's a problem
Speaker 8: because they cannot give you any more information than that.
Speaker 8: So you ask, you know, where is the threat from
Speaker 8: the say, we can disclose that it's it's confidential. So
Speaker 8: obviously six who advocate for sovereignty and freedom of their
Speaker 8: people that can Punjab know where where the threat is from. Yeah,
Speaker 8: And I think the underlying understanding within the community is
Speaker 8: that Western countries understand it as well. They're essentially waiting
Speaker 8: for when it is politically you know, acceptable, when it
Speaker 8: is politically beneficial for them to actually say something about it.
Speaker 8: And I think we are an under knowing illusions that
Speaker 8: you know that these guys are going to speak for
Speaker 8: us for the sake of justice, that they're going to
Speaker 8: you know, express our perspective and condemn these nations based
Speaker 8: on the protection of six. We know our liberation is
Speaker 8: going to be the result of our efforts. But I
Speaker 8: think from a lobbying perspective, from an expression perspective, I
Speaker 8: think it is not unreasonable of us to expect that
Speaker 8: of governments where we are citizens.
Speaker 9: Yeah, Like it's kind of the trade that you make
Speaker 9: grein theory, like you give up a lot of freedom
Speaker 9: and in turn you get safety in the Yeah, you're
Speaker 9: giving up one and getting the other right now.
Speaker 8: Right right exactly. So like there have.
Speaker 9: Been various movements to Kaliftan, I think we should just
Speaker 9: mention that like in the nineteen eighties, more like confrontational
Speaker 9: attempts at Kalistan like independence were met with collective punishment
Speaker 9: by the Indian state and non Sik people right within India.
Speaker 8: Yeah. So going dating back to the eighties, actually up
Speaker 8: until eighty four, there was no United Movement for Independence
Speaker 8: something else you call uprind On. It was kind of
Speaker 8: the face of the thick rights movement, but in the
Speaker 8: document that they had proposed to the government be an
Speaker 8: unput cyber resolution, it wasn't a proposition for exclusively six
Speaker 8: And I think that's an important point to continue to mention,
Speaker 8: is that the way the Indian state portrays Kalistan is
Speaker 8: anti Hindu, and I think they understand that to get
Speaker 8: the public support, we need to portray movements or anything
Speaker 8: really that's not in our interest as anti Hindu. We
Speaker 8: need to make them feel threatened. Yeah, and if we
Speaker 8: can do that, there will be support for us to
Speaker 8: engage in these collective punishments. So in the eighties and nineties,
Speaker 8: actually we call it the decade of disappearances is where
Speaker 8: the Indian government went from village to village disappearing six
Speaker 8: hundreds of thousands. Essentially, our last generation was wiped out
Speaker 8: by the Indian state and they disposed of their bodies
Speaker 8: and crematories, throw them in rivers, and you know, like
Speaker 8: we basically say that there's a sixth river of blood
Speaker 8: in Bujab because that is just how many young men
Speaker 8: were killed from eighty five to nineteen ninety five. So
Speaker 8: there was an armed resistance against this. I mean, they
Speaker 8: were seeing their sisters taken into police stations and all
Speaker 8: kinds of atrocities committed against them. They were seeing their
Speaker 8: brothers disappeared, their you know, their family members. So at
Speaker 8: some point it is better to give up your life
Speaker 8: than to live in these circumstances. And so that is
Speaker 8: the brink that they were pushed to, and so we
Speaker 8: lean on their example, though the movement does not quite
Speaker 8: exactly at that same place today, we lean on their
Speaker 8: example in that saying, these people were willing to give
Speaker 8: up their lives for this cause, and us sitting in comfort,
Speaker 8: even if it's you know, temporary safety, we have a
Speaker 8: responsibility to move this movement forward. And with these new assassinations.
Speaker 8: That's another important thing to mention. We've saw murders of
Speaker 8: essentially the biggest Punjabi pops, said Musah in history. I mean,
Speaker 8: this guy was in Hollywood, he was he was everywhere,
Speaker 8: and when he started talking about Kadistan, when he started
Speaker 8: making music regarding Punjab's rights, he was assassinated. And we're
Speaker 8: seeing a new wave of Indian oppression. And for the
Speaker 8: first time now people that thought, oh the eighties and nineties,
Speaker 8: you know, you guys could be making something up. Maybe
Speaker 8: the Indian government is right, you guys can be cut up.
Speaker 8: Now they're seeing these assassinations happen in front of their eyes,
Speaker 8: and they're making the judgment call as to who is
Speaker 8: in the right and who is in And I think
Speaker 8: that's another reason that the Kalaistan movement continues to gain
Speaker 8: kind of solidarity within the six all over the world. Yeah.
Speaker 9: Sure, Like if if a government is trying to assassinate
Speaker 9: people to just essentially saying something it disagrees with it,
Speaker 9: it's not hard to see like who's in the wrong exactly.
Speaker 9: So I wonder like, obviously there's a genuine threat to
Speaker 9: seek communities here that continues to be a threat to
Speaker 9: seek migrants from both political parties in the United States. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 9: I'm interested, but not hopeful to see how their asylum
Speaker 9: claims go based on this very obvious discrimination that you've outlined. Yeah,
Speaker 9: and there's this threat to seek people in their home
Speaker 9: rwnd in point job, how can people who are not sick,
Speaker 9: who are not part of the community like be in solidarity?
Speaker 9: How can they support what can they do to, like
Speaker 9: I guess yet to stop people being murdered?
Speaker 8: Well, it sounds cliche to say awareness, but at this
Speaker 8: point in time, they're just enough people aware of you know,
Speaker 8: how in danger they are, because if they don't speak
Speaker 8: for six today tomorrow, it could be them. And if
Speaker 8: the Western governments are allowing foreign nations to come in
Speaker 8: and they have embassies in these countries and they're allowing
Speaker 8: these nations to kind of, you know, assassinate their citizens,
Speaker 8: then what's to say that they won't be next to
Speaker 8: Mouth's that age old saying there was no one left
Speaker 8: to speak for me. That's part of it is you
Speaker 8: have to understand the ramifications of ignoring something like this.
Speaker 8: So I guess the first thing we'd like to see
Speaker 8: is solidarity with that Alistine. Now most folks have an
Speaker 8: opinion on it, or at least they've heard the word,
Speaker 8: and they've seen Six everywhere, you know, where the folks
Speaker 8: that walk around with turbans, and we're one of the
Speaker 8: probably ninety nine percent of people you see with turbans
Speaker 8: on our six and so we're a very visible community. However,
Speaker 8: the reasons we're here, our plight, understanding of our background
Speaker 8: is generally lacking. So I think the more that we
Speaker 8: can understand who Six are, what their beliefs are, what
Speaker 8: they're fighting for, why they're here to begin with, I think,
Speaker 8: you know, there will be more political pressure regarding that,
Speaker 8: and I'm seeing it starting to shift slightly, especially in
Speaker 8: the past five to ten years. We've tipped the skills
Speaker 8: just slightly, but we're far from from anywhere substantial.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I think for like, at least for my group
Speaker 9: of friends, right, we go down to the border and
Speaker 9: help people, and like we've encountered sick people because they
Speaker 9: were always there with us helping us, right, Like some
Speaker 9: sick folks flew down from other places and joined us
Speaker 9: and stay out there and helped us feed people. And
Speaker 9: like sick folks have shown up for other people substantially,
Speaker 9: like all over the world, and I think it would
Speaker 9: be really good to see people kind of reflect that
Speaker 9: that solidarity that's kind of baked into the Sick religion
Speaker 9: that it would be nice to see people doing that
Speaker 9: in return. Absolutely, as Sikhs organized to their own community safety,
Speaker 9: like obviously there's like a pressing danger to people, especially
Speaker 9: people who are vocal, like a Sikhs organized to like
Speaker 9: take care of one another in that sense.
Speaker 8: To some extent, yes, And again, a part of organization
Speaker 8: and having support that comes from that organization is having
Speaker 8: political power. And Six have political power in certain instances,
Speaker 8: but they do not have a homeland or the resources
Speaker 8: to kind of back it up. And you know politics
Speaker 8: kind of lobbying works with money. So the fact that
Speaker 8: we have these immigration problems a is a result of
Speaker 8: India's efforts, but be the reason that they don't have
Speaker 8: the support they need is because Six don't have a
Speaker 8: homeland where they can say, all right, these are our beliefs,
Speaker 8: these are our people. We support our people, we will
Speaker 8: give them these resources that they need. So we're kind
Speaker 8: of always operating at a grassroots level, and that's part
Speaker 8: of the issue, is why there's not grand or large
Speaker 8: scale change, but it continues to march forward. You know,
Speaker 8: as generations grow up, as they become more involved in
Speaker 8: different facets. A lot of people, especially in the United States,
Speaker 8: are first generation. So our parents' generation was just focused
Speaker 8: on surviving. How are we going to put food on
Speaker 8: the table? Are were going to put a roof over
Speaker 8: your head? And so the next generation kind of has
Speaker 8: the opportunity to explore how they can make a difference
Speaker 8: for their people. So Canada is getting there, the UK
Speaker 8: is getting there, the US is behind, just because our
Speaker 8: migration here was later than those places to that level,
Speaker 8: but it's getting there.
Speaker 9: Yeah, that's good. So people want to find out more
Speaker 9: about like the sick religion or like sick people are
Speaker 9: very good resources that you could suggest.
Speaker 11: Yeah.
Speaker 8: Absolutely, I think there's a very thorough background of what
Speaker 8: calist On is. Just on callist on dot org, okay,
Speaker 8: OKJ L I s t An dot org. They have publications,
Speaker 8: they have documentaries. They've done a significant amount of work
Speaker 8: to give the background of a Y six will never
Speaker 8: stop fighting for freedom and be kind of what the
Speaker 8: circumstances are today. So they've they've done a fairly good
Speaker 8: job at that. Other than that, there's pages on social media.
Speaker 8: There's free five ab which stands for freequin job. It's
Speaker 8: it's on Twitter, TikTok okay and of course TikTok has
Speaker 8: deleted that page many times. So where trying to figure
Speaker 8: out where the alliances are there and Instagram of course
Speaker 8: has done their thing based on their alliances. But there
Speaker 8: are some resources out there, and of course if you
Speaker 8: google it, the first things that are going to come
Speaker 8: up is Times of India, you know, hindos Tun Times
Speaker 8: basically saying this is a terrorist movement that's funded by
Speaker 8: foreign governments to break the unity integrity of India. It's
Speaker 8: a very rudimentary explanation, basically rooted in violence and how
Speaker 8: these people just have it out for us. But the
Speaker 8: reality is entirely different and the facts speak to that,
Speaker 8: and I think the assassination attempts of today, the folks
Speaker 8: that remain in Indian jails today, there's a UK citizen
Speaker 8: in Indian jail. There are you know, folks that are
Speaker 8: dying in Indian prisons. There's folks that have completed their
Speaker 8: sentences six thirty plus years still sitting in Indian prisons.
Speaker 8: So all of the circumstances today kind of speak to
Speaker 8: why this movement and exists and will continue to exist.
Speaker 8: So hopefully we can take advantage of some of the
Speaker 8: resources out there.
Speaker 9: Yeah, that's great, and I hope people will go and
Speaker 9: like educate themselves. You can look up caulsa Aid as
Speaker 9: well if you're interested in like the sort of sortid
Speaker 9: diarity and support side of Sikhism. Those people have been
Speaker 9: great at the border, and I know they've done tons
Speaker 9: about the great humanitarian work as well.
Speaker 8: Absolutely. Yeah.
Speaker 9: Is there anything else that you'd like people to know
Speaker 9: before we finish up here, like about six or about
Speaker 9: college down things they can do to help.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I think I would, especially all the viewers. I
Speaker 8: would like everyone to be open to the opportunity that
Speaker 8: there are more people in the world that are seeking
Speaker 8: to suppress and oppress than just what is told by
Speaker 8: American media today. At least be open to the opportunity.
Speaker 8: India is the world's biggest democracy today until it's not anymore,
Speaker 8: and communities like the six who have experienced violent genocide
Speaker 8: and today are experiencing the genocide. I think it's very
Speaker 8: important to understand that the sick genocide never ended. It
Speaker 8: continues today in different facets, in different forms. So that's
Speaker 8: A and B the struggle for freedom and sovereignty, though
Speaker 8: they want to put it on. So the Indian state
Speaker 8: continuously tries to kill two birds with one stone. They
Speaker 8: have enemity with Pakistan, so they tried to say that
Speaker 8: Kadistan is a movement to the byproduct of kind of
Speaker 8: focused on the interference, even though the facts speak otherwise
Speaker 8: that if it's not Fakistan that killed hundreds of thousands
Speaker 8: of six, it's not Focuistan that is assassinating six out
Speaker 8: in these foreign countries. So they try to kill two
Speaker 8: birds with one stone. India is definitely not a democracy.
Speaker 8: I would like the viewers to be open to that
Speaker 8: possibility as well and do your own research. Of course,
Speaker 8: I have a perspective based on the circumstances that my
Speaker 8: people have been through, and I would hope everyone can
Speaker 8: form a more thorough understanding and that there is a
Speaker 8: lot more happening, especially in that region than is politically
Speaker 8: correct to say right now. So that's what I'll finish with.
Speaker 9: Yeah, that's great, thank you very much for that. I
Speaker 9: think that's a really good place to finish.
Speaker 8: Thank you.
Speaker 9: So much for your time, and yeah, I really appreciate
Speaker 9: you explaining that for.
Speaker 8: Us, of course. Thank you for having me, gentlemen.
Speaker 14: Welcome to happen here. I'm Andrew Siege from the YouTube
Speaker 14: channel Andreism and I'm joined again by James Andrew. Welcome
Speaker 14: back time to talk about political codes again.
Speaker 8: Oh good fine.
Speaker 14: Continuing with the work of Dennis Toura and Tim Wolforth
Speaker 14: in their book on the Edge Political Cults Left and Right.
Speaker 14: I've spoken before about the cult recruitment process, the contractory
Speaker 14: positions held by cult members, ideological totalism, and the commonalities
Speaker 14: of political cults, including rigid belief systems, immunity to fortification, authoritarianism,
Speaker 14: arbitrary leadership, verification of leaders, intense activism, and the use
Speaker 14: of loaded language. And speaking of loaded language. I know
Speaker 14: that some people don't like the term cult because it is,
Speaker 14: you know, very charged. I prefer personally. I know that
Speaker 14: other terms are used, such as high control groups or
Speaker 14: new religious movements, but I'm sticking to cults. My question
Speaker 14: for you, James, do you think that you would be
Speaker 14: susceptible to the cult?
Speaker 9: One hopes not. We spoke about authoritarian personalities before, and
Speaker 9: I wonder if there's something similar for people who end
Speaker 9: up in cults. But I'm sure there's something that could
Speaker 9: get any of us. You know, we all have our
Speaker 9: susceptibilities to these things.
Speaker 2: But I hope it wouldn't be for sure.
Speaker 14: I mean, one would like to think, you know, yeah,
Speaker 14: I'm fuilt different than I would form into a cult.
Speaker 14: But you know, really, especially considering the the paucity of
Speaker 14: community these days, it's a little wonder that's one of
Speaker 14: people find a home in such harmful and abusive spaces.
Speaker 14: So previously I've touched on the LaRouche movements, the Newman tendency,
Speaker 14: and the United Red Army of Japan, the latter of
Speaker 14: which ended up killing some people. Today we'll be looking
Speaker 14: at another case study, not merely as extreme but still
Speaker 14: quite abusive, this time the infamous Marlene Dixon and her
Speaker 14: Democratic Workers Party.
Speaker 8: Fun Times, Fun Times.
Speaker 14: Indeed, I also got some information on Dixon's activity, not
Speaker 14: just from on the Edge, but also from the book
Speaker 14: Bounded Choice, True Believers and Charismatic Cults by Janja Lalich,
Speaker 14: who was actually a member of Dixon's Democratic Workers Party
Speaker 14: for ten years. I like that a lot of books
Speaker 14: written a bold cults are written by former cult numbers.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I mean I think it can be like the
Speaker 9: point you raised your initial question, right, like everyone likes
Speaker 9: to think they're specially and not susceptible, And I can
Speaker 9: see how books written about them could be written from
Speaker 9: a place of like condescension or you know, other ring.
Speaker 9: So I think it's always good when folks who have
Speaker 9: survived these things could write about them.
Speaker 14: Yeah, for sure, for sure. I mean one of the
Speaker 14: authors on the Edge, Tim Wore for a few who
Speaker 14: also part of a Trotskyist cult. So these are people
Speaker 14: who are speaking from experience.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I was writing about cults long before I started
Speaker 9: this podcast, So there was some weird cut like behaviors
Speaker 9: and endurance sports. And I spoke to an expert. She
Speaker 9: also was a survivor and introduced me to some other
Speaker 9: survivors of some more sort of classic left political cults.
Speaker 9: And like, it wasn't something I ever really felt comfortable
Speaker 9: like narrating their experiences. I would rather they narrate their experiences.
Speaker 7: Sure was.
Speaker 9: It was really interesting to see how many of them
Speaker 9: were like so willing to write about it and to
Speaker 9: talk about it and wanted to educate people about it.
Speaker 14: Yeah, I mean, one of the reasons I'm particularly passionate
Speaker 14: about political cults is just the way that they sap
Speaker 14: the energy, the passion, and the drive, the potential of
Speaker 14: what should be you know, people involved in you know,
Speaker 14: really positive change, they end up getting sucked in and
Speaker 14: the energies get sapped by these causes by these leaders.
Speaker 14: They just sort of diverte their potential trajectory.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 9: Absolutely, I think anyone who was active in the United
Speaker 9: States on the left in twenty twenty can attest to
Speaker 9: the ability of some of these groups to just cut
Speaker 9: the soul out of a popular movement which was making
Speaker 9: a positive difference at one point.
Speaker 14: Right, So let's get into it. Marlene Dixon was born
Speaker 14: into a family that valued education and intellectual pursuit. From
Speaker 14: a young age, she was immersed in an environment that
Speaker 14: fostered deep appreciation for learning and critical thinking, and this
Speaker 14: foundation significantly influenced her future path set in the stage
Speaker 14: for her academic and political endeavors. Growing up, Dixon showed
Speaker 14: an early interest in sociology, a field that would later
Speaker 14: become her academic and professional focus. She pursued higher education
Speaker 14: with a passion, earning her undergraduate degree and going on
Speaker 14: to complete a PhD in sociology in the University of California.
Speaker 14: The doctoral studies were marked by a rigorous exploration of
Speaker 14: social structures and equalities. Themes were resonate throughout her career
Speaker 14: as a sociology professor. Dixon's classroom was more than just
Speaker 14: a place for academic instruction. It was a forum for
Speaker 14: radical ideas and critical debate. Her teaching was infused with
Speaker 14: a strong feminist perspective, challenging traditional notions and encouraging students
Speaker 14: to question societal norms. This feminist ideology was not just
Speaker 14: an academic interest, but a driving force behind her activism
Speaker 14: and the formation of her political beliefs. However, even early
Speaker 14: on magain and science, that something's a bit of a wry.
Speaker 14: According to some of her former students and colleagues, it
Speaker 14: was also Dune those years when she became interested in
Speaker 14: mass social psychology and group behavior modification. She studied draber J.
Speaker 14: Lufton's work on thought reform. She studied and admired total communities, accults,
Speaker 14: and other directed methods of behavioral control such as Alcoholics Anonymous.
Speaker 14: She believed that these programs provided positive ways to change people.
Speaker 14: Dixon's early academic career also provided her with a platform
Speaker 14: to connect with like minded individuals who shared her passion
Speaker 14: for social justice. These connections were proved crucial as she
Speaker 14: moved beyond the confines of academia and into the world
Speaker 14: of radical political activisim Her political awakening came during a
Speaker 14: time of significant social and political upheaval. The sixties and
Speaker 14: seventies were decades marked by civil rights movements, anti war protests,
Speaker 14: and a crowing dissillusion one with the status quo. Dixon
Speaker 14: was deeply influenced by the principles of Marxism, Leninism and Maoism.
Speaker 14: Marxism provided her with a free for understanding class struggle
Speaker 14: and exploitation inherent and capitalist societies. Lenin's organizational principles, particularly
Speaker 14: the concept of the vanguard party, were also integral to
Speaker 14: Dixon's political thought. Lenin argued, of course, that a disciplined,
Speaker 14: centralized party was necessary to lead the wildern.
Speaker 2: Class to revolution.
Speaker 14: Dixon adopted this idea wholeheartedly, seeing the need for a
Speaker 14: tightly controlled, hierarchical organization to con guide the proletaria towards socialism.
Speaker 14: Mao Sadong's influence on Dixon was particularly evident in her
Speaker 14: approge to internal party denis. Mao's emphasis on continuous revolution
Speaker 14: and self criticism as tools for maintaining ideological purity resonated
Speaker 14: with Dixon. She implemented rigorous criticism and self criticism sessions
Speaker 14: within her future party, a practice that aimed to eliminate
Speaker 14: bourgeois tendencies and reinforced commitment to the party's goals. Dixon's
Speaker 14: political engagement wasn't limited to theoretical discussions. She was actively
Speaker 14: involved in radical movements, participating in protests and organizing efforts
Speaker 14: as well to challenge existing power structures. Her activism extended
Speaker 14: beyond national borders, as she connected with international revolutionary movements
Speaker 14: and drew inspiration from their struggles. The culmination of these
Speaker 14: influences and experiences led to the founding of the Democratic
Speaker 14: Worker's Party in nineteen seventy four. Dixon's vision for the
Speaker 14: Democratic Worpless Party or DWP was deeply rooted in this
Speaker 14: idea of Leninist democratic centralism, Maoist self critique, and Marxist
Speaker 14: anti capitalism. But beyond Marx, Lenin and Mao, the New
Speaker 14: Communist Movement or NCM played a significant role in shape
Speaker 14: and Dixon's approach. The NCM was a diverse collection of
Speaker 14: groups that emerged in the late nineteen sixties and early
Speaker 14: nineteen seventies advocating for a revitalized communist movement in the
Speaker 14: United States. The NCM sought to build new Marxist Leninist
Speaker 14: organizations that could address the shortcomings of the old left
Speaker 14: and provide a fresh, militant alternative. Dixon was, of course,
Speaker 14: deeply inspired by the ncm's emphasis on billionaire revolution sharing
Speaker 14: vanguard and his commitment to rigorous theoretical work and practical activism.
Speaker 14: At the time, the UP was getting a lot of
Speaker 14: credit for being one of the few feminist and women
Speaker 14: led organizations in the new Communist movement, which allowed the
Speaker 14: group to draw radicals from leftist circles as well as
Speaker 14: the women's movement and the gay movement. When most NCM
Speaker 14: groups were virulently a homophobic and dismissive of feminism, the
Speaker 14: DWP had a unique alert. Early on in her political career,
Speaker 14: Marline Dixon also contributed theoretically to the DWP with the
Speaker 14: concept of proletarian feminism, which allowed the DWP to stand
Speaker 14: up both against class prejudice and sexism and for the
Speaker 14: equality of all people. Over time, though her concept of
Speaker 14: proletariy and feminism became less prominent in the DWP's approach
Speaker 14: and in the literature. In the early stages, the concept
Speaker 14: of proletary and feminism attracted a lot of people, including
Speaker 14: jan Jalalich, the author of Bounded Choice, who had been
Speaker 14: part of the WP. The early days of the WP
Speaker 14: were marked by a significant effort to recruit and train
Speaker 14: new members. Dixon and her close associates focused on building
Speaker 14: a catre of dedicated revolutionaries who were deeply committed to
Speaker 14: the party schools. These numbers were not just activists, but
Speaker 14: Addiolodge called soldiers, prepared to dedicate their lives to the
Speaker 14: cause of socialism. Recruitment often targets had young intellectuals and
Speaker 14: activists who disillusioned with mainstream politics and eager for radical change.
Speaker 14: In this early period, the parties organized study groups, protests,
Speaker 14: and community outreach programs, all aimed at raising political consciousness
Speaker 14: and building support for the party's revolutionary agenda. Dixon's charisma
Speaker 14: and intellectual rigor inspired many, but her leadership style also
Speaker 14: had its challenges. Building on she had very authoritarian tendencies
Speaker 14: influenced by her admiration for mal Zadan, and it led
Speaker 14: to a highly controlled and often repressive internal atmosphere. Members
Speaker 14: were subjugated to rigorous criticism and self criticism sessions, and
Speaker 14: these sessions could be psychologically taxing, creating an atmosphere of
Speaker 14: constant scrutiny and pressure. This is exemplary of social psychologist
Speaker 14: Anthony Prakkanis and Aaronson's seven step guide to creating a
Speaker 14: political cult, which included crucially maintaining a rigid internal regime.
Speaker 14: In these early years, we can also see the signs
Speaker 14: of the other steps, such as creating a distinct social reality,
Speaker 14: building commitment through dissonance reduction, sending members to proselytize, and
Speaker 14: fixating members on a promised land, the promised land being,
Speaker 14: of course, international communism. The DWP crew steadily in its
Speaker 14: early years. Full time members called cadres or militants typically
Speaker 14: numbered between one hundred and twenty five and one hundred
Speaker 14: and fifty people, but in certain periods there were between
Speaker 14: three hundred and one thousand members at various creative affiliation.
Speaker 14: One of the d WP's primary areas of focus was
Speaker 14: labor organizing. Dixon and her colleagues saw the labor movement
Speaker 14: as a critical battleground for the struggle against capitalism, and
Speaker 14: they dedicated significant resources to supporting labour strikes, organizing union drives,
Speaker 14: and advocating for workers' rights. The DWP's members often worked
Speaker 14: closely with existing labor union providing support and promoting a
Speaker 14: more radical, class conscious approach labor activism, and this involvement
Speaker 14: helped party gain credibility and trust among workers, who saw
Speaker 14: the WP as genuine allies in their struggle. Members were
Speaker 14: also active in campaigns for affordable housing, health care, and education,
Speaker 14: working to build coalitions with other progressive organizations and community groups.
Speaker 14: Political education was another cornerstone of the activities. Dixon believed
Speaker 14: that a well informed and ideologically grounded membership was essential
Speaker 14: for the party's success, so they had regular study groups
Speaker 14: with jobs and lectures and Marxist theory, current events, and
Speaker 14: revolutionary strategy. And these activities are not limited to members,
Speaker 14: but were also used as tools for outreach. Eventually, the
Speaker 14: party's activities extended beyond its initial base in San Francisco
Speaker 14: and reached other parts of California, even gaining attention on
Speaker 14: a national scale. Dixon's ability to connect with other radical
Speaker 14: movements and a strategic vision for the WP's role in
Speaker 14: the broader of lutionary struggle had played a significant part
Speaker 14: in this growth, but despite their successes behind the scenes
Speaker 14: was not too hot, to put it lightly. While Dixon's
Speaker 14: theoretical acumen and charm had attracted many to her cause,
Speaker 14: her methods of maintaining control within the party with what
Speaker 14: gave it its cult connotations. One of the central aspects
Speaker 14: of Dixon's control was her personal domination over the party
Speaker 14: and its members. Dixon established herself as the undisputed leader
Speaker 14: of the EWP, demanding absolute loyalty and obedience. Leylish described
Speaker 14: her as a large, loud woman who exuded a type
Speaker 14: of chrisma that could be difficult for outsiders to comprehend.
Speaker 14: Her personal style was abrasive, and she was stern and domineering. Nonetheless,
Speaker 14: Dixon was able to exact commitment from her followers, an
Speaker 14: entailed devotion to her person and undying defense of her
Speaker 14: actions as their leader. So we see a peculiar and
Speaker 14: almost quanting resemblance to others the historical movements, like Heaven's Gates.
Speaker 14: On the surface, they seemed worlds apart. One is steeped
Speaker 14: in partical idiology, the other in spiritual salvation. But dive
Speaker 14: deeper and you'll find that the currents beneath their surface
Speaker 14: flew with striking similarities. Take for instance, the role of charisma.
Speaker 14: Like Apple White and the Nettles of Heaven's Gate. Dixon
Speaker 14: used words as her craft, her instrument, speaking to eager audiences,
Speaker 14: weaving a vision of hope that drew people in. She
Speaker 14: wasn't just persuede so she was magnetic. She created a
Speaker 14: myth for herself that seemed to fit with the revolutionary
Speaker 14: zie guys at the time. Laalish describes that when she
Speaker 14: first joined the party, Dixon was a tower in presence
Speaker 14: who created an intense, almost sacred bond with them. LATAs
Speaker 14: speaks of how the followers were awed by her, desperate
Speaker 14: to follow her vision, willing to endure her criticism just
Speaker 14: to stay in her good graces. And when Dick Sun
Speaker 14: would spend some time away and came back, they would
Speaker 14: spend long, cruel and meetings where she would dissect every
Speaker 14: decision they made and criticize everything they did in her absence,
Speaker 14: showing them all the ways they had fallen short. It
Speaker 14: was brutal, but it also reinforced her authority over them,
Speaker 14: as they wanted to get her approval at all times.
Speaker 14: One of her documents on the development of Leninist democracy
Speaker 14: told the followers that the leadership was about authority, not popularity,
Speaker 14: and whether we liked her or not, we had to
Speaker 14: accept as the ultimate authority in the party. Lachi also
Speaker 14: says that they were made to believe that being part
Speaker 14: of the WP was a privilege. Authority wasn't just accepted,
Speaker 14: it was revered, and this is the foundation of their
Speaker 14: relationship with Dixon. She was the leader, the guide in force,
Speaker 14: and they were the followers, committed, obedient, and always seeking
Speaker 14: her approval. And yet there was a secret at the
Speaker 14: heart of her. She was a myth maker. Her backstory
Speaker 14: was curated, embellished to paint herself as a champion of
Speaker 14: civil rights when the reality was far less dramatic. Systems
Speaker 14: of control was another area where the DWP and Heaven's
Speaker 14: Gates shared common ground. Both groups thrived on a mix
Speaker 14: of carrot and stick promises of a better future, harsh
Speaker 14: discipline for failure. Leaders would live apart from their followers,
Speaker 14: hidden away while their followers toiled and sacrificed. Every day
Speaker 14: was a test, every misstep a reason for criticism, and
Speaker 14: leaders were never revealing themselves fully. They created a distance.
Speaker 14: They were heightened their mystique and their authority. In the DWP,
Speaker 14: there was a very strict hierarchy and chain of command.
Speaker 14: Dixon was at the top. She had a select few
Speaker 14: leaders below her, and decisions were made top down. Democratic centralism,
Speaker 14: which was leninistact like the theoretically allowed for debate and democracy,
Speaker 14: was really there to enforce obedience. Members were also split
Speaker 14: into tears. He had trial members, candidate members, and general members.
Speaker 14: Each level carrier and distinct privileges and obligations. An advancement
Speaker 14: was up to Dixon. She decided who leveled up in
Speaker 14: the party. Sanctions for rule violations ranged from increased duties
Speaker 14: to expulsion, the severest being expulsion with prejudice effectively erase
Speaker 14: in the individual. From party history and the party's first purge,
Speaker 14: notably the quote unquote Lesbian Purge, exemplified Dixon's control tactics.
Speaker 14: As a target had perceived threat within the group and
Speaker 14: set a precedent for internal purges that instilled fair and
Speaker 14: loyalty among the members, and then Lastly, there was transcendent belief.
Speaker 14: Another area where Heaven's Skates and the DWP had common ground.
Speaker 14: For Heav's Skater was a more transcendent human life to
Speaker 14: reach a higher plane of existence. For the WP, it
Speaker 14: was what transforming society reaching utopia through class struggle. The
Speaker 14: daily life of the WP members was highly regimented. Dixon
Speaker 14: had strict routines and expectations demanded complete dedication to the
Speaker 14: party's activities. Members were subjected to intense scrutiny, particularly those
Speaker 14: of the evil middle class backgrounds, and this method of
Speaker 14: course effectively suppressed descent and ensured the members remained tightly
Speaker 14: bound to Dixon's vision. This rerelent their schedule that had
Speaker 14: them within long hours both in their day jobs and
Speaker 14: unparty related tasks, led them little time for pursuits or
Speaker 14: outside relationships, which also helped Dixon maintain control over their lives.
Speaker 14: By limited members interactions with outsiders, Dixon minimized the risk
Speaker 14: of external influences undermining her authority, and this isolation extended
Speaker 14: to live in arrangements as well as members lived communally,
Speaker 14: which further reinforced their dependence on the party and their
Speaker 14: separation from mainstream society. The combination of these control mechanisms
Speaker 14: created a highly controlled and insular environment within the WP,
Speaker 14: as members were constantly monitored by both Dixon and the
Speaker 14: other payers to ensure that any deviation from the party
Speaker 14: line was quickly identified and addressed. The use of fair
Speaker 14: guilt and psychological manipulation kept members in line. Of course,
Speaker 14: the control was not just psychological. It was physical, because
Speaker 14: when you're isolated on your working all the time, your
Speaker 14: body is going to break down, your exhausted, your burnt out,
Speaker 14: and the emotional strain of constant criticism doesn't exactly help either.
Speaker 14: But all of this were to keep party members in
Speaker 14: their place. The contriversies surrounding the WP's methods and leadership
Speaker 14: eventually drew attention from both within the leftist movement and
Speaker 14: from external observers. Critics argue that Dixon's authoritarianism when the
Speaker 14: parties cut like practices were antithetical to the principles of
Speaker 14: socialism and genuine revolutionary activity, but these criticisms did little
Speaker 14: to all to the internal dynamics of the WP during
Speaker 14: its peak. In the early days, Dixon and her followers
Speaker 14: truly believed her revolution was just around the corner. By
Speaker 14: the nineteen eighties, recruitment was faltering, purges was narrow in
Speaker 14: the organization's focus. At the WP's aggressive tactics had led
Speaker 14: to conflict. Without the leftist groups, Dixon had grown dissolution.
Speaker 14: She had begun to see the local struggles they were
Speaker 14: taking part in as insignificant as mere reformist gestures. She
Speaker 14: moved the party from distributing a local newspaper to publishing
Speaker 14: dense academic journals. She developed a stain for world systems theory,
Speaker 14: which had once been a guiding light in her movement,
Speaker 14: and rejected it as anti socialist and cynical. In her eyes,
Speaker 14: the United States working class was no longer a beacon
Speaker 14: for revolution. Instead, she placed her faith in the USSR
Speaker 14: in Eastern Europe, in distant lands where she believed the
Speaker 14: future of socialism lay. Her frequent travels to conferences in
Speaker 14: Europe and her focus on theoretical debates needed her members,
Speaker 14: as the heart of their struggle had been replaced with
Speaker 14: her distant, abstract vision that none of them could grasp.
Speaker 14: But the real breaking point came with her change and strategies.
Speaker 14: Dixon began to see the Petibo Rossi as potential allies
Speaker 14: instead of enemies, as they had always been. A radical
Speaker 14: shit from ideology that her party had been taught beyond
Speaker 14: all that her drinking had become more uncontrolled than usual,
Speaker 14: and her abuse of the members had increased. So in
Speaker 14: late nineteen eighty five, a few of her members decided
Speaker 14: that enough was enough. While Dixon was away on one
Speaker 14: of her many trips, they gathered in secret, shared their frustrations,
Speaker 14: and they'd bear the truth over what had become of
Speaker 14: the party. When Dixon returned, she was met with the
Speaker 14: harshest reality of war. They told her that the party
Speaker 14: was over, that she was expelled, and that they were
Speaker 14: dissolving the party. Her reaction was, of course, a mix
Speaker 14: of disbelief and anger, and a final bit of confrontation
Speaker 14: with the collapse of everything she had built. Afterwards, there
Speaker 14: was of course a mesteric The members have an endured
Speaker 14: abuse for so long, including financial abuse, took it upon
Speaker 14: themselves to divide the assets amongst themselves as a final
Speaker 14: small compensation for the years they had given. Each person
Speaker 14: received a poetry sum, a fraction of what they had invested.
Speaker 14: But at last, the party's ideological crises weekend leadership and
Speaker 14: internal strife resulted in the organization's dissolution. The party was
Speaker 14: indeed over, and they could start their life on you.
Speaker 8: Hey.
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