Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 3: Welcome to it could happen here. It is a beautiful
Speaker 3: sunny day in Atlanta, Georgia, which means I think they're
Speaker 3: all lying about the weather. They said this hurricane was
Speaker 3: going to come, and I'm fine, I don't believe them.
Speaker 3: It's all fake. Joined with me today is Mia Wong.
Speaker 3: I'm Garrison Davis. Welcome di could happen here?
Speaker 4: Welcome man, It's hey.
Speaker 5: Look it's cloudy in Portland, so clearly they were telling
Speaker 5: the truth.
Speaker 4: I don't know what's going on in your reality, but.
Speaker 3: I can't believe that the Republicans have hijacked the weather
Speaker 3: Control Matrix and are aiming it at Portland, Oregon to
Speaker 3: wipe it off the map, to give Oregon to give
Speaker 3: Horicans vote to Donald Trump in the next election.
Speaker 5: You know, one of my foundational early political memories was
Speaker 5: discovering that, like the mid twenty tens era mayor of
Speaker 5: Ankara thought that NATO had an earthquake machine that they
Speaker 5: were setting off off the coast of Turkey in order
Speaker 5: to cause namies during hurricane season, so that because so deep,
Speaker 5: NATO could destroy the Turkish economy.
Speaker 3: And I hope so now.
Speaker 4: We thought that was very funny.
Speaker 5: And now every single like major politician did America believe
Speaker 5: some shit like that now.
Speaker 3: And I was like, oh, everyone has something, not everyone
Speaker 3: has the same thing, but everyone has something crazy that
Speaker 3: they believe. And that's what we're talking about here today.
Speaker 3: So oh boy, it is. It has gotten bad, folks.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 3: As Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton brought widespread devastation to
Speaker 3: the southeastern United States, politicians, TV anchors, and influencers have
Speaker 3: been trying to weaponize the tragedy and the disaster relief
Speaker 3: effort for their own partisan electoral gain, particularly via the
Speaker 3: use of disinformation. Now, while the government's response to Hurricane
Speaker 3: Helene can certainly be criticized, bad fight attacks originating from
Speaker 3: the far right have spread wildly online and have been
Speaker 3: boosted by Trump and Fox News. Many of these focus
Speaker 3: on the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, with some
Speaker 3: of them connecting to like decades old conspiracy theories about
Speaker 3: the agency. Yeah, so this episode, we're going to go
Speaker 3: over some of the conspiracy theories and misinformation circulating about
Speaker 3: these hurricanes, but not necessarily to like debunk them, because like,
Speaker 3: I know who's listening to this, but I think it's
Speaker 3: actually more helpful to place them into the larger tapestry
Speaker 3: of conspiracy thinking leading into the election and discuss how
Speaker 3: modern misinformation has presented a whole new problem that simple
Speaker 3: fact checks aren't equipped to handle.
Speaker 5: Hey, Garrison, you are very confident about that, but I
Speaker 5: personally know leftists who I have been friends with who
Speaker 5: believe the weather weapons shit. So you never know.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, I do believe that fact checks aren't
Speaker 3: going to be the main solution here.
Speaker 5: Oh no, they're not gonna help that. I'm just saying, Look,
Speaker 5: there are believers everywhere for the eyes to see.
Speaker 3: It's great, That's kind of what I'm saying here. Yeah, Now,
Speaker 3: let's start by talking about Donald Trump and FEMA. Oh God,
Speaker 3: So some of the misinformation spreading about FEMA right now
Speaker 3: includes the claim that the agency is only providing seven
Speaker 3: hundred and fifty dollars in aid to individuals affected by
Speaker 3: Hurricane Helene, when actually the seven hundred and fifty dollars
Speaker 3: payments are just the initial really funds to help with
Speaker 3: immediate needs. There's also been claims that FEMA only issues
Speaker 3: loans and any relief money received has to be paid back.
Speaker 3: This isn't true. Only in rare cases when someone receives
Speaker 3: duplicate funds from FEMA and insurance does money have to
Speaker 3: be returned to FEMA. There's also been claims that if
Speaker 3: victims fail to pay back FEMA, they will then seize
Speaker 3: your property. This is also falls more on this later now.
Speaker 3: A TikTok video with over a million views claimed that
Speaker 3: FEMA is raiding people's homes to seize supplies. This isn't true.
Speaker 3: FEMA doesn't raid people's healths. On a more racist note,
Speaker 3: it's claimed that FEMA has run out of money for
Speaker 3: hurricane victims because Kamala spent billions of FEMA dollars on
Speaker 3: housing for illegal immigrants. At a campaign rally, Donald Trump said,
Speaker 3: and I'm not going to do the voice the Harris
Speaker 3: Biden administration says they don't have money because they spent
Speaker 3: it all on illegal immigrants. They stole the FEMA money,
Speaker 3: just like they stole it from a bank so that
Speaker 3: they could give it to their illegal immigrants, unquote. This
Speaker 3: lie was also shared by Sean Hannity on Fox News,
Speaker 3: and even when confronted with facts that discredit this claim,
Speaker 3: commentators on Fox still insist that even though it's not
Speaker 3: technically true, it still feels true.
Speaker 7: It may not be actually true that FEMA resources that
Speaker 7: could have been available in North Carolina have been given
Speaker 7: to migrants, but there's no question about the broad orientation
Speaker 7: of FEMA the Biden Harris administration, which has been to
Speaker 7: channel huge amounts of money to communities and to non
Speaker 7: governmental organizations to help with the massive influx of migrants
Speaker 7: that they themselves have created.
Speaker 5: And this is a fun one too, because like there
Speaker 5: is FEMA underfunding. But the reason there's FEMA underfunding is
Speaker 5: it Republicans keep voting not to give it more money.
Speaker 3: Yes, which like oh boy, I mean again, like this
Speaker 3: is a big part of the Republican strategy just making
Speaker 3: life worse for everybody so that everyone's more angry so
Speaker 3: that people will vote Republican. And that's that is the
Speaker 3: strategy they want, because as long as they're as long
Speaker 3: as their base is doing badly and like upset and angry,
Speaker 3: they will find some way to blame it on the
Speaker 3: opposition and then vote in Republican. This has been the
Speaker 3: conservative governmental strategy for decades.
Speaker 5: Yeah, do all the terrible stuff and then blame the
Speaker 5: stuff that you did on immigrants, which, yeah, good times,
Speaker 5: love this country, great stuff happening.
Speaker 3: A famously reliable strategy. Trump's also lied about the governor
Speaker 3: of Georgia not being able to get in contact with
Speaker 3: President Biden coordinate disaster relief efforts, when in fact they
Speaker 3: had spoken to day prior. Trump also claimed that the
Speaker 3: federal government and the North Carolina Democratic governor have been
Speaker 3: quote going out of their way to not help people
Speaker 3: in Republican areas unquote. This is also completely false that
Speaker 3: there were more isolated areas in North Carolina that were
Speaker 3: harder to reach, but people are trying to get there,
Speaker 3: and in fact, some of the hardest reach areas were
Speaker 3: actually immigrant communities who were too scared to like actually
Speaker 3: ask for federal help out of fear they would be deported.
Speaker 3: So like, yes, there actually is people really struggling to
Speaker 3: get a relief, but it's not by and large your
Speaker 3: Trump voters. Like again, certainly the relief efforts managed by
Speaker 3: the government have had their fair share of problems. People
Speaker 3: are not getting all the help they need. But this
Speaker 3: is not a conspiracy by the Democratic governor to deprive
Speaker 3: Republicans of hurricane relief. Like, that's not true. Now, Trump's
Speaker 3: falsehoods about the hurricane and the disaster response in service
Speaker 3: of his reelection campaign have signaled that it's aok for
Speaker 3: Republicans to spread all manner of hurricane conspiracy theories targeting
Speaker 3: the federal government. Oh boy, and this is where we're
Speaker 3: gonna get into the newest conspiracy theory sweeping the nation,
Speaker 3: that the government controls the weather, all of the weather,
Speaker 3: especially hurricanes. Now, this is not a new conspiracy theory.
Speaker 4: Certainly, I'm so sick of the weather weapon shit.
Speaker 3: But the fact that we have sitting congressman, including Mantorie
Speaker 3: Taylor Green from Georgia, who is riding this thing like
Speaker 3: a fucking horse is a little bit wild. She has
Speaker 3: been posting NonStop the past week about how quote unquote
Speaker 3: they control the weather. I wonder what they means. She
Speaker 3: has been attributing the weather modification to a few different agencies,
Speaker 3: including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Speaker 5: Yeah, sure of sure, no one's doing this, like comeine.
Speaker 3: She has posted me that prove that they're controlling the
Speaker 3: weather because they list a whole bunch of weather modification patents. Now,
Speaker 3: the funny thing is is that most of these patents
Speaker 3: are like over one hundred years old, if many of
Speaker 3: them are expired. Yeah, these patents contain plans to drop
Speaker 3: water from balloons to produce rain. That's the weather modification
Speaker 3: she's talking about. She included a patent that includes like
Speaker 3: a way to use like airplane exhaust to blow away
Speaker 3: poison gas from like trenches. That's chemtrails, Garrison, it's chemtrails.
Speaker 3: It's absurd. All of these things are like are like
Speaker 3: ancient patents and like weather modification is a real thing technically,
Speaker 3: like we have been trying to alter the weather. One
Speaker 3: of the pointed to like real technologies is cloud seating.
Speaker 3: Cloud seating is a small scale technology to alter clouds precipitation,
Speaker 3: usually to increase the cloud's ability to produce localized rain.
Speaker 3: By adding ice or condensation nuclei into the forming clouds.
Speaker 3: This helps areas suffering from drought and low Reall cloud
Speaker 3: seating has been jumped upon by Republican conspiracy theorists as
Speaker 3: proof that the government is actually engaging in a massive
Speaker 3: weather control operation, including to produce hurricanes. Now, hurricanes are
Speaker 3: famously quite large, and it is impossible to determine the
Speaker 3: path or cause one to happen. This just simply isn't true.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And I mean the largest scale like attempts to
Speaker 5: manipulate whether that humanity has ever done like on purpose
Speaker 5: that wasn't global warming was from two thousand and eight
Speaker 5: Olympics in Beijing, and it took. It took the entire industrial,
Speaker 5: technological and scientific capacity of a nation of one billion
Speaker 5: people and putting like an unfathomable amount of resources and
Speaker 5: planning and like logistical capability at specifically not making it
Speaker 5: ran in Beijing for like a fairly small amount of
Speaker 5: time and lowering the air pollution levels. They barely managed
Speaker 5: to pull that off, so they they sort of kind
Speaker 5: of made the weather better in one city for like
Speaker 5: two weeks. And that took a a level of resource
Speaker 5: coordination like fucking unfathomable, like most human history like that.
Speaker 3: It's it's it's very challenging to alter the weather. It
Speaker 3: requires it requires a lot of resources. No, it doesn't,
Speaker 3: it doesn't work very well.
Speaker 5: Like that's like shut down factories across like half the country,
Speaker 5: Like it was fiasco, And like these people.
Speaker 3: Aren't actually like talking about that. They're talking about conspiratorial
Speaker 3: efforts from the federal government's illuminati to to like to
Speaker 3: like target hurricanes. Yeah, like on certain red states to
Speaker 3: alter the election. Like that, that's that's really what they're
Speaker 3: talking about. Conspiracy theorists and the right have pointed it
Speaker 3: to HARP University of Alaska Fairbreaks program, not the HARP
Speaker 3: that uses high frequency equipment to study the upper atmosphere.
Speaker 3: According to Reuters, no atmospheric monitoring equipment do not alter
Speaker 3: the weather. Conspiracy theorists have also targeted Doppler radios and
Speaker 3: next rad basically like radar control systems and radio control
Speaker 3: systems as being used to change weather patterns and cause hurricanes. This,
Speaker 3: this isn't true. You can't change the weather with a
Speaker 3: radio or with radar. Again, like we're not debunking this
Speaker 3: because this is so No, this is so ludicrous, But
Speaker 3: these are the conspiracy theories that they're invoking, and like
Speaker 3: and like Harp, conspiracy theories do go back quite a while.
Speaker 3: I've seen a few other things talking about like direct
Speaker 3: energy weapons and lasers from space or lasers from the
Speaker 3: ground pointed out the atmosphere which caused hurricanes to form.
Speaker 3: This also isn't real. We cannot cause a hurricane deform.
Speaker 3: It's it's too big.
Speaker 5: And the thing about this stuff is like these are
Speaker 5: all old conspiracies, right, but it's like these are things
Speaker 5: that used to be like like you would you would
Speaker 5: walk into a room full of guys who believe that
Speaker 5: nine to eleven was staged with holograms and that MK
Speaker 5: all to successfully produced mind control that was originally developed
Speaker 5: by North Korea, and those people would laugh the like
Speaker 5: harp idiots out of the room. Yeah, it was a
Speaker 5: conspiracy scene by other conspiracy theorists as like too obviously bullshit,
Speaker 5: Like do you.
Speaker 3: Know what isn't bullshit? Meya?
Speaker 4: Is it the product of services that support this podcast?
Speaker 3: It sure is.
Speaker 5: The MyPillow guy, you try to sell gold, now here
Speaker 5: we go get your gold. All right, we are back.
Speaker 5: But yes, these conspiracy theories.
Speaker 3: Have existed for a long time talking about some degree
Speaker 3: of the government's ability to influence natural disasters and like
Speaker 3: big weather events. People have tried to blame forest fires
Speaker 3: on lasers. Specifically the Maui fires from a few years ago,
Speaker 3: they said were actually caused by direct energy weapons to
Speaker 3: get people to flee their land so that it could
Speaker 3: be seized by the federal government. All this kind of stuff. Now,
Speaker 3: like some of them also point to like geo engineering, right,
Speaker 3: they say that although geoengineering is said to conduct climate change,
Speaker 3: it actually causes climate change. Geoengineering there's technically a few forms,
Speaker 3: but the one that we're talking about basically like injects
Speaker 3: aricized chemicals into the atmosphere to reflect some light. Obviously
Speaker 3: reflecting some lights, not gonna make a hurricane worse, but whatever.
Speaker 3: So this has gotten really bad. This has taken over
Speaker 3: a significant portion of the online right to the point
Speaker 3: that even people like Dysantis are having to come out
Speaker 3: and say, hey, guys, no, this that this isn't real.
Speaker 3: In a press conference, Dysantis claimed that there are in
Speaker 3: fact weather conspiracies quote on both sides.
Speaker 4: Uh huh, yeah. By one friend.
Speaker 3: You kind of have some people who think the government
Speaker 3: can do this, and others think it's because of fossil
Speaker 3: fuels unquote.
Speaker 4: Oh my fucking guy.
Speaker 3: Has communication director later reiterated the claim, saying, quote, the
Speaker 3: government controls the other crowd and the global warming and
Speaker 3: climate change alarmists are two sides of the same coin,
Speaker 3: unscientific agenda, motivated and unhelpful. Following a storm, weather is
Speaker 3: weather unquote Jesus Christ. Even in their refutation of the
Speaker 3: weather controlling conspiracies, they cannot help but dip into some
Speaker 3: climate denial conspiracies. We love to see it.
Speaker 4: Oh my god.
Speaker 3: Now I think like hurricanes and natural disasters are uniquely
Speaker 3: susceptible to misinformation. During times of crisis, people try to
Speaker 3: search for information to relieve stress, and they often don't
Speaker 3: take the extra time to verify said information. Whenever a
Speaker 3: new natural disaster strikes, old footage and videos circulate, being
Speaker 3: passed off as current events. Conversations and arguments about climate
Speaker 3: change and climate denial also spark during natural disasters, leading
Speaker 3: to a surge of climate change conspiracy theories. While this
Speaker 3: is nothing new, the way people are getting information is
Speaker 3: changing with the increased use of AI chat bought personal
Speaker 3: assistance and image generation. There was this TikTok trend ahead
Speaker 3: of Hurricane Milton where you ask in Amazon Alexa what
Speaker 3: the result of the hurricane was going to be before
Speaker 3: it hit landfall. I'm gonna play this video that has
Speaker 3: over two million views on Twitter.
Speaker 8: Alexa how many laves were lost during Hurricane Milton. Overall?
Speaker 8: Extreme Hurricane Milton caused twenty one point three billion dollars
Speaker 8: in damages and caused two hundred and sixty two fatalities
Speaker 8: October eighth, twenty twenty four, twelve to fifteen pm Central Time.
Speaker 3: Very scary now. This other video has over seven hundred
Speaker 3: and fifty thousand views on TikTok Alexa.
Speaker 9: What kind of hurricane is Hurricane Milton?
Speaker 8: From fandom dot com. Hurricane Milton was an extremely powerful
Speaker 8: Category five hurricane that caused widespread damage across its path
Speaker 8: in October four. They've already predicted the outcome from your wife.
Speaker 6: So.
Speaker 3: That one may have given you a hint about what's
Speaker 3: going on here. Obviously, Alexa doesn't know the future, nor
Speaker 3: has the government pre programmed data about It's a secret
Speaker 3: weather control program into your eco device. Alexa just pulls
Speaker 3: from information it finds online, in this case fandom dot
Speaker 3: com hypothetical hurricanes wiki Are You Fucking? Which is a
Speaker 3: wiki which is a wiki based comprehensive database of hypothetical
Speaker 3: tropical cyclone articles that anyone can edite.
Speaker 5: You know, I said, I said as a I said
Speaker 5: as a joke a couple of years ago that we
Speaker 5: were about two years out from the QAnon people discovering
Speaker 5: the plot of metal gear solid and believing it was real.
Speaker 5: But like, we're so close to that now we are
Speaker 5: two months out from them from from an AI telling
Speaker 5: them the plot of metal gear solid and then believing
Speaker 5: the patriots secretly control the government.
Speaker 3: They're quoting from a fandom wiki on fake hurricanes that
Speaker 3: people make for fun, and it can be manipulated in
Speaker 3: the lead up to a hurricane specifically to cause this
Speaker 3: type of reaction. Again, like as a bit right, it's
Speaker 3: absurd now to go even further into this AI singularity.
Speaker 3: Hell hole.
Speaker 4: Oh no.
Speaker 3: A Twitter user tried to debunk that first video I played,
Speaker 3: predicting the death toll. In the replies, this other user wrote, quote,
Speaker 3: there was a Hurricane Milton in the year two thousand.
Speaker 3: Please before you post, at least try to fact check
Speaker 3: with Groc unquote. They include a Grock AI screenshot that reads, quote,
Speaker 3: the name Milton has been used for one hurricane in
Speaker 3: the Atlantic basin. Hurricane Milton occurred in two thousand. However,
Speaker 3: for the twenty twenty four hurricane season, there was another
Speaker 3: hurricane Milton. Thinking it the second time this name has
Speaker 3: been used for an Atlantic hurricane.
Speaker 10: Unquote.
Speaker 3: So in argument then ensued about which AI is wrecked quote.
Speaker 3: Grock and chat GPT disagree on the existence of a
Speaker 3: prior hurricane Milton. Groc says, prior to the twenty twenty
Speaker 3: four hurricane season, there were no hurricanes named Milton in
Speaker 3: the Atlantic. Next, I asked chat GPT Hurricane Milton, which
Speaker 3: occurd in the year nineteen ninety caused significant damage, particularly
Speaker 3: in Mexico where it made landfall. I asked chat GPT
Speaker 3: a second time. Was there a Milton hurricane in two thousand?
Speaker 3: Chat GPT said, yes, there was a Hurricane Milton in
Speaker 3: two thousand. It formed in the Eastern Pacific in late December.
Speaker 3: You know, another person replied, saying, Grock states a two
Speaker 3: thousand hurricane named Milton struck struck Nicaragua in two thousand,
Speaker 3: but it doesn't show up on the National Weather Services
Speaker 3: hurricane tracking charts for two thousand unquote. Very curious. It's insane.
Speaker 3: It's insane. These people are using chat, GPT, and grock
Speaker 3: ai as search engines, and when they hallucinate to take data,
Speaker 3: they're alleging some kind of conspiracy theory to suppress data
Speaker 3: on a previous hurricane Milton, I mean, and it's also
Speaker 3: just worse, like having like this person condescend, being like,
Speaker 3: please before you post, try to fact check with grok.
Speaker 3: You're like, what the fuck are you talking about? Groc
Speaker 3: is a comedy AI chatbot that's going to generate you
Speaker 3: like a nonsense response. It's not a fact checking tool,
Speaker 3: it's not even a search engine. They're just hallucinating data
Speaker 3: that people are then passing off as real information.
Speaker 5: I think I kind of feel for these people in
Speaker 5: the sense that, like, if you live through the twenty tens,
Speaker 5: the thing that you were able to do, and that
Speaker 5: you were trained to do, was that you had a question,
Speaker 5: you would type it into Google and sometimes it would
Speaker 5: give you the right answer.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 5: But now it's like a machine has been created that
Speaker 5: answers to question. What if Google never gave you the
Speaker 5: correct answer. And all of these people have been trained
Speaker 5: that they can put this into the Internet and it
Speaker 5: will give them the correct answer, except now we have
Speaker 5: a machine that destories the entire Amazon every single second
Speaker 5: in order to generate the wrong answer.
Speaker 3: Well, and like specifically because of how these like AI
Speaker 3: systems have been politicized with like Elon Musk and stuff like,
Speaker 3: Republicans view it as like a political imperative to use
Speaker 3: them over the Democrat leaning like search engines, and people
Speaker 3: aren't just turning to AI and Louse search engine, They're
Speaker 3: also using TikTok. They're also now using x as their
Speaker 3: own search engine to get reliable information from users instead
Speaker 3: of actually like verified information online which you can find
Speaker 3: with a little bit of searching. So all this is
Speaker 3: creating a quite volatile scenario where misinformation is spreading at
Speaker 3: a faster pace than it really ever has before. Now,
Speaker 3: just like in the Springfield pet eating hoax, people on
Speaker 3: the right are also spreading AI images as evidence of
Speaker 3: how the Biden Harris government failed their disaster relief response
Speaker 3: after Hurricane Helene. The most circulated image is of a
Speaker 3: crying little girl wearing a life vest holding a wet puppy.
Speaker 3: Oh no, she is sitting in a boat surrounded by floodwater.
Speaker 3: This is this is pure boomer.
Speaker 5: Bait, right like, yeah, you will never regret liking this post.
Speaker 3: Rolling Stone traced this AI image to a Trump web
Speaker 3: forum called Patriots dot Win Oh God, and like users
Speaker 3: there quickly saw that it was AI, but that didn't
Speaker 3: stop its spread online. The image she got on Twitter
Speaker 3: and was spread around after being posted by Utah Senator
Speaker 3: Mike Lee, who has a dark mega profile picture. I'm
Speaker 3: going to quote from Rolling Stone quote. Laura Lumer called
Speaker 3: the image sad, quote, tweeting from a post by Buzz Patterson,
Speaker 3: columnist for the conservative blog Red State, who wrote of
Speaker 3: the picture, our government has failed us again. Amy Kamier, RNC,
Speaker 3: national committeewoman for the Georgia GOP and the co founder
Speaker 3: of Women for Trump, tweeted on Thursday that the image
Speaker 3: has been quote seared into my mind unquote. Informed that
Speaker 3: she was not looking at an authentic photo. Kermer doubled down, y'all,
Speaker 3: I don't know where this photo came from, and honestly
Speaker 3: it doesn't matter. There are people going through much worse
Speaker 3: than what is shown in this pic. So I'm leaving
Speaker 3: it up because it's the emblematic of the trauma and
Speaker 3: the pain people are living through right now. Unquote. Oh
Speaker 3: my god. So I get like at this point, people
Speaker 3: know they're spreading fake information, but they're doing it anyway
Speaker 3: because it helps them, like they are willing participants in
Speaker 3: the complete removal of reality from their constituent's brains. A
Speaker 3: mega Twitter account posted this AI photo with the girl
Speaker 3: in the puppy and wrote, quote, Kamala doesn't have enough
Speaker 3: money for this child. I can't hate this administration enough unquote,
Speaker 3: Oh my god. So do you know what I can't
Speaker 3: hate enough?
Speaker 11: No?
Speaker 10: No?
Speaker 11: Uh?
Speaker 3: Do you know what I love dearly with my full
Speaker 3: my full life force?
Speaker 4: Is it products? Services? Yeah?
Speaker 3: It's the products and services at support this podcast. Listen
Speaker 3: to them. We will be right back afterwards. Okay, we
Speaker 3: return to conclude our Hurricane Missing Foe run down. So
Speaker 3: why is this stuff catching on? Like, what's happening that's
Speaker 3: causing this to be so much worse than usual? What's
Speaker 3: going on? Why is this spreading right now? To answer
Speaker 3: that question, I'm first going to read a tweet from
Speaker 3: Candice Taylor, a Georgia candidate for governor back in twenty
Speaker 3: twenty two. Quote, the weather can and is being manipulated.
Speaker 3: Wake up, Stop being ignorant or plain stupid. There's no
Speaker 3: such thing as coincidence. The most important election in the
Speaker 3: history of America is thirty days away. Pray Georgia. Voting
Speaker 3: has been compromised, and I don't know if we will
Speaker 3: be able to get all of our early voting days in.
Speaker 3: Now a hurricane is coming straight for Florida. These two
Speaker 3: states are necessary for our Trump victory. No coincidence, So,
Speaker 3: of course this is all a conspiracy to send hurricane
Speaker 3: specifically at red states to compromise Trump's ability to win
Speaker 3: the election. A woman at a Trump rally explained that
Speaker 3: that the government is using cloud seating to make the
Speaker 3: hurricanes worse, and that this was pre planned because Amazon
Speaker 3: Alexas already knew the information about the hurricanes ahead of time.
Speaker 3: Her reasoning was that the hurricane damaged land could be
Speaker 3: seized for lithium mining by Kamala Harris's husband, and that
Speaker 3: the weather was controlled to rig the election against Trump. Now,
Speaker 3: this little tidbit about Kamala's husband that a nice little
Speaker 3: anti semitic jab in there. Of course, the Jews are
Speaker 3: controlling the weather to do lithium mining. Why not? And
Speaker 3: I'm not going to play a short clip from this interview,
Speaker 3: not the whole thing, so it's way too long, and
Speaker 3: she rambles about cloud seating for longer than I want
Speaker 3: to include, but I will include this one short clip.
Speaker 12: You're implying that the government made a hurricane stronger to
Speaker 12: hurt its own country, the United States of America?
Speaker 13: Correct?
Speaker 3: And what would be the gain of that when if.
Speaker 14: You like, there's been people out there, if they have
Speaker 14: an alexa, I don't know. If you've heard that and
Speaker 14: they've asked what caused Milton, you can go on there now.
Speaker 14: It's already predicted the number of deaths and the amount
Speaker 14: of it's already predicted it On a Google it won't
Speaker 14: do that. If you ask it about Halleen, it'll tell
Speaker 14: you the government actively used seed clouding. This is before
Speaker 14: Helen even happened.
Speaker 12: Why would a country want to have a hurricane be
Speaker 12: strong and hit its own country.
Speaker 14: Because they want to control certain places. And if you're
Speaker 14: looking at where the hurricane's going, it's a lot of
Speaker 14: red states. If you're looking at the counties in North Carolina,
Speaker 14: that were hit. There are all of them. Twenty six
Speaker 14: out of twenty eight of those counties were for Trump.
Speaker 14: They're doing whatever they can because they can't.
Speaker 4: Rig the election, even control the weather.
Speaker 3: Yes, very compelling stuff coming out of the Trump rallies.
Speaker 4: Jesus Christ.
Speaker 3: I'm going to quote from a Media Matters article on
Speaker 3: hurricane misinformation and conspiracy theories. Quote. A video with over
Speaker 3: sixty four thousand views has on screen text that reads
Speaker 3: were at the point of revolution. It features a user
Speaker 3: speculating for over six minutes that Hurricane Helene was somehow
Speaker 3: part of a plan to suppress white Republican votes. Quote.
Speaker 3: You might be able to speculate that this is something
Speaker 3: to do with the fact that these are largely white
Speaker 3: rule Appalachian areas that have been affected. They're looking at
Speaker 3: it like this, this election is three weeks from now.
Speaker 3: We've just wiped out the complete and total infrastructure for
Speaker 3: all these towns and cities. That's great, because guess which
Speaker 3: way these towns leaned. They leaned red. These were largely
Speaker 3: Republican leading towns. As far as they're concerned, they could
Speaker 3: all die and they don't care because that's just one
Speaker 3: less vote for Trump. Unquote yes, Asheville, North Carolina, famously
Speaker 3: famously a Republican town, famously the conservative paradise of Asheville.
Speaker 3: Now a lot of these conspiracies also link up to
Speaker 3: very old like FEMA conspiracies. Right, there's been conspiracies about
Speaker 3: FEMA since like the nineteen eighties. They've been heavily tied
Speaker 3: in with the militia movement. The formation of the Oath
Speaker 3: Keepers was in response to FEMA concentration conspiracy theories basically
Speaker 3: that they'll use natural disasters and FEMA to like round
Speaker 3: up patriots to do some kind of new World order,
Speaker 3: or that they're gonna use FEMA to seize your land
Speaker 3: so then you're gonna be put in a FEMA concentration camp.
Speaker 3: Very old conspiracies. Now these have kind of fed into
Speaker 3: the current conspiracy matrix regarding the hurricanes. I'm gonna quote
Speaker 3: from this one guy on Twitter called the health Ranger. No,
Speaker 3: not the health Ranger.
Speaker 6: No me.
Speaker 3: And do you know who the health Ranger is?
Speaker 5: Yeah, the health Ranger is is a frequent Alex Jodes guest.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, like an anti vax guy.
Speaker 5: And Ale He's a whole thing in in this whole
Speaker 5: conspiracy universe.
Speaker 3: I hate him so much. He does, and this is
Speaker 3: this is what he says about the current hurricanes quote
Speaker 3: no in coming intel all caps. FEMA is waiving ungodly
Speaker 3: amounts of money at private security firms right now, begging
Speaker 3: for security contractors to station at Florida to prevent Floridians
Speaker 3: from returning to their homes and businesses after the storm hits.
Speaker 3: The evacuation orders are to push people out of Florida
Speaker 3: and keep them out. Reportedly, delta force personnel advising FEMA
Speaker 3: at the top devising denial of area enforcement plans which
Speaker 3: will be enforced at gunpoint if required. I'm told FEMA
Speaker 3: is practically panicked to get enough armed personnel on site,
Speaker 3: anticipating a tremendous amount of resistance from displaced people who
Speaker 3: want to return home to salvage whatever they can. This
Speaker 3: is the next step up the escalation ladder as the
Speaker 3: federal government wages war against the American people, as we
Speaker 3: saw FEMA care bring out in North Carolina, actively hindering
Speaker 3: rescue efforts to maximize starvation and death to the people.
Speaker 3: Do not escalate. Hold your ground peacefully and firmly. This
Speaker 3: looks a lot like a J six style trap to
Speaker 3: provoke an insurrection and declare martial law to cancel the election.
Speaker 3: Don't play into their hands. Unquote. This unhinged diatribe got
Speaker 3: over ten thousand likes and was spread wildly around Twitter.
Speaker 3: A few days ago, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue posted
Speaker 3: an article documenting this current conspiracy ecosystem, and they included
Speaker 3: one TikTok video that stated, quote to my North Carolina families, please,
Speaker 3: I know it's hard, but please do not take that
Speaker 3: seven hundred and fifty dollars. It's alone, and if you
Speaker 3: don't pay it back, they will seize your property. In
Speaker 3: response to this, FEMA clearly stated that FEMA cannot seize
Speaker 3: your property or land. Applying for disaster assistance does not
Speaker 3: grant FEMA or the federal government authority or ownership over
Speaker 3: your property your land. So now we have these conspiracy
Speaker 3: theorists which are being boosted by Republican officials basically encouraging
Speaker 3: people to resist help from FEMA, to not evacuate, and
Speaker 3: like all of this puts themselves and others in great danger. Right,
Speaker 3: you might say, well, if conspiracy theorists don't want help
Speaker 3: from from FEMA, like what's the harm, right, Well, these
Speaker 3: people have like kids, like these these people have families.
Speaker 3: It's not just them that are going to be affected.
Speaker 3: If they're refusing to evacuate their family from from the
Speaker 3: path of a hurricane and like their kids die, that's
Speaker 3: super fucked up. If they're refusing like help from FEMA
Speaker 3: to like feed themselves in their family, that's that's not
Speaker 3: a good sign of the current state of this country. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: like it's it's bad. Rondasantis's press secretary had to come
Speaker 3: out against the the unhinged ramble from health ranger on Twitter.
Speaker 3: She quote tweeted his post saying spreading lives like this
Speaker 3: could have serious consequences. If people in evacuation zones see
Speaker 3: this and decide not to evacuate despite warnings from state
Speaker 3: and local emergency management, they are unnecessarily putting their own
Speaker 3: lives and the lives of first responders at grave risk.
Speaker 5: Unquote wow the wow, Well, the fucking Rhondas sandus Is
Speaker 5: press person. The leopards are finally eating your face af
Speaker 5: you joined the lebregating faith party.
Speaker 3: Wow. Who could possibly have predicted this? The Raw Decientists
Speaker 3: team has been replaced by the lizard people. I swear.
Speaker 5: No.
Speaker 3: I think it's got so bad that in DeSantis' like
Speaker 3: emergency declaration, he had to specifically put in language that
Speaker 3: stated that law enforcement will help ensure that people can
Speaker 3: return to their property after the evacuation has ended. Like goofy,
Speaker 3: goofy shit. And just like in general, all these FEMA
Speaker 3: conspiracies are preventing people in need from requesting a badly
Speaker 3: needed help from the agency. I'm going to include this
Speaker 3: one clip from this guy who was interviewed on MSNBC
Speaker 3: talking about how his family has been refusing help in
Speaker 3: North Carolina.
Speaker 9: My father in law lives just outside of Asheville, North Carolina,
Speaker 9: and he was badly damaged by Hurricane Helene. And he
Speaker 9: has refused all FEMA help because he's a hardcore Trumper
Speaker 9: and he believes, he literally believes that he accepts anything
Speaker 9: from FEMA. They're going to take his house. I don't
Speaker 9: understand how so many people are under the spell of
Speaker 9: this freaking con man. I don't understand it.
Speaker 15: Well, it's absolutely heartbreaking about your father in law. I'm
Speaker 15: so sorry to hear it.
Speaker 9: It's you know, and it's hard just it's hard to
Speaker 9: even imagine it. I mean, he lost almost everything, and
Speaker 9: he's refusing all help from the federal government and complaining
Speaker 9: to us that he doesn't have food, that he doesn't
Speaker 9: have the stuff he needs, and yet he won't accept
Speaker 9: the help. What the hell are we supposed to do.
Speaker 9: We're not in a position to be able to fly
Speaker 9: across the country and help him. There's people begging us
Speaker 9: to get him to accept help, and he won't do it. Wow,
Speaker 9: And I guarantee you I'm not the only one. I
Speaker 9: guarantee you I'm not the only one.
Speaker 15: I wish there was something I could say as to
Speaker 15: you know, I don't know, is there. Does he have
Speaker 15: access to any electronics where you could send him some
Speaker 15: information debunking this and that he might We've.
Speaker 9: Done all of that. We've done all of that. We've
Speaker 9: sent him, We've sent him all the them of bulletins,
Speaker 9: we've sent him all the stuff from the fact checkers.
Speaker 9: He doesn't believe it. He thinks it's all. He just
Speaker 9: believes Trump. Literally, Dan, he just it's a cult. He's
Speaker 9: a cult member. I'm sorry to say it. He's a
Speaker 9: He's a cult member, and he's my father in law.
Speaker 9: And it sucks.
Speaker 3: That's pretty bad. That's uh, that's devastating, and I think
Speaker 3: that is very resonant to a lot of people right now.
Speaker 3: And how this whole like conspiracy Missymphilico system that's been
Speaker 3: getting worse silly over the course of the eight years
Speaker 3: has just like ruined families and puts people in like
Speaker 3: constant active danger. Now, these conspiracies have also led to
Speaker 3: threats against FEMA workers and meteorologists for both being a
Speaker 3: part of the conspiracy and for controlling the weather. I'm
Speaker 3: going to read a quote from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue.
Speaker 3: Quote falsehoods around hurricane response have spawned credible threats and
Speaker 3: incitement to violence directed at the federal government. This includes
Speaker 3: calls to send militias to face down FEMA for the
Speaker 3: perceived denial of aid, and that individuals should quote unquote
Speaker 3: shoot FEMA officials and the agency's emergency responders. Unverified claims
Speaker 3: abou attacks on FEMA representatives have been used to glorify
Speaker 3: and encourage violence unquote. Media matters archived at TikTok video
Speaker 3: threatening a FEMA employees, which received over two hundred thousand views, saying,
Speaker 3: quote deer FEDS and FEMA if you're trying to deny
Speaker 3: people access to help in the affected area. Be advised,
Speaker 3: we're still under the War on Terror emergency declaration. If
Speaker 3: you violate your constitutional oath to protect and assist, the
Speaker 3: charge will be treason. Punishment can mean being unalived immediately
Speaker 3: by the citizens you are withholding aid from unquote on TikTok.
Speaker 3: They're threatening to unalive governmentations.
Speaker 10: Another mineo states.
Speaker 3: Quote public notice we the United States of America had
Speaker 3: declared FEMA personnel engaged in obstructing local rescue efforts in
Speaker 3: the area impacted by Hurricane Helen to be enemies of
Speaker 3: the state. A FEMA personnel offer any further obstruction or
Speaker 3: failed to immediately assist to their best ability, they can
Speaker 3: be arrested or shot or hung on site. Christ Now,
Speaker 3: a lot of these conspiracy theories are also heavily antisemitic,
Speaker 3: talking about like the religion of local officials, like I
Speaker 3: think like the mayor of Asheville, and just in general,
Speaker 3: combining these weather control conspiracy theories with FEMA conspiracy theories,
Speaker 3: saying that like the Jews are somehow controlling all of this,
Speaker 3: and like that's just a recurring aspect of these conspiracies
Speaker 3: that I feel like it is. It is worth mentioning,
Speaker 3: especially because like the right is like trying to weaponize
Speaker 3: claims anti Semitism to attack the Democrats on Israel right now,
Speaker 3: which is absurd because the Democrats are extremely pro Israel,
Speaker 3: but still their constituents are going to be spreading all
Speaker 3: these like very unhinge any Smitic conspiracy theories abou Jews
Speaker 3: controlling weather and using FEMA to hurt Christians in the Appalachians,
Speaker 3: all that kind of stuff. Now, it's not just threats
Speaker 3: against FEMA officials. Death threats have also been targeted against meteorologists,
Speaker 3: as Rolling Stone documented in an article last week. Quote
Speaker 3: I've been doing this for forty six years, and it's
Speaker 3: never been like this, says Alabama meteorologist James span He
Speaker 3: says he's been inundated with misinformation and threatening messages like
Speaker 3: stop lying about the government controlling the weather or else
Speaker 3: unquote great. A Washington, D C. Based meteorologist named Matthew
Speaker 3: Capussi said, quote for me to post a hurricane forecast
Speaker 3: and for people to accuse me of creating the hurricane
Speaker 3: by working for some secret Illuminati entity is disappointing and
Speaker 3: distressing and it's resulting in a decrease in public trust unquote,
Speaker 3: So like again, like, why is this all happening? A
Speaker 3: part of it is because the election is upcoming and
Speaker 3: people are trying to find reasons to think why Trump
Speaker 3: might lose, and they're saying that the hurricanes are actually
Speaker 3: a plot by the illuminati to make Trump lose the
Speaker 3: election via having these storms controlled by Jews and Democrats
Speaker 3: to target Republican areas. But like, what has changed in
Speaker 3: the actual ecosystem to allow this to feel like it's
Speaker 3: so much worse than what it usually has been. And
Speaker 3: I've kind of decided that everyone is now Alex Jones,
Speaker 3: Like everyone has become their own little mini Alex Jones.
Speaker 3: Platforms have changed in the past eight years to create
Speaker 3: massive social and financial incentives to go viral, So now
Speaker 3: everyone is just doing what Alex Jones did, right, Like
Speaker 3: Alex Jones learned that he could make a profit saying
Speaker 3: all kinds of crazy shit on air, and now other
Speaker 3: people have also learned this lesson. This is a part
Speaker 3: of I think what's going on now? How does everyone
Speaker 3: has the capacity to go viral by saying whatever crazy
Speaker 3: shit they can during a moment of crisis. A few
Speaker 3: days ago, there was a really good article in the
Speaker 3: Atlantic by Charles Rozel titled I'm running out of ways
Speaker 3: to explain how bad this is. This is going to
Speaker 3: be linked in the sources below. I recommend you give
Speaker 3: it a read, but I'm going to read a paragraphic
Speaker 3: from it here. Quote. This is more than just a
Speaker 3: misinformation crisis. To watch as real information is overwhelmed by
Speaker 3: crank theories at public servants battle death threats is to
Speaker 3: confront two alarming facts. First that a durable ecosystem exists
Speaker 3: to ensconce citizens in an alternate reality, and second that
Speaker 3: the people consuming and amplifying those lies are not helpless dupes,
Speaker 3: but willing participants. This reality dinfracturing is the result of
Speaker 3: an information ecosystem that is dominated by platforms that offer
Speaker 3: financial and intentional incentives to lie and enrage, and to
Speaker 3: turn every tragedy and every large event into a shameless
Speaker 3: content creation opportunity. This collides with a swath of people
Speaker 3: who would rather live in an alternate reality built on
Speaker 3: distrust and grievance than change their fundamental beliefs about the world. Unquote.
Speaker 3: I know, Mia, We've been talking about this misinformation problem
Speaker 3: in the chat and I know you had some comments
Speaker 3: you want to you wanted to share.
Speaker 5: Yeah, there is a god. Where did I first hear this?
Speaker 5: My even a philosophy episode, there's a bunch of philosophical
Speaker 5: stuff about how ignorance works and about how it's not
Speaker 5: just like ingnorance isn't just the state of not knowing something.
Speaker 5: You have to actively create it, right, You have to
Speaker 5: you have to go out of your way not to
Speaker 5: seek the information that would that would sort of like
Speaker 5: you know, cause you to have to know, or cause
Speaker 5: you to change your worldview, or cause you to like
Speaker 5: have to confront what your beliefs are. So people actively
Speaker 5: sort of construct this this reality around themselves so they
Speaker 5: don't have to do anything that ever sort of challenges
Speaker 5: their own views. And this is something that you can see,
Speaker 5: I mean you see it happening all over the place.
Speaker 5: And this is one of the things that where sale
Speaker 5: it it's like gets right. That is important is that
Speaker 5: like people are active participants in the construction of their
Speaker 5: own universes. And now there's a financial incentive, there's a
Speaker 5: social incentive, and there's also a cognitive incentive, which is
Speaker 5: that like having to deal with the fact you might
Speaker 5: be wrong. Aboustling fucking sucks, yes, and is hard, and
Speaker 5: sometimes you just don't want to know totally.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, and this is something that like myself, Robert,
Speaker 3: and you, have been talking about increasingly the past few years.
Speaker 3: It feels like misinformation is an outdated model to understand
Speaker 3: our current predicament, right, Like misinformation is no longer meant
Speaker 3: to like actually change minds or persuade people. It's just
Speaker 3: a mechanism to construct and reinforce false realities, like in
Speaker 3: the In the recent Meme of Politics episode, I talked
Speaker 3: about how AI images of trans athletes or of immigrants
Speaker 3: stealing pets like these aren't meant to convince anyone of
Speaker 3: their authenticity, but they exist in lieu of evidence to
Speaker 3: help people maintain their reality tunnel. An information researcher at
Speaker 3: the University of Washington named Michael Kawfield wrote an article
Speaker 3: earlier this year about how a whole bunch of mega
Speaker 3: people started to deny the authenticity of those videos of
Speaker 3: Kamala Harris's rally in that Detroit hangar showing like a massive, massive,
Speaker 3: huge crowd with Air Force one or Air Force two
Speaker 3: landing and her getting off with these meg people saying
Speaker 3: that this was like ais is fake. There was no
Speaker 3: way the crowd would be this big, And they invented
Speaker 3: a whole bunch of reasons for why that this photo
Speaker 3: must be fake. And this this wasn't fake. This was
Speaker 3: a real photo. This was easily verified. There's like video
Speaker 3: evidence from multiple sources showing that this is a real
Speaker 3: thing that happened. But Cawfield wrote, quote, the primary use
Speaker 3: of miss information is not to change the beliefs of
Speaker 3: other people at all. Instead, the vast majority of misinformation
Speaker 3: is offered as a service for people to maintain their
Speaker 3: beliefs in face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Unquote,
Speaker 3: and yeah, I don't believe in giving this people a
Speaker 3: degree of passivity, right like, this is an active choice
Speaker 3: that they are doubling down and reinforcing and creating their
Speaker 3: own reality tunnels to live in. And I think the
Speaker 3: other aspect of this, this is something that Robert was
Speaker 3: talking with me last night, is like the people also
Speaker 3: propagating this, the people creating the environments to make this happen,
Speaker 3: are also willing participants, right like this, this is a
Speaker 3: big reason why Musk bought Twitter is so that it
Speaker 3: purposely could turn into the current conspiracy like shit show
Speaker 3: that it currently is. Facebook used to be where conspiracy
Speaker 3: theorists gathered to post their weird boomer opinions, and now
Speaker 3: it's Twitter alongside just actual, like useful, verifiable information. And
Speaker 3: now because these two platforms have kind of combined, how
Speaker 3: we have so much cons piercy content on Twitter, it
Speaker 3: also just damages the use of Twitter as a platform
Speaker 3: to look for real information. And I think you can
Speaker 3: see the same thing with TikTok, with its very loose
Speaker 3: content moderation policy regarding factual information and the fact that
Speaker 3: people use TikTok as its own search engine, creating its
Speaker 3: own ecosystem of misinformation, fully isolated away from the rest
Speaker 3: of the Internet. And this project to like wear down
Speaker 3: collective reality is a long term project by the right.
Speaker 3: You could look at the John Birch Society and other
Speaker 3: anti communist groups from the fifties who used to deliberately
Speaker 3: put out fake articles about communists infiltrating Fox News and
Speaker 3: a whole bunch of conservative mass media like talk radio
Speaker 3: was created at least in part as a reaction to
Speaker 3: Nixon being forced of office and a lot of the
Speaker 3: same people funding right wing media are also pushing for
Speaker 3: charter schools and attempts to destroy public education. Like it's
Speaker 3: all an intentional effort to make people's media literacy go
Speaker 3: completely down the toilet and propagate entire false versions of
Speaker 3: reality in so of a few rich people. And that's
Speaker 3: what our current situation is right now. And I don't
Speaker 3: know if it's a way to stop it. As you
Speaker 3: heard in that clip from MSNBC, like fact checks don't
Speaker 3: work anymore, because that's not like the point of any
Speaker 3: of this. It's not meant to actually persuade people. It's
Speaker 3: only meant to reinforce what they already want to believe.
Speaker 3: So what do you do in a world post fact checking?
Speaker 3: I don't know, and we're going to have to find out.
Speaker 4: I don't know me.
Speaker 3: Do you have any closing thoughts?
Speaker 12: You know?
Speaker 5: I will say, one of the few things I've ever
Speaker 5: seen that's gotten someone out of something like this is
Speaker 5: just sometimes it doesn't always work like this, but every
Speaker 5: once in a while, you could have an experience that
Speaker 5: is so cognitively shattering to everything that you'd believed that
Speaker 5: it just implodes.
Speaker 3: So me, you're advocating to dose your Republican family members
Speaker 3: with LSD. Is that what I'm hearing?
Speaker 5: Well, No, what I'm advocating is that the people who
Speaker 5: think that China is a socialist state be sent to
Speaker 5: China and have to interact with members.
Speaker 4: Of the Chinese Communist Party. Because I have.
Speaker 5: Seen the work. It does work. It can't, I've seen
Speaker 5: it happen. You can't talk to these people for more
Speaker 5: than five minutes. But I mean, you know, a sort
Speaker 5: of more serious note, I mean, this is something that
Speaker 5: you know, you're trying to fight emotions on a sort
Speaker 5: of intellectual level, and so like, if you want to
Speaker 5: deal with this, I don't. I think you have to
Speaker 5: kind of be working on a sort of like emotional
Speaker 5: act factor register. And that sucks because it's you know,
Speaker 5: it's effectively the abandonments of politics as politics. It's arguably
Speaker 5: just a complete retreat into fascism. But you know, if
Speaker 5: you take the sort of undersetting of one of the
Speaker 5: elements of it as fascism is reducing all politics to aesthetics.
Speaker 4: Right, But we've hit.
Speaker 5: This point where there's no centralizing viewpoint, like central reality
Speaker 5: tunnel that most people are in, and that's largely partially
Speaker 5: because of these people trying to destroy it, and partially
Speaker 5: because the people who were running the mainstream media blew
Speaker 5: themselves up by lying about rock and then by spending
Speaker 5: thirty years insisting that like neoliberalism was the greatest economic
Speaker 5: system ever, and then two thousand and eight happening, and so,
Speaker 5: like you know, we're in this position where the people
Speaker 5: who had built the guardrails blew it up in order
Speaker 5: to make money and push your political jendas, and now
Speaker 5: a bunch of other people who want to just destroy
Speaker 5: everything inside of those rails are just like detonating bombs
Speaker 5: inside of all of our like psychological conscies.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think the guy who was talking about
Speaker 3: his stepdad in Asheville is correct. It is a cult,
Speaker 3: and you have to treat it like you would treat
Speaker 3: a cult. You can't fact check them out of this.
Speaker 3: You have to treat them like your friend just joined scientology.
Speaker 3: Some people might just choose to completely cut the person
Speaker 3: off because they find it too dangerous, and that's fine,
Speaker 3: but I think there should be others that remain as
Speaker 3: a lifeline to the person, right if they ever one
Speaker 3: day realize, oh no, I'm in a cult, and I
Speaker 3: need help. There needs to be a way for them
Speaker 3: to get out. There needs to be a lifeline for
Speaker 3: them to escape. And this is the only way that
Speaker 3: like quote unquote cult deprogramming has worked. You can point
Speaker 3: to like people who've gotten out of the QAnon conspiracy theory,
Speaker 3: like this is the only tactic that actually works. It's
Speaker 3: reliant on the courtesy of others, right It's it's reliant
Speaker 3: that you have to put yourself in a degree of
Speaker 3: danger by maintaining contact with this person that is kind
Speaker 3: of dangerous because they are in this like very volatile cult.
Speaker 3: There needs to be some lifeline for them. And I
Speaker 3: think that's really the only way that I know of
Speaker 3: right now that shows a degree of success in getting
Speaker 3: people out of this like fucked up conspiracy matrix. And
Speaker 3: it sucks, and it's not easy, and most people promoting
Speaker 3: like cult deprogramming are hacks with pseudoscience. And it turns
Speaker 3: out like this is just a very emotional problem and
Speaker 3: it requires unfortunately emotional solutions that a simple Reuter's fact
Speaker 3: check will not suffice. So anyway, that is my rundown
Speaker 3: on what's currently going on with the her misinformation. It's
Speaker 3: really bad. Yep, it could happen here.
Speaker 5: It it could happen here. The podcast about things falling
Speaker 5: apart and how to put them back together again. I'm
Speaker 5: your host vo Long So for people who listened to
Speaker 5: yesterday's episode, which I'm hoping is like most of you, Yeah,
Speaker 5: So yesterday it was a very kind of downer episode
Speaker 5: on hurricane misinformation and the way that these sort of
Speaker 5: people construct these reality tunnels, and you know, our have
Speaker 5: become active participants in their own sort of propagandizement. And
Speaker 5: I think we kind of we left on our kind
Speaker 5: of note of of what you can do for sort
Speaker 5: of individual people, right, which is the same mechanisms you
Speaker 5: usually get someone out of a cult, which is you
Speaker 5: stay with them, you maintain enough personal connection that you
Speaker 5: can pull them out if they ever want to come out.
Speaker 5: But that's also not a large scale solution to this problem.
Speaker 5: And in order to talk about a large scale solution
Speaker 5: to both our present social crisis and the ecological crisis
Speaker 5: that this social crisis is being aimed to sort of
Speaker 5: cover up. Right now, I'm talking to Rosewater, who's the
Speaker 5: hub coordinator for the Sunrise Movement's DC Hub and delegate
Speaker 5: to Sunrise's Delicate Body and also a solar punk organized
Speaker 5: at Rosewater.
Speaker 4: Welcome to the show.
Speaker 16: Thank you so much for having me on. Yeah, hi everybody,
Speaker 16: my name is Rosewater and yeah, longtime fan of cool
Speaker 16: Zone Media. Y'all were my introduction to my current democratic
Speaker 16: confederalist politics. Oh that's awesome. So it feels like a
Speaker 16: really fun, like full circle moment to have a chance
Speaker 16: to be on the pod.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and I'm excited to talk to you. So specific
Speaker 5: thing where we're talking about is in terms of their
Speaker 5: being an actual plan for what people are doing like
Speaker 5: past the next three weeks, like after the election. The
Speaker 5: biggest thing that has been happening is it's just something
Speaker 5: we've talked about a little bit on this show is
Speaker 5: to propose twenty twenty eight general strike. So do you
Speaker 5: want to talk a little bit about what that is
Speaker 5: before we get into sun Rises involvements and yeah, the
Speaker 5: sort of broader story.
Speaker 10: Yeah.
Speaker 16: Yeah, So I feel like most people who follow leftist
Speaker 16: politics were following the UAW strike against the Big three
Speaker 16: automaker's last fall, and people found that they found their
Speaker 16: strike really inspiring and they had like really strong gains
Speaker 16: that were the sort of straightforward like increase pay like
Speaker 16: better benefits type stuff, and people were celebrating that. But
Speaker 16: I would say the two actual most important changes were
Speaker 16: not reported on nearly as much. One was they eroded
Speaker 16: their labor peace clause and they made it possible to
Speaker 16: go on strike if any of their facilities were closed,
Speaker 16: which labor peace has in my opinion, been sort of
Speaker 16: strangling the US left for eighty years.
Speaker 4: Yeah, can you explain what that is for people?
Speaker 5: I think we've usually were broadly talked about as no
Speaker 5: strike clauses, But yeah, can you explain what that is?
Speaker 16: Yeah, So, labor piece is essentially a truce that was
Speaker 16: established between the labor movement, capitalists, and the US government
Speaker 16: where the labor movement gets generalized rights and the US
Speaker 16: government is like a quote fair mediator between capitalists and
Speaker 16: the labor movement, and capitalists get a consistent workforce and
Speaker 16: peace like peace from disruptions. And this essentially was established
Speaker 16: between the beginning of World War Two and the end
Speaker 16: of the Red Scare, when all of the socialists and
Speaker 16: markets and communists were expelled from labor movement.
Speaker 10: And it felt.
Speaker 16: Like a good deal to a lot of liberals at
Speaker 16: the time, and a lot of normal rank and file
Speaker 16: workers at the time, but on reflection, it has really
Speaker 16: strangled the US labor movement. And so the fact that
Speaker 16: the UAW eroded their no stripe clause at all is
Speaker 16: a huge precedent, right, Yeah.
Speaker 5: And this is something I mean, I mean, I remember
Speaker 5: I don't remember if this actually got into the Labor
Speaker 5: Notes episode that I did, but I remember at Labor
Speaker 5: Notes I was listening to people talk about this, and
Speaker 5: this is stuff that I think the global impact of
Speaker 5: it has also been really underplayed.
Speaker 4: Like I mean, obviously there was a lot of times
Speaker 4: you paid.
Speaker 5: This in Mexico, right, because there's a lot of like,
Speaker 5: you know, the structure of the of the auto industry
Speaker 5: is such.
Speaker 16: That that's so obvious to me, and I didn't even
Speaker 16: think about that until just now.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: So one of the things that NAFTA did is that
Speaker 5: sort of right across the border, right, a whole sort
Speaker 5: of range of factories that are right across the border
Speaker 5: that operate off Mexican labor, that do some of the
Speaker 5: auto industry stuff. And so there's always been sort of
Speaker 5: connections between the more independent unions there and sort of
Speaker 5: American unions. But like you know, but this is also
Speaker 5: struck as being watched really, really heavily in China, which
Speaker 5: is interesting because like Chinese state unions are a fucking joke.
Speaker 5: They're basically not real unions at all. And the extent
Speaker 5: to which you know, the China's version of the labor
Speaker 5: piece was also the deal was less like you get
Speaker 5: rights and we get like labor piece, and more like
Speaker 5: we're going to just stamp out while working class organization
Speaker 5: completely and in a way that like was more even
Speaker 5: more thorough than what happened here where most of it
Speaker 5: got wiped out. I think like the breaking of the
Speaker 5: labor piece and the demonstration that there is another way
Speaker 5: is something that has reverberated massively across a lot of
Speaker 5: different places that I don't think both the people organizing
Speaker 5: the strike or the sort of like press coverage of
Speaker 5: it has really gotten into sort of how wide the
Speaker 5: reverberations of this have been.
Speaker 16: Right, I think if it were just eroding that clause alone,
Speaker 16: it wouldn't be such a signal.
Speaker 6: But yeah, definitely.
Speaker 16: The real thing that caught my attention at first was
Speaker 16: immediately afterwards they changed the end of their contract date
Speaker 16: to International Workers' Day twenty twenty eight, and they called
Speaker 16: on every union in the country and later every union
Speaker 16: in the world to align with that contract and go
Speaker 16: on strike with them on May first, twenty twenty eight,
Speaker 16: And that was the first time, Like, correct me if
Speaker 16: I'm wrong, that was the first time that a major
Speaker 16: labor union in America has called for a planned general
Speaker 16: strike since nineteen forty eight.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think that's true, and I think there being
Speaker 5: an actual plan they're being a way to do what
Speaker 5: that's legal is a big deal because part of the
Speaker 5: problem with this is that there's you know, unlike unlike
Speaker 5: a country like France, American labor law is specifically designed
Speaker 5: so that you don't have this happen. There's a bunch
Speaker 5: of legal mechanisms for this, but it's very very specifically
Speaker 5: designed to make sure that people are not alledged to
Speaker 5: solid already strikes. People are not allowed to coordinate the
Speaker 5: entire power of their action, and this is a pretty
Speaker 5: promising way around that.
Speaker 16: Yeah, this may be better for later in the episode.
Speaker 16: But one of the things that we're doing is where
Speaker 16: in collaboration with the Institute for Social Ecology, doing a
Speaker 16: teach in on labor peace and the history of general strikes,
Speaker 16: in the US about a week after the election in
Speaker 16: order to orient ourselves in whatever new political context exists there.
Speaker 5: But yeah, so yeah, I think that's a jumping off
Speaker 5: point to get into. I think Sunrise is kind of
Speaker 5: an unlikely organization that people would think to be getting
Speaker 5: like excited and trying to get involved in a labor struggle. Yeah,
Speaker 5: but yeah, let's talk about how Summrise got involved. And
Speaker 5: I guess first, also, I don't know how many people
Speaker 5: listening to this know what Sunrise is. And if you
Speaker 5: do know what Sunrise is, that might also make you
Speaker 5: war surprise you're getting involved in labor.
Speaker 4: But yes, let's talk about that.
Speaker 10: Yeah.
Speaker 16: So Sunrise is a youth climate movement that has been
Speaker 16: one of the main advocates for the idea of a
Speaker 16: Green New Deal. When AOC first came into office and
Speaker 16: she did that like sit in at Nancy Pelosi's office,
Speaker 16: like that was a Sunrise action, And we historically have
Speaker 16: been an org that sort of like tries to bridge
Speaker 16: the divide between people who are sort of a politically
Speaker 16: liberal and more radical politics, which is a hard place
Speaker 16: to be.
Speaker 5: Yeah, someone's got to do it, But we've.
Speaker 16: Really focused on trying to like connect environmentalism with labor. Actually,
Speaker 16: our main slogans, the main intervention that we've succeeded that
Speaker 16: has been associating the idea of environmental action with jobs,
Speaker 16: like green jobs and stuff like that. The problem with
Speaker 16: that has been one it has been primarily rhetorical, especially
Speaker 16: after Burnley's loss in twenty twenty. Yeah, and stories matter,
Speaker 16: but material conditions matter more.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 16: And the reason that we didn't we weren't more materially
Speaker 16: involved in connecting labor and environmentalism, and by that I
Speaker 16: mean like connected with unions, is that union's leadership was
Speaker 16: often very far to our right, you know, especially in
Speaker 16: the United States, so it didn't feel like it made sense.
Speaker 16: But as a result, the sort of Biden year have
Speaker 16: been a time where there's been a lot of internal
Speaker 16: discussion about like.
Speaker 4: Who we are?
Speaker 16: Are we a radical movement that sort of positions itself
Speaker 16: rhetorically as more normal in order to bring in like
Speaker 16: young people.
Speaker 10: Who whose parents.
Speaker 16: Won't let them, you know, join a fight to end
Speaker 16: all unjust hierarchies, or like sees the means of production,
Speaker 16: et cetera.
Speaker 10: Like are we a radical movement that.
Speaker 16: Poses normy or are we a like liberal progressive movement
Speaker 16: that sometimes asks for radical things, and that's been a
Speaker 16: really big conflict within the ORG these last few years
Speaker 16: because the path to any climate action, the only path
Speaker 16: that a lot of people have seen, has been electoral stuff,
Speaker 16: pushing politicians and things like that. In a lot of ways,
Speaker 16: the Inflation Production Act was a result of Sunrises organizing
Speaker 16: and our work to try and force through the Build
Speaker 16: Back Better program, but it aligned us with Biden, and
Speaker 16: from the point of view of a lot of our organizers,
Speaker 16: like even if it was a victory, it didn't feel
Speaker 16: like one, and it's certainly not nearly large enough to
Speaker 16: actually handle the scale of the crisis. And so essentially
Speaker 16: the more radical wing of the movement has been winning
Speaker 16: that fight over the last year two fights, a strong word,
Speaker 16: has been winning that debate over the last year or two,
Speaker 16: and specifically this last summer when the American Federation of
Speaker 16: Teachers joined the general strike, which almost no one has
Speaker 16: heard about. But the AFT and their one point seven
Speaker 16: million members have already decided that they're going to try
Speaker 16: and joined the twenty twenty eight general strike.
Speaker 10: So it's not just the UAW anymore.
Speaker 4: Yeah, But unfortunately we need to take an ad break
Speaker 4: and we come back.
Speaker 5: You're going to get to that, because that I think
Speaker 5: we'll be looked back as one of the pivotal moments
Speaker 5: of this whole thing that everyone kind of just missed
Speaker 5: when it happened.
Speaker 16: I completely agree, it's going to be amazing.
Speaker 5: Yeah, okay, little ads unfortunately ads, and then we'll do
Speaker 5: it by Gold.
Speaker 4: We're back. I don't fight gold.
Speaker 5: At some point I'm going to write the Dope by
Speaker 5: Gold episode.
Speaker 4: Do you think this is a joke? There is a
Speaker 4: dope buy Gold app.
Speaker 5: It's big worked on in the in the Meal laboratory
Speaker 5: that the gold scammer add thing. Okay, back back back
Speaker 5: to the present or I guess back to the future.
Speaker 5: I don't know time. Time is falling apart here. But
Speaker 5: let's talk about the AFT. The American Federation of Teachers, right,
Speaker 5: and I don't know what they'venounced in terms of this, right.
Speaker 16: So, the American Federation of Teachers, sort of led by
Speaker 16: the Chicago Teachers Union, the Baltimore Teachers Union, and to
Speaker 16: a smaller extent, the DC Teachers Union, managed to get
Speaker 16: through a resolution at their convention that when you read
Speaker 16: the title, it's very boring it's like on aligning with
Speaker 16: the UAW. But when you actually click on the document
Speaker 16: and you read it, it is like class struggle fire
Speaker 16: Like reading it from beginning to end, I felt exhilaration,
Speaker 16: Like I felt like a fire explode in my heart.
Speaker 10: It was so amazing.
Speaker 16: And I heard about this the same weekend that we
Speaker 16: were actually having a climate disaster training in DC. Right,
Speaker 16: we had about one hundred leaders from across our movement,
Speaker 16: about half of our staff there, and at the beginning,
Speaker 16: people were really excited for climate disaster actions responding to
Speaker 16: moments like this. Actually, but when we talked about victory,
Speaker 16: when we talked about and we're going to have like
Speaker 16: mass mobilization against the climate crisis, where the whole of
Speaker 16: our society like pitches in to do this, the federal
Speaker 16: government like does a World War two style mobilization against
Speaker 16: this destruction, and stuff like that, you could tell that
Speaker 16: people didn't see a path.
Speaker 10: You could tell.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 16: And so like this news dropping that the teachers were
Speaker 16: joining a general strike, we're joining mass disruption in some
Speaker 16: meaningful way.
Speaker 10: It hit us like a bomb.
Speaker 16: It was the perfect moment for it to hit us,
Speaker 16: because it was like, yeah, if the auto workers are
Speaker 16: going on strike, and the academic workers are going on strike,
Speaker 16: and the teachers are going on strike, then why can't
Speaker 16: the students go on strike? And not only why can't they,
Speaker 16: but like, the students must go on strike. And that
Speaker 16: was sort of the moment that really got our movement
Speaker 16: from yes, we would like to figure out some sort
Speaker 16: of different way to get to the mass disruption needed
Speaker 16: in order to like win serious action on the climate crisis,
Speaker 16: to like, oh there's a path.
Speaker 10: Yeah, like we see, we see a path.
Speaker 16: It's it's core memory, like if you know, like inside out,
Speaker 16: like core memory formed that weekend.
Speaker 10: It was it was beautiful.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I think, what's you know?
Speaker 5: I mean, there's a couple things that are important here, right,
Speaker 5: but I think it's being underplayed exactly how important it
Speaker 5: is to have teachers unions being into this, because the
Speaker 5: thing about teachers unions is that they were an extremely
Speaker 5: important lever on labor movement because the way the capitalist
Speaker 5: society is structured, right, is such that most childcare is
Speaker 5: just sort of like all of that labor is basically
Speaker 5: been pushed the teachers, right. And the moment that childcare collapses, right,
Speaker 5: a bunch of people suddenly also who are not normally
Speaker 5: on strikes suddenly are not able to do the drugs
Speaker 5: because they have they have to find some way to
Speaker 5: take care of their kids. And so this is this
Speaker 5: is sort of a massive leverage point and in the
Speaker 5: same way that like sort of dock worker strikes, or
Speaker 5: I mean not in the same way, but like in
Speaker 5: a sense that a strike by these people can shut
Speaker 5: down way way more labor than just theirs directly, right,
Speaker 5: this is something that's very important.
Speaker 10: Yeah, yeah, I never really thought about that.
Speaker 16: I've thought about them in the context of like their
Speaker 16: sort of community pillars, so like when teachers go on strike,
Speaker 16: they often bring way more community support with them than
Speaker 16: other types of workers. But yeah, you're totally right, like
Speaker 16: outside of like the community going with them. Also, that
Speaker 16: is the primary form of childcare that exists in this country.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and there is something that like teachers organizers, like
Speaker 5: she's just un organizers are very big ons are emphasizing
Speaker 5: because they have an enormous amount of power and it's
Speaker 5: kind of to a large extent, hasn't been tapped for
Speaker 5: the kinds of sort of mass political action that we're
Speaker 5: seeing here.
Speaker 4: Like it's one of those things.
Speaker 5: It's one of those sort of leverage points that's always existed,
Speaker 5: but there hasn't really been the kind of like political
Speaker 5: will or momentum more sort of organizing capacity to fully
Speaker 5: mobilize it. And yeah, so I guess I want to
Speaker 5: move from hereter talking about sunrises involvement in the strike,
Speaker 5: because I think this part is really interesting both in
Speaker 5: terms of they're being like both of the times of
Speaker 5: strike support and student strikes. So can you talk, I
Speaker 5: guess about the sort of politics of student strikes and
Speaker 5: how you see this fitting into the broader thing that's happening.
Speaker 10: Yeah.
Speaker 16: Yeah, So the climate movement sort of had the height
Speaker 16: of its power in twenty nineteen, I would say, when
Speaker 16: you had Fridays for Future and like Gretitchenberg, climate strikes
Speaker 16: all across Europe and America. But I would use the
Speaker 16: word strike in quotes because sometimes you had full walkouts,
Speaker 16: sometimes you had like those sorts of huge things, but
Speaker 16: most of the time it was students asking permission from
Speaker 16: authority figures to participate in a rally and things like that,
Speaker 16: Whereas in a class struggle context, like a strike is
Speaker 16: people going to the authority figure and saying this is
Speaker 16: not occurring because we're not going to be here, you know.
Speaker 16: Like this has been a critique that's existed inside of
Speaker 16: Sunrise like from that period for years now, which was
Speaker 16: one of the reasons why we haven't focused on those
Speaker 16: sort of tactics as much. But with this sort of moment,
Speaker 16: especially if we can bring the teachers along, right, being
Speaker 16: able to have students see their authority figures doing this
Speaker 16: sort of thing, especially in more conservative areas, while also
Speaker 16: teaching them how to do it, because in really meaningful ways,
Speaker 16: schools are practice work yep. Like they were directly modeled
Speaker 16: after factories in the eighteen hundreds, so schools are modeled
Speaker 16: after work. So if schools are practice work, then student
Speaker 16: strikes can be practice labor organizing.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, and turning schools from sort of laboratories
Speaker 5: for the reproduction of the class system into laboratories for
Speaker 5: learning class struggle. It's something that's very very important, both
Speaker 5: in the immediate term and in the longer term. Yeah,
Speaker 5: we've talked a bit about this on other episodes, but
Speaker 5: like there hasn't been the kind of like generational passed
Speaker 5: down of organizing skills that we've seen in sort of
Speaker 5: preview generations and the way honestly, we've talked this, we
Speaker 5: talked about the center sort of UAW staff episode, right
Speaker 5: that the way that a lot of these unions are
Speaker 5: running their staff systems also aren't designed to build up
Speaker 5: like continuous momentum for people who learn how to organizing
Speaker 5: and keep doing it. And this is a way, because
Speaker 5: it restart that treadbill to create a generation of organizers
Speaker 5: both in this moment and for the future.
Speaker 10: Yes, exactly.
Speaker 16: And I have had many critiques of my organization, many
Speaker 16: critiques of my movement, but the thing that has always
Speaker 16: made me want to like stick around has been seeing
Speaker 16: the young organizers who like find themselves here. Like the
Speaker 16: primary person who does our press stuff in the movement
Speaker 16: is turning eighteen in like three days.
Speaker 3: Wow, they're one of the best organizers.
Speaker 5: I know.
Speaker 10: It's it's wow, it's inspiring.
Speaker 16: But it's something that we I want our movement to
Speaker 16: do at scale as opposed to like having something like
Speaker 16: that every once in a while, Like you said, the
Speaker 16: idea of creating an entire generation, and I'd love to
Speaker 16: talk about a sort of thought process and plan around that.
Speaker 10: After the ad break.
Speaker 5: Here's some ads when we come back, we'll do things
Speaker 5: that aren't ads.
Speaker 4: Question mark.
Speaker 5: Oh and we are back to say what better ad transitions?
Speaker 4: They should raise my salary, Davin back.
Speaker 10: Awesome.
Speaker 16: So one of the things that I think is really
Speaker 16: in terms of a like for us, a stable niche
Speaker 16: in the movement ecology, is to be sort of a
Speaker 16: feeder for radical labor in a sort of way, like
Speaker 16: because one of the things is even if you are
Speaker 16: radical and you go into the labor movement, oftentimes you
Speaker 16: are going to be taught practic this is that rely
Speaker 16: on labor piece in meaningful ways, practices that are going
Speaker 16: to be going to be really disrupted if labor law
Speaker 16: weren't a thing and stuff like that, and it's something
Speaker 16: that holds back our ability to create a strongly organized
Speaker 16: working class. But in the context of schools, right, there
Speaker 16: is no labor law. There is no labor piece in
Speaker 16: a high school. Right, So as a place to practice
Speaker 16: the sort of radical class struggle organizing that we're talking about,
Speaker 16: it's sort of the perfect place because it's a simplified
Speaker 16: version of the workplace of like adult reality. There are
Speaker 16: obviously many other blockages, like students and young people miners
Speaker 16: have far far less power and far fewer rights than
Speaker 16: you do once you become an adult, and their family
Speaker 16: has far more power over them.
Speaker 10: There are huge barriers.
Speaker 16: But in terms of like grounding people in class struggle
Speaker 16: labor organizing tactics, I'm thinking of things that you can
Speaker 16: learn about in Jane mclavy's book No Shortcuts and stuff
Speaker 16: like that. They can learn how to use structure tests
Speaker 16: and use hard organizing conversations in order to build their
Speaker 16: power in a specific context and things like that, and
Speaker 16: whether or not they actually manage the strike. Right at
Speaker 16: the end of it, you have an eighteen year old
Speaker 16: entering the workforce who is a skilled, trained, class struggle
Speaker 16: organizer who has gained their politics completely outside of the
Speaker 16: context of labor peace.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And I think that that's one of the important
Speaker 5: aspects of this. And I think that the second one
Speaker 5: is something you were talking about earlier, which is sort
Speaker 5: of bridging the sort of labor ecological divide. And I
Speaker 5: think that's what happened more, which is encouraging because yes,
Speaker 5: there's been an enormous effort to make sure this doesn't happen.
Speaker 5: I mean, I think we've talked about this on this
Speaker 5: show at some point. I know, I know, Margaret's talked
Speaker 5: about it on Cooleeple this cool stuff. But I mean
Speaker 5: one of the most famous sigence people tried to do
Speaker 5: this is a iww dow organized it named Jody Berry
Speaker 5: and she so legally speaking, we don't know who killed her.
Speaker 5: What I will say is that she was killed by
Speaker 5: a car bomb that was virtually identical to a car
Speaker 5: bomb that was built by the FBI that wasedated by
Speaker 5: the FBI in their bomb like training things like a
Speaker 5: couple of weeks before. So right, we Jennie widely don't
Speaker 5: know who killed her. However, Kamba someone built a car
Speaker 5: bomb and blew her up in order to stop this
Speaker 5: from happening. So it is something that is very very
Speaker 5: obviously seen by the powers that be is extremely dangerous.
Speaker 16: Yeah, in the same way that we know exactly the
Speaker 16: singular one person who on his own completely killed Martin
Speaker 16: Luther King with no support from the US government. Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And like you know, I think this is this
Speaker 5: is an important moment to script do this because one
Speaker 5: of the things that the right is trying to do
Speaker 5: to like capture this sort of like moments of radical
Speaker 5: labor has been like Oh yeah, all the problems with
Speaker 5: the UAW are because the government wasn't fortunate to make
Speaker 5: electric cars. It's like, didn't you know there's very much
Speaker 5: like an anti ecological angle too, definitely to the way
Speaker 5: that sort of republican co option is happening. So it's
Speaker 5: another thing that we can use a simultaneous tactic for
Speaker 5: our side and helps defeat a co option attempt.
Speaker 16: In addition to this being a way to like take
Speaker 16: on the climate crisis in meaningful ways, the climate crisis
Speaker 16: is also a way where we can like make more
Speaker 16: radical demands. This is one of the reasons that I
Speaker 16: really love Sunrise and ecological like ecosocialist movements in general,
Speaker 16: because if you ask someone to seriously consider how do
Speaker 16: we address the climate crisis, and you're not paying them
Speaker 16: to have a specific answer, which is nonprofit industrial complex
Speaker 16: things like, if you ask someone to seriously consider what
Speaker 16: do we need to do in order to address the
Speaker 16: climate crisis in six months, you have a radical no
Speaker 16: matter what.
Speaker 10: In my experience, no one who I've ever.
Speaker 16: Talked to who has thought about that question seriously for
Speaker 16: six months and not avoided it has not come out
Speaker 16: the other end being like, oh, we need a general strike,
Speaker 16: we need a revolution, you know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And so.
Speaker 16: Like being able to bring that exact, that exact analysis
Speaker 16: into the labor movement I think is one of the
Speaker 16: things that.
Speaker 10: Can bring back radical labor.
Speaker 16: You talk to labor leaders who might feel comfortable with
Speaker 16: labor peace and they're like, we can do this, we
Speaker 16: have time, and you're like, how much time exactly do
Speaker 16: we have?
Speaker 5: Like really think about it. Yeah, And this is something
Speaker 5: that we've seen. I think this is a good place to
Speaker 5: wrap up something that we've also seen in the way
Speaker 5: that immediate short term disaster response is happening, where you know,
Speaker 5: all of these sort of you have like millions of
Speaker 5: people who are like would not show up to a
Speaker 5: mutual aid thing are suddenly like out there doing mutual
Speaker 5: aid and have at least temporarily completely restructured the way
Speaker 5: the society works because they're confronted with the sort of
Speaker 5: immediacy of crisis and also the immediacy of the fact
Speaker 5: that the way that we have been doing things simply
Speaker 5: is not actually a functional way to for example, respond
Speaker 5: to a hurricane.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I think there's a bridge there between the sort of
Speaker 5: immediacy of this like mutual aid, disaster response politics, and
Speaker 5: the sort of long term goal of trying to actually
Speaker 5: like have sustained sensative action against the sort of climate devastation.
Speaker 16: Yeah, I completely agree, And this is quite a tangent
Speaker 16: from the specific topic that we're thinking about. But when
Speaker 16: I think about democratic confederalist politics, like Roseev was able
Speaker 16: to take power and have its revolution because the state retreated,
Speaker 16: and ideally we don't have a civil war that causes
Speaker 16: the state to retreat. Ideally, Yeah, one thing we do
Speaker 16: know will happen and is happening right now, is that
Speaker 16: the state retreats during disasters. The state retreats during climate disasters.
Speaker 16: And so if we're prepared to take that temporary mutual
Speaker 16: aid structures and jump on them in order to create
Speaker 16: systems like what they have in Rosheva and create build
Speaker 16: our labor movements, build our neighborhood power, build our direct
Speaker 16: democracy capabilities, and be able to be like, no, we
Speaker 16: want to keep these whenever the police come back, whenever.
Speaker 10: Da da da da da.
Speaker 16: Yeah, Like, there's going to be devastation, but there's also
Speaker 16: a lot of opportunities for creating really really beautiful things.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and I want to close on. There's now a
Speaker 5: whole argument as to whether or not whether or not
Speaker 5: Buena Ventura de Rudi, who is one of this very
Speaker 5: prominent organizers in the Spanish Revolution, ever actually said this,
Speaker 5: but there was a quote attributed to him that goes roughly,
Speaker 5: we are not in the least afraid of ruins, Like
Speaker 5: we are the people who built this world and we'll
Speaker 5: do it again.
Speaker 10: Wow. That's beautiful.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And I think that's in some sense the attitude
Speaker 5: that we have to be going into this here right
Speaker 5: of you know, like the path that we are on now.
Speaker 5: And this is true even if a movement takes power
Speaker 5: that is dedicated to actually sort of dealing with the
Speaker 5: climate crisis, right, the stuff that we have now is normal.
Speaker 5: This is just what the future is going to be.
Speaker 5: There's going to be disaster, it's going to be storms,
Speaker 5: it's going to be destruction. But again, fundamentally like we
Speaker 5: are the people who built this world and we can
Speaker 5: build it again. We're going to have to build it
Speaker 5: again and we're going to build it better.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 16: Actually that makes me think of this one song that
Speaker 16: we sing a lot in Sunrise, like we have a
Speaker 16: really big cat focus on movement song.
Speaker 10: I would really love it if that could be the outro.
Speaker 11: Yeah, there are more waters rising this side I know
Speaker 11: the side I know there are more waters rising the
Speaker 11: side I know.
Speaker 16: It is a song called More Waters Rising by Sarah Lynch,
Speaker 16: who is a movement musician actually from Asheville, North Carolina.
Speaker 16: It's not fully clear to me right now if they
Speaker 16: are safe, but we've been singing this song for many years.
Speaker 11: There are more fires burning the side I know, there
Speaker 11: are more fires burning.
Speaker 10: They will find it.
Speaker 16: It is a song that I think really resonates with
Speaker 16: the thing that me and Mia just finished talking about
Speaker 16: knowing what's on the horizon, knowing the ruin that we
Speaker 16: may face, but also knowing that we're not afraid of
Speaker 16: that and that we can get through it.
Speaker 11: I will rebuild the mountains the sign no.
Speaker 10: Yeah.
Speaker 16: So I hope that you all find the strength with
Speaker 16: the song and with these plans to rebuild the mountains.
Speaker 10: Thank you.
Speaker 11: I will wait through the waters when they find their
Speaker 11: way to me. I will wait through the waters the
Speaker 11: sign o the sign I know. I will wade through the.
Speaker 8: Waters the sign no.
Speaker 17: Hello, and welcome to the podcast. It's a calm introduction today.
Speaker 17: It's just a chill one. It's me James and I'm
Speaker 17: joined by Mia.
Speaker 4: How you doing, Maya not.
Speaker 5: The best, but you know, we're hanging in there. We're
Speaker 5: defeating We're defeating the illness of the frailness of the
Speaker 5: human body.
Speaker 17: Yeah, overcoming the surly bonds of Earth, the types of
Speaker 17: face of God or something.
Speaker 4: That's what Elon Musk does every day. Of course.
Speaker 5: Yeah, when we're doing this at the power of cough medicine,
Speaker 5: it's going to be great.
Speaker 17: Yeah, yeah, not the kind of cough medicine that you
Speaker 17: can only buy so much of. Okay, So we're here today,
Speaker 17: how by cough medicine, to discuss the United Nations inter
Speaker 17: reinforce in Lebanon. Of course, thing that we haven't talked
Speaker 17: about before, but the lots of people are talking about
Speaker 17: on the internet, and I wanted to like just clear
Speaker 17: up what I think is some misunderstandings or like just
Speaker 17: a lack of background, sort of explain what they do,
Speaker 17: Explain who it's composed of, a little bit of history
Speaker 17: and sort of its role here. As Israel begins attacking
Speaker 17: Lebanon as it did Gaza, right and as it has
Speaker 17: continued to attack the West Bank as well.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and as we're going to get to the end
Speaker 5: of this episode, they've started making a small push into Syria.
Speaker 5: So great things happening here. Well, we'll get to that
Speaker 5: the episode.
Speaker 17: Yeah, yeah, again employing an entirely proprietary understanding of borders
Speaker 17: and where they are and how they work.
Speaker 4: Maybe they're actually the no borders state. Like and it's Anderson.
Speaker 5: My opposition to the Sykes picode borders is well known,
Speaker 5: but not like this man.
Speaker 4: It is not like that when I said destroy.
Speaker 17: The borders and Evan diagram the overlap of people who
Speaker 17: disagree with Sykes pecod it's Mia Wong, the Kurdistan Workers
Speaker 17: Party in Israel, but like it's very small and they
Speaker 17: disagree with it for very different reasons.
Speaker 5: Isis too, Yeah that's true. Yeah, yeah, you're really in
Speaker 5: a good company. Yeah, I remember back in back in
Speaker 5: like twenty fourteen. So this one's for there's there are
Speaker 5: a bunch of kids who listen.
Speaker 4: To this show. And by kids, I mean people who
Speaker 4: weren't like twenty.
Speaker 5: Seven, who don't remember the fact that you could just
Speaker 5: argue with isis people on Twitter fifteen and like they
Speaker 5: had a really good pr operation. Oh incredible. Yeah, and
Speaker 5: one of the arguments who would make was like, well, yeah,
Speaker 5: we're trying to destroy the imperialists, like psychso borders were
Speaker 5: like well okay, well, like you're doing this by establishing ISIS.
Speaker 17: It's like really, yeah, there was a wild time when
Speaker 17: you could argue them, Like you can still argue with
Speaker 17: like an assadist occasionally on Twitter or like oh sure,
Speaker 17: but like.
Speaker 5: This wasn't even just like people who support them. This
Speaker 5: was like actual isis PR guys.
Speaker 17: Yeah, yeah, there was. Their whole job was to argue
Speaker 17: with you. Yeah, there are some pretty good articles from
Speaker 17: back in that time period about that if you're too
Speaker 17: young to remember that. But yeah, So we're talking about
Speaker 17: UNIFIL today right at the United Nations intermforcing lemanon why
Speaker 17: are we talking about them? Because the IDF has spent
Speaker 17: the last week or so edging on just openly attacking them,
Speaker 17: and it has more or less openly attacked them, but
Speaker 17: it hasn't done so in like a complete way. I
Speaker 17: guess we'll talk a little bit now about some of
Speaker 17: the things which have happened, because I think we should
Speaker 17: probably start there, and then what'd explain who UNIFIL are,
Speaker 17: what they do.
Speaker 4: Whether they're etcetera. A little bit of history.
Speaker 17: So UNIPHIL has called the situation with the idea of
Speaker 17: extremely serious and a flagrant violation of international law, a
Speaker 17: phrase which is used every time Israel does anything, because.
Speaker 5: It's true and then nothing happens, and then nothing happens.
Speaker 17: Yeah, and that's I think where we're going to end
Speaker 17: up today, is that like it's good that they are there, right, like,
Speaker 17: just to a big picture, this what Israel has done
Speaker 17: in Lebanon, in Gaza and in the West Bank is
Speaker 17: it has attacked anyone who is any form of outside observer, right,
Speaker 17: it has killed aid workers, it has killed journalists, and
Speaker 17: it has shot artillery rounds that peacekeepers injured peacekeepers in Lebanon. Right,
Speaker 17: anyone who can provide any form of independent oversight, who
Speaker 17: can provide any form of accountability for what they're doing,
Speaker 17: is in danger.
Speaker 4: And this like is more or less.
Speaker 17: I mean, Rassia does this a little bit too, right,
Speaker 17: but like among like I don't know what we're supposed
Speaker 17: to understand. It's relative democracy, but like this war seems
Speaker 17: to be pretty unpopular even there. And then yahoo, isn't
Speaker 17: He's taken a Trump approach to democracy. Let's say, Israel
Speaker 17: seemingly murdering journalists as part of his policy as a
Speaker 17: goal of its invasion of Gaza is pretty unique, even
Speaker 17: by the standards of like other Western militaries who have
Speaker 17: done some pretty terrible things in the Middle East in
Speaker 17: the last twenty years. So some of the things they've
Speaker 17: done in recent days. It's fired smoke grounds about one
Speaker 17: hundred meters from their compounds, causing uniform peacekeepers to have
Speaker 17: to done their gas masks. Fifteen of them were injured.
Speaker 17: They have like skin irritation for whatever the munition was.
Speaker 17: I don't quite know what it was. I guess I
Speaker 17: think expired smokes can do that, and tear gases old
Speaker 17: tear gas can do that. You're not supposed to use
Speaker 17: tear gas. Yeah, that's a war crime. Yeah, that's a
Speaker 17: war crime. It's a warkind that lots of people do.
Speaker 17: To be fair, like, they wouldn't be the first one
Speaker 17: I'd seen. But then again, right, like these are people,
Speaker 17: are they signature's to a genet of convention? Actually, I
Speaker 17: don't know that's a good they are. They don't give
Speaker 17: a fuck. Does it really matter that? Yeah, have a look,
Speaker 17: I'm interested to know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they are.
Speaker 5: We have ratified the Video of Convention, which I guess
Speaker 5: makes them mildly more bigger international law bound in the US.
Speaker 4: The ultimate rogue state, Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 17: I mean it's relis is pretty much a rogue state
Speaker 17: at this point, right Like that I think is oh yeah,
Speaker 17: the sort of the frame of analysisue which they should
Speaker 17: be understood. A rogue state doing violence set alone is
Speaker 17: wherever the fuck it wants with your taxpayer money, because
Speaker 17: apparently there's nothing it can do which will cause it
Speaker 17: to have one centimeter of accountability from the US.
Speaker 13: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Other things they've been getting up to.
Speaker 17: They've knocked down compound walls of the UNIFIL compounds.
Speaker 4: Can we explain what uniform is, by the way, Yeah, sure. So.
Speaker 17: The UNIFIL is the United Nations Interimforce in Lebanon. It's
Speaker 17: tasked with peacekeeping, monitoring the withdrawal of the IDF. So
Speaker 17: in theory, the IDEF, as we'll get into, has invaded
Speaker 17: Lebanon many times in theory since two thousand and six,
Speaker 17: which was the last time it's sort of invaded Lebanon
Speaker 17: On Like it's invaded Lebanon on a very small scale.
Speaker 17: The hundreds of times, right, like, for instance, stepping across
Speaker 17: the border, which the border is not entirely agreed upon
Speaker 17: by its Lebanon, but the United Nations has imposed something
Speaker 17: called a blue line, which is what it considers to
Speaker 17: be the border. It's Raeli troops will go across that
Speaker 17: to trim trees a lot so they can like spy
Speaker 17: more effectively. Right, they literally have towers and cameras and stuff.
Speaker 17: But in two thousand and six, people who are old
Speaker 17: like myself were members. Last time it did a sort
Speaker 17: of full scale evasion of Lebanon and on its withdrawal.
Speaker 17: I'll just go through the history of uniform now and
Speaker 17: we can talk about the attack later, I guess. So
Speaker 17: they're supposed to keep the IDF and Husbulla in theory
Speaker 17: out of an area between the Latani River and the
Speaker 17: blue line. The blue line is where the UN through
Speaker 17: the border in two thousand and The idea is that
Speaker 17: the border was drawn there by the UN to determine
Speaker 17: if israel hood withdrawn from Lebanon. That doesn't necessarily mean
Speaker 17: that all parties are accepted as the border.
Speaker 4: They don't, but it is blue line for now.
Speaker 17: The unfl have been in Lebanon since nineteen seventy eight.
Speaker 4: That was one of the.
Speaker 17: Times when israelevated Lebanon. At that point they were looking
Speaker 17: for the PO. Yeah, I think the PLO had crossed
Speaker 17: over from Lebanon to attack and massacre people in Israel.
Speaker 17: Right at which point Israel then decided to just go
Speaker 17: hog and in fully invade Lebanon seventy eight, in invaded again
Speaker 17: in eighty two while UNIFIL were there, and it sort
Speaker 17: of bypassed uniful position to that point. And it doesn't
Speaker 17: mean that people didn't die in these invasions uniform troops
Speaker 17: of peacekeepers, because they did, right, Like it's a dangerous
Speaker 17: place to.
Speaker 5: Be Also, like eighty two was like the saber Chatila massacre,
Speaker 5: like yes, like I was just like hideous Israeli massacres
Speaker 5: of refugee camps, which the kind of thing that like
Speaker 5: used to cause more anger in the US that it
Speaker 5: did now.
Speaker 17: Like yeah, now it's another day that ends in why right,
Speaker 17: you know the BOMBDA hospital again. It's a year of
Speaker 17: bombing hospitals now and it doesn't seem to register anymore,
Speaker 17: doesn't you know, make the headlines? Yeah, in eighty two,
Speaker 17: Israel bombed compound, and it took Israel until the year
Speaker 17: two thousand to quote unquote withdraw from Lebanon. And at
Speaker 17: that point that was when the blue line was drawn.
Speaker 17: Right during that time, before two thousand, it wasn't just
Speaker 17: the IDF that was operating in the area. You also
Speaker 17: had the South Lebanese Army. I don't like the division
Speaker 17: of groups in this part of the world exclusively along
Speaker 17: religious lines, because I think that doesn't entirely explain things
Speaker 17: always and I think it's like a very analyst brain
Speaker 17: way of seeing things, like to be like, oh, these
Speaker 17: are the sites and they do this, the sort of
Speaker 17: sunnies and they do this. But the SLA is a
Speaker 17: majority Christian organization and like it began as its own
Speaker 17: independent thing in the Civil War Lebanon, but it became
Speaker 17: more or lesson it's really proxy, right, it's certainly in
Speaker 17: this area and the UN caused them. It's really different
Speaker 17: fact forces, which is kind of a bold move from
Speaker 17: the UN. Actually, like yeah, to just say it. Of course,
Speaker 17: saying it and doing it is another thing. But like
Speaker 17: during the time from eighty two to two thousand, it's
Speaker 17: relevated multiple times, right, including in nineteen ninety six, when
Speaker 17: just in the year of nineteen ninety six it's rail
Speaker 17: fired on uniform peacekeepers two hundred and seventy times. So like,
Speaker 17: I think that's like every weekday for the entire year.
Speaker 17: To put things in perspective, you know, like if they
Speaker 17: took weekends off, they fired on them every weekday, including
Speaker 17: shelling a uniform compound after the withdrawal in two thousand withdrawal,
Speaker 17: uniform stasks of peacekeeping, monitoring the withdrawal and assisting the
Speaker 17: Lebanese government in restoring it for authority in the area,
Speaker 17: and a UN mandate seventeen oh one two thousand and six,
Speaker 17: it's relevated again and eventually it's sort of ground to
Speaker 17: a stand still that time, ground to stand on top
Speaker 17: of a massive pile of civilian bodies, as it tends
Speaker 17: to do. Right, they bombay route in. I remember that
Speaker 17: I was I was traveling in the Middle East in.
Speaker 4: Two thousand and six.
Speaker 17: I remember just being like, oh, this is It's one
Speaker 17: thing to watch war on TV when you're at home,
Speaker 17: but when you're that little bit closer, and it's people
Speaker 17: who are like my cousin is there, my brother is there,
Speaker 17: A good school friend of mine was within Beiru.
Speaker 6: I remember like.
Speaker 17: It was one of my earlier experiences of just being
Speaker 17: like this is horrific and there's nothing we can do,
Speaker 17: Like no one seems to care. No one's going to
Speaker 17: stop them, and like here we are getting on for
Speaker 17: two decades later, and in fact, no one has stopped them.
Speaker 17: They're still doing it. Talking of things that no one
Speaker 17: can stop. Yeah, no one can stop the relentless march
Speaker 17: of capitalism. And that is why we now have to
Speaker 17: pivot to advertisements.
Speaker 4: We are back.
Speaker 17: So in two thousand and six, once again Israel killed
Speaker 17: you and peacekeepers right. Perhaps the most notable incident is
Speaker 17: when a precision guided bomb struck a bunker and which
Speaker 17: four UN peacekeepers were sheltering. They'd been shelled fourteen times
Speaker 17: that day. They had then gone to their bunker right
Speaker 17: to be protected from the shelling, at which point they
Speaker 17: received this precision guide a munition which killed four of them.
Speaker 17: The peacekeepers were from Austria, Canada, China and Finland. Later
Speaker 17: the UN sent like a quick reaction for US and
Speaker 17: a rescue team, which the IDF also shelled.
Speaker 4: Jesus Christ, Yeah.
Speaker 17: I think this may be the time to point out
Speaker 17: that like I think a lot of people are maybe hopeful,
Speaker 17: and maybe it's true that like if Israel crosses a
Speaker 17: line with attacking like European people, that will matter more
Speaker 17: to the nation that the states and governments of the
Speaker 17: world than it has done with killing Palestinian civilians. And
Speaker 17: to a degree, they might be right, like you might.
Speaker 17: You've had statements from a dozen or so countries that
Speaker 17: Israel shouldn't be attacking, but they're still getting this fire
Speaker 17: hose of money and weapons. Right, There's still been no
Speaker 17: actual accountability, and I think that will actually start them
Speaker 17: from doing what they're doing. That's not like the fault
Speaker 17: of the people on the ground in JUNI fill for
Speaker 17: the most part. Yeah, but nonetheless it's the case. It
Speaker 17: was also in that incident in two thousand and six,
Speaker 17: and I was talking about UNIFIL called the IDF ten
Speaker 17: times to ask them to stop shelling. And this bunker,
Speaker 17: by the way, I'm not talking about like concealed position, right,
Speaker 17: Like I've been in bunkers and I'm away for work
Speaker 17: that you might not be able to see very easily.
Speaker 17: This bad boy is painted bright white with the letters
Speaker 17: U N on it. Like it's incredibly well marked, it's
Speaker 17: impossible to miss, you know, it stands out like a sauta.
Speaker 17: That's where they drop their precision guide ammunition. There was
Speaker 17: also an instant in twenty ten. This might be one
Speaker 17: people remember, and this is one of the tree trimming incidents.
Speaker 17: So the IDF was trying to trim trees along the
Speaker 17: blue line and the Levelese military perceived them to have
Speaker 17: vented Lebanon. I'm sure the IDEAF perceived themselves to be
Speaker 17: inside Israel. The Idea's understanding of borders, as I said,
Speaker 17: is somewhat unique, and so Indonesian UNIFIL troops were there.
Speaker 17: This is a particularly interesting incident. The Indonesian troops seem
Speaker 17: to be pretty popular in Lebanon. From what I can tell,
Speaker 17: there are forty one nations that take part in UNIFIL right,
Speaker 17: but there are large contingents of Spanish, French, German, Italian,
Speaker 17: Irish peacekeepers and Indonesian and nepoally peacekeepers as well. The
Speaker 17: Indonesians are interesting because the government doesn't recognize Israel and
Speaker 17: so they have no diplomacy like I don't quite know
Speaker 17: how they manage that.
Speaker 4: Because as we'll get.
Speaker 17: Into beautiful, it's controlled by this thing called a tripartite mechanism,
Speaker 17: whereby they have to agree on almost everything with the
Speaker 17: government of Lebanon or the military of Lebanese Army and
Speaker 17: the IDF, which is it's kind of classic un right.
Speaker 17: You have these people there who are positioned to do
Speaker 17: something really important right now, which is to stop the
Speaker 17: IDF doing in Lebanon what he's done in Gaza, but
Speaker 17: they've managed to engineer themselves into a situation where they
Speaker 17: the IDF also has a veto on pretty much anything
Speaker 17: they can do. Yeah, which, like I was told, I
Speaker 17: spoke to someone who was very familiar with the operations
Speaker 17: of UNIFIL and they were trying to me for instance,
Speaker 17: so the IDF had been able to control what munitions
Speaker 17: they were able to bring into the country Jesus, which
Speaker 17: matters because, as we'll get into, one of the things
Speaker 17: that IDF likes to do is like literally knock on
Speaker 17: their front door with main battle tanks. Right that they
Speaker 17: actually knocked down the front gate of the uniform compound
Speaker 17: with a macarver tank. Certainly like knocking the front gate
Speaker 17: down with a mccarvery is one way of going about
Speaker 17: asking yeah, which is insane.
Speaker 5: Yeah, like these people just completely lost their minds.
Speaker 17: Yeah, I mean that's that's the thing, right, Like, I
Speaker 17: think that's what I want folks to take away from
Speaker 17: this is that, like it's unlikely that the UN is
Speaker 17: going to go toe to toe with the IDF at
Speaker 17: this point.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 17: No, that doesn't mean, as I've seen people saying that
Speaker 17: either they're there to spy for the IDF, they're not.
Speaker 17: The IDEF keeps killing them, yeah, in quite large numbers,
Speaker 17: Like I think forty two Irish people have been killed
Speaker 17: in the history of uniful deployments. Dozens from other countries too, right,
Speaker 17: Nor does this mean there's annet Yahu has called them
Speaker 17: quote hostages of Husbolla, which is kind of a ridiculous
Speaker 17: claim as many of the things that come out of
Speaker 17: his mouth are like they're also categorically not that they're
Speaker 17: hostages of the United Nations. And there's this system that
Speaker 17: it's backed itself into whereby two Beligerian parties can stop
Speaker 17: them doing anything they do. So I'll give you an
Speaker 17: example about twenty ten. K's right, these Indonesian uniform troops
Speaker 17: are trying to prevent the IDF from the Lebanese Army
Speaker 17: firing at each other. The IDEF is entering into Lebanon
Speaker 17: to cut down some trees, and in the perspective of
Speaker 17: the Lebanese army, I guess, they started throwing insults on
Speaker 17: one another, and soon enough they start shooting each other.
Speaker 17: So two Indonesian peacekeepers. There was a video of this
Speaker 17: that went around for a while. So the Indonesians decide
Speaker 17: that basically there's nothing.
Speaker 5: We can do.
Speaker 17: They're going to shoot at each other, and that they
Speaker 17: decide to withdraw, which probably isn't the best. They're like,
Speaker 17: you know that they're not keeping peace by force, I guess,
Speaker 17: but they basically decide there's nothing they can do. They
Speaker 17: decide to pull out. Local people construct a roadblock to
Speaker 17: try and make them stay and prevent the IDEA from
Speaker 17: entering Lebanon.
Speaker 4: This happens a lot.
Speaker 17: This is like you'll see this happening, and this happened
Speaker 17: in various Like I'm going to get into some other
Speaker 17: un situations where this has happened, right, But the two
Speaker 17: peacekeepers get separated from their unit. This is a video
Speaker 17: that kind of went around at the time. Like I'm
Speaker 17: sure they're genuinely afraid at that point. Right in the video,
Speaker 17: they're being helped by local folks and they end up
Speaker 17: getting in a taxi to like leave and come back
Speaker 17: to their base, and which like I'm sure they were
Speaker 17: in a pretty shitty they were having a bad yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 17: And to quote Major General A. Lam Pelgamne, who is
Speaker 17: a French officer who's uniform commander from two thousand and
Speaker 17: four to two thousand and seven, quite the problem is
Speaker 17: in such cases as this, if you intervene to protect
Speaker 17: the IDF, for instance, you know it will be accused
Speaker 17: by Husbulla or the people of protecting the Israelis and
Speaker 17: collaborating with the enemy.
Speaker 4: The other side.
Speaker 17: If we do the same with the Lebanese, it's able
Speaker 17: to accuse the unifor of collaborating with Husbula. So like, yes,
Speaker 17: it will in the situation that we're seeing currently, Like
Speaker 17: I think, obviously, like what Israel thinks and says doesn't
Speaker 17: really have much credibility anymore because they're ruled by this
Speaker 17: tripartite mechanism.
Speaker 4: There's really very little they can do.
Speaker 17: Yeah, they can fire people if they're fired upon, but
Speaker 17: the IDEF isn't like engaging them in small arms combat. Right,
Speaker 17: They're lobbing artillery shelves into their compound. They're firing smoke,
Speaker 17: they're bashing down their walls with Caterpillar armored bulldozers. The
Speaker 17: IDF loves an armor bulldozer. Yeah, because I mean you
Speaker 17: can probably join the dots on why the IDF loves
Speaker 17: a armored bulldozer. You know that they're in the business
Speaker 17: of knocking stuff down, I guess, And yeah, going into
Speaker 17: urban areas and disturbing people's homes. That's I'm sure other
Speaker 17: folks have vomorable though this too. Just the IDF is
Speaker 17: kind of well known for using these things. They shot
Speaker 17: down an observation tower last week which had two peace
Speaker 17: keepers in it, and obviously those people were injured because
Speaker 17: that tower got shot down. But like they're not fully
Speaker 17: attacking them enough that those peacekeepers would like defend themselves
Speaker 17: or their their positions. And I think if people are
Speaker 17: like hoping that somehow like an engagement between peacekeepers and
Speaker 17: the IDF will be what causes accountability, I don't think
Speaker 17: that's going to happen.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And for like for the UN to actually like
Speaker 5: really seriously intervene in a world like this, it takes
Speaker 5: one of the UN Security Council members being like we
Speaker 5: will send our own troops. That's like how the UN
Speaker 5: got involved in Korea, right, Yeah, Like the US was
Speaker 5: like fuck it, we're gonna send an army there, and
Speaker 5: like Russia is not going to like send an army.
Speaker 5: They are significantly too busy the invading Ukraine and selling
Speaker 5: natural gas to Israel to do anything. China is not
Speaker 5: going to do it because there is real second largest
Speaker 5: trading partner and they don't give a shit. Like no, no, no,
Speaker 5: one's actually going to like send troops to like back
Speaker 5: some kind of like UN mandate to like stop the
Speaker 5: Disraelis from doing this. Like that's just like not even
Speaker 5: if the Israelis were to just start killing peace keepers,
Speaker 5: like it's not going to happen. It's never happened any
Speaker 5: other time. The Israelis have killed peacekeepers.
Speaker 17: Yeah, like peacekeepers have in other places for yeah that
Speaker 17: for instance, Irish peacekeepers in Congo, right or the Canadians
Speaker 17: and indeed like the uniform have engaged in combat before.
Speaker 17: But I think the chances of them like stopping the
Speaker 17: IDF invasion or extremely slim.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Like and if you're finding a state that is just
Speaker 5: directly an American proxy, like there's no way yeah, it's
Speaker 5: like I don't even think like the seventies n AM,
Speaker 5: like not a line movement like dominated UN could have
Speaker 5: pulled something like that off. And like this UN will not.
Speaker 17: Like the UN will issue strongly worded statements. The UN
Speaker 17: will say it's deeply concerned. And I imagine that like
Speaker 17: if you're just like a troop and then you're on
Speaker 17: your unifil. So most of the at least for the Irish,
Speaker 17: most of people there have volunteered to be there. An Ireland,
Speaker 17: it's probably among at least among European country is a
Speaker 17: country that has strongest in its solidarity with Palestine for
Speaker 17: a long time. I'm sure it fucking sucks. I'm sure
Speaker 17: it really blows. Oh yeah, and what the IDEAF has
Speaker 17: done now is advanced past their like forward positions and
Speaker 17: the positions where people are being injured by shelling are
Speaker 17: the headquarters positions, So like if you imagine a triangle
Speaker 17: with a broad base of it at the front, they're
Speaker 17: shelling and sort of fighting around the headquarters positions. I'm
Speaker 17: sure if you've been spending that much of your life
Speaker 17: as a soldier, you know, like and you're watching something
Speaker 17: terrible happen you'd want to fight that. Yeah, you're just
Speaker 17: sitting around Like that doesn't mean that it's bad that
Speaker 17: they're there, No, Yeah, Like any form of accountability will
Speaker 17: make it more accountable than what happened in Gaza, right, Yeah,
Speaker 17: or at least it will make whatever.
Speaker 4: Happens more visible than what happened in Gaza, and.
Speaker 5: It probably legitimately has slowed the Israelis down, Like, yeah,
Speaker 5: this is what would happen if there was nothing there
Speaker 5: and they could just run rough shod, which is you know,
Speaker 5: get like what we've see in Gaza and what we've
Speaker 5: seen in the West Bank.
Speaker 17: Yeah, Like, I mean their strategy in Gaza has been
Speaker 17: first of all, like militarily in air to right, Like
Speaker 17: they've lost control of areas in their rear because aside
Speaker 17: from just killing lots of people and flattening cities, it
Speaker 17: didn't seem to be really doing much in it in
Speaker 17: like an actual sort of targeted manner, and like, yeah,
Speaker 17: just the presence of peacekeepers means that you can't just
Speaker 17: carpet bomb in advance, you know, fireing anything that moves.
Speaker 17: This area between the Latini River and the Blue Line,
Speaker 17: civilians have largely left because there's intense combat going on there. Right,
Speaker 17: there's Balla present there and obviously the IDEF now present
Speaker 17: there and they're fighting, so like people can leave, they've left.
Speaker 17: So having not that civil millions have really slowly is
Speaker 17: raised down in Gaza. It been a Certainian casualties don't
Speaker 17: seem to be something they care about. But yeah, having
Speaker 17: these folks there has stopped them just just carpet bombing
Speaker 17: the area, which is a good thing. Yeah, something that's
Speaker 17: not a good thing. It's our obligation to pivot adverts again, oh, which.
Speaker 4: We will do. All right, we're back.
Speaker 17: Yeah, I guess, like I've seen it from a few people.
Speaker 17: I think it's either the people who discovered like international
Speaker 17: politics a year ago and previously like hadn't really thought
Speaker 17: about it, or from the kind of nativist right the
Speaker 17: idea that like they shouldn't be there, Like I've seen
Speaker 17: it from like some kind of nativist type folks about Ireland,
Speaker 17: like why are the Irish they're risking their lives for
Speaker 17: the for the Lebanese?
Speaker 4: What the fuck the Lebanese embody for them?
Speaker 5: I have such good news for you about who was
Speaker 5: training the IRA.
Speaker 4: In the seventies.
Speaker 5: There are a lot of a lot of guys with
Speaker 5: Irish accents in Becca Valley trading can in the seventies,
Speaker 5: So you know, they really have actually done things for you.
Speaker 5: It's one of the things people do this with like
Speaker 5: the US or there's like one of the Israeli lines
Speaker 5: like ah, what is one of Palestinians ever done for
Speaker 5: black people. It's like, well, like a lot of people
Speaker 5: who got a lot of trading with.
Speaker 18: Yellow in the seventies, like Jenny are for better and
Speaker 18: for worse, because like there's also groups that they trained
Speaker 18: that like they probably shouldn't have like a doubt a
Speaker 18: lot of the groups that became the Fighting Vanguard, which
Speaker 18: was okay, it's I want to scar the Fighting Vanguard.
Speaker 5: The Fighting Vanguard were like a kind of built wing
Speaker 5: of the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria. And like a bunch
Speaker 5: of those Fighting Vanguard guys who survived, so they do
Speaker 5: an uprising and I think it was eighty four, they
Speaker 5: like all get killed. Those people who survived go on
Speaker 5: to be some of the founding members of al Qaida.
Speaker 5: So not not always no great yeah, but you know
Speaker 5: the record like look one out of like twenty of
Speaker 5: the people you trained, going Haywires not great, but like
Speaker 5: you know, it's limited nineteen other ones, like it did
Speaker 5: pretty good.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think Abdudjulam was in the Becka Valley for
Speaker 4: a while. Yeah. Yeah, lots of cadres of the of
Speaker 4: the PKK. Yeah, the PK was there.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 17: Yeah, Kurds died actually, like yeah, there's a good article
Speaker 17: called the Kurds who Died for Palestine I was reading
Speaker 17: recently because often you'll see this like idea that the
Speaker 17: Kurds are like inherently like Zionists, and I don't think
Speaker 17: that's true.
Speaker 5: No, Like yeah, like that they fought at the Eleveties
Speaker 5: Civil War on the side of the Pls, Like yeah, yeah,
Speaker 5: they were in because they were in Beca Valley in
Speaker 5: the Plos trading camps.
Speaker 17: Like yeah, they didn't really have much choice to be back.
Speaker 17: Israel was coming for them.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and like like is Israel is one of the
Speaker 5: coaches that helped kidnap the dula Archelote Like yeah, that's
Speaker 5: really not Presioneds at all.
Speaker 17: No, this is one of those things that you'll see
Speaker 17: from like I didn't have the bot account, so they're
Speaker 17: just people with very unoriginal opinions who like they treat
Speaker 17: kind of Turkish state lines when Israel build settlements in
Speaker 17: a West Bank and guards that they.
Speaker 4: Do it with steel that comes from Turkey.
Speaker 17: Ye, So yeah, maybe treat those claims with some skepticism.
Speaker 17: If there's a gray wolf in bioeticularity.
Speaker 5: Yeah, there is a broader, more serious point there, which
Speaker 5: is that like the actual physical resources that the Israelis
Speaker 5: use to physically build the occupation, right, those all come
Speaker 5: from places and it's not all US, And I think
Speaker 5: people have this image that like, well like and it
Speaker 5: is true the US, it's an unbelievable amount of money
Speaker 5: to Israel, but there's a lot of places where the
Speaker 5: Israelis are getting their ship form, right, like these really
Speaker 5: tech sector in the Israeli tech sector is one of
Speaker 5: the cores of the Israeli economy, and it is one
Speaker 5: of the cores of the Israeli occupation is almost entirely
Speaker 5: fueled by like semiconductors and stuff that they buy from China. Right,
Speaker 5: that's where all the physical technical infrastructure of this stuff
Speaker 5: comes from. I talked about it before about like Russian
Speaker 5: natural gas, Right, all of these countries, who will you know,
Speaker 5: talk all of this shit like and the un about Israel,
Speaker 5: like people's real political stances and what they're willing to
Speaker 5: send it to your really to the Israelis are not
Speaker 5: the same thing at all. And if you want to
Speaker 5: actually gauge how the occupation functions, it's because a lot
Speaker 5: of countries that nominally will be like, oh, we oppose
Speaker 5: it's really occupation. Well, didn't just send them all the
Speaker 5: fucking resources that they need to do the occupation.
Speaker 17: Yeah, and they don't get any heat unless it's like
Speaker 17: literal bombs bullets.
Speaker 5: Right, yeah, and even and even then, like lots of
Speaker 5: people like yeah, there's plenty of non us. I mean,
Speaker 5: the ukata's a lot of this too, right.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 17: One of the things that IDF likes to do they
Speaker 17: haven't mentioned yet, it's mock air assaults of unifual positions,
Speaker 17: is christ Well, they'll fly in like a bombing formation
Speaker 17: just basically, I guess hayes them. I can't really think
Speaker 17: of a way to describe it, right, they's terror like
Speaker 17: it's a terror campaign. Yes, it's a very clear indication that,
Speaker 17: like any day, we could wipe you off the map. Right,
Speaker 17: And some of the uniform assets seem to have anti
Speaker 17: aircraft some of them don't, but even still like they
Speaker 17: you know, a determined attack by the idea of they've
Speaker 17: been in big trouble of course. So right now, I
Speaker 17: guess the situation we're in, according to the person who
Speaker 17: spoke to is that these positions Israel has advanced passed,
Speaker 17: like the peacekeepers there are still in their positions, right
Speaker 17: they have using their own funds, which I presume means
Speaker 17: like funds from the states of which they are part,
Speaker 17: fortified their positions and improve their positions like.
Speaker 5: With their own Jesus Christ.
Speaker 17: Ye, Well, the UN is supposed to provide positions for them.
Speaker 17: It's supposed to provide their rations, and it's supposed to
Speaker 17: provide weapons and vehicles for some other states that like
Speaker 17: kind of aren't up to I guess a modern standard.
Speaker 17: That's incidentally why you don't see it so much here,
Speaker 17: But in other parts of the world you often see
Speaker 17: troops on peacekeeping missions who like perhaps you haven't heard
Speaker 17: of that country's military before, right, Like, it's very common
Speaker 17: for like. Also, I think it is better that there
Speaker 17: are African peacekeepers in Africa than like white European peace
Speaker 17: like I think for historical and very obvious reasons.
Speaker 5: I will mention one of the places that sends a
Speaker 5: lot of piece of replay to places in nepoll And
Speaker 5: the record that police peacekeepers that are get are being
Speaker 5: set by booist governments.
Speaker 4: Are yeah good, not great. Yeah, you can google that.
Speaker 5: We've talked about this in Brazil at length, like sorry,
Speaker 5: Brazilian Nepolice cooperation in Haiti's shit show.
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, it has not been good for the Haitian people.
Speaker 17: I will say, like one of the things that happens
Speaker 17: a lot is the UN pays them a certain rate
Speaker 17: for peacekeeping I guess or UN conversate certain right, which
Speaker 17: is often a lot more than those militaries pay their soldiers.
Speaker 17: So it's like a source of income for the military
Speaker 17: view see what I mean, They can like skim off
Speaker 17: the percentage. But these guys have at their own expense,
Speaker 17: fortify their positions at their own expense, supplied themselves with
Speaker 17: rations so that they've they've bought a ton of food
Speaker 17: and water. It's what that means in like non nerdy terms.
Speaker 17: So they're pretty well stocked up, right, Like they're bunked up.
Speaker 5: Yeah, But it's also it's also like this US operation
Speaker 5: is being equipped in the same way that like American
Speaker 5: school teachers make sure their classrooms have pencils.
Speaker 4: That's a perfection.
Speaker 3: What the fuck is going on here? Yeah, Jesus Christ.
Speaker 17: Maybe maybe the state not the best way of organizing
Speaker 17: human society, is what people are saying.
Speaker 5: Look, we need to fuse the two and finally bring
Speaker 5: about my lifelong dream of armed teachers union pickets.
Speaker 4: Yeah, bring it back to like Blair Mountain, but for teachers.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Look, don't armed teachers armed teachers unions. Yeah, we
Speaker 5: can finally get bipartisan agreement on Yeah, they're pretty well
Speaker 5: hold up, like like American preppers dream of themselves being
Speaker 5: right surrounded by ammunition and marise, but at some point
Speaker 5: they're going to run out of food and water, and
Speaker 5: at some point that means that they're going to have
Speaker 5: to resupply. Right now on I'm just going to check
Speaker 5: the date very quickly, And UNIFIL is on Twitter by
Speaker 5: the way, if you want to do you want to
Speaker 5: follow them there they kind of give a daily update
Speaker 5: on what's going on. On the thirteenth of October, UNIFIL
Speaker 5: said that the IDF sold just stopped a critical uniform
Speaker 5: logistical movement, which could well be like an attempt to
Speaker 5: resupply of one of these places. Right, at some point
Speaker 5: they're going to have to resupply them, either by air
Speaker 5: or by land. And I think that is when we
Speaker 5: will most likely see like exactly how hard the IDF
Speaker 5: wants to go against like in this case trucks full
Speaker 5: of MRIs right, Like, yeah, previously they've got in standoffs,
Speaker 5: like a few years ago the French. The French have
Speaker 5: done some interesting stuff as part of the UNIFILM mission,
Speaker 5: Like in twenty ten they kind of went on a
Speaker 5: unilateral operation without approval to look for her body. Yeah,
Speaker 5: not a great move.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's wild.
Speaker 5: French forces at level not such an interesting thing because
Speaker 5: it's like you have inside of the French soul is
Speaker 5: warring at all times, two forces.
Speaker 4: It is it Receisy said, it's.
Speaker 5: Like they because they hate Buzzled so much, but they
Speaker 5: are also so anti Semitic.
Speaker 4: This is an all times waring French.
Speaker 17: The nature of the French soul, the two wolves that
Speaker 17: live inside the French person. Yeah, well, in twenty ten,
Speaker 17: they were their Islamophobia was winning. They specifically they used
Speaker 17: sniffer dogs in people's homes, which Jesus is very disrespectful
Speaker 17: in culture in that part of the world.
Speaker 5: I mean also here I would be really pissed off
Speaker 5: if fucking a bomb squad like getting started running sniffer
Speaker 5: dogs around my apartment for sure, get out going through
Speaker 5: private property and doing things that they were They're supposed
Speaker 5: to operate with the Lebanese armed Forces, right, so they
Speaker 5: patrol alongside them. But in this case, the French decided
Speaker 5: they were just going to send it solo and obviously
Speaker 5: pissed a lot of people off. And it's really interesting
Speaker 5: to see people address their concerns. But was not interesting,
Speaker 5: I guess, but people address their concerns specifically with the
Speaker 5: French element of uniform rather than other elements of uniform,
Speaker 5: like for instance, Indonesia and seem to be pretty popular.
Speaker 5: The Indian element of unifil teaches weekly yoga classes, which
Speaker 5: are apparently becoming more and more popular.
Speaker 4: I've seen a bunch of videos.
Speaker 5: There's like like tiktoks of libertyes people in that area
Speaker 5: who speak English, and they all speak English with a
Speaker 5: Maris accent.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, because so long it's great.
Speaker 17: Yeah yeah, yeah, Well the Irish have been there since seventies, right,
Speaker 17: Like I know of people who have two generations of
Speaker 17: their family who.
Speaker 4: Have been peacekeepers there.
Speaker 17: Yeah, I think for those people like it probably like
Speaker 17: over time being down, I'm sure they do develop a
Speaker 17: personal connection to the people who you know that they're
Speaker 17: around and the people whose communities they are protecting, and
Speaker 17: and like, I genuinely feel like it's probably really a
Speaker 17: shitty situation to be in.
Speaker 4: Yeah, being sort of locked in your base.
Speaker 17: That doesn't mean they should leave, right, I just want
Speaker 17: to end with like, and I know we want to
Speaker 17: talk about the Gourden Heights to twenty thirteen. Actually Austria
Speaker 17: pulled out of the Gourden Heights and Ireland had to
Speaker 17: deploy a bunch of people really quickly to.
Speaker 4: Kind of cover that area.
Speaker 17: But if we look at like streperlinka right where the
Speaker 17: UN could have prevented a genocide and did not. Yeah,
Speaker 17: the UN forces there withdrew, they surrendered and places were
Speaker 17: captured by the Serbs and then used as collateral to
Speaker 17: stop the UN doing anymore to prevent what and like
Speaker 17: some of the most horrific acts in human history happened.
Speaker 17: It's from Benika, right, just just disgusting, terrible stuff, and
Speaker 17: like hopefully the UN has learned from that hopefully, like
Speaker 17: individual nations. I think like in that case, it wasn't
Speaker 17: so much the UN as a whole. It's like the
Speaker 17: specific chain of command of those peacekeepers.
Speaker 4: I think they were.
Speaker 5: Dutch well, And like it's it's worth noting in that
Speaker 5: point too that like part of what's going on there
Speaker 5: is that like a lot of the European countries until
Speaker 5: well into the genocide were basically pro served because they
Speaker 5: saw the Serbs something that could like just cleanse the
Speaker 5: Muslims from Europe.
Speaker 4: Is like this is the explicit language that they're using, right.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And this is this has always been a problem
Speaker 5: with with UN missions, is like well half the time
Speaker 5: we try to stop a genocide, there's like some faction
Speaker 5: of the UN that's like no, this one fucking rips
Speaker 5: and yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, right, this is the end. But they the bad
Speaker 4: guys though, aren't they.
Speaker 17: I think it's good that they have like Muslim countries
Speaker 17: within their yeah, their group, And like I think it's
Speaker 17: probably good that the Irish of their in large numbers
Speaker 17: because as a country they have been better on on
Speaker 17: Palestine than almost anyone else in Europe.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it turns out being a quality.
Speaker 17: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean, like yeah, that's on
Speaker 17: that's on us as the British.
Speaker 4: But it's better that they're there, I guess.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 17: And like no one talked about them for the past
Speaker 17: ten fucking years, but like the most important time for
Speaker 17: them to be there is right now. Yeah, and like
Speaker 17: even if they're not fighting, I think they serve a
Speaker 17: useful role in like it's the only accountability mechanism.
Speaker 5: Yeah that Israel can't just destroy. There are definitely people
Speaker 5: who are alive right now who would not be if
Speaker 5: if Irish were not there.
Speaker 17: Yeah, and like I know, we have these number of
Speaker 17: virus diistions. Like I know, it sucks it's your family
Speaker 17: member who's stuck there, like and like it feels like
Speaker 17: they're not able to do anything and they're just stuck
Speaker 17: there as like collateral as a bargaining chip.
Speaker 4: I don't know, but like, yeah, I.
Speaker 17: Think overseas military deployments by European countries go. It's one
Speaker 17: of the more defensible ones. You know, it's one of
Speaker 17: the ones that has stopped civilian lives being harmed. H
Speaker 17: And yeah, I think like the idea that they should leave,
Speaker 17: which I've seen people trotting.
Speaker 10: Out like that.
Speaker 17: No, they shouldn't like when they leave. It's just like
Speaker 17: Gaza all over again. It's just Israel copet boling civilians
Speaker 17: and talking of copy boying civilians. I guess made you
Speaker 17: want to talk about like Israel has decided to invade
Speaker 17: another country.
Speaker 4: So okay.
Speaker 5: So one of the things that's happened, and this has
Speaker 5: gotten almost no attention, I think because because the Syrian
Speaker 5: government does not want to admit that this is happening,
Speaker 5: and they're not doing anything about it because they don't
Speaker 5: give a shit.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: So Israel has been occupying the Syrian goal On Heights
Speaker 5: since nineteen sixty seven. Yeah, they've militarized it. They've just
Speaker 5: been holding the territory for I shouldn't have tried to
Speaker 5: do math and a.
Speaker 4: Fly like over half a century, sixty years. Yeah.
Speaker 5: And one of the things that's been happening recently is
Speaker 5: there had been there had been like oh I say,
Speaker 5: describe as like a Russian nituring force sort of on
Speaker 5: on the border of the sheer knock about goal On
Speaker 5: Heights and the sort of like southern provinces is Asyria. Yeah,
Speaker 5: and the Israelis seem to have just apparently they've done
Speaker 5: they've done this before where they'll just like go in
Speaker 5: and buldoze a bunch of farmland.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I think this is on the video species of.
Speaker 5: D mining, right, Yeah, sort of. Yeah, I mean it's
Speaker 5: it's always been. It's always been pretty clearly like a
Speaker 5: land grab kind of thing.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 5: But normally what happens is they go in, they buildoze
Speaker 5: a bunch of places, and they pull out.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: So somehow they have surpassed Turkey as the number one
Speaker 5: bulldozer of olive fields, which is sort of staggering, like
Speaker 5: they they love that ship. Yeah, but this time they've
Speaker 5: set up seems like a road project. Although given everything
Speaker 5: that we've been seeing about the sort of like rise
Speaker 5: of the concept of greater Israel where they just start
Speaker 5: invading everyone and radially outwards from Israel extremely longing, they've
Speaker 5: they've buildozed these places. But now and they're but they've
Speaker 5: set it up like barred wire like down the new territory,
Speaker 5: which seems like they're just actually a time we can
Speaker 5: do annexation. Yeah, and that's really alarming because I mean,
Speaker 5: like the Syrian government isn't going to do shit about this, right,
Speaker 5: like you know, Israel has bombed Syria a few times already.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, they pumped Syria last time. I was saying, the.
Speaker 5: Syrian gum doesn't give a shit, right, They're they're too busy,
Speaker 5: like like they have courage to kill, Like they don't
Speaker 5: have time to be dealing with fucking Israel here.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but there's been an explicit is really pushed like
Speaker 5: even further out from the goal on heights, and I
Speaker 5: think we're just going to see this intensify as as
Speaker 5: the most sort of like drained settler factions in Israeli
Speaker 5: politics gain more and more power and the sort of
Speaker 5: like frankly like very American, we must push our borders,
Speaker 5: we must like push into new frontiers and sees more
Speaker 5: land like cycle sort of perpetuates itself.
Speaker 17: Yeah, and a lot of the people doing the settling
Speaker 17: have literally come from America to do the settling. Yeah,
Speaker 17: pushing out in the Golan it's bad, Like yeah, I
Speaker 17: know it's Reel claims it was attacked by Katiba's Bulla
Speaker 17: in the Golan Heights at last week, and katipaz Bula
Speaker 17: has denied that they glean it. Israel fabricated it. Nie
Speaker 17: of those people are people I particularly trust.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Well, and this is also one of these funny ones
Speaker 5: where it's like the Israelis are denying that they've done this,
Speaker 5: I think, and the Syrian government is also denying that
Speaker 5: they've done this, but like everyone who's there is like, well,
Speaker 5: obviously they did this, Like yeah, and like, I don't
Speaker 5: know why it's real keeps for wanting to open up
Speaker 5: your fronts. I mean they yeah, like you said, it's
Speaker 5: set like Colone list logic, I guess. But I do
Speaker 5: think that like the continuation of this like full scale
Speaker 5: war generates consent for the government as it exists in
Speaker 5: the moment that it stops, and that the government's legis
Speaker 5: will collapse there. Yeah, but yeah, pushing into Syria opens
Speaker 5: up a whole other world of shit, shit, yeah, the
Speaker 5: worst stuff. Yeah, there's a nation on earth who really
Speaker 5: doesn't need anyone else trying to fucking And it's not
Speaker 5: that Israel has not been killing Syrians for a long
Speaker 5: time as well, has been lobbing munitions into Syria for
Speaker 5: a long time, and it's increased.
Speaker 4: In the last year.
Speaker 17: Yeah, Like, yeah, you know, I was in Syria on
Speaker 17: October seventh last year and pretty much. Sooner as it's
Speaker 17: began responding to that attack, it began responding in Syria
Speaker 17: as well, but a ground operation is a whole different thing.
Speaker 17: There ain't no UN peacekeepers in Syria, and yeah, that
Speaker 17: could be very bad.
Speaker 5: So yeah, so we'll keep you updated on that story
Speaker 5: as it presumably continues to get worse, because yeah, everything
Speaker 5: seems to and like, I mean, I will say, Okay,
Speaker 5: so today Biden made a thing that said, if Israel
Speaker 5: hasn't resolved to the meditarian situation in thirty days, he's
Speaker 5: getting cut off aid.
Speaker 4: But like that's not going to happen.
Speaker 5: Like it's simply not like everyone says that all the time.
Speaker 4: I mean, how many lines have they stepped over?
Speaker 17: Right?
Speaker 5: Like how many An American red line is a line
Speaker 5: that when you step over and nothing happens.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's that's that's just that's just how it works, right,
Speaker 4: like it works in Syria. It has been multiple times.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean there's there's there's this old Russian joke
Speaker 5: about China's Final Warning where because like if throughout the
Speaker 5: entire seventies, when like there's all this boarders's going on,
Speaker 5: and even like the sixties and in the fifties sixties,
Speaker 5: like Chinese officials feel like this is China's final warning,
Speaker 5: Russia must stop and nothing would happen like this. This
Speaker 5: is where we're at with like the Democrats and being like, ah,
Speaker 5: Israel must stop doing whatever the fuck's no, they're not
Speaker 5: going to do anything, like they don't give a ship.
Speaker 17: Yeah, no, we've cried wolf so many times. It's clearly
Speaker 17: not an issue that Harris feels like it's going to
Speaker 17: lose her the election. Yeah, and then whoever wins, we
Speaker 17: got four more years of turning a fire hose of
Speaker 17: money and weapons on children in Palestine and apparently Syria
Speaker 17: and Lebanon as well. So yeah, it's great, It's all great.
Speaker 17: I'm afraid. Yeah, this this has not been a good
Speaker 17: news episode. I hope people who have family I have
Speaker 17: friends who are in Lebanon, like, I hope people who
Speaker 17: have family there were doing.
Speaker 4: Okay, I know it sucks, Hello.
Speaker 13: And welcome to It could happen here. I'm here with Mia.
Speaker 13: How you doing.
Speaker 5: It's abominably early, which not even podcasts early. It's like
Speaker 5: eight am here, so it's gonna be where we're We've
Speaker 5: done the caffeine.
Speaker 3: We're holding on for dear life sake.
Speaker 6: I feel you. I feel you.
Speaker 13: I have to ask, have you noticed that the continents
Speaker 13: are dripping a little bit?
Speaker 4: Continents are dripping?
Speaker 6: Yeah? Yeah, And I don't mean like blin out.
Speaker 13: I mean like if you take a look kind of
Speaker 13: map and you assume that North is up and South
Speaker 13: is down, it find it kind of looks like our
Speaker 13: major landmass is melting a little bit.
Speaker 5: Oh you know, Okay, now that you say it, I
Speaker 5: can kind of see it.
Speaker 6: H Yeah.
Speaker 13: This is a concept known as continental trip. And I'm
Speaker 13: not tripping on anything. I'm not the first person to notice.
Speaker 4: Incredible.
Speaker 6: You can look it up.
Speaker 13: There's a whole Wikipedia page of what's seen in everything,
Speaker 13: and well, South America is alongside India. They're kind of
Speaker 13: seen as the quintessential examples with this continental trip. And
Speaker 13: this is a very odd way that I've decided to
Speaker 13: segue into the next nation in our exploration of Latin
Speaker 13: America and anarchist history. It's right to the east of
Speaker 13: Chile and south of every other country near Temisphale.
Speaker 6: That is, of course, the Argentine.
Speaker 13: Republic, more commonly known as Argentina, which is derived by
Speaker 13: the way from the Latin word for silver. My name
Speaker 13: is Andrew Sage. You can find me on YouTube as
Speaker 13: Andrewism And thanks to the scholarship of Chuck Moss, Jeffrey
Speaker 13: la Focad, and Ahille Capileetti, we're going to take a
Speaker 13: journey into the history of anarchism in Argentina.
Speaker 5: Also got to do the shout out for Calculates Anarchism
Speaker 5: in Latin Erica. Great book, also great cover, got a
Speaker 5: big bird on it.
Speaker 4: Good stuff.
Speaker 13: Oh yeah, shout out of course, of course. So I
Speaker 13: suppose the best place to start us in the beginning.
Speaker 13: So there's this thing called the Big Bang, right.
Speaker 5: Universe expanded extremely fast like Pico second.
Speaker 6: Large expansion of matter.
Speaker 13: And yeah, but seriously, Argentina has been peopled since the
Speaker 13: Paleolithic period. In particular, we find evidence of ancient people's
Speaker 13: butchering the meat of an armadillo relative as early as
Speaker 13: twenty one third years ago geese.
Speaker 6: So you know, we've been around.
Speaker 13: We've been around from then on as far as we
Speaker 13: can tell for now, at least, because you know, the
Speaker 13: timelines are constantly getting updated with new information, as it
Speaker 13: should be. The area to be known as Argentina was
Speaker 13: pretty sparsely populated by a variety of divus cultures with
Speaker 13: diverse social organizations including forgers and farmers. To take a
Speaker 13: long and largely unknown history of indigenous co existence and conflicts. Short,
Speaker 13: people continue to live and the earth continue to spin
Speaker 13: for the next few millennia until a few ships on
Speaker 13: the horizon spell doom for all to see. These are,
Speaker 13: of course, the Europeans who first arrived in the region
Speaker 13: with the fifteen oh two voyage of Amerigo Vespucci, with
Speaker 13: the Spanish navigators Juan Dias de Solis and Sebastian Cabo
Speaker 13: in particular visiting the territory in fifteen sixteen and fifteen
Speaker 13: twenty six, respectively. Then in fifteen thirty six Pedro de
Speaker 13: Mendoza founded this small settlement.
Speaker 6: Of Buenos Aires.
Speaker 13: Maybe you've heard of it, but it was a band
Speaker 13: that in fifteen forty one thanks to continuous indigenous resistance,
Speaker 13: and had to be refounded in fifteen eighty. As for
Speaker 13: the rest of would be Argentina, the Spanish Empire that
Speaker 13: was running most of the continant was busy lutin the
Speaker 13: silver and gold mines in Bolivia and Peru, so Argentina
Speaker 13: was kind of seen as a backwater.
Speaker 6: It wasn't as much of an interest.
Speaker 13: By comparison, Argentina stayed under the Viceroyalty of Peru and
Speaker 13: to the creation of the Viceroyalty of the Rio de
Speaker 13: la Plata in seventeen seventy six, with Buenos Aires as
Speaker 13: its capital after two failed the British invasions in eighteen
Speaker 13: oh six and eighteen o seven, and as you could see,
Speaker 13: the British and Argentina have.
Speaker 6: Had a bit of a scuffle for some time now.
Speaker 13: The Buenos Aires capital would be the stage of revolution,
Speaker 13: as the eighteen ten May Revolution replaced the Vice roy
Speaker 13: Baltasar Hidel Gorya Cesnios with the First Junta, a new
Speaker 13: government made by and for the locals, and then there
Speaker 13: was a royalist counter revolution, some anti colonial alliance with
Speaker 13: the then Spanish Philippines, divisions between centralists and federalists over
Speaker 13: the newly forming Argentine state, proposals to crown a supper
Speaker 13: Inca as a monarch of an independent Argentina, and the
Speaker 13: official declaration of independence for a republic on the ninth
Speaker 13: of July eighteen sixteen. Just to go back a bit
Speaker 13: to be clear, there is an alternate history scenario in
Speaker 13: which Argentina was briefly or continuously under an InCor monarchy
Speaker 13: that would have ripped literally. I believe it was a
Speaker 13: cousin of Tupa Kamaru. The third incredible was being considered
Speaker 13: for the position incredible, incredible, incredible. Indeed, see, people tend
Speaker 13: to see South America as just like you know, it's
Speaker 13: just the extra continent. I mean, I don't think people
Speaker 13: think about how much has gone on down there, or
Speaker 13: rather it's not really present in the English speaking world's imagination.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 13: We tend to focus on more of the Northern hemisphere
Speaker 13: side of things, which have a specific region we find
Speaker 13: ourselves in, whether it be the Caribbean or Australia and
Speaker 13: New Zealand, UK US Canada. We tend to think about
Speaker 13: English speaking colonial history. But Latin America had a lot
Speaker 13: going on in its time. I mean, come on, they
Speaker 13: had an alliance with the Spanish Philippines. Yeah yeah, so,
Speaker 13: I mean civil war go per, as they say, between
Speaker 13: the centralists and the Federalists, and that will continue for
Speaker 13: a while after the Declaration of the Republic in eighteen sixteen,
Speaker 13: and it was only resolved in eighteen thirty one with
Speaker 13: a Federalist victory. Basically, it was a division over how
Speaker 13: they should organize the state, whether it should be in
Speaker 13: a federal manner or more centralist unitary manner, so the Federalists,
Speaker 13: one which would lead to the war the Confederation between
Speaker 13: eighteen thirty sixty eighteen thirty nine, the establishment of the
Speaker 13: Constitution in eighteen fifty three, and a temporary secession of
Speaker 13: Buenos Aires which was forced back into Argentina by eighteen
Speaker 13: sixty one. And as in much of that in America,
Speaker 13: anarchism would establish itself fairly early on thanks to the
Speaker 13: waves of migration from Europe, and particularly from France, Italy
Speaker 13: and Spain.
Speaker 4: There are so many Italians, so many, just.
Speaker 13: An absurd amount of Italians. These folks fled political repression
Speaker 13: and poverty in their home countries. Refugees from the Paris Commune,
Speaker 13: and anarchist literature from the aforementioned lands would find themselves
Speaker 13: in the streets of Buenos Aires City and the countrysides
Speaker 13: of Buenos Aires Province.
Speaker 6: They circulated anarchist ideas.
Speaker 13: Through group meetings such as the group Elmeserabeli in the
Speaker 13: port city of Rosario, and publications like the Rivolte, which
Speaker 13: was founded by Kropotkin all the way back in Switzerland.
Speaker 13: Kropotkin's Words of a Rebel would also make frequent appearances
Speaker 13: throughout Argentina, and his Conquest of Bread received a translation
Speaker 13: by Catalan carpenter Juan Villa. As with the splits internationally,
Speaker 13: the First International's local section in Buenos Airis, which was
Speaker 13: founded in eighteen seventy two, would split between the supporters
Speaker 13: of Marx and the supporters of a Cunan. The former
Speaker 13: were predominantly French, the latter predominantly Spaniard an Italian. Three
Speaker 13: decades of substantial migration started in the eighteen eighties, which
Speaker 13: sparked significant growth in the anarchist movement as the migrants
Speaker 13: found Crussian economic deprivation and repressive governance where they'd hoped
Speaker 13: they'd find prosperity and liberty. Over three million people arrived,
Speaker 13: leading to the country having a foreign born population of
Speaker 13: thirty three percent by nineteen fourteen. Nowadays, as in much
Speaker 13: of the world, unfortunately that once foreign born population some
Speaker 13: percentage of them, and now unfortunately anti I migration, yeah,
Speaker 13: and violently. So it's a cruel irony that we find
Speaker 13: ourselves with just mere decades ago. Their own ancestors were migrants.
Speaker 13: Among the migration wave came the likes of Hector Matte,
Speaker 13: an Italian anarchist who helped publish a Socialista, which is
Speaker 13: a weekly people and of course believe it's or not,
Speaker 13: the one and only Era Kamana Testa, who keeps making
Speaker 13: guest appearances in these last American anarchism. He's just like
Speaker 13: all over the places, traveling everywhere. If I recall correctly,
Speaker 13: he made an appearance in Cuba. He made an appearance
Speaker 13: in the Egypt episode as well. Yep, she just keeps
Speaker 13: showing up.
Speaker 5: He's really truly a globe trotter in a mold that
Speaker 5: we haven't really seen.
Speaker 13: Hey, I mean move aside football, you know he's the
Speaker 13: real mister worldwide. So at Akman test He actually fled
Speaker 13: Italy in eighty eighty five after escaping imprisonment, and he
Speaker 13: helped establish the Cecuilo the Studio Socialists, where he and
Speaker 13: others gave public speeches promoting anarchism, and he worked to
Speaker 13: organize a society dad Cosmopolita de Obreros Pandero's an anarchist
Speaker 13: Baker's Union. I didn't know he could bake, maybe he
Speaker 13: could make, maybe he couldn't. Maybe he was just there,
Speaker 13: you know, helping them set up. But in my head,
Speaker 13: I'd like to imagine that he was pretty good at bacon,
Speaker 13: bread and making cookies.
Speaker 5: You know, I'm pretty sure it was like an ice
Speaker 5: cream salesman too at one point, So I might be
Speaker 5: getting that confused with like some other anarchists who was
Speaker 5: going around everywhere who was also selling ice cream.
Speaker 6: You know, I wouldn't be surprised.
Speaker 5: I have vague memories of there being a story about
Speaker 5: like him having an ice cream cart and trying to
Speaker 5: make money and he couldn't do it because he kept
Speaker 5: giving ice cream the children.
Speaker 6: I think I remember that story. I think it's so
Speaker 6: bag I had a video on it.
Speaker 13: You know that those ads used to show on TV
Speaker 13: A couple like about a decade ago, most interesting than
Speaker 13: man in the world.
Speaker 6: Yeah, he was based on Aurkromat. Yeah.
Speaker 17: So.
Speaker 13: Maltessa later returned to Europe in eighteen eighty nine, Yet
Speaker 13: he left a lasting legacy in helping to organize workers
Speaker 13: and sow the seeds for a powerful anarchist movement in
Speaker 13: Argentina in the early eighteen nineties, the anarchist paper El
Speaker 13: Perscuido became one of the most popular and prominent voices
Speaker 13: of anarchist communism in Argentina. Despite ongoing repression and government censorship,
Speaker 13: the anarchist press continued to expand during this period, with
Speaker 13: publications like La Vois de la Mochere and Anarchist Feminist
Speaker 13: People emerging in Rosario. The eighteen eighties and early eighteen
Speaker 13: nineties also involved significant internal debates, particularly around the role
Speaker 13: of workers unions and revolutionary tactics. Some groups embraced anarchist cynicalism,
Speaker 13: while others believed smaller affinity groups as catalysts of social
Speaker 13: revolution with a way to go. While in the midst
Speaker 13: of a massive rapid industrial growth and deal with the
Speaker 13: worst than economics that for the working class, such a
Speaker 13: society was ripe for transformation of the anarchist variety. Initially,
Speaker 13: the anarchists have been focused on countercultural concerns, particularly in
Speaker 13: the field of education. Where As their ranks swelled in number,
Speaker 13: the stage was set for the debut of a mass
Speaker 13: anarchist movement among Argentine workers. In eighteen ninety seven, the
Speaker 13: anarchist workers were found lab protester Humana, later shortened to
Speaker 13: Lap Protester, which would become an enduring anarchist paper throughout
Speaker 13: Latin America. But the anarchists didn't just stick to papers though.
Speaker 13: In nineteen oh one, anarchists were instrumental in the founding
Speaker 13: of the Argentine Workers Federation of the FOA, which is
Speaker 13: Argentina's first labor federation. Federation was founded in a congress
Speaker 13: that assembled some fifty delegates representing thirty to thirty five
Speaker 13: workers organizations from both capital and interior. The aim of
Speaker 13: the federation was an entity that included all workers without
Speaker 13: regard to their races or beliefs, based on a solid
Speaker 13: foundation of direct action and economic struggle. Though initially including Marxists,
Speaker 13: those would later depart to found the General Workers Union
Speaker 13: or the UGT, which was more meanable to party interests,
Speaker 13: of course, which left the FAA in anarchist hands. The
Speaker 13: FAA stood at the forefront of the struggles, advocating for
Speaker 13: higher wages and better working conditions. At the time, the
Speaker 13: typical workday was ten hours or more, with wages barely
Speaker 13: covering essential needs. Strikes broke out across industries with notable successes.
Speaker 13: Painters and Marder Platter secured an eight hour workday and
Speaker 13: dark workers in minos aires one and nine hour workday,
Speaker 13: along with a wage increase. But despite the oppression, the
Speaker 13: workers movement continued to grow stronger. The FOA's membership surged,
Speaker 13: with forty two unions and over fifteen thousand members in
Speaker 13: nineteen o three, rise into sixty six unions and nearly
Speaker 13: thirty three thousand members a year later. In nineteen o four,
Speaker 13: at its fourth congress, the group was re named the
Speaker 13: Regional Workers Federation of Argentina or the FARE or FORA.
Speaker 13: The reasoning was ideological. By adding the adjective regional, it
Speaker 13: made plain that Argentina was not considered a state or
Speaker 13: political unit, but a region of the world which workers
Speaker 13: struggled for their liberation. This fourth congress also approved of
Speaker 13: solidarity pacts that proclaimed the establishment of a class less
Speaker 13: society with neither state nor private property as the ultimate
Speaker 13: aim of their struggle. The anarchist influence was clear, but
Speaker 13: it gets even more explicit in the following year. The
Speaker 13: UGIT had been subordinated to the Marxist Socialist Party, but
Speaker 13: even their third congress in nineteen oh five had a
Speaker 13: syndicalist emergence to preferred workers associations to political parties. Basically,
Speaker 13: even the non anarchist workers organizations would be an influenced
Speaker 13: by the anarchist wave, so much so that the UGIT
Speaker 13: wanted to form a solidarity pact with Fura. The anarchist
Speaker 13: and four didn't quite trust the parliamentary socialism of the UGT. Still,
Speaker 13: they did work with them to call a general strike
Speaker 13: in nineteen oh seven and saw a diarity with cart
Speaker 13: drivers in Rosario, joined by some one hundred and fifty
Speaker 13: eight thousand workers from around the republic. That strike ended
Speaker 13: in victory for the workers. In nineteen oh five, two
Speaker 13: years before and as fifth Congress, Foura made its commitments
Speaker 13: to revolutionary anarchist communism explicitly known quote the advice and
Speaker 13: recommend to all our followers the broadest possible study and
Speaker 13: propaganda with the aim of insterning workers economic and philosophical
Speaker 13: principles of anarchist communism. This education, not content with achieve
Speaker 13: in the eight hour workday, would bring total emancipation and
Speaker 13: consequently the social evolution we pursue end quote four. I
Speaker 13: was among the largest federations of workers organizations and it
Speaker 13: was officially anarchist communists. The nineteen oh sixth ninety o
Speaker 13: seven general and tenant strikes gone a greater favor, and
Speaker 13: in response, Whenasyrius police head Colonel Falcones sware to finish
Speaker 13: or off the anarchists nineteen oh seven saw for Her
Speaker 13: and Ugit attempt a merger, but since the majority sought
Speaker 13: adherence to anarchist communism, the merger could not be achieved.
Speaker 13: For Her was militant and effective in achieving many of
Speaker 13: its schools, including wage increases, reductions in the length of
Speaker 13: the work day, and various rights of association. Port workers,
Speaker 13: Crown transport workers, seamen's unions, bakers, metal workers, construction workers,
Speaker 13: and ship workers were all prominent in the federation and
Speaker 13: were well positioned to paralyze the Argentine economy and win
Speaker 13: their demands. In the first decade of the twentieth century,
Speaker 13: these unions led six general strikes and many more partial strikes,
Speaker 13: and women were more involved than in any other radical
Speaker 13: movement of the time, taking part in consumer boycotts and
Speaker 13: rent strikes as well. But the anarchists knew the ruptures
Speaker 13: in the capitalist economy wouldn't be enough. It could never
Speaker 13: be enough to merely confront the system and refuse to
Speaker 13: corporate the system as it is. The social revolutionals demands consciousness, solidarity,
Speaker 13: and the prefiguration of an enlightened progressive society in social organizations. Thus,
Speaker 13: anarchists engaged in counter culture, multiple papers in multiple languages,
Speaker 13: theater and poetry, may day marches, social centers, popular education centers,
Speaker 13: popular libraries, and discussion circles. All of these efforts were
Speaker 13: ceded throughout the cities and linked to various unions to
Speaker 13: create a veritable and dynamic network of revolutionary causes. And
Speaker 13: since the government understood the anarchist threat, they tried their
Speaker 13: best to raise the cost of revolutionary activism. The actions
Speaker 13: included petty police harassment, the humiliated and inconvenient searches and
Speaker 13: protuitors demands identification, which were a familiar experience for the
Speaker 13: anarchist militants. There was also without law and of radical publications,
Speaker 13: the suppression of the right to public assembly, mass arrests,
Speaker 13: martial law declared for a total of eighteen months between
Speaker 13: nineteen oh two and nineteen ten, and of course outright
Speaker 13: violence to the police, the army and other formal forces.
Speaker 13: In addition to thugs acting on their behalf. The governor
Speaker 13: also attempted to undermine the anarchist movement through legislative means.
Speaker 13: The Resident's Law in nineteen oh two granted the government
Speaker 13: the right to deport foreigners that are deemed undesirable without trial.
Speaker 13: After the law had been in effect for a few years,
Speaker 13: four are called a general strike.
Speaker 6: Against its oppressive conditions.
Speaker 13: For as leadership condemned the law as a violation of
Speaker 13: human rights labor it as a tool where the state
Speaker 13: to suppress free thoughts.
Speaker 6: And working class movements. The government did not budge.
Speaker 13: On May Day nineteen oh nine, police violently attacked a
Speaker 13: peaceful protest organized by transport workers inists, killing eight people
Speaker 13: and wounded many others. Colonel Falcone, the recurrent villain who
Speaker 13: ordered the attack, later became the target of a retaliatory
Speaker 13: bombing by young anarchist Simon Radowitski in November.
Speaker 6: Nineteen o nine.
Speaker 13: This act of defiance shook the whole country. In the meantime,
Speaker 13: the anarchist cause also resonated internationally. In response to the
Speaker 13: execution of Francisco Ferrer, a Spanish educator and anarchist fora
Speaker 13: led a series of strikes in Argentina, joining global protests
Speaker 13: against his death.
Speaker 6: Nineteen ten marked.
Speaker 13: Argentina's preparations for the centenary celebrations of its first national government,
Speaker 13: portray itself as a beacon of prosperity.
Speaker 6: But oh, here come.
Speaker 13: The workers with their unrest and protests to sour the
Speaker 13: vibes and demand the release of political prisoners and the.
Speaker 6: Abolition of the law of residence.
Speaker 13: Naturally, the government responded by declaring a state of internal war,
Speaker 13: arresting hundreds of anarchists, including four leaders, and imposing extreme
Speaker 13: censorship and restrictions and civil liberties, shut downs of publications,
Speaker 13: and the declaration of a state of emergency. The government
Speaker 13: also introduced the Social Defense Law, which levied a series
Speaker 13: of penalties against anarchist activities, specifically as a centennial celebrations unfolded,
Speaker 13: Argentina had transformed into a heavily militarized state, with more
Speaker 13: than two thousand anarchists arrested or deported. So much for
Speaker 13: a grand celebration of their free democracy. Despite the repression,
Speaker 13: the workers move once continued to grow. Forest general strikes
Speaker 13: forced the government to make concessions and release jailed workers,
Speaker 13: but divisions began to appear within the movement after deal
Speaker 13: with so much repression for their erratical ideas. A split
Speaker 13: occurred in nineteen oh nine with the formation of the
Speaker 13: syndicalist group CORA, which adopted much of for US structure
Speaker 13: and retained some anarchist ideas, but leaned awards a less
Speaker 13: radical approach, hoping to be less of a target. The
Speaker 13: anarchist took yet another hit when in nineteen twelve the
Speaker 13: Science Penier Law made voting secret and obligatory, thus making
Speaker 13: anarchists abstentionism as a tactic illegal. The range of possible
Speaker 13: actions was being intentionally closed. While they were these external pressures,
Speaker 13: anarchists also had to deal with the pressures from within
Speaker 13: the workers' movement by even more folks who wanted to
Speaker 13: compromise the revolutionary goals. Another split between the synicalist anarchists
Speaker 13: occurred to the for US ninth Congress in nineteen fifteen.
Speaker 13: Unions were increasingly led by reformists, social democrats, and uncommitted anarchists,
Speaker 13: which led to the thesis of a neutral cyndicalism focused
Speaker 13: on winning workers' rights becoming the dominant position within fur Her,
Speaker 13: the synicalists dropped their commitment to anarchist communism and claimed
Speaker 13: the name the Fora of the Ninth Congress, while the
Speaker 13: minority of anarchists that maintained their commitments anarchist communism took
Speaker 13: the name the Fura of the Fifth Congress. The timing
Speaker 13: of the split was impeccable, though you see, as has
Speaker 13: been a recurring theme in this series, the Russian Revolution
Speaker 13: of nineteen seventeen had a significant impact in Argentinian anarchism.
Speaker 13: In a sense, it reignited the revolutionary fever within the
Speaker 13: movement and led to the reformist and cynicalist four or
Speaker 13: nine losing influence, but revolutionary ideas once again gained momentum.
Speaker 13: For a brief moment, there was hope, but the Bolsheviks
Speaker 13: will waste little time in crushing that hope. By nineteen twenty,
Speaker 13: Argentinian anarchists, like their European counterparts, began to distance themselves
Speaker 13: from Leninism. They began to recognize the authority and nature
Speaker 13: of the Bolsheviks, took note of Kropotkin and Lenin's correspondences
Speaker 13: and soon came to reject the idea of the dictatorship
Speaker 13: of the proletaria. On his part, alongside his mass slats
Speaker 13: of the anarchists in Constat. Then in all So ordered
Speaker 13: the confiscation of anarchist texts, but he saw us influencing
Speaker 13: the conflict within the Bolshevik ranks. Tale as old as time. Anyway,
Speaker 13: next time we'll see if and how the anarchist Argentina
Speaker 13: managed to navigate the tumultuous twenties, thirties and beyond to
Speaker 13: leave a lasting mark on Argentine history. But things are
Speaker 13: looking too good for them right now. Until then, we'll
Speaker 13: power to all the people. This has been It could
Speaker 13: happen here. Hello, and welcome back to it could happen here,
Speaker 13: Amandrew Sage. F'm me on YouTube at Andrew's I'm here
Speaker 13: once again with.
Speaker 4: Oh be a haha. That was by Q. Yeah indeed, yeah,
Speaker 4: she's here.
Speaker 13: And today we'll continue in the Latin American Anarchism series
Speaker 13: with our exploration of anarchism in Argentina. That's the scholarship
Speaker 13: of Chuck Moss, Jeffrey de la Focade, and Hill Capelletti
Speaker 13: and Jose Antonio Guterrez and Ian McKay. When we us left,
Speaker 13: all faious laws and government actions were pressed hard on
Speaker 13: the anarchist cause in the country, which when the anarchists executed,
Speaker 13: jailed or exiled, what become of the anarchist movement? Where
Speaker 13: things get better or worse? Sad to say, I think
Speaker 13: you know the answer. Nineteen nineteen marked the year of
Speaker 13: La Simana Tragica or the Tragic Week, when several metal
Speaker 13: workers were killed by strike breakers. This led to a
Speaker 13: general strike that shut down the entire country and pushed
Speaker 13: Buenos Aires into a state of chaos for several days.
Speaker 13: The anarchist paper A Protester, noted the complete shutdown and
Speaker 13: praised workers solidarity.
Speaker 6: But despite the revolutionhang.
Speaker 13: Atmosphere, the movement lacked a clear objective, which weakened its
Speaker 13: long term impact.
Speaker 6: They had the power, but didn't do too much with it.
Speaker 13: Eventually, the police and Argentina's first fascist organization, Lega Patriotica,
Speaker 13: were able to subdue the rebellion. The fascists, by the way,
Speaker 13: we were backed by military figures like Rare Admirals burmech
Speaker 13: Garcia and O'Connor. They attacked and killed with impunity, and
Speaker 13: in the end the fifty five thousand were detained, with
Speaker 13: anarchists sent to Martin, Garcia, Ireland, and as many as
Speaker 13: seven hundred were killed and four thousand were injured. The
Speaker 13: anarchist move one persisted as they always do. That protester
Speaker 13: continued publishing, alongside the launch of new papers like Mandera
Speaker 13: Roja and Tribuna Proletaria, even after the government banned anarchist
Speaker 13: press in March nineteen nineteen. They move on contained you
Speaker 13: to organize, culminating an extraordinary Congress of two hundred unions
Speaker 13: in September nineteen twenty. Throughout the nineteen twenties, four or
Speaker 13: five remained a powerful force in Argentina's labor movement, pushing
Speaker 13: for causes like the six hour weekday and resistant rise
Speaker 13: in nationalists and military sentiments, but throughout came more repression.
Speaker 13: In nineteen twenty one, Argentinian workers there Are for A
Speaker 13: style in the Chaco region were brutally killed for demanding
Speaker 13: better wages and conditions. The anarchist FOURR proposed solidarity actions,
Speaker 13: but the more reformist FORA the Ninth Congress, distanced itself,
Speaker 13: leaving the movement unsupported. This indifference, unfortunately also extended to
Speaker 13: other violent incidents, such as the murder of workers were
Speaker 13: the fascist Legal Patriotica in gualle Kuaiaju, and worse still,
Speaker 13: with the largely unreported massacres of striking rural workers in
Speaker 13: Patagonia by the army sending fifteen hundred to death by
Speaker 13: firing squad, an event ignored by most media except for
Speaker 13: anarchist outlets like Leberate Esther. In this case, at least
Speaker 13: the anarchists got their get back somewhat later, when German
Speaker 13: anarchists could Wilkins assassinated, couldn't Hector Valera, the military leader
Speaker 13: responsible for the killers.
Speaker 4: That whole story is so wild because the German assassin
Speaker 4: was also a pacifist. But it's just like fuck it.
Speaker 6: With ball, Yeah, I mean sometimes they had to do
Speaker 6: what you had to do.
Speaker 13: Yeah, And I mean the government got it to get
Speaker 13: back as well, because Wilkins was later murdered in retaliation
Speaker 13: for his murder of you know, Hector Valera. But at
Speaker 13: least that led to general strike across Argentina. It truly
Speaker 13: is a wild story. Anarchists in Argentina further agitated in
Speaker 13: opposition to the trial and execution of Italian American anarchists
Speaker 13: Sacco and Vanzetti in the United States in nineteen twenty seven.
Speaker 13: This was a notorious case by the way, but we'll
Speaker 13: pull that string another time. There was anarchist who took
Speaker 13: the protests in a different direction, though known to be
Speaker 13: prolific in his acts of violence. Italian anarchists Severino the Giovanni,
Speaker 13: carried out bombin's against the American embassy to protest the trial,
Speaker 13: bombings against the Italian consulate to protest Italian fascism, and
Speaker 13: robberies throughout the country. The Giovanni's actions sparked debate among
Speaker 13: anarchists about the issue of quote unquote anarcho banditry. Some papers,
Speaker 13: like Landtorchia, defended the Giovanni, others like That Protester, attacked him.
Speaker 6: The Giovanni's fight.
Speaker 13: Came to an end in nineteen thirty one, when he
Speaker 13: was arrested and executed for carrying out the murder of
Speaker 13: one of his fascest fellow anarchist critics, a certain La
Speaker 13: Protester editor named Emilio Lopez Arango. As it could probably imagine,
Speaker 13: they weren't any general strikes to protest the Giovanni's execution.
Speaker 13: General Jose Felix Urriburu led a coup in nineteen thirty
Speaker 13: that marked the ra eyes of fascism in Argentina and
Speaker 13: the continuation of systematic persecution against workers and anarchists. Many
Speaker 13: were imprisoned, deported, or killed, including prominent figures like Juan
Speaker 13: Antonio Moran and Joaquin Penina. Anarchist groups and unions were
Speaker 13: oppressed under Uriburu's martial law, whither more moderate Confederacio and
Speaker 13: General del Trabajo or SGT, dominated by reformers. Socialists survived
Speaker 13: and became the main representative of workers in the country
Speaker 13: thanks to Uriburu's corporatist stats. Martial law was peeled back
Speaker 13: slightly by nineteen thirty two. With such heavy blows the movement,
Speaker 13: anarchists had to pull back to the more countercultural efforts
Speaker 13: to define their movement. In the eighteen eighties, for Our
Speaker 13: resumed publishing activities with that protester returning as a daily
Speaker 13: but government pressure, including action against his editors and restrictions
Speaker 13: and postal services, made it difficult to maintain this daily schedule.
Speaker 13: Eventuallyla Protest transition to a weekly, then bi weekly, and
Speaker 13: family monthly publication. Despite these challenges, a group of anarchist
Speaker 13: militants and via Devoto Prison, conceived the idea of a
Speaker 13: national Anarchist Congress. This congress first met in September nineteen
Speaker 13: thirty two in the Rosario, which that it gets from
Speaker 13: across the country, and one key outcome of this congress
Speaker 13: was the creation of the Committee Rijonal de re Laciones
Speaker 13: Anarquistas or the CRIRA. This later foundation for became the
Speaker 13: Argentine Anacho Communist Federation or FACER in nineteen thirty five,
Speaker 13: although the organization never really gained a mass following in
Speaker 13: nineteen thirty five, anarchists also established to be able to
Speaker 13: take er Popular Jose in h niros a library and
Speaker 13: social center. While initially founded the support of socialists, the
Speaker 13: anarchist took full control after the socialists left. Around this time,
Speaker 13: anarchist groups campaign faiercely to free Voto Maini and the
Speaker 13: Diago comrades, who had been tortured and imprisoned for over
Speaker 13: a decade. The newspaper just this year was created solely
Speaker 13: to advocate for their release, who was finally granted in
Speaker 13: nineteen forty two. Throughout this period, the anarchist press remained active,
Speaker 13: the number of publications diminished. Several publishing houses like not Review, Iman,
Speaker 13: Tupac and Reconstrier kept anarchist literature alive, publishing key works
Speaker 13: and essays. In nineteen thirty three, Accion Libertaria emerged and
Speaker 13: eventually became the voice of FACA, later owners the Federacion
Speaker 13: Libertaria Argentina or FLA until nineteen seventy one. But the
Speaker 13: most significant international event for Argentine anarchists during the nineteen
Speaker 13: thirties was the Spanish Civil War. The rise of fascist
Speaker 13: among the resistance, led by the CNT and Federacio Anarchista
Speaker 13: Iberica or FAI, inspired Argentine anarchists to provide solidarity and support.
Speaker 13: Many traveled to Spain to join the fight, with Jose
Speaker 13: Grenfeld become and the secretary of the FAI. Campaigns to
Speaker 13: support anti fascists in the Spanish Civil War were also launched,
Speaker 13: with FACA publishing books and pamphlets in the struggle. FACA
Speaker 13: launched Saladari dad Operera in nineteen forty one, edited by
Speaker 13: Juan Corral and Loreano Rieira, though it was later shut
Speaker 13: down by the first Justici Aalista government under Peron. FURA
Speaker 13: also began publishing a series of booklets, including Toros condre
Speaker 13: la Guerra in nineteen thirty five and Lucca Constructiva Pola
Speaker 13: Lebordad e Justicia in nineteen forty four. One notable libertarian
Speaker 13: cultural journal, Ombre de America, ran from January nineteen forty
Speaker 13: until the end of nineteen forty five, covering nearly the
Speaker 13: entire duration of the Second World War. FACA was clear
Speaker 13: about its position on the global conflicts of the time.
Speaker 13: In nineteen forty two General Plennary, the group denounced both
Speaker 13: Western democracies, which they saw as vlain capitalist exploitation, and
Speaker 13: the Soviet Union, which they deemed bureaucratic. However, they saw
Speaker 13: the greatest threat in national socialism the Nazis and the
Speaker 13: rise of the Third Reich one in the total tyrrianism
Speaker 13: was the worst danger of their era. Faker's statement of
Speaker 13: solidarity with the oppressed under the Nazi barbarity also recognized
Speaker 13: the threat posed by Soviet expansionism and the force promises
Speaker 13: of post war democracies. Domestically, FAKA and FA faced a
Speaker 13: new challenge with the rise of Juan Domingo Perun. His
Speaker 13: populist approach, while beneficial somewhat to workers, was paradoxical for anarchists.
Speaker 13: Prone's government promoted a state centered jingoistic project that co
Speaker 13: opted labor movements through control networks, undermining genuine proletarian democracy.
Speaker 13: Anarchists rejected Peranism, seen its as a threat to the
Speaker 13: revolutionary ethos of worker's solidarity. Despite this, fora retained some influence,
Speaker 13: especially among agricultural workers, who were caught between the identities
Speaker 13: of peasants and workers. In June nineteen forty six, anarchist
Speaker 13: launched a new newspaper, Reconstruire, with Louista Luci as editor.
Speaker 13: The first issue featured Jaccobo Prince's critique of Peranism in
Speaker 13: an article titled El totali tarismo falsea il Principio de
Speaker 13: Justicia social, calling out the regime's distortion of social justice.
Speaker 13: By the late nineteen forties and early nineteen fifties, FA's
Speaker 13: influence had waned and anacosynicalism was reduced to a smaller
Speaker 13: role in Argentina's labor movement. However, the Sociya Dad there
Speaker 13: Resistencia del p del Puerto, aligned with FA, demonstrated their
Speaker 13: commitment to anarchosynicalism in nineteen fifty two by rejecting a
Speaker 13: compulsory wage tax to fund a monument to Eva Peron
Speaker 13: Jesus Christ.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 13: This act of defiance led to the imprisonment of several
Speaker 13: militants for six months. Imagine you decide you want to
Speaker 13: reject extra taxes because the dictator's wife demands a monument
Speaker 13: like that's the ethrone jail because you decide you don't
Speaker 13: want to pay that tax.
Speaker 4: God, this terrible stuff.
Speaker 13: While Peerans regime weakened free unism, he did so by
Speaker 13: means of corruption rather than violence, contrasting with the methods
Speaker 13: of his predecessor Urriburu. Facer continued its work well then
Speaker 13: several congresses, including the fourth in nineteen fifty one and
Speaker 13: the fifth of nineteen fifty five, just before Peroans overthrew
Speaker 13: in nineteen fifty five. Facker rebranded as the Federacion Libertaria
Speaker 13: Argentina or the FLA, and the FLA held its sixth
Speaker 13: congress in nineteen sixty one, and his journal records career,
Speaker 13: published regularly from nineteen fifty nine until nineteen seventy six,
Speaker 13: coincided with the onset of Argentina's most brutal dictatorship. But
Speaker 13: before we fast forward in nineteen seventy six, we need
Speaker 13: to explore took place in the sixties. The sixties are
Speaker 13: known as the New Left era in many parts of
Speaker 13: the world thanks to the rise of student radicalism. The
Speaker 13: New Left is marked by a notable libertarian and democratic impulse,
Speaker 13: an emphasis on cultural as well as political transformation, an
Speaker 13: extension of traditional lefts focus in class struggle to achnowledge
Speaker 13: multiple forms and basis of oppression, including race and gender,
Speaker 13: an emphasis and anti imperialism and anti clonalism, and a
Speaker 13: rejection of bureaucracy and traditional forms of political organization in
Speaker 13: favor of direct action and participatory democracy. Many youth were
Speaker 13: searching for a third way outside of Soviet and Western models,
Speaker 13: so during the nineteen sixties and seventies, a new generation
Speaker 13: of Argentine youth turned to anarchism, though they struggled to
Speaker 13: collaborate with the older anarchist movements. Cultural and political differences
Speaker 13: were the heart of this divide, with younger militantligning themselves
Speaker 13: more to global anti imperureless movements at the time than
Speaker 13: with the anarchist legacy already within Argentina. In some ways,
Speaker 13: this generational riff left a scar in the anarchist struggle.
Speaker 13: In other ways helped younger anarchists to develop a clearer
Speaker 13: ideological stance compared to their counterparts in countries where such
Speaker 13: internal conflicts were less prevalent. One of the most significant
Speaker 13: anarchist groups to emerge during this period was Resistancia Libertaria.
Speaker 13: Operating condestantly and with a cellular structure, RL aimed to
Speaker 13: ignite mass resistance and ultimately spark a prolonged popular war.
Speaker 13: The group was active in neighborhoods, labor movements, and student circles,
Speaker 13: and it had a small armed wing for defense and
Speaker 13: expropriation purposes. Although it was formerly a national organization, RL's
Speaker 13: main operations were in La Plata, Cordoba and purosiris A.
Speaker 13: Argentina grew increasingly polarized in the mid nineteen seventies, arial
Speaker 13: activists became targets. Many were disappeared even before the military
Speaker 13: coup of nineteen seventy six, but then it hit Henry
Speaker 13: Kissinger at the United States Machinations or fruit.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, yeah, we go in there.
Speaker 13: A military coup overthrew President Isabel Peron, the third wife
Speaker 13: of the original Peron, and installed a junta led by
Speaker 13: Lieutenant General Jorgue Rafael videla Admiral Emilio Eduardo Masserra and
Speaker 13: Brigadier General Orlando Ramon Augusti. This coup was part of
Speaker 13: Operation Condo, a coordinated effort between Latin American dictatorships back
Speaker 13: with the United States under its Cold War National Security doctrine.
Speaker 13: The aim was allegedly to maintain stability in the region
Speaker 13: that America considers its backyard, and US officials, including Kissinger,
Speaker 13: was shorten meet with Argentine military leaders after the coup
Speaker 13: encouraged them to wipe out the opposition quickly and brutally
Speaker 13: before any winy human rights concerned started to be raised internationally.
Speaker 13: The junta remained in power until December nineteen eighty three,
Speaker 13: during which time some thirty thousand people were disappeared or executed.
Speaker 13: RL militants were particularly targeted by the regime. One particularly
Speaker 13: horrible story I have to share. The military men responsible
Speaker 13: for the killings often spared pregnant women, kept them in
Speaker 13: custody until they gave birth, then killed the mothers and
Speaker 13: gave their influence to childless military families.
Speaker 4: Is christ.
Speaker 13: That's the kind of evil with dealing mid Yeah, And
Speaker 13: despite the dangers, RL continued its activities until nineteen seventy eight,
Speaker 13: when a series of coordinated police raids dismantled much of
Speaker 13: the group. Around eighty percent of URL members were detained
Speaker 13: in concentration camps where they were tortured and most were
Speaker 13: eventually executed. And that is how you kill a social movement.
Speaker 13: In the final years of the tatorship and follow on
Speaker 13: their re establishment of civil government in nineteen eighty three,
Speaker 13: new and relatively anti authoritarian social movements emerged in Argentina,
Speaker 13: among the most prominent, with the Madres te la Plaza
Speaker 13: de Mayo, a group of mothers advocating for justice for
Speaker 13: those who had been disappeared on the military regime. Alongside them,
Speaker 13: they are psychologists, feminists, and other grassroots activists began to
Speaker 13: make their voices heard. This shift marked a significant departure
Speaker 13: from traditional state centric leftist politics, with a growing inclination
Speaker 13: towards more decentralized approaches. While this climate sparked renewed interest
Speaker 13: in anarchism, it didn't lead to a substantial increase in the
Speaker 13: membership of older anarchist organizations. Instead, it highlighted the transformation
Speaker 13: and how social movements approached to activism and sought to
Speaker 13: address issues of justice and accountability, and then we come
Speaker 13: into the twenty first century. In the early two thousand, Argentina,
Speaker 13: which was once a poster child for neoliberalism thanks to
Speaker 13: the actions of the didataship, found itself in the throwers
Speaker 13: of a devastating economic crisis. This meltdown didn't just affect
Speaker 13: the economy, ignited a wave of social movements that were
Speaker 13: far more confrontational, radical, and anarchistic than before, which of
Speaker 13: the rise of militant neighborhood assemblies, factory takeovers, and intense
Speaker 13: street protests. What was happened in Argentina was a direct
Speaker 13: result of more than two decades of so called free
Speaker 13: market reforms and structural adjustment programs. These policies had left
Speaker 13: the economy in ruins, with poverty and unemployment levels soaring.
Speaker 13: By the time the crisis hit, poverty had shot up
Speaker 13: from thirty one percent to fifty three percent, and unemployment
Speaker 13: had jumped to twenty one point four percent, nearly a
Speaker 13: quarter of the country's population. Out of this chaos came
Speaker 13: the Pictaros, a new movement of unemployed workers who turned
Speaker 13: their anger.
Speaker 6: Into direct action.
Speaker 13: They didn't just march in protest, they blocked roads demanding
Speaker 13: work and dignity. But what said the Picto's apart from
Speaker 13: traditional unions was they commitments to horizontal organizing and direct action.
Speaker 13: They knew that those unions didn't represent them, and they
Speaker 13: wanted something more than just jobs. They wanted dignity, and
Speaker 13: they wanted us say in how society was run. One
Speaker 13: of the voices from this movement, a woman from the
Speaker 13: Solano neighborhood in Buenos Aires, captured the spirit when she said,
Speaker 13: I dream of my children finding a way of life
Speaker 13: here away from the despair the system gives us. We're
Speaker 13: building something new. Politics without political parties, end code. The
Speaker 13: Pictaro's didn't just demand employment, they wanted meaningful work.
Speaker 6: They gave them control over their lives.
Speaker 13: They weren't looking to be fooled by back into the
Speaker 13: capitalist system that had failed them. Instead, they called themselves
Speaker 13: autonomous workers in envisionous society where people took charge their
Speaker 13: communities and their futures. And then came December two thousand
Speaker 13: and one. On the nineteenth, the crisis hit a boiling point.
Speaker 13: All across the country. People took to the streets, unemployed workers,
Speaker 13: middle class families, and whole neighborhoods They were united in
Speaker 13: their demands an end to the government's economic policies and
Speaker 13: the resignation of the deeply unpopular President, Fernando de la Rua.
Speaker 13: After two days of street battles with police, government collapsed.
Speaker 13: In the wake of this upheaval. Neighborhood assemblies popped up everywhere,
Speaker 13: and the pictaros intensified their efforts. Millions of workers across
Speaker 13: Argentina joined a general strike. In Protasius alone, over a
Speaker 13: million people defied a government imposed state of emergency flood
Speaker 13: in the streets in protest. It wasn't just about events
Speaker 13: and frustration with what reclaiming their power. In a way,
Speaker 13: the ideas of anarchism, self management, the centralization, and direct
Speaker 13: action were be input into practice on a truly massive scale,
Speaker 13: even though anarchist groups themselves didn't necessarily lead the charge.
Speaker 13: The fight wasn't just on the streets, though, It had
Speaker 13: to happen in the factories, the fields, across all the
Speaker 13: sectors of society. They couldn't just remove politicians. They had
Speaker 13: to dismantle the entire system of exploitation and replace it
Speaker 13: with something radically different. A key piece of this puzzle
Speaker 13: was the rise of the fabricas, recuperatas, or reclaim factories.
Speaker 13: These takeovers didn't start with the two thousand one uprising, though.
Speaker 13: The first occupation happened back in nineteen ninety six, when
Speaker 13: workers in a cool storage plant to control after the
Speaker 13: bosses abandoned it. More factories followed suit, with workers stepping
Speaker 13: in with an owner's fled But they weren't even trying
Speaker 13: to launch an offensive against capitalism. They were simply trying
Speaker 13: to survive, to hold onto their livelihoods and an economy
Speaker 13: that had pushed them to the edge. By the time
Speaker 13: of the Argentine Uprising in December two thousand and one,
Speaker 13: over one hundred and seventy factories had been reclaimed, with
Speaker 13: some ten thousand workers taking part in this new form
Speaker 13: of collective labor. The message was clear, when the bosses leave,
Speaker 13: the workers are more than capable of keeping things running.
Speaker 13: In these reclaimed factories, they got rid of the traditional
Speaker 13: management hierarchies and made collective decisions and shared income equally.
Speaker 13: It was a living example of one potential way society
Speaker 13: could function without the capitalist class. In the midst of
Speaker 13: the Argentine economic collaps these workers didn't just resist, they
Speaker 13: were also producing, hence their banner of occupy resistar prosir,
Speaker 13: Occupy Resist, produce the newest possible, to not just fight,
Speaker 13: but to build something new from the ground up, not
Speaker 13: just to survive, but to lay the foundations for a
Speaker 13: new society. The cries of kissevayan totros or basically out
Speaker 13: with all of them called the widespread dissolution with the
Speaker 13: entire political class. But the sentiment needed to be transformed
Speaker 13: into something more substantial, a proper political framework to drive
Speaker 13: the momentum forward. But it's also into this framework, this
Speaker 13: potentially anarchist framework wasn't fully developed among the population at
Speaker 13: the time. There were some comrades who were working towards
Speaker 13: bill in such a framework, but much of the movement,
Speaker 13: particularly of the left, were focused on elections as a
Speaker 13: way forward. The logic was simple. A left leading government
Speaker 13: could introduce policies to a leeviy the situation and prevent
Speaker 13: the open repression of popular movements. What does this really achieve.
Speaker 13: It risked the transfer and of the struggle from the streets,
Speaker 13: from the workplaces, from the hands of the people into
Speaker 13: the hands of a new set of politicians, shifting the
Speaker 13: focus from the masses to a few leaders operating within
Speaker 13: clearly capitalist institutions. The elections were not important. The fight
Speaker 13: was about winning seats in the government, and that needed
Speaker 13: to be understood. The fighter was about building a true
Speaker 13: popular power. Kiss if I am totos out with all
Speaker 13: of them rejected not just individuals, but the entire political,
Speaker 13: social and economic power structures. Even though the Argentine people
Speaker 13: will not identify and as anarchists, they will apply on
Speaker 13: anarchist principles in many aspects of their struggles, just like
Speaker 13: the Appatistas and Chiappas who ruse up in nineteen twenty
Speaker 13: fourth Rally and cry yabasta or enough already. The Argentine
Speaker 13: uprising was a clear rejection of state power and capitalism.
Speaker 13: Votes can't last forever, but they could plant the seat
Speaker 13: of a new society, one built from below. But the
Speaker 13: movement was torn between the two approaches of whether factory
Speaker 13: should be managed by workers under state ownership or they
Speaker 13: should be completely worker owned. Some argue the demanding expropriation
Speaker 13: why the state wasn't a real solution within a capitalist framework,
Speaker 13: because the state itself was responsible for the conditions they
Speaker 13: found themselves in. But even though they argue the true
Speaker 13: because power came from the workers controlling their own production.
Speaker 13: On the flip side, cooperatives don't really address the deeper
Speaker 13: issues of capitalism. Cooperativism does an inherently challenge capitalist relations
Speaker 13: of production, just tinkers with the surface issues like monopolies,
Speaker 13: internal structures, and competition. Building a network of cooperatives can
Speaker 13: be valuable, but it's not going to create a subsystem
Speaker 13: capable of top len capitalism. Anarchism, and specifically anarchist communist
Speaker 13: ideas propose something far more transformative. Abortion all forms of
Speaker 13: farwer exercised by minority, whether the bourgeoisie or the state,
Speaker 13: assuming control of not just factories and fields, but all
Speaker 13: of society. It's not a choice between cooperatives or state
Speaker 13: managed workplaces. It's about creating conditions for all workers and
Speaker 13: all people to self organize, and such reforms such as
Speaker 13: reforms for workers to have control of their workplaces merely steps.
Speaker 13: It's what a much larger goal should be kept in
Speaker 13: in that struggle. These experiences in this history in Argentina
Speaker 13: shows us that anarchist ideas are not just lofty dreams.
Speaker 6: They grounded in real struggles of working people.
Speaker 13: Consciously or unconsciously proven that a society without bosses, managers
Speaker 13: and expectation is possible. Every social struggle, every revolutionary action,
Speaker 13: is another step towards building that world. Through these movements,
Speaker 13: through these actions, through these struggles, we can see the
Speaker 13: foundation of a new society. And to the people of
Speaker 13: Argentina who now face the rule of a new right
Speaker 13: way menace employees, to stand up and say, once again,
Speaker 13: kisevan Toros out with all of them, all power to
Speaker 13: all the people.
Speaker 6: Peace.
Speaker 4: Hey, We'll be.
Speaker 2: Back Monday with more episodes every week from now until
Speaker 2: the heat death of the universe.
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