Speaker 1: Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let
Speaker 1: you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode
Speaker 1: of the week that just happened is here in one
Speaker 1: convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to
Speaker 1: listen to in a long stretch if you want. If
Speaker 1: you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
Speaker 1: there's gotta be nothing new here for you, But you
Speaker 1: can make your own decisions. Hey everybody, Uh, Robert Evans here,
Speaker 1: along with Garrison and Chris. Um, we are pre empting
Speaker 1: the episode that will be airing after this because Um
Speaker 1: of events that happened in Portland, Oregon this weekend. On
Speaker 1: Saturday the nineteen there was a weekly racial justice march. UM.
Speaker 1: The march again it occurred. Its occurred every week for
Speaker 1: a couple of years now. UM. It is instensibly led
Speaker 1: by the mother of a Patrick Kimmins, who is a
Speaker 1: Portland a young black Portland man who was killed by
Speaker 1: the police a couple of years ago. UM. This is
Speaker 1: a regular thing. As a general rule, you'll see a
Speaker 1: lot of folks in the right talking about this. March
Speaker 1: is like an Antifa gathering. Um. This almost never gets
Speaker 1: any coverage whatsoever. Because as a general rule, UM, it's
Speaker 1: it's just a march where people, you know, protest police violence.
Speaker 1: It's not something that that tends to draw much attention, UM,
Speaker 1: even within Portland's UM. This Saturday, a person who lived
Speaker 1: in the neighborhood where people were assembling for the march
Speaker 1: UM left their home confronted a group of women who
Speaker 1: were acting as corkers. Corking is a job at protests.
Speaker 1: It's a traffic safety thing. It's people on a mix
Speaker 1: of usually bikes, motorcycle scooters every now and you see
Speaker 1: like a one wheel and their job is to kind
Speaker 1: of route traffic around the march in order to keep
Speaker 1: people from getting hit by cars. UM. It is a
Speaker 1: safety thing. UM. These folks were confronted by this person.
Speaker 1: Reports on the ground that have been covered in local
Speaker 1: news from people who were there say that he started
Speaker 1: out yelling at them, calling them terrorists and um. According
Speaker 1: to one person who was on the scene, within about
Speaker 1: ninety seconds began firing. Uh. He hit and killed one woman, UM,
Speaker 1: and he wounded four others UM. And he himself was
Speaker 1: shot by a protester who was nearby, who was to
Speaker 1: all everything we know so far, legally open carrying a rifle. UM.
Speaker 1: He is the shooter. Um is in critical condition in
Speaker 1: the hospital. UM. One of the people who was doing
Speaker 1: traffic security that night is dead. UM. I believe at
Speaker 1: least one is still in the hospital. The others have
Speaker 1: been released. That's that's the the actual like, that's those
Speaker 1: are the facts of the situation as they're known. The
Speaker 1: protester who returned fire quickly afterwards turned themselves and their
Speaker 1: rifle into the police. UM. You know, the police to
Speaker 1: the stuff that they do in these instances, and then
Speaker 1: released the person who had responded defensively to the shooting.
Speaker 1: And that's where or we are right now. UM. Portland
Speaker 1: police have been very cag and saying anything about this.
Speaker 1: They have framed it as a clash between a homeowner
Speaker 1: and protesters. UM. One thing we can say, based on
Speaker 1: where this person came out of it does not appear
Speaker 1: that they were a homeowner. Looks like they left a
Speaker 1: would have been like a rental thing. Not that that
Speaker 1: particularly matters, but it's interesting the framing with the police
Speaker 1: are choosing to use here. UM. And yeah, there's there's
Speaker 1: fairly little information as of right now, the name of
Speaker 1: the shooter has not been released by the police. UM.
Speaker 1: Neither has the name of the protester who responded UM
Speaker 1: to the gunfire. But we do know, you know a
Speaker 1: number of the people who were hit. We know the
Speaker 1: person who has deceased. Avoid kind of spreading anything more
Speaker 1: specific than that until there's there's evidence. There's not yet
Speaker 1: video of this, although one of the people who was
Speaker 1: there says they have a go pro that was taken
Speaker 1: by the police that may have something. I don't know
Speaker 1: the extent to which we will get that information. Again,
Speaker 1: the police have been acting to uh kind of make
Speaker 1: this look like a clash rather than what the evidence
Speaker 1: that like reporters at OPB and the Portland Mercury and
Speaker 1: even the Times have have found, the interviews they've conducted, UM,
Speaker 1: it seems fair to say that this was a mass
Speaker 1: shooting UM that was stopped by a protester, as opposed
Speaker 1: to what I would call a clash YUM. But that's
Speaker 1: that It's obvious Portland police aren't going to want that
Speaker 1: narrative to come out very telling lee. The mayor of Portland,
Speaker 1: Ted Wheeler, issued a statement where he talked about the
Speaker 1: shooting as a piece of the city's ongoing gun crime,
Speaker 1: did not mention the woman who was killed, did not
Speaker 1: mention the injured, but expressed his sympathy with the police
Speaker 1: for being so tired. Um, so you know that's Portland's Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's pretty sick and like you shouldn't like
Speaker 1: it's not like dismissing it by saying it's Portland's saying
Speaker 1: like this is like no, there's there's been growing rather
Speaker 1: right from the city and people the past few years
Speaker 1: that have basically been encouraging something like this to happen. Um,
Speaker 1: and now that it has, it is also pretty sick
Speaker 1: looking at different like media framing and police framing and
Speaker 1: talking about it's a homeowner and how it was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was like a clash, not like an outright attack
Speaker 1: on people. Um. Yeah, so it's it's it's bad. It's
Speaker 1: it's pretty gross. But what we can do right now
Speaker 1: is support the people who were there. Yeah, they go
Speaker 1: fund me for medical expences and you know, mental health
Speaker 1: effects in thee because it's a bit some of the
Speaker 1: wounded were themselves plugging up the bullet holes of other
Speaker 1: wounded while they had also been shot. Because it was
Speaker 1: a lot of the people doubled as medics or had
Speaker 1: some sort of medical training. Um, there were medics who
Speaker 1: were like threatened by police when they arrived on scene
Speaker 1: for not being willing to stop providing um pressure to
Speaker 1: a gunshot wound. Like a bunch of ugly stuff happened.
Speaker 1: There's a mix of ugly stuff and like stuff that
Speaker 1: seems ugly but it's pretty normal. Like the ambulance did
Speaker 1: not move in immediately, which obviously people on scene were
Speaker 1: very angry about. That is standard everywhere for like ambulances
Speaker 1: at active shootings, and it's just I mean, it's not pleasant,
Speaker 1: but it's also like they're not ever acting from as
Speaker 1: much information as the people who were there maybe have.
Speaker 1: I'm not I'm not gonna blame you know, e M
Speaker 1: T S or whatnot for following s OP in this situation.
Speaker 1: I will blame the police for their responses to stuff
Speaker 1: like this obviously, and the fact that, um, you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's unlikely that a satisfying police investigation will be conductive.
Speaker 1: That said, it does seem like we already, based on
Speaker 1: the early reporting that exists from again a number of
Speaker 1: different news organizations, number of different local journalists, that we
Speaker 1: have a pretty good idea of the basics of what happened. UM.
Speaker 1: Obviously more will come out in addition to you know nothing,
Speaker 1: but respect to the medics who responded, UM, I think
Speaker 1: it's worth acknowledging that the protester who shot the shooter
Speaker 1: UM seems to have, from the evidence we have handled
Speaker 1: themselves as close to perfectly as you can in a
Speaker 1: defensive shooting. UM. They stopped the threat, UM, they went
Speaker 1: to the police, they turned in the rifle. They did not.
Speaker 1: And there's a number of reasons for this, including the
Speaker 1: fact that, like the last time there was a shooting
Speaker 1: that was involved the left wing demonstrator, that person was
Speaker 1: hunted down and killed by U. S. Marshals UM. But
Speaker 1: it also I think helps when it comes to the
Speaker 1: legal stuff that's going to wash out on this the investigation.
Speaker 1: It really helps that this person dotted their eyes and
Speaker 1: crossed their ties to make it very clear that this
Speaker 1: was a UM A very like legal self defense situation. Obviously,
Speaker 1: I think a lot of the folks who participate in
Speaker 1: these things don't particularly care about the law one way
Speaker 1: or the other. But in terms of how other people
Speaker 1: see what has happened and what the fallout to this
Speaker 1: is and maybe the degree to which people properly put
Speaker 1: some blame on the city for this. I think it
Speaker 1: is helpful that the person who responded UM with their
Speaker 1: rifle to their shooting conducted themselves so carefully. So, I mean,
Speaker 1: I have I have a lot of respect for everybody
Speaker 1: on the ground. A lot of hard decisions had to
Speaker 1: be made, UM, and it seems like in a a
Speaker 1: the worst case scenario situation, the people who were on
Speaker 1: the ground handled themselves UM with a tremendous amount of
Speaker 1: thoughtfulness and encourage. I think that's everything. Yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: think there's not nothing much else to say at this
Speaker 1: moment right now, to safe, be careful, and again the
Speaker 1: go fund me. Just type type go fund may stand
Speaker 1: with Portland into Google. It will take you to the
Speaker 1: go fund me UM and you can help folks out there. Hello,
Speaker 1: welcome to it could happen here. I'm Garrison, and today
Speaker 1: we're talking about two of my favorite things, which is
Speaker 1: unions and coffee. UM. Joining me as a usual is
Speaker 1: Chris and Sophie. What do you guys think about about
Speaker 1: coffee and unions and the combination thereof big on unions
Speaker 1: like that, like like making them like having them not
Speaker 1: big on coffee. It's it's too bitter. I can't do it. Unbelievable.
Speaker 1: Union's great coffee, great, Chris bad, Chris gets the wall.
Speaker 1: It's the ultimate canceling. That is more intense. We are
Speaker 1: coming down all the coffee issue. I don't ever tell
Speaker 1: prop that. Don't ever talk prop. You don't like coffee.
Speaker 1: I worry. Um and anyway to to join us to
Speaker 1: discuss coffee and unions is a union organizer and uh
Speaker 1: also someone with a podcast, so that's fun. Uh but
Speaker 1: Kayleie Schuler, Hello, Hello, thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1: You know what they say about unioniced coffee, that's better,
Speaker 1: It tastes better. That's yeah, that is that is that
Speaker 1: is what I have heard, much better quality. That is true.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's the problem that Chris has been having. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the that's the thing. That's a Chris jumped to
Speaker 1: jump to conclusions. But you failed, you failed to consider
Speaker 1: the uh the coffee question. Um. Anyway, we're gonna be
Speaker 1: talking about unions and coffee and Starbucks today because there's
Speaker 1: been a massive wave of Starbucks uh location unionizations around
Speaker 1: the country. And I like to start by kind of
Speaker 1: discussing the origin of this like wave of unionization efforts
Speaker 1: all across the states. Yeah. So, um, you know, I'll
Speaker 1: just stay right off the bat like, um, legalities, logistics,
Speaker 1: the nitty gritty is still not my forte and all
Speaker 1: of this. UM. So I might not do the best
Speaker 1: job explaining it, but I'm going to do my best, um,
Speaker 1: and to get into the origin story of the whole movement.
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna get into my origin story a little
Speaker 1: bit um with this effort. So UM. I started working
Speaker 1: at Starbucks last year, and uh, not long after, I
Speaker 1: was approached by uh my fellow partner, my friend Tyler
Speaker 1: de Geer, and he's also one of our committee members here,
Speaker 1: and he was like, hey, did you hear about what
Speaker 1: has happened in Buffalo? And as you guys probably know, uh,
Speaker 1: Buffalo was the first to unionize um, and so he
Speaker 1: was really excited about it. I was like, yeah, sounds cool.
Speaker 1: Probably not my thing though, um and he was like, no,
Speaker 1: it is, like, just let's talk about it. I was like,
Speaker 1: all right, fine, we talked about it. I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: this makes so much sense. We should definitely do this.
Speaker 1: So um, as far as I know, this uh started
Speaker 1: in Buffalo. They reached out to Workers United uh because
Speaker 1: they knew that this was something they needed and wanted. UM.
Speaker 1: And then when they successfully unionized, I mean, it just
Speaker 1: sparked so much inspiration across the country and we hopped
Speaker 1: on really quick. UM. Other locations in Boston also hopped
Speaker 1: on not long after, and uh, yeah, it kind of
Speaker 1: spread like wildfire. Yeah, it's been wonderful to watch the
Speaker 1: kind of wave of of of attempts and in some cases,
Speaker 1: like in a lot of cases of like successful attempts
Speaker 1: just kind of take a you know, just go all
Speaker 1: Like it's how fast they've been happening in so many
Speaker 1: different places around around the country. UM, I'd like to
Speaker 1: talk I like to talk about like why the Starbucks
Speaker 1: unionization kind of effort is so important, Like why why
Speaker 1: this is? Like of course, like unions are obviously like
Speaker 1: generally a net good, but like why specifically is it's
Speaker 1: is it important to unionize these Starbucks local shows? Like
Speaker 1: what types of like UM issues is the unization trying
Speaker 1: to kind of solve and give you know, workers better
Speaker 1: conditions at these at these stores and cafes. So this
Speaker 1: great question, And first I want to start by saying
Speaker 1: Starbucks is a great place to work. I say that
Speaker 1: all the time. I reap the benefits. There are benefits,
Speaker 1: good ones. They pay minimum wage or whatever, like, the
Speaker 1: pay is decent, We have benefits. It's really a lot
Speaker 1: of people who work at our Starbucks day it's one
Speaker 1: of the better jobs they've had. And we deserve a
Speaker 1: union for It's I mean really, in my brain, it's
Speaker 1: kind of akin to insurance. Right, you have it in
Speaker 1: case you need it. If an emergency happens, you don't
Speaker 1: have to pay the whole um e er bill out
Speaker 1: of pocket. You've got some coverage coming from somewhere, right, That,
Speaker 1: at least in my mind, is what this union is
Speaker 1: for UM. That being said, we also just want to
Speaker 1: obviously democratize our workplace. We want to have a spot
Speaker 1: at the bargaining table because we you know, we have HR,
Speaker 1: we have people to go to. But unions are partners
Speaker 1: looking out for partners, and that's it. Starbucks looks out
Speaker 1: for partners and profit. You know, it's a business. It's
Speaker 1: a huge business. UM. So this would just give us
Speaker 1: UM a stronger sense of empowerment. And uh again, I
Speaker 1: really think of it kind of like insurance, it's just
Speaker 1: us making sure we're taken care of at all times. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what what type of kind of you know, whenever the
Speaker 1: discussion of union's kind of starts at workplaces, there's always
Speaker 1: like an element of like secrecy and you know, being
Speaker 1: worried about you know, different types of suppression. So what
Speaker 1: types of kind of things that people been doing when
Speaker 1: the when the union is like trying to get trying
Speaker 1: to get trying to get off the around to organize,
Speaker 1: like like are people using like signal chats? Like what
Speaker 1: what is what is like in this in these stores?
Speaker 1: How is how are we trying to get more people
Speaker 1: to like be comfortable with this idea and get like
Speaker 1: get started with the organizing process. That's a really good question.
Speaker 1: And we're still doing that work all the time. That
Speaker 1: work doesn't really end, especially because um, it's commonly known
Speaker 1: now so I don't feel as scared to say it.
Speaker 1: But there are being there is union busting happening. It's
Speaker 1: happening all the time. Um, and it's scary and it's intimidating,
Speaker 1: and it's meant to be and it's effective, you know. So, Um,
Speaker 1: we have a majority yes vote in my store I
Speaker 1: already know that, but it also takes upkeep. It takes maintenance. Um,
Speaker 1: it takes checking in with people and you know, for
Speaker 1: my money, checking in and saying, hey, how are you
Speaker 1: feeling about this? Are you doing okay? Like I know
Speaker 1: that this is scary. I know that you're hearing things
Speaker 1: like do you have any questions? Um. It takes us
Speaker 1: doing our due diligence and researching the things that they're saying. Um.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I mean it's it's kind of a constant
Speaker 1: thing as far as like technically how it's done. I
Speaker 1: mean lots of group chats, just like, way too many
Speaker 1: group chats. That that has been most of my experience
Speaker 1: with most most political organizing in general is just way
Speaker 1: way too many group chats. Yeah, in terms of like
Speaker 1: what's Tucks is doing to start their like union busting response?
Speaker 1: Is this website that they have launched? Yeah, I I
Speaker 1: know you've I know you've tweeted about this, uh about
Speaker 1: this site. So I would love to love to discuss it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I just went off. I didn't really think
Speaker 1: much of it, you know, I just I saw it
Speaker 1: on there and just was like, this is lies. Um.
Speaker 1: I mean, well, for one. I'm trying to remember everything
Speaker 1: I've read and tweeted, but the one that's coming to
Speaker 1: mind is when they say this may affect your relationship
Speaker 1: with your store manager and it may make it difficult
Speaker 1: for to me, that is that may depends entirely on
Speaker 1: how much um, union busting Starbucks wants to do. If
Speaker 1: you want to tell our store managers that this will
Speaker 1: negatively impact our relationship with them, if that's how you
Speaker 1: want to frame it, then yeah, I probably will. Um.
Speaker 1: If you if you want to make it more difficult
Speaker 1: by not negotiating the contract easily with us, um, yeah,
Speaker 1: then that might happen. It's not that's not a union problem.
Speaker 1: That's a Starbucks problem that they are framing as a
Speaker 1: union problem. Um yeah, I can't. What were the other
Speaker 1: things that I common it on. I just like to
Speaker 1: also explain, like what the site is and what it's
Speaker 1: like trying to do. Oh sure, yeah, I mean it's
Speaker 1: it's um, it's union investing. It's uh, it's giving it's
Speaker 1: giving partners the facts that they need to know, you know, like,
Speaker 1: it's it's we want to make sure that you are
Speaker 1: informed before you vote. Know, Um, that's what that is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's this like sleekily designed page that has a list
Speaker 1: of facts about about organizing and all the reasons why
Speaker 1: it's going to negatively represent, negatively affect your relationship with
Speaker 1: the Starbucks Corporation. Oh, this was one of the points. Said, Um,
Speaker 1: the union may not negotiate for some things you are
Speaker 1: hoping for, and some things you value now might go away.
Speaker 1: That is so ridiculous. That's a threat. Yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: threat that your well being will be changed, Like we
Speaker 1: might not negotiate this contract ry nicely with you. That
Speaker 1: it the union is us. They love to talk about
Speaker 1: the third party and oh, your your store manager is
Speaker 1: gonna have to work with a steward. The steward is
Speaker 1: going to be someone who already works in the store. Yes,
Speaker 1: the steward is us. The union is us. Why would
Speaker 1: we negotiate a contract that doesn't benefit us. That's so silly,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's it's very typical union besting kind of behavior.
Speaker 1: And if you know, if they can just if this
Speaker 1: type of propaganda, you know, can just convince a few
Speaker 1: people and and and scare and scare only only a
Speaker 1: couple of the people that will be enough to kind
Speaker 1: of cause division and shutdown efforts in the store. Right,
Speaker 1: So that's that's that's all that their goal is is
Speaker 1: to prevent you know, at least one more store from
Speaker 1: not doing it. That's like as long as they do that,
Speaker 1: then it's then then then it's like successful. Um. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: And you know, based on how many people work at
Speaker 1: an individual, individual store, that's not entirely unlikely, right is
Speaker 1: it'll you know, it will, like you you, union busting
Speaker 1: efforts do work in a lot of cases, and that's
Speaker 1: why they still do them. Absolutely absolutely, yeah, And that's
Speaker 1: why it's it's really important for UM. You know, if
Speaker 1: there are any partners listening to this, UM. And partners,
Speaker 1: by the way, is what you know we call ourselves
Speaker 1: at Starbucks. UM. The the social aspect of this within
Speaker 1: your store, the checking in with your partners and seeing
Speaker 1: how they're feeling about it, and having UM as many
Speaker 1: face to face conversations as you can have and really
Speaker 1: really sticking by each other is really important because yeah,
Speaker 1: like I said, these UM tactics are tried and true,
Speaker 1: they're effective, they're intimidating, UM, and so you have to
Speaker 1: really support each other through that and keep reminding each
Speaker 1: other like, no, there's a reason we're doing this. This,
Speaker 1: this is actually still a good thing, you know, because
Speaker 1: top of our jobs, and then a lot of partners
Speaker 1: are in school or they have families, Like we already
Speaker 1: have a lot going on, and then we have to
Speaker 1: go into work and be reminded that our desire for
Speaker 1: a union is not valuable to Starbucks and so they're
Speaker 1: going to make things harder by doing all the things
Speaker 1: they're doing. Um, you have to really really be there
Speaker 1: for each other through this process. Yeah, I mean that's,
Speaker 1: you know, solidarity, one of the key of the key
Speaker 1: tenants of this type of you know, the type of organizing.
Speaker 1: I know, Chris is a pretty big union appreciator. I mean,
Speaker 1: I I like unions, but but Chris, Chris really really,
Speaker 1: really really enjoy So I'm wondering if you if you
Speaker 1: have anything he likes them so much, he'll He'll even
Speaker 1: like unionized coffee. He'll be like this coffee still, it
Speaker 1: will it will good work. Chris love the some of
Speaker 1: the there's some stores in Chicago that are unionizing, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, hmmm, maybe maybe we should check them out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you should at least at least check about and say
Speaker 1: like hi, it'd be like, yeah, great, what's a great
Speaker 1: thing to do. Um, definitely go to those stores, go
Speaker 1: up to the counter and offer you or um, order
Speaker 1: your coffee, and then ask them to write like unions
Speaker 1: strong or we love unions as your name. Um, because
Speaker 1: when the baristas are making the coffee and they still
Speaker 1: like see that sticker come through, it's we really love that, Chris.
Speaker 1: They have great tea there too, ice cream. Yeah, the tea,
Speaker 1: it's really good, or the chi Like listen, I'm saying
Speaker 1: information though about like, yeah we have there's finally a
Speaker 1: store that's like somewhat near Los Angeles where I am
Speaker 1: that that is announced that they're unionizing, which is exciting,
Speaker 1: like okay, California, way to join the party late, but
Speaker 1: you know it's it's cool ahead. Yeah. One thing I'm
Speaker 1: interested in is how how big is the shop, Like
Speaker 1: how many people are are sort of like well, I'm
Speaker 1: not not just like like just how many people there
Speaker 1: like could potentially join the union, I mean anyone could.
Speaker 1: I think we have about twenty. I could be so wrong,
Speaker 1: but I think we have around twenty partners in our
Speaker 1: store right now. Um and yeah, any well, yeah, just
Speaker 1: about anybody could join that, not anyone who's salaried. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: but I mean that seems that seems pretty common across
Speaker 1: all the different stores. Is around that it's around like
Speaker 1: twenty union eligible people per location. Seems roughly accurate based
Speaker 1: on the stuff I've seen from you know, Seattle to
Speaker 1: Philadelphia to Boston to Buffalo too, you know, all all
Speaker 1: places in between. And yeah, so part part of part
Speaker 1: of like the actual more organizational structure is a linked
Speaker 1: to Work as United. Yes, part of the part of
Speaker 1: the Service Employees International Union UM affiliate kind of a
Speaker 1: family of unions UM who's kind of led the led
Speaker 1: the campaign or you know, has been part of the
Speaker 1: campaign UM to unionize the you know, thousands of locations
Speaker 1: through the States, and yeah, I think around like eighty locations,
Speaker 1: including two of the company's flagship ones inside Seattle and
Speaker 1: New York, have have joined this this effort. And it
Speaker 1: does seem like every day there's like more stores popping up.
Speaker 1: Who are who are who are saying yeah, this is
Speaker 1: a good idea. This is whether it be to you know,
Speaker 1: be like, yeah, some of our equipment is old, and
Speaker 1: it's like, you know, it causes like keep burns because
Speaker 1: it's not like maintenance properly or being like, yeah, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of like sexual harassment caused by like some
Speaker 1: like some like patrons that never gets addressed by management.
Speaker 1: Um and or you know saying like yeah, I may
Speaker 1: be deserved to be paid more than fifteen dollars an
Speaker 1: hour UM. With rent being you know as high as
Speaker 1: as high as it is, maybe we should be paying
Speaker 1: over twenty bucks an hour. I don't know how everybody
Speaker 1: else is doing, but my rent situation is interesting. So
Speaker 1: rent has been ballooning in recent in recent months even
Speaker 1: it's been it's been really going up, which I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm sure we'll talk about it at some point on
Speaker 1: the show here, but yeah, like there's a lot of
Speaker 1: there's a lot of issues that ares being like, yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe people should be paid more, people should be at
Speaker 1: the bargaining table. There's a lot of things to address
Speaker 1: to make it a safer workplace, to make it a
Speaker 1: workplace where you're more respected. Um. And it's uh, it's
Speaker 1: really nice to see people saying, yeah, I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: put up with the city more and we can do
Speaker 1: something about it, because like there are mechanisms to to
Speaker 1: do this right, that's why it's happening. So that's that's
Speaker 1: very uh, very exciting to see is taking place. It
Speaker 1: really is, and it you know, you make a lot
Speaker 1: of great points and bring up a lot of the
Speaker 1: benefits of having a union, and its just like it
Speaker 1: just surprises me how anti union Starbucks is is period um,
Speaker 1: because it's just it's like, I don't know, you, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you paint such a beautiful picture, because it is a
Speaker 1: beautiful picture to have autonomy and um, respect and empowerment
Speaker 1: in the workplace. You know, they they train us to
Speaker 1: work through the lens of humanity, you know, by their
Speaker 1: words and U it's pretty humane to let people have
Speaker 1: a say, a real stay in the workplace, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it kind of exposes that type of you know,
Speaker 1: pretty pretty corporate language, that formative. Yeah, exactly. It's um,
Speaker 1: I am interested in like the other like kind of
Speaker 1: union busting or soft union busting kind of stuff going
Speaker 1: on even like before this website in terms of how
Speaker 1: like man like how like management has been responding, um
Speaker 1: and how more like like what like what like the
Speaker 1: local responses to wind stores start talking about this, Yeah,
Speaker 1: And and another fall up to that is I noticed
Speaker 1: that COVID was mentioned on this on this website. Is
Speaker 1: that being brought up within union busting at all or
Speaker 1: is that brought I just it was like a huge
Speaker 1: red flag for me that they used like, well, we
Speaker 1: helped you during COVID, we were there for you, which
Speaker 1: really did not. That's like that's like that's like that's
Speaker 1: like abusive terminology. That is pretty manipulative to be like
Speaker 1: we we helped you during a pandemic. It's it's like, well, yes,
Speaker 1: as you should, because yeah, you're the place where I
Speaker 1: was employed. I give something to you, you give something
Speaker 1: to me. And yeah, and as I Twitter ranted in
Speaker 1: the comment, you know, like with peace and love. We
Speaker 1: had to beg to get our cafe closed out like
Speaker 1: we we Like, it wasn't like we just uh cases
Speaker 1: rose and they came in said, hey guys, we're gonna
Speaker 1: close it like we had. We were calling and um
Speaker 1: making a stink and I mean we were talking about striking,
Speaker 1: but then remembered we're not unionized yet we didn't, but
Speaker 1: uh yeah, I mean it was we Yeah, we were
Speaker 1: really fed up. Um people sitting in there for hours
Speaker 1: with their faces out, you know, as cases were rising.
Speaker 1: So UM, Yeah, great point. That's really pretty manipulative, because
Speaker 1: like you should be helping us through covid. UM. That's
Speaker 1: not like a that's not a benefit, that's just that's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not killing people. It's like should should be something
Speaker 1: that's just kind of always there. Shouldn't shouldn't be an extra,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah. And I mean as far as UM,
Speaker 1: you a sort of local UM interference, I guess I'll
Speaker 1: say UM, I do want to say UM. In my case,
Speaker 1: our store manager, UM, I really care about her. UM.
Speaker 1: I have a great working relationship with her. I really
Speaker 1: respect her. She's done a lot of good for our store. UM,
Speaker 1: and she's really just doing the best she can having
Speaker 1: conversations with us. UM. She has her opinions and feelings
Speaker 1: about it, and I just try to listen to them,
Speaker 1: and she listens to mine. UM. But there definitely Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean as soon as we filed for an election,
Speaker 1: we started actually as soon as we started organizing, and
Speaker 1: they sort of caught wind. UM. We started having barista meetings,
Speaker 1: which are as vague as they sound, UM, And people
Speaker 1: who had worked there longer than me said, we've never
Speaker 1: had these before. UM. Maybe once you know and if years. Um,
Speaker 1: So we started having all these meetings and not even
Speaker 1: talking about the union at first, but all of a
Speaker 1: sudden they wanted to hear from us and fix things
Speaker 1: in the store and and all this stuff and be
Speaker 1: super helpful and present. And then there definitely just was
Speaker 1: a heightened corporate presence in the store. Um, people we've
Speaker 1: never seen before coming in, like, hey, how are you doing?
Speaker 1: Want to talk? It's like, no, you're a stranger. I
Speaker 1: don't how to talk to you. Um. So that was weird. Um,
Speaker 1: but yeah, yeah, there's there's definitely definitely just a shift
Speaker 1: in presence. Um. Again, any of these meetings and um, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's been interesting. What what do you kind of how
Speaker 1: do you see like the situation resolving? Like do you
Speaker 1: do you like how how like do you have has
Speaker 1: also like yeah, what's like the state of of of
Speaker 1: your stores specifically? Yeah, so we are on our way
Speaker 1: to an election. Um, we've requested an election. Uh so
Speaker 1: we're really just like in a waiting period for that.
Speaker 1: We don't know exactly when it's gonna be. We've heard soon, um,
Speaker 1: but who knows when that is? Um. We yeah, we
Speaker 1: have some we we had to do a zoom hearing
Speaker 1: for some of the legalities for things here in Massachusetts.
Speaker 1: That was interesting. But yeah, so we're we're just waiting
Speaker 1: for the election at this point. And the election is
Speaker 1: what will uh you know, that's when we're gonna cast
Speaker 1: our yes or no vote UM, and we will find
Speaker 1: out whether or not we're gonna unionize. And I think
Speaker 1: we will unionize. It's looking that way. I'm confident, UM,
Speaker 1: and I really look forward to that. What do you think, UM, Like,
Speaker 1: what do you see as happening after the vote is done, like, like,
Speaker 1: assuming it is a vote yes, Like, how do you
Speaker 1: think this will impact UM working at the store going forward?
Speaker 1: It's gonna be interesting and it's going to be an adjustment,
Speaker 1: right because from the time that we vote and we
Speaker 1: vote yes, Let's say we vote yes and we're going
Speaker 1: to unionize, there is it could take a long time.
Speaker 1: It could take a year. We don't know. It could
Speaker 1: take more and less UM to get from that vote
Speaker 1: to you know, what we refer to as the bargaining
Speaker 1: table UM to negotiating a contract with Starbucks UM. And
Speaker 1: in that time there are things UM. And again, if
Speaker 1: partners are listening, you can do your research on this
Speaker 1: on the n l r B website. UM there. You
Speaker 1: know there are things that will be UM different in
Speaker 1: that waiting period. Right, So, if if Starbucks decides to
Speaker 1: release um a nationwide UM Spring raise, because why not
Speaker 1: we love giving you raises, UM, we would be exempt
Speaker 1: from that because we're in negotiations. Because we're in this
Speaker 1: sort of in between spot. Um there, there are little
Speaker 1: weird things that we might have to just be aware
Speaker 1: of no going in UM in that sort of interim.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, and then eventually, you know, those raises and
Speaker 1: any other things that we've sort of been waiting on
Speaker 1: get brought to the bargaining table. Yeah. I think this
Speaker 1: is an important thing for people to understand when when
Speaker 1: you're doing union organizing, right is you know you have
Speaker 1: this giant push and you have like you have to
Speaker 1: have the push to get to get either recognition or
Speaker 1: to get those the National Labor Relations Board vote. But
Speaker 1: most unions that go under go under in like before
Speaker 1: the first contract, and you have to like that's that's
Speaker 1: something that you know when when you when you talk
Speaker 1: to people who who are the professionally you can't union organizers,
Speaker 1: they talk they talk about this constantly, just like you
Speaker 1: have to hold it together during during that period between
Speaker 1: your first like bet, between when you when you're when
Speaker 1: when you get recognized it when your vote ends that
Speaker 1: first contract. And it's hard in a lot of ways. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because the things we're talking about, like management will do
Speaker 1: you know, they'll they'll intensify the union busting because they're
Speaker 1: hoping the union will still fall apart. But if you
Speaker 1: hold it together and if you get that first contract
Speaker 1: your union, like you know, you you now have a
Speaker 1: union and you've basically stabilized and at that point, like
Speaker 1: you now have a seat at the table and you
Speaker 1: have to take your seat the table and fight. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's a big responsibility when when you say hold
Speaker 1: it together during that time, do you do you mean, like, um,
Speaker 1: just through those changes and that interim and that sort
Speaker 1: of weird awkward phase, like you have to like just
Speaker 1: hold it together like mentally and just kind of power
Speaker 1: through it. Yeah. Well, also I mean you have to,
Speaker 1: like you have to just keep making sure everyone's involved,
Speaker 1: which is something that's difficult because especially after sort of
Speaker 1: the initially people because people have also had like a
Speaker 1: job to do it this entire time, right, they're still
Speaker 1: they're still making coffee, they're still making the podcast, they're
Speaker 1: still doing whatever, So you still have whatever. Have you
Speaker 1: ever done? This is sort of beside the point, but
Speaker 1: it's fun. Have you guys ever done like the sixteen
Speaker 1: personalities personality assessment? At some point? I've never done it.
Speaker 1: It's really fun. I just did it for school, and
Speaker 1: it's the thing that tells you, like, I'm an i
Speaker 1: n f J TV and my thing is the advocate. Sophie,
Speaker 1: what's yours? You look like you had one ready to go.
Speaker 1: I don't remember what it was, but I remember having
Speaker 1: to do it like fifteen times in school. Yeah. I also,
Speaker 1: I also forget what I the one that I did
Speaker 1: for when I was in school as well. But I
Speaker 1: brought it up because I'm thinking I want to send
Speaker 1: it to my fellow organizers and be like, do this
Speaker 1: and we can sort of highlight what each other's strengths
Speaker 1: are um and start playing into those because, like you
Speaker 1: were saying, Chris, like it really is a team effort,
Speaker 1: and I think it only really works if you are
Speaker 1: utilizing people and respecting people's strengths, you know, because not
Speaker 1: everyone has the same strengths. Like, yeah, you might be
Speaker 1: a kick as graphic designer. But like not everyone can
Speaker 1: do that. You know, maybe they're better at hosting get togethers,
Speaker 1: or they're better at writing emails or whatever. You know.
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, playing to strengths is so important in
Speaker 1: the long run because yeah, it can take a year
Speaker 1: to get to the negotiating table, which which like is horrible,
Speaker 1: Like that shouldn't be like it should it shouldn't be
Speaker 1: that long. Um And you know, tactics such as like specifically,
Speaker 1: you know, raising wages around a unionization effort so that
Speaker 1: people in the union don't get it. That is like
Speaker 1: another form of union investing. Like that is like like
Speaker 1: I don't think they haven't thought that through, Like that
Speaker 1: is that is part of that whole process being like
Speaker 1: oh yeah you could have a union or you can
Speaker 1: get higher wages now, Like that's like, that's that is
Speaker 1: part of what's going on. It's because they want people
Speaker 1: to not sign on to have long term benefits, so
Speaker 1: they're gonna offer these short term benefits. So like it
Speaker 1: really is like because of how elongated the unionization process
Speaker 1: can be, it gives a lot of time for people
Speaker 1: to get burnt out. Um And and combating that like
Speaker 1: combating being burnt out is one of the most important parts.
Speaker 1: And yeah, it's it's really it's really challenging sometimes. Oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, absolutely, I mean I love that conversation. I'm
Speaker 1: like a mental health dweeb. Um, it's it's my it's
Speaker 1: what my my podcast is called Your Messy Friend, and
Speaker 1: that's basically all I talk about is mental health. And yeah,
Speaker 1: the burnout, I mean, I'm recovering for burnout right now.
Speaker 1: You know, Um, it's very real. You have to make
Speaker 1: sure that you know, while you're taking care of everybody
Speaker 1: else and making these efforts, like you have to make
Speaker 1: sure that you are checking with yourself every day and
Speaker 1: making sure your needs are being met because giving from
Speaker 1: an empty tank does not last long. As I'm sure
Speaker 1: you guys know. Yeah, if you uh, if if you're,
Speaker 1: if you're, if the water in your espresso machine is out,
Speaker 1: then nothing can flow through to make this for you exactly. See.
Speaker 1: It was what an amazingly crafted metaphor. I just not
Speaker 1: tortured it at all anyway. So what is the like
Speaker 1: turnover rate at the store? Like, like, how how quickly
Speaker 1: are people coming in and out of jobs? And how
Speaker 1: has that been affecting organizing. The cool question. Um, we
Speaker 1: haven't had a ton of people leave since I got there,
Speaker 1: I mean, and I definitely I can pretty confidently say
Speaker 1: none of those had to do with unionizing. Um, it
Speaker 1: was all for just like different reasons. Um, we've had
Speaker 1: quite a few more people come in recently, and I
Speaker 1: would say that, Um. I mean it's it's weird because
Speaker 1: our current store manager, uh was great. She was hired
Speaker 1: around the same time that we really started amping up
Speaker 1: union stuff. And you know, it's almost unfortunate because I
Speaker 1: think she thought it was it was about her and
Speaker 1: it just so wasn't you know. Um. But yeah, so
Speaker 1: it's who knows if it was just because she was
Speaker 1: there now or because of the union stuff or both.
Speaker 1: But uh, they did start hiring quite a few more people, um,
Speaker 1: around the time that we started organizing, And yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it's you have to walk this fine line when
Speaker 1: you have new people coming in. Of course, you want
Speaker 1: to get to them and give them your info um
Speaker 1: or at least give them resources to look into before
Speaker 1: corporate gets to them. UM. But then you also they're
Speaker 1: they're learning a new job. It's really fast paced and overwhelming,
Speaker 1: Like you have to be careful not to totally overwhelm
Speaker 1: them either. I mean that that's really something I've just
Speaker 1: tried to keep in mind throughout the whole process. Is
Speaker 1: like when my friend Tyler approached me, I was like,
Speaker 1: I don't know what this is. I don't I don't
Speaker 1: know if this is necessary for me. And now I'm
Speaker 1: on the committee, you know, so you know what I mean. Like,
Speaker 1: it's that thing where I'm like, Okay, if I could
Speaker 1: be convinced, maybe anyone can. All right, is there um
Speaker 1: any direct action that people who are listening or any
Speaker 1: call to action you have for us that we can
Speaker 1: prot to our listeners or links or anything that you
Speaker 1: think would be useful for our people to know. That's
Speaker 1: a cool idea. Yeah, thanks. Um. Like we mentioned before,
Speaker 1: if you want to just like stop by your local
Speaker 1: unionizing Starbucks and get a coffee with the name, you know,
Speaker 1: unionized or union strong. That like that in person support,
Speaker 1: especially when your first organizing, is really really helpful. Even
Speaker 1: just stopping by to drop off a card or say hey,
Speaker 1: good luck with unionizing. Um, that really means a lot. Um.
Speaker 1: You can follow SB Workers United on Instagram and Twitter
Speaker 1: and just engage with us UM reach out if you
Speaker 1: need info about how to organize the people on Instagram
Speaker 1: or so, I mean on all the platforms are just
Speaker 1: like so on top of responding UM and uh, website.
Speaker 1: I think we have a website, I would assume, so
Speaker 1: I would assume at this point. Yeah, I mean, we
Speaker 1: have a pretty pop in Instagram and Twitter, but UM, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't think I'm forgetting anything. I think
Speaker 1: that's that's about it. UM, and just making noise on
Speaker 1: online is also really helpful. You know, I love when
Speaker 1: people comment on Starbucks posts and they're like, yeah, how
Speaker 1: about unions though, yeah union. The website is s B
Speaker 1: workers United dot org affiliated with the Workers United and
Speaker 1: the Starbucks. You know, I think effort, which has ways
Speaker 1: to donate or by by merch in support of the
Speaker 1: union and that kind of stuff, which funds I'll go
Speaker 1: to the go to the campaign and you know, just
Speaker 1: in case it wasn't clear, like and this is something
Speaker 1: you'll hear from Starbucks. Is all of this about the
Speaker 1: third party and Workers United is going to do this
Speaker 1: and that, blah blah blah. We essentially, you know, we
Speaker 1: work with that they promote our cause you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, they're here to support our mission and our goals.
Speaker 1: I mean, you'd be amazed by how much partners do
Speaker 1: for this, you know, united so much. But we we
Speaker 1: do the nitty gritty every day, communicating with each other.
Speaker 1: We're communicating nationally now we have a platform for that.
Speaker 1: Um and yeah, it's really cool and so like they are,
Speaker 1: they're kind of like, I don't know, the supporting beams
Speaker 1: of of everything we're doing, you know, it's us, yeah,
Speaker 1: but like the actual makeup of it definitely is with
Speaker 1: Starbucks employees, you know, and all the people I've been
Speaker 1: in like Twitter conversations with our d m s who
Speaker 1: are involved. It's like, yeah, like everyone who's like actively
Speaker 1: involved in doing it all has worked in a Starbucks before,
Speaker 1: um and still and still are like it is. It
Speaker 1: is definitely being led by the workers. Um and yeah,
Speaker 1: that's really great and really crucial. Um. Do you have
Speaker 1: any do you have any other plugables either for yourself
Speaker 1: or for yeah, anything else plug your Yeah, thanks guys, Um,
Speaker 1: this was really fun. Thank you for having me on.
Speaker 1: I love podcasting. UM. So yeah, I mentioned sp Workers
Speaker 1: United on Instagram and Twitter. Make sure you give them
Speaker 1: a follow, follow Barista's you find along the way. Who
Speaker 1: are you know speaking up about this? Show them your support. Um,
Speaker 1: my podcast is called your Messy Friend. You can find me.
Speaker 1: I think wherever you get your podcasts, definitely Spotify that's
Speaker 1: what I use. UM and yeah that's about it. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you so much Kayleie for joining us today. You
Speaker 1: talked about Starbucks and unions. UM, follow us online on Twitter, Instagram,
Speaker 1: at Happened Here pod and cool Zone Media and I
Speaker 1: think that does it? Does it for us? I can't
Speaker 1: wait for y'all to win. Yeah, absolutely can't. Can't. Can't
Speaker 1: wait for you guys to win. As soon as as
Speaker 1: soon as Portland locations start going, I'll definitely go in
Speaker 1: and support. But until then I will make coffee alone
Speaker 1: in my my, my, my lonely, my my lonely espresso machine. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, thank you, thank you so much for for
Speaker 1: coming on to talk. Thank you, thank you so much.
Speaker 1: Welcome to It could Happen Here, a podcast about things
Speaker 1: falling apart and even occasionally about trying to put them
Speaker 1: back together. Today, as is too often the case, we're
Speaker 1: going to be focused more on the falling apart thing,
Speaker 1: because today we are talking about the situation in Ukraine. UM,
Speaker 1: it is as I I type or not type because
Speaker 1: I'm not writing, but you know, you get how I'm
Speaker 1: used to thinking. As I say this. Russian troops have
Speaker 1: just moved in to two regions in eastern Ukraine that
Speaker 1: have been occupied by what are generally called Russian backed
Speaker 1: separatists since two thousand and fourteen. Vladimir Putin gave a
Speaker 1: speech that I will be we'll be talking about a
Speaker 1: bit with our guest um and announced his intention to
Speaker 1: recognize those breakaway sections of the country as independent republics. Uh.
Speaker 1: And the area that he has chosen to recognize includes
Speaker 1: about sevent territory that is currently occupied and held by
Speaker 1: the Ukrainian government. So it's a big mess. UH. This
Speaker 1: is some have said like a soft version of the
Speaker 1: invasion that people were expecting. I think it's probably more
Speaker 1: accurate to say it's a slow start, um, compared to
Speaker 1: what is potentially possible and very likely coming in the future.
Speaker 1: To talk more about this and about being an anarchist
Speaker 1: kind of trapped in between you know, NATO and Russia
Speaker 1: and everything that's flinging around right now. Is Ukrainian journalist
Speaker 1: Romeo Kokratski Romeo, Welcome to the show. Thanks a lot,
Speaker 1: thanks for having me. Been a big fan of yours.
Speaker 1: So it's an honor to be here. And you are
Speaker 1: in your in Kiev right now, right? Yeah? Correct? And
Speaker 1: and how is everybody keeps asking this all around? But
Speaker 1: how is the mood? Um? As you know, to the
Speaker 1: extent that there's a way of saying that, like I've i've,
Speaker 1: you know, have things kind of taking a turn since
Speaker 1: Putin actually made his first big play. I mean, as
Speaker 1: much as journalists like to say, there is no magic
Speaker 1: to instantly bull every resident in the city to find out, Yeah,
Speaker 1: walk around and talk to everybody, just like all the
Speaker 1: four million or whatever citizens in the city. Let me
Speaker 1: just let me just ask him. Um. But like, there
Speaker 1: definitely has been a turning point. Um. Like one of
Speaker 1: the big refrains that I've seen, like personally and everyone
Speaker 1: has been saying, right, is that Ukrainians are so calm.
Speaker 1: Look at these pictures of them like shopping in malls
Speaker 1: and like going to school. What else are you supposed
Speaker 1: to do? What else are we supposed to do? But
Speaker 1: I mean that this true, people have been calmed. But
Speaker 1: since yesterday evening there definitely has been a shift, um,
Speaker 1: and even casual conversation, uh in key of like I
Speaker 1: was sitting, to paraphrase a famous columnists usual framing, I
Speaker 1: was sitting in a cafe and overhearing the wait staff
Speaker 1: chat amongst themselves. Um, and obviously the the the whole
Speaker 1: conversation is, oh is Putin going to push into Kiev?
Speaker 1: And anecdotally we're semi anecdotally, I guess, Um, apartment prices
Speaker 1: in the western cities like in Lviv and uge World
Speaker 1: have really spiped up, like incredibly so that people are
Speaker 1: I wouldn't call that. That's a depressing way to pay
Speaker 1: attention to, that a reason to pay attention to that, Like,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't call it a mass panic. Um. There's no
Speaker 1: like bank runs, no, like all the stores are stocked. No,
Speaker 1: one's like hoarding. Um. But at the same time, there
Speaker 1: is a study trickle of people going west and kind
Speaker 1: of making plans at this point. Yeah, and UM, So
Speaker 1: this to kind of give people a little bit more
Speaker 1: context before we get into some of the more political
Speaker 1: dimensions of this um. Right now, there has not been
Speaker 1: a massive escalation um of violence outside of the areas
Speaker 1: where there have been fighting for several years. You know,
Speaker 1: there has been an escalation on the front line that's
Speaker 1: existed since UM, but there has not been like troops
Speaker 1: pouring across the border in other areas and stuff. And
Speaker 1: that's obviously probably the number one worry. UM. It looks
Speaker 1: like what's about to happen is or at least it's
Speaker 1: hard to say, because Putin has recognized the borders of
Speaker 1: this breakaway part of Ukraine as significantly larger than the
Speaker 1: area they actually control, and he has moved troops, Russian
Speaker 1: active duty troops into that area. Now, Russian troops, I'm
Speaker 1: from what I've heard about three thousand have been in
Speaker 1: the breakaway areas for years now, UM, but a significant yeah,
Speaker 1: a significant number have been added now. And obviously the
Speaker 1: fear is that because he has recognized the territory of
Speaker 1: these these quote unquote in his terms breakaway republics is
Speaker 1: being much larger than what they control, that Russian troops
Speaker 1: are going to participate with the separatists UM in attacking
Speaker 1: and taking those territories from the Ukrainian government. UM. That's
Speaker 1: one concern. Obviously. The the concern attached to that is
Speaker 1: that it would be not at all inconceivable for a
Speaker 1: conflict that started that way to spread to a much
Speaker 1: wider part of Ukraine. Um, this is all coming alongside
Speaker 1: a speech Putin gave that, unfortunately, is going to be
Speaker 1: one of those things people here about in history books. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: out of it, God damn mind. And it's one of
Speaker 1: those things. We will talk some more about how the
Speaker 1: Western left sometimes I don't want to be like because
Speaker 1: this is also largely the the online left, but how
Speaker 1: the online left talks about Putin sometimes. This was not
Speaker 1: a I want to return to the Soviet Union at speech.
Speaker 1: This was I want to return to czarist Russia's borders
Speaker 1: type speech. Like the guy has the Czarist imperial crest
Speaker 1: emblazoned on the gates to his palace. So I'm really
Speaker 1: not sure what people would have expected. And unfortunately he's
Speaker 1: better at his job than any of the last tsars
Speaker 1: were because he's he's achieved a notable amount of success
Speaker 1: towards that goal already. Um, and yeah, he he a
Speaker 1: number of things that were it's one of those. Like
Speaker 1: one of the things he said, which is a line
Speaker 1: that folks like him in Russia have been saying for
Speaker 1: a while, is that Ukraine. The existence of Ukraine as
Speaker 1: an independent polity is a mistake. And as an anarchist,
Speaker 1: you know, there's this like, well, yeah, I don't I
Speaker 1: don't like the Ukrainian state. I don't like any state
Speaker 1: in particular. But if you're if your only disagreement is
Speaker 1: with the statehood of Ukraine and you're fine with the
Speaker 1: statehod of Russia, you know, then then perhaps what you
Speaker 1: actually think is that people in Ukraine should not have
Speaker 1: any autonomy to disagree with the government in Moscow. Um.
Speaker 1: And I think that's the case here. Um. There's a
Speaker 1: there's similarities between how Putin and those like him in
Speaker 1: Russia treat Ukrainians um with how for example, the Turks
Speaker 1: treat Kurds in the southern part of the country. There's
Speaker 1: this this thing you'll hear a lot from Turkey, where like,
Speaker 1: there's no Kurds in Turkey, They're they're mountain Turk who
Speaker 1: have lost their their language. And there's this denial from
Speaker 1: Putin in the Russians that Ukrainians are a people, that
Speaker 1: they exist, and this this is a something that has translated.
Speaker 1: Most people have heard versions of this, and just any
Speaker 1: of the coverage you've heard of Ukraine if you've ever
Speaker 1: heard of it referred to as the Ukraine. What that
Speaker 1: is is part of a very old um line that
Speaker 1: kind of exists to allow Russians to deny the existence
Speaker 1: of Ukrainians as a people and make it make it
Speaker 1: seem more like it's just kind of a geographic region,
Speaker 1: which is not the case. And why you wouldn't refer
Speaker 1: to you wouldn't call it the Ukraine anymore than you
Speaker 1: would call it the Canada. Um, it just isn't the
Speaker 1: way you, you say, should say that. But um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I think that's at least enough of a background
Speaker 1: to get into the real media what we want to
Speaker 1: talk about. So, and I'm just gonna kind of open
Speaker 1: this up to you to chat about what you'd like
Speaker 1: to say and what you think needs to be gotten
Speaker 1: across to the international left, because internationalism is something we
Speaker 1: value a lot here and it has been hard to
Speaker 1: find in this conflict. Yeah, Like, growing up in the
Speaker 1: York in the nineties, one of the core values I
Speaker 1: kind of absorbed, I guess through osmosis is the value
Speaker 1: that every single person I met, regardless of whatever corner
Speaker 1: of the world they came from, is the exact scene
Speaker 1: beings me, UM, and it wasn't. And and that kind
Speaker 1: of realization was one of the things that I guess
Speaker 1: I wouldn't say pushed, but UM conspired to to turn
Speaker 1: me into a leftist, a socialist Marxist UM. And part
Speaker 1: of that, especially when I was learning about what the
Speaker 1: hell all these isms were, UM, was internationalism, the idea
Speaker 1: that well, our struggle isn't within the the fabricated borders
Speaker 1: of what ever UM polity has has decided to impose
Speaker 1: their their authority. UM. But internationally, every single worker is
Speaker 1: the same as every other worker. We're all struggling with
Speaker 1: the same issues, we're all fighting the same forces, UM,
Speaker 1: and generally speaking, we have the same enemies. Ah. Now
Speaker 1: fast forward to two h I go online and what
Speaker 1: do I see? Well, Ukrainians are all Nazis or Ukraine
Speaker 1: shouldn't exist, or how can we support either of those?
Speaker 1: It's two fascist states fighting each other. And I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: Ukraine has got a population of forty four million. You
Speaker 1: want to tell me that every single one of those
Speaker 1: forty four million or Nazis Like people didn't even say
Speaker 1: that about Germany. They were literally the Nazi state, I
Speaker 1: mean the United States, um for that man like, we
Speaker 1: had four years of Trump and openly fascist authoritarian lee
Speaker 1: and no one seems to say, well, I guess the
Speaker 1: U s should be bombed. Well, I guess there are some.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's definitely there's definitely people that yeah, but
Speaker 1: generally speaking that's not exactly the view that people take right. Um.
Speaker 1: So it's it's been a long process of disappointment. Well,
Speaker 1: I say, long, Um, there's always been the kind of
Speaker 1: well what are these people really think about Ukraine? But
Speaker 1: breaft of such a strong impetus to take a side,
Speaker 1: I guess, um, it hasn't been in the forefront. And
Speaker 1: now every day I see people that I would have
Speaker 1: considered comrades, that I would have considered um friends and brothers,
Speaker 1: just kind of turned their back on me. Because I
Speaker 1: live here, right, any any aggression, any action that's taken
Speaker 1: will literally affect me physically sitting here and cue. Um.
Speaker 1: So it's been it's been really really immensely disheartening to
Speaker 1: see that every single value UM that I thought the
Speaker 1: Left was supposed to value, that that I thought the
Speaker 1: left was built on um by people with rows emojis
Speaker 1: or hammering sickles in their user names or whatever the
Speaker 1: hell it is, and we should probably talk about some
Speaker 1: of why this is and what the what the history
Speaker 1: is here. So, the most kind of direct thing that
Speaker 1: people can point to when they when they call Ukraine
Speaker 1: a fascist state or when they talk about this is
Speaker 1: the existence of the ass Off Battalion the AS of
Speaker 1: Italian as a paramilitary organization. That means it's it's not
Speaker 1: officially a part of the governmental military structure, but it
Speaker 1: it does receive it has received arms from the government
Speaker 1: and it UH functions as part of Ukraine's defense forces
Speaker 1: UM for the for the purposes of fighting off the
Speaker 1: Russian back separatists UM and the AS of Italian and Nazis.
Speaker 1: There's there's you know, the the you can There's been
Speaker 1: a tremendous amount of reporting on that. On that matter,
Speaker 1: it's a big problem in the Ukrainian government deserves a
Speaker 1: significant amount of criticism for the degree to which as
Speaker 1: OFF has been allowed to continue existing UM. But there's
Speaker 1: also a lot that gets left out when people focus
Speaker 1: on that, including the fact that, for example, the political
Speaker 1: wing of as Off right sector, which is kind of
Speaker 1: the that it would be fair to call that the
Speaker 1: umbrella term for like the far right parties in the
Speaker 1: Ukraini Ukrainian government have been pretty effectively siloed away from
Speaker 1: political power through very active measures to about like what
Speaker 1: is one percent of um like representation, and so it
Speaker 1: didn't actually pass the threshold tantor the new barliament. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're they're nonentity politically, they're just non popular there. Um
Speaker 1: campaigns failed, their models fail, their agitation fails. Ukrainians do
Speaker 1: not want to vote for Nazis. Yeah, and it's it is.
Speaker 1: It is a an ugly situation. I I remember talking
Speaker 1: with when I was reporting on the mightn uprisings, which
Speaker 1: is when, again for people who aren't up on recent
Speaker 1: Ukrainian history, they had a president who tried to do
Speaker 1: a dictatorship um, and people rose up and fought him
Speaker 1: in the streets. Um. It was a very gnarly time.
Speaker 1: About two hundred people were shot by government forces. Um.
Speaker 1: And eventually the president was forced to flee the country,
Speaker 1: which is what precipitated everything that's happening now, because that
Speaker 1: president was pretty closely tied with Putin and the people
Speaker 1: fighting him. UM, we're not all they were not pro
Speaker 1: NATO rebels, but they were more definitely more supportive of
Speaker 1: closer ties with Western Europe than they were with Russia. UM.
Speaker 1: And that again, those are kind of the precipitating events
Speaker 1: for everything that happened that's happening now. Um. And some
Speaker 1: of the people who were fighting the president's forces were fascists. UM.
Speaker 1: And it's one of those things. I remember talking with
Speaker 1: protesters at the time who were like, well, am I
Speaker 1: supposed to get in fight with them at the same
Speaker 1: time as I'm trying not to get shot by riot police.
Speaker 1: It's like, what what do you expect me to do?
Speaker 1: And it is a nasty situation, and it's one of
Speaker 1: those things. UM. I don't know, Like I don't know
Speaker 1: what to tell people about that, because it's it's it's ugly,
Speaker 1: and it's uncomfortable and it's messy. And that's also Ukrainian history.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of ugly, uncomfortable, messy things here is
Speaker 1: there's with every country's history. It doesn't mean people in
Speaker 1: Kiev deserve to have their housing blocks pounded by Russian artillery.
Speaker 1: Doesn't mean that people in Vadivka deserve to have their
Speaker 1: homes pounded by artillery. UM. And whatever criticisms you want
Speaker 1: to make about how the Russian government or how the
Speaker 1: Ukrainian government has handled as Off, And there are many
Speaker 1: criticisms to make that's not really relevant to the people
Speaker 1: living in these areas having their homes destroyed on a
Speaker 1: daily basis by mortar fire. I just want to make
Speaker 1: like a couple of things really clear. The as Off
Speaker 1: Battallion is like a thousand guys like Macs. And the reason,
Speaker 1: one of the reasons at least that they rose to
Speaker 1: such prominence in the beginning wasn't only there um ability
Speaker 1: to mobilize in the early stages of the Russian war
Speaker 1: against Ukraine. It was also because they had very strong
Speaker 1: financial backing um from the former Interior Minister um Arsenivakav.
Speaker 1: And Ivakav is no longer in power, UH. And one
Speaker 1: of the things you can see immediately was the like
Speaker 1: almost nullifying of fascist street marshes and fascist demonstrations UM
Speaker 1: in Kiev outside the President's office. That all vanished because
Speaker 1: more like in Ukraine, ideology is not very strong. And
Speaker 1: this is something UM that I've noticed a lot of
Speaker 1: people UH from the US in Europe have trouble understanding
Speaker 1: about Ukrainian politics. People here are not really ideological. Our
Speaker 1: parties don't map UM. Aside from a couple of outliers
Speaker 1: like rights actor UM, it doesn't really map to any
Speaker 1: left right access UM. People typically will always want the
Speaker 1: same policies, like they always want a pension, they always
Speaker 1: want UM universal healthcare to be better, they always want
Speaker 1: the roads fixed. UM generally policy something most Ukrainians actually
Speaker 1: agree on UM. As a result, most of our elections
Speaker 1: are purely personality based. That's one of the reasons m
Speaker 1: Zelenski Voladimer's Lenski Orur current president. One was because he
Speaker 1: was a well known comedian. Yeah, and people liked his personality,
Speaker 1: and he put out a whole TV show as a
Speaker 1: pr stunt um before launching his campaign, and people voted
Speaker 1: for that personality the on screen h And so when
Speaker 1: there was far right activity, and again I want to
Speaker 1: stress that that activity, even the street activity, has almost disappear,
Speaker 1: it's because the far right is typically used in Ukraine
Speaker 1: as a political tool by one. All of our were
Speaker 1: one interest group against another. That's why when the money disappeared,
Speaker 1: they disappeared. Because the leaderships, the leadership of these fascist
Speaker 1: groups typically speaking, we're not UM that ideological themselves. But
Speaker 1: they did like having USUV s and they did like
Speaker 1: buying guns and um, hiring hookers and doing drugs. Like
Speaker 1: they liked the money and that's why they did it.
Speaker 1: And they would convince a bunch of teenagers to go
Speaker 1: out and wave a couple of torches and march or chant.
Speaker 1: But these guys were really purely in for the money. Um.
Speaker 1: And again you can tell that because when their financial
Speaker 1: backer disappeared there in order to be found. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: it's one of those one of the things that is
Speaker 1: very frustrating to me. I can't remember one of the
Speaker 1: earliest projects that I did that was like a for
Speaker 1: belling cat as we were there was a Pride march
Speaker 1: in Kiev that got attacked by Nazis. This was a
Speaker 1: couple of years back, and we were kind of trying
Speaker 1: to identify the individu Jewel fascists who are like beating
Speaker 1: people in the street, and it's spending hours pouring over
Speaker 1: that footage. It makes it incredibly frustrating that there are
Speaker 1: people outside of the country boiling it down to while
Speaker 1: all of those people are fascists, all of those people
Speaker 1: are part of a fascist state, and it's like no
Speaker 1: a lot of those people. Quite a few Ukrainians have
Speaker 1: fought Nazis in the streets, you know. Um, that's a
Speaker 1: reality of the situation. And it's it's um and it
Speaker 1: it's it's ugly in part because if you actually want
Speaker 1: to look at what's been happening, uh with the Russian
Speaker 1: back separatists, there's a lot of fascists over there. Um,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of paramilitary organizations and like far right
Speaker 1: groups that have been used by the Russian government. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: literally literally because they're fascist leader Yeah, like Lagner, like
Speaker 1: many Nazis. It's it's it's hard to to understand to
Speaker 1: sleep from my perspective, um, because not only is Russian
Speaker 1: fascism have far more influence on Russian policy than any
Speaker 1: Ukrainian fascists has ever had in Ukrainian policy. Um, it's
Speaker 1: also that the Russian project and the narrative they use. Um.
Speaker 1: There there's this joke they call are not really joke,
Speaker 1: a slurred they call they call Ukrainians Nazi's been darists, um.
Speaker 1: For those who don't open Darrow was a Ukrainian nationalist
Speaker 1: leader partisan fought against the Soviets UH, and he his
Speaker 1: organization was implicated in quite a few war crimes, significant
Speaker 1: number of war crimes, war crimes. UH so clearly been
Speaker 1: near himself, probably not a great guy, Yeah, but to
Speaker 1: delegitimize all Ukrainian kind of independence movements that I've propped
Speaker 1: up over the years, the Soviet government and now the
Speaker 1: Russian government has always he's insisted that there is no
Speaker 1: legitimate way for Ukraine to be independent. We're all Nazi
Speaker 1: Bandarists no matter what. And that's why you had UM.
Speaker 1: There's a picture a couple of days ago of a
Speaker 1: solidarity marshin Kiev UM with UH some of Kiev's LGBT
Speaker 1: community holding up Bandara's flags, not because they're gay Nazis,
Speaker 1: because it's a way of, yeah, retaking this slur back
Speaker 1: from the Russians. And it's all part of the complicating
Speaker 1: factor here is that because of how geo politics worked
Speaker 1: out in that period of time, there are very uncomfortable
Speaker 1: but kind of inextricable ties between UH Ukrainian, the basic
Speaker 1: idea of Ukraine being a nation independent from Russia and
Speaker 1: anti communism, and because of what was going on in
Speaker 1: anti communism in that period of time, we're talking the
Speaker 1: thirties and forties. It means that a decent number of
Speaker 1: those early Ukrainian nationalists were either directly implicated with the
Speaker 1: Nazis like Bandera, or at least had uncomfortable ties. And
Speaker 1: that's a messy part of history that shouldn't be shied
Speaker 1: away from. But for example, the same thing is true
Speaker 1: of Finland. Like you can say the exact same thing
Speaker 1: about sucking Finnish nationalism, Finnish sovereignty and whatnot, um, And
Speaker 1: people don't call Finland a Nazi nation, um even though Yeah,
Speaker 1: the fact that they were stuck between the USSR and
Speaker 1: Nazi Germany means that there were a lot of Fins
Speaker 1: in that period of time who made some real fucked
Speaker 1: up choices, um like. But also there's a lot that
Speaker 1: has to be like, you can't adequately discuss why those
Speaker 1: choices were made if you don't talk about, for example,
Speaker 1: the holodomor you know, which was the starvation genocide of
Speaker 1: several million Ukrainians by the Soviet government. Like people to
Speaker 1: go back even further, um and to I don't know, Bernard,
Speaker 1: my leftist production a little bit, if you go back
Speaker 1: to the Civil War itself, where um, a lot of
Speaker 1: this started most of the nationalist groups, I would say
Speaker 1: nearly all of them. There were one or two monarchists
Speaker 1: minor monarchist groups in Ukraine, but the grand majority of
Speaker 1: them were in fact socialism or socialist. They had like
Speaker 1: the hammer and sickle and wheat on their currency and everything,
Speaker 1: because at the time that was what one votes UH
Speaker 1: from the peasantry. But when the Bolsheviks crushed every independent
Speaker 1: Ukrainian social movement in exchange for bureaucrats that they imported
Speaker 1: from the Empire and just shoved into Ukrainian cities, H, Well,
Speaker 1: then you had Ukrainians that wanted to be independent and
Speaker 1: wanted to have a better life than under the Tsar. Well,
Speaker 1: now suddenly they don't even have that support um from
Speaker 1: the Bolsheviks UH. And obviously, as a Ukrainian UM, I
Speaker 1: can't talk about this without bringing up Nestro Macnu, who
Speaker 1: was a anarchist leader, the leader of the Ukrainian Black
Speaker 1: Army UM during the Civil war. And what happened to them, Well,
Speaker 1: the Bolsheviks betrayed them and killed all of them, and
Speaker 1: of course the movement UH and then smeared them all
Speaker 1: is UM. How to file rapist cannibals if I remember correctly. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of of of disinformation you can find
Speaker 1: about that time, just like today, you know, only the
Speaker 1: names have changed exactly. So if there is no other
Speaker 1: outlet for Ukrainian nationalism and the group that you thought
Speaker 1: maybe an ally in UH destroying the empire in granting
Speaker 1: you self determination, turns out to be a continuation of
Speaker 1: that exact empire. Well it's pretty logical. Maybe not right,
Speaker 1: but it is pretty logical for people go to the
Speaker 1: for people to go to the other extremes. And it's
Speaker 1: one of those One of the things I think that
Speaker 1: should be noted more, as we talked about earlier, is
Speaker 1: that one of these stories of Ukrainian politics, particularly in
Speaker 1: the last got close to a decade since the Maidan,
Speaker 1: is that mainstream Ukrainian political leaders and Ukrainian voters have
Speaker 1: overwhelmingly rejected that sort of nationalism this time around, UM
Speaker 1: and have gone out of their way to silo it
Speaker 1: out of active political power, UM in a way that
Speaker 1: one could argue is more successful than has been done
Speaker 1: in the United States. UM. And absolutely we didn't ye Trump, Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: you get you guys basically elected John Stewart. UM. Pretty
Speaker 1: much I mean that was his Um. Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: his whole thing. He put on satirical political sketches, that
Speaker 1: was the entire show. Um. We did basically elect John Stewart.
Speaker 1: And you know, I have my criticisms of Zelenski, um
Speaker 1: as a lot of people do. Uh. And one of
Speaker 1: the things we love saying in Ukraine whenever people are like, oh,
Speaker 1: look at all the look at all the Nazis there,
Speaker 1: We're so not We're so anti semitic that we elected
Speaker 1: a Jewish comedian that's how. That's how anti semitic we are.
Speaker 1: That we have huge minorris standing in the middle of
Speaker 1: Kiev during the high holidays, that's how. That's how anti
Speaker 1: semitic we are. Yeah. And and Zelinski's uh prime minister
Speaker 1: is also a Jewish Man, which makes Ukraine the second
Speaker 1: country in the world to have a Jewish president and
Speaker 1: prime minister. Um. Yeah, like we don't care because it's
Speaker 1: not it doesn't even come up in campaigns like what
Speaker 1: even when Romney was running uc Democratic campaigns, um painting
Speaker 1: is a scary Mormon or the ads implying in a
Speaker 1: moment you don't even have that level of religious antipathy
Speaker 1: in Ukraine. It's it's it's just a much more complicated
Speaker 1: We're actually talking about the problems of the far right
Speaker 1: and and to fascism, you know, in Ukraine. It's a
Speaker 1: much more complicated story than a lot of people on
Speaker 1: you know, social media or whatnot want to give it
Speaker 1: credit to because it's just easy to some things up
Speaker 1: in one sentence and not have to care about a
Speaker 1: looming humanitarian catastrophe. But that is what we are looking at.
Speaker 1: If this invasion, it will be bad. If Russia uses
Speaker 1: active forces in order to take the remainder of those
Speaker 1: two provinces from the Ukrainian government, it will be a
Speaker 1: nightmare of almost unimaginable consequence. If the invasion proceeds on
Speaker 1: the wider scale that is possible at this point, um.
Speaker 1: And it is no, no no, no, please yeah. UM. I've
Speaker 1: been a dumor on this basically since I first heard
Speaker 1: about the build up, um, because Putin has made it
Speaker 1: very clear over the years what he considers Ukraine to be.
Speaker 1: Like you mentioned, he doesn't think that Ukraine should exist
Speaker 1: as like a polity. Um. And as a result, I
Speaker 1: have pretty much this whole time been pretty sure that
Speaker 1: he's going to attack you. Um. And now we're coming
Speaker 1: to a very definite tipping point. Um. Just today, Putin's
Speaker 1: made a lot of moves. UM. Like you mentioned, he
Speaker 1: authorized military force to be used um in the Damas.
Speaker 1: And actually he's gone further. He's authorized military force to
Speaker 1: be used abroad, UH, which I mean obviously that means
Speaker 1: Ukraine where else that's where his like the about I
Speaker 1: think seven of the entire Russian Army is currently around
Speaker 1: Ukraine or close enough that they can reinforce um without
Speaker 1: a lot of yeah, at least of the active duty,
Speaker 1: because the Russian military there's a small actually competent right yeah, yeah, yes,
Speaker 1: but the professional the contract soldiers, yes, Um. And especially
Speaker 1: on the northern border, Uh, there are a lot of
Speaker 1: battalion attach groups that are basically sitting and waiting, I
Speaker 1: guess for whatever the order will be eventually, um. And
Speaker 1: in Belarus, And since Putin has given this authorization to
Speaker 1: operate abroad, and he stated that he recognizes these puppet
Speaker 1: authorities as I qual him um that he recognizes their
Speaker 1: borders as the entirety of the Donetsk luconsk o BLUs,
Speaker 1: which again only a third of those territories are under
Speaker 1: the de facto control of public authorities. Two thirds of
Speaker 1: both provinces are still under Ukrainian government control, including the
Speaker 1: the critical port city of Marieuple. And now that Putin
Speaker 1: has authorized forced to be used abroad, well, it's kind
Speaker 1: of I mean, at least it is incredibly obvious to
Speaker 1: me what the next steps are from the Russian perspective.
Speaker 1: If I want to subjectate you right, um, and I
Speaker 1: think a big failing he is people in the West,
Speaker 1: especially the western left, um, no, very little of for example,
Speaker 1: the Chessian Wars, oh god, especially the Second War, and
Speaker 1: what happened to Rosnie, Yeah, Africa during that war, and
Speaker 1: what the Russians did the subjects that population. And if
Speaker 1: anyone thinks that Putin treasures Ukrainian lives any more than
Speaker 1: he did Chechen lives, then I've got a bridge of
Speaker 1: the proto sell them. Though you should act now because
Speaker 1: the valley's gonna drop real fast. Yeah, And it's one
Speaker 1: of those if you, as a good leftist, have spent
Speaker 1: a significant amount of time reading about the horrific crimes
Speaker 1: of of imperialist nations in Africa and Southeast Asia. In
Speaker 1: the America's um, what the Russian Federation did there is
Speaker 1: on that scale. It's it's absolutely on that scale. It was.
Speaker 1: It was a titanically ugly war. UM. And I mean
Speaker 1: any modernly you can look at what they did in
Speaker 1: Syria yea, or what they are doing in Syria, what
Speaker 1: they continue to do in Syria. UM. But as it
Speaker 1: turns out, UM, Syrians learned this lesson that I am
Speaker 1: learning now about big portions of the UM Western left
Speaker 1: a long time ago. Yeah, which is that if you
Speaker 1: can find, for example, some Syrian rebels who are shitty
Speaker 1: and Islamists or whatever, you can tar every single person
Speaker 1: whoever stood up against Bashar al assad as A as
Speaker 1: a terrorist UM, which is really easy, especially if you're
Speaker 1: getting paid Kremlin money to advance that line and you
Speaker 1: your name is Ben Norton. This brings us to the
Speaker 1: place where there really aren't clear answers, which is like
Speaker 1: what can be done? And it is one of those
Speaker 1: things where it's like, well, uh, that's not an easy question,
Speaker 1: because you do have to when you start grappling with
Speaker 1: like all right, well, like should what should NATO do?
Speaker 1: What should other European non NATO nations do? Like what
Speaker 1: what what is actually capable of? Like potentially altering or
Speaker 1: disrupting the courses of action here while we're talking about
Speaker 1: the Russian state, which has a lot of nukes. Um,
Speaker 1: we're talking about a situation that could spiral out of
Speaker 1: control in a way that very few situations globally are
Speaker 1: capable of potentially spiring spiraling out of control. And so
Speaker 1: it is a not a situation where anyone who tells
Speaker 1: you this is clearly the thing to do that will work,
Speaker 1: is I think trying to is probably full of ship
Speaker 1: and a little unhinged um because this is a real
Speaker 1: fucking ugly one. Um. But some of what has been done, Um,
Speaker 1: we just got the news today that I think we
Speaker 1: both found surprising, but it is very positive that the
Speaker 1: Germans have canceled construction of the Nord Stream to pipeline,
Speaker 1: which is a gas pipeline from Russia into the EU.
Speaker 1: Um that a lot of folks were saying Germany was
Speaker 1: not going to take any sort of stances, solid stances
Speaker 1: on Ukraine's behalf because of that pipeline, because of how Germany,
Speaker 1: along with a lot of Western Europe, is tremendously reliant
Speaker 1: upon Russian gas exports, um for just like keeping themselves
Speaker 1: heated in the winter. UM, so that's a positive move.
Speaker 1: I I tend to be critical of the ability of
Speaker 1: sanctions to do much. UM. And if we're looking historically
Speaker 1: at sanctions, particularly to how they're most often implied, they
Speaker 1: have a tendency to just harm regular people more than
Speaker 1: they have to do it. Like we can look at
Speaker 1: the sanctions in Iraq right which which were part of
Speaker 1: why something like a million people starved. Um. We are
Speaker 1: talking about different kinds of sanctions in general, and we're
Speaker 1: talking about the sanctions being imposed by NATO countries against
Speaker 1: the Russian state right now. They're largely sanctions against members
Speaker 1: of the Duma. UM, There's there's a lot. It's not
Speaker 1: the same as looking at like what was being done
Speaker 1: to Saddam's Iraq. That said, I'm still very hesitant to
Speaker 1: say I think that sanctions are going to disrupt Putin's
Speaker 1: course of action. I'm curious what you think can and
Speaker 1: should be done here, you know, like what is do
Speaker 1: you have any kind of clear idea in your own
Speaker 1: head about what might have a disruptive effect on on
Speaker 1: what Putin is doing? Learned to teleport and shoot Putin
Speaker 1: in the head with a nimillionator. I mean that would
Speaker 1: be that'd be great. There's there's a can we that
Speaker 1: tear had we that teleportation capacity, there would be a list.
Speaker 1: You know, put my skill points into that. But realistically speaking,
Speaker 1: the Russian state is authitarian. It doesn't really care what
Speaker 1: its own citizens think. It definitely doesn't care what other
Speaker 1: people think. However, Um, Russia has been, at least in
Speaker 1: um the modern realm, relatively image conscious. UM. Which is
Speaker 1: why I think one thing that could work, for example
Speaker 1: or not, could work, but would perhaps force the Russian
Speaker 1: state to consider its actions a little bit more carefully.
Speaker 1: And I want to be very clear when I talk
Speaker 1: about the Russian state, I'm talking about Putin himself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the government. He has no there's no like other decision
Speaker 1: makers in Russia. And that was actually perfectly encapsulated um
Speaker 1: during his speech the other day where he just outright,
Speaker 1: um like eviscerated the head of his foreign intelligence service.
Speaker 1: I'm live TV for the whole world to see just
Speaker 1: utterly humiliated the guy for no real reason, just because
Speaker 1: he can and you could see that. And we're talking
Speaker 1: about Russia's top spy. I mean, beyond Puttin himself stammering
Speaker 1: like a frightened school child when Puttin addressed him, just
Speaker 1: with just a hint of sharpness. Um. So when I
Speaker 1: say to the Russian state, I'm referring literally to the
Speaker 1: body in prison of of Vladiman Prune Um. And like, honestly, yeah,
Speaker 1: I would love to see people pick at Russian embassies
Speaker 1: and make demonstrations and marches and so on. Um. Do
Speaker 1: I think that will have a practical real effect, to
Speaker 1: be honest, No, say with the sanctions. Um, I'm sure
Speaker 1: Putin's pet oligarchs and members of his party and the
Speaker 1: uh the people that in theory keep him in power. Um,
Speaker 1: the oligarchs, the the polimentarians, the mafia lords and so on.
Speaker 1: I'm sure they're gonna be pretty mift if their yachts
Speaker 1: and their multimillion dollar properties in Miami and New York,
Speaker 1: in London and the villasm the French Riviera when when
Speaker 1: all that gets taken, I'm sure they'll they'll be pretty annoyed. Um.
Speaker 1: But I don't think Putin cares. I think that he
Speaker 1: has a really irrational um desire to subjugate Eve specifically, Um.
Speaker 1: He sees Kiev as um what we call in Russian,
Speaker 1: the mother of all Russian cities. Yeah, it's the um
Speaker 1: the place of the Kievan Ruce. Yeah, the word Russian
Speaker 1: comes from Kievan Ruce, you know, exactly exactly. And I
Speaker 1: just don't think that Putin is going to turn away
Speaker 1: from that goal because a couple of his buddies are
Speaker 1: complaining that they're mega yachts got taken in by the
Speaker 1: British authorities or whatever. Nor do I think they're gonna
Speaker 1: care that. You know, there are a couple of marchers
Speaker 1: outside of embassies in New Yorker something. Um, but that
Speaker 1: may help spur the world as a whole, the international
Speaker 1: community into taking a harder line stance against because Simeon
Speaker 1: comes time and again. Um, Like, the guy's a gangster,
Speaker 1: he's he's like a security service thug. If you've ever
Speaker 1: like interacted with like a petty like sergeant, police sergeant
Speaker 1: or something that has just a bit of authority and
Speaker 1: prety much show imunity that that's put into a te um.
Speaker 1: The dude thinks he's over educated, uh and the cleverest nimble, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think, But for really the way he talks, in
Speaker 1: the way he's acts, he's just a bully. He's he's
Speaker 1: he's got the same basic personality as like Villan Wether,
Speaker 1: you know, the fucking head of the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department.
Speaker 1: He's like, not like a beat cop, but like one
Speaker 1: of the cops who rises to run a union or
Speaker 1: run a city police department. Yeah, he's good at consolidating power.
Speaker 1: He's good at at exercising organizing others to exercise violence
Speaker 1: on his behalf. But yeah, at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: he is primarily a bully. And it's one of those Um,
Speaker 1: I don't know, Like, when it comes to arms shipments,
Speaker 1: that is a historically Again, if you look at the
Speaker 1: history of partic like let's just say specifically NATO shipping
Speaker 1: arms places most of the time, that does not improve
Speaker 1: the situation for people in that country. That that has
Speaker 1: been a historical reality of arms Shipment's not just with
Speaker 1: NATO as a general rule everywhere, when you ship more
Speaker 1: guns into an area, that that rarely improves quality of life. Um.
Speaker 1: But we are not talking about a country that has
Speaker 1: had any kind of centralized political legitimacy or what not collapse.
Speaker 1: You're not talking about a country that is in the
Speaker 1: middle of tearing itself apart between thirty or forty different sides. Um,
Speaker 1: it's not the same situation as well, let's ship a
Speaker 1: bunch of guns to Libya, you know. Um. It just
Speaker 1: isn't there different histories, different political realities on the ground.
Speaker 1: I don't know that I actually think any amount of
Speaker 1: arms shipments would dissuade Putin from advancing either. Um. But
Speaker 1: I I don't know what else to do. I certainly
Speaker 1: am not against the idea of like, Okay, guys have
Speaker 1: some A G T M s, you know, have some
Speaker 1: wire guided missiles, have some javelins, um, because like, what
Speaker 1: else are you gonna do? Um? I mean, we're not
Speaker 1: going to and I'm certainly not saying we should send
Speaker 1: US troops in um because again we have to consider
Speaker 1: the nuclear situation too. UM. What do you think is?
Speaker 1: Where are your thoughts there? Um? Because this is something
Speaker 1: that I I'm very I'm very mixed on, although again
Speaker 1: I'm broadly fine with Yeah, I mean, at least give
Speaker 1: people the ability to fight back. Yeah, it's a difficult one, especially,
Speaker 1: like you noted, the military industrial complex has very rarely
Speaker 1: improved any situation the world anywhere. Yep, this might be
Speaker 1: one of the few exceptions, UM, because the fact is
Speaker 1: that Ukraine doesn't really have the tools to defend these
Speaker 1: to defend ourselves we have, UM, or at least our
Speaker 1: government claims that we have the strongest army in Europe, which,
Speaker 1: to be honest, with all the defense cuts that Europe
Speaker 1: can come, that may be true at least on the
Speaker 1: ground sense. Certainly the most combat experienced army in here. Yeah, absolutely, UM.
Speaker 1: But what we lack entirely is air power and air
Speaker 1: defense UM. And what Russia has in spades is air
Speaker 1: power and air defense. And as we saw UM when
Speaker 1: the US invaded Rock, Well, you can destroy conventional army
Speaker 1: in a couple of days by just bombing the ship
Speaker 1: out of it uh. And the Russians have quite a
Speaker 1: few missiles UM aimed straight at Kiev and quite a
Speaker 1: view planes waiting on standby, I presume to bomb the
Speaker 1: ship out of Kiev. Uh. And it would be nice
Speaker 1: to have some way to to defend ourselves against that UM.
Speaker 1: But again there's there's not much that can be sent. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Of course stingers and javelins and so on, UM. That
Speaker 1: will all help raise the costs of the occupation that
Speaker 1: follows the initial bombardment But if Putin goes for the
Speaker 1: strategy that Assade has used in Syria, which is bomb
Speaker 1: the living ship out of every civilian residential area in
Speaker 1: the city until the people just submit or are all dead, um, well,
Speaker 1: there's not really too much we can do about that.
Speaker 1: And that is like, there is a lot that individual
Speaker 1: that that trained and motivated soldiers with small arms and
Speaker 1: munitions like javelins can do even to resist a country
Speaker 1: with with overwhelming air power. The corollary to that is
Speaker 1: that in doing that a lot of stuff, everyone around
Speaker 1: them dies, the city is turned into a graveyard. Um.
Speaker 1: I've I've seen that with my own eyes, and that's
Speaker 1: that's I mean, got to be the thing if you're
Speaker 1: looking at this with any kind of reasonable lies and
Speaker 1: not just like trying to find a political angle to
Speaker 1: support that has to be your main concern is that
Speaker 1: the potential here is for a tremendous loss of life
Speaker 1: and also for the creation of millions of refugees. Um.
Speaker 1: And this is something in another of audio clip that
Speaker 1: you published a bit earlier on Twitter you say, which
Speaker 1: is that like, if this goes as badly as it can,
Speaker 1: no matter what your politics are, this will become your problem. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I stand behind that absolutely, because there are a lot
Speaker 1: of Ukrainians and while most of us have no desire
Speaker 1: to live under the Russian yoke, the majority of us
Speaker 1: are not trained fighters. Were just people, just regular people.
Speaker 1: And I know, especially in the US, UM, with our
Speaker 1: like out of control gun culture, imagining like they're the
Speaker 1: singular guy, you know, they're they're the macho man with
Speaker 1: with all the guns, take down the government all by themselves.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, it's a fantasy. It's a fiction. Um, that
Speaker 1: is how things work. Uh. And quite frankly, most people
Speaker 1: are not psychologically suited to combat. That's why armies take
Speaker 1: so long to break soldiers down to teach them to
Speaker 1: murder people, because that is not something humans do naturally.
Speaker 1: And the majority of people subjected to that kind of
Speaker 1: violence will run. And again, there are forty four million
Speaker 1: of us, and they will run and run and run.
Speaker 1: Pretty much everyone in the world. You saw this with Syria,
Speaker 1: sell this with Libya. Um, you've seen this pretty much
Speaker 1: with every single place that has experienced massive violence in
Speaker 1: the modern world. Um, that's the reaction. Yeah, and that's
Speaker 1: when we run. We bring all of our biases and
Speaker 1: problems and cultural predilections to you m hm. And it's yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that's that's really that out to end on
Speaker 1: and it is you get a lot of folks you
Speaker 1: know who who rightly you know, focus on and think
Speaker 1: a lot about revolutionary struggles in places like Vietnam and
Speaker 1: um in an Afghanistan and will point out that like, well,
Speaker 1: you don't need to have as advanced to military as
Speaker 1: your opponent to win. And again, just the corollary to that, all, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the corollary to that is that like, yeah, but millions
Speaker 1: of people die. Millions of people died in Afghanistan, millions
Speaker 1: of people died in Vietnam. Um, that's that, that is
Speaker 1: the reality. Yeah, you can resist an imperial power with
Speaker 1: minimal technology, but you're not going to leave that fight
Speaker 1: with a family alive still, you know, Like that's that's
Speaker 1: how it goes. Um. So let's all say a little
Speaker 1: prayer for I don't know, peace, Uh, I hope the
Speaker 1: worst doesn't happen. Um. What has there been kind of
Speaker 1: mobilization that you've seen within the the activist the anarchist
Speaker 1: community and in Kiev, um to you know, any kind
Speaker 1: of mutual aid stuff like or is it just one
Speaker 1: of those situations where it hasn't started happening yet and
Speaker 1: nobody really knows what would even be useful to do
Speaker 1: if it does. I'll say this, Um, it may come
Speaker 1: as a little bit of a shock, but anarchists not
Speaker 1: typically the best organised. Yeah. Um. Specifically, like a lot
Speaker 1: of my UH friends who are active in the anarchist
Speaker 1: um movement in Ukraine have simply joined the territorial defense
Speaker 1: battalions or the regular army and will simply fight as soldiers. Um.
Speaker 1: There has been a very strong I don't know if
Speaker 1: you called denial um. A colleague of mine used the
Speaker 1: term doomed optimism, and I really like the side of that,
Speaker 1: so let's go with that. Yeah, there's been this really
Speaker 1: strong doomed optimism amongst Ukrainians that the worst will not
Speaker 1: happen and there's no real reason to prepare for anything,
Speaker 1: because well, things are going to be fine. Um. And
Speaker 1: that's what our government tells us as well, things are
Speaker 1: going to be fine. They don't see any massive attack
Speaker 1: groups or I mean, I feel like that's contradicted by
Speaker 1: the the open source intelligence that I've been looking at.
Speaker 1: But I I am just one guy. I obviously don't
Speaker 1: have the intelligence apparatus of a nation state. UM. So
Speaker 1: I mean maybe they're right, Um, but generally speaking, people
Speaker 1: have just been joining the army, going to um tactical trainings. Um.
Speaker 1: But this is all very basic stuff like going the woods,
Speaker 1: learn how to set up camp and you know, clean
Speaker 1: a rifle kind of kind of things. Um. Nothing like
Speaker 1: combat training, because where would you get that except by
Speaker 1: joining the army and going to the front. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: the kind of training that might keep in the event
Speaker 1: of a full conflict when out of ten of those
Speaker 1: people alive long enough to learn how to fight. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and that might be worth it. Yeah, I mean yeah,
Speaker 1: if you're talking about like yes, not not to say
Speaker 1: people shouldn't be doing that, because people should do whatever
Speaker 1: they can. Um, how are you kind of a close
Speaker 1: out like as this Like doom scrolling is the thing
Speaker 1: we all talk about, and there's there's plenty image just
Speaker 1: sitting here in Portland. We just had a mass shooting
Speaker 1: on a protest this weekend, and so there's a lot
Speaker 1: of doom scrolling going on in my community. But we're
Speaker 1: not staring down the barrel of a hundred and ninety
Speaker 1: thousand soldiers you know, potentially uh, hitting us from the
Speaker 1: air and ground simultaneously. How do you How are you
Speaker 1: like focusing on the stuff that you can do anything
Speaker 1: about and the stuff that you can productively handle without
Speaker 1: losing yourself in that obvious amounts of cannabis. That's good.
Speaker 1: I'm glad you guys have decent pod access. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: actually don't know what I'll do if, um, if my
Speaker 1: current supplies got out to be quite honest, um, but
Speaker 1: I mean it's been definitely a struggle. Um. And the
Speaker 1: past couple of days, especially my mental health has not
Speaker 1: been especially great. Um. But again, I'm one dude. Like,
Speaker 1: I'm not in very good shape. I have or vision,
Speaker 1: one of my eyes don't work, I'm diabetic. Like, I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna go out and grab a rifle and start
Speaker 1: killing every rooskie I see, you know. Um. But at
Speaker 1: the same time, I've got a job to do. I
Speaker 1: as an English language journalist in Ukraine. Um, I have
Speaker 1: this is your busy season, Yeah, it's my busies. Like
Speaker 1: one of my jobs is to counter Russian distin information
Speaker 1: and too like tell people the truth of what is
Speaker 1: going on here. Um, And that role will only get
Speaker 1: more important if the the conflict expands, um from from
Speaker 1: the scope that it is now. Uh so how am
Speaker 1: I doing? Well? I'm still alive, um, having off myself
Speaker 1: and uh I'm still I'm still working. So I think
Speaker 1: as as good as I can be under the circumstances.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, UM, well I hope your weeds supply stays
Speaker 1: stable um at the very fucking fingers. Yeah. Um. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for coming on the show, Romeo. UM,
Speaker 1: do you have anything you want to plug kind of
Speaker 1: as we as we go out here? Um, just if
Speaker 1: you really want to know about what's going down in Ukraine,
Speaker 1: I am co host of the podcast called Ukraine Without
Speaker 1: Hype and find it on any podcast platform. Um. And
Speaker 1: if you really want to get a look out what's
Speaker 1: going on in English um with only a tinge of
Speaker 1: leftist bias, um, then tune in. You can follow us
Speaker 1: on Twitter Hype Ukrane um and again on any podcast
Speaker 1: platform that you use. So it is later awesome, Well
Speaker 1: check out Romeo there, check out this podcast, and you know,
Speaker 1: just try to keep your eyes on the situation and
Speaker 1: don't let yourself be uh overwhelmed by what some random
Speaker 1: person on Twitter tries to sum it up. As you know,
Speaker 1: people are more complicated than that. It could happen here
Speaker 1: coming to you live from my room in Chicago. But
Speaker 1: but importantly we were coming to your life, and it
Speaker 1: could happen here Central where the gamers have seized the pod.
Speaker 1: It is me, Christopher, it is Garrison. Hello, fellow gamer. Hello,
Speaker 1: and in the gaming trenches with my razor headset on,
Speaker 1: looking into my uh the video powered view flinder, and
Speaker 1: I'm ready to continue on the fight. It's gonna be great.
Speaker 1: We're talking about talking about gaming, We're talking about the military,
Speaker 1: we're talking about why the two of them crossing is
Speaker 1: extremely bad. And uh, with us to talk about this
Speaker 1: are two people who are somewhat less clownish than we are. Um.
Speaker 1: This is Katie and Chris from Gamish for Peace, which
Speaker 1: is an initiative of Vesterans for Peace. We welcome to
Speaker 1: the show. Hello, Hey, thank you. I take offensive being
Speaker 1: called less clownish, and I'm just trying to live up
Speaker 1: to your standard. I'll have you know. I am very
Speaker 1: very clownish and clumsy and all of those good things.
Speaker 1: And he trusted me with weapons. Oh god, So I
Speaker 1: guess starting out, I want to talk about I guess
Speaker 1: very generally the history of counter recruitment, because this is
Speaker 1: something that's been going on in the U. S. Military
Speaker 1: for I mean, it really is like from from what
Speaker 1: I could tell, like about as long as there's been
Speaker 1: you know, recruitment for the military. But I was wondering
Speaker 1: if we could start I don't know, maybe maybe maybe
Speaker 1: around sort of the Vietnam era when you when there's
Speaker 1: you know, very very serious and intense sort of left
Speaker 1: wing kind of recruitment, and then we can go from there. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So coming out of Vietnam, you have Vietnam veterans against
Speaker 1: the war forming, uh, and there's a massive pushback on uh,
Speaker 1: the draft. Uh. The anti war movement is pretty much
Speaker 1: at its strongest, and Vietnam veterans against the war over
Speaker 1: time becomes a veteran for peace. Veterans for Peace has
Speaker 1: a long legacy of sitting at the front of the
Speaker 1: anti war movement peace movement, participating in nuclear abolition work,
Speaker 1: kind of recruitment work, the escalation work out of Save
Speaker 1: Our v A, helping veterans get assistance with disability benefits,
Speaker 1: and making sure that the traumas that veterans suffer and
Speaker 1: the communities of UM impacted by the military suffer are
Speaker 1: getting treatment for the care UH deported veterans because Vietnam
Speaker 1: that's served and then got deported and that continues to
Speaker 1: this day. UH SO Veterans for Peace at a multi
Speaker 1: pronged approached, the anti war efforts UH and UH two
Speaker 1: thousands around UH two thousand seven, Ish Iraq Afghanistan Iraq
Speaker 1: Veterans against the War later known as Iraq Afghanistan Veterans
Speaker 1: Against the War comes along, and that's a new generation
Speaker 1: of veterans carrying along built on the legacy of Veterans
Speaker 1: for Peace and being non veterans against the war. UM.
Speaker 1: You know, there's a long history of Coffee ops g
Speaker 1: I Resistance, UM Outreach doing work with veterans, trying consciences,
Speaker 1: objective object or work UM g I resisted work in
Speaker 1: in there, and there's just a long legacy of just
Speaker 1: betteran sharing their experiences and coming back and really ah
Speaker 1: wanting to make sure nobody else goes through that and
Speaker 1: making sure that they get the help they need and
Speaker 1: kind of slow that that beat of the war drune
Speaker 1: that seems to media seems to always be picking up.
Speaker 1: And that's where we came in. That's definitely a good
Speaker 1: way to put it now, especially born out of the pandemic,
Speaker 1: a lot of the recruiting had to move online. They
Speaker 1: didn't really have if they wanted to keep recruiting, they
Speaker 1: had to go online, and that's where a majority of
Speaker 1: the newest generation is they are watching Twitch. Twitch had
Speaker 1: a viewership like pretty much competing with Netflix streaming UM
Speaker 1: as of this summer, and I'm sure that hasn't really
Speaker 1: changed much. I'm sure it is just as popular UM
Speaker 1: and the audience for Twitch skews very young. So that's
Speaker 1: really what started to worry members of Veterans for Peace, like, Okay,
Speaker 1: we might need to ramp up truth and recruitment UM initiatives,
Speaker 1: which is what Games for Peace came out of. Because
Speaker 1: the thing is, if you're forming a paras social relationship
Speaker 1: with these younger kids by streaming and forming those laserships,
Speaker 1: getting them on discord and talking to them, you're getting
Speaker 1: a one sided view of what military services about, and
Speaker 1: you are definitely not getting the uh, imperialist informed viewpoint
Speaker 1: for sure. UM. So Venemans for Peace kind of came
Speaker 1: out of that. That's like very insidious looking, uh, hidden
Speaker 1: and subtle way of of recruiting using the video games
Speaker 1: that have already historically been used for recruiting purposes. So
Speaker 1: it's like a double it's like a double whammy that
Speaker 1: got on us there for those not inundated in the
Speaker 1: game or warfare like we are. Um, how let's I
Speaker 1: think we should briefly describe what twitches because I know
Speaker 1: a lot of people probably probably isn't actually away of
Speaker 1: of Twitch. That's the words we are down in these
Speaker 1: trenches finding off the cyber net stop. Um. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: I guess twitches like a live stream platform that is
Speaker 1: primarily used for live streaming people playing video games, and
Speaker 1: people kind of help their own like brands and like
Speaker 1: personalities and like para social relationships with an audience via
Speaker 1: them playing these games and kind of adding their commentary,
Speaker 1: you know, variety of games. You know, sometimes it's like
Speaker 1: mostly chatting with people like inside like a group chat
Speaker 1: while playing a game. Um, or you know, it's some
Speaker 1: of more focused on the game itself. It kind of varies,
Speaker 1: but yeah, it's a it's a it's it's arguably the
Speaker 1: biggest live streaming platform. I think it was brought by
Speaker 1: Amazon a few years ago. Um. And yes, there is
Speaker 1: a there is a US there's a there's a few
Speaker 1: US like military channels on there that are actually like
Speaker 1: relatively popular. Um. I guess the other thing to kind
Speaker 1: of get into for some background is, like you mentioned,
Speaker 1: you already kind of alluded to this, like the history
Speaker 1: of the U. S Military using video games for propaganda
Speaker 1: because they've been they've been one of like the earliest
Speaker 1: funders of games for this reason, I think getting into
Speaker 1: that history is like interesting, um, and something that some
Speaker 1: people are definitely aware of, but a lot of times
Speaker 1: can get overlooked, despite you know, Call of Duty being
Speaker 1: one of the biggest video game franchises in the world. Yeah. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: the military is involvement in video game video can design
Speaker 1: using as recruitment, using it primary Initially, at first it
Speaker 1: was thought of as a training tool and they started
Speaker 1: looking at it for training. Um. If you think back
Speaker 1: to like early nineties Doom, the original Doom had a
Speaker 1: mod released called the Marine Mod. It was a modification
Speaker 1: designed for the Marine Corps to use to train marines
Speaker 1: in as early the early nineties when Doom was at
Speaker 1: its height. And then then that grows from there. You
Speaker 1: have first to fight, Uh, what is it. UH. Game
Speaker 1: called First to Fight features Marine Corps marines and dress
Speaker 1: Blues where you're tactically UH fighting a battle in UM
Speaker 1: in which you never want to do. If you know
Speaker 1: anything about the Marine Corps Blues, you do not want
Speaker 1: to be doing anything in those that isn't getting drunk exactly.
Speaker 1: Drunk and dancing and blues all they're good for. UM. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you have you have a First to Fight and
Speaker 1: then it turns into Call of Duty America's Army, which
Speaker 1: thankfully just got pulled down all its platform from its platform.
Speaker 1: That's a huge win. But the Army started design getting
Speaker 1: into the development of video games for training, UH and
Speaker 1: then got into it for as recruiting, and America's Army
Speaker 1: is a perfect highlight of that where they just flat
Speaker 1: out had recruitment posters and training things UH in there
Speaker 1: with links to how to get to recruiters or get
Speaker 1: more information about joining the military joining the army. UM
Speaker 1: you have armor to UH. You could you could argue
Speaker 1: and draw the line from military training simulators to pub
Speaker 1: G Underground, which is one of the uh most biggest
Speaker 1: Battle Royale games, which is where you get Fortnite out
Speaker 1: of so you can draw these lines straight from the
Speaker 1: military's involvement in designing training and recruitment materials to what
Speaker 1: our kids are playing the most these days. And really
Speaker 1: one of the most kind of sick factors of this
Speaker 1: is like how much games have been designed and pushed
Speaker 1: towards basically training people for um like uh, I guess
Speaker 1: we're trying to think of the term, but like combat
Speaker 1: at a distance in terms of like ding like drone combat.
Speaker 1: There's just like they started just use the Xbox controllers
Speaker 1: for some like drone missions. Like like it's like there
Speaker 1: are specifically looking at the pipeline of specifically young males
Speaker 1: who get into this type of gaming and trying everything
Speaker 1: they can to push them into a career where they
Speaker 1: just kill people in overseas countries using the same technology,
Speaker 1: using you know, using video game controllers, using like you know,
Speaker 1: operating systems very similar to what we're being used in
Speaker 1: video games. And I mean, like in video games are
Speaker 1: a very effective propaganda tool. If you're thinking, like, okay,
Speaker 1: I mean I just enjoy playing more games. It's not like,
Speaker 1: what's what's the big deal? Like sure, like I also
Speaker 1: enjoy playing war games. Sometimes they can be a fun
Speaker 1: um you know, I like this like tactics based games,
Speaker 1: but these have been shown to be very effective at recruitment,
Speaker 1: to the point that video game footage and video games
Speaker 1: were like one of isis favorite recruitment and propaganda tactics
Speaker 1: as well, like this is it's a it's a thing,
Speaker 1: like it's not it's not just like oh, it's fine,
Speaker 1: Like no, these these things are actually kind of a
Speaker 1: profit of Yeah. Um, they are very effective in that
Speaker 1: manner as a recruitential and there is a real synergy
Speaker 1: between gaming developers and the d o D because of
Speaker 1: how effective uh, you know that recruiting can be, or
Speaker 1: the recruiting tool can be. Um, similar to movies. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, the military entertainment complexes is a term thrown
Speaker 1: around a lot for good reason. You know, you have
Speaker 1: there is a black box of politics. Whenever you're watching
Speaker 1: a movie that picks uh yeah, some sort of power
Speaker 1: structure against whatever the villain is doing. There's there, there's
Speaker 1: always something there, and video games are not too different
Speaker 1: from that. You just have a little bit more say
Speaker 1: and where the story goes, but maybe not even it
Speaker 1: depends on the development. But um, there's article in in
Speaker 1: the Atlantic that was it was actually like about a book,
Speaker 1: um from beincause Dexter Thomas Warplay, and it's all about
Speaker 1: video gaming and the relationship with the military. And they
Speaker 1: said the Pentagon avoids pitiful, expensive efforts to create their
Speaker 1: own training simulators, and developers get fat government checks so
Speaker 1: they can help fund these new games, new virtual reality
Speaker 1: things under the guys of it being a useful training
Speaker 1: tool for training in like virtual virtual reality environments, which
Speaker 1: it scares me already. Um. And then game developers are like, great,
Speaker 1: I can get a government grant, so even if this flops,
Speaker 1: we still got the money out of it. That's not
Speaker 1: an uncommon phenomena. Yeah, I mean in terms of like filmmaking, Yeah,
Speaker 1: like there's been there's rules for like Pentagon contracts with
Speaker 1: film studios to be like, if you want to use
Speaker 1: you know, U. S. Military equipment or personality, to follow
Speaker 1: these specific rules to portray the military in this light, um,
Speaker 1: which often do get followed just because people want to
Speaker 1: use the cool equipment and stuff. You know. I'm still
Speaker 1: agree that my that my beloved Transformers got cuted by
Speaker 1: the U. S. Military and all of their films as
Speaker 1: a result of films are pretty pretty bad. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll have you know. They are film art. No, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: I can't even keep your straight. I hope as a
Speaker 1: as someone with many many star scream action figures, I
Speaker 1: I dream of one day of having good Transformers movies.
Speaker 1: I mean, you got the classic, the you know, the
Speaker 1: eighties classic, Um, You've got You've got the Touch, um
Speaker 1: and the bubblebe film is okay, but it's even still
Speaker 1: that one got cooked. That one got cooked by the
Speaker 1: military pretty pretty severely. Yes, it's it's funny that you
Speaker 1: mentioned isis using video gaming. Uh, there's just a recent
Speaker 1: report came out. It's linked to the u N. I
Speaker 1: believe it's linked to the u N. Council on Counter
Speaker 1: Terrorism or Office counter Terrorism. Uh, talking about violent extremism
Speaker 1: and gaming, the link between video games and violent extremism.
Speaker 1: And what's really interesting is it's not so much at
Speaker 1: the video games themselves are the issue. It's the gaming
Speaker 1: adjacent space. It's it's the para social relationship development, it's
Speaker 1: the meme, and it's the what what we've what we've
Speaker 1: known in in the gaming world for a while as
Speaker 1: associated with like the behaviors and culture around gamer Gate
Speaker 1: and things things like that where we see this uh,
Speaker 1: this toxic culture that um is easy to cultivate inside
Speaker 1: these spaces and and be co opted for more to
Speaker 1: various things. UM. And that doesn't that's that doesn't mean
Speaker 1: that the military isn't banking or utilizing those same principles
Speaker 1: to to get its recruiting messages across. The military is
Speaker 1: another violent extreme position, right. You're whether it's you're the
Speaker 1: violent arm of capitalism and the state or or violent
Speaker 1: like domestic terrorists or something like that, you're still um
Speaker 1: opting into or your position is still getting mobilized towards
Speaker 1: potentially doing violence. And these gaming adjacent spaces are make
Speaker 1: it really easy for recruiters of all sorts to be
Speaker 1: in there and push people to more of that side
Speaker 1: of things. Yeah. One of the things I remember when
Speaker 1: I was like a teenager on Twitch was like, so
Speaker 1: I watched just like a lot of harsh Stone streams, right,
Speaker 1: and this is like these were, you know, like completely
Speaker 1: mainline hard stone streams. And there was there was this
Speaker 1: artist who everyone called Kebab the German and uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: so it turns out that Kebab the German was a miss.
Speaker 1: It was like a shortening like abbreviation of his actual name,
Speaker 1: which was removed Kebab, And this guy's stuff was just
Speaker 1: being played on like every major like like Twitch, like
Speaker 1: all the major harshonal streaments who just playing groove Kebab
Speaker 1: songs and it was like and this this was just
Speaker 1: like what like this is just what Twitch was in
Speaker 1: like fourteen fifteen, and yeah, like there there's so much
Speaker 1: like the the the extent to which just this sort
Speaker 1: of like i mean just overtly fascist like milieu would
Speaker 1: just seep into just like you know, here was a
Speaker 1: bunch of people playing a card game and like it
Speaker 1: wasn't and it wasn't even like like I mean some
Speaker 1: of these which were like really reactionally like I've seen
Speaker 1: I've seen streamers who like will like watch videos of
Speaker 1: like cops doing right like raids on people's houses on stream,
Speaker 1: like you know, like you have those people who are
Speaker 1: like really florright, but some of these people were just
Speaker 1: like I don't know, they're just a lot of them
Speaker 1: are just regular people, like the regular people themselves extremists
Speaker 1: yeah yeah, yeah, just value Yeah. Well even then like
Speaker 1: some of them just like I think with like like
Speaker 1: with with with with like with the Germans like they
Speaker 1: just didn't know, like they just they just like didn't
Speaker 1: know what was going on, and so they were just
Speaker 1: you know, spreading all of this stuff and it was
Speaker 1: like it was horrifying. Yeah. Absolutely, And actually I'm glad
Speaker 1: you mentioned that because about a year ago, the Army
Speaker 1: Sports Channel got in trouble because one of the streamers
Speaker 1: didn't catch on to to there were two user names
Speaker 1: that were explicitly white supremacist. One of them was um
Speaker 1: six million was not enough. Yeah, yeah, yeah, real, real gross.
Speaker 1: And I guess like just the whole idea of multitasking
Speaker 1: between playing a game, trying to interact with chat, and
Speaker 1: trying to make sure you're you're on screen and all
Speaker 1: of those things. They didn't realize it, or they willfully
Speaker 1: didn't realize it. I don't know which one, and I'm
Speaker 1: not going to make a judgment either way, but they did.
Speaker 1: They had to shut down that stream, and I don't
Speaker 1: think they streamed for a couple of weeks after that.
Speaker 1: They had to like reassess some some things because they're like, hey, actively,
Speaker 1: you know, white supremacists people are on your stream, you
Speaker 1: should probably you should probably do something about that. And
Speaker 1: I feel like if you're the U. S Military streaming
Speaker 1: on Twitch, that someone's job should just be to prevent
Speaker 1: that from happening. Like yeah, but the resources. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: like they kind of have this problem though, because Twitch
Speaker 1: has a there's a there's a huge just like like core,
Speaker 1: like a large enough base of Twitch users are just
Speaker 1: like fascist or like hard right wingers that do things
Speaker 1: like like there have been a persistent problem on Twitch
Speaker 1: for for years now of like these hate raids. It's
Speaker 1: like people doing mass raids on like anyone who's white
Speaker 1: and anyone who's like not just white dude, and just
Speaker 1: like hate rating their channels and like spamming the chat
Speaker 1: with like slurs and stuff like that. And you know
Speaker 1: when when that's you know, and that that's too large,
Speaker 1: Like yeah, like those those are the people, like you
Speaker 1: know that that's a large enough part of Twitch that
Speaker 1: like even even even if you're like taking the most
Speaker 1: charitable thing, which that the US, like the Army is
Speaker 1: not overtly recruiting white supremacists, which like okay, but like
Speaker 1: even even if you give them the benefit of the doubt, right,
Speaker 1: like that that's a large enough part of just what
Speaker 1: Twitch is. They haven't a center in front of blind
Speaker 1: eye and and radicalization, specifically right wing and white nationalist
Speaker 1: radicalization in the military is well studied and well established
Speaker 1: as an existing phenomena. I knew someone personally who uh
Speaker 1: got caught trying to smuggle weapons for a new or
Speaker 1: Nazi group. And that's all I'll say on that. Boy. Yeah, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: it is a thing, and it hits really close. It
Speaker 1: is definitely a phenomena to have was in the military.
Speaker 1: And um, these paramilitary Nazi groups actively recruit from people
Speaker 1: coming out in the military because they have the trainings
Speaker 1: that they want. And I mean, I trying to figure
Speaker 1: out a way to tie this back to recruiting online.
Speaker 1: But it's like, with all of this in mind, it
Speaker 1: is very insidious that the target is explicitly young kids.
Speaker 1: And I'm not saying that just to be like, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, because we've got a lot of We've gotten
Speaker 1: pushed back with saying, well, the military doesn't recruit kids.
Speaker 1: They you can only sign up in their seventeen about
Speaker 1: that as a kid, that all that is a kid.
Speaker 1: Second of all, it's like the thing is it's it's
Speaker 1: it's just like grooming children. That's that's what it is.
Speaker 1: It is. It's the same process of grooming. That's that's
Speaker 1: what's going on. One of one of my best friends
Speaker 1: growing up, like because it was my best friend for
Speaker 1: like a decade, Like I met him in first grade.
Speaker 1: He was my friend for the entirety of school and
Speaker 1: then he got like because his parents sent him away
Speaker 1: to like, uh one of one of those like uh
Speaker 1: like summer like like military school camp, and he was
Speaker 1: just never the same afterwards, and he's like a fascist now,
Speaker 1: and yeah, that sucks. Yeah, that does suck. That there's
Speaker 1: not a better word for that. That that sucks because yeah,
Speaker 1: they can't sign up until they're seventeen, but that's not
Speaker 1: the point. Isn't convince seventeen year olds. The point the
Speaker 1: points to ingrain this idea in them when they're like
Speaker 1: sucking twelve years old on the internet. And that is
Speaker 1: just what grooming is, right, starting it when you're when
Speaker 1: they're young, so when they're old enough, they will be
Speaker 1: able to sign up for the thing. Like that's that's
Speaker 1: what the process is, and that's what like, you know,
Speaker 1: military propaganda reqruipment has been doing for a long time,
Speaker 1: but the specifically the way it's being done on the
Speaker 1: internet around gaming is extrasidious. It was literally it is
Speaker 1: explicitly said by one of UM A recruiting officer, Dr. E.
Speaker 1: Case Wardinsky, and I apologize if I'm pronouncing that wrong.
Speaker 1: But then he literally said, we have to confront this
Speaker 1: question of will you wait until they're seventeen or will
Speaker 1: we start talking to them at age twelve thirteen, fourteen
Speaker 1: fifteen when a form the set of things they were
Speaker 1: thinking about doing with their life. Because we're literally saying
Speaker 1: we want to groom children. It's like, yeah, so I
Speaker 1: think now would be the time to kind of get
Speaker 1: into the countering side of things. It's like, yes, this
Speaker 1: is a this is a big problem, as we've laid
Speaker 1: out the past twenty minutes of what can we do
Speaker 1: about it? Yeah, so what can we do about it?
Speaker 1: There's um a good deal that we can do about it? Right,
Speaker 1: um we we Veterans for Peace, the Truth and Recruitment
Speaker 1: UH working Group came up with an idea for the
Speaker 1: Gamage for Peace initiative concerned veterans and gamers and UH
Speaker 1: and allies. Because Veterans for Peace isn't just comprised of
Speaker 1: veterans themselves, it's also allies and accomplices UM came together
Speaker 1: and started forming the an online community of our own
Speaker 1: UM where we have kind of adopted some four channels.
Speaker 1: Have changed this concept of four channels to change. One
Speaker 1: do education, talking about UH, sharing our experiences as veterans,
Speaker 1: talking about and unpacking recruitment tactics and techniques. UH. Start
Speaker 1: talking being extremely vocal and raise awareness around the recruitment
Speaker 1: techniques that we've we've already been talking about, right. Uh. Second,
Speaker 1: we're doing some mentorship and leadership stuff. Starting to develop
Speaker 1: programs in local communities that offer alternatives to the economic draft. Right,
Speaker 1: like just throwing it back to where we started talking
Speaker 1: about coming out of Vietnam. It has already said that
Speaker 1: sergeant hard Times is the best recruiter and it posts
Speaker 1: posts the drafts we went when we went to an
Speaker 1: all volunteer force. You have to have a reason to join,
Speaker 1: and there's a thing called the economic draft, and it's
Speaker 1: the impoverished conditions that many kids and people face that
Speaker 1: forced them to go into the military. Right. You don't
Speaker 1: have healthcare coming out of high school, you're in an
Speaker 1: abusive home, you're not talking to a guidance counselor no
Speaker 1: college is coming to You don't know how to pay
Speaker 1: for college, You don't know where what you're going to
Speaker 1: do because you're eight in and on your own. And
Speaker 1: that's what we keep telling kids. So you have the
Speaker 1: economic draft, which encourage gives an opportunity for recruiters to go, hey,
Speaker 1: this this program will solve everything. And what what people
Speaker 1: don't realize is what's being asked is are you willing
Speaker 1: to kill for a camaro? Are you willing to kill
Speaker 1: just to have a roof of your head? Are you
Speaker 1: willing to kill for medicare? Right? So we're starting to
Speaker 1: focus on developing mentorship and leadership programs UM include helping
Speaker 1: kids and young adults get into college or find mutual
Speaker 1: aid programs and within their communities start doing stuff locally
Speaker 1: because this is the problem is pervasive. Right. Not everybody
Speaker 1: needs to escape abuse of home and it is fine
Speaker 1: staying in their community, but doesn't know how to survive
Speaker 1: within the community because they don't have the resources there.
Speaker 1: And we also look at the what's going on in
Speaker 1: the world today and and recognize that things must be
Speaker 1: done at a local level. UM and you can be
Speaker 1: part of leading that change. Right. Ingesting some of our
Speaker 1: world concerns. We ourselves do direct actions. We go to
Speaker 1: gaming conventions, speak out, try to actually do counter recruitment
Speaker 1: right where the recruiters are. We just it's really pervasive.
Speaker 1: If you, if you if you go to any kind
Speaker 1: of con or any kind of can, any kind of
Speaker 1: like game fest or whatever, um, you know, comic cons,
Speaker 1: there will always be multiple military recruitment boots there, like
Speaker 1: like Navy, Marines, Army National Guard, like all of them.
Speaker 1: That they will all all be there. And it's not
Speaker 1: not my favorite thing to see. No, no, it's frustrating. Yeah,
Speaker 1: board games aren't even safe, right. The Army Esports team
Speaker 1: has a forty K team, So if you play Warhammer
Speaker 1: forty K, they have nationally or internationally ranked forty K
Speaker 1: team playing in the major circuits. You know, it's most
Speaker 1: insulting about that, sorry, Chris, most insulting about that. And
Speaker 1: I know this because one of the streams that we do,
Speaker 1: I host it is called ad Slam because we started
Speaker 1: out as like roasting military recruitment ads, but it kind
Speaker 1: of morphed into just like general veteran and military depictions
Speaker 1: and media and to them was on the or at
Speaker 1: least referenced the Army e Sports Warhamerpoty K Team. And
Speaker 1: you know how people will like take their figurines really seriously,
Speaker 1: they paint them. They look really cool. The Army like
Speaker 1: spray painted them gold and it's called the Day. And
Speaker 1: I'm like, really, you have all of these resources, you
Speaker 1: are using the recruiting budget which is ridiculous and astronomical,
Speaker 1: and you spray painted them gold. Are you kidding me?
Speaker 1: Come on? And it's just an insulting that it was
Speaker 1: so low effort, but they still get the praise. Um.
Speaker 1: A lot of people report like having positive viewpoints of
Speaker 1: the military after interacting with members of you know, the
Speaker 1: Eastward Team or the Booth or whatever. So I'm I'm
Speaker 1: genuinely annoyed that it's also low effort on that matter
Speaker 1: and they're still getting a positive response. Bothers me, that's
Speaker 1: a perfect highlight because being there on like the hate
Speaker 1: using military terms nowadays, but being their boots on ground,
Speaker 1: you know, uh at it at these conventions, uh doing
Speaker 1: providing truth and recruitment right, talking about alternative Uh really
Speaker 1: just being there in front of recruiters and and talking
Speaker 1: to the people that they're targeting and family members, letting
Speaker 1: them know like, hey, we as veterans, right, don't let
Speaker 1: this be what shapes your child's future or your future. Right,
Speaker 1: there's other opportunities for you. Um and and you know,
Speaker 1: whether that's if you're into gaming, start designing games, right, Like,
Speaker 1: there's there's so many opportunities within the gaming community that
Speaker 1: doesn't want to put you into the military pipeline also, right,
Speaker 1: So it's not the game's fault. It's not like it's
Speaker 1: it's that the state's using right now, right, um and
Speaker 1: then we're trying to form some our owny sports teams also, right,
Speaker 1: so we can compete directly against them, kick their as
Speaker 1: in some of the tournaments that they host. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: my my dream is to see some gamers for Peace
Speaker 1: jerseys getting awarded like some trophy next to the Army
Speaker 1: sports team and just dunking on them so across all
Speaker 1: the if we lose, if we're up there, we still
Speaker 1: get to dunk on them. See, we had so much
Speaker 1: more fun. We don't have to go clean up barracks
Speaker 1: room after this. Like the ultimate goal being us being
Speaker 1: able to provide tangible alternatives. So a kid coming out
Speaker 1: of high school thinking like, well, I either go into
Speaker 1: a lot of debt to go to college or I
Speaker 1: join the military. If we can get um not a
Speaker 1: hold of them, that seems predatory, but if we can
Speaker 1: talk to them, or our organization can provide that alternative
Speaker 1: and say, oh, well, you don't really have to do that.
Speaker 1: We have a scholarship program that we can offer you,
Speaker 1: or we can provide a lite, at the very least
Speaker 1: education about what they're really getting into so they can
Speaker 1: make a better informed decision. Because the main problem that
Speaker 1: I have with the way that recruiting works is that
Speaker 1: you are not getting a view of what life would
Speaker 1: actually be like. You are not getting a view of
Speaker 1: what you're fighting for. The There's a whole lot of
Speaker 1: like these vague concepts that they tell you that you're
Speaker 1: fighting for and then you're supposed to feel great about
Speaker 1: doing but none of those are real in practice, liberty
Speaker 1: or protecting the homeland, none of that is what you're doing.
Speaker 1: You're helping Northrop Grumman create a profit. Right Like, there's
Speaker 1: uh and so at least, at the very least someone
Speaker 1: who thinks that they have no other options, and in
Speaker 1: this country that might not be too far off right.
Speaker 1: We don't have a universal health care system. That was
Speaker 1: part of the reason why I joined the Marine Corps
Speaker 1: that I knew I would get healthcare and I knew
Speaker 1: I would get money to go to college and not
Speaker 1: be in this loan debt that I was in. So
Speaker 1: I'm definitely not alone in that. And UM, if maybe
Speaker 1: we can even just provide a more holistic view of
Speaker 1: what decision that you're making, that would be considered a
Speaker 1: win to us. So that was my soapbox. One of
Speaker 1: the important things is trying to push back on the
Speaker 1: motion offarious things that we're seeing right, whether that's games
Speaker 1: that are becoming way to train, some training simulator. Uh.
Speaker 1: There's another campaign that Gamage for Peace work on, and
Speaker 1: Veterans for Peace worked on the platform six Days with Care.
Speaker 1: The Council on American and Islamic Relations U pushing back
Speaker 1: on again called Six States in Flucia, which was delayed
Speaker 1: to quarter four two of this year, So we got
Speaker 1: it was pushed by a year, whether through our efforts
Speaker 1: or for whatever reason, but it was pushed by a year. Um.
Speaker 1: And this game is dubbed a murder simulator, uh, because
Speaker 1: it is. We look at other games like Escape from
Speaker 1: tarkov as as teaching fundamental skills through tried and true
Speaker 1: teaching methodologies for military skills. Um. You know, we were
Speaker 1: talking about counter recruitment and truth and recruitment to give
Speaker 1: people an opportunity to make informed, have an informed decision
Speaker 1: about their participation in the war machine. But also we're
Speaker 1: trying to push back directly on the war machine and
Speaker 1: and say hey, there's better uses of our money for
Speaker 1: for as as a government to take care of our people.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of fundamental things. There's the contributions to
Speaker 1: the climate crisis. Is the military's number one, uh impact
Speaker 1: or of the on the climate war is never green
Speaker 1: You can't green watch the military. Um, the you know,
Speaker 1: we have just so much going on around all the
Speaker 1: ways that people don't realize that militaries involved. We have
Speaker 1: the future of German warfare, kill, cloud technology, gaming technology,
Speaker 1: and the military and militarism is so tightly wound right
Speaker 1: now that just pushing back and trying to parse those
Speaker 1: two things apart is one of the things that is
Speaker 1: most effective for counter recruitment and also for mobilizing people
Speaker 1: to be like, hey, we actually deserve better, Like get
Speaker 1: out of my gaming space. And like, get me some food, sovereignty,
Speaker 1: get me, get me like, let's let me be part
Speaker 1: of my community. Get out of the gaming space and
Speaker 1: stop using what is fun and has actual educational value,
Speaker 1: mental health benefits, physical health benefits, commune to impact social
Speaker 1: impact like this, this gaming tool, this gaming technology we
Speaker 1: have can be used for so much good. Uh, but
Speaker 1: we need to disentangle the military's usage from it and
Speaker 1: and stop framing our our time, our time enjoy that
Speaker 1: we enjoy with our friends and family. Uh through this
Speaker 1: lens at the military forces to view with her. Because
Speaker 1: there are so many great games out there, like like
Speaker 1: we are in one of like right now we have
Speaker 1: the most amount of games ever released, most amount of
Speaker 1: good games like always being announced and released all the time.
Speaker 1: There's so many great stuff to play, and yeah, there's
Speaker 1: anything that can be done to push people away from
Speaker 1: stuff that kind of promotes this you know, colonial imperial
Speaker 1: it's kind of mindset um is great, right, Like That's
Speaker 1: why I kind of appreciate the cartoony aspects of Fortnite.
Speaker 1: Even though I hate playing Fortnite and we'll never really do, so,
Speaker 1: I still appreciate it as opposed to like the heavily
Speaker 1: militaristic kind of aesthetics that other you know, similar Battle
Speaker 1: Royals show, um. Because I mean because with with with
Speaker 1: as many games out there as there is, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think any kind of attempts to push people away from
Speaker 1: the more problematic aspects of you know, specifically shooting games,
Speaker 1: UH is great. Yeah, And just noting that when you're
Speaker 1: playing these games, especially if they are relatively close to reality, UM,
Speaker 1: understand the impact that you can have by pointing out
Speaker 1: simply that your friend doesn't respawn in real life. Right.
Speaker 1: And also keep in mind if you are playing a
Speaker 1: game that that is close to a recent reality, that
Speaker 1: you could be playing through someone's actual trauma. So I'm
Speaker 1: not telling you not to play the games if they are.
Speaker 1: We've gone over a couple of like Squad uh and
Speaker 1: and others that are like very very realistic um in
Speaker 1: their application. Just keep in mind when you're playing it
Speaker 1: that maybe look at it through that lens, like would
Speaker 1: how would you feel if you were playing through a
Speaker 1: game but it was the exact moment of your trauma.
Speaker 1: And I'm not even saying from the military side, I
Speaker 1: mean from from the people who were being bombed side,
Speaker 1: you know, so just just want to have more people
Speaker 1: be more mindful with what they consume and how. And
Speaker 1: again I'm not telling you not to consume it, just
Speaker 1: telling you to to think a little bit about it
Speaker 1: and what that type of media can do while having
Speaker 1: that baggage onto it. And there is a place for
Speaker 1: that's in the military experience in gaming. Right Like when
Speaker 1: I was in when I was deployed to Iraq, I
Speaker 1: took an Xbox Stege six year over there with me
Speaker 1: in the bottom my sea bag and we had on
Speaker 1: camp filution, we had a local area network of Xboxes
Speaker 1: in all the cants when we sat there and played
Speaker 1: Halo and and Gears of War and when that dropped
Speaker 1: walls there, right, Like, that's how we stay in touch
Speaker 1: with each other. It's how we process like auditory things
Speaker 1: and and and our combat experiences. Right, That's that's valid
Speaker 1: sublimation and processing of our traumatic experience as a thing.
Speaker 1: And games have that And that's not a military exclusive
Speaker 1: thing or veteran exclusive thing. That's for all communities. Um.
Speaker 1: But what we have to do is add context and
Speaker 1: nuanced when we're playing these games and go oh, um,
Speaker 1: there's another side to this story. That's the local civilian
Speaker 1: that just had a bomb cave in the ceiling. Right. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's there's these these instances where we've removed that because
Speaker 1: we're so focused on the competitive nature instead of the
Speaker 1: storytelling in the full scope of what that game is
Speaker 1: allowing us to process. Um. And that's why I don't like,
Speaker 1: I'm not blaming recruiters or blaming like coming up to
Speaker 1: people in the military and going, you know, you're horrible.
Speaker 1: It's not the right thing. Hey, I was there, right,
Speaker 1: I did the six years in the Marine Corps, and
Speaker 1: and um, you know, instead of going, hey, you're a
Speaker 1: horrible person or things like that, like we're trying to
Speaker 1: offer them them the recruiters and other military members of
Speaker 1: the community that go, hey, you're allowed to speak out
Speaker 1: against the things that you know were bullsh it while
Speaker 1: you're in there. Because if I knew it was a
Speaker 1: bullshit while I was in there, and I couldn't speak out,
Speaker 1: I didn't know I had a community to speak out
Speaker 1: to or with. And we're trying to offer community to them. Um.
Speaker 1: And that's beyond beyond just video games, but that's drone
Speaker 1: operators and infantry eyes and and people that are just
Speaker 1: fed up with what they see in a system that
Speaker 1: is supporting a crumbling infrastructure. Right, Like, Um, you can
Speaker 1: only deploy so many times without developing either becoming completely
Speaker 1: dead on the inside or having developing some semblance of
Speaker 1: empathy that goes, Hey, deep down, I know something's wrong here,
Speaker 1: and I just don't know how to uh Like, I
Speaker 1: don't know what that feeling is. Well, that feeling is
Speaker 1: is just empathy for the human condition and not wanting
Speaker 1: to see people traumatized through war. Right, Um, that that
Speaker 1: idea of us going into like even post nine eleven,
Speaker 1: like immediate post nine eleven events early on they had
Speaker 1: they went there with the right, right idea, I want
Speaker 1: to defend my community. I want to be do do service,
Speaker 1: right like I don't have another option. Yeah, I'm an
Speaker 1: economic drafty, but all in all here to help people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was, it was. It was a genuine thought, Like,
Speaker 1: it was a genuine idea, right people, you can very
Speaker 1: much disagree with like the intentionality the propaganda that like
Speaker 1: governments were doing to promote the war and the unjust
Speaker 1: reasons for that, but for the but for the regular people, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was, it was, it was genuine feelings that caused
Speaker 1: that to happen, and overlooking that, I think MSS what
Speaker 1: makes the recruitment to work. You know, if if if
Speaker 1: you just look at all the people who join the
Speaker 1: military as being like, oh, they're just like bad people
Speaker 1: who want to kill you know, brown people. You're like,
Speaker 1: but that's you can think that, but that doesn't actually
Speaker 1: do anything to understand how recruitment actually works. And then
Speaker 1: if you can't do that, then you don't know how
Speaker 1: to actually counter it. Right exactly, if you are a
Speaker 1: veteran and you feel like we do this whole thing
Speaker 1: was bullshit you and that can be uh an incredibly
Speaker 1: alienating experience. I've been there, because it feels like with
Speaker 1: the amount of veterans we saw the January six events, um,
Speaker 1: all the veterans that you see that get through to
Speaker 1: the right wing side of the culture of war, I
Speaker 1: just want to say that we see you. You're not alone,
Speaker 1: you are you are not crazy. I promise you. We
Speaker 1: we are trying to build a community of people like
Speaker 1: that who understand it and promote healing through that community,
Speaker 1: political education through that so that you can create resiliency
Speaker 1: within your community and as well as at least put
Speaker 1: a little bit of pressure on the military entertainment complex
Speaker 1: and the military recruiting apparatus. Yeah, fuck the military, Fuck
Speaker 1: war war, It's truth, all right, Tea two. If anything
Speaker 1: specific that you want to plug, yes, join our discord. UH.
Speaker 1: You can find if you search the discord, you can
Speaker 1: look up Gamers for Peace and you will see us
Speaker 1: on Twitch. We are Veterans for Peace all one word,
Speaker 1: and we stream several times the week gaming content content
Speaker 1: of out um different alternatives to military service content, breaking
Speaker 1: down propaganda and recruiting efforts, as well as other political
Speaker 1: education things. Sometimes it's just a random community game night
Speaker 1: as well. Um, actually, no, that's not random. Those are
Speaker 1: on Thursdays, so there. Um, Chris, should I should we
Speaker 1: add anything? I got something? Um? Uh? The if if
Speaker 1: one of the first things you can do besides going
Speaker 1: to discord and checking us out on Twitch. UH. We
Speaker 1: actually have an online digital direct action campaign going on
Speaker 1: UH that we're pushing to allow content creators on Twitch
Speaker 1: as a platform to be able to opt out of
Speaker 1: military ads UH on their channels. So that is our
Speaker 1: campaign that we currently have ongoing. There's a petition it
Speaker 1: is uh bit dot Lee Slash, Twitch Military ad Opt
Speaker 1: out is the u r L. They'll take you right
Speaker 1: to the Twitch petition that feedback your Twitch. We're looking
Speaker 1: to hit a thousand at least a SAP on that petition,
Speaker 1: UH to get some get a response from Twitch, and
Speaker 1: then go from there, allowing content creators to take ownership
Speaker 1: of their of the the ads and stuff that are
Speaker 1: on their channels, at least when it comes to military
Speaker 1: recruitment UH, and then going from there. UH. We also
Speaker 1: UH are doing actions and planning things constantly. So beyond lookout,
Speaker 1: joined the discord all that good stuff. Oh, if you
Speaker 1: need help navigating that, I'm a mod in the discord
Speaker 1: at plantipa she slash today and you'll find me. We'll
Speaker 1: try to put that link for the petition in the
Speaker 1: show notes so people can find out with a with
Speaker 1: a with with an easy click. Awesome. Perfect, All right, Well,
Speaker 1: thank you too for joining us. We are it could
Speaker 1: happen here at happened here pod in the places, in
Speaker 1: the places, the places you know, all the places, they're
Speaker 1: all there. H Well, thank you everyone for listening, and yeah,
Speaker 1: go play. I don't know Mario Kart eight or something,
Speaker 1: you know, something something fun. I don't know. I enjoyed.
Speaker 1: I enjoyed the Mario Kart games as a as as
Speaker 1: someone of my age, very very very integral to my
Speaker 1: driving education. So yeah, go play Mario Kart eight buck
Speaker 1: war War not another generation. Oh boy, it could happen
Speaker 1: here is the podcast that you're listening to. All right,
Speaker 1: St Andrew, that that's my job done today? Why why
Speaker 1: don't you take over? Good job. I'm proud of you,
Speaker 1: Thank you. Welcome everybody. Another wonderful episode of it could
Speaker 1: happen here today. Open to take a look at another book, well,
Speaker 1: two books, this time, this time works of fiction, and
Speaker 1: this time by an English, unfortunately writer named Alice Huxley. Right,
Speaker 1: we'll be looking at Ireland and Free of New World,
Speaker 1: the sort of twins of speculative science fiction. I would say.
Speaker 1: Aldice Huxley was, like I said, an English writer and philosopher,
Speaker 1: and he actually wrote a lot of books, um fifty
Speaker 1: in his lifetime. To be precise. He was also a
Speaker 1: French teacher who interestingly enough, taught George Owell. But I
Speaker 1: did not know from yeah, but from what what his
Speaker 1: past students have said. He wasn't a particularly good teacher, Okay,
Speaker 1: but he was a good speaker. Um. He was also
Speaker 1: a very very big fan of psychedelics and mysticism and philosophy,
Speaker 1: and particularly like advit I don't know if I'm pronounced
Speaker 1: that correctly, but advate vendata, which is like a Hindu
Speaker 1: spiritual practice. Yeah, I know. He's He's even referenced a
Speaker 1: lot and like occultist and chaos magic books written like
Speaker 1: post the sixties. He's yeah, yeah, yeah, he's He's like, um,
Speaker 1: that guy, it's his name again, Alan Watts. Yeah guy, yeah.
Speaker 1: Also very interestingly, Um, Huxley actually had LSD injected into
Speaker 1: his veins. It's a basic Yeah. He was like he
Speaker 1: was dying, as you know one does on their deathbed,
Speaker 1: and that is the traditional thing to do traditionally. Yes,
Speaker 1: while in the process of dying, because he had like
Speaker 1: advanced learning your cancer, he had to write to his
Speaker 1: wife Laura. He was just like LSD intermuscular. He's like, okay,
Speaker 1: Jackson him fucking muscle. And she doesn't inject him with
Speaker 1: one do she injects him with two doses and then
Speaker 1: he dies like several hours later. Incredibly based what away
Speaker 1: to go? Staggeringly based and honestly, if if he was
Speaker 1: like speaking on the deathbed. I would really love to know,
Speaker 1: like what that experience was like, like, are you just
Speaker 1: like dancing through hell? Like what's going on? I mean
Speaker 1: it could it could think I can see of being
Speaker 1: the most amazing thing and also extreme plainly terrified. Right
Speaker 1: as a general rule, when like Pete, they've done studies
Speaker 1: on like giving different kinds of psychedelics, usually silocybin mushrooms
Speaker 1: to um people who are in hospice and it it
Speaker 1: generally reduces their fear of death. Yeah, they they go
Speaker 1: in peace. Yeah, yeah, it just makes them like, ah,
Speaker 1: you know what, everything is the same as everything else,
Speaker 1: and we're the imagination of the universe. I'm going to
Speaker 1: go back into space, which is fine. Good for them, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: good for them, good for them. If I want my
Speaker 1: death bed, I a pread wouldn't want to be thinking
Speaker 1: about death either. Yeah. I mean that assumes that, you know,
Speaker 1: we get a deathbed, you know, and that's the kind
Speaker 1: of wild thing about death. You don't know when it's
Speaker 1: going to happen. But so it too into the topic
Speaker 1: of discussion. Brief New Wild and Ireland right to summarize
Speaker 1: the plots of booth, I guess I'll start with Brief
Speaker 1: New will it is the more famous of the two.
Speaker 1: I don't think a lot of people have hood of
Speaker 1: Island compared to Brief New World because briefe like New
Speaker 1: World and high School. But I have not read Island exactly,
Speaker 1: and it's like it's released as a lot of out
Speaker 1: society that that that we read about the Dystupias, but
Speaker 1: not the Utupias. But anyway, Brief New World, you know,
Speaker 1: it's really up there with like in terms of um,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's notoriety. Um. It is like one
Speaker 1: of the quintessential dystopias. It's set like several hundred years
Speaker 1: into the future, like four which you know, to place,
Speaker 1: which is several decades ago. Brief New World was set
Speaker 1: in two thousand and fifty four, two thousand five hty ce,
Speaker 1: so several Star Direct times. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But however,
Speaker 1: in the book, it isn't called two thousand five. It's
Speaker 1: called six three to a F a F standing for
Speaker 1: after Ford. Because in this world, and I'm sure we'll
Speaker 1: get into this a bit, Henry Ford, the Assembly, lying guy,
Speaker 1: the monet guy, he is basically god. He is the
Speaker 1: god of their world, you know. So yeah, that wouldn't
Speaker 1: be ideal. They say things like by Ford's name and
Speaker 1: that kind of thing, you know, and his school sort
Speaker 1: of simply line structure. Um. It's basically it's chopolated to
Speaker 1: society as a whole. Right, there's this world state where
Speaker 1: emotions and individuality a condition out of children, and everyone
Speaker 1: belongs to everyone else, and you know there's children are
Speaker 1: created in like factories and generated to be part of
Speaker 1: specific classes, whether it be alpha, beta, gamma, telta, or epsilon.
Speaker 1: So it's like it's kind of like, what's what, what's
Speaker 1: what's happening today? You know, in terms of the Greek
Speaker 1: alphabet um, we are the alphas who are bred to
Speaker 1: be like the leaders and stuff, and you're the absilons
Speaker 1: who are bred to be like the menial libras, and
Speaker 1: you have the folks in between, and like they're literally conditioned,
Speaker 1: you know, so like in the factory, in the baby
Speaker 1: making factory, which is in this case literal and not
Speaker 1: a euphemism for the womb um. You know, they like
Speaker 1: poled back on oxygen or they apply sitting chemicals or
Speaker 1: sitting hormones in order to like condition people, so they
Speaker 1: don't do like genetic um like coding or whatever. They
Speaker 1: just they do a chemical concoctions in those sort of
Speaker 1: test tubes. And yeah, I mean the story of the
Speaker 1: world is really how it's affecting, like that's on the
Speaker 1: top level of people within it and sort of contrasted
Speaker 1: with sort of reservations that exist in their world where
Speaker 1: people are a bit less restricted. Um. And it ends
Speaker 1: pretty tragically, but the next book also ends it tragically.
Speaker 1: The extra for being Island, which is like the utopian
Speaker 1: twin for a Brief New World in a lot of
Speaker 1: ways in terms of memory, mirroring a lot of the
Speaker 1: same themes that Brief New World explores. Right, So in
Speaker 1: Ireland there's this specific island called Parlor, which is um fictional.
Speaker 1: I mean, there was an area in India called Parlor,
Speaker 1: but the island of Parlor in this world is like
Speaker 1: it doesn't exist, right, And it's basically seen as this
Speaker 1: oasis of happiness and freedom and where it's inhabitants of
Speaker 1: resisted capitalism and consumers um and technology. Right then this journalist,
Speaker 1: another British guy named Will farnaby Um pulls up on
Speaker 1: their island and he's basically trying to scoop out the
Speaker 1: island for exploitation because he's friends with this industrialist who's
Speaker 1: trying to like extract oil from the region. And while
Speaker 1: he's going through the Ireland and really going through the
Speaker 1: society going through the book, there are a lot of
Speaker 1: monologues and stuff. I mean, this book is kind of
Speaker 1: heavy on the monologues and the discussions. It's kind of
Speaker 1: like Alice Sucksley's soup box for all his ideas, just
Speaker 1: laying them all out there. Right. So Will enters Palace
Speaker 1: a cynic, but by time he comes out, he's like
Speaker 1: he's had like layers on layers of epiphanies. And I
Speaker 1: don't know for those who have been reading to one
Speaker 1: of everything recently. Um in chapter two there the authors
Speaker 1: David When Grown, David Group. But this sort of outline
Speaker 1: some of the discussions that were happening that were happening
Speaker 1: between Europeans and Indigenous Americans at the time of arrival,
Speaker 1: and how those discussions were shaping both um apparentily the
Speaker 1: Europeans view of society. Interestingly, it's kind of like reflected
Speaker 1: here because you know, I have this white man who
Speaker 1: pulls up with all his English ideas and it's basically
Speaker 1: these indigenous inhabitants and parlor basically deconstructing his ideas through dialogue, UM,
Speaker 1: and through debate and discussion, and unfortunately it doesn't end
Speaker 1: very well. Despite you know, being convinced of the purity
Speaker 1: and brilliance of the polonies we have lived in, Um,
Speaker 1: he already made the deal with the industrialist and pola
Speaker 1: um Is has basically been sold by an by neighboring
Speaker 1: country and so it's downfall is now inevitable and that's
Speaker 1: how it ends. Oh and also UM will want to
Speaker 1: be kind of as like an LSD. Well'sund really LSD.
Speaker 1: But it's like a psychedelic trip. Yeah, it's like a
Speaker 1: combination like pilocybin almost yeah, yeah, and true how that
Speaker 1: Sucksley fashion? Yeah Yeah, there's like a lot of the
Speaker 1: tropes and like themes that were president Brave New World
Speaker 1: exists in island, but as like their inversion so like
Speaker 1: in terms of like it showed like the like Brave
Speaker 1: New World that's written before Huxley had psychedelics. It was
Speaker 1: like his his version of drug use is so different
Speaker 1: in that book. It's more like a pacifying drug Um,
Speaker 1: whereas the drug use in Island. It's more like an
Speaker 1: like an enlightening drug. So, but there's a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of themes that like parallel but are also inverted on
Speaker 1: each other. Yeah, exactly exactly, And we're gonna get into
Speaker 1: those themes just now. But to summarize, Brave New World
Speaker 1: is basically humans becoming less than human because of all
Speaker 1: these technological and sociological um efforts, where as Ireland is
Speaker 1: like the opposite we had. You know, humans are able
Speaker 1: to come into the fullness of the humanness um while
Speaker 1: still using science, except in a way to enhance their
Speaker 1: quality of life. I don't know if I missed any
Speaker 1: aspect of either plots that and if you want to
Speaker 1: like touch on a real quick no, no, no reallyy okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I will say the one thing is it
Speaker 1: just because Brave New World also has this sort of
Speaker 1: like weird like going to a reservation plot that's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: kind of a b plot, but you see, sort of
Speaker 1: it's another one of those things instead of like I
Speaker 1: don't know if inverteds the right word, but the sort
Speaker 1: of context of it is very very different in Island
Speaker 1: than it isn't Brave New World. Yeah, yeah, because I mean,
Speaker 1: in a sense you have this outside protagonist who is
Speaker 1: introduced to this alternate way of living UM and is
Speaker 1: transformed by it, you know, except in Brief New World,
Speaker 1: you know, he ends up killing himself and in Ireland,
Speaker 1: well he already sold out the island. You know. I
Speaker 1: will say, UM, one criticism that I want to get
Speaker 1: out of the way before we get into like the
Speaker 1: concepts and you know how they might apply to politics
Speaker 1: as a whole. Really is Huxley, like a lot of
Speaker 1: authors and thinkers and ideologus of his time, has this
Speaker 1: very unsettling a fixation on overpopulation. It's kind of like
Speaker 1: what we were talking about UM with the last book
Speaker 1: we discussed here UM, this sort of weird fixation and
Speaker 1: over population and you know, people dying out and that
Speaker 1: kind of thing UM in in parliam in Ireland there's
Speaker 1: a sort of acceptance of UM of population as something
Speaker 1: that needs to be you know, avoided until I guess
Speaker 1: it brings us to the first theme, which is the
Speaker 1: use of contraception in both books, right, Like, on one hand,
Speaker 1: you have in Brave New World where there's like mandatory
Speaker 1: contraception and people are literally not allowed to like naturally
Speaker 1: give both. You know, they have to have babies through
Speaker 1: test you, whereas in parlor, you know, there's reproductive education
Speaker 1: and reproductive choice and expressive sex. And it's really like
Speaker 1: a complete contrast. So I guess I want to do
Speaker 1: something like I like speculating and thinking about how anarchy
Speaker 1: would operate. UM. I think there needs to be a
Speaker 1: lot more of that in terms of UM creative works
Speaker 1: and discussions. I mean, like there was at the Cafe
Speaker 1: by mal Tester, and there are some like utopian fictions
Speaker 1: out there, but I like less than utopian, but still
Speaker 1: interesting explorations of anarchist society. It's like there's Lucky the
Speaker 1: Quins that is possessed. It is interesting to me that
Speaker 1: even in mainstream sort of imagining, whenever there's an attempt
Speaker 1: to envision a utopia, there's nearly always a lot of
Speaker 1: anarchist principles involved in that. It's basically impossible to imagine
Speaker 1: a utopia without aspects of anarchist theory making it into
Speaker 1: it exactly. And it tends to be like some elements
Speaker 1: of anti work in there, and like you know, like
Speaker 1: to post work, post hierarchy, freedom of association. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: as I kind of want to look at that, look
Speaker 1: at these works through that lens as well. Here mostly Island,
Speaker 1: considering Island is a clue so actually than free New
Speaker 1: World is Yeah, i'd say so just a little bit. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like when you look at how sexual liberation is treated
Speaker 1: in Ireland, it is pretty much an echo of what
Speaker 1: anarchists was seeing about free love in like nearly twenty
Speaker 1: like late nineties Sentry. You know, because I feel like
Speaker 1: I'm a good one, like free choice and contraceptive access
Speaker 1: and that sort of thing, reproductive choice, free love. It's
Speaker 1: really in Paula, I would see, Um they have this
Speaker 1: sort of elements as well of like communal child rearing,
Speaker 1: I mean in Um, which is another thing I spoke
Speaker 1: about that and like my video in December on the family,
Speaker 1: like the fact that humans basically evolved in an alloparental arrangement,
Speaker 1: in a corporative reading arrangement. Yeah, there's because of capitalism
Speaker 1: moved away from that. Yeah, there's a lot of if
Speaker 1: you if you study how kind of different societies that
Speaker 1: were not capitalists handled child rearing, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: like very interesting. I think my favorite is it was
Speaker 1: some indigenous group in Um South America, whose like cultural
Speaker 1: belief was that you didn't you didn't have like one
Speaker 1: man have sex with a woman, and that like leads
Speaker 1: conceiving a child. It starts the process. And so once
Speaker 1: you've started the process of making a child, the woman
Speaker 1: then is going to pick out all of the guys
Speaker 1: that she thinks have traits that she wants to be
Speaker 1: like part of the child she's making and has sex
Speaker 1: with them, because you're like gradually building the child by
Speaker 1: having like adding additional sperm to it, which means that
Speaker 1: when they have the kid, all of those guys that
Speaker 1: she had sex pregnant have a responsibility to rear the
Speaker 1: child and teach it things, which I think is objectively
Speaker 1: the best way to treat kids. I mean, even like
Speaker 1: it's that's such an interesting metaphysical concept in terms of
Speaker 1: like what constitutes like even like the the idea of
Speaker 1: genetic makeup, because even though it's not like literally true,
Speaker 1: it's still like if you can convince yourself of that
Speaker 1: in your head, then it kind of is physically true,
Speaker 1: and it will it will be true enough for the
Speaker 1: kid because like really because most of the father those
Speaker 1: treats are gonna like manifest in the child anyway because
Speaker 1: they were raised by them. Therefore, I think we should
Speaker 1: all agree to just act like it works that way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I mean like and also like in terms of
Speaker 1: like the group living in Island versus like Brave New
Speaker 1: World everywhere else, it's always like you don't you have
Speaker 1: group living because you've lost like the idea of individuality,
Speaker 1: right versus groups living in Island is more like you
Speaker 1: know how like anarchists have like group homes and that's
Speaker 1: it's it's very similar to group living allows you to
Speaker 1: be the best version of yourself because the best version
Speaker 1: of yourself exists in the community. Yeah, exactly. There's like
Speaker 1: there's like a barista or whatever. There's a kind of
Speaker 1: like like a jokey fruition fist. I think about a
Speaker 1: lot where it's like if you see a block and
Speaker 1: like you're looking at it like a black block, right,
Speaker 1: It's like the way you can tell that there are
Speaker 1: mooise involved is if you see a bunch of people
Speaker 1: actually like legitimately wearing all the same thing. It's like
Speaker 1: like it's it's it's like it's it's really like it's
Speaker 1: it's it's extremely rare that like even even when you're
Speaker 1: doing this for security reasons that you can get a
Speaker 1: bunch of anarchists who actually literally all wear exactly the
Speaker 1: same thing, because it's like it's like, yeah, you have
Speaker 1: this sort of like I mean, okay, this is this
Speaker 1: is not like always true, but like it's it's I
Speaker 1: don't know, you you you have this thing where even
Speaker 1: when you're like even when anarchists are like trying to
Speaker 1: sort of like fade into a single mass, it's like
Speaker 1: be like like they literally can't do it because everyone
Speaker 1: has this sort of like this individual definitely seeing people
Speaker 1: be bad at block more often than I've seen them
Speaker 1: be good at it, Yeah, it's like whi I mean
Speaker 1: like the actual hiding part of it. Yeah yeah, but
Speaker 1: I don't know, like it's it's it's it's there's there's
Speaker 1: there there there there's a way of sort of egalitarianism
Speaker 1: in sociality where like you treat everyone as if they
Speaker 1: were exactly the same and like and you know, and
Speaker 1: there there's models of this word. It's like yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like okay, you actually try to like force everyone to
Speaker 1: be exactly the same, where like everyone to be exactly
Speaker 1: same in the class and like that sucks. And you
Speaker 1: shouldn't do it. And the alternative to that is everyone
Speaker 1: is just sort of like in a group, but they're
Speaker 1: all like I don't I'm not entirely sure if this
Speaker 1: don't make any sense, but it's I don't know, there
Speaker 1: are a group thing. Yeah. Yeah, it's like the purpose
Speaker 1: of the group is to like maintain like you know,
Speaker 1: maybe like maintain the differentiation of the individual. Yeah, to
Speaker 1: foster what makes the dividence is really good at being
Speaker 1: like their own person and give them the tools that
Speaker 1: can you can set that up. Yeah, I think exactly.
Speaker 1: Like culturally, we have like problems thinking about that because
Speaker 1: like the sort of American version of individuality has to
Speaker 1: do with like no, no, no, you're you're an individual
Speaker 1: because you have no connections to anyone else. And it's like,
Speaker 1: well this sucks and it is bad because and that
Speaker 1: kind of goes back to the whole spoon building a
Speaker 1: baby concept. I didn't think I would ever use that
Speaker 1: freeze individuals only individuals because their combination of influences are
Speaker 1: unique to them. Yeah, well not just that. I mean
Speaker 1: obviously it's a gene's a component, and I'll know a lot,
Speaker 1: but I think key aspect of it is that you know,
Speaker 1: because we are reason these different environments surrounded by different people,
Speaker 1: we have different experiences. That's what builds us up. You know,
Speaker 1: Like I can I can already name off the top
Speaker 1: of my head, like a bunch of like defining movements
Speaker 1: from my childhood. You know that basically changed my course,
Speaker 1: you know, like the one time I got cyber bullied,
Speaker 1: not basically like shifted my perspective and my approach the
Speaker 1: internet to that kind of thing. You know, it's like
Speaker 1: it really, I really can't imagine how someone could come
Speaker 1: away with the idea that an individual is just an
Speaker 1: individual on their own. Yeah, they just they just pop
Speaker 1: out and are that thing. Yeah, I mean yeah, because
Speaker 1: like a large portion of you was built up of
Speaker 1: previous you, and previously like exists, like your previous existences
Speaker 1: makes a large portion of yourself. And like sure you
Speaker 1: can say you have a little bit of like ego
Speaker 1: from the start, like your actual self self that that
Speaker 1: you know, contributed to the way you interpret events, which
Speaker 1: then will in turn build your personality. But I think
Speaker 1: these things are not opposing. These things work in tandem.
Speaker 1: But yeah, yes, it is the whole group living components
Speaker 1: and also in that group living components. You notice and
Speaker 1: at one point in the book, Um, one of the
Speaker 1: children like basically in passing mentions that you know, they
Speaker 1: don't want to go by a certain person because they
Speaker 1: are mad at them or whatever. And so they basically
Speaker 1: have that freedom to remove themselves from that situation and
Speaker 1: go on, um, sleep at another house or another space
Speaker 1: until that sort of situation is resolved. And I think
Speaker 1: that also would really be a crucial element of society,
Speaker 1: particularly for children, having that freedom of associate and freedom
Speaker 1: of movement, because imagine how many abusive situations could be
Speaker 1: avoided over him. Indeed, if children had the ability to
Speaker 1: come out of it. You know, we strict children of
Speaker 1: choice and allows these sorts of dynamics to persist. Yeahstand
Speaker 1: these dynamics that persist in the next generation and so
Speaker 1: on and so on. It's this thing that's having a
Speaker 1: resurgence in the United States right now and is like
Speaker 1: at the core of all of the book banning in
Speaker 1: the anti trans legislation, which is this idea that like
Speaker 1: kids shouldn't have a choice because that would interfere with
Speaker 1: parents having absolute control over the life of their child.
Speaker 1: And then includes the control to like, if a child
Speaker 1: says I'm this or I'm that, the parent can say
Speaker 1: absolutely not. Yeah, exactly if you had like this, if
Speaker 1: you sort of like too with like someone from from
Speaker 1: the past or someone who lives in like a cooperative
Speaker 1: reading arrangement, that the pear and the child is the
Speaker 1: pearance property entirely, it would look at you like real
Speaker 1: funny because the child is part of the community, doesn't
Speaker 1: belong to anyone, you know, if it belongs to anything.
Speaker 1: It just belongs to the community as a whole, as
Speaker 1: as we all do. Yeah. But yeah, another element I
Speaker 1: think I find, um, I find really interesting and the
Speaker 1: way that probably society operates is that and I guess
Speaker 1: in comparison to brieve New World, unlike in brief New World,
Speaker 1: where drugs are used like UM likes, and like all
Speaker 1: drugs are used for a pacification and control and self
Speaker 1: medication and that kind of thing to sort of like
Speaker 1: chill you out and prevent you from basically going mad
Speaker 1: in a mad society. Um in Pala, you know, Chunky's
Speaker 1: is used for bonding and for enlightenment and for social
Speaker 1: connection and social cohesion. It is really really using that
Speaker 1: that he changes what drugs do in his books, like
Speaker 1: after he starts doing them. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Yeah, Now,
Speaker 1: I actually don't know. You know, I used to have
Speaker 1: because I I had the opposite arc with with drugs,
Speaker 1: where I started doing them when I was very young
Speaker 1: and had the belief that like they were kind of
Speaker 1: inherently this mind opening tool that could be used to
Speaker 1: expand the borders of reality within human beings, and as
Speaker 1: an adultum in part through some of the research I've
Speaker 1: done on the far right, come to understand, like, no,
Speaker 1: you can also use them to reinforce the very limited,
Speaker 1: terrible things you already believe, And there are folks who
Speaker 1: do that quite effectively of appeal you esotericism kind of. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know if I just made up that too.
Speaker 1: I like, I like that term. It's thinking of it's
Speaker 1: an accurate it's an accurate term to describe the thing
Speaker 1: we're talking about. I'm taking it, okay, Well, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that that's absolutely correct, because I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: like those sort of psycho psychedelic substances and stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they can open your mind, but they are as they
Speaker 1: are ultimately drawing from your mind, drawing from your past
Speaker 1: experiences and beliefs in some capacity. The way I always
Speaker 1: describe it is that, like, psychedelics are an acceleberance to
Speaker 1: the fire that you've already built, and they can make
Speaker 1: it flare up, and it can be really cool and awesome,
Speaker 1: and it can flare up and be utterly terrified and
Speaker 1: be like oh no, no, no, no, no no no no,
Speaker 1: but it's always kind of amplifying the things that are
Speaker 1: you've already built through like the kindling of yourself. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It psychedelics do not create things um within you, but
Speaker 1: they can lead you to realize things you wouldn't already realize,
Speaker 1: or they can lead you to reinforce things that you're
Speaker 1: already doing. And it kind of depends on what you
Speaker 1: go into it with. It's like you know, Leary said,
Speaker 1: it's I think it was leally set setting in dose,
Speaker 1: and like your mind set is one of the most
Speaker 1: important things for what's actually going to happen when you
Speaker 1: when you take psychedelics. Yeah, and if you're a Nazi,
Speaker 1: you can get better being a Nazi from taking as
Speaker 1: if you're a Nazi, you're gonna see Hitler pull up, Yes,
Speaker 1: my son, continue the good work. That's That's the thing
Speaker 1: a lot of people don't understand when I've tried to,
Speaker 1: like when I tried to talk to people who are
Speaker 1: like really obviously pro psychedelics and like, yeah, they're so
Speaker 1: like freeing that you think about new ways, And then
Speaker 1: I explained to them, there's like, well this isn't this
Speaker 1: is an easy segue. But if somehow the conversation goes
Speaker 1: to the point to be talking about all the Nazis
Speaker 1: who do psychedelics and and then like do like weird
Speaker 1: esoteric rituals while doing like like psyched drugs, they can
Speaker 1: confuse these people because like how could you be a Nazi? Well,
Speaker 1: you're you know, in that mindset, and like, well it's
Speaker 1: actually for all of yeah, for all these reasons that
Speaker 1: we've discussed, it can actually assist within that like it's
Speaker 1: like fantastical, genocidal, conspiratorial thinking. It can really can really
Speaker 1: give that a lot, a lot of credence in someone's brains,
Speaker 1: because especially if you've spoken to someone who has taken
Speaker 1: psychos and I've had a specific kind of experience, you
Speaker 1: can't talk them all to that experience. Yeah, as far
Speaker 1: as they consume that is that is solidified in the mind.
Speaker 1: You know, this is reality. I just had a glimpse
Speaker 1: that the reality kind of thing, you know. Yeah, absolutely, yeah.
Speaker 1: It's one of those like if you want, if you
Speaker 1: want an illustration of how psychedelics do not work the
Speaker 1: way some people claim, just make a note of the
Speaker 1: fact that at every street fight between fascists and anti
Speaker 1: fascists in Portland, both sides, every single person had fucking
Speaker 1: weed on them, Like the fucking the far right like
Speaker 1: smoking pot as much as everybody else. Um, they just
Speaker 1: also do cocaine. Where is where is? Antifa does yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and does ketamine. The Proud Boys do cocaine, and they
Speaker 1: both have everybody's got joints, and both people and people
Speaker 1: and people on both sides have dropped acid and taking shrimps.
Speaker 1: Yeah I can. I can say this from a point
Speaker 1: of journalistic certainty because during one of the rallies where
Speaker 1: there was a permitted event at the Federal Park, the
Speaker 1: police were there and telling people they could not take
Speaker 1: weed onto the Federal Park because it was federally illegal,
Speaker 1: and every like both sides, people were like alright, shit, Michael,
Speaker 1: turning back because they couldn't walk on with the weed
Speaker 1: in their pockets. That's gonna who kind of wounds to
Speaker 1: me because m I don't know if you all saw
Speaker 1: this teet I put on recently, Like there's still this
Speaker 1: resistance to drugs and particularly to like kind of this
Speaker 1: and you would think that, you know, after decades of
Speaker 1: research and decades of understanding and really decades, not even decades,
Speaker 1: centuries of its use in various you know, religious and
Speaker 1: spiritual practices that by now, you know, in a post
Speaker 1: colonial country would reach the point where you know, we
Speaker 1: let it go and we deternalize it. But although the
Speaker 1: we're kind of in the process of it, we still
Speaker 1: have this situation where the police are like constantly burning
Speaker 1: down like fields of cannabis. Like they pull up and
Speaker 1: they're like, we just seized and burned down like one
Speaker 1: million dollars worth of cannabis and arrested. This is than
Speaker 1: the others, Like, why are we still at this point
Speaker 1: where um, basic basic like plants and tubs and medicines
Speaker 1: and whatnot. Still he saying this stigma it's not grounded
Speaker 1: in any sort of reality or logic. You know, it's
Speaker 1: just colonially, you're a prejudice. But that was brief aside, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I the only thing I have much left to see
Speaker 1: boat Island and brief New World. Well, you know, listeners,
Speaker 1: go home, put on some Hitler speeches, drop some absolutely
Speaker 1: absolutely not that is the worst idea. Do not do that,
Speaker 1: Go to the woods, go do basically literally anything else
Speaker 1: besides that specific thing. It's that specific thing that is different.
Speaker 1: Different people can can disagree. No, like that is like
Speaker 1: one of the worst things to do to your own
Speaker 1: brain and psyche. Absolutely not. Yeah, just do whatever, whether
Speaker 1: literally anything else. Watch Star Trek, put on, put on
Speaker 1: off the I have. I've watched a lot of Star
Speaker 1: Trek while tripping. See, there's there's so many better things
Speaker 1: to do that that thing you've said. Mm hm, go
Speaker 1: watch the movie Conspiracy starring Kenneth brand Of a shipload
Speaker 1: of mescal and that could be funny. They don't even
Speaker 1: know what mescaline is, neither instructions. Do not compute if
Speaker 1: if acid made time different? What? Yeah, that's kind of mescaline.
Speaker 1: I mean, mescaline is like the the active thing inside pot. Yeah,
Speaker 1: mescalin is is a psychedelic the most intense time dilation
Speaker 1: I've ever experienced, where like you will feel like weeks
Speaker 1: have passed and it's been like seven hours. Um, it's
Speaker 1: pretty dope. I definitely recommend mescal and everybody go take
Speaker 1: mescaline even where at that, Um, well you if you,
Speaker 1: if you, there is a way to get the cact
Speaker 1: which are legal pretty much everywhere because they're just cactuses
Speaker 1: and a lot of people use them decoratively, and then
Speaker 1: using a what do you call the pressure cooker, you
Speaker 1: can you can get the mescal and out of the cacti.
Speaker 1: I've known people who have done it. I have not
Speaker 1: personally done it. Obviously, that would that would that would
Speaker 1: be a crime. Never criminal. We would never, we would
Speaker 1: never advocate that. Yeah, but but there are ways too.
Speaker 1: There are ways that like a person with minimal resources
Speaker 1: can get mescal and out of out of the right cactus.
Speaker 1: And people have done it, you know, So there's the
Speaker 1: criminals have done people. There's this thing anyway. Yeah, alright,
Speaker 1: Saint Andrew, that was awesome. I'm gonna go to read
Speaker 1: Island now. Um it's a good world. And I haven't
Speaker 1: read this. I would write bummed, I guess at the
Speaker 1: end of this, I am kind of bummed that as
Speaker 1: as imaginative guy as he was, his This was his
Speaker 1: final book too, well, in his utopian story had to
Speaker 1: end with it being crushed essentially by industrial expansion. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and like co option, I mean like it is it is,
Speaker 1: it is interesting. Yeah, this this was his final book.
Speaker 1: This was like his like send off in like in
Speaker 1: a way. That's that's an interesting component, right because like
Speaker 1: in Ireland yet like the utopian society, but there is
Speaker 1: a king, yeah, and a queen mother, but not they
Speaker 1: don't have like the kind of power that you know,
Speaker 1: we were typically, Um we still upon kings and queen mothers.
Speaker 1: You know, they're still they're still able to destroy the
Speaker 1: society ultimately by collaborating with the military dictator enighbor and
Speaker 1: the industrialist oil guy. But I mean they are not
Speaker 1: really that involved in the day today run into their society,
Speaker 1: you know, like Hallo would be the same with without them.
Speaker 1: And interestingly, the reason they were taking parts in the
Speaker 1: destruction upon these societies because they were educated in Europe
Speaker 1: by Christians and then went back to Parlo. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: interesting because he's kind of playing with it. Sounds like
Speaker 1: the same thing Token was, because like Jared Tolkien at
Speaker 1: the end of his life kind of identified himself as
Speaker 1: like this weird sort of monarchist anarchist where he wanted
Speaker 1: there to be thought the ideal society was one in
Speaker 1: which people, you know, there was people could not exercise
Speaker 1: power over each other, but there was a little hierarchy,
Speaker 1: and that you had a king who couldn't actually do anything,
Speaker 1: whose purpose was to act as a figurehead. Um and
Speaker 1: I I don't entirely get what he was going through here.
Speaker 1: He wrote a lot on the subject himself. And it's
Speaker 1: interesting that Huxley is kind of playing with the same idea,
Speaker 1: but is is obviously being like, well, this is a
Speaker 1: bad idea. You know, it could only work for so long, um, YadA, YadA.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I find that compelling. Again, I want
Speaker 1: to read this, and that's something I may dig into more.
Speaker 1: Is kind of like how Token conceived of the ideal
Speaker 1: sort of monarchy versus how how Huxley was thinking about it.
Speaker 1: I think that's kind of interesting. Yeah, well that's gonna
Speaker 1: do it for us here, and it could happen here.
Speaker 1: Uh Garrison tour dot com to sponsored to dot com. No,
Speaker 1: just drop some acid and Google Hitler. Okay again, like seriously,
Speaker 1: don't don't, don't literally do anything else. Don't do that.
Speaker 1: The woods are lovely, the beach is magnificent. Talk to
Speaker 1: the ocean. It's so much mountain mountain unless you yea
Speaker 1: like something. Yeah yeah, go to a to have go
Speaker 1: to a comic con U literally think my suggestions. I
Speaker 1: will talk about that experience at a later date. All right,
Speaker 1: that is uh, that is the show. Hey, We'll be
Speaker 1: back Monday with more episodes every week from now until
Speaker 1: the heat death of the Universe. It Could Happen Here
Speaker 1: is a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts
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Speaker 1: You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated
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Speaker 1: for listening.