WEBVTT - Watching War Behind a Screen 0:00:01.720 --> 0:00:08.000 As media. Hey everyone, Robert Evans here, Welcome to It 0:00:08.039 --> 0:00:10.959 could happen here, as I'm sure you're aware, at this 0:00:11.080 --> 0:00:14.040 point over the weekend, somewhere between five hundred and one 0:00:14.040 --> 0:00:17.720 thousand Hamas fighters. Those numbers have a lot of flex 0:00:17.800 --> 0:00:20.200 in them. It's really unclear at this moment that just 0:00:20.320 --> 0:00:22.680 kind of my guess, based on what I've seen so far, 0:00:23.239 --> 0:00:26.880 carried out a successful infiltration and sneak attack across a 0:00:26.920 --> 0:00:30.160 wide swath of the Israeli border. Their methods were varied 0:00:30.200 --> 0:00:33.199 from motorized hang gliders and boats to mobile columns of 0:00:33.200 --> 0:00:36.839 technicals and bulldozers, which they used to breach fence lines. 0:00:37.360 --> 0:00:40.560 Surprise seems to have been nearly total. In their worst 0:00:40.600 --> 0:00:44.519 intelligence failure since the nineteen seventies, many IDF troops were 0:00:44.560 --> 0:00:48.320 caught literally in their underwear. Casualties seem to have been 0:00:48.400 --> 0:00:51.760 highest among the police, who were unprepared for militants armed 0:00:51.800 --> 0:00:56.520 with conventional military weapons. Casualty accounts remain heavily in flux, 0:00:56.560 --> 0:00:59.080 so I will not labor over them here. Suffice to 0:00:59.080 --> 0:01:01.400 say that the best information at the time that I'm 0:01:01.400 --> 0:01:04.200 writing this suggests at least a thousand dead in the 0:01:04.240 --> 0:01:07.640 first day or so of fighting. It appears at the 0:01:07.720 --> 0:01:11.520 moment to be fairly evenly split between Israeli soldiers, police 0:01:11.560 --> 0:01:15.919 and civilians, as well as Hamas fighters and Palestinian civilians. 0:01:16.480 --> 0:01:19.280 We can expect the death toll among Palestinians to rise 0:01:19.319 --> 0:01:23.520 steadily in the near future as the bombing of Gaza escalates. 0:01:23.880 --> 0:01:26.039 It is very clear though, that the Hamas did not 0:01:26.120 --> 0:01:29.679 strike only military targets, and Israelis and Palestinians are not 0:01:29.720 --> 0:01:32.800 the only people killed right now. There are reports coming 0:01:32.800 --> 0:01:35.080 in that a music festival, it was some sort of 0:01:35.080 --> 0:01:39.400 sytrance psychedelia festival in southern Israel on land that was 0:01:39.520 --> 0:01:44.640 possibly illegally occupied, was attacked by Hamas militants. Something like 0:01:44.680 --> 0:01:47.960 two hundred and sixty people are confirmed to have been killed. 0:01:48.200 --> 0:01:51.120 There's pretty hideous video of a young German woman in 0:01:51.120 --> 0:01:55.280 her twenties, her corpse stripped, being paraded around by fighters. 0:01:55.720 --> 0:01:59.920 It's very ugly stuff. There's also unclear videos of other killing. 0:02:00.160 --> 0:02:03.040 I've seen one video of a man beating another man's 0:02:03.080 --> 0:02:05.960 head in it's claimed to be a Hummas militant and 0:02:06.000 --> 0:02:09.680 civilian clothes beating a Filipino guest worker in Israel to death. 0:02:10.000 --> 0:02:12.840 There's no actual evidence that I've seen as to who 0:02:13.040 --> 0:02:15.800 either person in the video is, and a lot of 0:02:15.840 --> 0:02:18.280 the videos of horrible things that are spreading right now 0:02:18.320 --> 0:02:22.160 are just that, videos that definitely show violence, but that 0:02:22.320 --> 0:02:25.800 are extremely unclear as to who is perpetrating the violence 0:02:25.919 --> 0:02:29.320 and why. We do, of course, know that Hummas targeted 0:02:29.360 --> 0:02:32.480 a number of civilians. A significant number were killed, including 0:02:32.520 --> 0:02:36.200 people in their homes, and unknown numbers of people were 0:02:36.480 --> 0:02:39.760 kidnapped and taken back across the border to be ransomed 0:02:39.840 --> 0:02:43.720 later for imprisoned fighters and Palestinian civilians. This has happened 0:02:43.760 --> 0:02:48.679 before in previous escalations of conflict in the area. It's 0:02:48.720 --> 0:02:50.760 not a new tactic. In The videos of it are, 0:02:50.800 --> 0:02:53.600 of course horrifying. The capturing and killing of civilians is 0:02:53.639 --> 0:02:57.040 by any definition of the term, a war crime. Israel's 0:02:57.040 --> 0:02:59.560 response has been horrifying as well, and writ on a 0:02:59.680 --> 0:03:03.160 larger scale. Significant chunks of Gaza have already been leveled 0:03:03.160 --> 0:03:06.240 in airstrikes. At least one hospital has been targeted, killing 0:03:06.320 --> 0:03:09.440 a nurse. Israel has cut off power to Gasam, an 0:03:09.480 --> 0:03:13.280 active collective punishment that also qualifies as a war crime. 0:03:13.480 --> 0:03:16.440 That term has less weight than it used to these days. 0:03:16.919 --> 0:03:19.400 Many of US in the West grew up with illusions 0:03:19.440 --> 0:03:22.799 about a rules based international order. The crimes occurring now 0:03:22.880 --> 0:03:25.639 will continue to erode the idea that war might ever 0:03:25.680 --> 0:03:29.360 have limits. Like white water cutting a path through stone. 0:03:29.400 --> 0:03:31.600 I try to stay plugged into such things, and I 0:03:31.639 --> 0:03:34.680 become aware of this most recent eruption as it happened. 0:03:35.360 --> 0:03:38.280 I spent several hours trying to understand the early open 0:03:38.320 --> 0:03:41.440 source intelligence, watching people that I trusted in the region 0:03:41.560 --> 0:03:44.760 post videos that they could verify, and then I went 0:03:44.760 --> 0:03:47.960 to sleep. When I woke up, I saw the expected 0:03:48.080 --> 0:03:51.960 river of bloodthirst on social media. This is also nothing new. 0:03:52.000 --> 0:03:55.120 The Internet has not created this behavior. You may have 0:03:55.200 --> 0:03:57.080 read when you were in high school that early in 0:03:57.120 --> 0:03:59.800 the US Civil War, picnicking civilians would show up to 0:03:59.800 --> 0:04:04.400 awe the Battle of Manassas. Certain aspects of online culture have, however, 0:04:04.600 --> 0:04:08.160 lent a deeper ugliness to the affair. I noticed this 0:04:08.200 --> 0:04:11.040 for the first time during the fighting against ISIS. I 0:04:11.120 --> 0:04:13.920 reported from Moses several times and kept up with various 0:04:13.920 --> 0:04:17.679 Telegram channels, WhatsApp groups, and Twitter accounts that shared footage 0:04:17.680 --> 0:04:21.120 and updates from the field. A subculture developed around this, 0:04:21.279 --> 0:04:24.840 fueled by a mix of professional seeking intel and amateurs, 0:04:25.000 --> 0:04:27.560 some of whom later became experts, and others of whom 0:04:27.600 --> 0:04:31.360 simply liked watching the violence. All of us experienced a 0:04:31.400 --> 0:04:36.279 degree of desensitization, and Gallo's humor was common. Researchers would 0:04:36.320 --> 0:04:40.960 share their favorite Isis nasheeds effectively Jihati theme music, and 0:04:41.040 --> 0:04:43.760 throw Arabic phrases that they'd read in issues of Debique 0:04:43.760 --> 0:04:48.359 Isis's magazine into daily conversation. Lines of dialogue from different 0:04:48.480 --> 0:04:52.200 videos of combat became catchphrases. The best known of these 0:04:52.320 --> 0:04:54.880 was probably a video released in April of twenty sixteen, 0:04:54.960 --> 0:04:58.120 which showed a group of four ISIS fighters battling Kurdish 0:04:58.120 --> 0:05:01.919 troops north of Mosl. These guys were not overly familiar 0:05:02.000 --> 0:05:04.480 with their weaponry, much of which had recently been looted 0:05:04.480 --> 0:05:07.680 from Iraqi army stores. One of the fighters in the video, 0:05:07.960 --> 0:05:11.560 Abu Hajar, fucks up constantly, at one point roasting his 0:05:11.640 --> 0:05:14.040 own men with the back blast of a rocket launcher. 0:05:14.240 --> 0:05:16.680 The timing on it is pretty perfect, and it's basically 0:05:16.720 --> 0:05:20.240 impossible not to laugh a little at this. His comrade 0:05:20.279 --> 0:05:23.360 shouts a now infamous line at him, what is wrong 0:05:23.400 --> 0:05:27.400 with you? Abu Hajar? The man who filmed the video dies, 0:05:27.440 --> 0:05:29.440 of course, and so did a bunch of other people 0:05:29.480 --> 0:05:32.560 that day. Now, these guys are ices fighters, so it 0:05:32.600 --> 0:05:34.640 wasn't hard to laugh at the footage and move on. 0:05:34.920 --> 0:05:37.719 I did, and so did many other people. I still 0:05:38.160 --> 0:05:41.039 chuckle sometimes at it. Of late, though I've come to 0:05:41.080 --> 0:05:45.000 find the laughter more unsettling. This started after the expanded 0:05:45.080 --> 0:05:49.000 Russian invasion of Ukraine. I began to see videos of wounded, dying, 0:05:49.040 --> 0:05:53.560 and dead Russian conscripts. These were often close in gory shots, 0:05:53.560 --> 0:05:57.599 devoid of broader information, and shot purely for entertainments. One 0:05:57.640 --> 0:06:00.400 thing to watch combat videos in which people die, if 0:06:00.400 --> 0:06:03.200 it gives you an understanding of the nature of combat 0:06:03.320 --> 0:06:05.640 in that theater of war, the kinds of weapons used, 0:06:05.640 --> 0:06:08.840 the efficacy of certain tactics. It's another to just look 0:06:08.920 --> 0:06:12.360 at a bleeding teenager as he slowly dies and joke 0:06:12.440 --> 0:06:15.040 about it. Now, some of the folks who were laughing 0:06:15.080 --> 0:06:18.640 are people I knew Ukrainian civilians and volunteers, and I 0:06:18.760 --> 0:06:21.080 cannot blame them, and do not blame them for taking 0:06:21.160 --> 0:06:24.120 satisfaction or even mirth in the death of an invader. 0:06:24.640 --> 0:06:27.320 That is how war works. That is how war has 0:06:27.440 --> 0:06:30.520 always worked. It is foolish and cruel to ask for 0:06:30.600 --> 0:06:34.280 decorum from people under siege. I'm sure many Gazans feel 0:06:34.279 --> 0:06:36.960 the same about footage now flooding the Internet from this 0:06:37.080 --> 0:06:40.480 most recent attack. But many of the people cheering at 0:06:40.520 --> 0:06:44.280 dead Russian conscripts were not soldiers and not civilians who 0:06:44.360 --> 0:06:47.520 were being shelled by that state, but were random Americans, 0:06:47.600 --> 0:06:51.080 middle class, suburban war aficionados far from the danger, who 0:06:51.120 --> 0:06:53.120 spent time, who took a moment from their day to 0:06:53.400 --> 0:06:57.400 joke about suffering soldiers in a foreign country. A mirror 0:06:57.480 --> 0:07:01.200 of that behavior now proliferates as well. It curdled my 0:07:01.279 --> 0:07:04.520 gut then, and it still does. But my feelings here 0:07:04.560 --> 0:07:07.720 are immaterial. I have come to believe that this behavior 0:07:07.800 --> 0:07:10.760 is impossible to avoid or even mitigate. To a very 0:07:10.760 --> 0:07:15.640 substantial degree. It also appears to be nearly universal. Social 0:07:15.680 --> 0:07:29.240 media has made barbarism easier than ever to monetize. As 0:07:29.240 --> 0:07:31.600 the years have gone on, every new eruption of violence 0:07:31.640 --> 0:07:35.000 around the world brings with it more footage faster ocent 0:07:35.240 --> 0:07:38.960 open source intelligence accounts have gone from a niche obsession 0:07:39.040 --> 0:07:43.760 among reporters and conflict nerds to mainstream entertainment. Because views 0:07:43.880 --> 0:07:47.360 equal money, especially on Twitter, where Elon Musk pays people 0:07:47.400 --> 0:07:49.800 based on the engagement they get. There is now a 0:07:49.880 --> 0:07:53.080 financial incentive to post videos that will be shared widely, 0:07:53.160 --> 0:07:55.480 and as always, the stuff that is shared most widely 0:07:55.800 --> 0:07:59.280 is the stuff that makes people angry. Videos need not 0:07:59.400 --> 0:08:03.280 be truthful to spread. In some cases, this means reposting 0:08:03.360 --> 0:08:06.080 old footage as if it is new. This is particularly 0:08:06.160 --> 0:08:09.280 easy with the conflict in Gaza, since Israel has launched 0:08:09.320 --> 0:08:12.320 so many strikes against it over the years. One video 0:08:12.400 --> 0:08:14.760 of a building crumbling into rubble left or a missile 0:08:14.760 --> 0:08:17.240 strike is as good as another to the rats scrambling 0:08:17.280 --> 0:08:21.920 for Elon Musk's pocket change. Many viral disinformation videos are 0:08:21.960 --> 0:08:24.920 just clips from the check video game Arma two. For 0:08:25.000 --> 0:08:28.440 roughly a decade, footage of in game combat has gone viral, 0:08:28.760 --> 0:08:31.920 netting followers and sometimes money for all manner of shady figures. 0:08:31.960 --> 0:08:34.480 If you see video that's claimed to be an Israeli 0:08:34.480 --> 0:08:37.920 helicopter or a Russian helicopter or an American helicopter being 0:08:37.920 --> 0:08:41.640 shot down in some erupting field, you should really double 0:08:41.720 --> 0:08:43.920 check that, because there's always a very good chance that 0:08:43.920 --> 0:08:46.160 it's a clip from this video game of a chopper 0:08:46.200 --> 0:08:48.520 going down, or of some other kind of military vehicle 0:08:48.600 --> 0:08:51.920 being taken out. In real warfare, it's quite rare to 0:08:52.000 --> 0:08:54.360 get footage at a good angle and close to that 0:08:54.440 --> 0:08:56.840 sort of thing. So anytime you see footage that seems 0:08:56.880 --> 0:09:00.160 like it might be too good to be real, it 0:09:00.200 --> 0:09:04.280 probably is. Such disinformation is of course unsightly, but that's 0:09:04.320 --> 0:09:06.760 not all it is. It can provoke violence as well. 0:09:07.160 --> 0:09:10.400 A recent New York Times article on social media disinformation 0:09:10.520 --> 0:09:14.160 makes this clear quote. The Times found several pieces of 0:09:14.200 --> 0:09:18.280 misinformation that spread out across Israelian Palestinian neighborhood and activist 0:09:18.280 --> 0:09:20.880 WhatsApp groups this week. One which appeared as a block 0:09:20.920 --> 0:09:23.760 of Hebrew text or an audio file, contained a warning 0:09:23.800 --> 0:09:27.240 that Palestinian mobs were preparing to descend on Israeli civilians. 0:09:27.600 --> 0:09:30.960 Palestinians are coming. Parents, Protect your children, read the message, 0:09:31.000 --> 0:09:34.320 which pointed specifically to several suburban areas north of Tel Aviv. 0:09:34.760 --> 0:09:36.840 Thousands of people were in one of the telegram groups 0:09:36.880 --> 0:09:39.000 where the post was shared. The post then appeared in 0:09:39.000 --> 0:09:42.640 several WhatsApp groups, which had dozens to hundreds of members. Now, 0:09:42.920 --> 0:09:45.920 there were no reports of violence in the areas mentioned 0:09:46.040 --> 0:09:48.559 in this post. This kind of thing happens all over 0:09:48.600 --> 0:09:50.840 the world and has been happening for years, and the 0:09:50.840 --> 0:09:53.880 fact that it's untrue does not stop similar viral lies 0:09:53.920 --> 0:09:57.720 from inspiring and justifying mass violence in places like India 0:09:57.760 --> 0:10:01.400 and Meanmar. In both those countries, much of this targeted 0:10:01.400 --> 0:10:04.880 disinformation was posted at the direct behest of state security 0:10:04.880 --> 0:10:08.360 agencies to further their efforts at genocide. None of this 0:10:08.440 --> 0:10:10.840 is new. It all just works much faster thanks to 0:10:10.880 --> 0:10:14.800 social media. The one truly significant change in recent months 0:10:14.880 --> 0:10:17.440 has been the addition of a direct profit motive to 0:10:17.480 --> 0:10:20.600 sharing lies. The best recent example of this is a 0:10:20.600 --> 0:10:24.000 fellow named Mario Naffall. He's a con artist and a 0:10:24.040 --> 0:10:26.920 crypto scammer who embezzled from his own company and has 0:10:26.920 --> 0:10:31.080 built a massive following retweeting out of context videos starting 0:10:31.080 --> 0:10:35.000 with the Wagner rebellion in Russia. Earlier this year. Elon Musk, 0:10:35.040 --> 0:10:39.040 whose ignorance of that conflict is unsurpassed, called Naffall's messages 0:10:39.200 --> 0:10:43.120 the best coverage I've seen so far. More recently, marion 0:10:43.160 --> 0:10:46.360 Na Fall has been responsible for spreading fake news about 0:10:46.400 --> 0:10:49.880 the potential capture of Nimrod Alone, who is the commander 0:10:49.920 --> 0:10:53.640 of Israel's Southern forces in the region. The video that 0:10:53.720 --> 0:10:57.160 he claimed was Nimrod alone being taken into captivity was 0:10:57.200 --> 0:11:01.680 in fact a completely different persons, actually unclear who. Mario 0:11:01.760 --> 0:11:04.640 does not know anything about anything, and I think was 0:11:04.760 --> 0:11:08.240 just lying because that would be the most salacious thing possible. 0:11:08.760 --> 0:11:11.600 It's also worth noting that Elon Musk recently made a 0:11:11.679 --> 0:11:16.000 post highlighting a couple of ocent accounts that were his recommendations, 0:11:16.000 --> 0:11:18.920 his picks for credible people to report on the conflict, 0:11:18.960 --> 0:11:21.760 and you should follow these folks. He then deleted part 0:11:21.800 --> 0:11:24.200 of that tweet and self censored himself when one of 0:11:24.200 --> 0:11:26.760 the sources he had picked referred to dead Hamas fighters 0:11:26.760 --> 0:11:29.960 as martyrs, which Elon had an issue with. Clearly, what 0:11:30.000 --> 0:11:33.120 he's doing is attempting to pick and set his own 0:11:33.360 --> 0:11:37.160 propaganda dispensers, you know, the people that, for whatever reason 0:11:37.200 --> 0:11:41.360 he thinks, are providing the most convenient narrative about what's happening. 0:11:41.760 --> 0:11:45.320 None of this should be mistaken for actual news. It 0:11:45.400 --> 0:11:48.160 is likely that much, perhaps most, of the footage on 0:11:48.280 --> 0:11:51.240 your timeline from the fighting in Gaza and Israel is 0:11:51.360 --> 0:11:54.040 reposted video that is not current. Obviously, there is a 0:11:54.040 --> 0:11:56.760 lot of current footage going out right now too, But 0:11:56.840 --> 0:12:00.439 a significant amount of it is not. I find this exastspirating, 0:12:00.600 --> 0:12:03.680 even as I wonder how much that really matters. Is 0:12:03.840 --> 0:12:07.120 sharing old footage of civilian homes being leveled by Israeli 0:12:07.160 --> 0:12:10.240 missiles really an issue when similar homes are being bombed 0:12:10.280 --> 0:12:13.560 at the same time. I do still think so, but 0:12:13.600 --> 0:12:15.600 I'm no longer sure that my feelings on the matter 0:12:15.640 --> 0:12:20.200 are quite rational. The most commonly accepted definition of intelligence 0:12:20.280 --> 0:12:23.320 of intellect that you'll find is the ability to adapt 0:12:23.320 --> 0:12:27.560 to change and select environments, or the ability to deal 0:12:27.640 --> 0:12:31.120 with change in your environment. If that is truly the 0:12:31.120 --> 0:12:35.000 best measure of intelligence, then my discussed at disinformation makes 0:12:35.000 --> 0:12:38.400 me kind of stupid. Its purveyors have had blinding success 0:12:38.480 --> 0:12:41.080 in using it to push their own narratives and to 0:12:41.200 --> 0:12:45.800 shape reality. I use the word barbarism earlier to describe this, 0:12:45.920 --> 0:12:48.960 and it's a loaded word, but not nearly so loaded 0:12:49.000 --> 0:12:53.880 as its synonym, savagery. Savagery is a word that inspires 0:12:53.920 --> 0:12:56.959 powerful emotions for good reason. It was often used by 0:12:56.960 --> 0:13:00.360 white supremacist colonizers to paint whole peoples as bad, backwards 0:13:00.400 --> 0:13:03.480 and less human, especially when they engaged in acts of 0:13:03.520 --> 0:13:07.200 resistance that were in reality no bloodier or more violent 0:13:07.280 --> 0:13:10.959 than the acts being perpetrated against them. The word predates 0:13:11.000 --> 0:13:14.360 European colonialism, though it seems to date back to around 0:13:14.400 --> 0:13:18.080 thirteen hundred, and it entered French salvage like the Cologne 0:13:18.160 --> 0:13:22.480 Johnny depphawks from the Latin salvaticus, which literally means of 0:13:22.559 --> 0:13:26.240 the woods. Why this digression because in two thousand and four, 0:13:26.280 --> 0:13:29.880 an Islamist strategist named Abu Baker Naji published a book 0:13:29.920 --> 0:13:34.160 on the Internet titled Management of Savagery. In Naj's conception, 0:13:34.360 --> 0:13:38.000 savagery was defined as terrorist attacks against civilian infrastructure and 0:13:38.280 --> 0:13:41.280 stuff like tourist facilities, which were meant to provoke violent 0:13:41.440 --> 0:13:45.920 escalations from superpowers. That violence would radicalize more people against 0:13:45.920 --> 0:13:48.840 the West and lead to a progressive degradation of social 0:13:48.960 --> 0:13:52.960 order and operational capacity in the nation's nase saw as enemies. 0:13:53.520 --> 0:13:56.040 The management of savagery was a key text for the 0:13:56.080 --> 0:13:59.240 men who wound up creating the Islamic State. Some will 0:13:59.320 --> 0:14:01.760 use this to our argue that the tactics failed, since 0:14:01.800 --> 0:14:05.079 Isis is not exactly thriving at present. To do so 0:14:05.200 --> 0:14:07.800 would be to ignore the six trillion dollars the United 0:14:07.800 --> 0:14:10.800 States lit on fire fighting, a disastrous war on terror 0:14:11.120 --> 0:14:14.720 which supercharged much of the underlying instability in our country 0:14:14.800 --> 0:14:17.240 and may yet lead to a collapse in domestic order. 0:14:18.280 --> 0:14:20.400 I will admit that I have found the framework of 0:14:20.520 --> 0:14:24.520 managing savagery useful in my interpretation and understanding of conflict, 0:14:24.760 --> 0:14:28.000 both domestic and international. In twenty twenty, I got to 0:14:28.040 --> 0:14:30.920 watch the process up close over the course of dozens 0:14:30.920 --> 0:14:35.160 of protests. The basic strategy of most Portland protests that year. 0:14:35.200 --> 0:14:37.080 When like this you got a bunch of people to 0:14:37.080 --> 0:14:39.240 march up to a police building, they would chant and 0:14:39.320 --> 0:14:41.840 yell until the police got angry and then gassed and 0:14:41.960 --> 0:14:45.200 or beat up everybody. After a while, this dynamic was 0:14:45.280 --> 0:14:49.200 widely understood and accepted by protesters. They saw their suffering 0:14:49.280 --> 0:14:51.880 and the risk that they engaged in as an acceptable 0:14:51.920 --> 0:14:55.440 trade off because it revealed the violence and savagery inherent 0:14:55.560 --> 0:14:59.600 in policing as an institution. This they hoped, would radicalize 0:14:59.600 --> 0:15:02.200 others again against it, people who watched clips of videos 0:15:02.200 --> 0:15:05.240 from the protest or who attended themselves, and for a 0:15:05.280 --> 0:15:08.200 time this strategy worked quite well. Many people who had 0:15:08.200 --> 0:15:10.920 been apolitical on the matter grew utterly hardened against the 0:15:10.960 --> 0:15:14.400 cops after a few hours in the gas clouds. People 0:15:14.440 --> 0:15:17.520 cannot endure violence, however, without being changed by it. So 0:15:17.600 --> 0:15:20.160 as the week's war on, participants grew more and more 0:15:20.160 --> 0:15:23.000 comfortable with not just property destruction, but with the use 0:15:23.040 --> 0:15:26.920 of things like molotov cocktails. One may consider a molotov 0:15:26.960 --> 0:15:30.160 to be necessary sometimes, and throughout history they often have been, 0:15:30.480 --> 0:15:33.600 But savage is as good a term to describe firebombs 0:15:33.760 --> 0:15:36.560 as any. No one was killed by any molotov that 0:15:36.600 --> 0:15:38.880 I ever saw used in Portland, but of course no 0:15:39.000 --> 0:15:42.760 protests come close to the savagery of warfare. The emotional 0:15:42.800 --> 0:15:45.080 dynamics at play are shades of each other, though, and 0:15:45.120 --> 0:15:48.000 I thought it might be useful to mention perhaps a 0:15:48.040 --> 0:15:51.360 more illustrative example would be my own experiences in Mosel 0:15:51.520 --> 0:15:54.520 in the early summer of twenty seventeen. My team and 0:15:54.560 --> 0:15:56.920 I were embedded with an Iraqi federal police unit in 0:15:56.960 --> 0:15:59.360 the Old City, where the fighting was intense and hideous. 0:16:00.000 --> 0:16:02.120 I'm under fire from a sniper. Some of the shots 0:16:02.120 --> 0:16:05.040 were so close that chipped concrete hit my helmet. The 0:16:05.040 --> 0:16:07.400 mortar team with us responded with the help of a spotter. 0:16:07.480 --> 0:16:10.120 They dropped explosive shells on homes and shops until they 0:16:10.200 --> 0:16:13.160 hit and killed the sniper. In that moment, I felt 0:16:13.160 --> 0:16:16.480 elation I've seldom felt since. After we found better cover, 0:16:16.600 --> 0:16:18.880 I began composing the scene in my head, laying out 0:16:18.960 --> 0:16:21.680 how I would write it. Then my fixer, Sangar said 0:16:21.720 --> 0:16:24.160 something that interrupted my train of thought and has remained 0:16:24.160 --> 0:16:26.880 with me ever since. Did you count how many rounds 0:16:26.880 --> 0:16:29.160 they fired before they hit him? I told him I 0:16:29.160 --> 0:16:31.680 thought it was six or seven. Maybe where do you 0:16:31.720 --> 0:16:32.800 think the others landed? 0:16:33.800 --> 0:16:34.000 From? 0:16:34.040 --> 0:16:36.280 His tone was clear what he meant. The old city 0:16:36.360 --> 0:16:38.800 was crowded. Many civilians had not yet been able to 0:16:38.960 --> 0:16:42.600 escape the Isis lines. Their homes were often next door 0:16:42.640 --> 0:16:45.640 to fighting positions, and the density of the city meant 0:16:45.640 --> 0:16:47.880 that any honest hit still had a good chance of 0:16:47.920 --> 0:16:51.120 hitting someone. Later, I met a man whose house had 0:16:51.160 --> 0:16:53.960 been hit twenty times by mortar rounds and rockets before 0:16:53.960 --> 0:16:57.240 he had a chance to escape with his family. So 0:16:57.320 --> 0:16:59.680 the glee of the moment faded. My writing about that 0:16:59.760 --> 0:17:02.560 scene was more sober, more careful, and much better. As 0:17:02.600 --> 0:17:05.199 a result, Saygur's words have helped me shape both my 0:17:05.280 --> 0:17:07.720 coverage of war and my reactions to it ever since. 0:17:08.680 --> 0:17:11.240 This shouldn't matter to people being bombed out of their 0:17:11.240 --> 0:17:14.280 homes and losing loved ones right now. It might be helpful, though, 0:17:14.280 --> 0:17:16.720 to those of us watching bloodshed from behind a screen, 0:17:17.359 --> 0:17:19.359 at least until we're the ones filming. 0:17:23.000 --> 0:17:25.359 It Could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media. 0:17:25.560 --> 0:17:28.240 For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website 0:17:28.280 --> 0:17:30.520 cool zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the 0:17:30.560 --> 0:17:34.000 iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. 0:17:34.359 --> 0:17:36.479 You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, Updated 0:17:36.560 --> 0:17:40.600 monthly at coolzonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.