Speaker 1: Hey everybody. Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let
Speaker 1: you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode
Speaker 1: of the week that just happened is here in one
Speaker 1: convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to
Speaker 1: listen to in a long stretch if you want. If
Speaker 1: you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
Speaker 1: there's gotta be nothing new here for you, but you
Speaker 1: can make your own decisions. Welcome to the coort open.
Speaker 1: Here is practical guy to make it Puma culture happen
Speaker 1: wherever you are. I am your host for this episode,
Speaker 1: Andrew of the YouTube channel andreis Um. I'm joined here
Speaker 1: with Chris and Jeames lou Hello. Hi, thanks for having us,
Speaker 1: Thanks having me the guest. Well, you're gonna walk us
Speaker 1: through this. I'm very excited to learn more about it. Yes,
Speaker 1: so I really see it as a as a key
Speaker 1: component in our restoration of the earth. And so I
Speaker 1: find it necessary that regardless of what direction your individual
Speaker 1: practice is going in, we're we're looking to specialize or whatever,
Speaker 1: couldn't quote specialized. I think it's still important to think
Speaker 1: about where food comes from and think about way as
Speaker 1: that we can enhanced and in large our food autonomy,
Speaker 1: especially considering the multi layering crises that you know compounding
Speaker 1: these days. Puma culture was first coined as a tomb
Speaker 1: by puma culturist Bill Mollison. It's a portmanteau of permanent
Speaker 1: agriculture and permanent culture, and it's the conscious design and
Speaker 1: mainstenance of agriculturally productive ecosystems MS which have a diversity,
Speaker 1: stability and resilience of natural ecosystems. It's a way of
Speaker 1: integrating landscape and people providing their food, energy, shelter, and
Speaker 1: other material and other non material needs in a sustainable way.
Speaker 1: And just to be clear, the concepts, the ideas, the
Speaker 1: principles that make up puma culture have existed long before
Speaker 1: Bill Morrison was born, have existed in cultures all over
Speaker 1: the world. Bill Molson is just someone who has, I
Speaker 1: guess given it a spin for a modern audience. But
Speaker 1: these principles, these ideas are things that have been in
Speaker 1: practice for thousands of years, tens of thousands, even from
Speaker 1: the approach to land management and settlement designed to the
Speaker 1: whole systems thinking approach to nature which can be seen
Speaker 1: in a lot of animals practices. It has a long history,
Speaker 1: and it's one that people who practice Puma culture today
Speaker 1: research Puma culture will inevitably uncover in their learning process. However,
Speaker 1: Bill Morrison first coined in the nineties seventies as a
Speaker 1: response to the oil embargoes they were taking place at
Speaker 1: the time. By bringing together the traditional knowledge of vastery
Speaker 1: of indigenous cultures and combining them with certain modern design
Speaker 1: and layouts, it created a movement that is now um
Speaker 1: spreading across the world from every on every continent. Honestly,
Speaker 1: the way that Puma culture views um the world the
Speaker 1: views systems. It comes with an outlook that recognizes it
Speaker 1: all biological material is a potential energy source. The aim
Speaker 1: is to try to trap energy on your land and
Speaker 1: to use that energy the most efficient way before a
Speaker 1: degrede to create circular economies and cycles of energy. That
Speaker 1: how for actual sustainable agricultural practice, which unfortunately has not
Speaker 1: been the aim of agriculture, especially industrial agriculture, and Superma
Speaker 1: culture represents a challenge to that status cool. The ethics
Speaker 1: of Puma culture are primarily focused on care for the earth,
Speaker 1: that being all living and on living things, care for
Speaker 1: all people, there by promoting self reliance and community responsibility,
Speaker 1: the sort of we all have access to the resources
Speaker 1: necessary for existence and care for community, and specifically communit
Speaker 1: t that allows us to be to think of an
Speaker 1: approach our society in a way that benefits all people
Speaker 1: in all life, recognizing the community is not just our neighbors,
Speaker 1: it's not just the people who live in our city
Speaker 1: or town. It is all the living things that incorporate
Speaker 1: our surroundings and beyond. The way that puman culture approaches
Speaker 1: um design, it's a lot of his emphasis and mimicking
Speaker 1: how the natural world would attempt to stabilize. Of course,
Speaker 1: these systems take thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands,
Speaker 1: even millions of years two fully develop and age and
Speaker 1: reach some kind of stable state. But public culture seeks
Speaker 1: to learn from you know, these old growth forests and
Speaker 1: these healthily ecosystems, and accelerate that process to establish things
Speaker 1: that will last generations, to established spaces that will provide
Speaker 1: for the needs of people hundreds of years down the line.
Speaker 1: When it comes to approaching pumic culture design practically, first
Speaker 1: things first to recognize is that anybody can take part
Speaker 1: in pumic culture design. Anybody can take part in constructing
Speaker 1: these sources of systems, and it can be established. The
Speaker 1: basic principles can be established regardless of your circumstances, your
Speaker 1: individual climate or biosphere, because the principles are based on
Speaker 1: following what nature was doing anyway. One of the first
Speaker 1: principles involves the recognition of the connections in a local
Speaker 1: Asian seeing that a web is stronger than a single string,
Speaker 1: meaning that all of these different parts, the different moving parts,
Speaker 1: coming together create something stronger than if each individual person,
Speaker 1: each individual creature trying to move by itself. It also
Speaker 1: looks at the connection between waste and resources. We all
Speaker 1: on the old adage just says, you know, one man's
Speaker 1: trash is another mantas of treasure, but when it comes
Speaker 1: to ecosystems, we should really be taking it quite literally,
Speaker 1: because the waste of one part of the system directly
Speaker 1: feeds into the resource of another part. Decomposing plants and
Speaker 1: animals directly feed into the fungal networks and flourishing of
Speaker 1: the next generation of plants, animals, as and in at
Speaker 1: web in that network. In those connections, we can also
Speaker 1: recognize for principle too, that each element performs multiple functions.
Speaker 1: If we are for example, keeping chickens. They can be
Speaker 1: a source of eggs and feathers and protein, of course,
Speaker 1: but they also produced mania, and their daily activity helps
Speaker 1: to aerate the soil. And they also provide insect control um,
Speaker 1: allowing your plans to food and flourish banana trees. They
Speaker 1: provide bananas, of course, they provide fruit. They also provide
Speaker 1: starch and mulch and protection and shade, and they hold
Speaker 1: water quite well. Actually, when I had taken a puma
Speaker 1: culture design course a couple of months ago, one of
Speaker 1: the things that I had learned from the guy who
Speaker 1: was running it was that he had told his story
Speaker 1: and he had done this this project in Barbarous and
Speaker 1: in Barbado was he was called to restore sort of
Speaker 1: like an old sand mine um because it run out
Speaker 1: of sand. Well, it's close running out of sand. And
Speaker 1: so the community that was reliant in that sand mine
Speaker 1: didn't really have any direction um because their economy, their
Speaker 1: local economy, been so reliant on those jobs. When he
Speaker 1: came in, it's just like and he showed the pictures,
Speaker 1: it's just very very barren landscape, very dry, very dusty,
Speaker 1: And I was honestly in disbelief that something so dead,
Speaker 1: so destroyed, something so devolved, could be as radically transformed
Speaker 1: as he had transformed it. Unfortunately, this is a podcast,
Speaker 1: not a video, or otherwise I would show you the pictures.
Speaker 1: But the transformation was stunning. I want of the elements
Speaker 1: that he had used to transform that dry lands ape
Speaker 1: into a lush food forest was banana trees, because surprisingly,
Speaker 1: banana trees are very effective. Well, unsurprisingly, banana trees are
Speaker 1: very effective at growing quickly and providing shade to other plants,
Speaker 1: and so as these other plants are growing up, they
Speaker 1: have the shaded banana tree to protect them from the
Speaker 1: harsh sun and to the banana trees. While they may
Speaker 1: not be the top doors to the forest in the end,
Speaker 1: by the time the forest is fully established, because banana
Speaker 1: trees don't get that tall, they still vital in that
Speaker 1: early stage in providing that function of shade that allows
Speaker 1: the rest of the forest to establish itself. That's really cool.
Speaker 1: It's very very very cool. Which all pictures after, it's
Speaker 1: like a place people could see them online like Instagram,
Speaker 1: they could look up or something. Yes, so um, if
Speaker 1: you go on Wassamaki Puma culture dot org. I believe
Speaker 1: he has the pictures up there that'll be w E
Speaker 1: S E M A k I Puma culture dot org.
Speaker 1: And if I remember correctly, he has the pictures on there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: was it like a sand mine before or something? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was a sand mine. Yeah, jeez, wow, it looks
Speaker 1: like there's no goodness in the soil and the first
Speaker 1: one and then yeah, yeah, to go back into the
Speaker 1: recording aspect when it came to that project, a large
Speaker 1: part of it was just getting that life in the soil.
Speaker 1: So they were taken. They were getting mulch and manua
Speaker 1: from wherever they could get it, just to give some
Speaker 1: life for that soil. They would grow sitting like hardy,
Speaker 1: fast growing plants and then chopped them down after they'd
Speaker 1: grow in sufficiently so they would die right where they
Speaker 1: lay and provide nutrients to the soil. And that process
Speaker 1: was what helps to build up that soil even before
Speaker 1: you started planting the bananas and other stuff. And were
Speaker 1: they able like you're saying, they were getting some of
Speaker 1: that stuff wherever they could get it, like, and were
Speaker 1: they able to get that that was it like considered
Speaker 1: a waste product? I guess better people they got it from,
Speaker 1: and so like I know, I have chickens and they
Speaker 1: obviously produced like manure, and I'll put some of it
Speaker 1: in my like vegetables to the grow. But I'll just
Speaker 1: give it to anyone else who wants it. It is
Speaker 1: that a thing that they were able to do there? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think people are donated UM. And I mean I
Speaker 1: would assume at least in turn, I don't know what
Speaker 1: the cases in Barbados, but in turn that they are
Speaker 1: bush trucks which pass every once in a while to
Speaker 1: collect whatever, you know, branches and cut grass and whatever
Speaker 1: people have puts out um from their yard will go whatever.
Speaker 1: So I would assume that they would have asked the
Speaker 1: bush truck people to you know, bring some of that
Speaker 1: stuff to the site to help out, because a lot
Speaker 1: of people, you know, they just put that in front
Speaker 1: of the yard waiting for the bush struck to pass.
Speaker 1: And so a lot of very good potential sources of
Speaker 1: like UM ecosystem building, that sort of that so called
Speaker 1: waste really resources gets wasted when it could really see UM,
Speaker 1: a lot of these kinds of projects. Yeah, that's very cool. Yeah, yes,
Speaker 1: something that like I don't know if if you ever
Speaker 1: read UN documents about like stopping climate change. Like they
Speaker 1: always have a giant section about circular about circular economy stuff,
Speaker 1: but about sort of I mean, basically doing this stuff
Speaker 1: and then nothing ever happens and no one ever does it,
Speaker 1: and so yeah, it's it's really cool all that, like
Speaker 1: this is a place where those ideas which like are
Speaker 1: if there's if we are going to survive as a
Speaker 1: species with like most of us alive and doing well,
Speaker 1: we're going to have to do exactly. I'm I'm kind
Speaker 1: of reminded just on this sort of topic of I
Speaker 1: was in Rwanda and February, and one of the things
Speaker 1: that really struck me with this system of agriculture that
Speaker 1: they've devised where um, they have patties that they grow
Speaker 1: rice right like submerged, and then in there there are
Speaker 1: living fish and then above them they are like little
Speaker 1: hutches with rabbits and I'm so like the rabbit manure
Speaker 1: helps to fertilize what's growing beneath, and then like it's
Speaker 1: this kind of circular thing where I think they can
Speaker 1: feed some of the things that they cut off the
Speaker 1: plant to the rabbits and it's sort of like and
Speaker 1: the fish will help keep the water clean. I think
Speaker 1: that like filter fish, I can't quite a plan to
Speaker 1: keep it clean for the fish. It was fascinating. I
Speaker 1: was like, this is amazing, Like they're not as opposed
Speaker 1: to I grew up on a farm and I'm very
Speaker 1: familiar with some of the larger arable sort of grain,
Speaker 1: but like grains in the UK, and how you're relying
Speaker 1: on a ton of exogenous inputs, which I was just
Speaker 1: so impressed with the fact that they devised a system
Speaker 1: that didn't require those exactly exactly you really want to.
Speaker 1: Of course you might, we will have to get external sources,
Speaker 1: especially in the beginning as you're trying to establish the system,
Speaker 1: but the aim is really to have this system continuously
Speaker 1: establishing itself and expanding itself and maintaining itself. Yeah, would
Speaker 1: it be a system that works mostly with like a
Speaker 1: plant based food stuff, so I guess that seems generally
Speaker 1: to be more sustainable. Absolutely. I mean, man Ya's a
Speaker 1: really powerful source of fertilizer. And I think you can
Speaker 1: keep animals without you know, eating them or using them
Speaker 1: anyway if you just want to, you know, because they
Speaker 1: make good companions and stuff as well. Yeah, but yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I would say a plant focus system could definitely but
Speaker 1: and to sort of rhyme or aligned with principle too,
Speaker 1: which said that each element performs multiple functions. It's also
Speaker 1: important to have each function supported very multiple elements. Right,
Speaker 1: So you don't want to get all your food from
Speaker 1: one source. You want to have a mix of trees
Speaker 1: and roots and short crops and cultivates. I mean having
Speaker 1: all your food coming from one sources. Basically what we
Speaker 1: do now with you know, these mono cultures, with these
Speaker 1: this industrial farming that has these fields and fields and
Speaker 1: fields that are so susceptible to pests and disease that
Speaker 1: we have to basically drench them with chemicals just a
Speaker 1: lot to survive. Because and the same guy who did
Speaker 1: the course, he explains it me like this. He said
Speaker 1: that when there's a system in nature and it's not
Speaker 1: in balance, they basically send out a signal saying, eight,
Speaker 1: this is not in balance, come and fix it. And
Speaker 1: so these so called pests, these bugs and stuff, they
Speaker 1: come to these aberrations, these freaks of nature, these massive
Speaker 1: fields of crops, and recognizing that this is not sustainable
Speaker 1: um establishments in the landscape, they try to try to optimize. Right,
Speaker 1: he calls them. He doesn't call them pests. He calls
Speaker 1: them optimizers. So if you have, for example, uh, excessive
Speaker 1: amount of a certain pest in your system, something's wrong
Speaker 1: with that system because those so called pests, those optimizers
Speaker 1: are only able to flood your system because they don't
Speaker 1: have the mechanism. System doesn't have the mechanisms in place
Speaker 1: to keep them in check. So you don't have the fauna,
Speaker 1: the larger insects and stuff in your system that will
Speaker 1: keep those pests in check. There's an imbalance in place,
Speaker 1: and that's something that needs to be rectified, and there
Speaker 1: different ways to rectified depend on this situation. Another example,
Speaker 1: and this isn't um from the pooma culture poom culture course.
Speaker 1: Another example was the this I believe someone was talking
Speaker 1: about the presence of wolves in some of the parks
Speaker 1: in in the US and how reintroducing those wolves did
Speaker 1: so much too regulate the rest of the ecosystem, the
Speaker 1: ripple effects that had an arrest the ecosystem UM stabilizing
Speaker 1: the day of populations and stabilizing UM the beaver populations,
Speaker 1: and stabilizing all these other different plants and animal species
Speaker 1: that you would think are not even connected to the wolves,
Speaker 1: but still their presence creating a significant rule in maintaining
Speaker 1: that balance. Yeah. Go go watch how wolves change rivers.
Speaker 1: It's literally five minutes and it rules. Yeah, it's amazing.
Speaker 1: It's just like the concept of rewilding. Is that what
Speaker 1: would that be a similar thing? Yeah? Yeah, rewilding is
Speaker 1: basically it's puma culture had to be more focused on
Speaker 1: sustaining human communities in you know, in a balance with
Speaker 1: the rest of the natural world, whereas rewilding is more
Speaker 1: focused on helping to rebuild ecosystems outside of the human
Speaker 1: sphere at He says, I understand it. Yeah, yeah, that
Speaker 1: makes no sense to me. So with principle three, which
Speaker 1: was three or rate, was that each function should be
Speaker 1: supported by multiple elements. You would want to get all
Speaker 1: your food from one source. You just want to grow
Speaker 1: like rows and rows of trees or rows and rows
Speaker 1: of corn. You want to grow a mix of trees
Speaker 1: and roots and short crops and cultivars and all these
Speaker 1: different species and variations that would make up like an
Speaker 1: actual forest. The food forest is approach that a lot
Speaker 1: of prima culturists would advocate, and within a food forest,
Speaker 1: you would have I believe seven major groups. This sort
Speaker 1: of seven levels that creator sort of a beneficial system.
Speaker 1: On the top layer, you have the canopy, which consists
Speaker 1: of large fruits and nut trees. They provide the most
Speaker 1: shade and they keep the whole area they'll climb into
Speaker 1: the area stable. On that second layer, you're gonna have
Speaker 1: the low tree layer, which has the dwarf fruit trees.
Speaker 1: The smaller fruit trees would fall under the canopy. On
Speaker 1: the third layer, you would have the shrub layer where
Speaker 1: you would grow you know, your berries and other small
Speaker 1: you know plants. And below that you have the ubecious
Speaker 1: layer where you would grow different houbs and spices and
Speaker 1: things like that. And then below that you have your
Speaker 1: root vegetables, and below that you have well, you can
Speaker 1: really go below the roof vegetables, but next to those
Speaker 1: three vegetables, you would want to grow your soil surface crops,
Speaker 1: your ground cover um like they're sitting running beans and stuff.
Speaker 1: That would help to create a groundcover which protects the
Speaker 1: soil and prevents the establishment of undesirable plants, which we
Speaker 1: quote wheats. And then finally the seventh layers, the poutical layer,
Speaker 1: which consists of the climbers and vines. It would establish
Speaker 1: themselves on the low tree layer and the canopy. So
Speaker 1: if you have that sort of food forest system in
Speaker 1: places all those seven layers, you're not getting each function
Speaker 1: supported by one element to getting it supported by many elements.
Speaker 1: The same goes for water. You want to get all
Speaker 1: your water source coming from just like the pipes and
Speaker 1: whatever water the government sent you, you want to have
Speaker 1: water coming from the rain. If possible, you might want
Speaker 1: to tap into the water table, or you might want
Speaker 1: to depending on your situation. You might have extreme or
Speaker 1: you might be on a hill, in which case you'd
Speaker 1: have water flowing down, and you want to find ways
Speaker 1: to trap that water and to consive that water so
Speaker 1: that is distributed throughout your system. Unlike regular home garden.
Speaker 1: Part of the aim of a puma culture um system
Speaker 1: is that it just like in nature, it waters itself,
Speaker 1: it takes care of itself, and so you're going to
Speaker 1: have to want You're gonna want to have all sources
Speaker 1: of different sources of water elements in place to provide
Speaker 1: that water. The same goes for energy. You would want
Speaker 1: to get all the energy from one source. You want
Speaker 1: to combine you know, human power, animal power, hydro electricity
Speaker 1: if possible, soul of power if possible. Basically, redundancy is
Speaker 1: very important. Redundancy is very important, and I'll see it
Speaker 1: again for emphasis. Redundancy is very important. The next principle,
Speaker 1: principle number four, is that you want to approach puma
Speaker 1: culture with energy efficiency in mind, particularly your own energy.
Speaker 1: So on the more practical side of things, if you
Speaker 1: you might want to do what my mentor my guide
Speaker 1: had done, which was a zone and sector analysis. So basically,
Speaker 1: you draw like a map of your space. You outline
Speaker 1: your daily patterns and the energies that come from outside
Speaker 1: your site, like wind and rain and flood and fire
Speaker 1: and pollution and noise and smells and all these different things.
Speaker 1: You want to look at how you move through your space.
Speaker 1: Want look at how the sunshine passes over your space.
Speaker 1: You want to look at the view and you want
Speaker 1: to try to harness those good energies, whether it be
Speaker 1: the rain or wind or whatever it maybe the sun
Speaker 1: and plant. Accordingly, you don't want to have sun sensitive
Speaker 1: plants on like the south side of your property of
Speaker 1: your space wherever the spaces, and you wouldn't want to
Speaker 1: have plants to eat a lot of sun in the shade.
Speaker 1: You also want to divvy up your space. Once you've
Speaker 1: you know, on that map of you space, you're wanted
Speaker 1: to get up into zoons. So I first zone not
Speaker 1: be your immediate live in space. The second zone would
Speaker 1: have an intensive kitchen garden sorry first soon it would
Speaker 1: be a place of consumption and processing of whatever it
Speaker 1: is that your system is producing. It doesn't necessarily have
Speaker 1: to be a house. It could be uh community kitchen,
Speaker 1: or it can be uh campus clubhouse. I don't know.
Speaker 1: It could be any space that you're using for consumption
Speaker 1: and processing. The next zone is going to be intensive
Speaker 1: kitchen garden. It's a place where you would want to
Speaker 1: grow the plants that cycle through more quickly, UM, the
Speaker 1: spices and the herbs and the different things that you
Speaker 1: would use on a regular basis. The next zone I
Speaker 1: would want to have its focus on local support, community
Speaker 1: support and surplus. So this zone UM, the first zone
Speaker 1: is actually technically zone zero. The second zonner Zone one
Speaker 1: as a Zone two, which is that sort of local
Speaker 1: support space that orchard is we want to grow, UM,
Speaker 1: your fruit trees, your ornamentals, UM, I want to raise
Speaker 1: raise animals there and you basically wanted to be a
Speaker 1: space where you can provide for the local community, separate
Speaker 1: and apart from your own produce. Zone three would also
Speaker 1: have the emphasis on production. Zone three probably the space
Speaker 1: where you have your main crops, the crops you spend
Speaker 1: a lot of time focusing on. Zone four would also
Speaker 1: have a lot of investment in establishing a sustainable sort
Speaker 1: of life cycle um for more long term plants, and
Speaker 1: Zone five would be a space of wilderness, of forest
Speaker 1: of wildlife, orridors that allow spaces of free wilding even
Speaker 1: within your mall constructed site. Having your system split into
Speaker 1: zones helps you to reduce the amount of work that
Speaker 1: you put in, the amount of resources use, the amount
Speaker 1: of maintenance you'll need, and it also helps you to
Speaker 1: boost to yields and to recycle resources most effectively. The
Speaker 1: fifth principle is the use of biological resources natural insecticides, timber,
Speaker 1: nitrogen fixers, whatever the case may be, you want to
Speaker 1: be using the systems that have evolved to fulfill those rules.
Speaker 1: To fulfill those rules, you may or may not be
Speaker 1: afraid of certain creatures. I myself, personally, I don't like
Speaker 1: frogs or toads or really I don't like most animals personally,
Speaker 1: I just survide with them. However, Comma, I recognize the
Speaker 1: importance right, So frogs and bats and snakes, all of
Speaker 1: these creatures helped provide like a stable system, whether it
Speaker 1: be a snakes dealing with um crats or bats stealing
Speaker 1: with insects, or frogs also dealing with insects. You men
Speaker 1: want to use companion planting as well, um like the
Speaker 1: three sisters method, which is a combination of beans, corn,
Speaker 1: and what's the three one again with squashes, right, and
Speaker 1: squash and that would help to establish you know itself
Speaker 1: and maintain itself. It's sort of like a microcosm of
Speaker 1: the Bronda Puber culture concept and one that has been
Speaker 1: in practice funititive years. The sixth principle is the practice
Speaker 1: of energy cycling. Trapping sunlight through greenhouses is making the
Speaker 1: most used basically out of the energy that flews through
Speaker 1: your system before it leaves your system, recycling the organic
Speaker 1: matter that passes three system so that produces no real
Speaker 1: waste um. When I was at the site at the
Speaker 1: Puma Culture forest, I witnessed compost toilet for the first
Speaker 1: time and was immediately grossed up by the concept. However,
Speaker 1: Comma upon being blown away by the product of those
Speaker 1: compost toilets, I changed my tune very quickly. And although
Speaker 1: I would not I probably would not use a compost
Speaker 1: toilet on a regular basis. I think it has some benefit, um,
Speaker 1: because we're flushing away some some real power, some real
Speaker 1: nutrition stuff. Um. Of course, there are risks associated with
Speaker 1: using human mania, but the process that he had put
Speaker 1: in place involved using human waste um. And then for
Speaker 1: every certain amount of human waste, you dump sawdust on
Speaker 1: top of it. And that sawdust helps to deal with
Speaker 1: the smell um so much so that I actually didn't
Speaker 1: smell anything when I opened up those those compost toilets.
Speaker 1: But it also helps to create that balance between the
Speaker 1: carbon and the nitrogen that is required for compost. And
Speaker 1: so after that, after a tub has been filled compost toy,
Speaker 1: the toub has been filled, he seals it up, leaves
Speaker 1: it for a year to break down, and by the
Speaker 1: time it comes out it's just like regular soil. However,
Speaker 1: of course safety prequestions, I believe he only uses it
Speaker 1: for his orchards, so only like fruit trees and other
Speaker 1: kinds of trees. I spent a lot of time so
Speaker 1: far discussing these sort of larger systems where you know,
Speaker 1: I'm basically assuming you have several acres of land like
Speaker 1: this guy does. I don't have several leakers of land.
Speaker 1: I don't have an inch of land um, and I
Speaker 1: feel like a lot of people listening don't. So there
Speaker 1: are elements that you can incorporate on the small scale,
Speaker 1: such as grew boxes. You can have deep litter beds,
Speaker 1: you can have aquaculture systems, and that's actually one of
Speaker 1: the things that he Foost established um which is like
Speaker 1: a series of aquaculture systems, and it's actually one of
Speaker 1: the main focuses of his project to this day. But
Speaker 1: I was quite surprised as to the yield that could
Speaker 1: be produced from something as simple as a couple of
Speaker 1: pipes put together with some to me to plants grown
Speaker 1: out of it. So I mean, don't underestimate yourself or
Speaker 1: this pace available to you, because it might not be
Speaker 1: able to plant to whole forest, but you can do
Speaker 1: a little something. Coming back to the food forest concept,
Speaker 1: the eighth principle is the use of natural plant succession
Speaker 1: and stack. It you are a group plants together, they
Speaker 1: would give a continuing production over time and both the
Speaker 1: short term and long term. And like I established, you
Speaker 1: want to have those layers in place, the roots, divines,
Speaker 1: the trees, etcetera. The ninth principle encourages diversity, encourages poly culture,
Speaker 1: which is something that I'm sure you would have picked
Speaker 1: up on by now. The tenth principle is increasing the
Speaker 1: edge within a system by creating unique niches that allow
Speaker 1: for the more rare, the more vulnerable corners of life
Speaker 1: to sustain themselves. And I think that's something that a
Speaker 1: lot of pum and culturists do in terms of establishing
Speaker 1: their own systems. They have like a special food cocus,
Speaker 1: certain passion project to certain species that they just love
Speaker 1: and want to see flourish, and so they create these
Speaker 1: niches within their systems that allow allow for those creatures
Speaker 1: to flourish. Principal eleven employers that you observe natural patterns.
Speaker 1: Nature rarely goes in a street line, and you may
Speaker 1: want to make that pattern, whether be spirals or waves
Speaker 1: or branches, whether it be patterns over time from you know,
Speaker 1: the week to the month of the year to repeating
Speaker 1: patterns in the weather or the seasons. You want to
Speaker 1: be observing these patterns and adjusting system continually. The early
Speaker 1: parts of establishing a puma culture system is certainly the
Speaker 1: most difficult part. But even five to ten years down
Speaker 1: the line, when the system is more established, more sell sustaining,
Speaker 1: he still want to be playing that role of tweaking
Speaker 1: it as you go along. And I think that's something
Speaker 1: that more people need to recognize about humanity. We didn't
Speaker 1: just spring on to hear like some sort of alien
Speaker 1: parasite leaching off of the youth, right, We just like
Speaker 1: every other animal, like every other creature on this planet,
Speaker 1: have a role to play in the ecosystems we inhabit. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: a lot of that activity has been destructive because of
Speaker 1: how all socio economic system has been structured. But that's
Speaker 1: something we have a role and changeing. And part of
Speaker 1: that is recognizing that we are stewards. We we we
Speaker 1: can be good stewards. We can't help to facilitate the
Speaker 1: flourishing of life. We don't have to be grim reapers
Speaker 1: upon the systems that we are a part of. And
Speaker 1: so even as you're late, couldn't quote in these long
Speaker 1: term projects twenty years, thirty years, you're still going to
Speaker 1: be tweaking and cultivating and hopefully expanding these systems over time.
Speaker 1: Principles twelve reminds us we gotta pay attention to the
Speaker 1: scale of these systems, to the long term of these systems,
Speaker 1: recognizing that this is something you want to establish over generations.
Speaker 1: And finally, Principle number thirteen is be positive experiments small,
Speaker 1: learning from your mistakes, scale up, bringing more people, get involved,
Speaker 1: get more of your community, of your social circle, of
Speaker 1: your family, of your affinity group, of whatever the case
Speaker 1: is going to be, get more people involved. Um in
Speaker 1: imagining this complex, beautiful revolutionary project, we have a long
Speaker 1: way to go, but a lot of prom as could
Speaker 1: be made in a short space of time, and a
Speaker 1: lot of projects already going on. With this ended mind,
Speaker 1: I would sugg just going online really and just switching
Speaker 1: for the different Pooma culture projects happening around the world,
Speaker 1: whether it be the food forests that Jeff law Turner
Speaker 1: is working to establish in Morocco, or the puma culture
Speaker 1: Pumablitz systems that people are putting in place in Australia
Speaker 1: and or the greening the Sahara projects in the Sahel
Speaker 1: region across Africa, or the many small skill projects taking
Speaker 1: place and large scale projects taking place across the America's
Speaker 1: there a lot of people putting in this work, and
Speaker 1: there's a large community, um willing and able to support
Speaker 1: as you hopefully embark upon this journey. That's about it
Speaker 1: for me. Yeah, that's that's fascinating and I'm really interesting
Speaker 1: is that. I think, Yeah, it's it's massively missing in
Speaker 1: our discussion about like I don't know how to phrase
Speaker 1: this rightly, but like making a better world, just to
Speaker 1: give it a really broad sort of phrasing. And when
Speaker 1: we often think about like political discourse and when we
Speaker 1: think about political systems, but without food systems, we really
Speaker 1: like the hierarchy of needs is not satisfied, right, And
Speaker 1: I think that folks listening can make a really positive change,
Speaker 1: really really quickly and in their own lives and spaces
Speaker 1: if they sort of spend some time with this stuff. Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: and it's cool. I think, um an important to to
Speaker 1: reference that like so much of this like we're like
Speaker 1: the person you named a start who's name I'm sorry
Speaker 1: I've forgotten, but like, um, I think, yeah, it's important
Speaker 1: to a reference that these are indigenous ways of knowing
Speaker 1: and doing and being and living and like you said,
Speaker 1: they've existed for millennia and like going back to that,
Speaker 1: it's good as part of the largest sort of way
Speaker 1: of respecting indigenous cultures and land rights and all the
Speaker 1: other things we need to do. Ah, it could happen.
Speaker 1: Here is a podcast that you're listening to, and you know,
Speaker 1: mostly we talk about problems that you should be aware of.
Speaker 1: Sometimes we talk about solutions, and today we're kind of
Speaker 1: going to talk about a solution. Today is one of
Speaker 1: our famed good News episodes. So everybody, everybody celebrate and
Speaker 1: also give your name for the folks at home. Yea,
Speaker 1: I'm James, Yay, I'm Gare, Yeah, I'm Chris. Wonderful. That
Speaker 1: was perfect. That was that is completely natural, just just
Speaker 1: like we practiced. Um. So the thing that the thing
Speaker 1: that is noteworthy and the thing that we're celebrating and
Speaker 1: also explained today, is that this summer we were recording
Speaker 1: this what like a day into September, two days into September, UM,
Speaker 1: so we are we are. Yeah, it's September one. So
Speaker 1: we have officially gotten through the summer um without a
Speaker 1: right wing rally in Portland that degenerates into a gigantic brawl.
Speaker 1: This is the first year that has happened since two
Speaker 1: thousands seventeen. So starting in two thousand seventeen, Patriot Prayer
Speaker 1: and the Proud Boys and other affiliated groups would vary
Speaker 1: regularly and they would do it throughout the year, but
Speaker 1: particularly during the summers, um hold protests and marches, and
Speaker 1: these all had different themes. They were the Second Amendment rallies,
Speaker 1: rally against Marxism rally and support of the fucking cops,
Speaker 1: the hymn to rally, all sorts of stupid, stupid fucking
Speaker 1: names um. But the main problem, the main purpose of
Speaker 1: them all was so that there would be gigantic fist
Speaker 1: fights between you know, Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer brawlers
Speaker 1: and anti fascists. That was the reason to hold these events,
Speaker 1: and they got increasingly gnarly and increasingly violent, until everything
Speaker 1: culminated in the summer of this massive Trump caravan through
Speaker 1: the city with like thousands of trucks, people shooting paintballs
Speaker 1: and spraying mace and throwing shipped off the back of trucks,
Speaker 1: and then a Patriot Prayer member named Aaron Danielson got
Speaker 1: his ass shot to death by an anti fascist during
Speaker 1: a somewhat unclear altercation outside of a parking garage. What
Speaker 1: I can say is that everyone involved was heavily armed.
Speaker 1: UM and yeah. After that there were some more very
Speaker 1: ugly fights. But UM, an increasing like thing that happened
Speaker 1: was that there would be gunfire at these protests. And
Speaker 1: the next year UM, at an anniversary fucking fistfight thing,
Speaker 1: a right winged administrator fired into a crowd of anti
Speaker 1: fascists in downtown for Portland, who returned fire and drove
Speaker 1: him off. He was arrested. UM. A bunch of there
Speaker 1: was a big stupid fight at a kmart in another
Speaker 1: part of town the same day debandoned kmart parking lot
Speaker 1: that held a massive brawl and several of them got
Speaker 1: Several of the proud boy types got real nasty charges
Speaker 1: from that one. After the police, as they generally did,
Speaker 1: chose not to take any kind of action. UM and
Speaker 1: then you know, things kind of peat it out, UM
Speaker 1: and nothing. There have not been any right wing rallies since.
Speaker 1: There was one mass shooting attack on a weekly racial
Speaker 1: justice protest in Portland earlier this year, UM, where a
Speaker 1: fascist fired into a crowd of women who were doing
Speaker 1: corking duty. Um he killed one woman, um, and he
Speaker 1: wounded four other people and um, yeah, he was taken down,
Speaker 1: shot twice in the hip by a protester who was
Speaker 1: armed security for that march. And after that there hasn't
Speaker 1: really been anything. And this is the interesting one of
Speaker 1: the things that There's a number of things that are
Speaker 1: interesting here, but one of them is that this has
Speaker 1: occurred while Proud Boy chapters are recording record recruitment. There's
Speaker 1: more new chapters of the Proud Boys than there were
Speaker 1: prior to January six, and there have been at least
Speaker 1: two hundreds something right wing gatherings around the country with
Speaker 1: like Proud Boys and other affiliated groups in attendance since
Speaker 1: January six. UM, So nationwide, the kind of rallies that
Speaker 1: Portland's been sing since got more common, and they didn't
Speaker 1: happen at all in Portland this year. And that's what
Speaker 1: we're here to talk about today. I think there's a
Speaker 1: couple of things that are have contributed to the current
Speaker 1: state of affairs, UM, which I think broadly can be
Speaker 1: described as the right is kind of scared to do
Speaker 1: big events in Portland. There have been a couple of
Speaker 1: like sputtering attempts. They drove through town on their way
Speaker 1: to Washington real quickly as part of this caravan once,
Speaker 1: but they didn't go through downtown again. It wasn't like
Speaker 1: one guy did fire it people on a bridge with
Speaker 1: a handgun, which the police did nothing about. But they're
Speaker 1: not willing to like hang around. And I think there's
Speaker 1: a few reasons why they've been scared off. Number One,
Speaker 1: they keep getting shot UM. That has happened several times now. UM.
Speaker 1: Number Two, the physical resistance to them has been gnarlier
Speaker 1: as of the fights. UM, people have gotten smarter about
Speaker 1: how they do some aspects of the fighting, involving like
Speaker 1: a lot of property, like spraying paint on people's fancy
Speaker 1: body armor and ship, which is expensive. And then after
Speaker 1: five years of ignoring it, UM, the state has actually
Speaker 1: started charging right wing brawlers with felonies, which has scared
Speaker 1: I think a lot of them off. UM. And yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's that's kind of where we are now. And
Speaker 1: I think one of the things people should be paying
Speaker 1: attention to is what Portland's had to do and and
Speaker 1: both how long it took, but also like what kind
Speaker 1: of things were involved to actually get to this point,
Speaker 1: Because other folks are going to need to be willing
Speaker 1: to do some of the ship people had to do
Speaker 1: in Portland for years, which includes like fucking strapping on
Speaker 1: gear and going out to confront these people in the street. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think, Um, it's really interesting because I just I
Speaker 1: know you've written a piece about this for New Lines
Speaker 1: recurring Me. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that'll be up by the
Speaker 1: time the ser this runs cool. Um, yeah, I just
Speaker 1: read it. I thought it was really good. Um. It
Speaker 1: reminds me of like when we talk about anti fascism historically, right,
Speaker 1: We we sort of talked about the high points a lot,
Speaker 1: and the one that at least I see most people
Speaker 1: going back to is the Battle of Cable Street in
Speaker 1: London in six which people will probably I know you've
Speaker 1: had it in Bastards episodes before, yes, and it's it's
Speaker 1: very similar thing, right, Like it's a broad intersexual coalition
Speaker 1: of people who are like, we will not let you
Speaker 1: do this ship in our space, and we will physically
Speaker 1: fucking stop you, and if the police try and protect you,
Speaker 1: we will stop them doing that as well. There's incidents
Speaker 1: between most of these fascists and anti fascists, like throughout
Speaker 1: the thirties and a lot later in British history. But
Speaker 1: it's a very similar kind of play book, I guess right.
Speaker 1: It's like physical force opposition to fascist gatherings and not
Speaker 1: letting them feel safe in your space. Yeah, not letting
Speaker 1: them feel safe and not letting them go unopposed, because
Speaker 1: I mean, one of the things that was kind of
Speaker 1: repeatedly a factor in Portland is that when the anti
Speaker 1: fascists out numbered the right from the start, and significantly
Speaker 1: there was a lot less violets on on the days
Speaker 1: when that happened, um, And so it wasn't always a
Speaker 1: matter of people needing to show up to literally fight.
Speaker 1: There are times when like a show of force can work,
Speaker 1: and I think a good example of that in recent
Speaker 1: times in Texas in the DFW area obviously is a
Speaker 1: hot point for different right wing groups, including the Proud
Speaker 1: Boys harassing LGBT events stuff like drag Queen Story Hours
Speaker 1: and that sort of thing, and members of the elm
Speaker 1: Fork John Brown Gun Club who we've had on the
Speaker 1: show and and other affiliated groups have been showing up
Speaker 1: armed in an armor, most recently to protect like a
Speaker 1: drag brunch um that was being counter protested. You can
Speaker 1: see like photos of like here's a proud boat with
Speaker 1: a bat with fucking barbed wire wrapped around it, and
Speaker 1: there there and in this like, you don't show up
Speaker 1: with the bat wrapped in barbed wire unless you're hoping
Speaker 1: you're gonna get to bash somebody's fucking head in. And
Speaker 1: that guy wound up standing off at the sideline all
Speaker 1: day long because a bunch of people were there with rifles.
Speaker 1: I think that guy may not legally be allowed to
Speaker 1: possess firearms. Yes, I also suspect that guy has a
Speaker 1: felony record because he also had a nightstick and like
Speaker 1: several other like more ninja like meamed here weapons. It
Speaker 1: was yeah, yeah, say to me and look if if
Speaker 1: I'm going to be totally fair, meme to your weapons. No,
Speaker 1: no side in this fight. Because for a long time
Speaker 1: in Portland, there was an individual who would bring a
Speaker 1: pair of Samurai sorts everyone stations and we're we are
Speaker 1: talking gas station grade samurai. Did they have the oil
Speaker 1: slick effect? They must have, they must have. No, he
Speaker 1: never drew his blades because of course then he would
Speaker 1: have had they would have had to taste. That's the rule. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the legal ramification that also it's impossible to take
Speaker 1: the swords that when you have them mounted on your back,
Speaker 1: it's literally possible to take the tactical back screen. It's
Speaker 1: an offensive position. But no, I think it's worth talking
Speaker 1: about the types of other cities where there have been
Speaker 1: a sizeable amount of far right protests this summer, especially
Speaker 1: targeted at queer people, um, and how Portland is one
Speaker 1: of the cities where that did not happen. I mean,
Speaker 1: we've seen a lot of stuff in Dallas, and the
Speaker 1: people have been doing a pretty good job and both
Speaker 1: denying the right ground to gain but also denying them
Speaker 1: any of their like fight footage that they love to gather.
Speaker 1: They've they've done a really good job at balancing that aspect,
Speaker 1: which is very, very challenging. It's very challenging and it
Speaker 1: takes a lot of discipline. And obviously, when we think
Speaker 1: kind of tactically about what guns mean in a situation
Speaker 1: like this, they're tools that have up. The downside of
Speaker 1: guns is that if things go wrong and everybody is strapped,
Speaker 1: the potential is for things to go very fucking wrong. Indeed, Um,
Speaker 1: the upside is that when you have a line of
Speaker 1: people with rifles. The dudes with knives and batons and
Speaker 1: ship are a hell of a lot less likely to
Speaker 1: want to start a fucking fight because it's the the
Speaker 1: consequences are immediately obvious. You could look at it as
Speaker 1: kind of like the protest equivalent of mutually assured destruction
Speaker 1: of sort of the old like of of how the
Speaker 1: US of the Soviet Union managed nuclear tensions. Um. But
Speaker 1: it it. It has been very effective in Dallas for
Speaker 1: that reason. And I think it's I think the fact
Speaker 1: that protests became increasingly armed in Portland and also that
Speaker 1: there are by my account at least three cases of
Speaker 1: fascists uh being run off or injured or killed by
Speaker 1: protesters with firearms. That is part of why they didn't
Speaker 1: want to do that ship so much anymore. M hmm.
Speaker 1: I think part it's important too, because, like I I
Speaker 1: think there was a real danger after written House that
Speaker 1: right wing protesters We're gonna see this and just be like, no,
Speaker 1: we can just shoot these people, right, because you know,
Speaker 1: you have a situation where suddenly becomes very clear that
Speaker 1: the state is not going to prosecute people if like
Speaker 1: right wing protests for shooting people. But you know, okay,
Speaker 1: if if the if the desterrance is not to say,
Speaker 1: if the insurance is if you get here to get
Speaker 1: into a gunfight, you're gonna lose and get shot like that,
Speaker 1: that I think has been extremely effective in a lot
Speaker 1: of ways. Yeah, early so sort of hadn't. I think
Speaker 1: it's probably worth noting as well that like where it's
Speaker 1: been effective, it's been effective because it's been organized and
Speaker 1: like I don't want to use the word discipline because
Speaker 1: maybe discipline imply the authority that that doesn't exist. But
Speaker 1: like there's been some kind of collective restraint in agreement
Speaker 1: on rules of engagement and stuff, which because I've also
Speaker 1: seen folks try to do this unilaternally, that does not
Speaker 1: fucking end well, Like if you're if you're the one
Speaker 1: person I've been carrying and expecting the state where that's
Speaker 1: not legal, like you're just to one person going to prison. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and obviously open carry protests only work in states where
Speaker 1: that can be done legally. Yeah, doing that in Texas
Speaker 1: is different than doing that in California. Yeah, That's what
Speaker 1: I'm here to tell you. But yeah, I think it's
Speaker 1: a it's a force multiplier, right, Like these guys have
Speaker 1: I think especially people on the right have like absorbed
Speaker 1: so much like this sort of like there are types
Speaker 1: of male as delineated by the Greek alphabet bollocks, and
Speaker 1: they've convinced themselves that they are Alpha's and they can
Speaker 1: win a fight. Now, James, I've seen more Sigmas than
Speaker 1: Alpha's protest so many sigmas. I've seen a few epsilons, Man,
Speaker 1: I don't know that's the type of male. I met
Speaker 1: a real Sigma at an anti mask protest in who
Speaker 1: brought his a r in a sixty round drum and
Speaker 1: brag that he had five hundred rounds loaded into magazines
Speaker 1: as he as he protested masks in front of the
Speaker 1: state capital. And it was like the people he was
Speaker 1: protesting were specifically like about a dozen nurses who were
Speaker 1: standing around. Let's say, it was like, you got do
Speaker 1: you need those five bullets for those unarmed nurses? Where
Speaker 1: signs telling it a mask he's ready for when the
Speaker 1: ship hits the fan romic, I'm guessing. Oh, I I
Speaker 1: don't believe I saw a med kit. I used to
Speaker 1: try to make a note of it. I will say
Speaker 1: the right. In the last year, I've noticed more med
Speaker 1: kits and pictures that I've seen so good good, I
Speaker 1: guess yeah. But yeah, like if you are a person
Speaker 1: who's not like physically enormous or like, like I said,
Speaker 1: these guys have convinced themselves that like they somehow like
Speaker 1: top tier brawlers, even though seen the Patriot Front videos
Speaker 1: they're very funny, like it's like a false equalizer. I
Speaker 1: guess right. It allows people to sort of enter that
Speaker 1: space without having to be massive dudes. I don't want
Speaker 1: to focus too much on specifically firearms because I think
Speaker 1: that's less important than and not that the primary lesson
Speaker 1: of Portland, which is what is necessary to stop these
Speaker 1: people from showing up, is consist shows of force. And
Speaker 1: I think one thing that I just kind of always
Speaker 1: don't intellectually interesting is that you know, when you when
Speaker 1: you read about like military strategy, right, um, for every
Speaker 1: like guy who's actually kicking indoors getting into firefights in
Speaker 1: the field, you have you know, nine or ten people
Speaker 1: behind him who are responsible for logistics, right Um. That's
Speaker 1: the only way in modern military works. When you don't
Speaker 1: have a logistics train set up like that, things go
Speaker 1: like they did for Russia start of the advansion, where
Speaker 1: you have like hundreds of tanks without fuel and ship UM.
Speaker 1: When in Portland protests, an average for a large protest,
Speaker 1: I would say the average was around a thousand people.
Speaker 1: Now that's a large protest. Often they were smaller. But
Speaker 1: when you would get these big hyped for a couple
Speaker 1: of weeks the Proud Boys are coming to town, you'd
Speaker 1: easily get a thousand or two thousand people counter protesting,
Speaker 1: and you know it would be probably ten or fiftcent
Speaker 1: who were who were showing up specifically ready to kind
Speaker 1: of throw down um and ready to throw and also
Speaker 1: with some experience doing it, and a much larger number
Speaker 1: who were Some of them were there as medics, some
Speaker 1: of them were handing out water or other beverages, they
Speaker 1: were handing out food. Uh. There were people who were
Speaker 1: there just to yell and chant with signs to like
Speaker 1: be you know, moral support. There were people they're doing
Speaker 1: transport blocking roads. UM. People they're doing you know, UM
Speaker 1: intel and stuff, filming things UM. People who were there,
Speaker 1: uh you know doing stuff like um covering up live
Speaker 1: streamers cameras with with bubble rap sheets. Or we used
Speaker 1: to have a band full of people who dressed as
Speaker 1: bananas who would kind of kind of try to distract
Speaker 1: and drown out the far right. There was one beautiful
Speaker 1: individual I saw a couple of times who was in
Speaker 1: black block, except for they wore a kilt and they
Speaker 1: carried a pair of bagpipes. And when, like you would
Speaker 1: get a couple of fascists approaching a protester and like
Speaker 1: trying to get into an argument, he would walk right
Speaker 1: up and he would just start playing the bagpipes so
Speaker 1: that they couldn't have an offensive. Yeah. Yeah, it was beautiful, um,
Speaker 1: but kind of more important than the specific you do
Speaker 1: need and I don't want to like distracted this. You
Speaker 1: always need a core of people who are willing and
Speaker 1: ready to get into a fucking fight when you're doing
Speaker 1: this kind of activism. But the biggest thing is that
Speaker 1: people show up consistently. Um. And one of the things
Speaker 1: Portland's had a number of different organizations like pop Mob,
Speaker 1: Popular and more Mobilization that kind of existed to organize
Speaker 1: less radical um or at least kind of and not
Speaker 1: not necessarily less radical. Sometimes people who were just like
Speaker 1: because of whatever in their life, were much less interested
Speaker 1: in the actual getting into a fight thing, but understood
Speaker 1: that the more people show up the safer it is,
Speaker 1: and succeeded in ensuring that there was like a larger
Speaker 1: body of people at all of these events, and that
Speaker 1: along with more rat groups like Rose City Antifa, who
Speaker 1: kind of particularly earlier in the fights, was a big
Speaker 1: street presence as well as did a lot of research,
Speaker 1: and then other kind of newer um and often kind
Speaker 1: of smaller anti fascist collectives that would organize people to
Speaker 1: straight up fight. It was it was this mix of
Speaker 1: all of that that allowed it to be that whenever
Speaker 1: they showed up, there was always a group confronting them,
Speaker 1: and it was nearly always larger um. And it got
Speaker 1: to the point at the height of you know, there
Speaker 1: was this right wing protest before time hand, nobody quite
Speaker 1: knew how bad it was going to be. Garrison. You
Speaker 1: and I got there right as things were starting, and
Speaker 1: it was the anti fascists were outnumbered kind of at
Speaker 1: the beginning of the day, and things got really violent
Speaker 1: very quickly. Within an hour or two though, about somewhere
Speaker 1: around a thousand people had showed up on the anti
Speaker 1: fascist side and we're organized and fighting. It was a
Speaker 1: very impressive response time. Yeah, and I think it is
Speaker 1: it's the actual it's the I mean people used the
Speaker 1: word like the term to diversity of tactics often just
Speaker 1: to kind of defend actions that are more radical. Um.
Speaker 1: And there's the there's the other side of diversity of tactics,
Speaker 1: which is pulling in all of the background support that
Speaker 1: creates This is the sustainability for more radical actions like
Speaker 1: showing up and actually being a frontliner to get into
Speaker 1: fistfights with proud boys. Then there's all of the other stuff,
Speaker 1: like whether that's like medics, other support teams, people playing
Speaker 1: doing like queer dance parties to push fascists out of areas.
Speaker 1: All those types of things not only make the environment
Speaker 1: more sustainable, so people can show up over a larger
Speaker 1: period of time because they don't get so burnt out
Speaker 1: because all they're doing is fist fighting. Um. So I
Speaker 1: think those actions are another our thing. That's it's it's
Speaker 1: worth not just ignoring those and not just discrediting those,
Speaker 1: because once you have that type of presence and people
Speaker 1: know that you're gonna that, those are the types of
Speaker 1: environments that you're able to create when you're outnumbered by
Speaker 1: fascists and you need to call and need to need
Speaker 1: to put out a call for support if you if
Speaker 1: you have this kind of reputation that can that can
Speaker 1: help get a lot of people out very quickly and
Speaker 1: help with the That actually is like popular mobilization that right,
Speaker 1: that that's what that's what that's what that actually means.
Speaker 1: So that's how you can get at the anti fascist
Speaker 1: side to outnumber the fascist side, like we saw in
Speaker 1: um despite that not being the case. When when when
Speaker 1: when it started? Yeah? And I think because the main
Speaker 1: thing that ended that fight was the was the anti
Speaker 1: fascist side just moving as a massive, massive block and
Speaker 1: just pushing the fascists out of the area. Like there's
Speaker 1: as soon as the fascist line broke and you have
Speaker 1: like hundreds and hundreds of hundreds of people in Portland
Speaker 1: streets directing the flow of movement, you can't you can't
Speaker 1: stop that. The force. The force is too great, um.
Speaker 1: And that requires there to be a large amount of people,
Speaker 1: including people who are not gonna get into a fist
Speaker 1: fight with someone three times their size. Yeah. I think
Speaker 1: another thing, um that that maybe it's important is that
Speaker 1: like and it's kind of at the core of anti fascism, right,
Speaker 1: It's it's it's possible for people who have done just
Speaker 1: different tactics, but different opinions, like to create this broad
Speaker 1: based alliance and not get a cross with each other
Speaker 1: for not agreeing on everything. And yeah, or at least, um,
Speaker 1: stop fighting with each other long enough to drive the
Speaker 1: fascists out. Because Portland's, by the way, another thing we
Speaker 1: should acknowledge, the Portland anti fascist community can be quite messy. Um.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of different factions and disagreements, and
Speaker 1: there have been a lot of arguments up to the
Speaker 1: present day. But you know, as a general rule, when
Speaker 1: the right showed up, people mobilized and and threw down
Speaker 1: against them. You know, despite the fact that it was
Speaker 1: a mix of folks who were libs and folks who
Speaker 1: were radicals and folks who were you know, um something
Speaker 1: in between. Um it was And again I don't this
Speaker 1: was never a particularly clean process, and it didn't have
Speaker 1: to be. You know, you could point out and and
Speaker 1: if we had longer, we could point out all number
Speaker 1: of different like flaws and shortcomings and like things that
Speaker 1: we're done, that we're wrong or unfair to somebody. But
Speaker 1: what was kind of more important than any of the
Speaker 1: ways in which the movement was flawed was at the
Speaker 1: end of the day, that it persisted, that it kept
Speaker 1: bringing people out, and that it kept resisting, and that
Speaker 1: the right seems to have kind of blinked before the
Speaker 1: left did. Here, like that's what what matters more than
Speaker 1: anything about Portland's people felt comfortable enough to continue to
Speaker 1: come out and it felt worthwhile enough. But for the
Speaker 1: anti specifically for the anti fascist protests, they were able
Speaker 1: to create those environments that people that that families were
Speaker 1: felt totally comfortable coming out to UM and people felt
Speaker 1: that it actually was worthwhile, Like there was it was
Speaker 1: it was worth it to take an afternoon out of
Speaker 1: your day to show up and say no, and and
Speaker 1: and if you're able to physically display no, you can't,
Speaker 1: you can't come here. Yeah, And that was um. You know,
Speaker 1: obviously when we talked about the difference between doing that
Speaker 1: against the police as opposed to the right, you know,
Speaker 1: the police have more in their current form hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty have had a hundred and fifty years or so
Speaker 1: to dig in. You know, Um, it's a harder target.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I think the fact that um, I think
Speaker 1: the fact that one of the strengths of the movement
Speaker 1: in Portland was that as a general rule. A lot
Speaker 1: of people who had a pretty diverse set of beliefs
Speaker 1: all felt this is a thing I can do and
Speaker 1: should do. This is worthwhile and important. These people need
Speaker 1: to be opposed in the streets, and that's worth some
Speaker 1: time out of my very limited fucking free time to
Speaker 1: go do um and that That is kind of I
Speaker 1: think the primary lesson if you want to know what
Speaker 1: other cities should take from Portland's, it's the importance of
Speaker 1: developing a community like that, a community information network like that,
Speaker 1: but also just like a community where people can all
Speaker 1: kind of where where people feel like, yes, it is
Speaker 1: actually it is worthwhile for me to show up and
Speaker 1: participate in this right Like. That's the hard thing is
Speaker 1: getting across When there's, um, you know, a book reading
Speaker 1: at a library, the Proud Boys are going to show
Speaker 1: up in protest. It's it's getting getting the message out
Speaker 1: to people in the area and getting a couple of
Speaker 1: hundred folks to show up, Because if you can get
Speaker 1: two hundred people to show up to something like that,
Speaker 1: there's never gonna be that many fucking Proud Boys at
Speaker 1: the event. It's gonna be thirty or forty of them
Speaker 1: or less. Maybe a dozen. And if you're a fucking
Speaker 1: library and twenty proud boys show up to like cause
Speaker 1: a problem, and you've got like a dozen kids inside
Speaker 1: getting read a book or some shit, or it's a brunch,
Speaker 1: and yet thirty proud boys show up, you have a
Speaker 1: huge problem. People would get really hurt. They could get
Speaker 1: fucked up heading to their cars, they can get harassed.
Speaker 1: It's scary if that number of Proud Boys shows up
Speaker 1: and a hundred a hundred and fifty people show up
Speaker 1: to counter them. Um, then suddenly number one, all of
Speaker 1: the people who are being threatened by the fascists get
Speaker 1: this feeling that like, oh my god, I'm actually supported
Speaker 1: by the community, that like people are willing to come
Speaker 1: out and defend me and defend people like me. And
Speaker 1: number two, the proud boys get to feel it like
Speaker 1: fuck even even here, we're even in Dallas right where
Speaker 1: we we might be outnumbered. You know, I think because
Speaker 1: a few other cities where protests have continued and where
Speaker 1: they haven't, they haven't in Portland, I think yet we've
Speaker 1: we've seen a decent amount of activity this year in Salem,
Speaker 1: um a lot of blood and there have been far
Speaker 1: right protests in Salem ever since seen as well. Yes.
Speaker 1: And the other place that because because I just because
Speaker 1: I just did a deep dive into this is there's
Speaker 1: been a lot of people from the Portland area from
Speaker 1: Vancouver UM planning to go up to port towns in
Speaker 1: Washington and it's been interesting talking with the people up
Speaker 1: there about this is the first time they've really seen
Speaker 1: a large influx of people. And it's it's people who
Speaker 1: don't it's the proud boys who are not comfortable showing
Speaker 1: up to Portland anymore, but instead they're going to drive
Speaker 1: three hours to go to this small town of ten
Speaker 1: thousand people. UM. And then watching people in this in
Speaker 1: this low laria figure out how they're going to respond
Speaker 1: to this has been super intriguing. There's been a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of people. There's been affinity groups in the area
Speaker 1: setting up medic trainings for for queer people who live
Speaker 1: in the town. UH. There's been meetings between bipoc groups
Speaker 1: and like more like gun based queer groups about how
Speaker 1: they can mutually support each other as the far right
Speaker 1: descends on their city. UM. And in some cases, you know,
Speaker 1: there was people in certain groups who at at previous
Speaker 1: protests that's happened the past month. They did not feel
Speaker 1: comfortable going out to the front lines of this type
Speaker 1: of thing, but they were able to work with other
Speaker 1: organizers to set up kind of uh like support kind
Speaker 1: of like uh support like areas and even kind of
Speaker 1: kind of like they described it as like a picnic
Speaker 1: that's like a quarter mile away and it creates like
Speaker 1: a buffer zone in between people who want to go
Speaker 1: to the front lines and this whole background of people
Speaker 1: that's supporting you and it's gonna help you out if
Speaker 1: you need anything. Um So, all the various ways that
Speaker 1: you can, you can incorporate a diversity of strategies and
Speaker 1: different type of groups into countering something that's moving to
Speaker 1: your city. Now. Um just an interesting note based on
Speaker 1: how much I've I've heard people talk about you know,
Speaker 1: proud boys coming up from Portland and and and Vancouver
Speaker 1: just ending up feeling they have to drive three hours
Speaker 1: to other cities to get you know there whatever whatever
Speaker 1: they want to do. Yeah, the ideal thing is that
Speaker 1: they walk away not even beat up as much as
Speaker 1: demoralized and feeling like it was a waste of time
Speaker 1: and money. Ideally, they in their gear, get covered and
Speaker 1: fucking paint or something, um, and they lost six hours
Speaker 1: of time on a fucking Saturday. And if that kind
Speaker 1: of happens repeatedly, maybe they'll stop, you know, which is
Speaker 1: which is again the goal is for them to uh
Speaker 1: feel like it's not worth coming out, you know, like
Speaker 1: that's what like people. It's often said like, you know,
Speaker 1: make racists a freight again is a statement you heard
Speaker 1: a lot, particularly after But it's a little more complicated
Speaker 1: than that. It's not purely about fear. It's also it's hopeless.
Speaker 1: You want to make them hopeless. You want to feel
Speaker 1: make them to feel like there's no fucking point in
Speaker 1: showing up. And that's the most valuable thing, is a
Speaker 1: victory condition. That's that's above everything else, is making them
Speaker 1: feel like there is no hope for their movement. I
Speaker 1: think that the most recent as as a time of recording,
Speaker 1: there was there was this protest on the UM that
Speaker 1: was a mix of like turfs and then a mix
Speaker 1: of far right people. There's this guy from Vancouver called
Speaker 1: the Common Sense Conservative who runs a little like video
Speaker 1: blog thing um that he was organizing some people to
Speaker 1: go up and I don't know, it's it's it's there
Speaker 1: was like, yeah, it's like thirty people, lots of them
Speaker 1: from out of state who traveled up as a part
Speaker 1: of this, like Turf Anti transside, and there was like
Speaker 1: three hundred to four hundred people from the local area
Speaker 1: who showed up and we're like, no, you're not gonna
Speaker 1: to this of And ever since then there's been a
Speaker 1: lot of infighting between the Turfs and the kind of
Speaker 1: more far right people because it sucks. It sucks that
Speaker 1: you have three people from the actual city that show
Speaker 1: up and go no and try to like physically remove
Speaker 1: you from this space. And I think you can sort
Speaker 1: of see mirrors of this and like the way left,
Speaker 1: just like protest work right where it's like it's it's
Speaker 1: a lot easier to hold together coalitions when you're winning,
Speaker 1: and the moment you start losing, the moment things start
Speaker 1: going wrong, like all of the infighting comes back and
Speaker 1: you know the entire movement will just tostegrate. And this
Speaker 1: this works the same way on the right if you
Speaker 1: can if you can actually beat them consistently a few times,
Speaker 1: and you can start like holding on long enough for
Speaker 1: their their internal group dynamics to unravel. Like this, this
Speaker 1: is a way to beat them. Yeah, yep. Um, well
Speaker 1: that's about all I had to say, not a complicated
Speaker 1: topic anything else, all right? Well, well as uh yeah, anyway,
Speaker 1: go up, go go yellow the fucking Nazi. Um, go
Speaker 1: go damage a fascists body armor by spraying them with
Speaker 1: paint from a great distance. You know, go go. Uh,
Speaker 1: I don't know, do something else? Uh? By what's kyling?
Speaker 1: Your Written House? Oh? In in our in our Centenius
Speaker 1: Cultural Center. Ya remember Kyle written House. Remember Remember that
Speaker 1: night where I spent way too much time online finding
Speaker 1: that kid's name, and then he was arrested a few
Speaker 1: hours later, and then he got off after murdering these people.
Speaker 1: Remember when that happened. I do. So you're saying that
Speaker 1: you're in some way responsible for what we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about today. No, this is not. This is one
Speaker 1: of the most truly cursed things that I have ever
Speaker 1: seen on the internet that that man has ever existed.
Speaker 1: So I know people are just learning about this now,
Speaker 1: but I've known about this for a while because I
Speaker 1: kind of have a personal obsession with Kyle Rittenhouse for
Speaker 1: reasons that should be obvious. Um uh yeah, I've been,
Speaker 1: I've been. I'ven't about this for a bit. I just
Speaker 1: have never found a good time to bring it up.
Speaker 1: But I guess, I guess, I guess we've now found it,
Speaker 1: which is it's Kyle in time. Yeah, it's time to
Speaker 1: talk about the central cultural Kyle Rittenhouse, which exists in Argentina.
Speaker 1: As part of I think maybe we'll explain a little
Speaker 1: bit about like what the broader contact of these central sits,
Speaker 1: like what they are if people aren't familiar, and then
Speaker 1: what the fuck this abomination is all about? Right? So
Speaker 1: these exist across Latin America more or less. Also, I've
Speaker 1: seen him in Spain, the Spanish speaking world, but I
Speaker 1: think that's like a reflective thing, going back to Spain.
Speaker 1: And they're like community spaces. They they're very hugely but
Speaker 1: I've been two different ones. They've nearly always left this
Speaker 1: or at least progressive, and their spaces where sometimes people
Speaker 1: can go and meet, right, communities can meet. Sometimes they're
Speaker 1: like cultural events, talks, you can borrow books. Often like
Speaker 1: their associated with neighborhood movements or what we might broadly
Speaker 1: call like anarchism. But sometimes it's yeah, explicit, sometimes it's
Speaker 1: it's not. It's like a communally center type thing. The
Speaker 1: closest thing we would have here would probably be like
Speaker 1: info shops, but those kind of differ based on what
Speaker 1: kind of anarchist infoshop you're at. Um. But yeah, they're
Speaker 1: like like community gathering places you can pick up books
Speaker 1: or whatever. And this one's a little bit a little
Speaker 1: bit odd. Yeah, yeah, because it is very much not
Speaker 1: left if it claims me, Argentina's first openly right, it's
Speaker 1: cultural center, and it's run by this guy called Josse
Speaker 1: a dead Man. He is a poster, right, This is
Speaker 1: the guy who many people will have become aware of today.
Speaker 1: I have spent most of my day watching his content
Speaker 1: on the internet. Good for you, it's great, and I
Speaker 1: love my job. I took three days off, I went camping,
Speaker 1: and then I just retoxified my brain with this ship immediately. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's okay, So obviously dead Man right. The reason that
Speaker 1: we are interested in him today is a because of
Speaker 1: his truly cursed posting history and be because the anti
Speaker 1: terrorist police in Argentina raided the Central Court rittenhouse last night.
Speaker 1: I've got some audio of the raid which they went.
Speaker 1: We have to we have to play the studio of
Speaker 1: the race. Yeah, yeah, there were flashbangs, So we're there
Speaker 1: were guns. There were a lot of guys in plate carriers.
Speaker 1: That's wild. Just the that's like the first real time
Speaker 1: anything related to cal Writon House has faced any sort
Speaker 1: of consequence, that's right, Yeah, based Argentinean cops. Well, again,
Speaker 1: they can only do things that are funny, that's true.
Speaker 1: And this is and raiding a Kylendhouse themed cultural center
Speaker 1: is funny, is very funny. This is extremely funny, Like,
Speaker 1: this is one of the funniest things I've ever seen.
Speaker 1: As they go in, you're going to see some some
Speaker 1: of not only artistically offensive, but really offensive in every
Speaker 1: way murals. So they're really bad, Yeah, very incredibly bad.
Speaker 1: The right is not good at street art, no, I mean,
Speaker 1: and this is this is this is the real problem
Speaker 1: that they have. As is sort of like strategy of
Speaker 1: like trying to mirror sort of left wing cultural spaces.
Speaker 1: Is that like as as annoying as like left wing
Speaker 1: cultural spaces are like right wing cultural spaces are like
Speaker 1: the worst thing to be and you can possibly imagine
Speaker 1: because there's nobody like every single one of these people
Speaker 1: is completely insufferable. And again, let left left left wing
Speaker 1: sort of like social rude, but it's always buffered by
Speaker 1: the fact that they have an incredible number of very
Speaker 1: talented artists. These guys like the Donald Trump with the
Speaker 1: squad head is I don't think you would describe it
Speaker 1: as as as quality artists. Responsible for the for the
Speaker 1: murals at the Kyle Written House Cultural Center, Yeah, he
Speaker 1: did them himself. There their videos. So do we want
Speaker 1: to talk about what before? We before talking about like
Speaker 1: why this was rated? Wan to talk about like what
Speaker 1: this actually is and like whysts like like where did
Speaker 1: this come from? Okay? So this comes pretty much out
Speaker 1: of this. He seems to some of his earlier posts
Speaker 1: about centership of Dragon Ball Z like oh my god, yeah,
Speaker 1: which I will not profess. I've probably it's probably Z,
Speaker 1: isn't it? Okay? Okay, alright, so I've I've given myself
Speaker 1: away as a non anime understander at the outset. I
Speaker 1: don't know why it was censored, and he claims that
Speaker 1: it was. He uses a phase like Femi bolshi a
Speaker 1: lot Femi bolshe which I'm guessing is a portmanteau of
Speaker 1: feminist in Bolshevik, and he is a card. You're probably right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so he's definitely an in. So, yes, the feminists are
Speaker 1: censoring DBZ and this means I need to start a
Speaker 1: fascist hangout spot. Yeah, that's that's the journey of this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well more or less, I guess it seems to really
Speaker 1: come out of the lockdown. It seems to come out
Speaker 1: of him being unemployed from March. There's a big anti
Speaker 1: lockdown group in Argentina called fuerts Ony Dadda Argentina, which
Speaker 1: he's part of. And that that's if you look. Actually
Speaker 1: it says like Carl written House Cultural Center, and then
Speaker 1: it has fuess ony Daddia written underneath um, and so
Speaker 1: that seems to be a large part of it. It
Speaker 1: opened relatively recently. I was looking for an exact date,
Speaker 1: but I couldn't find it. But it is within the
Speaker 1: last year, Yes it has. It has been within the year.
Speaker 1: I remember seeing something about this earlier this year. Um,
Speaker 1: just to recap some of the art, maybe because it
Speaker 1: didn't like art's a strong word, paintings depictures. Yeah, art
Speaker 1: requires a few a few things to make it actually art.
Speaker 1: I don't think the stuff qualifies as as art. No,
Speaker 1: but and some of them I genuinely was unable to
Speaker 1: discern who are they supposed to be? It's really difficult,
Speaker 1: Like it's it's kind of hard to tell who Trump
Speaker 1: is and it's Trump. This is this is this is
Speaker 1: this is how. This is the level of artists we're
Speaker 1: dealing with. Your Yeah, trap looks like someone out of
Speaker 1: Minecraft or something like. His head is entirely square. The
Speaker 1: width is equal to the height. Yeah, which, but they've
Speaker 1: they've got One of the guys I saw was this
Speaker 1: guy called Malvo. Do people know who he is? Perhaps not? Okay,
Speaker 1: this is probably one that we won't include the video
Speaker 1: of in the podcast. But so he was. He went
Speaker 1: to prison because he tortured leftists as a copy in
Speaker 1: Argentina in the seventies, right, and then he escaped and
Speaker 1: in two thousand and eight, the cops come to his
Speaker 1: house to take him back, and instead of going back
Speaker 1: to Jaila Live TV in front of his wife and children,
Speaker 1: he shoots himself. Like they just keep rolling, the reporters
Speaker 1: like five feet away and they're like, oh, he shoves
Speaker 1: up in the head. He's down, and now he's immortalized
Speaker 1: by Yeah. That looks like a five year old in
Speaker 1: cells finger painting on the walls. This is this is
Speaker 1: what happens when people follow their leader. Alert. Yeah, it's true.
Speaker 1: So there's there's other people there. There's Heavier Malay. I
Speaker 1: think he's called he's like he's a classic chud libertarian.
Speaker 1: He's an Argentine politician. They of course have a Confederate flag.
Speaker 1: They have banners from the Argentine Civil War. There's an
Speaker 1: imperial Japanese flag. Yeah, next to Donald Trump, like the
Speaker 1: kind of I'm just looking at like the front like
Speaker 1: banner thing or like the front like mural at the
Speaker 1: editor's horrible horrible picture of Kyle Rittenhouse wearing a suit
Speaker 1: that it looks so funny. It's like it's the the
Speaker 1: the image is just amazing. It's god they have they
Speaker 1: have Okay, I will say it looks like I drew
Speaker 1: it blindfolded with my left hand. Like it looks so bad.
Speaker 1: The one thing, okay, I I think they're well, okay.
Speaker 1: Their depiction of Bollsonaro, like it's fine. It kind of
Speaker 1: captures the grotesqueness of him. But he's doing finger guns
Speaker 1: guns with the Brazilian flag behind him. Remember remember this
Speaker 1: started with DVZ. Here, Yeah, written houses like giant thing
Speaker 1: has like what what is it? The two holes, the
Speaker 1: two blacks on his face eyepatch, But no, it's not.
Speaker 1: It's like two or three black circles on the inside
Speaker 1: mineral of written house. It looks like he's wearing an eyepatch,
Speaker 1: like some kind of night vision optic. Maybe also as
Speaker 1: a Kyler written House expert who spent hours coming through
Speaker 1: the clothing he was wearing. They have his hat completely wrong.
Speaker 1: They have here like a reddish pinkish hat. That's not
Speaker 1: the hat that he was wearing. He was wearing a
Speaker 1: tan hat with with a white back mesh. Um and
Speaker 1: the hat was the reason were able to figure out
Speaker 1: who he was because it has a little tear in
Speaker 1: the front and we were able to compare that to
Speaker 1: get an exact match onto the suspects Facebook profile. Um,
Speaker 1: so the hat is completely wrong. So already they've they've
Speaker 1: dropped the ball here on any semblance of accuracy by
Speaker 1: the completely rung hat for this picture. It's I'm insulted.
Speaker 1: As someone who spent hours figuring out what this guy's
Speaker 1: name is, I'm insulted. Yeah, there's all kind of cursed stuff.
Speaker 1: This Abascale, the box guy from Spain, like anyone who
Speaker 1: you can think of he's just like a culture warrior
Speaker 1: is depicted in finger painting style by this guy by
Speaker 1: Hosy death Man. So he he came to the attention
Speaker 1: of the author well, actually he came to the attention
Speaker 1: of the authorities before. It will shock nobody to find
Speaker 1: that he has been sending untolisted images of his genitalia
Speaker 1: to women for a very long time. So he's been
Speaker 1: sending got a lot of are you telling me? The
Speaker 1: dragon ball z in Cel, who started a Kyle written
Speaker 1: host cultural center, has been sending out unsolicited dick fix.
Speaker 1: I wonder if what Okay, hold on, hold on, I
Speaker 1: just I think I think I just had a revelation
Speaker 1: about this guy. Did you just crack this case wide open?
Speaker 1: Hold on, hold on, Yeah, I can't wait to hear
Speaker 1: what you've come out with. I am on the edge
Speaker 1: of edge of my seat. I am thrilled. All right,
Speaker 1: I only have to hand them on their Facebook page,
Speaker 1: which is toxic as hell. Yeah, their face. Their Facebook
Speaker 1: is pretty funny. They have a video of a woman
Speaker 1: in the side of the culture yea. When the woman
Speaker 1: comes in there, like just to prove it's a woman.
Speaker 1: People say women don't come here like we have a woman.
Speaker 1: They've filmed like of like a like a five minute
Speaker 1: video of this woman sitting inside, just so there was
Speaker 1: proof that there was a woman inside this building. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they were so shocked. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's very clear
Speaker 1: that like they had not been expecting it. So he's
Speaker 1: actually been to jail for gender based online violence. I
Speaker 1: think I figured out how this connects Dragon ball Z.
Speaker 1: My Okay, I'm not a percent sure about this. My
Speaker 1: guess is that this guy is like a hard line. Um,
Speaker 1: I've never actually heard this guy's names out loud. Vic
Speaker 1: Mignagna like truth or guymig Vagot is like this. He
Speaker 1: was a voice actor who was on Dragon ball Z
Speaker 1: who like sexually harassed and assaulted like a ship ton
Speaker 1: of people. Um, And in twenty nineteen, like the stuff
Speaker 1: came out and there was like a huge right wing
Speaker 1: backlash around him, And I really wonder if this is
Speaker 1: the fucking thing that he was mad about. He was
Speaker 1: this voice actor that got canceled because his favorite voice
Speaker 1: actor got canceled for sexually Celtic people. Yeah, well so
Speaker 1: so Vic tried to, like the voice actor guy tried
Speaker 1: to sue a bunch of people for defamation and got
Speaker 1: fucking apps lutely owned in court, and then all of
Speaker 1: the ship that he'd been doing for like decades like
Speaker 1: came out. So it would not surprise me if this
Speaker 1: was like part of this guy, like if this is
Speaker 1: part of the thing he was sucking screaming about with
Speaker 1: dragon ball Zy being censored. But the feminist Bolsheviks, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the worst thing I've ever said. This is the
Speaker 1: worst organization ever had in my life. Yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: kind of I think a large part of this cultural
Speaker 1: center and the kind of the stuff behind it stems
Speaker 1: out of a whole bunch of like the anti communist
Speaker 1: groups that have existed in Argentina for a long time. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: his like so all his videos he has his backpack
Speaker 1: with like a hammer and sickle with like that no
Speaker 1: you know, the circling line through it. And he then
Speaker 1: that he stages that everywhere with him, and he has
Speaker 1: like something he has like a bunch of anti communist
Speaker 1: graffiti that he also you'll see him in his h
Speaker 1: like in his Facebook profile it used to say sometimes
Speaker 1: anti social always anti communist, and it had like the
Speaker 1: yellow and black little thing and yeah, and he's he's betrayed.
Speaker 1: I think the tweet that first announced it betrayed them
Speaker 1: as like libertarian and caps, which like they have like
Speaker 1: better dead than red. That's not a fucking ang cap.
Speaker 1: But like these people are trying to revoke the era
Speaker 1: of violence against the left in Argentina in the nineteen seventies, right,
Speaker 1: Like that's where they're going for here. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: like in case people are not aware of this, Argentina
Speaker 1: had a like an incredibly brutal military data show killed
Speaker 1: the ships on people. Also like went around Latin America
Speaker 1: trading other death squads. They had this group called the
Speaker 1: Triple A, which was basically a fascist death squad that
Speaker 1: sort of actor as a pre military for other wings
Speaker 1: of the state. They killed one of people. Eventually they
Speaker 1: kill the governments. Um, they're one of the people involved
Speaker 1: in Operation Condor. They drop people at helicopters. Also they yeah,
Speaker 1: it was really fucking bad. And and and these anti
Speaker 1: these like anti communists they basically fascist death squads or
Speaker 1: some of them fascist literally fascist. Yes, are like the
Speaker 1: style of slogans. The propaganda that they're using for this
Speaker 1: center is in the same vein as that they're carrying
Speaker 1: that tradition in Argentina, and I think people are familiar
Speaker 1: with the Nazis. People should also probably probably somewhat familiar
Speaker 1: with the the the whole thing with tons of tons
Speaker 1: of Nazis fleeing to Argentina um and Argentina being very
Speaker 1: welcoming to a whole bunch of like like like like
Speaker 1: like German Nazi like actual like Nazi Nazis, like like
Speaker 1: with membership God, not Third Reich Nazis. Yeah. So one
Speaker 1: thing that the that he did, one thing that dead
Speaker 1: man did or he they posted as we on their
Speaker 1: Facebook page with last mathday's dela plaza da mio. They
Speaker 1: are like these mothers who made this weekly protest I
Speaker 1: think it was weekly, and they wore white handkerchiefs, right,
Speaker 1: and they were like where are I disappeared children? And
Speaker 1: they sort of mobilized maternity in this way that made
Speaker 1: it very hard for the state to crack down on them, right,
Speaker 1: especially a state which is all about like quote unquote
Speaker 1: traditional gender roles or whatever you want to call it. Um.
Speaker 1: So these mothers are like held up as a great
Speaker 1: example of peaceful protest, of peaceful protests against dictatorship, right
Speaker 1: of forcing them to acknowledge their crimes. They're they're looked
Speaker 1: up to by a lot of people all around the world,
Speaker 1: and he and his bros went out and vandalized a
Speaker 1: monument to them and then posted about it on their
Speaker 1: Facebook like pretty openly, like we did this, look at
Speaker 1: us go so generally pretty much piece of ship guy.
Speaker 1: And he claims that the real he was radicalized by
Speaker 1: torturous sexual abstinence, which is enforced upon him by the
Speaker 1: government with the COVID nineteen lockdown. Aha, So he's claiming
Speaker 1: to be a var cell and not an him cell
Speaker 1: or c that's have said this too long, I mean,
Speaker 1: and if it's first on by the government, then it
Speaker 1: is involuntary. Yes, yeah, okay, I guess I guess some
Speaker 1: men right here. We don't need to continue the conversation.
Speaker 1: It actually doesn't matter. No, he was unable to find
Speaker 1: intimacy with the people he wanted to and therefore decided
Speaker 1: to send them pictures of his penis instead and then
Speaker 1: start a cultural center themed after Kyle Rittenhouse. That's correct. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to think of like I did a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff on like the aftermath of the Written House
Speaker 1: shooting as well, and we immediately saw a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of a big wave of written House stuff in the
Speaker 1: better Dead than Read and anti communist action type like memes,
Speaker 1: And I think that this very much stems out of
Speaker 1: that tradition as well, at the cow written House being
Speaker 1: this like symbol of here is a shining example of
Speaker 1: someone who actually put in the work to kill communists
Speaker 1: quote un communists obviously. Um. And I think that with
Speaker 1: with the whole kind of like anti communist death squad
Speaker 1: framing of this, that matches up with a lot of
Speaker 1: the kind of the memes that we're that we're circulating
Speaker 1: in the weeks after the original shooting in Kenosha, And
Speaker 1: we can see this as like a physical manifestation of
Speaker 1: that type of mimetic messaging, like this is like a
Speaker 1: it's a it's a physical version of that of course
Speaker 1: incorporating into just a larger kind of right wing populist politics,
Speaker 1: uh you know, veering onto fascism um. And I think
Speaker 1: it's but specifically with like the anti communist action and
Speaker 1: better Dead than Red type type memes that were using
Speaker 1: written House, that is a very a very clear kind
Speaker 1: of uh nexus point between these two things, Like why
Speaker 1: is someone in Argentina super into Cowritten House. It's it's
Speaker 1: because of this we already have this big strain of
Speaker 1: anti communist stuff inside Argentina. Kyle and how was used
Speaker 1: me medically in this way? Very easy thing for the
Speaker 1: right there to use. I think, I don't know. I think, Um, James,
Speaker 1: do you have Do you have any other fun facts
Speaker 1: about this? Yeah? I do, Yeah, I do. So there
Speaker 1: seems to be another guy who does most of the
Speaker 1: speaking for them when they speak to the media. He
Speaker 1: only gives his name once as do like ju, but
Speaker 1: then he also wait for it because he claims to
Speaker 1: have Jewish ancestry as well, and therefore they can't be
Speaker 1: anti Semitic. So very troubling. Maybe I'm pronouncing that wrong,
Speaker 1: but you know, I can't think of another way. It's
Speaker 1: only two letters, so extremely troubling. One thing that I
Speaker 1: did know is what is there's a whole lot of
Speaker 1: quote unquote gender ideology talk right, and a lot of
Speaker 1: cultural Marxism talk. So here's a guy who's extremely online
Speaker 1: and is parenting these kind of Ben Shapiro American Right
Speaker 1: talking points. You can also like One thing that's very
Speaker 1: funny is there appears to be a punk band called
Speaker 1: war Pigs who are selling I think it's figurines, like
Speaker 1: World Cup figurines preps which they are selling. Mundy, it's
Speaker 1: the word he used. They seem to be basically pretending
Speaker 1: to be him online selling these figurines, pretending their fundraising
Speaker 1: for his center, but then they're obviously using the money
Speaker 1: for their anti fascist efforts. That is incredibly bad. Shout
Speaker 1: out to them, war Pigs, look him up. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: give him some money if you can buy so funny.
Speaker 1: He gets so fucking mad about it. He made so
Speaker 1: many videos about it. And then his parents were like
Speaker 1: he talks about them as heroes of the Marxist movement
Speaker 1: and like leftists and revolutionaries. So he's thirty eight now,
Speaker 1: so his parents will have been young in the seventies
Speaker 1: perhaps but certainly certainly like around in the period in
Speaker 1: their teens and tw empties. And he talks about like
Speaker 1: how his parents recruel to him, and how the supposed
Speaker 1: Marxists like bullied him, how he he says at one
Speaker 1: point he has Tourette's. They forced him to do treatments,
Speaker 1: which he claims curtails his opportunities to meet women. But
Speaker 1: he only mentioned this once and he sort of goes
Speaker 1: off on these weird diversions. Yeah, it's a lot of
Speaker 1: very basic kind of online and cell type stuff. I
Speaker 1: want to talk a little bit about the sort of
Speaker 1: trans ale on this too, because I think so one
Speaker 1: of the things I think like is not very well
Speaker 1: known that at some point I will do a full
Speaker 1: episode on when I find when I'm able to like
Speaker 1: get enough stuff together and find people who are like
Speaker 1: really qualified to talk about it. But Argentina has had
Speaker 1: one of the world's most powerful trans movements for a
Speaker 1: long time. And I mean they have stuff there that
Speaker 1: like like there, there's there, there is a law that
Speaker 1: passed um I think last year or that that like
Speaker 1: that they have like a hiring quota, so all for
Speaker 1: public service job, there's a one percent hiring quota of
Speaker 1: people who have to be trans. Like. Yeah, they're like
Speaker 1: they they have stuff. They're like they have done stuff
Speaker 1: there that is like like not even like on the
Speaker 1: agenda for like any other like trans woven I've ever seen.
Speaker 1: So Yeah, they're they're they're very strong, they're very well organized,
Speaker 1: and the government has sort of like has done like
Speaker 1: a bunch of like genuinely very good, like pro trans stuff,
Speaker 1: like under the pressure of this movement, and I think
Speaker 1: that I think like in that context, I think his
Speaker 1: this fact that he's obsessed with like gender critical ship
Speaker 1: makes a lot of soundse because that's you know, that's
Speaker 1: like one of the sort of right wing things in
Speaker 1: Argentina is opposing this ship. But like it doesn't. I
Speaker 1: don't know, they're kind of losing that battle insofar as
Speaker 1: like you know, people people have done a really really
Speaker 1: good job and fought really really desperate and sort of
Speaker 1: horrible battles for decades. But yeah, they're they're they're sort
Speaker 1: of bearing fruit in really cool way. Is respect nice
Speaker 1: good job, and so what else is bearing fruit is
Speaker 1: his posting because he has been rated by I would
Speaker 1: urge you towards this video. I'll tweet it so people
Speaker 1: can find it there as well. But a metric ship
Speaker 1: ton of our police. And the reason they're rating him
Speaker 1: is because he's made like a public threat. Basically he
Speaker 1: made this say. It's about eleven and a half minute video. Notably,
Speaker 1: he says our total to support to the Brazilian hero
Speaker 1: who tried to create justice for all Argentinians and goes
Speaker 1: on to talk about this. This is with reference to
Speaker 1: the assassination attempt that we saw what last week, Yes,
Speaker 1: so so so last week this this fascist tried to
Speaker 1: assassinate the vice president of Argentina. And we're going to
Speaker 1: get more into this in our upcoming week of content
Speaker 1: titled Assassination Week. Assassination Upcoming, We're gonna be a whole
Speaker 1: week of whole week of episodes about fascinations. Um. But
Speaker 1: in brief, this this, this happened, and then the people
Speaker 1: at the Cultural Center made this livestream celebrating the attack
Speaker 1: and calling the perpetrator Argentina's Brazilian hero. Yes, it really
Speaker 1: was just he also like tells people to rise up
Speaker 1: and stuff like, there's some very clear course direction in there.
Speaker 1: In the raid, they found a mortar shell and one
Speaker 1: eight four minument a mortar shell, a drone, and they
Speaker 1: they've confiscated a bunch of hard drive which I do
Speaker 1: not envy the person who has to go through his
Speaker 1: phones and hard drives. There. They're going to see some balls,
Speaker 1: they're going to see some pain, but hopefully that person
Speaker 1: can get some therapy. And this isn't the first like,
Speaker 1: this isn't the first time that the state has tried
Speaker 1: to come after them. They actually there there were discussions
Speaker 1: about like denying the crimes committed under the day Tater
Speaker 1: ship and how he can be prosecuted for that, because
Speaker 1: that was the thing that they were very clearly doing.
Speaker 1: So it seemed like he'd kind of been in the
Speaker 1: crosshairs of progressive legislators in Argentina for a while, and
Speaker 1: then he went and made this batchet crazy video where
Speaker 1: he makes calls to violence. He says the left can't
Speaker 1: ask for non violence. He says the left doesn't respect democracy,
Speaker 1: and he calls the vice president a rat and a
Speaker 1: murderer and says that it's just a shame that she
Speaker 1: wasn't blown up and it's only because the weapon malfunctioned
Speaker 1: that this hero didn't get to do justice for a
Speaker 1: largent times, I should have been the guy like I'm sorry. Yeah, look,
Speaker 1: we're like, he's just he's just built different. Yeah, she's
Speaker 1: he's built different because he got sabotaged by all of
Speaker 1: his esoteric Nazi or something, which we will get more
Speaker 1: into in the upcoming assassination week. Yep, we just got
Speaker 1: to record the theme music and then we'll be there.
Speaker 1: He cut together footage of all of the great assassination.
Speaker 1: This is gonna be half an hour constant assassination college. Yeah,
Speaker 1: these guys are extremely curse that there's more curse stuff
Speaker 1: that they've done that like we probably shouldn't go into.
Speaker 1: I didn't think because I think you could just understand
Speaker 1: this is a lonely in so guy who's been on
Speaker 1: the Internet too much become more and more radicalized and
Speaker 1: like surrounded himself with people who agree. And it's been
Speaker 1: pretty funny to watch people prank him for a while,
Speaker 1: like scrolling down their Facebook page. It's very funny to
Speaker 1: see people consistently like he doesn't seem to be an
Speaker 1: intellectual giant. But it's also worrying and obviously he's advocating
Speaker 1: for violence against people. Wouldn't emoginized. Whenever someone starts taking
Speaker 1: things that are online out into the physical world, like
Speaker 1: making basically a monument like a physical place, Um, it's
Speaker 1: always concerning. It's always it's always one of the big
Speaker 1: big red flags. Yeah, and I think, like specifically, the
Speaker 1: fact that he had both a mortar shell and a
Speaker 1: drone is incredibly alarming. You don't say, yeah, I just
Speaker 1: want to say, I just want to put that all
Speaker 1: the record for a second. Yeah, if he'd posted a
Speaker 1: little bit less, you're going to have made it into
Speaker 1: assassination week. But here we are, and they cocked by
Speaker 1: your own posted tail tail is all this time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if he'd stuck to tradition and not posted him, they did. Also,
Speaker 1: I just want to sell secondhand clothes at the center.
Speaker 1: I don't know why. I don't know what they were
Speaker 1: going for there, but they did that. So coffee really Yeah,
Speaker 1: well in Argentina and you want some secondhand clothes and coffee,
Speaker 1: I can tell you where not to go. Don't go
Speaker 1: to this place because these odds are you're gonna get
Speaker 1: rated by police when you're there. Yeah. I didn't think
Speaker 1: there's much of dis place left now. I think it
Speaker 1: looks like the door has not recovered from their entry,
Speaker 1: judging by the fact that they've taped bin bag for
Speaker 1: it in the photos here. Yeah, hopefully someone can squat
Speaker 1: this place. Maybe the war pigs can get it and
Speaker 1: just toast a collection of figurines there that would be based.
Speaker 1: That would be so sick. Yeah, they need money, just
Speaker 1: let us know. We'll do a fundraiser. So I hope
Speaker 1: this is a good lesson in knowing when posting goes
Speaker 1: too far. Yeah, try try to keep your cringe online
Speaker 1: if you're going to do it, because you don't want
Speaker 1: to be this guy. No, you certainly do not want
Speaker 1: to be this guy complaining about track and Bolz and
Speaker 1: posting that results in the police raiding your car and
Speaker 1: house steamed hangout spot. Yeah just yeah, truly one of
Speaker 1: the weirdest pivots from online to the streets that I've
Speaker 1: ever seen. This dude probably should have been jail a
Speaker 1: long time ago. They probably worth noting that, like gender
Speaker 1: based violence is like the common denominator for people who
Speaker 1: do add terrible ship, and this is not not an
Speaker 1: example of that. Yeah. Who who could have thought that
Speaker 1: the raging and cell misogynist would also have bad politics? Yeah,
Speaker 1: to keep doing Fammi Boushi ship, you have a full support. Indeed,
Speaker 1: Well that isn't for us today. To tune in next
Speaker 1: week I think next week, right next week or maybe
Speaker 1: the week after for our upcoming week of episodes titled
Speaker 1: Assassination Week. Yeah, it's gonna be great. Of course, not
Speaker 1: not endorsing any political violence, assassinations any kinds. AH nine
Speaker 1: eleven is in a couple of days. I'm Robert Evans.
Speaker 1: This is it could have happened here a podcast about
Speaker 1: nine eleven. Um well, as as Garrison said in the
Speaker 1: intro that we're not using it's about things falling apart,
Speaker 1: and boy did that happen on two things that fell apart? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Um yeah. So this was originally going to be a
Speaker 1: slightly cruder episode than it wound up being. But I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna I'm just gonna delve into the script and uh,
Speaker 1: Chris Garrison, you guys just buckle in, because the reason
Speaker 1: I have you both as guests on this is that
Speaker 1: you are both too young to remember nine That's not true.
Speaker 1: I remember, I remember, I remember. Were you like four?
Speaker 1: I hope so yeah, I was four. But I remember
Speaker 1: my mom like so she she was trying to explain
Speaker 1: the Pentagon, right, and so she has like a coaster
Speaker 1: on the ground and she's making an airplane with her
Speaker 1: hand is just going into anyway. So, as I said,
Speaker 1: neither of you properly remember nine eleven. I don't remember it.
Speaker 1: Love it. I I was at the age where every
Speaker 1: moment of it is burnt into my into my brain,
Speaker 1: as is the reaction so I wanted you both on
Speaker 1: this because we're gonna talk about how nine eleven kind
Speaker 1: of became a cult um and how to maybe how
Speaker 1: to maybe deal with that, and then we'll be chatting
Speaker 1: about Glenn Beck's nine twelve project, which is something I'm
Speaker 1: sure neither of you are very familiar with. Now. In
Speaker 1: its sixth season, the popular cartoons South Park ran an
Speaker 1: episode in which Jared Fogel, who was at that point
Speaker 1: just a subway spokesman and not a convicted child molester,
Speaker 1: came to town and announced the start of a new
Speaker 1: program to give everyone AIDS. Now, he was talking about
Speaker 1: dietitians and personal trainers to help people lose weight, but
Speaker 1: everybody heard AIDS the disease, which led to wacky hijinks.
Speaker 1: That's the episode. It ends when everyone realizes they'd misunderstood
Speaker 1: Fogel and they all laugh. Uh. This leads them to
Speaker 1: realize that AIDS is finally funny, because things that are
Speaker 1: tragic become funny exactly twenty two point three years after
Speaker 1: they occur. That's the joke in the episode, and went
Speaker 1: on to become a minor little internet joke that, like,
Speaker 1: you know, once you hit that twenty two year point,
Speaker 1: you can laugh about something tragic. We are now at
Speaker 1: like twenty one year and change since September eleventh, two
Speaker 1: thousand one, and I think if we're all honest, most
Speaker 1: of us can admit that we've laughed at a lot
Speaker 1: of nine eleven jokes. We're recording this the day the
Speaker 1: Queen died, and people are like photo shopping her face
Speaker 1: to be the Twin Towers, and it's so it's quite
Speaker 1: a time on the old Internet. Now. I think the first,
Speaker 1: I think the hardest, at least, that I ever laughed
Speaker 1: at a nine eleven joke. I'm sure it's not the
Speaker 1: first time was this picture of Trump Tower that was
Speaker 1: posted to Twitter like right after he got inaugurated, with
Speaker 1: the text George Bush do you thing? Um, it's still
Speaker 1: an excellent nine eleven joke. Now, the first person with
Speaker 1: any kind of platform to making a nine eleven joke
Speaker 1: was the recently deceased comedian Gilbert Gottfried. On September twenty nine,
Speaker 1: two thousand one, he took part in a roast of
Speaker 1: Hugh Hefner at the New York Friars Club, And I'm
Speaker 1: gonna play you the audio of that right now. I
Speaker 1: have to catch up flight to California. I can't get
Speaker 1: a direct flight. They said they had to stop at
Speaker 1: the Empire State Building Park there. Extremely tamed joke. Honestly
Speaker 1: not a great joke. UM, but it went onto it
Speaker 1: was It's probably like maybe the most famous and like
Speaker 1: kind of stand up history like bombs. Um. God Freed
Speaker 1: and said himself said that he lost the audience more
Speaker 1: than anyone else ever has. UM. I think it caused
Speaker 1: some career problems for him. Um. He later said, like
Speaker 1: a few weeks after. This was days after. So this
Speaker 1: is at the Friar's Club roast of Hugh Hefner on
Speaker 1: September twenty nine. Is this work too soon? It's from UM? Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: this I mean, I don't I don't know that it
Speaker 1: originated there, but this was the response to him. Um,
Speaker 1: and I think it's the first time I ever recall
Speaker 1: hearing someone say that. Godfried said that like the reason
Speaker 1: he decided to tell a joke this close to nine
Speaker 1: eleven was that he was personally offended by the fact
Speaker 1: that anything could be too soon to make a joke about. UM.
Speaker 1: One of these is interesting about this. A little side
Speaker 1: thing is that like after bombing and getting shouted at
Speaker 1: by the audience. Godfried, like decide did to get them
Speaker 1: back by telling a particularly long and foul version of
Speaker 1: the Aristocrats, which is a meta joke about jokes primarily anyway. Um,
Speaker 1: it's basically just being as foul mouthed as you can
Speaker 1: possibly be to an audience. Um. And that that audio
Speaker 1: has been lost to time apparently, But boy, you can
Speaker 1: watch a fun documentary about the Aristocrats if you want
Speaker 1: to learn more about that now. I think the first
Speaker 1: good actual comedy bit about nine eleven came out a
Speaker 1: little bit after this. This was about two weeks after
Speaker 1: the day and a couple of months later, at like
Speaker 1: the three month point, South Park season five aired, uh,
Speaker 1: and they ran an episode about nine eleven. Um. It
Speaker 1: has been criticized, rightly so because there's some kind of
Speaker 1: racist bits of humor in there. Surprising, that's not surprising. Um.
Speaker 1: That said, it's also kind of a valuable snapshot of history.
Speaker 1: For one thing, The huge part of the episode is
Speaker 1: just kind of like the Afghan child counterparts to the
Speaker 1: main characters in the show, walking around their town as
Speaker 1: everyone is ordered by US air strikes. UM. So it's
Speaker 1: it is not like the it stands kind of an
Speaker 1: opposition to sort of the kind of like bootlicking responses
Speaker 1: you got for For some context, the show The West Wing,
Speaker 1: which is the favorite show of everybody who runs anything
Speaker 1: in politics right now, ran an emergency nine eleven episode
Speaker 1: like a couple of weeks after the attack, which was
Speaker 1: the kind of turnaround you didn't do in TV at
Speaker 1: that point in time. So they put in a ton
Speaker 1: of effort to have the special nine eleven episode of
Speaker 1: The West Wing. Um that number one in the alternate
Speaker 1: West Wing universe, there's no nine eleven. There's like some
Speaker 1: vague like there's basically basically the episode focus on like
Speaker 1: a bunch of kids on a tour getting stuck in
Speaker 1: the White House because it locks down because some vague
Speaker 1: terrorist attack thing happens in a fake country they made up.
Speaker 1: So when the West Wing needed to talk about Muslims,
Speaker 1: um and kind of like the breakout piece of this, well,
Speaker 1: there's two breakouts. One of them is a very racist
Speaker 1: retelling of the story of Isaac and Ishmael that explains
Speaker 1: like why Muslims are always so angry all the time, um.
Speaker 1: And then the White House Press Lady c J. Craig
Speaker 1: goes on a rant about how awesome the intelligence apparatus
Speaker 1: is and how like what good people uh CIA agents are,
Speaker 1: and how the best thing to do for politics sometimes
Speaker 1: is to have a guy dressed as a waiter murder
Speaker 1: somebody with a silence pistol like it was out of
Speaker 1: its mind, unhinged. That's the fucking like. So the fact
Speaker 1: that South Park does an episode that's like, yeah, we're
Speaker 1: gonna murder a bunch of people in Afghanistan for no
Speaker 1: reason is like, not a not a bad response, not
Speaker 1: a bad thing to recognize about that day. Um, the
Speaker 1: other things that are like pretty good or pretty I
Speaker 1: think meaningful sort of bits in that episode. It opens
Speaker 1: with all of the kids at the bus stop wearing
Speaker 1: gas masks as they stand in line for the bus.
Speaker 1: There's a piece in that episode that kind of sticks
Speaker 1: with me today still, um that I'm gonna play for
Speaker 1: you guys. I don't know, I always found that bit fun.
Speaker 1: So when the school bus arrives, there's a cop on
Speaker 1: its searching bags and confiscating items that might be used
Speaker 1: as weapons. The school classroom doors are reinforced with a
Speaker 1: massive military grade lock, which resonated more in a time
Speaker 1: when like school shootings weren't a constant thing. Um, And
Speaker 1: it it kind of hit me because, you know, when
Speaker 1: this episode came out and I watched it when it
Speaker 1: came out, I was at middle school, Clark Middle School
Speaker 1: in Plano, Texas, and on nine eleven and twelve, the
Speaker 1: attacks were like the only topic of discussion that anyone had.
Speaker 1: And I have this vivid memory of a couple of
Speaker 1: girls in my US history class weeping because they were
Speaker 1: scared that al Qaeda was coming for our schools next. Um,
Speaker 1: Like this was a very real worry for kids that
Speaker 1: I grew up with, what like Midland, Texas or something. No,
Speaker 1: it was, indeed, it's a big school. But like I'm
Speaker 1: certain that fucking Osama bin Laden had never heard the
Speaker 1: name plane o Texas, let alone the Joatha thing with
Speaker 1: like anytime a plane was like going down, people will
Speaker 1: point at it and be like, oh my god, yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: um No, that was definitely a meme. And there was,
Speaker 1: you know, one of the most famous ones was this
Speaker 1: this video called Triumph Dot a v I that started
Speaker 1: to spread on the Something Awful forums That was just
Speaker 1: footage of the September eleventh attacks set to yakety sacks um.
Speaker 1: And again, these were all kind of the comedy that
Speaker 1: that you know, that South Park put out here and
Speaker 1: that you saw, and stuff like the Triumph video were
Speaker 1: reactions to how fucking seriously everybody else took nine eleven right.
Speaker 1: Like I have to, I have to point out that
Speaker 1: like watching an episode like this or watching something like
Speaker 1: Trump felt like legitimately transgressive in the days and weeks
Speaker 1: after nine eleven, because it was kind of a as
Speaker 1: we'll talk about, had turned into kind of like a
Speaker 1: secular cult um. And I think people who were just
Speaker 1: a few years old then or born after nine eleven
Speaker 1: missed this part of nine eleven. Um. I think you
Speaker 1: inherited the wars and the intrusions on civil liberties and
Speaker 1: the creeping fast is um, but not the derangement by
Speaker 1: terror that had preceded it, Like everybody's permanently deranged from
Speaker 1: nine eleven, But you didn't really get to know people
Speaker 1: before that kind of happened and drove a lot of
Speaker 1: them mad. As a kid, it was like a strange
Speaker 1: and exciting and scary moment. But I think my parents
Speaker 1: and I think the people who were kind of in
Speaker 1: their age range um completely lost their minds, and oddly
Speaker 1: that that South Park episode has kind of the best
Speaker 1: depiction of that too. There's a scene in which stand
Speaker 1: who is one of the main characters they're all like
Speaker 1: middle school kids, walks into his house and sees his
Speaker 1: mom like lying on the couch staring blankly ahead UM
Speaker 1: and just like weeping. She's surrounded by tissues. She's been
Speaker 1: crying for days, UM and as her husband says, she's
Speaker 1: just been watching CNN for like the last eight weeks straight.
Speaker 1: And the the image of her just kind of like
Speaker 1: lying on the couch staring at the TV is I
Speaker 1: can remember every adult that I knew as a kid
Speaker 1: doing that, and it it really did go on for days,
Speaker 1: like people moved moved around as if they were like
Speaker 1: in kind of a shocked stupor. I'm sure there's places
Speaker 1: where this wasn't the case, UM, But for my family,
Speaker 1: who were very very conservative people, and I think for
Speaker 1: people particularly who lived closer to the attacks, like it
Speaker 1: was just this period of um like post traumatic stress
Speaker 1: for the entire country. I think a good amount of
Speaker 1: research backs up the fact that this it had this
Speaker 1: kind of and I think it is hard to understand
Speaker 1: if you weren't there impact on people. I found a
Speaker 1: Pew Research study that I'm gonna quote from now. Our
Speaker 1: first survey following the attacks went into the field just
Speaker 1: days after nine eleven. From September seventeen, two thousand one,
Speaker 1: A sizeable majority of adults said they felt depressed. Nearly
Speaker 1: half said they had difficulty concentrating, and a third said
Speaker 1: they had trouble sleeping. It was an era in which
Speaker 1: television was still the public's dominant news source. Said they
Speaker 1: got most of their news about the attacks from television,
Speaker 1: compared with just five percent who got their news online,
Speaker 1: and the televised images of death and destruction had a
Speaker 1: powerful impact. Around nine and ten Americans agreed with the
Speaker 1: statement I feel sad when watching t the coverage of
Speaker 1: the terrorist attacks. A sizable majority found it frightening to watch,
Speaker 1: but most did so anyway. Fear was widespread, not just
Speaker 1: in the days immediately after the attacks, but throughout the
Speaker 1: fall of two thousand one. Most Americans said they were
Speaker 1: very percent or somewhat forty five percent worried about another attack.
Speaker 1: When asked a year later to describe how their lives
Speaker 1: changed in a major way, about half the adults said
Speaker 1: they felt more afraid, more careful, and more distrustful or
Speaker 1: more vulnerable as a result of the attacks. And I
Speaker 1: think you can't separate this because the main people were
Speaker 1: talking about here when we're talking about the response to this,
Speaker 1: when we're talking about the people who got to make decisions,
Speaker 1: it's boomers, right, which is not all that different from
Speaker 1: how it is today, but even it was even more
Speaker 1: so boomers then. And you know, my parents and the
Speaker 1: people of their generation are all children of the Cold War.
Speaker 1: They both grew up, my parents on different military bases,
Speaker 1: um and I can remember, you know, my dad told
Speaker 1: me stories about doing like duck and coverage rills as
Speaker 1: a kid, like literally hiding under a desk to get
Speaker 1: ready for an atomic bomb. His family like went out
Speaker 1: into the countryside during the Cuban missile crisis to hide
Speaker 1: because they were afraid all the cities we're going to
Speaker 1: get nuked. And this is not These are not uncommon experiences.
Speaker 1: So you have to think, like all of the all
Speaker 1: of the adults were either very close to this period
Speaker 1: or had spent most of their formative years like constantly
Speaker 1: scared of being murdered by a nuclear weapon. Um, there
Speaker 1: have been clinical like studies and stuff that have shown
Speaker 1: that that fear of nuclear annihilation is a major factor
Speaker 1: and anxiety like it's not ever been properly I think
Speaker 1: explained how much that fucked up that generation. But what
Speaker 1: you had is all these people who had spent the
Speaker 1: first couple of decades of their lives living with the
Speaker 1: sort of damocles over their heads. And then the war ends, right,
Speaker 1: the Cold War ends, the USSR falls apart, and suddenly
Speaker 1: people aren't talking about nuclear warfare for the first time
Speaker 1: in anybody's memory. Um, And I think for most of
Speaker 1: that generation they felt safe for the first time. There
Speaker 1: was this kind of celebration that was pretty bipartisan, that
Speaker 1: capitalism and democracy had triumphed, and that like this kind
Speaker 1: of horror that had stalked through their childhood had been defeated.
Speaker 1: When people like Francis fuki Yama talked about the end
Speaker 1: of history, what Fukiyama meant was that liberal democracy was
Speaker 1: kind of, in his eyes, the end of the evolutionary
Speaker 1: road for states, which is a flawed idea, But the
Speaker 1: interpretation that I think people like my parents had was
Speaker 1: that we didn't need to worry anymore. Right, like that
Speaker 1: that's the end of history, right, our way of life
Speaker 1: had one and we like we we didn't need to worry.
Speaker 1: And in nine eleven happens and suddenly this decade or
Speaker 1: so of relief from that all ends in a minute,
Speaker 1: and all of that fear that they lived with their
Speaker 1: whole lives came roaring back with abandoned. Nine eleven was
Speaker 1: like the emotional equivalent of splitting an atom. And and
Speaker 1: the Internet that was released by that is going to
Speaker 1: be used for something, right. I want to kind of
Speaker 1: touch on that a little bit, because I mean, I
Speaker 1: obviously don't remember the nineties because I wasn't there, and
Speaker 1: it is such a fascinating idea to me, like this
Speaker 1: time where neoliberalism kind of reached their paradise, like like
Speaker 1: we didn't we could we we we we did the thing,
Speaker 1: We found the spot and how that you know, talk
Speaker 1: about like the edge o chaos theory, how it was
Speaker 1: built up to the super high point and then all
Speaker 1: because because it got so high and then immediately crumbled,
Speaker 1: um and shot down and there's this thing that um.
Speaker 1: One of my favorite writers, Granat Morrison, talks about how
Speaker 1: nine eleven kind of became this moment where the world
Speaker 1: of imagination and the world of like the lowest material
Speaker 1: visceral reality crashed into each other. Um, and he says
Speaker 1: a quote. The collapse expressed itself in the material world
Speaker 1: when the twin towers of the World Trade Center were
Speaker 1: reduced to dust by determined extremists. When cement occurred, reality
Speaker 1: and fiction began their slow collapse into one another. After
Speaker 1: the fall of the towers, quote unquote, reality became more fictional,
Speaker 1: and quote unquote fiction became more realistic, I think, plausible, realistic,
Speaker 1: superhero of movies like The Dark Knight films, fake news,
Speaker 1: deep fakes, a r VR and the rise of magical thinking. Um.
Speaker 1: And I would extra plate that out to like stuff
Speaker 1: like you know Q and on UM and you know
Speaker 1: the how just these images that we thought were only
Speaker 1: viewable in film and television um became descended down onto
Speaker 1: the onto the dirtiest, most visceral material plane. UM. And
Speaker 1: then things that were fake like this idea like the
Speaker 1: Perfect nineties, It's gonna be this is gonna continue continue
Speaker 1: like Diever that fiction. Uh, it felt almost more real,
Speaker 1: like it like that that that should have been what's
Speaker 1: real and it's not me more. Yeah, it feels like
Speaker 1: there's an alternate and I think that's part of why
Speaker 1: liberals are still so goddamn in love with the West wing.
Speaker 1: And by the way I talked about liberals, my parents,
Speaker 1: who loved Ronald Reagan more than life itself, watched every
Speaker 1: episode of that show. They thought it was wonderful. And
Speaker 1: the Republicans are always portrayed very sympathetically on the West wing. Right,
Speaker 1: it's very much this noble opposition sort of idea um
Speaker 1: and uh, the the that I think there's something in
Speaker 1: that that there's list almost since that we've been locked
Speaker 1: out of the right reality. And that's that's what you know,
Speaker 1: That's what liberals are constantly harkening back to with with
Speaker 1: nine eleven. But it's also or with with stuff like
Speaker 1: the West Wing. But it's also like what conservatives. I
Speaker 1: think for a while they were looking for that. I
Speaker 1: think that's what George W. Bush promised and failed to deliver. Um.
Speaker 1: It's what they were hoping to get with Romney and
Speaker 1: when that didn't happen. I think part of what's going
Speaker 1: on with Trump is this desire, part of the desire
Speaker 1: to burn it all down is the inability to get
Speaker 1: back to this imagined if you're talking about the collapse
Speaker 1: of reality and fiction going into each other, that's what
Speaker 1: Donald Trump represents. He is this so fictional person that
Speaker 1: in order to meet this new world of reality and
Speaker 1: fiction the same thing, you need somebody that under that,
Speaker 1: that rep sense that. Um. So they turned to him
Speaker 1: because he was meeting the way they saw the world
Speaker 1: was going, that the reality infection are going into each other.
Speaker 1: So you're going to get the reality television president who
Speaker 1: who who? Who kind of embodies that essence on a
Speaker 1: very very visceral level. And I think that's part of
Speaker 1: why when you have nine eleven happen, you have all
Speaker 1: of this energy released. Both parties kind of come together
Speaker 1: in this idea that the United States should strike back
Speaker 1: and that we were at war. It's rightly pointed out
Speaker 1: by people that particularly protests against the Iraq war were massive,
Speaker 1: and they were, they were historically large. But President Bush
Speaker 1: was also the most popular president of our lifetime briefly,
Speaker 1: and it's because people were in line behind this idea
Speaker 1: that we need to hit someone well. And and I
Speaker 1: think something that's important about this that's completely forgotten is
Speaker 1: that the invasion of Afghanistan. There was like no protests.
Speaker 1: There were there were a few, but like the left imploded,
Speaker 1: like here's I'm going to read a quote from Doug Henwood.
Speaker 1: This is an attack on us. There is a near
Speaker 1: certainty that something will be done soon. Clearly considerable use
Speaker 1: of force will have to be used to capture these
Speaker 1: motherfucker's um like Adolph read He's like talking about how
Speaker 1: like there's gonna have to be military reaction. Like a
Speaker 1: bunch of the people from like who like the the
Speaker 1: old school, like anti Vietnam War protesters like from STS
Speaker 1: are like, well, we don't oppose all wars, we just
Speaker 1: opposed bad wars. So like here we should go in vadive.
Speaker 1: Guess like everyone lost their minds. Well, and I want
Speaker 1: to what I really the core of when I talk
Speaker 1: about today is why that happened. Because I think there's
Speaker 1: on particularly kind of some of the more superficial left
Speaker 1: wing analysis of this, this idea that like George Bush
Speaker 1: did what he did in response because he's like this
Speaker 1: Christian holy warrior um. And there's a couple of reasons
Speaker 1: people do this, including the fact that he once referred
Speaker 1: to the invasion of Iraq as a crusade, but as
Speaker 1: a general rule, what Bush did was not because of
Speaker 1: his Christianity and had nothing to do with any kind
Speaker 1: of conflict with his Lam. In particular. What it was
Speaker 1: was the reaction of a group of a kind of fundamentalists,
Speaker 1: fundamentalists of belief in the American state, reacting to an
Speaker 1: attack on the sanctity of that kind of idea um.
Speaker 1: And this is this is you know why all these
Speaker 1: liberals were on board at least with you know, the
Speaker 1: strike on Afghanistan or attacking Afghanistan. Christopher Hitchens. Probably no
Speaker 1: one embodies like what happened to a lot of the
Speaker 1: left better than Hitchens. Hitchens was a well known liberal journalist.
Speaker 1: He wrote an excoriating book about Henry Kissinger. Right, he's
Speaker 1: one of these people who was criticizing the Empire, who
Speaker 1: was attacking it for its excesses. For builds his career
Speaker 1: on that, and the nine eleven happens. And the first
Speaker 1: big thing he does is he puts out a massive
Speaker 1: column titled Bush's Secularist Triumph, in which he argues that
Speaker 1: the war on terror is not a crusade but a
Speaker 1: battle to keep rely Gin in public power. Separate, and
Speaker 1: I want to quote now from a study published in
Speaker 1: the Journal of Political Theology by William Kavanaugh of DePaul University.
Speaker 1: It's kindled the war on terror secular or sacred. There
Speaker 1: may be some Christians who think that we are fighting
Speaker 1: for Jesus, but the battle is being one in the
Speaker 1: name of secularism. George Bush may subjectively be a Christian,
Speaker 1: but he and the US Armed forces have objectively done
Speaker 1: more for secularism than the whole of the American agnostic
Speaker 1: community combined and doubled. While the left makes apologies for
Speaker 1: religious terrorists, the right supports their obliteration to protect our
Speaker 1: secular state. Secularism is not just a smug attitude. It
Speaker 1: is a possible way of democratic and pluralistic life that
Speaker 1: only became thinkable after several wars and revolutions had ruthlessly
Speaker 1: smashed the hold of clergy on the state. We are
Speaker 1: now in the middle of another such war and revolution,
Speaker 1: and the liberals have gone a wall. That's Kavanaugh's summary
Speaker 1: of Hitchens is article, but like, what's going on there
Speaker 1: is really interesting because Hitchens is proceeding as an a
Speaker 1: priori assumption that the attack on the Twin Hours is
Speaker 1: an attempt by a theocracy to take over and destroy
Speaker 1: a secular state, rather than an attempt to damage economically
Speaker 1: a military enemy um and goat it into a war
Speaker 1: that would weaken it socially, militarily and economically, which is
Speaker 1: exactly what had actually happened. The liberals that Hitchens attacks
Speaker 1: is former allies are basically saying, don't take the bait right,
Speaker 1: don't do the thing that he wants you to do,
Speaker 1: because it will it will lead to the results he
Speaker 1: wants to achieve. All Hitchens can see is that, like
Speaker 1: Muslim extremists are scary and they want to hurt him
Speaker 1: as an atheist, religion is doing things that hurt me,
Speaker 1: So I must destroy the people who believe in this city. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting because everybody, all of the people who
Speaker 1: are kind of on the side of this civic religion,
Speaker 1: which is which is why they're responding, because there they're
Speaker 1: civic religion has been attacked and this strike on the towers.
Speaker 1: They all find kind of different ways to justify it.
Speaker 1: Hitchens is a prominent atheist, so it makes sense that
Speaker 1: he kind of sees it as a fight against theocracy.
Speaker 1: If you go through a lot of footage of news
Speaker 1: anchors in the immediate wake of the attack. Garrison, you
Speaker 1: and I were doing this a couple of nights ago.
Speaker 1: There were numerous references that the Twin Towers, which were
Speaker 1: a symbol of capitalism, and that they represent capitalist and
Speaker 1: American supremacy over capital It's like it's it's it's like
Speaker 1: the American supremacy of the economic system and and and
Speaker 1: like a reified symbol of capitalism almost like it's like
Speaker 1: it's like an idol to like to the god of capital. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a there's a number of different things you can
Speaker 1: find making this point. But in a column that published
Speaker 1: on nine twelve, uh, the Washington Post editorial Board wrote,
Speaker 1: for three decades, the Twin Towers of New York's World
Speaker 1: Trade Center stood as the symbol of American economic might,
Speaker 1: as powerful an icon for capitalism as the Statue of
Speaker 1: Liberty is for freedom exactly exactly. That's yeah, yeah, it's amazing. No,
Speaker 1: people were just saying this ship the day. You ever
Speaker 1: think that's funny about it. It's like no one thought
Speaker 1: this before. Like these are cheap fucking buildings, like the
Speaker 1: World Trades Yeah, like a license, Like it's literally It's
Speaker 1: just like license is a nameless license out. It's like that,
Speaker 1: you know, But that doesn't because again, what what you
Speaker 1: by saying this when they're saying like, for three decades,
Speaker 1: this was the symbol of American economic might. People and
Speaker 1: I keep going back to my parents, but I think
Speaker 1: they represent a lot of Americans saw the defeat of
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union as being achieved by the US economy,
Speaker 1: by capitalist right, and and that's the thing that ended history.
Speaker 1: That's the thing that got them to their neo liver paradise.
Speaker 1: It's the thing that saved them from the nukes. And
Speaker 1: so by taking these towers down, bin Laden basically killed Superman. Right,
Speaker 1: That's how they're reacting to it. Um. George Bush and
Speaker 1: Christopher Hitchens and the Washington Post editorial board, they all
Speaker 1: saw their support for war not as as not based
Speaker 1: in religion. All of them would have denied this right, Um.
Speaker 1: But Kavanaugh argues that they were motivated primarily by what
Speaker 1: he calls the civil religion of the United States, which
Speaker 1: is why I've been using that term. I'm gonna quote
Speaker 1: from his paper again. The United States has its own
Speaker 1: civil religion, which, though relying on the support of Christians,
Speaker 1: and undoubtedly, borrowing much from Christian imagery, transcends mere sectarian
Speaker 1: religion to unite all Americans on a higher ground. Indeed,
Speaker 1: this is what makes secularism compatible with civil religion. What
Speaker 1: Robert Bella calls traditional religion is privatized, while civic rituals
Speaker 1: revolve around a generic God who underwrites America's identity and
Speaker 1: purpose in the world. In this sense, Andrew Sullivan is right.
Speaker 1: This is a religious war. The war of which nine
Speaker 1: eleven was a significant marker, is not extremist and expansionist
Speaker 1: religion against a peace loving and neutral secularist order. It
Speaker 1: is rather the violent confrontation of Islamist terrorism with the
Speaker 1: civil religion of American expansionism, that is, the evangelical insistence
Speaker 1: that liberal social order is the only viable kind of
Speaker 1: social order. It is what Tarik Ali has called the
Speaker 1: clash of fundamentalisms. And I think that's important because I
Speaker 1: think one way area in which the left really got
Speaker 1: things wrong in sort of their interpretation of what happens
Speaker 1: in this period of seeing it as a lash between
Speaker 1: kind of Christian fundamentalists as embodied by George Bush and
Speaker 1: Islamic fundamentalists. No, no, no. The people who were leading
Speaker 1: this country, including Bush, but including most of the the Liberals,
Speaker 1: were America fundamentalists. They were fundamentalists in the idea of
Speaker 1: the secular American state, and so were my parents. As
Speaker 1: conservative as they were, my family was never about you know,
Speaker 1: Christianity needing to be spread over there. It was about
Speaker 1: this this belief in America as something holy and that
Speaker 1: something holy and sacred had been struck on September eleven.
Speaker 1: I will say I I think, I I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's easy for me to see why people think about
Speaker 1: this on the left sort of as this Christian holy war,
Speaker 1: because like I grew up with a lot of people
Speaker 1: who like in the wake of this, who like really
Speaker 1: were full on into the crusade thing. Like I had
Speaker 1: classmates would talk about how they were going to join
Speaker 1: the military to kill a Muslims. Like there was like
Speaker 1: I think this is a real thing. Sure, and that's
Speaker 1: what I mean, that's sort of analytic wrong, that's what
Speaker 1: that's what Kavanaugh saying, and that it's kind of scaffolded
Speaker 1: on Christianity. But like that's fun fundamentally, like the fact
Speaker 1: that there are some people who are going in there
Speaker 1: being like this is finally religious crusade, doesn't mean that's
Speaker 1: like what the leadership of the country is doing, and
Speaker 1: as I have to do. I think that's part of
Speaker 1: why we get Trump and the current Christian extremist surge
Speaker 1: is that, uh, it's a reaction to how kind of
Speaker 1: the neo cons go with this, because for the neo cons,
Speaker 1: this isn't really about this isn't about Christianity is something
Speaker 1: you use in this fight, but like, that's not what
Speaker 1: you're fighting for here. Um. And I think there's there's
Speaker 1: a good amount of evidence for the fact that Americans
Speaker 1: identified something as being like holy about the Twin Towers,
Speaker 1: particularly after the attack. UM from Kavanaughs study in Public
Speaker 1: Theology Quote and August to thousand ten of poll found
Speaker 1: that fifty six percent of Americans regard Ground zero as
Speaker 1: sacred ground, and a slightly larger majority opposes construction of
Speaker 1: a mosque nearby. For this region, a sacred aura surrounds
Speaker 1: the identity of the nation that was attacked on that day,
Speaker 1: and the attacks concentrated that sacredness in a particular location
Speaker 1: in time. It is not necessary to go back to
Speaker 1: the more famously evangelical George W. Bush to make the
Speaker 1: link between piety and nine eleven. In his speech at
Speaker 1: Ground Zero last September eleventh, two thousand ten, Barack Obama
Speaker 1: talked about gathering at this sacred hour on hallowed Ground
Speaker 1: and talked about how those who were not only killed
Speaker 1: but sacrificed in the attacks. God was invoked, of course,
Speaker 1: but it was a generic God who belonged to no
Speaker 1: particular faith, because, as Obama made clear, the victims themselves
Speaker 1: were of many faiths. Yeah, this is I mean one
Speaker 1: of the things that I think is interesting if you're
Speaker 1: actually trying to analyze this and you want to see
Speaker 1: kind of the degree to which why I think it's
Speaker 1: important to look at how people treated the space itself
Speaker 1: is sacred, is how actual religion responded in the wake
Speaker 1: of nine eleven, and how Americans responded to religion in
Speaker 1: the wake of nine eleven, because you know, it says
Speaker 1: they're about fifty six percent of the country. See, this
Speaker 1: is like hallowed Ground in some way. Um. And I
Speaker 1: think there's evidence that people kind of rose up to
Speaker 1: defend this civic religion more than they actually did their
Speaker 1: real faiths. Um. And this is because primarily the reaction
Speaker 1: on a on a population basis to September eleven, is
Speaker 1: that religiosity in the United States continued to decline. Right,
Speaker 1: There's a public idea that it led to this like
Speaker 1: surge of people coming back to the church and getting
Speaker 1: religious again, but there's really no demographic evidence to back
Speaker 1: that up. And I want to quote from an article
Speaker 1: I found in Christianity Today. For a few weeks after
Speaker 1: nine eleven, people packed the pews, but it soon became
Speaker 1: apparent there was not a great awakening or a profound
Speaker 1: change in America's religious practices, as Frank M. Newport Gallop Pole,
Speaker 1: editor in chief, told The New York Times in November
Speaker 1: of two thousand one. Barnard Group confirmed that conclusion in
Speaker 1: two thousand six, attract nineteen dimensions of spirituality and beliefs
Speaker 1: and found none of those nineteen indicators were statistically different
Speaker 1: from pre attack measures. In other words, that not eleven
Speaker 1: attacks didn't put American Christians on a trajectory towards more
Speaker 1: orthodox beliefs or more consistent habits of prayer, church attendance,
Speaker 1: or scripture reading. And so far as we can measure
Speaker 1: matters of faith, the decline of American religiosity continue to
Speaker 1: pace spiritually speaking, said barn As David Kinneman. It's as
Speaker 1: if nothing significant ever happened, and that's something evangelicals have
Speaker 1: had to grapple with ever since the US did not
Speaker 1: turn back to God demographically. And while hateful attacks against
Speaker 1: Muslims surged, you have to acknowledge that a lot of
Speaker 1: those were from people who were more or less secular
Speaker 1: um in the traditional sense. And this is part of
Speaker 1: why so many of the online atheists set Uh sided
Speaker 1: with the al right in two thousand fifteen, in two
Speaker 1: thousand sixteen, right, it's because there are a lot of
Speaker 1: those people Um, while they would have described themselves as
Speaker 1: an opposition to Christianity as well, were very much a
Speaker 1: part of the same civic religion as everybody else. And
Speaker 1: we're willing to engage in racist attacks against members of
Speaker 1: religion as a result of that. You know, when when
Speaker 1: you get the fact that a majority of Americans saw
Speaker 1: ground zero was sacred and opposed building a mosque because
Speaker 1: of that, a decent chunk of those people are not
Speaker 1: Christians who opposed the building of a mosque, Right, they're
Speaker 1: a religious or their atheist, and they opposed the building
Speaker 1: of a mosque because they still see Islam as an enemy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's uh, it's interesting, but Americans were not moved to
Speaker 1: embrace religion by the attacks UM and the deterioration of
Speaker 1: our sense of security that followed, and I think that
Speaker 1: Evangelicals have never been able to actually accept this. A
Speaker 1: two thousand thirteen Barner Group survey found that most Americans,
Speaker 1: but particularly born again Christians, believe nine eleven quote made
Speaker 1: people turn back to God, and this again has led
Speaker 1: to kind of a fetishization of the period right after
Speaker 1: nine eleven UM. The writer of that Christianity Today article
Speaker 1: I cited earlier theorizes quote. My first suggestion is what
Speaker 1: we thought was hope wasn't lost at all. It was
Speaker 1: less Christian trust and character and redemption of God than
Speaker 1: American optimism, coded with not quite biblical bromides that when
Speaker 1: there's bad, good will follow. Americans love to believe that
Speaker 1: everything happens for a reason, and that after a short
Speaker 1: period of time, sorrow will always turn into joy and
Speaker 1: suffering into sanctifications. We quote Romans we know that in
Speaker 1: all things God works for the good of those who
Speaker 1: love him, and incorrectly interpreted to mean that everything that
Speaker 1: happens to us will also somehow work out, Okay, And
Speaker 1: I think that they're onto something here, and this really
Speaker 1: that this goes back to what Kavanaugh was saying about
Speaker 1: how this civil religion is kind of grafted on over
Speaker 1: the bones of Christianity, right, Um, and it's it's there's
Speaker 1: so much. Part of what's interesting to me here is
Speaker 1: that well, I think it's it's worthwhile that he quotes Romans.
Speaker 1: I have to think that this, this belief that Americans
Speaker 1: have that everything happens for a reason, is at least
Speaker 1: as undergirded by like Disney as it is with scripture.
Speaker 1: It's undergraded by the way we tell stories, by the
Speaker 1: way fiction works in our society, which is a very
Speaker 1: unique to us. Right, Every culture does not tell stories
Speaker 1: the same way. Well, and I think, like, if you
Speaker 1: want to trace that out to like, I think that's
Speaker 1: part of the reason why people are so unbelievably any
Speaker 1: conspiracy theories here. Yeah, if everything needs to have a reason,
Speaker 1: that it's part of an overarching grand narrative that ties
Speaker 1: everything together. Yeah, And it's obviously again I don't want
Speaker 1: to like underplay and perhaps we should do an episode
Speaker 1: maybe behind the bastards on the reaction of the religious
Speaker 1: right to nine eleven, which was nuts and it was
Speaker 1: vicious and horrific. I'm not I'm not trying to deny that,
Speaker 1: but I think one of the things that happens in
Speaker 1: this period is they grow increasingly infuriated that that is
Speaker 1: not shared by a majority of the country, that it
Speaker 1: doesn't bring a religious revival, right, that that doesn't follow
Speaker 1: September eleven. Um. Now, it is kind of there's a
Speaker 1: couple of things that are interesting here. Um. One of
Speaker 1: them is that, uh, the apocalyptic Christian believers, they do
Speaker 1: have kind of this this in with the Bush administration.
Speaker 1: We know that at one point a bunch of apocalyptic
Speaker 1: like Christian representatives, like people who are kind of heading
Speaker 1: churches and stuff that believe there's this belief among certain
Speaker 1: Christians that you need to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem
Speaker 1: and bring about the end of days and all this stuff.
Speaker 1: There's a bunch of ship that has to happen in
Speaker 1: Palestine in order for the apocalypse to come, and they're
Speaker 1: trying to get us presidents to make it happen. This
Speaker 1: is why Trump made some of the calls that he
Speaker 1: made was to deliberately like give those people a win, um,
Speaker 1: which is why some of the ship that happened in
Speaker 1: Jerusalem during the Trump administration um was able to happen.
Speaker 1: All of that stuff is stuff that they went to
Speaker 1: George Bush. They had a two hour meeting with him
Speaker 1: and Elliott Abrams and a bunch of his staff were
Speaker 1: these representatives of kind of like the Pentecostal movement. Tried
Speaker 1: to get him to carry out this wish list policy
Speaker 1: of acts around Israel and Iraq to help them bring
Speaker 1: about the rapture, and the Bush administration didn't really do
Speaker 1: any of that. They have to take the meeting, right,
Speaker 1: They bring these guys in, they don't give them what
Speaker 1: they want. It's not until Trump that a lot of
Speaker 1: these guys get what they want. And what you what
Speaker 1: happens here. You've got this this death cult Christian group
Speaker 1: who see this as a crusade and who want to
Speaker 1: war with Islam, and they're constantly frustrated by the fact
Speaker 1: that even though he's supposed to be their guy, Bush
Speaker 1: doesn't go all the way for them, right, and this
Speaker 1: is part of why his military adventurism gets criticized effectively
Speaker 1: by guys like Trump. Who win the evangelical right, because
Speaker 1: the evangelicals say, like, well, if we're not going to
Speaker 1: have a holy war, then like what was this stuff?
Speaker 1: We just wasted a bunch of of money and a
Speaker 1: bunch of treasure and a bunch of young men for
Speaker 1: nothing over there. Um. And that's part of like what
Speaker 1: Trump wins on. Now, these two factions, these neo cons,
Speaker 1: the guys who wind up, by the way, the guys
Speaker 1: who are sort of on the civic religion side of
Speaker 1: the response to nine eleven are all the people who
Speaker 1: wind up running the Lincoln project right when you're talking
Speaker 1: about the Republicans on that side of thing. And then
Speaker 1: the part the folks who break off the evangelicals, the
Speaker 1: people who want to holy war, that's who winds up
Speaker 1: making the core of Trump's support. Um. And yeah, And
Speaker 1: that's I think mostly where I'm going to leave us
Speaker 1: for today. On nine twelve. Next week we'll have another
Speaker 1: special episode about Glenn Beck's nine twelve project that will
Speaker 1: be kind of the finishing of this. But I want
Speaker 1: to end because we're talking about why I did this
Speaker 1: and why I started by talking about jokes about nine
Speaker 1: eleven is because I think understanding understanding the attack on
Speaker 1: the towers as like an attack on what what had
Speaker 1: effectively become a god to a lot of Americans, even
Speaker 1: if they didn't realize it. Right, the sanctity of this
Speaker 1: kind of neoliberal capitalist order, and it's it's it's um,
Speaker 1: it's historic inevitability. Right. The fact that that's what was
Speaker 1: going on, that that that was so dear to people,
Speaker 1: that justified so much violence, twenty years of war, of
Speaker 1: bombing's millions of deaths is part of why I think
Speaker 1: there's a value in joking about nine eleven, which is
Speaker 1: not to say that what happened wasn't terrible. Three three
Speaker 1: thousand and change innocent people were murdered um in a
Speaker 1: in a truly horrific way. If you actually sit down
Speaker 1: and watch the footage the people falling out of the buildings,
Speaker 1: it's a namare. If you think about stuff like Flight
Speaker 1: ninety three, it's it's really stirring. You have these people
Speaker 1: who one moment they're heading to like see their families
Speaker 1: or go on a work trip or something. You're on
Speaker 1: a plane experience, I'm sure everybody has, where you're just
Speaker 1: like trying to get from A to B and in
Speaker 1: the space of like a few minutes. They have to
Speaker 1: all decide they're going to charge a bunch of terrorists,
Speaker 1: fight in hand to hand combat, and then pilot a
Speaker 1: plane into the ground in order to stop it from
Speaker 1: killing other people. That's that's powerful stuff. Um. What what
Speaker 1: I think is important is de sacralizing it, because there's
Speaker 1: nothing sacred about mass murder um, and there's nothing there's
Speaker 1: we shouldn't see what happened, there is anything but what
Speaker 1: it is, which is a tragic um, a tragic act
Speaker 1: of violence against innocent people. But taking it as like
Speaker 1: an attack on our soul, as an attack on like
Speaker 1: our our collective god. Um. When you start to do
Speaker 1: that again, it kind of justifies any sort of violence,
Speaker 1: like there's nothing, there's nothing that's off the table, and
Speaker 1: in in the first few years after nine eleven, there
Speaker 1: was nothing off the table. Um, And we're never getting
Speaker 1: back to the world that we had before, which is
Speaker 1: ultimately like what all that violence was about. Right, all
Speaker 1: of everything terrible that was in the wake of nine
Speaker 1: eleven was justified, even if people didn't say it. In
Speaker 1: the desire to get back to where we were in
Speaker 1: the nineties, right in their heads and their sense of security.
Speaker 1: I'm not talking about anything is like courses, economic projections.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about in the sense of like optimism and
Speaker 1: basic security. And I think one of the people who
Speaker 1: got this best in the immediate wake of the attack
Speaker 1: was Hunter S. Thompson, who you know, was still alive
Speaker 1: at that point for a couple of years, and he
Speaker 1: wrote a column. I think it was for ESPN dot com,
Speaker 1: because that's who he was writing for in those days.
Speaker 1: His career was well past its peak, um, but he
Speaker 1: wrote probably the best thing anyone wrote a week after
Speaker 1: nine eleven. I'm going to read you the end of that.
Speaker 1: Now we're at war now, according to President Bush, and
Speaker 1: I take him at his word. He also says this
Speaker 1: war might last for a very long time. Generals and
Speaker 1: military scholars that will tell you that eight or ten
Speaker 1: years is actually not such a long time in the
Speaker 1: span of human history, which is no doubt true. But
Speaker 1: history also tells us that ten years of martial law
Speaker 1: and a wartime economy are going to feel like a
Speaker 1: lifetime to people who are in their twenties today. The
Speaker 1: poor bastards of what will forever be known as Generation
Speaker 1: Z are doomed to be the first generation of Americans
Speaker 1: who will grow up with the lower standard of living
Speaker 1: than their parents enjoyed. This is extremely heavy news and
Speaker 1: it will take a while for it to sink in.
Speaker 1: The twenty two babies born in New York City while
Speaker 1: the World Trade Center burned, will never know what they missed.
Speaker 1: The last half of the twentieth century will seem like
Speaker 1: a wild party for rich kids compared to what's coming now.
Speaker 1: The party's over, folks. Yeah, that is kind of the
Speaker 1: feeling growing up in the early two thousand's and not
Speaker 1: not knowing, not never actually experiencing the nineties. Yeah, some ways,
Speaker 1: you know, nine eleven feels very similar to me as
Speaker 1: something like Pearl Harbor, Like they're both things that happened
Speaker 1: I guess before I was around, and it just they
Speaker 1: created the world that already existed in like it never
Speaker 1: it never like it, you know, it never changed the
Speaker 1: world I was in. It just became the world that
Speaker 1: I was in. For me, nine eleven is my first memory,
Speaker 1: Like that is the first thing I remember, And yeah,
Speaker 1: we got exactly the world that you would expect from
Speaker 1: your first every reading nine eleven. Yeah, it's um, I
Speaker 1: mean again, for me, I think the thing I identify
Speaker 1: most is that little clip I played from South Park
Speaker 1: where one of the kids is like, do you remember
Speaker 1: when everything didn't suck? It's not really um, So yeah,
Speaker 1: go out, um, tell a tasteful joke about nine eleven,
Speaker 1: and try not to worship the state. It doesn't end well. Hey,
Speaker 1: we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from
Speaker 1: now until the heat death of the universe. It Could
Speaker 1: Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media. For
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Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.