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Speaker 1: We don't usually think of the American right wing as

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Speaker 1: protesters or activists. Conservatives tend to be older, for one thing,

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Speaker 1: and they also tend to be on the side of

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Speaker 1: state power, the side of law and order. Liberals and

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Speaker 1: leftists are more likely to agitate for major changes in

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Speaker 1: the status quo. But right wing activism isn't unheard of either,

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Speaker 1: and recent experience has made it clear that when the

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Speaker 1: right stands up, they can make a serious impact. The

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Speaker 1: two fourteen Bundy standoff made national news. What started as

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Speaker 1: a confrontation over Clive and Bundy's refusal to pay grazing

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Speaker 1: fees to the Bureau of Land Management turned into a

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Speaker 1: minor right wing uprising against state control. Hundreds of militiamen

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Speaker 1: from all over the country, clad in body armor and

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Speaker 1: packing military grade weaponry, stood against federal law enforcement agents

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Speaker 1: and made them back down. The militiamen got their way,

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Speaker 1: more or less, and they got their way again two

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Speaker 1: years later, when Clive and Bundy's sons led a group

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Speaker 1: that occupied the malhur Wildlife Refuge in Oregon. I was

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Speaker 1: actually near the Malhir Refuge for a little bit of that,

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Speaker 1: not at the refuge itself, but in the town of Burns, Oregon,

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Speaker 1: talking to locals about what it was like to live

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Speaker 1: through the armed insurrection of a far right militia. People

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Speaker 1: told me stories and militiamen roaring through town and pickup trucks,

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Speaker 1: carrying guns into local businesses and terrifying residents. The way

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Speaker 1: they described these men reminded me more than a little

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Speaker 1: of how citizens of Constantinevka, a city in eastern Ukraine,

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Speaker 1: described the Russian backed separatists who briefly occupied their city.

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Speaker 1: Some of these men were literal Russian soldiers, of course,

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Speaker 1: but others were foreigners and local partisans, people with no

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Speaker 1: military training but a love of guns and feeling powerful. Now.

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Speaker 1: In both Bundy occupations, the specific justification for what they

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Speaker 1: were doing was not something with a lot of broad appeal.

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Speaker 1: Their grievances were niche and rural. Most people who didn't

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Speaker 1: live near Malhor viewed the entire thing as something of

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Speaker 1: a silly farce. The occupiers were male, dick shaped candies

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Speaker 1: and care packages, and mocked as y'all. kDa. It is

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Speaker 1: a great nickname, but I don't think most Americans really

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Speaker 1: realize how fucking terrifying A true y'all Cada would be

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Speaker 1: a few thousands sufficiently motivated, organized, and angry rural Americans

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Speaker 1: have the power to bring this nation to its needs.

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Speaker 1: In the last episode of It Could Happen Here, I

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Speaker 1: envisioned the start of a second American Civil War, driven

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Speaker 1: by President Trump's refusal to leave office and a series

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Speaker 1: of urban left wing uprisings. Today, we're going to look

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Speaker 1: at another possibility, one that involves the other half of

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Speaker 1: the American political equation. Today we're talking about the revenge

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Speaker 1: of Rural America. Exit polls taken in the two thousand

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Speaker 1: sixteen election revealed that a whopping three quarters of Americans

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Speaker 1: felt the country was growing more divided. Ground zero for

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Speaker 1: this divide was the split between rural and urban voters.

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Speaker 1: One way to look at Donald Trump's upset victory is

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Speaker 1: as the revenge of Rural America. Rural areas across the

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Speaker 1: country saw an unprecedented turnout, and those Americans voted overwhelmingly

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Speaker 1: for Donald Trump. Representative Tom Cole, Republican from Oklahoma, said this,

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Speaker 1: at the time, we've got some big chisms out there.

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Speaker 1: Rural America's much more Republican than ever before. In the

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Speaker 1: two thousand eighteen midterm elections, the urban rural divide in

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Speaker 1: America was even more pronounced. Only twenty nine percent of

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Speaker 1: Democratic voters lived in rural areas, the remainder being suburban

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Speaker 1: or urban. For comparison, a whopping forty six percent of

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Speaker 1: Republican voters live in rural areas, only nineteen percent live

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Speaker 1: in cities. Urban and rural America see each other as

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Speaker 1: increasingly two different nations. The one strong commonality between them

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Speaker 1: is that they both believe the other chunk of America

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Speaker 1: hates them. A two thousand eighteen PU survey revealed that

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Speaker 1: majorities of both urban and rural America believe the rest

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Speaker 1: of the country quote looks down on them. Here's the

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Speaker 1: New York Times quote. P has never asked this question

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Speaker 1: before in a way that allows us to tell if

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Speaker 1: the sentiment is becoming more common, but election results show

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Speaker 1: that urban and rural Americans are increasingly at odds with

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Speaker 1: each other. The new survey confirms both believe the other

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Speaker 1: group doesn't understand their problems or share their values, and

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Speaker 1: political scientists warned that place based resentments no one respects

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Speaker 1: rural America or Trump is at war with cities can

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Speaker 1: be easily exploited by politicians. Kathy Kramer, the University of

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Speaker 1: what Wisconsin political scientists who helped Pew compile this report,

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Speaker 1: believes this divide has gotten worse since the two thousand

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Speaker 1: and sixteen election and that it represents something new and

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Speaker 1: dangerous in American politics. Quote. We're at a political moment

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Speaker 1: where cultural divides overlap with political divides, which overlap with geography. Now.

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Speaker 1: I find that Pew study interesting for a lot of reasons,

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Speaker 1: but the most concerning thing to me is that it

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Speaker 1: shows this divide between rural and urban America has not

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Speaker 1: always been as bad as it is today. Here's the

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Speaker 1: Times again. Quote. Registered voters in urban areas have become

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Speaker 1: more likely to identify as Democrats or leaning Democratic. The

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Speaker 1: opposite trend has been more pronounced among rural residents, with

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Speaker 1: a notable shift after two thousand eight. Before then, rural

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Speaker 1: voters were relatively evenly divided between the two parties. You

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Speaker 1: may not find this divide as frightening as I do,

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Speaker 1: but I think it presages something potentially quite terrible. In

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Speaker 1: addition to trending further right every year, the rural United

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Speaker 1: States kind this seems to be falling the funk apart.

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Speaker 1: Cattle rustling is on the rise again across the Southwest

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Speaker 1: and states like Oklahoma, Texas, and California. It's reached levels

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Speaker 1: not seen since literal cowboy days. Now modern wrestling is

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Speaker 1: usually driven by sky higher rates of drug abuse. In

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Speaker 1: other words, people are stealing cows to buy pain killers

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Speaker 1: in meth Agricultural theft of all kinds is actually on

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Speaker 1: the rise across the rural US. Entire semi trucks filled

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Speaker 1: with nuts and oranges are regularly hijacked via complex schemes

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Speaker 1: that often involve fake trucking companies. Rural America is also

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Speaker 1: growing more violent. For most of American history, living out

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Speaker 1: in the middle of nowhere was the safer decision, since

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Speaker 1: cities tended to have much higher crime rates. But last year,

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Speaker 1: for the first time in a decade, violent crime rates

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Speaker 1: and rural areas rose above the national average. America's suicide

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Speaker 1: rate also increased by more than twenty from two thousand

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Speaker 1: one to two thousand fifteen. Most of that increase happened

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Speaker 1: out in the country. The increases in violent crime and

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Speaker 1: suicide are both due at least in part to the

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Speaker 1: fact that gun ownership is vastly higher out in the country.

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Speaker 1: Scent of rural Americans own a firearm compared to nineteen

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Speaker 1: percent of city dwellers and twenty eight percent of suburban Americans.

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Speaker 1: Three quarters of rural Americans own more than one firearm,

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Speaker 1: and forty eight percent of gun owning rural Americans use

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Speaker 1: their firearm to hunt. So these people have practical experience

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Speaker 1: using a gun out in the world to hit live,

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Speaker 1: moving targets. Now stick all this together, and what do

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Speaker 1: you have? It sure looks like you have all the

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Speaker 1: ingredients you'd need if you wanted to cook up one

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Speaker 1: ass kicker of an insurgency. And if the second American

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Speaker 1: Civil War kicks off in the rural areas, I can

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Speaker 1: almost guarantee you it will start with a massive new

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Speaker 1: push for national gun control. Kamala Harris, easily one of

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Speaker 1: the primary front running Democratic candidates in the current bevy

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Speaker 1: of candidates, is outspoken about her desire to ban all

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Speaker 1: semi automatic firearms. This would ban the vast majority of

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Speaker 1: America's civilian owned guns, literally making tens of millions of

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Speaker 1: people into criminals overnight. The only weapons left legal would

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Speaker 1: be revolvers, shotguns, and bolt action hunting rifles, which are

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Speaker 1: ironically the very weapons outside of bolt action weapons most

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Speaker 1: likely to be used in violent crime. In the immediate

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Speaker 1: wake of President Trump's decision to declare a state of

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Speaker 1: emergency over the border, conservative never trumpers like Rick Wilson

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Speaker 1: took to Twitter to warn not that Trump might seize power,

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Speaker 1: that setting this precedent would inevitably lead to Democrats declaring

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Speaker 1: a state of emergency of their own over gun violence

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Speaker 1: once they were back in the Oval Office. On January eight,

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Speaker 1: during a scene and appearance, Parkland shooting survivor David Hogg

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Speaker 1: said this quote, if we really want to start talking

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Speaker 1: about the national emergency, like the President likes to talk about,

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Speaker 1: forty Americans dying annually from gun violence, is a pretty

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Speaker 1: damn good one to start with. Last year, The Atlantic

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Speaker 1: published an article by Elizabeth Gaitin evaluating the extent of

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Speaker 1: the president's emergency hours. In February two thousand, nineteen, Pacific

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Speaker 1: Standard Magazine applied that to the possibility of a national

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Speaker 1: emergency over guns. Quote. The legal infrastructure to levy an

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Speaker 1: emergency declaration Goyton rights exists thanks to the Presidential Emergency

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Speaker 1: Action documents developed by the Eisenhower administration designed to address

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Speaker 1: such extra legal actions as declarations of martial law and

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Speaker 1: the suppression of habeas corpus. These documents could potentially extend

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Speaker 1: to encompass outright firearms confiscations given the scope of a

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Speaker 1: national crisis. Now. Back during Hurricane KATRAINA, the New Orleans

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Speaker 1: Police Department ordered evacuating citizens to hand over their firearms

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Speaker 1: to the police Superintendent Edwin P. Compass the third later

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Speaker 1: declared a blanket confiscation of all firearms in the city,

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Speaker 1: saying only law enforcement are allowed to have weapons. At

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Speaker 1: the time, a federal court issued a restraining order to

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Speaker 1: stop the weapons confiscations, so they did not go through

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Speaker 1: all the way, but weapons were confiscated. And of course

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Speaker 1: that was a very different time with a Republican president

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Speaker 1: and a few hundred fewer mass shootings in recent memory.

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Speaker 1: President Harris's semi automatic weapons ban would have to be

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Speaker 1: followed by mass confiscation. Tens of millions of gun owners

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Speaker 1: will not hand over their weapons willingly. There are literally

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Speaker 1: more privately owned firearms than people in the United States,

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Speaker 1: and half of those guns are owned by just three

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Speaker 1: percent of gun owners. I'm going to give you one

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Speaker 1: guess as to which part of the country most of

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Speaker 1: those gun owners live. Earlier this year, Washington State passed

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Speaker 1: a new set of gun control regulations. The restrictions are

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Speaker 1: fairly mild compared to Kamala Harris's proposition, and the new

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Speaker 1: law is popular with the state's liberal majority. Fifty nine

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Speaker 1: percent of Washingtonian supported it, but most of those people.

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Speaker 1: Most of those supporters live in urban areas like Seattle.

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Speaker 1: In conservative, rural and suburban Washington, people are pissed. Sixteen

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Speaker 1: sheriffs have so far declared that they will not enforce

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Speaker 1: the new law. Here's the Wall Street Journal quote. Sheriff

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Speaker 1: Tom Jones of Grant County, also in eastern Washington, is

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Speaker 1: one of a number of sheriffs who have said that

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Speaker 1: they would wait for the courts to rule before telling

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Speaker 1: their deputies to enforce the new law. I swore an

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Speaker 1: oath to defend our citizens and their constitutionally protected rights,

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Speaker 1: said mister Jones, whose county voted against the gun control

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Speaker 1: measure by more than two to one. I do not

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Speaker 1: believe the popular vote over rules that now there are

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Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands of heavily armed Americans right now who

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Speaker 1: see armed resistance to the state as something aspirational as

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Speaker 1: a dream. Most of these guys, and they are mostly guys,

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Speaker 1: don't have any real combat training. A lot of them

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Speaker 1: are probably just LARPing, play acting. But the Bundy standoff

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Speaker 1: was proof that even Larper's with a shipload of a

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Speaker 1: r fifteens can scare the federal government in the face

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Speaker 1: of a major gun band. How many rural communities and

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Speaker 1: how many states would say fuck you to a democratic president.

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Speaker 1: The Yellow vest movement kicked off as a suburban and

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Speaker 1: rural movement in France, a revolt from the more conservative

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Speaker 1: sections of that country society against a neoliberal president and

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Speaker 1: his policies. I'm going to quote from the New York

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Speaker 1: Times here. The movement originated in May when a woman

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Speaker 1: named Priscilla Ludovski, who has an internet cosmetics business and

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Speaker 1: lives in the suburb southeast of Paris, launched an internet

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Speaker 1: petition calling for a drop in gas prices. She broke

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Speaker 1: down the price into its components, noting the taxes made

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Speaker 1: up more than half the cost. In France per leader

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Speaker 1: lead free gas was one point four one euros on Sunday,

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Speaker 1: or about six dollars per gallon. The petition went mostly

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Speaker 1: unnoticed until October when Eric drew it. A truck driver

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Speaker 1: from the same area as miss Ladowski ran across it

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Speaker 1: and circulated it among his Facebook friends. Newspapers began writing

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Speaker 1: out the petition, and the number of signature skyrocketed from

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Speaker 1: an initial seven hundred to two hundred thousand. Now, the

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Speaker 1: yellowvest movement in France is not a purely conservative thing

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Speaker 1: within France itself. It's actually much more divided than that.

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Speaker 1: But I think it provides a good look at how

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Speaker 1: an activist movement can launch amongst older and more conservative

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Speaker 1: segments of a modern society. I also think rising gas

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Speaker 1: prices could very well be another generator of rural rage

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Speaker 1: here in America. People who live in the country spend

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Speaker 1: more on gas because they have to drive further distances.

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Speaker 1: There is a good chance that any Green New Deal

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Speaker 1: style plan to slow global warming introduced by a democratic

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Speaker 1: administration would include to gas tax. Rural areas grow our

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Speaker 1: food in a very real way that keep the cities alive,

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Speaker 1: and the people who live in those places know it.

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Speaker 1: Just to say, air traffic controllers and stewardesses had the

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Speaker 1: power to ind a government shutdown by threatening air travel.

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Speaker 1: Rural Americans have something they too can hold captive. In

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Speaker 1: their case, it's the food supply. This would of course

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Speaker 1: require a great deal of organization, lists of demands, and

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Speaker 1: political figureheads to speak for the movement, to lend it

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Speaker 1: a shape and a sense of purpose, and I can

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Speaker 1: guarantee you that Joey Gibson, the founder of Patriot Prayer,

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Speaker 1: would at least try to be one of them. Joey

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Speaker 1: is one of the leading figures in the right wing

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Speaker 1: activist movement that's arisen since the two thousand sixteen election.

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Speaker 1: Along with the Proud Boys, Joey and Patriot Prayer have

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Speaker 1: spent the last two years brawling against Antifa with fists

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Speaker 1: and flagpoles, but they have also held numerous armed marches

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Speaker 1: in full body armor carrying rifles. Gibson lives in Vancouver, Washington.

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Speaker 1: Most members of his gang come from either suburban or

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Speaker 1: rural areas around Portland, Oregon. If you watch hours and

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Speaker 1: hourage of their footage marches and ee O rants like

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Speaker 1: I have, you'll regularly hear these people describe their constant

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Speaker 1: bloody rallies in Portland as something of a crusade. Christian

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Speaker 1: Holy warriors descending into a decadent left wing city to

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Speaker 1: purchase of sin. In the last episode, I played several

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Speaker 1: clips of Alex Jones calling for a new civil war

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Speaker 1: against the left. Joey Gibson just happens to be a

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Speaker 1: regular guest on Info Wars. Last December, he joined the

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Speaker 1: show to talk about Washington's new gun control laws. It's

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Speaker 1: out of control and I've seen the videos on your shite.

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Speaker 1: You should plug no place people can find these. We're

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Speaker 1: gonna post some of these tempful wars dot com. You're

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Speaker 1: getting crowds of hundreds and hundreds of people in small towns,

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Speaker 1: counties coming out and they are really pitched about this.

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Speaker 1: They're really upset. We had almost three people in the

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Speaker 1: county with about ten thousand people in it, and they

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Speaker 1: were extremely concerned. They're really upset. They're sick and tired

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Speaker 1: of Seattle telling them what they can or cannot do.

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Speaker 1: These people just they just want to be free, They

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Speaker 1: want to be left alone. And so I think this

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Speaker 1: is the key in states like Washington and Oregon, the

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Speaker 1: keys to go around to all the counties that believe

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Speaker 1: in the car Institution, which is about nine of the

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Speaker 1: counties of Washington State, most of our conservative Now I've

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Speaker 1: met Joey. He's not a brilliant man or a likely

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Speaker 1: pick for a right wing revolutionary war lord. He would try,

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Speaker 1: but for my money, a likelier pick for rural insurrectionist

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Speaker 1: war lord would be someone like Ryan Bundy. You've seen

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Speaker 1: Ryan on the news a few times, especially if you

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Speaker 1: kept up with the Bundy standoff back in two thousand fourteen.

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Speaker 1: He's one of the sons of Clive and Bunny, the

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Speaker 1: old racist rancher who masterminded that standoff with the Bureau

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Speaker 1: of Land Management in Bunkerville, Nevada. Ryan is the one

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Speaker 1: with the facial deformity. This has led a lot of

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Speaker 1: people online to treat him as if he is a

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Speaker 1: big dum dummy because bigotry knows no political bounds. But

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Speaker 1: Ryan Bundy is not dumb. He was probably the driving

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Speaker 1: force behind the two thousand sixteen occupation of the Malhir

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Speaker 1: Wildlife Refuge. Ryan spent months in jail over that, but

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Speaker 1: he defended himself against the court and one. Some of

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Speaker 1: this was due to the serious mistakes made by the prosecution,

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Speaker 1: but a lot of it came down to Ryan's personal charisma,

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Speaker 1: his ability to sway a jury of his peers to

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Speaker 1: believe in the righteousness of his cause. Right now, Ryan

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Speaker 1: is running for governor of Nevada. He's probably a long

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Speaker 1: shot candidate, but it doesn't really matter. Dozens upon dozens

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Speaker 1: of heavily armed men and women were willing to gather

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Speaker 1: and put their lives on the line for his family twice.

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Speaker 1: There is a weird religious crusade angle to what the

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Speaker 1: Bundees have been doing, based on a fringe Mormon prophecy.

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Speaker 1: The fantastic podcast Bundyville, which I heartily recommend, goes into

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Speaker 1: more detail on this, but the short of it is

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Speaker 1: they believe that they've been chosen by God to defend

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Speaker 1: the Constitution, or at least their interpretation of the Constitution.

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Speaker 1: This is the kind of nutbar stuff that I think

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Speaker 1: a lot of liberals are prone to laugh about. I

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Speaker 1: don't find anything funny about the Bundees. Two people have

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Speaker 1: already been radicalized into killing by their rhetoric. In June

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Speaker 1: of two thousand fourteen, Jerried and Amanda Miller, fresh from

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Speaker 1: taking part in the standoff at Bundy Ranch, drove into

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Speaker 1: Las Vegas and walked into a Cisi's Pizza with a

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Speaker 1: small arsenal. They opened fire on two officers sitting and

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Speaker 1: eating lunch, killing both. As they started shooting, the couple

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Speaker 1: allegedly yelled this is the start of a revolution. One

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Speaker 1: dead officer was covered in a Gadsden flag, another was

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Speaker 1: covered in a Nazi flag. Jared and Amanda killed one

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Speaker 1: more person, a random bystander, before dying in a gunfight

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Speaker 1: with police. Now, the Millers had a lot of other

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Speaker 1: radicalizing factors behind their rampage than just the Bundy standoff,

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Speaker 1: but it was an important step in their journey. Lavoy

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Speaker 1: Finnickham is probably a better example of a man who

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Speaker 1: died explicitly for the Bundy's. He was shot reaching for

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Speaker 1: a gun after being stopped with Ryan and his brother

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Speaker 1: Amon during the Malhir occupation. In June of two thousand sixteen,

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Speaker 1: William Keiebler, a Utah militia leader and close adherent of

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Speaker 1: the Bundies, was arrested and charged for trying to detonate

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Speaker 1: homemade bombs at a BLM building in Arizona. So that's

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Speaker 1: three distinct cases and four individual people who have been

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Speaker 1: radicalized into violent, deadly action by the rhetoric and beliefs

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Speaker 1: of the Bundy clan. In a situation where order starts

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Speaker 1: to break down even more in rural America and extremist

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Speaker 1: groups begin to tear at the fabric of our society,

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Speaker 1: you can bet the Bundy's will not just sit back

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Speaker 1: and watch. So far, the Bundy family have mostly agitated

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Speaker 1: around land rights and what they depict as the struggle

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Speaker 1: of American ranchers against the tyrannical government. But they and

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Speaker 1: their supporters are also huge backers of the Second Amendment,

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Speaker 1: and if they were to organize even violently in defense

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Speaker 1: of the right to bear arms, I think you would

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Speaker 1: see them receive a lot of support from even mainstream conservatives.

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Speaker 1: Tucker Carlson is one of the most popular conservatives in

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Speaker 1: modern America. Here's a clip from a December four, two

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Speaker 1: seventeen episode of his show. During an interview with a

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Speaker 1: gun control advocate, the fact is, we need to have

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Speaker 1: fewer guns, and we need to talk about banning entire

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Speaker 1: classes of especially dangerous firearms like US all weapons. And

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Speaker 1: I think we have to talk about not just banning them,

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Speaker 1: but requiring them people allow the government to buy them back.

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Speaker 1: So you're universal gun confiscations. What you're talking about about

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Speaker 1: universal gun confiscations. So you're saying ban a class of

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Speaker 1: firearms that would be any rifle with you know, a

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Speaker 1: capacity of more than one above a certain caliber. I mean,

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Speaker 1: I don't know what the criteria are that you're suggesting,

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Speaker 1: but basically any gun they would use for deer hunting

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Speaker 1: would be banned. No, I would make a distinction between

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Speaker 1: long guns that are technically semi automatic of the kind

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Speaker 1: like my dad uses the taunts, and semi automatic assault

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Speaker 1: weapons that have to gon owners and hunters like me.

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Speaker 1: These are meaningless distinctions. But let's just go right to

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Speaker 1: the meat of it. What do you do to people

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Speaker 1: who won't sell them back? Um? I think you. I

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Speaker 1: think you had a bare minimum sort of find them

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Speaker 1: severely for it, and build an incentive for them to

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Speaker 1: selve them ready for the civil war that would ensue

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Speaker 1: when you try and take people's guns. And I'm serious. Now,

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Speaker 1: I can't think of many Americans I personally despise more

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Speaker 1: than Tucker Carlson, but I don't think he's wrong about that.

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Speaker 1: And if large chunks of rural America declared their resistance

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Speaker 1: to the federal government, the state would not have a

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Speaker 1: lot of options for stopping them. Both rural and urban

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Speaker 1: America have seen declines in the number of police officers

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Speaker 1: in recent years, but the rural parts of this country

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Speaker 1: are the only place where that dropping cops has led

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Speaker 1: to a surge in crime. So rural Americans, who grow

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Speaker 1: most of our food feel increasingly isolated from the majority

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Speaker 1: of the United States. They are already dealing with a

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Speaker 1: significant breakdown of civil order. And oh yeah, they just

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Speaker 1: happen to have most of America's three hundred something million

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Speaker 1: privately owned firearms. We don't, don't, I hope. At this point,

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Speaker 1: I've established how very possible a rural revolt is. Now

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Speaker 1: let's take a look at how it might actually happen.

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Speaker 1: Head north from San Francisco on the I five, and

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Speaker 1: before long, the verdant green of the Bay will give

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Speaker 1: away to rolling yellow hills, creeping higher and higher until

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Speaker 1: they become mountains. By the time you hit Read in California,

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Speaker 1: about three hours north from Silicon Valley, you'll be in

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Speaker 1: a place that does not feel like cal Alifornia, or

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Speaker 1: at least not the California that most of the world knows.

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Speaker 1: Reading is not a progressive hippie town like so many

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Speaker 1: small cities in northern California. It's filled with gun stores,

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Speaker 1: gigantic trucks, Bible schools, and churches. As you near reading,

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Speaker 1: you start to see strange signs, flags that bear a

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Speaker 1: yellow circle with two exes inside it on a green background.

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Speaker 1: This is the flag of the State of Jefferson. The

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Speaker 1: double exes stand for the fact that most rural Californians

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Speaker 1: believe they have been double crossed by the big cities

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Speaker 1: where most Californians reside. The State of Jefferson movement wants

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Speaker 1: to secede from California so they can pay fewer taxes,

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Speaker 1: particularly on gasoline, which California taxes at a higher rate

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Speaker 1: than any other state. Jeffersonians or wanna be Jeffersonians, however

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Speaker 1: you prefer to identify them, also advocate for looser gun laws,

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Speaker 1: more in line with so called free states like Texas.

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Speaker 1: You see a lot of Trump flags in this part

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Speaker 1: of California, at least more than you see in other

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Speaker 1: parts of the state. Most Californians, if they've even heard

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Speaker 1: of the state of Jefferson, view it is a big joke.

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Speaker 1: The movement has existed for decades now without ever managing

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Speaker 1: to move forward on their dreams of secession. But I

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Speaker 1: can say with confidence that for many people in rural

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Speaker 1: nor Caw, the state of Jefferson is anything but a joke.

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Speaker 1: From two thousand thirteen to two thousand sixteen, I spent

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Speaker 1: increasing chunks of time in rural inland California, mostly in

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Speaker 1: the tiny mountain communities in and around Reading. You probably

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Speaker 1: haven't heard of any of the towns I lived in.

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Speaker 1: They are not tourist destinations. They have names like red Bluff, Weaverville, Dunsmere,

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Speaker 1: and Shingletown. The place I spent most of my time

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Speaker 1: was Manton, a small community tucked deep in the middle

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Speaker 1: of nowhere. Most residents in Manton either grew weed or

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Speaker 1: cooked meth. Some did both. There are two roads into Manton,

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Speaker 1: one long and lonesome road from red Bluff and a

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Speaker 1: harrepin mountain road in from Shingletown, and all the months

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Speaker 1: I spent there over three years, I did not see

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Speaker 1: a single police car. Manton is not entirely free from

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Speaker 1: the long arm of the law, but most of what

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Speaker 1: transpires there is well outside of its grasp. That fact

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Speaker 1: does not make Manton an oddity in rural California. In

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Speaker 1: two thousand eighteen, McClatchy, a media company based in Sacramento,

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Speaker 1: investigated the number of law enforcement officers in rural California.

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Speaker 1: Here's how the Sacramento Be summarized things quote. Departments in

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Speaker 1: multiple jurisdictions are operating with skeleton stabs, McClatchy found, pushing

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Speaker 1: response times into hours, or sometimes leaving residents without a

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Speaker 1: response at all. In Trinity County, deputies regularly cover hundreds

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Speaker 1: of miles of territory alone. When law enforcement does arrive

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Speaker 1: in many outlying places, it's often a single officer, cut

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Speaker 1: off from back up and in some cases communication with

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Speaker 1: his or her department. We have no money, we have

431
00:22:36,160 --> 00:22:39,520
Speaker 1: no people, said Modoc County Sheriff Mike Pointdexter, echoing more

432
00:22:39,560 --> 00:22:42,480
Speaker 1: than a dozen rural California sheriffs. We don't have near

433
00:22:42,560 --> 00:22:47,280
Speaker 1: enough people. We just don't now. McClatchy interviewed officers and

434
00:22:47,400 --> 00:22:51,680
Speaker 1: citizens and reviewed crime statistics for twenty five rural Californian counties.

435
00:22:51,960 --> 00:22:54,639
Speaker 1: These places accounted for forty one percent of the state's

436
00:22:54,720 --> 00:22:57,919
Speaker 1: land mass but just four percent of its population. McClatchy

437
00:22:57,960 --> 00:23:00,480
Speaker 1: found that from two thousand eight to two thousands. Seventeen,

438
00:23:00,760 --> 00:23:03,320
Speaker 1: the number of rural deputies in these areas dropped from

439
00:23:03,400 --> 00:23:05,920
Speaker 1: seventeen hundred and fifty eight to sixteen hundred and ten.

440
00:23:06,359 --> 00:23:09,480
Speaker 1: This means roughly sixteen hundred men and women are responsible

441
00:23:09,480 --> 00:23:13,119
Speaker 1: for maintaining order in nearly half of America's third largest state.

442
00:23:14,200 --> 00:23:16,479
Speaker 1: Right now, the state of Jefferson is only in favor

443
00:23:16,480 --> 00:23:19,040
Speaker 1: of seceding from California. They want to be the United

444
00:23:19,080 --> 00:23:21,960
Speaker 1: States is fifty first state. But if you listen to

445
00:23:21,960 --> 00:23:24,199
Speaker 1: how these people talk, the amount of anger they have

446
00:23:24,320 --> 00:23:27,320
Speaker 1: for urban Californians, you might conclude that they could be

447
00:23:27,359 --> 00:23:30,840
Speaker 1: convinced to take more extreme action. I found an l

448
00:23:30,880 --> 00:23:33,320
Speaker 1: A Times article about the state of Jefferson. The journalist

449
00:23:33,359 --> 00:23:34,960
Speaker 1: who wrote it went to a meeting some of these

450
00:23:34,960 --> 00:23:37,160
Speaker 1: people held, and he quoted the speech of a prominent

451
00:23:37,200 --> 00:23:41,040
Speaker 1: State of Jefferson advocate, Mark Baird, a rancher in Siskiyou County.

452
00:23:41,440 --> 00:23:44,800
Speaker 1: Mark told his fellow rural Californians, you're the ones being

453
00:23:44,840 --> 00:23:48,800
Speaker 1: exterminated by a lack of liberty. Now that language, the

454
00:23:48,840 --> 00:23:52,800
Speaker 1: word exterminated. That's how you prime people for violence. And

455
00:23:52,840 --> 00:23:55,440
Speaker 1: there is enough truth behind his words to make them stick.

456
00:23:55,840 --> 00:23:59,159
Speaker 1: Rural Californians are just as poor as rural Texans, but

457
00:23:59,200 --> 00:24:02,720
Speaker 1: they're also burden by California's much higher taxes. A gas

458
00:24:02,760 --> 00:24:05,320
Speaker 1: tax makes sense in l a in fact, it's necessary

459
00:24:05,359 --> 00:24:07,439
Speaker 1: to keep the air breathable. But if you live in

460
00:24:07,480 --> 00:24:09,840
Speaker 1: Shasta County and you need a big truck to do

461
00:24:09,880 --> 00:24:11,600
Speaker 1: the kind of work people do out in the sticks,

462
00:24:11,640 --> 00:24:13,680
Speaker 1: and you've got to drive eighty miles a day paying

463
00:24:13,720 --> 00:24:17,800
Speaker 1: California gas prices well twelve extra since per gallon, is

464
00:24:17,840 --> 00:24:20,960
Speaker 1: a real hardship. And by the way, these people love

465
00:24:21,080 --> 00:24:24,880
Speaker 1: Donald Trump. The president currently enjoys a s approval rating

466
00:24:24,920 --> 00:24:27,960
Speaker 1: in rural America. If Trump is voted out or impeached,

467
00:24:28,080 --> 00:24:30,160
Speaker 1: it would not take much to get millions of people

468
00:24:30,200 --> 00:24:32,840
Speaker 1: to believe this was part of some deep state conspiracy

469
00:24:32,880 --> 00:24:36,480
Speaker 1: to steal liberty and also guns. That exact fear is

470
00:24:36,560 --> 00:24:39,320
Speaker 1: literally what caused the birth of the American militia movement

471
00:24:39,359 --> 00:24:41,800
Speaker 1: back in the late nineteen eighties. Now at the time

472
00:24:41,840 --> 00:24:43,719
Speaker 1: they called it the New World Order, but the basic

473
00:24:43,800 --> 00:24:46,320
Speaker 1: idea is that a socialist government was coming to take

474
00:24:46,359 --> 00:24:49,600
Speaker 1: their guns. That's why all these militias started. People like

475
00:24:49,640 --> 00:24:53,199
Speaker 1: Timothy McVeigh have killed over this stuff before So if

476
00:24:53,280 --> 00:24:56,240
Speaker 1: rural America decides to revolt, what would that look like.

477
00:24:56,760 --> 00:24:59,320
Speaker 1: How could four percent of a state effectively fight back

478
00:24:59,320 --> 00:25:01,720
Speaker 1: against the night the six percent who live in cities.

479
00:25:02,680 --> 00:25:05,480
Speaker 1: It is impossible to overstate the importance of the Golden

480
00:25:05,520 --> 00:25:08,000
Speaker 1: State to the rest of America, not because of Silicon

481
00:25:08,119 --> 00:25:12,320
Speaker 1: Valley or Hollywood, but because California feeds this country. It

482
00:25:12,440 --> 00:25:15,399
Speaker 1: leads the state in cash receipts for crops forty seven

483
00:25:15,440 --> 00:25:18,480
Speaker 1: billion dollars a year and much more. At this point.

484
00:25:18,520 --> 00:25:21,320
Speaker 1: The nearest state behind it, Iowa, is only twenty seven

485
00:25:21,320 --> 00:25:24,240
Speaker 1: billion in receipts. Texas only generates twenty three and a

486
00:25:24,280 --> 00:25:35,400
Speaker 1: half billion. California's cash receipts for agriculture were more than Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Arizona,

487
00:25:35,560 --> 00:25:39,760
Speaker 1: and New Mexico combined. The state leads the nation in

488
00:25:39,840 --> 00:25:42,960
Speaker 1: sixty six crucial crops and grows more than nine of

489
00:25:43,000 --> 00:25:52,040
Speaker 1: the nation's almonds, artichokes, dates, figs, raisins, kiwi's olives, peaches, pistachios, prunes, pomegranates,

490
00:25:52,119 --> 00:25:56,000
Speaker 1: sweet rice, and walnuts. The bulk of California's food, including

491
00:25:56,040 --> 00:25:59,320
Speaker 1: nearly all its beef, comes from the densely farmed Central Valley,

492
00:25:59,600 --> 00:26:02,359
Speaker 1: but seven many five percent of California's water comes from

493
00:26:02,400 --> 00:26:05,600
Speaker 1: the watersheds north of Sacramento, which means the so called

494
00:26:05,640 --> 00:26:08,640
Speaker 1: state of Jefferson, were it to organize itself and revolt,

495
00:26:08,840 --> 00:26:11,920
Speaker 1: could cut off access to the water that makes California's

496
00:26:11,920 --> 00:26:16,119
Speaker 1: agriculture possible. Eight percent of California's water demand is in

497
00:26:16,160 --> 00:26:19,600
Speaker 1: the southern two thirds of the state. Right now, it

498
00:26:19,680 --> 00:26:21,560
Speaker 1: still seems like a long shot. But in the wake

499
00:26:21,560 --> 00:26:24,520
Speaker 1: of a massive, sweeping gun band and remember most economists

500
00:26:24,560 --> 00:26:27,040
Speaker 1: say we're right around the corner from another massive economic crash.

501
00:26:27,359 --> 00:26:29,879
Speaker 1: I brought up the Occupy movement last episode two and

502
00:26:29,920 --> 00:26:32,360
Speaker 1: how a similar movement might cause a right wing crackdown

503
00:26:32,400 --> 00:26:34,840
Speaker 1: that sparks the Civil War. I can see that same

504
00:26:34,880 --> 00:26:37,400
Speaker 1: sort of activist movement providing an opportunity for a far

505
00:26:37,520 --> 00:26:41,320
Speaker 1: right rural insurgent movement. After all, Occupy rose up itself

506
00:26:41,359 --> 00:26:44,560
Speaker 1: after the election of a Democratic president in an economic collapse.

507
00:26:44,840 --> 00:26:47,679
Speaker 1: Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, and Beto O'Rourke, three of the

508
00:26:47,720 --> 00:26:52,160
Speaker 1: most prominent potential Democratic candidates, are all very unpopular among

509
00:26:52,200 --> 00:26:55,040
Speaker 1: the far left. So imagine this assault weapons band is

510
00:26:55,119 --> 00:26:57,399
Speaker 1: enacted while the economy is in the shitter, and cities

511
00:26:57,440 --> 00:27:00,560
Speaker 1: across the US are convulsed with protests and of patients.

512
00:27:01,000 --> 00:27:04,119
Speaker 1: Even if these occupations and protests avoid the rioting I

513
00:27:04,200 --> 00:27:07,240
Speaker 1: theorized about last episode, it would still take a massive

514
00:27:07,280 --> 00:27:09,600
Speaker 1: toll on law enforcement, and that would look a lot

515
00:27:09,640 --> 00:27:12,639
Speaker 1: like opportunity to rural separatists who are sick and tired

516
00:27:12,640 --> 00:27:15,520
Speaker 1: of city folk telling them what to do. All the

517
00:27:15,560 --> 00:27:18,600
Speaker 1: water that grows California's crops is pumped south. It doesn't

518
00:27:18,600 --> 00:27:21,520
Speaker 1: just slide down there naturally. Pumps can be blown up.

519
00:27:21,840 --> 00:27:24,320
Speaker 1: The crops grown in the Central Valley are all transported

520
00:27:24,320 --> 00:27:27,440
Speaker 1: by trucks traveling on highways. Few I e d s

521
00:27:27,480 --> 00:27:30,480
Speaker 1: could cripple transit for days, and it just so happens

522
00:27:30,520 --> 00:27:33,040
Speaker 1: that rural America is a wash in and ingredient you

523
00:27:33,080 --> 00:27:35,240
Speaker 1: would need to make a really great I E D.

524
00:27:36,200 --> 00:27:39,639
Speaker 1: Tanna write is a bipartite explosive compound. It is safe

525
00:27:39,640 --> 00:27:42,359
Speaker 1: to handle, not explosive until mixed, and even then only

526
00:27:42,400 --> 00:27:45,240
Speaker 1: explosive when used with a detonator or shot with a rifle.

527
00:27:45,720 --> 00:27:47,960
Speaker 1: But tanna wite can be converted into something much more

528
00:27:48,040 --> 00:27:51,840
Speaker 1: dangerous with ease David Cocolin, the counterinsurgency expert in former

529
00:27:51,880 --> 00:27:55,359
Speaker 1: State Department strategists, told me this. I am astounded. You

530
00:27:55,359 --> 00:27:57,960
Speaker 1: can buy Tanna Write online. Tanna Write is basically amin.

531
00:27:58,000 --> 00:28:00,240
Speaker 1: All World War two bombs were filled with this stuff

532
00:28:00,240 --> 00:28:02,720
Speaker 1: that is essentially the same thing set up by impact

533
00:28:02,800 --> 00:28:04,680
Speaker 1: or a small T and T charge. I see no

534
00:28:04,800 --> 00:28:07,080
Speaker 1: legitimate purpose to tanner wite. If you took the ammonium

535
00:28:07,160 --> 00:28:10,640
Speaker 1: nitrate compound, you would then have a substance called ANFO,

536
00:28:10,880 --> 00:28:15,680
Speaker 1: the classic ira a explosive. Now, Kilcolan told me that

537
00:28:15,760 --> 00:28:18,240
Speaker 1: anyone in a farming community has access to the chemicals

538
00:28:18,280 --> 00:28:20,439
Speaker 1: you would need to turn tanner wite into anto and

539
00:28:20,480 --> 00:28:23,119
Speaker 1: that quote it's very safe to use and transport as

540
00:28:23,119 --> 00:28:26,720
Speaker 1: an insurgent. So for full disclosure, I myself have used

541
00:28:26,720 --> 00:28:28,560
Speaker 1: Tanna Write dozens of times over the years and I

542
00:28:28,600 --> 00:28:30,560
Speaker 1: love it. Normally, you only set up like a half

543
00:28:30,600 --> 00:28:32,280
Speaker 1: pound charge and you shoot it with a rifle from

544
00:28:32,280 --> 00:28:34,359
Speaker 1: a distance and it blows up and it's fun. I

545
00:28:34,359 --> 00:28:36,159
Speaker 1: can remember one time my friends and I set a

546
00:28:36,200 --> 00:28:39,000
Speaker 1: four pound charge one time, and only one time, because

547
00:28:39,000 --> 00:28:41,200
Speaker 1: it left a fucking crater and rained dirt down on

548
00:28:41,200 --> 00:28:43,640
Speaker 1: our heads from two hundred feet away. A lot of

549
00:28:43,640 --> 00:28:46,560
Speaker 1: Americans owned tanner Write, not just in California. When I

550
00:28:46,640 --> 00:28:48,800
Speaker 1: lived in Texas, I had twenty pounds at a time

551
00:28:48,840 --> 00:28:52,280
Speaker 1: delivered to my door. Tanna Wite gets its name from

552
00:28:52,280 --> 00:28:55,360
Speaker 1: its inventor, a guy named David Tanner. Mr. Tanner lives

553
00:28:55,360 --> 00:28:57,760
Speaker 1: in Oregon, and that's where most tanner Wite is made.

554
00:28:58,160 --> 00:29:00,400
Speaker 1: Residents of the so called state of Jefferson would only

555
00:29:00,480 --> 00:29:02,320
Speaker 1: have to drive a couple hours to buy it straight

556
00:29:02,320 --> 00:29:05,640
Speaker 1: from the source. So say a rural insurgency starts, and

557
00:29:05,680 --> 00:29:09,240
Speaker 1: say this insurgency strikes at southern California's water supply, maybe

558
00:29:09,240 --> 00:29:11,440
Speaker 1: going after the pumps and the Taha Choppi mountains that

559
00:29:11,480 --> 00:29:14,280
Speaker 1: carry it south. Or maybe they focus on bombing highways,

560
00:29:14,320 --> 00:29:17,280
Speaker 1: shutting down transit on the roads of America's most populous state.

561
00:29:17,760 --> 00:29:20,240
Speaker 1: A few hundred committed insurgents with a good plan and

562
00:29:20,320 --> 00:29:24,240
Speaker 1: decent organization could do a tremendous amount of damage this way.

563
00:29:24,600 --> 00:29:28,520
Speaker 1: Law enforcement, already wildly undermanned in rural California, would need

564
00:29:28,560 --> 00:29:30,280
Speaker 1: to bring in help from the cities, and if those

565
00:29:30,320 --> 00:29:33,840
Speaker 1: cities are convulsed with big gas occupy style protests, well,

566
00:29:34,680 --> 00:29:36,880
Speaker 1: at some point the government would have to deploy troops

567
00:29:36,960 --> 00:29:39,680
Speaker 1: to secure the nation's food supply. This would be a

568
00:29:39,760 --> 00:29:42,320
Speaker 1: terrifying precedent for a number of reasons. For one thing,

569
00:29:42,520 --> 00:29:45,480
Speaker 1: most U S soldiers come from rural areas, and California

570
00:29:45,520 --> 00:29:47,600
Speaker 1: is one of the major recruiting grounds for the United

571
00:29:47,600 --> 00:29:50,680
Speaker 1: States military. The d o D would have to take

572
00:29:50,720 --> 00:29:53,400
Speaker 1: great care to ensure soldiers weren't being sent to pacify

573
00:29:53,480 --> 00:29:56,360
Speaker 1: unrest being generated by their own friends and family members.

574
00:29:56,840 --> 00:29:58,720
Speaker 1: That might lead to the same sort of situation we

575
00:29:58,760 --> 00:30:02,880
Speaker 1: see in Afghanistan, constant insider attacks and desertions, where soldiers

576
00:30:02,880 --> 00:30:05,480
Speaker 1: take their experience and their weapons and melt into the

577
00:30:05,480 --> 00:30:09,320
Speaker 1: deep woods with their comrades. Their new comrades, this rural

578
00:30:09,320 --> 00:30:13,160
Speaker 1: insurgency would not stay confined to California very long. Terrorist

579
00:30:13,200 --> 00:30:16,480
Speaker 1: tactics have a nasty tendency to spread virally. A series

580
00:30:16,520 --> 00:30:19,360
Speaker 1: of truck bombings and rural northern California could lead rather

581
00:30:19,440 --> 00:30:22,680
Speaker 1: quickly to similar attacks all around the nation, not just bombings,

582
00:30:22,680 --> 00:30:25,600
Speaker 1: but hijackings. In many cases, these thefts might rely on

583
00:30:25,600 --> 00:30:28,520
Speaker 1: truck drivers themselves, allowing loads to be hoisted in exchange

584
00:30:28,520 --> 00:30:30,600
Speaker 1: for a cut of the money. Black market sales of

585
00:30:30,600 --> 00:30:33,120
Speaker 1: food would provide more funding for the insurgency, even as

586
00:30:33,160 --> 00:30:36,240
Speaker 1: food prices started to rise in the cities. Perhaps the

587
00:30:36,240 --> 00:30:38,320
Speaker 1: state and the federal government could get its shipped together

588
00:30:38,360 --> 00:30:40,440
Speaker 1: quickly enough to restore the flow of water to southern

589
00:30:40,440 --> 00:30:43,600
Speaker 1: California in a timely manner. Even so, a month or two,

590
00:30:43,640 --> 00:30:46,160
Speaker 1: even a few weeks without sufficient water would be crippling

591
00:30:46,160 --> 00:30:48,840
Speaker 1: to those farmers in their crops. Even a short lived

592
00:30:48,840 --> 00:30:51,960
Speaker 1: and very localized insurgency would cause a massive spike in

593
00:30:52,040 --> 00:30:56,120
Speaker 1: food prices. Now, food prices are traditionally the single biggest

594
00:30:56,120 --> 00:30:59,040
Speaker 1: predictor of civil conflict. Twitter and Facebook get a lot

595
00:30:59,080 --> 00:31:01,120
Speaker 1: of credit for the Arabs bring of two thousand eleven,

596
00:31:01,120 --> 00:31:03,840
Speaker 1: but that series of revolutions, uprisings, and civil wars was

597
00:31:03,920 --> 00:31:06,920
Speaker 1: sparked in large part by the price of grain. I'd

598
00:31:06,920 --> 00:31:08,680
Speaker 1: like to read a couple of quotes from a wonderful

599
00:31:08,680 --> 00:31:11,680
Speaker 1: Guardian article titled use your loaf. While food prices were

600
00:31:11,680 --> 00:31:14,560
Speaker 1: crucial to the Arab spring, when grain prices spiked in

601
00:31:14,560 --> 00:31:16,440
Speaker 1: two thousand seven to two thousand and eight, Egypt's bread

602
00:31:16,480 --> 00:31:19,160
Speaker 1: prices rose thirty seven percent, with unemployment rising as well.

603
00:31:19,240 --> 00:31:21,560
Speaker 1: More people depended on subsidized bread, but the government did

604
00:31:21,560 --> 00:31:24,520
Speaker 1: not make any more available. Egypt's annual food price inflation

605
00:31:24,600 --> 00:31:27,280
Speaker 1: continued and had had eighteen point nine percent before the

606
00:31:27,320 --> 00:31:30,120
Speaker 1: fall of President Mubarak. The first protests of the Arab

607
00:31:30,200 --> 00:31:32,280
Speaker 1: Spring in Tunisia in December two thousand and ten were

608
00:31:32,360 --> 00:31:35,880
Speaker 1: quickly dismissed as another bout of bread riots, but of

609
00:31:35,880 --> 00:31:39,160
Speaker 1: course those protests led to the overthrow of the Tunisian dictator.

610
00:31:39,680 --> 00:31:41,959
Speaker 1: This is not just a Middle Eastern thing. Food prices

611
00:31:41,960 --> 00:31:45,240
Speaker 1: are the number one predictor of unrest worldwide. If rural

612
00:31:45,240 --> 00:31:47,960
Speaker 1: America decided to go to war, they have a number

613
00:31:48,000 --> 00:31:50,360
Speaker 1: of very convenient choke points they could use to attack

614
00:31:50,440 --> 00:31:53,520
Speaker 1: their urban enemies. Many of these insurgents would consider it

615
00:31:53,560 --> 00:31:56,840
Speaker 1: revenge for decades of mockery, neglect, and environmental policies that

616
00:31:56,880 --> 00:31:59,960
Speaker 1: burdened them far more than is fair. These resentments exist

617
00:32:00,160 --> 00:32:01,960
Speaker 1: right now. All it would take is a few hundred

618
00:32:02,000 --> 00:32:04,840
Speaker 1: people in a geographically discrete part of the country like

619
00:32:04,920 --> 00:32:08,360
Speaker 1: northern California to turn this anger into action. So it

620
00:32:08,440 --> 00:32:10,800
Speaker 1: should at this point be easy to imagine rising food

621
00:32:10,800 --> 00:32:13,320
Speaker 1: prices in the midst of a recession escalating the number

622
00:32:13,320 --> 00:32:15,800
Speaker 1: and violence of these protests that we were already seeing

623
00:32:15,840 --> 00:32:19,120
Speaker 1: in cities across the nation. Desperation causes the government to

624
00:32:19,120 --> 00:32:22,080
Speaker 1: approve more and more violent tactics to deal with the insurgents,

625
00:32:22,120 --> 00:32:25,440
Speaker 1: which inspires more rural anger and probably causes more attacks.

626
00:32:25,800 --> 00:32:29,440
Speaker 1: We've watched this happen before in numerous countries. The bombing

627
00:32:29,440 --> 00:32:31,520
Speaker 1: of trucks and highways to cut off food is a

628
00:32:31,600 --> 00:32:33,280
Speaker 1: tactic that could work in almost every part of the

629
00:32:33,360 --> 00:32:36,040
Speaker 1: United States. Only four percent of the food consumed by

630
00:32:36,080 --> 00:32:39,040
Speaker 1: Americans is locally produced. More than seventy percent of the

631
00:32:39,040 --> 00:32:41,560
Speaker 1: food that gets to our cities does so via trucks.

632
00:32:41,600 --> 00:32:44,760
Speaker 1: We are incredibly vulnerable to attacks on our highways, and

633
00:32:44,800 --> 00:32:46,920
Speaker 1: this country is filled with people who have the means

634
00:32:46,960 --> 00:32:51,280
Speaker 1: and motivation to apply this sort of violence. In November eighteen,

635
00:32:51,400 --> 00:32:53,760
Speaker 1: over the space of about a week, two major busts

636
00:32:53,880 --> 00:32:56,560
Speaker 1: by US law enforcement officers led to the arrests of

637
00:32:56,560 --> 00:33:00,120
Speaker 1: more than eighty Neo Nazis and white supremacists. They are

638
00:33:00,120 --> 00:33:03,000
Speaker 1: members of gangs with names like the Unforgiven and the

639
00:33:03,160 --> 00:33:06,240
Speaker 1: Aryan Brotherhood. Thirty nine of the arrested were members of

640
00:33:06,240 --> 00:33:09,280
Speaker 1: a Neo Nazi gang from rural Florida. These Nazis were

641
00:33:09,280 --> 00:33:12,840
Speaker 1: found with meth fentanyl more than a hundred firearms, several

642
00:33:12,840 --> 00:33:16,080
Speaker 1: pipe bombs, and one rocket launcher. In a more violent

643
00:33:16,120 --> 00:33:18,280
Speaker 1: and less settled America, those men and women could have

644
00:33:18,320 --> 00:33:21,840
Speaker 1: formed the nexus of a deadly regional insurgency. And trust me,

645
00:33:22,120 --> 00:33:24,360
Speaker 1: there are thousands of people like them all around the

646
00:33:24,360 --> 00:33:27,800
Speaker 1: country who have not yet been busted hell. That same week,

647
00:33:27,920 --> 00:33:31,360
Speaker 1: police in Green Bay, Wisconsin, responding to a domestic disturbance call,

648
00:33:31,560 --> 00:33:35,760
Speaker 1: found a man with swastika tattoos and an underground bomb laboratory.

649
00:33:36,000 --> 00:33:38,320
Speaker 1: When I start talking about the state of Jefferson turning

650
00:33:38,320 --> 00:33:41,240
Speaker 1: into a violent insurgency, when I talk about rednecks bombing

651
00:33:41,240 --> 00:33:44,959
Speaker 1: water pump stations and hijacking trucks, it probably sounds far fetched.

652
00:33:45,320 --> 00:33:47,400
Speaker 1: But the kind of people who want that future, who

653
00:33:47,400 --> 00:33:49,560
Speaker 1: are just itching for the chance to go Taliban on

654
00:33:49,600 --> 00:33:52,600
Speaker 1: all of our asses, those people exist right now. They

655
00:33:52,600 --> 00:33:55,560
Speaker 1: aren't the majority of rural America or of conservatives, but

656
00:33:55,600 --> 00:33:57,920
Speaker 1: they don't need to be. A few thousand of violent

657
00:33:57,960 --> 00:34:00,960
Speaker 1: extremists spread out across a few dozen states could do

658
00:34:01,080 --> 00:34:05,360
Speaker 1: damage wildly out of proportion to their numbers. We don't.

659
00:34:06,200 --> 00:34:17,319
Speaker 1: We don't. Right I find myself drawn back regularly to

660
00:34:17,320 --> 00:34:19,719
Speaker 1: the notes I took in my interview with David Kilcullen,

661
00:34:19,880 --> 00:34:23,120
Speaker 1: one of the world's great counterinsurgency experts. We were talking

662
00:34:23,160 --> 00:34:25,520
Speaker 1: about the best way to cripple this country and he

663
00:34:25,600 --> 00:34:28,920
Speaker 1: said this quote. You don't try to generate a mass movement,

664
00:34:28,960 --> 00:34:30,479
Speaker 1: You don't try to get the state to crack down

665
00:34:30,480 --> 00:34:33,040
Speaker 1: on you. Instead, you try to generate a sectarian civil

666
00:34:33,040 --> 00:34:37,080
Speaker 1: war so intense that it makes the society ungovernable. And

667
00:34:37,120 --> 00:34:40,200
Speaker 1: that's the goal for any true revolutionary movement, right or left,

668
00:34:40,560 --> 00:34:44,680
Speaker 1: make America ungovernable. If you've been paying attention to your

669
00:34:44,760 --> 00:34:47,320
Speaker 1: a Nazi news, you may have heard about the terrorist

670
00:34:47,400 --> 00:34:50,480
Speaker 1: group Adam Woffen. With five deaths and counting to their name,

671
00:34:50,760 --> 00:34:53,080
Speaker 1: they have the highest body count of any neo Nazi

672
00:34:53,160 --> 00:34:56,120
Speaker 1: organization of the post two thousand sixteen era. While the

673
00:34:56,120 --> 00:34:58,919
Speaker 1: group has been hobbled recently by some inside drama over

674
00:34:59,520 --> 00:35:02,680
Speaker 1: Satan Them, they have active members in several US states

675
00:35:02,719 --> 00:35:05,279
Speaker 1: as well as Germany. These cells are usually three to

676
00:35:05,320 --> 00:35:08,759
Speaker 1: four members, with no communication between individual groups here, said

677
00:35:08,800 --> 00:35:12,440
Speaker 1: the German magazine Der Spiegel described them. Members are heavily

678
00:35:12,480 --> 00:35:14,720
Speaker 1: armed and prepared to make use of their weapons. Indeed,

679
00:35:14,719 --> 00:35:16,360
Speaker 1: they are getting ready for what they see as the

680
00:35:16,400 --> 00:35:19,479
Speaker 1: coming race war and so called hate camps. Weapons training

681
00:35:19,600 --> 00:35:21,680
Speaker 1: is conducted by members of the U. S Military, who

682
00:35:21,680 --> 00:35:24,359
Speaker 1: are also among the group's members. According to one former

683
00:35:24,440 --> 00:35:27,440
Speaker 1: member of the Adam Waffen Division, newcomers must submit to

684
00:35:27,480 --> 00:35:31,440
Speaker 1: water boarding in addition to other such trials. Now pro Publica,

685
00:35:31,600 --> 00:35:34,960
Speaker 1: working with the Fantastic Conflict, journalist Jake Hanrahan interviewed a

686
00:35:35,000 --> 00:35:37,239
Speaker 1: former member of Adam Waffen. I'm going to play a

687
00:35:37,239 --> 00:35:39,600
Speaker 1: clip from that here. A lot of things that they

688
00:35:39,600 --> 00:35:44,719
Speaker 1: talk about other members don't know about, of course, to

689
00:35:44,880 --> 00:35:48,759
Speaker 1: keep us, keep everyone from falling down, as it's talked

690
00:35:48,800 --> 00:35:52,759
Speaker 1: about in Siege, hit and runs. I got here and there,

691
00:35:55,440 --> 00:36:00,160
Speaker 1: stop let everyone panic. There's been no point to march

692
00:36:00,200 --> 00:36:05,560
Speaker 1: around the streets like a weak fucking pussy with white

693
00:36:05,560 --> 00:36:10,520
Speaker 1: polos and khakis and tiki torches streaming White Lives Matter.

694
00:36:12,000 --> 00:36:16,920
Speaker 1: I don't care about politicians, don't care about politics, just

695
00:36:17,000 --> 00:36:23,719
Speaker 1: wanting everyone just stopped being slaves for the system that

696
00:36:23,760 --> 00:36:27,240
Speaker 1: we're living in, living under. Her When he mentioned siege,

697
00:36:27,400 --> 00:36:29,919
Speaker 1: that's a reference to a white supremacist newsletter and book

698
00:36:29,960 --> 00:36:32,520
Speaker 1: authored by a guy named James Mason. Mr Mason is

699
00:36:32,560 --> 00:36:35,440
Speaker 1: a founding father of American Nazism and the guy who

700
00:36:35,480 --> 00:36:38,680
Speaker 1: coined the term leaderless resistance. He and his comrades have

701
00:36:38,719 --> 00:36:41,239
Speaker 1: been urging exactly the kind of war I've outlined here

702
00:36:41,480 --> 00:36:44,399
Speaker 1: for more than forty years. I write this a few

703
00:36:44,400 --> 00:36:46,920
Speaker 1: months after the birth of yet another new white supremacist

704
00:36:46,960 --> 00:36:49,920
Speaker 1: terror group in the United States. These people called themselves

705
00:36:50,040 --> 00:36:52,680
Speaker 1: the Base. Their name is literally the English translation of

706
00:36:52,719 --> 00:36:55,440
Speaker 1: Al Qaeda, who they considered to be an inspiration. They

707
00:36:55,440 --> 00:36:58,640
Speaker 1: are mostly based in the Pacific Northwest. They too, focus

708
00:36:58,680 --> 00:37:01,120
Speaker 1: on weapons training and small group preparation in order to

709
00:37:01,120 --> 00:37:04,160
Speaker 1: carry out insurgeant attacks against the U. S government. That

710
00:37:04,239 --> 00:37:07,360
Speaker 1: former Adam Woffin Gay interviewed by ProPublica, mentioned wanting to

711
00:37:07,440 --> 00:37:10,480
Speaker 1: destroy the system. He was expressing a desire to do

712
00:37:10,520 --> 00:37:14,480
Speaker 1: exactly what David Cocolin was talking about, render the country ungovernable.

713
00:37:14,960 --> 00:37:18,000
Speaker 1: These people, the neo Nazis and militiamen and white supremacists,

714
00:37:18,040 --> 00:37:20,480
Speaker 1: they all know exactly what they plan to do if

715
00:37:20,560 --> 00:37:26,080
Speaker 1: civil conflict erupts across the country. What will you do? Statistically,

716
00:37:26,280 --> 00:37:29,239
Speaker 1: You'll probably be in a city watching food prices rise

717
00:37:29,280 --> 00:37:32,759
Speaker 1: and seeing protest after protest convulse your downtown. There will

718
00:37:32,760 --> 00:37:35,239
Speaker 1: be runs on grocery stores, maybe even mass looting a

719
00:37:35,320 --> 00:37:37,880
Speaker 1: food If things get bad enough outside of the city,

720
00:37:38,040 --> 00:37:40,879
Speaker 1: roads will be closed, checkpoints with soldiers and heavily armed

721
00:37:40,880 --> 00:37:43,200
Speaker 1: cops will start to appear on the interstate. The Great

722
00:37:43,239 --> 00:37:46,680
Speaker 1: American Highway System will become militarized as the state scrambles

723
00:37:46,719 --> 00:37:49,520
Speaker 1: to pin down the insurgency. If you do live out

724
00:37:49,520 --> 00:37:52,480
Speaker 1: in the country or in a particularly conservative suburb, you

725
00:37:52,520 --> 00:37:55,560
Speaker 1: will have the additional complexity of needing to live with insurgents.

726
00:37:56,000 --> 00:37:58,640
Speaker 1: The first few months of this will be particularly difficult.

727
00:37:58,760 --> 00:38:01,080
Speaker 1: It takes time to deploy the National Guard of the Army.

728
00:38:01,400 --> 00:38:04,160
Speaker 1: Millions of rural Americans might spend weeks or months without

729
00:38:04,200 --> 00:38:08,520
Speaker 1: any realistic access to law enforcement or emergency services. Imagine

730
00:38:08,520 --> 00:38:10,960
Speaker 1: a knock at the door one night, an armed insurgent

731
00:38:11,120 --> 00:38:14,000
Speaker 1: asking for food or shelter. What do you do? It

732
00:38:14,080 --> 00:38:16,239
Speaker 1: might be weeks before the police come back or the

733
00:38:16,320 --> 00:38:18,840
Speaker 1: army arrives, and even when they do, they won't be

734
00:38:18,880 --> 00:38:21,520
Speaker 1: at every house every day. They may not even be

735
00:38:21,560 --> 00:38:23,839
Speaker 1: able to hold onto the area. So maybe you find

736
00:38:23,840 --> 00:38:27,080
Speaker 1: yourself aiding and abetting these revolutionaries, even if you consider

737
00:38:27,120 --> 00:38:29,960
Speaker 1: them terrorists. For a lot of people, that will feel

738
00:38:29,960 --> 00:38:33,279
Speaker 1: like the safest decision. So far on this podcast, I

739
00:38:33,360 --> 00:38:35,759
Speaker 1: focused on just how the civil war might break out,

740
00:38:36,000 --> 00:38:38,680
Speaker 1: and past a certain point, it doesn't really matter whether

741
00:38:38,680 --> 00:38:40,560
Speaker 1: the fighting starts from a left wing or a right

742
00:38:40,600 --> 00:38:43,640
Speaker 1: wing movement. Just as a rural secessionist movement would take

743
00:38:43,719 --> 00:38:46,879
Speaker 1: unrest in the cities as an opportunity, radical leftists would

744
00:38:46,880 --> 00:38:49,680
Speaker 1: find an ungovernable America to have just as much potential

745
00:38:49,719 --> 00:38:53,120
Speaker 1: for their ideals. Most of you listening probably wouldn't pick

746
00:38:53,160 --> 00:38:55,600
Speaker 1: a side right away. It wouldn't even look like there

747
00:38:55,600 --> 00:38:58,680
Speaker 1: were sides for a while. There'd be Protestant cities, of course,

748
00:38:58,800 --> 00:39:01,480
Speaker 1: activists with lists of the hands, maybe demands you agree with,

749
00:39:01,640 --> 00:39:04,480
Speaker 1: maybe not. And there'd be insurgents terrorists out in the

750
00:39:04,480 --> 00:39:07,080
Speaker 1: country with their own demands, strangling your city and the

751
00:39:07,120 --> 00:39:10,360
Speaker 1: rest of urban America. As the government failed to restore

752
00:39:10,440 --> 00:39:13,160
Speaker 1: order and normalcy, a lot of people would find themselves

753
00:39:13,160 --> 00:39:17,200
Speaker 1: seriously questioning the government's legitimacy, probably for the first time.

754
00:39:17,640 --> 00:39:19,560
Speaker 1: We've never really had cause to do that on a

755
00:39:19,600 --> 00:39:22,360
Speaker 1: mass level in modern America. Whatever else has happened, the

756
00:39:22,400 --> 00:39:24,880
Speaker 1: state has always managed to keep the highways open the

757
00:39:24,920 --> 00:39:27,880
Speaker 1: food flowing. When that's no longer the case. A lot

758
00:39:27,960 --> 00:39:31,160
Speaker 1: more people will find themselves picking sides. For some of

759
00:39:31,239 --> 00:39:34,920
Speaker 1: us that will mean backing a protest movement demanding radical change.

760
00:39:35,239 --> 00:39:38,040
Speaker 1: For others, it will mean supporting the government, maybe because

761
00:39:38,080 --> 00:39:40,080
Speaker 1: we just want the unrest to be over. And for

762
00:39:40,200 --> 00:39:42,920
Speaker 1: a growing number of Americans, it will mean deciding they

763
00:39:42,920 --> 00:39:46,040
Speaker 1: don't want to be Americans anymore. The government would not

764
00:39:46,080 --> 00:39:49,439
Speaker 1: call it a civil war, not right away, but we'd

765
00:39:49,480 --> 00:39:53,400
Speaker 1: know now. So far, we've just talked about how the

766
00:39:53,400 --> 00:39:55,920
Speaker 1: fighting would start, and for my money, I think the

767
00:39:55,960 --> 00:39:58,359
Speaker 1: most likely beginning would involve a mix of the things

768
00:39:58,400 --> 00:40:00,560
Speaker 1: we've talked about in both of these first two episodes.

769
00:40:00,840 --> 00:40:04,000
Speaker 1: City centers occupied by activists with demands fighting the police

770
00:40:04,000 --> 00:40:07,000
Speaker 1: in National Guard, while rural insurgents carry out their own

771
00:40:07,000 --> 00:40:09,759
Speaker 1: attacks and make their own demands. Every attack from every

772
00:40:09,800 --> 00:40:12,640
Speaker 1: side accelerates the whole process and pushes the whole country

773
00:40:12,680 --> 00:40:16,200
Speaker 1: closer to chaos. Now, the state would not take all

774
00:40:16,239 --> 00:40:19,319
Speaker 1: of this sitting down, of course. There would be increasingly

775
00:40:19,400 --> 00:40:22,000
Speaker 1: vigorous attempts to right the ship and to stop the

776
00:40:22,040 --> 00:40:26,040
Speaker 1: cycle of violence. Federal and state governments would throw absolutely

777
00:40:26,080 --> 00:40:29,279
Speaker 1: everything they had at curbing the unrest and restoring order.

778
00:40:29,840 --> 00:40:32,440
Speaker 1: On the next episode, if it could Happen Here. I'll

779
00:40:32,480 --> 00:40:34,840
Speaker 1: walk you through just what that would look like and

780
00:40:34,880 --> 00:40:41,960
Speaker 1: why the system's efforts would be almost certainly doomed to fail. Genia.

781
00:40:42,840 --> 00:40:47,200
Speaker 1: We watched it from our phones, change our Facebook pictures,

782
00:40:47,680 --> 00:40:53,120
Speaker 1: congratulating ourselves, made nervous jokes and whispers. But the sexts

783
00:40:53,200 --> 00:40:58,040
Speaker 1: was sinning now and essays always listening. Wonder of this

784
00:41:00,000 --> 00:41:05,239
Speaker 1: ostrum has been dead to them low now we're all

785
00:41:05,360 --> 00:41:09,640
Speaker 1: it's just none. The one they've done. You can give

786
00:41:09,719 --> 00:41:14,319
Speaker 1: an inch and they'll just take your own. But we

787
00:41:14,440 --> 00:41:23,600
Speaker 1: don't find. We don't, right, even with Rosa Sada door. No,

788
00:41:23,880 --> 00:41:30,560
Speaker 1: we don't find. We don't right even I'm Robert Evans

789
00:41:30,640 --> 00:41:33,239
Speaker 1: and I'm just exhausted from reading all of that. You

790
00:41:33,239 --> 00:41:35,279
Speaker 1: can find me on Twitter at I right, okay. You

791
00:41:35,320 --> 00:41:38,680
Speaker 1: can find this show on Twitter at happen Here pod,

792
00:41:39,080 --> 00:41:41,239
Speaker 1: and you can find this show online at it could

793
00:41:41,239 --> 00:41:45,200
Speaker 1: Happen here pod dot com. Our music, as always, is

794
00:41:45,200 --> 00:41:46,080
Speaker 1: from four Fists