WEBVTT - It Could Happen Here Weekly 143 0:00:01.720 --> 0:00:02.880 Cool Media. 0:00:03.480 --> 0:00:05.880 Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let 0:00:05.960 --> 0:00:09.600 you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode 0:00:09.720 --> 0:00:12.840 of the week that just happened is here in one 0:00:12.960 --> 0:00:16.720 convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to 0:00:16.720 --> 0:00:19.200 listen to in a long stretch if you want. If 0:00:19.200 --> 0:00:21.160 you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, 0:00:21.200 --> 0:00:22.919 there's going to be nothing new here for you, but 0:00:23.280 --> 0:00:24.920 you can make your own decisions. 0:00:27.120 --> 0:00:29.720 Welcome back to you could happen here here daily dose 0:00:29.800 --> 0:00:33.599 of something a little unsettling. I'm Molly Conger, your occasional 0:00:33.600 --> 0:00:35.360 host here on this feed, and the host of a 0:00:35.360 --> 0:00:37.720 new weekly show from Cool Zone Media called Weird Little 0:00:37.720 --> 0:00:41.080 Guys that I think you'll probably like. Today, I'm a 0:00:41.080 --> 0:00:43.440 little shamelessly promoting my own show by giving you a 0:00:43.440 --> 0:00:45.519 little taste of the kinds of stories I like to 0:00:45.560 --> 0:00:48.199 dig into over on the Weird Little Guys feed. So 0:00:48.479 --> 0:00:51.960 remember last month when Donald Trump got shot? I kind 0:00:51.960 --> 0:00:55.279 of don't. It feels like it was years ago. I 0:00:55.320 --> 0:00:57.880 barely remember who I was during those tense few days 0:00:57.880 --> 0:01:00.640 where it seemed possible Trump would ride that momentum to victory. 0:01:01.160 --> 0:01:04.039 Imagining posters of that photo of Trump with blood dripping 0:01:04.040 --> 0:01:07.840 down his face, fist raised, and then kind of didn't 0:01:07.920 --> 0:01:11.280 matter at all anymore. The shooter wasn't a Biden sleeper 0:01:11.280 --> 0:01:14.360 agent sent to take down the opposition. He was just 0:01:14.360 --> 0:01:16.760 some kid with a rifle and the kind of uniquely 0:01:16.840 --> 0:01:19.760 American desire to cause chaos with it. And that was 0:01:19.760 --> 0:01:22.360 really hard for a lot of people to swallow. What 0:01:22.400 --> 0:01:25.280 do you mean it doesn't seem like he was politically motivated. 0:01:25.680 --> 0:01:28.039 He shot the former president. He shot him while he 0:01:28.080 --> 0:01:29.920 was on stage at a rally for his campaign to 0:01:29.959 --> 0:01:33.880 retake the presidency. Everything about the situation is political. How 0:01:33.880 --> 0:01:38.120 could the shooter have had any other motivation? Thomas Crooks 0:01:38.160 --> 0:01:39.920 wouldn't be the first guy to take a shot at 0:01:39.920 --> 0:01:43.920 a president or a presidential candidate for no reason at all. 0:01:44.800 --> 0:01:47.440 Far from it. While I was doing research for the 0:01:47.440 --> 0:01:50.080 first episode of my show, which theoretically you could pick 0:01:50.160 --> 0:01:52.160 up your phone and subscribe to right now while you're 0:01:52.200 --> 0:01:55.080 listening if you wanted to, it got lost on a 0:01:55.080 --> 0:01:58.920 few side quests. That's always happening to me. But as 0:01:58.920 --> 0:02:01.360 I breezed past a quick mention of George Wallace, the 0:02:01.400 --> 0:02:04.280 four term governor of Alabama, best remembered for his rallying 0:02:04.320 --> 0:02:09.520 cry of segregation now, segregation, tomorrow, segregation forever. I'm not 0:02:09.520 --> 0:02:11.120 going to do it in his accent. I'll spay that. 0:02:12.360 --> 0:02:15.520 I remember that he got shot while running for president too, 0:02:16.760 --> 0:02:19.280 during the primary in nineteen seventy two. He was paralyzed 0:02:19.280 --> 0:02:23.160 after surviving an attempted assassination on the campaign trail. Surely, 0:02:23.280 --> 0:02:25.840 whoever shot a man like George Wallace did it out 0:02:25.840 --> 0:02:31.440 of a deep ideological commitment to something right. Maybe a 0:02:31.480 --> 0:02:34.359 civil rights activist opposed to Wallace's views on race, or 0:02:34.400 --> 0:02:37.400 a McGovern voter concerned that Wallace's cynical attempt to gain 0:02:37.440 --> 0:02:40.600 the Democratic Party nomination after winning five states as a 0:02:40.600 --> 0:02:44.120 third party candidate in sixty eight might actually work. Or 0:02:44.560 --> 0:02:47.000 maybe he was a diehard Nixon supporter who saw Wallace 0:02:47.040 --> 0:02:50.960 as a spoiler, siphoning conservative votes away from Nixon. But 0:02:51.040 --> 0:02:54.760 that's not what happened. When Arthur Bremer shot George Wallace 0:02:54.800 --> 0:02:57.000 four times in the chest and stomach on May fifteenth, 0:02:57.120 --> 0:03:00.680 nineteen seventy two. It had nothing at all to do 0:03:00.720 --> 0:03:06.360 with Wallace's policy positions, or Nixon's or McGovern's. It didn't 0:03:06.400 --> 0:03:09.480 even have really anything at all to do with George 0:03:09.520 --> 0:03:13.840 Wallace Bremer had been planning for months to assassinate Richard Nixon, 0:03:14.280 --> 0:03:17.920 but it turned out that was too hard. He just 0:03:18.000 --> 0:03:21.960 wanted to shoot somebody important. I hesitate to draw too 0:03:22.000 --> 0:03:24.680 many comparisons to the Trump shooter because there's a lot 0:03:24.720 --> 0:03:27.520 we still don't know and may never know. But it 0:03:27.560 --> 0:03:30.160 did come out early on that Crooks was equally interested 0:03:30.160 --> 0:03:32.639 in shooting Joe Biden. Trump just happened to have a 0:03:32.680 --> 0:03:35.720 campaign rally close to where he lived in Pennsylvania, and 0:03:35.800 --> 0:03:39.560 that rally happened to have weak perimeter security. Crooks had 0:03:39.560 --> 0:03:41.800 also looked into how to get close to FBI Director 0:03:41.840 --> 0:03:47.880 Christopher Ray, Attorney General Merrick Garland, and inexplicably, Kate Middleton. Yes, 0:03:48.000 --> 0:03:51.640 that Kate Middleton, the Princess of Wales. If Biden had 0:03:51.640 --> 0:03:54.840 been campaigning in western Pennsylvania, or if Richard Nixon's security 0:03:54.840 --> 0:03:58.040 hadn't been so tight, Crooks may have shot Biden and 0:03:58.200 --> 0:04:01.360 Bremer may have killed Nixon. It doesn't seem like it 0:04:01.400 --> 0:04:04.840 really mattered to either of them who they shot, as 0:04:04.880 --> 0:04:08.240 long as they shot somewhat important. One of the funny 0:04:08.240 --> 0:04:11.600 things about history is realizing that we've always been the 0:04:11.640 --> 0:04:14.280 way that we are now there. Truly is nothing new 0:04:14.360 --> 0:04:17.279 under the sun, because within hours of the attempt on 0:04:17.279 --> 0:04:20.480 George Wallace's life, before any information was clear at all, 0:04:21.080 --> 0:04:23.120 Nixon was demanding his aides put in a call to 0:04:23.160 --> 0:04:26.400 the White House Deputy director of Communications, Kenneth Clawson, to 0:04:26.400 --> 0:04:28.440 put out a statement that the shooter was a supporter 0:04:28.520 --> 0:04:31.039 of George McGovern that was the front runner and the 0:04:31.040 --> 0:04:34.800 Democratic primary, whom Nixon would go on to trounce terribly 0:04:34.880 --> 0:04:36.880 at the election at the end of that year. So 0:04:37.320 --> 0:04:40.560 Nixon saying, just say, we've got evidence, We've got unmistakable evidence. 0:04:41.360 --> 0:04:44.880 Of course, they didn't have evidence of any kind, unmistakable 0:04:44.960 --> 0:04:47.600 or not. And when the evidence did emerge, it certainly 0:04:47.680 --> 0:04:50.000 didn't show the shooter working on the McGovern campaign, which 0:04:50.040 --> 0:04:52.240 is the rumor Nixon was hoping to spread in those 0:04:52.279 --> 0:04:52.960 early hours. 0:04:54.080 --> 0:05:22.920 Bob, definitely, day person, you know what I mean, put 0:05:22.400 --> 0:05:28.280 it right away that you put it to get that 0:05:32.760 --> 0:05:34.880 before they hit on the way. 0:05:36.400 --> 0:05:39.840 Now, we don't have thousands of hours of secret recordings 0:05:39.880 --> 0:05:43.160 from inside the offices of today's Republicans, but we did 0:05:43.160 --> 0:05:45.400 see something really similar in the immediate aftermath of the 0:05:45.400 --> 0:05:48.360 Trump shooting. He's a Biden voter. He's a Democrat, he's 0:05:48.360 --> 0:05:50.760 a radical leftist, he's Antifa. We can already tell. We 0:05:50.960 --> 0:05:53.760 just know it's obvious. We have proof. The fact that 0:05:53.760 --> 0:05:56.799 there was no proof of anything on day one doesn't matter. 0:05:57.400 --> 0:06:01.159 It matters even less than no proof ever materialized. You 0:06:01.360 --> 0:06:03.880 just have to get the rumor out first. You have 0:06:03.960 --> 0:06:06.840 to make an impression while the cement is wet, and 0:06:06.880 --> 0:06:10.000 sometimes that's permanent. One thing that is not on the 0:06:10.120 --> 0:06:12.760 Nixon tapes, though, is a conversation that allegedly occurred that 0:06:12.760 --> 0:06:15.640 afternoon in May nineteen seventy two that was reported by 0:06:15.640 --> 0:06:18.960 Seymour Hirsh twenty years later in nineteen ninety two. Despite 0:06:18.960 --> 0:06:21.240 a Supreme Court ruling in the seventies the tapes belonged 0:06:21.240 --> 0:06:23.799 to the National Archives, the full volume of the Nixon 0:06:23.800 --> 0:06:25.720 tapes were not made available to the public until two 0:06:25.800 --> 0:06:30.000 thousand and seven. Now, Seymour Hirsh is not a making 0:06:30.040 --> 0:06:31.839 stuff up kind of guy. I don't think he was 0:06:31.880 --> 0:06:35.160 fabricating any part of this story. He's still alive and 0:06:35.240 --> 0:06:37.080 has a sub stack at eighty seven years old. So 0:06:37.160 --> 0:06:38.920 I don't want any beef with Seymour. That's not what 0:06:38.920 --> 0:06:41.120 I'm saying. He has a decade's long career as an 0:06:41.120 --> 0:06:43.960 investigative journalist and has a Pulitzer for exposing the cover 0:06:44.040 --> 0:06:46.839 up of the Myli massacre. I don't think he's patting 0:06:46.839 --> 0:06:49.039 the truth here. But in his nineteen ninety two New 0:06:49.120 --> 0:06:52.000 Yorker piece called Nixon's Last cover Up, the Tapes he 0:06:52.040 --> 0:06:55.360 wants the Archives to suppress, Hirsch wrote that the unreleased 0:06:55.360 --> 0:06:57.400 tapes from the afternoon of the wall Is shooting contained 0:06:57.400 --> 0:07:01.120 recordings of Nixon directing E. Howard Hunt, the retired CIA 0:07:01.200 --> 0:07:04.520 officer who headed his White House plumbers, to break into 0:07:04.520 --> 0:07:08.039 Bremer's apartment before the FBI could search it and to 0:07:08.200 --> 0:07:13.880 plant McGovern campaign literature. Hunt's own autobiography admits only that 0:07:14.080 --> 0:07:18.440 at Nixon's direction, Nixon advisor Charles Coulson did ask Hunt 0:07:18.520 --> 0:07:22.480 to take a look around Brehmer's apartment. Even that this 0:07:22.520 --> 0:07:24.960 is all taking place just a month before Hunt did, 0:07:25.120 --> 0:07:27.520 in fact play a key role at the Watergate break in, 0:07:28.120 --> 0:07:31.840 this isn't exactly unbelievable. I can absolutely believe that Richard 0:07:31.920 --> 0:07:34.000 Nixon would ask E. Howard Hunt to break into a 0:07:34.000 --> 0:07:37.320 building for some nefarious purpose, because we know he did 0:07:37.320 --> 0:07:40.360 that at least once. And one thing the varying accounts 0:07:40.360 --> 0:07:42.400 seemed to agree on is that Hunt was unable to 0:07:42.400 --> 0:07:44.720 complete the assignment because the FBI had already sealed off 0:07:44.720 --> 0:07:48.040 Bremer's apartment in Milwaukee before he got there. Hersh's peace 0:07:48.080 --> 0:07:51.160 claimed the tapes contain recordings of Coulson breaking this news 0:07:51.160 --> 0:07:53.480 to Nixon, that Hunt arrived too late and the apartment 0:07:53.520 --> 0:07:56.720 was already under police guard, and further claims that on 0:07:56.800 --> 0:07:59.520 the recordings, Nixon can be heard berating Coulson for not 0:07:59.560 --> 0:08:03.360 doing more to slow down the FBI. Again, all completely 0:08:03.400 --> 0:08:06.040 believable if you have even a passing knowledge of Richard Nixon, 0:08:06.720 --> 0:08:09.800 and Colson himself related this account to Hirsh in nineteen 0:08:09.880 --> 0:08:13.440 ninety two. The problem is we have the tapes now, 0:08:13.880 --> 0:08:17.240 fifteen years after Hirsch's article was published. Researchers scoured the 0:08:17.280 --> 0:08:19.880 newly released recordings for proof of this version of events, 0:08:19.880 --> 0:08:23.200 and it isn't there. It's entirely possible that Colson is 0:08:23.240 --> 0:08:26.560 recalling conversations that occurred outside the presence of the tape machine, 0:08:26.640 --> 0:08:29.360 or is misremembering how much of this was actually spoken 0:08:29.400 --> 0:08:33.040 aloud in what was simply understood. It's not out of 0:08:33.080 --> 0:08:35.560 the realm of possibility that Colson is recalling something Nixon 0:08:35.600 --> 0:08:40.200 definitely desired. It's just not all the tapes. Absence of 0:08:40.200 --> 0:08:42.480 proof isn't proof of absence, of course, but we do 0:08:42.559 --> 0:08:45.120 have a pretty complete record of Nixon's conversations on the 0:08:45.160 --> 0:08:49.000 afternoon of May fifteenth, nineteen seventy two. Those missing eighteen 0:08:49.040 --> 0:08:53.120 minutes are from a different frantic afternoon that summer. But 0:08:53.160 --> 0:08:55.800 before we get to the rest of Richard Nixon's no good, 0:08:55.920 --> 0:09:08.520 very bad day, here are some products and services. So 0:09:08.520 --> 0:09:10.760 on May fifteen, Nixon got out of a budget meeting 0:09:10.800 --> 0:09:13.440 around four pm, which was shortly after the shooting, and 0:09:13.480 --> 0:09:15.720 that's when he first got the news. And we know 0:09:15.840 --> 0:09:18.040 from the tapes that his first phone call was to 0:09:18.040 --> 0:09:21.319 his own wife, pat and then he called George Wallace's wife, Cornelia. 0:09:22.200 --> 0:09:24.760 He then asked Secretary of the Treasury John Connolly to 0:09:24.920 --> 0:09:28.200 call Ted Kennedy to offer him full Secret Service protection, 0:09:28.280 --> 0:09:31.400 which is not allowable under the structure of how that works, 0:09:31.440 --> 0:09:35.079 but he wanted it done, presumably out of some combination 0:09:35.200 --> 0:09:38.559 of the idea that Kennedy would be McGovern's vice presidential pick, 0:09:38.600 --> 0:09:41.679 and maybe just the general idea that if people are 0:09:41.679 --> 0:09:44.680 getting assassinated, you need to account for all your Kennedy's. 0:09:45.360 --> 0:09:47.520 It's actually kind of wild to dig into the tapes 0:09:47.559 --> 0:09:49.760 and see where everyone's heads were at that afternoon in 0:09:49.800 --> 0:09:53.079 the Oval office. A recording from around seven pm captures 0:09:53.080 --> 0:09:55.280 speculation that the shooting may have been a false flag 0:09:55.320 --> 0:09:58.920 by Wallace's own people, but the idea is quickly dismissed. 0:09:59.160 --> 0:10:00.599 He wouldn't have his own peace pople shoot him in 0:10:00.640 --> 0:10:02.480 the stomach. That could kill you. They would have gone 0:10:02.480 --> 0:10:05.079 for something less dangerous, like shooting him in the foot, 0:10:05.920 --> 0:10:09.440 Which is a conversation we all had after the Trump shooting, 0:10:09.480 --> 0:10:12.040 isn't it. Oh, maybe this is a stunt. Wait, why 0:10:12.080 --> 0:10:15.800 would he have them fire at his head? That's so crazy, right, 0:10:16.320 --> 0:10:18.600 it's I mean, it's the same conversation with different names 0:10:18.600 --> 0:10:21.840 and body parts. Subbed him and this recording to captures 0:10:21.920 --> 0:10:24.440 Nixon's top aids hoping that whoever did it was a 0:10:25.040 --> 0:10:31.560 left wing NUTT. 0:10:32.280 --> 0:10:34.880 Would be one of his own people to whatever to 0:10:34.880 --> 0:10:36.760 shoot that man off, and. 0:10:36.720 --> 0:10:38.200 They would have shot him in the foot or something. 0:10:40.280 --> 0:10:41.239 Oh I haven't. 0:10:41.640 --> 0:10:43.199 Wouldn't be is not one of then of people shoot 0:10:43.240 --> 0:10:48.439 him on the store to kill him? 0:10:48.440 --> 0:10:48.560 Oh? 0:10:48.679 --> 0:10:50.559 I think the guy. The guy has to be a 0:10:50.640 --> 0:10:55.520 nut of some kind. I just told the left wing right, Yeah, 0:10:55.880 --> 0:11:02.079 I silly, I think I could ken it was really 0:11:02.080 --> 0:11:06.319 elaborating now rather than the writing. And I tried to 0:11:06.360 --> 0:11:09.800 bring out the ring the writing crack. 0:11:10.040 --> 0:11:11.199 How hell to do that? 0:11:11.559 --> 0:11:12.760 It showed him twisted the. 0:11:12.840 --> 0:11:14.240 Start of plum people. 0:11:16.480 --> 0:11:18.040 So Nixon tried to put a thumb on the scale 0:11:18.080 --> 0:11:20.800 after the fact, But the exact nature of his meddling 0:11:20.840 --> 0:11:23.880 will forever be up for debate, I guess, and the 0:11:24.000 --> 0:11:26.599 Nixon tapes aren't the only unique primary source for in 0:11:26.720 --> 0:11:29.600 down that day. In the early months of nineteen seventy two, 0:11:29.640 --> 0:11:32.040 as Arthur Bremmer prepared to shoot Nixon, gave up on 0:11:32.040 --> 0:11:35.400 shooting Nixon and ultimately shot George Wallace, he was keeping 0:11:35.400 --> 0:11:39.000 a diary, and in nineteen seventy three Harper's Magazine Press 0:11:39.360 --> 0:11:43.040 published that diary. I couldn't find a physical copy of 0:11:43.080 --> 0:11:45.720 the original bound book published by Harper's for less than 0:11:45.760 --> 0:11:48.760 a small fortune, but it did find an archival scan 0:11:48.880 --> 0:11:51.800 of the diary that was produced as evidence, and the 0:11:51.840 --> 0:11:56.400 diary is a strange and fascinating document. Only the latter 0:11:56.400 --> 0:11:58.640 half was published. He'd thrown away the first one hundred 0:11:58.640 --> 0:12:00.520 and forty eight pages of fact. He notes on the 0:12:00.520 --> 0:12:03.480 first page of the version that we have. In nineteen 0:12:03.520 --> 0:12:06.400 eighty a construction worker named Sherman Griffin found those first 0:12:06.440 --> 0:12:08.800 one hundred and forty eight pages, so this again, eight 0:12:08.880 --> 0:12:11.840 years after the shooting. He found them wrapped in plastic 0:12:11.920 --> 0:12:15.480 inside of a backpack underneath the twenty seventh Street Viaduct 0:12:15.520 --> 0:12:19.080 in Milwaukee. From prison, Arthur Remmer tried to sue Griffin 0:12:19.120 --> 0:12:20.959 for ownership of the document, saying it would only be 0:12:21.080 --> 0:12:23.120 used to embarrass him and it was his. He owned it. 0:12:23.240 --> 0:12:25.840 I need back, But in nineteen eighty one a court 0:12:25.920 --> 0:12:28.160 ruled that Griffin could keep it. I'm sure it was 0:12:28.200 --> 0:12:30.760 more complicated in the end, all the back and forth 0:12:30.800 --> 0:12:34.920 in court, but ultimately Finder's Keepers. The portion we do 0:12:35.000 --> 0:12:38.840 have is a lot of things. It's full of typos 0:12:38.880 --> 0:12:42.240 and disorganized thinking, and sexual fantasy and the mundane rambling 0:12:42.280 --> 0:12:44.160 stream of consciousness of a guy going about his day 0:12:44.160 --> 0:12:46.800 to day life as he tries to figure out how 0:12:46.840 --> 0:12:49.520 to shoot the president. A few months after it was published, 0:12:49.520 --> 0:12:52.079 The New York Review published an essay by Gorvadal speculating 0:12:52.120 --> 0:12:54.560 that Brehmer hadn't written the diary at all as a 0:12:54.559 --> 0:12:57.160 literary critic it was his professional opinion that Brehmer could 0:12:57.160 --> 0:12:59.840 not have written such a document, so it was riddled 0:12:59.840 --> 0:13:02.440 with typos. The doll believes they come and go and 0:13:02.480 --> 0:13:06.120 are not believable in their structure and format, as though 0:13:06.120 --> 0:13:08.920 the writer is remembering as he writes that he's supposed 0:13:08.920 --> 0:13:10.480 to be a twenty one year old bus boy of 0:13:10.520 --> 0:13:13.839 mediocre intelligence. He also doubts that Bremer was well read 0:13:13.920 --> 0:13:16.520 enough to make reference to Soljhanitsyn's day in the Life 0:13:16.559 --> 0:13:18.719 of A von Denisovich or quit as he crossed the 0:13:18.760 --> 0:13:23.520 Great Lakes call me Ishmael. Both Denisovich and Ishmael are misspelled, 0:13:23.520 --> 0:13:25.680 but that could be intentional, he says. 0:13:26.880 --> 0:13:26.960 No. 0:13:27.160 --> 0:13:30.760 Gore Vadahal believes or perhaps would only like you to think. 0:13:30.800 --> 0:13:33.600 He believes it's hard to say that the diary was 0:13:33.640 --> 0:13:38.400 falsified in its entirety by E. Howard Hunt. Nixon Spook 0:13:39.360 --> 0:13:41.880 and Hunt was a prolific writer, giving Vidal a large 0:13:41.960 --> 0:13:44.400 volume of material for comparison, and he claims there are 0:13:44.440 --> 0:13:47.959 similarities in the writing styles, and also notes that both 0:13:48.000 --> 0:13:51.520 Bremer and Hunt use the phrase Harry hippies. They have 0:13:51.559 --> 0:13:54.880 a distaste for Harry hippies. I wasn't alive in nineteen 0:13:54.920 --> 0:13:57.040 seventy two. Maybe a lot of people hated Harry hippies. 0:13:57.640 --> 0:14:00.240 But again, just as Hirsch's claims what the secret apes 0:14:00.240 --> 0:14:02.360 in nineteen ninety two were called into question when we 0:14:02.400 --> 0:14:04.720 got the tapes in two thousand and seven, but All's 0:14:04.800 --> 0:14:08.160 essay was published in nineteen seventy three, seven years before 0:14:08.200 --> 0:14:10.839 the first half of the diary was found. So even 0:14:10.880 --> 0:14:13.200 if you're inclined to believe Hunt was crafty enough to 0:14:13.240 --> 0:14:15.600 construct this elaborate plot with a fake diary and a 0:14:15.600 --> 0:14:18.920 patsy shooter, it's a real stretch to think he would 0:14:19.040 --> 0:14:22.120 even bother writing one hundred and forty eight pages, wrapping 0:14:22.120 --> 0:14:24.440 them in plastic, hiding them inside of a backpack, and 0:14:24.480 --> 0:14:27.080 tucking that backpack into a little nook under a bridge 0:14:27.080 --> 0:14:29.840 in Milwaukee to be found by a construction worker a 0:14:29.840 --> 0:14:32.280 decade later. That part just doesn't make a. 0:14:32.280 --> 0:14:32.800 Lot of sense. 0:14:33.360 --> 0:14:36.120 But maybe Gorbadal was just doing an elaborate bit that 0:14:36.280 --> 0:14:39.280 I don't understand. The legacy of that diary lives on 0:14:39.480 --> 0:14:42.680 in some surprising ways. In those early days after the 0:14:42.720 --> 0:14:44.960 Trump shooting, before we all forgot what ever happened, I 0:14:45.000 --> 0:14:46.720 did see a lot of people point out that the 0:14:46.800 --> 0:14:49.840 last time a president took a bullet it wasn't over politics. 0:14:50.560 --> 0:14:54.520 John Hinckley Junior shot Reagan to impress Jodi Foster. Remember, Okay, 0:14:54.880 --> 0:14:58.440 here's where I admit something kind of embarrassing. I've always 0:14:58.480 --> 0:15:02.200 just accepted that statement at faceback. It makes no sense, 0:15:02.520 --> 0:15:05.640 but he wasn't acting rationally, so it's not something I 0:15:05.800 --> 0:15:08.200 felt like I needed to make sense of. He shot 0:15:08.240 --> 0:15:10.800 Reagan to impress Jodi Foster. I guess he thought she'd 0:15:10.840 --> 0:15:13.560 find that impressive. No need to interrogate that further. I 0:15:13.600 --> 0:15:15.720 mean a lot of women might find it impressive if 0:15:15.760 --> 0:15:17.360 you shot Ronald Reagan, so there's not a lot of 0:15:17.360 --> 0:15:20.120 follow up to do on that. The thing is, i'd 0:15:20.120 --> 0:15:24.120 never seen the movie Taxi Driver. I never pieced together 0:15:24.160 --> 0:15:26.400 that he thought shooting the president would impress Jodi Foster 0:15:26.520 --> 0:15:29.320 because she starred as the child sex worker in the 0:15:29.320 --> 0:15:32.400 movie Taxi Driver, in which the protagonist Travis Bickle plans 0:15:32.400 --> 0:15:35.880 to shoot a presidential candidate named Charles Palatine. Hinkley shot 0:15:35.920 --> 0:15:38.840 Reagan to impress Jodi Foster makes I guess like a 0:15:38.920 --> 0:15:42.400 little more sense if you have that cultural context, and 0:15:42.480 --> 0:15:45.040 I fear I may have been the very last person 0:15:45.040 --> 0:15:48.880 in America to find that out. So maybe everybody else 0:15:48.880 --> 0:15:51.720 already knew this next part too. I don't know, but 0:15:51.840 --> 0:15:55.240 Taxi Driver owes a lot to Arthur Bremmer, the guy 0:15:55.240 --> 0:15:59.160 who shot George Wallace. Screenwriter Paul Schrader has always denied 0:15:59.280 --> 0:16:01.840 that he based any part of the movie on Bremer's diary. 0:16:02.360 --> 0:16:04.560 In a nineteen seventy six interview, Schrader says he was 0:16:04.600 --> 0:16:08.280 inspired by the shooting itself in nineteen seventy two, but 0:16:08.320 --> 0:16:11.200 that the script was actually finished before the diary was 0:16:11.240 --> 0:16:14.320 published in seventy three, and he registered the script with 0:16:14.360 --> 0:16:18.240 the WGA, So that is provably true, right. But he 0:16:18.280 --> 0:16:22.240 told film comments Richard Thompson in seventy six, I want 0:16:22.240 --> 0:16:24.720 to emphasize that the script was written before any of 0:16:24.760 --> 0:16:27.720 the diary was published. After I read the diary, I 0:16:27.760 --> 0:16:29.680 was very tempted to take some of the good stuff 0:16:29.720 --> 0:16:31.960 from it and add it to Taxi Driver, but I 0:16:32.000 --> 0:16:35.640 decided not to because of legal ramifications. Bremer is sitting 0:16:35.680 --> 0:16:37.560 there in jail with nothing better to do than sue us, 0:16:37.600 --> 0:16:39.600 which is why I made certain the script was registered 0:16:39.600 --> 0:16:42.080 before the diary came out, and that nothing was changed 0:16:42.120 --> 0:16:45.480 after the diary's publication, And that's actually kind of prescient 0:16:45.520 --> 0:16:47.160 of him, come to think of it. He's saying this 0:16:47.200 --> 0:16:49.240 in seventy six that Bremer could file some kind of 0:16:49.320 --> 0:16:52.520 nuisance lawsuit from prison, and that's years before Bremer tried 0:16:52.560 --> 0:16:54.520 to get half a million dollars and his diary back 0:16:54.520 --> 0:16:58.480 from that construction worker. And I'm obviously not a film buff. 0:16:58.720 --> 0:17:01.520 We all just found out that I've never seen a movie. 0:17:02.040 --> 0:17:04.080 So he won't say Schrader is not telling the truth here. 0:17:04.760 --> 0:17:06.960 And maybe somebody who knows more about film would say, well, 0:17:06.960 --> 0:17:09.600 there's a difference between a script and a screenplay, right, 0:17:09.600 --> 0:17:12.800 those are different things. The script was done, but he 0:17:12.880 --> 0:17:15.960 still could have changed the look and feel of how 0:17:15.960 --> 0:17:19.320 it was shot. Because there are some scenes in Taxi 0:17:19.359 --> 0:17:21.560 Driver that, unless Scorsese and Trader had some kind of 0:17:21.760 --> 0:17:24.680 deep psychic connection to whatever forces in the universe motivated 0:17:24.760 --> 0:17:29.040 Arthur Bremmer, they absolutely came from the diary. I read 0:17:29.040 --> 0:17:31.320 the diary before sitting down to see what the movie 0:17:31.320 --> 0:17:34.320 was all about. So when Travis Pickele, the titular taxi driver, 0:17:34.880 --> 0:17:37.160 pulls up outside of a building with his fare, Martin 0:17:37.200 --> 0:17:40.000 Scorsese himself in the back seat. I was doing the 0:17:40.080 --> 0:17:43.600 Leonardo DiCaprio pointing meme at my TV because the camera 0:17:43.640 --> 0:17:46.240 pans to a woman in a window smoking a cigarette, 0:17:46.280 --> 0:17:49.160 partially obscured by a gauzy curtain, And just a few 0:17:49.200 --> 0:17:52.280 pages into Bremmer's diary, he describes a really similar scene 0:17:52.880 --> 0:17:54.879 before he flew back to Milwaukee to try to cross 0:17:54.880 --> 0:17:57.520 the border into Canada to shoot Richard Nixon in Ottawa. 0:17:57.840 --> 0:18:00.679 He wrote this in his diary, My last night at 0:18:00.680 --> 0:18:03.000 the Howard Johnson's in the Jamaica area in New York City. 0:18:03.480 --> 0:18:06.679 I didn't sleep much. A beautiful naked lady across a 0:18:06.680 --> 0:18:08.920 parking lot on the next motel out by her window 0:18:09.119 --> 0:18:12.800 Florida ceiling, smoking cigarettes, and I had to watch her. 0:18:13.240 --> 0:18:15.240 Her table room light was on and a thin veil 0:18:15.280 --> 0:18:17.440 of curtain allowed me to watch her as she passionately 0:18:17.520 --> 0:18:20.119 kissed a man who wore clothes. I never saw them 0:18:20.160 --> 0:18:21.760 in each other's arms for more than a minute at 0:18:21.760 --> 0:18:25.720 a time. They must have been fighting through binoculars. I 0:18:25.720 --> 0:18:28.560 saw them gesture like Italians and open their mouths very wide, 0:18:28.760 --> 0:18:32.119 very often. So maybe he finished the script before he 0:18:32.160 --> 0:18:35.000 read the diary, but the diary absolutely influenced the way 0:18:35.040 --> 0:18:38.320 the film was shot. According to Andrew Rausch's book on 0:18:38.359 --> 0:18:40.879 the films of Bartin Scorsese, de Niro prepared for the 0:18:40.960 --> 0:18:43.840 role by getting a New York taxi license and driving 0:18:43.880 --> 0:18:46.520 around the city listening to a cassette tape of someone 0:18:46.560 --> 0:19:01.159 reading the Diary aloud. The Diary is genuinely oh normally, 0:19:01.200 --> 0:19:03.359 I'm firmly in the camp of please do not read 0:19:03.480 --> 0:19:07.000 or recommend that others read the manifestos left behind by shooters. 0:19:07.640 --> 0:19:10.240 There's not much to gain from it. It's what they 0:19:10.280 --> 0:19:13.000 want with that and the other. There's plenty of writing 0:19:13.040 --> 0:19:16.240 on the topic, but I don't really think anyone will 0:19:16.240 --> 0:19:19.760 read Arthur Bremer's diary entry about leaving a nude massage 0:19:19.800 --> 0:19:23.840 parlor frustrated that he's still a virgin, and feel inspired 0:19:23.880 --> 0:19:26.520 to follow in his footsteps. But I do think it's 0:19:26.560 --> 0:19:29.960 a fascinating document. I learned more about what's inside the 0:19:30.000 --> 0:19:33.160 mind of a nihilist aspiring shooter from Bremer's diary than 0:19:33.640 --> 0:19:37.119 I've learned from any self indulgent little manifesto left behind 0:19:37.119 --> 0:19:39.680 by a mass shooter after failing to get his shot 0:19:39.680 --> 0:19:42.280 at Nixon at the appearance in Ottawa in April, he wrote, 0:19:42.760 --> 0:19:44.960 I just need a little opening and a second of time. 0:19:45.680 --> 0:19:48.680 Nothing has happened for so long three months. The last 0:19:48.680 --> 0:19:51.600 person I held a conversation with in three months was 0:19:51.640 --> 0:19:53.879 a near naked girl rubbing my erect penis, and she 0:19:53.920 --> 0:19:58.040 wouldn't let me put it through her failures. A few 0:19:58.080 --> 0:20:00.440 pages later, he writes that he thought about getting really drunk, 0:20:00.520 --> 0:20:04.000 but quote decided against it. Just wanted to pick a 0:20:04.040 --> 0:20:06.560 fight with a bartender somewhere or someone get arrested, and 0:20:06.600 --> 0:20:09.480 then where am I? I got something to do something 0:20:09.520 --> 0:20:13.080 big before I ever get arrested again. He writes that 0:20:13.119 --> 0:20:15.280 he's getting tired of writing he wants to be a 0:20:15.280 --> 0:20:19.240 madman who kills, and then abruptly transitions to saying he 0:20:19.440 --> 0:20:22.600 goes crazy when hears Johnny Cash's new single, quoting the 0:20:22.680 --> 0:20:24.959 lyrics I shot you with my thirty eight and now 0:20:25.000 --> 0:20:28.119 I'm doing time, before noting that a baseball game had 0:20:28.160 --> 0:20:31.080 been canceled that day due to rain. Honestly, the document 0:20:31.080 --> 0:20:33.640 it reminds me the most of is the diary kept 0:20:33.640 --> 0:20:36.400 by Franklin Seacrest, the young man who set a synagogue 0:20:36.400 --> 0:20:39.399 on fire in Austin in twenty twenty one. Large portions 0:20:39.440 --> 0:20:42.000 of his diary were produced as evidence in his trial, 0:20:42.640 --> 0:20:44.640 and his diary is sort of similar in that it's 0:20:44.640 --> 0:20:48.800 a strange stream of consciousness accounting his frustrations with women, 0:20:48.920 --> 0:20:51.960 his daily activities, going to class, arguments with his mother, 0:20:52.800 --> 0:20:56.920 interspersed with these strange outbursts of violent desire, and they're 0:20:56.920 --> 0:20:59.600 just sort of mixed in without any recognition that these 0:20:59.600 --> 0:21:03.520 things are congruous. After taking two weeks away from his 0:21:03.600 --> 0:21:05.760 diary to deal with the tragedy of failing to kill 0:21:05.840 --> 0:21:09.480 Richard Nixon, remember went to see Clockwork Orange. As he 0:21:09.520 --> 0:21:12.040 watched the movie, he decided he would kill George Wallace instead, 0:21:12.680 --> 0:21:15.560 though he lamented that this was a second rate target, writing, 0:21:16.200 --> 0:21:18.080 I won't even rate a TV in terruption in Russia 0:21:18.160 --> 0:21:20.720 or Europe. When the news breaks, they never heard of Wallace. 0:21:21.320 --> 0:21:23.320 If something big and nom flares up, I'll be at 0:21:23.359 --> 0:21:25.960 the bottom of the first page. In America, the editors 0:21:25.960 --> 0:21:29.840 will say Wallace dead. Who cares? He won't get more 0:21:29.880 --> 0:21:32.879 than three minutes on network TV news. I don't expect 0:21:32.880 --> 0:21:35.400 anybody to get a big, throbbing erection from the news. 0:21:36.080 --> 0:21:38.159 You know, a storm in some country we never heard of, 0:21:38.240 --> 0:21:41.680 kills ten thousand people, Big deal, Pass the beer? What's 0:21:41.720 --> 0:21:44.520 on TV tonight? I hope my death makes more sense 0:21:44.520 --> 0:21:47.680 than my life. And just days before he finally took 0:21:47.720 --> 0:21:50.879 his shot, he wrote, yesterday I even considered McGovern as 0:21:50.880 --> 0:21:53.560 a target. If I go to prison as an assassin, 0:21:53.920 --> 0:21:57.440 solitary forever, guards in my cell, etc. Or get killed 0:21:57.520 --> 0:22:00.720 or suicided, what difference to me? Ask me why I 0:22:00.720 --> 0:22:03.520 did it, and I'd say I don't know, or nothing 0:22:03.560 --> 0:22:07.080 else to do, or why not? Or I have to 0:22:07.160 --> 0:22:10.000 kill somebody. It bothers me that there are about thirty 0:22:10.040 --> 0:22:12.199 guys in prison now who threatened the pres and we 0:22:12.320 --> 0:22:14.600 never heard a thing about him except that they're in prison. 0:22:15.400 --> 0:22:18.440 Maybe what they need is organization. Make the first lady 0:22:18.440 --> 0:22:21.280 a widow incorporated, chicken in every pot and a bullet 0:22:21.280 --> 0:22:24.520 on every head, committee incorporated the whole to national convention 0:22:24.600 --> 0:22:27.000 every year to pick the executioner. A winner will be 0:22:27.040 --> 0:22:29.600 chosen from the best entry in forty thousand words or less, 0:22:29.640 --> 0:22:32.280 preferably less on the theme how to do a bang 0:22:32.359 --> 0:22:35.280 up job getting people to notice you? Or get it 0:22:35.280 --> 0:22:40.280 off your chest, make your problems Everybody's On May thirteenth, 0:22:40.320 --> 0:22:42.680 two days before the shooting, Brehmer attended a Wallace rally 0:22:42.720 --> 0:22:45.680 in Kalamazoo, Michigan. There are photographs of Bremer at the 0:22:45.720 --> 0:22:47.480 rally that day, and he even spoke to a police 0:22:47.480 --> 0:22:49.879 officer who responded to a call about a suspicious vehicle 0:22:49.920 --> 0:22:53.159 park near the venue. Brehmer told the officer he just 0:22:53.160 --> 0:22:54.840 wanted to be early to get a good spot at 0:22:54.880 --> 0:22:57.160 the rally and complied when asked to move his car. 0:22:58.440 --> 0:23:01.359 His loaded thirty eight was in his jacket potet. He 0:23:01.400 --> 0:23:02.960 writes in his diary that he could have taken his 0:23:03.000 --> 0:23:04.919 shot that day, but at the last minute two teenage 0:23:04.920 --> 0:23:07.400 girls caught between him and his target, and he thought 0:23:07.400 --> 0:23:09.560 they'd be disfigured or blinded if he fired through the 0:23:09.560 --> 0:23:13.080 glass they were pressed up against, writing, I let Wallace 0:23:13.160 --> 0:23:16.800 go only to spare these two stupid, innocent, delighted kids. 0:23:17.760 --> 0:23:19.920 His final entry, made the night before the shooting ends 0:23:19.920 --> 0:23:23.800 with got a sign from campaign headquarters here to shield 0:23:23.800 --> 0:23:27.520 the gun. Is there anything else to say? My cry 0:23:27.600 --> 0:23:32.160 upon firing will be a penny for your thoughts. Round 0:23:32.160 --> 0:23:34.760 four pm on the fifteenth, after Wallace finished addressing a 0:23:34.760 --> 0:23:37.480 crowd in Laurel, Maryland, Bremer pushed his way through the 0:23:37.520 --> 0:23:40.760 people hoping to shake Wallace's hand and unloaded his thirty eight. 0:23:41.560 --> 0:23:44.240 He struck Wallace four times and wounded four others, a 0:23:44.240 --> 0:23:47.679 state trooper, a campaign volunteer, Wallace's personal bodyguard, and a 0:23:47.720 --> 0:23:51.399 secret Service agent. He was convicted and sentenced to sixty 0:23:51.400 --> 0:23:54.159 three years, later reduced to fifty three years on appeal. 0:23:54.560 --> 0:23:56.920 He was denied parole in nineteen ninety six after arguing 0:23:56.920 --> 0:24:00.720 it as hearing that shooting segregationist dinosaurs wasn't as bad 0:24:00.720 --> 0:24:04.520 as harming mainstream politicians, but it was released in two 0:24:04.560 --> 0:24:07.560 thousand and seven. George Wallace wrote to Bremer in prison 0:24:07.640 --> 0:24:09.800 in nineteen ninety five, telling him that he forgave him 0:24:09.800 --> 0:24:12.040 for the shooting and hoped to correspond a bit to 0:24:12.040 --> 0:24:15.880 get to know one another. Bremer never responded, and George 0:24:15.920 --> 0:24:19.160 Wallace died in nineteen ninety eight. So we shot George 0:24:19.200 --> 0:24:22.240 Wallace for no reason, and Robert de Niro's study of 0:24:22.280 --> 0:24:24.880 the diary he left behind inspired the performance that made 0:24:24.920 --> 0:24:27.919 Hinckley shoot Reagan. There's really nothing hard to believe at 0:24:27.920 --> 0:24:29.920 all in the idea that Thomas Crooks wanted to shoot 0:24:29.920 --> 0:24:33.400 the president just to be remembered as anyone at all. 0:24:53.640 --> 0:24:56.879 Hi and Welcome to the podcast. It's b James and 0:24:56.920 --> 0:25:00.960 today I am joined by Nick. Been doing some reporting 0:25:01.040 --> 0:25:03.600 on a forest occupation in Hint, which is a place 0:25:03.640 --> 0:25:05.719 I used to live. Actually, Mick, would you like to 0:25:05.840 --> 0:25:07.920 introduce yourself and sort of explain a little bit about 0:25:07.920 --> 0:25:08.480 what you've been doing. 0:25:08.760 --> 0:25:12.280 Of course, Hi, I'm Meck. I am incidentally reporting on 0:25:12.480 --> 0:25:15.080 stuff and I thought this was a pretty neat thing 0:25:15.119 --> 0:25:17.960 to report on that I think people should know more about, 0:25:18.160 --> 0:25:19.760 and it's also kind of a fun thing. 0:25:19.840 --> 0:25:23.760 So yeah, it's very accessible for people, Like if you 0:25:23.800 --> 0:25:26.719 want to do like little forest occupying over the summer, 0:25:26.920 --> 0:25:28.520 this is one that you can do pretty easily. 0:25:29.280 --> 0:25:32.119 Yeah. Yeah, you can skip your European festival season and 0:25:32.280 --> 0:25:36.600 just go help at the forest occupation, which is cheaper 0:25:36.640 --> 0:25:37.720 and much more memorable. 0:25:38.400 --> 0:25:40.359 Yeah you can. God, they used to have one of 0:25:40.359 --> 0:25:42.439 those near the little town I lived in when I 0:25:42.480 --> 0:25:45.440 was racing in Belgium, and it was a scene. 0:25:45.880 --> 0:25:47.639 Yeah, just lovely times. 0:25:48.000 --> 0:25:50.359 Yeah, great times. We should maybe explain like a little 0:25:50.400 --> 0:25:52.359 bit about Hunt as a city, because I think if 0:25:52.359 --> 0:25:55.040 people have seen it, or they've maybe visited, like they've 0:25:55.040 --> 0:25:57.040 been to the middle of town, right and they've they've 0:25:57.040 --> 0:25:59.600 seen the castle and then the waterhouse bar or whatever, 0:25:59.600 --> 0:26:02.200 and they've been one of those sugar noses, but like 0:26:02.800 --> 0:26:05.560 they may not have seen the whole city. So can 0:26:05.600 --> 0:26:07.080 you sort of characterize the city. 0:26:07.720 --> 0:26:10.720 Of course, it's very diverse in the sense that the 0:26:10.760 --> 0:26:13.959 scenery changes a lot. You've got some of these like 0:26:14.080 --> 0:26:18.000 really old buildings that are just like speaking to your imagination. 0:26:18.520 --> 0:26:22.720 But then there's also almost like concrete deserts. Yeah, I 0:26:22.760 --> 0:26:25.320 would almost call them, where like the view on the 0:26:25.359 --> 0:26:29.680 street is just an incredible amount of gray in varying colors. Yeah, 0:26:29.840 --> 0:26:32.080 thats it was a beautiful city. I don't mean to 0:26:32.480 --> 0:26:36.000 thresh talk cantier at all, but at times it's just 0:26:36.359 --> 0:26:36.960 really gray. 0:26:37.760 --> 0:26:38.000 Yeah. 0:26:38.119 --> 0:26:41.399 Yeah, I've lots of memories of springtime and Flanders and 0:26:41.480 --> 0:26:45.440 like gray sky and gray buildings and gray roads and yeah, 0:26:45.480 --> 0:26:48.040 but also some very beautiful areas. So yeah, why did 0:26:48.160 --> 0:26:50.239 you go ahead and explain to us a little bit 0:26:50.240 --> 0:26:51.720 about this forest occupation? 0:26:52.400 --> 0:26:56.680 Okay, it's an occupation that's happening to a little north 0:26:56.760 --> 0:27:00.440 of the city center. In terms of forest occupations, it's 0:27:01.320 --> 0:27:07.960 remarkably accessible. So it's called the Womblehems Meson or ponds 0:27:08.320 --> 0:27:11.560 for you English speakers. Out there, and it's part of 0:27:11.600 --> 0:27:15.199 an industrial area called the Dauci, which is located just 0:27:15.240 --> 0:27:18.520 west of the canal the Lever, which connects the port 0:27:18.520 --> 0:27:21.919 of Hant, the third largest port in Belgium. The area 0:27:22.000 --> 0:27:25.920 itself is about fourteen to fifteen hectares. I'm not sure 0:27:25.960 --> 0:27:27.800 how to translate that to US numbers. 0:27:28.280 --> 0:27:32.879 I'm sorry, Yeah, neither terriblated American, doesn't matter. 0:27:33.040 --> 0:27:36.600 There's internet, Yeah, and the ar area is largely been 0:27:37.119 --> 0:27:40.320 left to its own for a pretty significant amount of 0:27:40.400 --> 0:27:46.720 time past twenty years now. There's two areas within the ponds, 0:27:46.920 --> 0:27:49.720 as I'm going to call them, a northern part and 0:27:49.760 --> 0:27:53.439 a southern part, and later down the line i'll explain 0:27:53.480 --> 0:27:58.200 why that is important before I continue further on the highlight. 0:27:58.800 --> 0:28:02.879 I went there mainly as a form of solidarity and support. 0:28:03.560 --> 0:28:05.440 I had asked if people would be willing to talk 0:28:05.480 --> 0:28:09.119 to me about in a journalistic or reporting capacity, and 0:28:09.160 --> 0:28:12.520 they agreed to that. But I'm not a local, and 0:28:12.560 --> 0:28:15.560 I also don't want to pretend i am, although any 0:28:15.600 --> 0:28:19.720 listener will hear my accent and know that. So yeah, 0:28:19.840 --> 0:28:23.560 we'll be mainly talking about the southern area, and there's 0:28:23.640 --> 0:28:28.280 destination plans before this area there's essentially two parties that 0:28:28.320 --> 0:28:31.639 are working together to turn these green areas into the 0:28:31.640 --> 0:28:34.840 gray concrete deserts that we just talked about. These parties 0:28:34.880 --> 0:28:39.240 are the municipality of Kent and the Lane, a government 0:28:39.320 --> 0:28:43.720 organization that handles public transport and Flanders. So over the years, 0:28:43.760 --> 0:28:47.240 there have been several plans to build or develop the ponds, 0:28:47.840 --> 0:28:51.160 but up until last week. We're recording this in the 0:28:51.240 --> 0:28:54.120 week of August eighth, but up until last week, no 0:28:54.200 --> 0:28:57.840 permits were issued to actually finalize or realize these plans. 0:28:58.360 --> 0:29:00.840 The northern part was supposed to be turned into a 0:29:00.880 --> 0:29:04.800 sort of training area for bus drivers, while the southern 0:29:04.840 --> 0:29:07.560 part is intended to be a parking lot for public 0:29:07.600 --> 0:29:12.080 transport buses. The activists currently residing in the forest are 0:29:12.200 --> 0:29:15.520 by no means against the idea of public transport, but 0:29:15.680 --> 0:29:18.320 do think that the destruction of this piece of datuare 0:29:18.400 --> 0:29:22.760 is counterproductive for both the locals and for climate change reasons. 0:29:23.120 --> 0:29:25.360 There is enough concrete in the city already, and they 0:29:25.480 --> 0:29:29.280 argue that alternative solutions have not been giving the attention 0:29:29.360 --> 0:29:29.880 they deserve. 0:29:30.440 --> 0:29:33.560 Yeah, it seems like it wouldn't be hard to find. 0:29:33.600 --> 0:29:35.320 Like I think they call it like a brown field 0:29:35.400 --> 0:29:38.280 site like a former industrial site or in that area 0:29:38.280 --> 0:29:42.600 of Flanders, to redevelop an old factory or a warehouse 0:29:42.800 --> 0:29:45.600 complex or something. To do this rather than taking one 0:29:45.640 --> 0:29:48.720 of the green spaces and destroying it and paving it over. 0:29:48.800 --> 0:29:51.959 You know, I don't know what the municipality was thinking, 0:29:52.000 --> 0:29:56.240 but I'm sure there is like barren areas elsewhere that 0:29:56.640 --> 0:30:00.200 can just as easily be repurposed in a way that 0:30:00.280 --> 0:30:05.280 doesn't destroy nature. So the part that was most surprising 0:30:05.320 --> 0:30:07.560 to me, and at the same time not at all, 0:30:07.680 --> 0:30:11.200 is how this is being played out politically. To give 0:30:11.200 --> 0:30:15.040 everyone a quick timeline, about twenty years ago, the municipality 0:30:15.280 --> 0:30:19.280 designated these two zones that I talked about as to 0:30:19.320 --> 0:30:22.960 be used for common use. I'll reumain it for those 0:30:23.000 --> 0:30:25.960 speaking Dutch or Flemish well. At the same time the 0:30:26.080 --> 0:30:30.000 ground was being bought by the public transport company the 0:30:30.120 --> 0:30:34.120 lane plans for development started. There is even like an 0:30:34.240 --> 0:30:38.240 unused tram bridge just outside the green zone and the occupation. 0:30:39.040 --> 0:30:41.920 But for one reason or another, the permit to build 0:30:41.920 --> 0:30:44.960 on the ground itself had expired, during which time nature 0:30:45.360 --> 0:30:48.040 took it upon herself to reclaim the area. Now, what 0:30:48.080 --> 0:30:50.880 I mentioned earlier is this difference between the north and 0:30:50.920 --> 0:30:55.600 the south part. These are separated by train tracks, making 0:30:56.040 --> 0:30:59.160 a very clear distinction between the two areas. The land 0:30:59.240 --> 0:31:01.960 originally wanted to use the north part to make a 0:31:02.000 --> 0:31:05.800 sort of training area, as I just said, but these 0:31:05.920 --> 0:31:09.560 plans never materialized. At the same time, about three years ago, 0:31:09.800 --> 0:31:13.400 another action group prevented the destruction of the northern part. 0:31:14.120 --> 0:31:17.480 Now this is where I find it really interesting. The 0:31:17.600 --> 0:31:21.400 terrain is still owned by the line and the municipality, 0:31:21.880 --> 0:31:25.440 but they intend to give custody to a local environmental 0:31:25.440 --> 0:31:29.240 group called Naturepunt, but only if the plans for the 0:31:29.280 --> 0:31:33.560 southern part, where there's an occupation right now, are completed. 0:31:33.840 --> 0:31:38.960 Oh yes, yes, interesting. Yeah. While I was talking to 0:31:39.040 --> 0:31:43.000 my source, I was reading between the lines there as 0:31:43.040 --> 0:31:46.480 a sort of an attempt to play these multiple environmental 0:31:46.560 --> 0:31:50.200 organizations against each other, a sort of divide and conquer. 0:31:50.440 --> 0:31:52.280 M Yeah, very new theorious. 0:31:52.680 --> 0:31:55.200 When I asked my source about that, they said that 0:31:55.280 --> 0:31:57.160 it was up to mediate whether or not I would 0:31:57.200 --> 0:32:00.479 call it that, but that the existence of these plants 0:32:00.560 --> 0:32:01.600 is just a reality. 0:32:02.080 --> 0:32:02.400 Now. 0:32:02.840 --> 0:32:06.720 I will not claim, probably for legal reasons, that there's 0:32:06.800 --> 0:32:09.720 definitely some attempt to set these parties up against each other. 0:32:10.400 --> 0:32:13.280 But from the information that I have, like if I 0:32:13.320 --> 0:32:17.240 were a betting man, I know where i'd put my money. 0:32:17.320 --> 0:32:20.880 Yeah, that's really interesting, So like not true to put 0:32:21.120 --> 0:32:23.680 it is not present in the forest occupation on the 0:32:23.720 --> 0:32:26.680 southern side, is that right? Not that I'm aware of, 0:32:26.960 --> 0:32:29.520 And so they'd stand to like they'd gain custody of 0:32:29.600 --> 0:32:32.240 the northern society of the people on the southern side failed. 0:32:32.560 --> 0:32:36.400 Exactly, how anfair he is, exactly, And if the southern 0:32:36.440 --> 0:32:40.320 side now succeeds in preventing like the tearing down of 0:32:40.440 --> 0:32:44.120 the trees, then the northern side could become you know, 0:32:44.640 --> 0:32:48.120 threatened again, and then this whole circus starts all over again. 0:32:48.720 --> 0:32:51.440 Right, Yeah, So both of them have the avested interest 0:32:51.480 --> 0:32:56.040 in one of these well, in theory, the municipality maybe 0:32:56.080 --> 0:32:57.720 would like them to think that both of them have 0:32:57.720 --> 0:33:00.520 an interest in the paving over of one of these areas. 0:33:00.560 --> 0:33:04.400 But exactly, like someone has to lose in this equation. 0:33:04.640 --> 0:33:08.800 And I find it interesting that that it's happening like this, 0:33:09.160 --> 0:33:14.400 especially because hands kind of promotes itself on these green 0:33:14.520 --> 0:33:16.959 zones that are mixed throughout the city and that are 0:33:17.000 --> 0:33:21.280 then accessible for people by bike or for running or walking, 0:33:21.560 --> 0:33:24.960 And then in that same breath there's also still the 0:33:25.120 --> 0:33:27.560 oh yeah, one of these species of nature we need 0:33:27.600 --> 0:33:32.520 to tear down because we need more concrete. Yeah, those 0:33:32.560 --> 0:33:34.360 two views just don't align. 0:33:34.360 --> 0:33:36.920 Right, And like we said, there's no shortage of Concretely, 0:33:37.000 --> 0:33:41.080 this is a very sort of post industrial area. It's 0:33:41.120 --> 0:33:43.000 not like this is like a public facing thing that 0:33:43.040 --> 0:33:45.240 needs to be in one area to be accessible to people, right, 0:33:45.280 --> 0:33:49.080 Like they could store their buses, train their bus drivers, 0:33:49.360 --> 0:33:52.760 you know, somewhere else in Flanders. It's not like it 0:33:52.840 --> 0:33:53.960 needs to be right in town. 0:33:54.400 --> 0:33:57.440 Now. I'm certain there are other areas where you could 0:33:57.560 --> 0:34:01.440 just as easily make a parking lot for buses. Yeah. 0:34:01.480 --> 0:34:04.320 As for like a training grounds, I'm not sure how 0:34:04.360 --> 0:34:07.520 that would work. But then again there I think there's 0:34:07.600 --> 0:34:10.400 roads enough in the city for people to practice, like 0:34:10.480 --> 0:34:14.320 even like industrial areas not to have very much traffic, 0:34:14.880 --> 0:34:19.040 so that could still work without having to like again 0:34:19.680 --> 0:34:21.800 get rid of a piece of forest just so people 0:34:21.800 --> 0:34:23.080 can drive around in buses. 0:34:23.280 --> 0:34:23.600 Yeah. 0:34:23.719 --> 0:34:27.080 But again, this is not an argument against public transport, 0:34:27.239 --> 0:34:32.440 more in the like hypocrisy and senselessness of the plans 0:34:32.440 --> 0:34:33.759 that are on the table right now. 0:34:34.080 --> 0:34:36.320 Yeah, and kind of trying to make people choose between 0:34:36.360 --> 0:34:38.560 two things when they should be perfectly possible to have. 0:34:38.560 --> 0:34:42.160 Both, right exactly. I'm guessing it would also be more 0:34:42.200 --> 0:34:47.000 cost effective if you take some other parts, because I'll 0:34:47.040 --> 0:34:50.680 dive into that later. But there's also like pollution in 0:34:50.719 --> 0:34:53.600 these areas that needs to be taken care of. So 0:34:53.800 --> 0:34:56.520 just from a cost effective standpoint, I think there should 0:34:56.560 --> 0:34:59.840 be alternative options that will keep everyone happier. 0:35:00.160 --> 0:35:00.440 Yeah. 0:35:00.719 --> 0:35:04.359 So, yeah, described me your visit there, like, describe how 0:35:04.400 --> 0:35:06.600 it was and what you winness there? 0:35:06.960 --> 0:35:10.520 Okay, Well I went there at the end of July. 0:35:10.840 --> 0:35:14.960 I stayed a few days and it was really weird 0:35:15.040 --> 0:35:19.080 because you're coming from again a tram stop, then you 0:35:19.120 --> 0:35:21.600 have to walk for a bit and all of the 0:35:21.680 --> 0:35:24.640 sudden it's like you're in a forest. It was. It 0:35:24.680 --> 0:35:27.719 was really surreal almost to know that you're in the 0:35:27.719 --> 0:35:30.600 middle of a big city but also have that kind 0:35:30.640 --> 0:35:33.760 of like isolation from the sounds of traffic. 0:35:34.160 --> 0:35:36.960 Yeah. I mean that's lovely, right, It's nice that's that's 0:35:37.080 --> 0:35:38.560 available at least for now. 0:35:38.760 --> 0:35:41.640 Oh yeah, I understand one hundred percent why people want 0:35:41.680 --> 0:35:44.920 to keep that green space close to their homes. 0:35:45.120 --> 0:35:45.600 Yeah. 0:35:45.640 --> 0:35:49.640 So the ponds are a mix of terrain like there's 0:35:49.680 --> 0:35:54.440 like water hungry, like swampy areas when the ring has 0:35:54.480 --> 0:35:58.800 been falling. There's lush grass fields with like little curvy 0:35:58.880 --> 0:36:03.200 impromptu paths to take. And there's some parts where the 0:36:03.239 --> 0:36:05.960 trees have been growing for long enough that people can 0:36:06.000 --> 0:36:09.719 now build treehouses in them, which to me is quite 0:36:09.719 --> 0:36:12.680 a good indicator that not much development or care has 0:36:12.719 --> 0:36:15.960 been done in this terrain. There's an absolutely insane amount 0:36:16.000 --> 0:36:20.480 of BlackBerry bushes, much to mydy light. And yeah, it's 0:36:20.560 --> 0:36:24.239 just for an area that is relatively small in the 0:36:24.239 --> 0:36:28.160 bigger picture. It just surprised me how many different faces 0:36:29.040 --> 0:36:32.480 it has. It was a delight to be there. Locals 0:36:33.239 --> 0:36:36.080 tend to use the area for walks or picnics, or 0:36:36.160 --> 0:36:39.360 to take their dogs out. I've seen multiple people stopping 0:36:39.360 --> 0:36:42.719 by just to pick the blackberries. The city itself calls 0:36:42.760 --> 0:36:46.440 this entire area a green zone and a climate access 0:36:47.120 --> 0:36:50.000 their words. What can has done is trying to create 0:36:50.520 --> 0:36:53.439 a network of zones and roads that are accessible by car, 0:36:53.760 --> 0:36:55.680 but not so much that there is a lot of 0:36:55.719 --> 0:37:00.680 traffic on these roads, which makes them ideal for cycling, running, recreation, 0:37:01.280 --> 0:37:05.120 or even transports if you would so choose. The website 0:37:05.120 --> 0:37:07.680 of can itself promotes these areas is good for the 0:37:07.680 --> 0:37:12.400 flora and fauna, for the environment, and subsequently for residents. 0:37:12.560 --> 0:37:15.200 Then you need to be thinking of absorption of rainwater, 0:37:15.480 --> 0:37:20.520 or keeping local populations of animals and plants healthy, or 0:37:20.920 --> 0:37:22.840 just the cooling effect that nature has. 0:37:23.239 --> 0:37:25.160 Yeah, compared to black top. 0:37:25.520 --> 0:37:29.960 Exactly like fully, concrete cities tend to like not really 0:37:30.000 --> 0:37:33.319 release their warmth as quickly as nature does it. And 0:37:33.360 --> 0:37:35.680 it was surprising because it was really hot when I 0:37:35.719 --> 0:37:37.960 was there, but in the shade of the trees, it 0:37:38.040 --> 0:37:42.640 was perfectly doable up until the point where you actually exercised, 0:37:42.680 --> 0:37:47.720 and then suddenly it was less cool. But different story again. 0:37:47.920 --> 0:37:52.279 The website from the municipality itself acknowledges the importance of 0:37:52.320 --> 0:37:56.000 the area for an endangered species of lizard and the 0:37:56.040 --> 0:37:58.680 efforts that the city took to make sure that it 0:37:58.719 --> 0:38:02.840 can still thrive there. More concretely, one person I spoke 0:38:02.920 --> 0:38:06.319 to said that there are thirty nine protected species of 0:38:06.320 --> 0:38:09.759 plants and animals living there, protected under both Flemish and 0:38:09.800 --> 0:38:13.600 European law. So I'm not really sure why that's discarded 0:38:14.800 --> 0:38:19.719 into the calculation. I'm not a municipality person. I don't 0:38:19.760 --> 0:38:23.680 know also, I believe there have been sightings of foxes there, 0:38:24.000 --> 0:38:26.680 mainly because we were told by the activists not to 0:38:26.719 --> 0:38:29.280 eat the blackberries that are too close to the ground 0:38:29.920 --> 0:38:33.319 due to the parasites that foxes may carry and can 0:38:33.360 --> 0:38:35.120 subsequently like infect. 0:38:34.840 --> 0:38:37.080 People with Oh wow, yeah interesting. 0:38:37.400 --> 0:38:41.280 You know what else carries parasites, James? 0:38:41.400 --> 0:38:44.440 Is it the goods and services that we rely on 0:38:45.080 --> 0:38:46.280 to pay for this podcast? 0:38:46.760 --> 0:38:49.920 Exactly, there's a fifty percent chance that these products and 0:38:49.920 --> 0:38:54.279 services will give you one or another incurable parasite. 0:38:55.280 --> 0:39:09.640 Wonderful, and we're back. And you mentioned that there was 0:39:09.680 --> 0:39:13.680 a problem with pollution in the wilderness space, you can explain, 0:39:13.719 --> 0:39:16.440 like what kind of pollution then entails. 0:39:16.760 --> 0:39:19.080 Of course, in the past there has been like a 0:39:19.120 --> 0:39:22.799 pollution of both the groundwater and the soil in and 0:39:22.840 --> 0:39:26.640 of itself. That's not that remarkable. I've been told by 0:39:26.680 --> 0:39:29.480 someone that Flanders has multiple spots where you can come 0:39:29.520 --> 0:39:34.040 into contact with different forms of pollution. In the ponds, 0:39:34.160 --> 0:39:37.279 there is both pollution in the soil and in the groundwater. 0:39:37.760 --> 0:39:41.920 The soil itself contains asbestos, although it should be noted 0:39:41.920 --> 0:39:47.080 that that is within like the acceptable regulatory norms. As 0:39:47.080 --> 0:39:51.279 a refresher for listeners. Asbestos danger lies mainly in the 0:39:51.280 --> 0:39:54.480 breaking or fracturing of the material, and the fibers that 0:39:54.600 --> 0:39:58.480 release through that process is what makes asbestos so hazardous. 0:39:58.680 --> 0:40:01.080 An effective way to mitigate is to make sure that 0:40:01.120 --> 0:40:03.880 these fibers do not get into the air, for which 0:40:04.120 --> 0:40:07.479 water tends to work. Wonders so, at least in terms 0:40:07.520 --> 0:40:11.560 of asbestos, it seems very simple and cost effective to 0:40:11.719 --> 0:40:14.960 just leave it undisturbed, because it's already an area that 0:40:15.600 --> 0:40:19.200 likes to swallow up water, which then will isolate the 0:40:19.200 --> 0:40:23.680 asbestos from the air and thus make it less harmful. 0:40:24.000 --> 0:40:28.480 The water is contaminated with vocis. That's an acronym for 0:40:28.560 --> 0:40:33.720 a variety of volatile organic compounds with some chlorine attached 0:40:33.719 --> 0:40:37.319 to it. I don't know. I'm not a chemist. These 0:40:37.400 --> 0:40:41.080 chemicals have several uses and applications in a variety of industry. 0:40:41.640 --> 0:40:45.000 One of my sources told me that the specific chemical 0:40:45.200 --> 0:40:49.400 is one point for dioxane, which is used as a solvent. 0:40:49.760 --> 0:40:51.680 It's not the type of stuff you want to drink 0:40:51.719 --> 0:40:56.040 or inhale, but serious exposure from contaminated soil or water 0:40:56.200 --> 0:40:59.040 is pretty rare from what I've read. As my source 0:40:59.080 --> 0:41:01.759 pointed out to content eminence in the water will overtime 0:41:01.840 --> 0:41:07.120 degrade organically, a process called phytoremediation, where the presence of 0:41:07.200 --> 0:41:12.000 plants and microorganisms and fungi will degrade the material and 0:41:12.080 --> 0:41:15.360 reduce the toxicity. While reading into this, I found that 0:41:15.400 --> 0:41:19.279 the same is true to an extent for asbestos, which 0:41:19.360 --> 0:41:23.360 can be a source of like inorganic nutrients for these microorganisms. 0:41:24.000 --> 0:41:27.080 So while you could point out that phytoremediation is a 0:41:27.120 --> 0:41:31.920 longer process than sanitation, I personally think that it's just 0:41:32.000 --> 0:41:35.719 common sense that letting nature do its work understir might 0:41:35.760 --> 0:41:40.759 be significantly cheaper and more sustainable compared to putting additional 0:41:40.840 --> 0:41:46.239 chemicals and substances in the ground to neutralize these vocis 0:41:46.480 --> 0:41:49.440 also just a fun little side quest here. But in 0:41:49.520 --> 0:41:53.239 order to monitor the area, the line employed a concierge 0:41:53.520 --> 0:41:57.760 to walk the terrain on a daily basis. I'm unsure 0:41:57.760 --> 0:42:01.279 if you can spot upcoming or in merging contamination with 0:42:01.400 --> 0:42:03.960 the naked eye, but not my money that they used 0:42:03.960 --> 0:42:04.879 to pay the guy. 0:42:05.200 --> 0:42:07.960 So this guy just his job was to walk around 0:42:08.160 --> 0:42:09.000 the ponds. 0:42:09.600 --> 0:42:13.120 Yeah, pretty much. I'm told he had like a little 0:42:13.200 --> 0:42:18.000 hut or a little shack from which he worked. The 0:42:18.040 --> 0:42:21.000 guy was still working there at the time the activists 0:42:21.040 --> 0:42:24.319 moved in, but the shack is gone, and so is 0:42:24.360 --> 0:42:27.120 the gonecierge. I'm not sure about the details of what 0:42:27.239 --> 0:42:31.880 happened there, but what I do find extremely funny is 0:42:31.920 --> 0:42:36.000 that now officials and spokespersons from the development site are 0:42:36.000 --> 0:42:38.239 claiming that the area is dangerous and that it is 0:42:38.280 --> 0:42:40.960 for their own well being that the activists leave as 0:42:41.000 --> 0:42:45.440 soon as possible, which doesn't really make sense to me, 0:42:45.680 --> 0:42:49.960 Like either this argument is like incredibly disingenuous, or they 0:42:50.000 --> 0:42:53.000 fucked over someone by paying them to take this incredibly 0:42:53.040 --> 0:42:56.200 the risky job of walking over contaminated terrain. 0:42:56.760 --> 0:42:59.960 Yeah, and not to mention like all the people who 0:43:00.080 --> 0:43:02.920 they allowed toward their dogs and click blackberries there and things. 0:43:03.400 --> 0:43:07.000 Exactly if it was that dangerous that people should not 0:43:07.080 --> 0:43:10.640 be there, then I'm fairly certain they could muster better 0:43:10.719 --> 0:43:13.040 fences than they did at the moment. Like I'm not 0:43:13.040 --> 0:43:16.839 sure on offense economy in the broader sense, but there 0:43:16.840 --> 0:43:20.440 should at least have been signs on the fences, and 0:43:20.480 --> 0:43:24.280 there were none. So yeah, we're getting to the octupist groups. 0:43:24.840 --> 0:43:27.640 The group that is currently occupying the trees is an 0:43:27.680 --> 0:43:31.600 assembly of people who care deeply about the area itself. 0:43:32.000 --> 0:43:34.000 I spoke on the record with one of them and 0:43:34.040 --> 0:43:35.879 I would like to play this clip to let them 0:43:35.920 --> 0:43:37.200 introduce themselves. 0:43:38.640 --> 0:43:41.920 I'm Elvid and one of the activists of the Window 0:43:41.920 --> 0:43:46.040 Myths occupation which he occupied since the twenty of June, 0:43:47.400 --> 0:43:51.960 and we occupy this because it's endangered. Is the lend, 0:43:51.960 --> 0:43:57.560 which is the public transports company in Flanders, wants to 0:43:57.600 --> 0:44:03.200 destroy this fifteen hector of nature for building a bus 0:44:04.320 --> 0:44:07.120 deput so like a parking for buses. 0:44:07.600 --> 0:44:10.480 Okay, do you want to tell us about what what 0:44:10.520 --> 0:44:13.720 you you and the group of activisties have done here. 0:44:15.640 --> 0:44:15.839 Yeah. 0:44:15.960 --> 0:44:19.760 So we live in the trees as much as possible, 0:44:19.800 --> 0:44:23.400 and we we sleep there to make an eviction harder 0:44:23.400 --> 0:44:29.560 and to have more power in our in our action, 0:44:30.080 --> 0:44:33.160 like it's way more difficult for them to get us 0:44:33.200 --> 0:44:36.880 out if we are on height and use other tactics 0:44:36.920 --> 0:44:43.640 to to block them. And they also kndot start cutting 0:44:43.640 --> 0:44:47.760 trees when we are in in the trees another trees? 0:44:48.160 --> 0:44:48.960 How is that for you? 0:44:51.280 --> 0:44:53.000 It's intends. 0:44:54.640 --> 0:45:00.399 Always and occupation of course, but also places of where Yeah, 0:45:00.560 --> 0:45:04.880 very experiment with living together and where everyone's welcome. 0:45:05.920 --> 0:45:07.920 There are no door bells no walls. 0:45:08.840 --> 0:45:12.239 Furst are very open place where everyone can just come 0:45:12.280 --> 0:45:16.080 in and feel like they are welcome, and it's not 0:45:16.440 --> 0:45:17.320 owned by someone. 0:45:17.360 --> 0:45:17.759 It's not. 0:45:19.320 --> 0:45:22.439 Yeah, it doesn't feel like it's belonging to someone, which 0:45:22.480 --> 0:45:23.799 you can easily. 0:45:23.600 --> 0:45:24.600 Have with the house, I think. 0:45:25.800 --> 0:45:29.479 But here there's all the space to make stuff, to live, 0:45:29.560 --> 0:45:35.760 to take time for yourself, which makes it very healthy, 0:45:35.880 --> 0:45:39.200 I think to live here by being in nature, people 0:45:39.200 --> 0:45:42.480 are just more happy I think in general than in 0:45:42.880 --> 0:45:47.680 the city and in the house. And yeah, we are 0:45:47.719 --> 0:45:53.600 mainly building three houses. As you can hear, maybe probably. 0:45:55.160 --> 0:45:58.319 So as you've heard that was it's one of the 0:45:58.360 --> 0:46:03.600 activists that I spoke to. As you've also probably heard, 0:46:04.320 --> 0:46:06.600 is that there is construction going on in the trees. 0:46:07.920 --> 0:46:11.919 There's multiple treehouses there at the moment, and that's where 0:46:11.960 --> 0:46:16.040 they sleep. When I spoke further to our vidz, he 0:46:16.120 --> 0:46:19.160 made clear like the demands that activists have, which is 0:46:19.200 --> 0:46:22.280 mainly that they don't want the needless destruction of this area. 0:46:23.320 --> 0:46:25.879 There's intention is to remain in the trees and make 0:46:25.920 --> 0:46:28.560 it hard, if not impossible, for the trees to be felt. 0:46:28.920 --> 0:46:32.640 There are multiple treehouses with enough stability and space for 0:46:32.840 --> 0:46:35.440 multiple people on top of that they are preparing for 0:46:35.480 --> 0:46:39.560 a possible eviction, all while also living happily and communally, 0:46:40.239 --> 0:46:43.080 like every night they cook together, they're having dinner together. 0:46:43.560 --> 0:46:46.440 I found it incredibly healing and wholesome to just have 0:46:46.520 --> 0:46:48.879 a meal around a small fire with like a group 0:46:48.920 --> 0:46:53.440 of like minded people, not hearing traffic or other urban noises. 0:46:53.840 --> 0:46:58.040 A bright spot was one evening where someone played a 0:46:58.560 --> 0:47:02.400 Dutch protest and just on the guitar satirizing an unamed 0:47:02.480 --> 0:47:05.440 US president for his role in the Vietnam War, which 0:47:05.840 --> 0:47:08.800 can't escape US politics even in the middle of a forest. 0:47:10.040 --> 0:47:13.160 So then I would like to play a second clip, 0:47:14.400 --> 0:47:17.640 and how do you want to talk about how your 0:47:17.640 --> 0:47:21.040 relationship is with the neighbors around here? 0:47:22.280 --> 0:47:29.000 Yeah, the neighbors they started their own action committee for 0:47:29.239 --> 0:47:32.640 more than three years ago, I think, and they have 0:47:32.719 --> 0:47:37.040 already saved one piece of the Wildenhelm's myths, which is 0:47:39.560 --> 0:47:42.880 on the north part of the training will. So this 0:47:42.960 --> 0:47:46.520 one is now safe. It's only three hectors. But it 0:47:46.600 --> 0:47:48.880 was also the land who wanted to destroy it for. 0:47:50.640 --> 0:47:55.840 Making a say, a place to practice to drive with the. 0:47:55.880 --> 0:48:01.080 Bush like a training ground for bus drivers exactly. 0:48:01.120 --> 0:48:05.000 So just put concrete on this swampy area to them 0:48:05.560 --> 0:48:07.560 once in a while drive for the bus there as 0:48:07.560 --> 0:48:08.560 if there is no other. 0:48:08.400 --> 0:48:10.360 Concrete in the city to practice d. 0:48:12.320 --> 0:48:15.000 But this is no safety and now the neighbors are 0:48:15.680 --> 0:48:20.839 also for this big piece of the Williams Myths are 0:48:20.920 --> 0:48:24.560 now going to start the court case against the decision 0:48:25.520 --> 0:48:29.240 because the Ministry of thout the the Ministry of Environment, 0:48:31.680 --> 0:48:36.720 they approved the permits for the style plants for the business. 0:48:37.400 --> 0:48:42.360 Okay, uh, that was yesterday that that was announced. So 0:48:44.200 --> 0:48:46.920 how are you feeling. How are you feeling right now? 0:48:47.360 --> 0:48:51.880 Do you have any plans on how to continue to 0:48:52.120 --> 0:48:54.760 fight against the bulldozing of this place. 0:48:55.360 --> 0:48:58.040 Yeah, we are not surprised that she approved it. It 0:48:58.200 --> 0:49:01.920 was we saw it coming a bit. But it's just 0:49:02.000 --> 0:49:04.840 very ridiculous. And we will keep fighting, of course, because 0:49:06.400 --> 0:49:10.680 this is a very Hypocrates and saying that we have 0:49:10.719 --> 0:49:15.760 to save that nature. But in the meantime she proved 0:49:15.760 --> 0:49:21.160 decisions to destroy them this kind of nature. So we 0:49:21.320 --> 0:49:24.359 just continue to fight and the neighbors do it. 0:49:24.320 --> 0:49:28.919 With the court case. We keep yeah, we stay here 0:49:28.960 --> 0:49:32.080 and we keep building and pepre for an eviction. 0:49:34.040 --> 0:49:38.120 That's really interesting. That diversity of taxet cooperation, I think 0:49:38.360 --> 0:49:41.080 is really valuable in these kind of struggles. Can you 0:49:41.160 --> 0:49:43.760 explain a little bit more about that, like how that works. 0:49:44.160 --> 0:49:47.400 Well, I think it was just the stars that aligned 0:49:47.920 --> 0:49:52.439 for this particular goal. There is a neighborhood committee that's 0:49:52.480 --> 0:49:56.640 also heavily opposed to the destruction of this area, but 0:49:56.760 --> 0:50:00.879 it's mainly a well, a neighborhood committee. These are people 0:50:00.960 --> 0:50:05.120 who will stand up to like the municipality, but entirely 0:50:05.200 --> 0:50:09.360 through the legal system or the judicial system. And I 0:50:09.360 --> 0:50:12.360 think this committee was like at least a year or 0:50:12.400 --> 0:50:16.879 two maybe even more old before the occupation happened. And 0:50:17.400 --> 0:50:23.279 the occupation also happens separately from the committee, So you 0:50:23.400 --> 0:50:26.640 kind of have this, you know, alliance now between like 0:50:27.040 --> 0:50:30.080 a group of people who will take more direct action 0:50:30.320 --> 0:50:33.960 against the plans to destroy the place and this group 0:50:34.000 --> 0:50:37.440 who is going to do that by filing court cases 0:50:38.200 --> 0:50:41.640 against the plans that the land and the municipality are 0:50:41.640 --> 0:50:45.680 trying to realize right now. It's really funny always because 0:50:46.080 --> 0:50:48.480 one of my sources said, the people who are occupying 0:50:48.560 --> 0:50:51.919 for us came down like angels. The activists really don't 0:50:52.000 --> 0:50:54.719 like to be called that, but it's sort of yeah, 0:50:54.880 --> 0:50:57.280 just they have a common they have a common goal 0:50:58.080 --> 0:51:01.439 and for that, they're working together, and from what I've seen, 0:51:01.480 --> 0:51:05.320 there is very warm and friendly contact between the groups. 0:51:05.640 --> 0:51:08.600 I've seen multiple neighbors come by with like food or 0:51:08.640 --> 0:51:12.600 building materials, like think of screws or nails, or like 0:51:12.760 --> 0:51:16.240 wooden beams for construction. I think there was one person who, 0:51:16.280 --> 0:51:19.879 like every Sunday, brings pancakes. I'm not sure if. 0:51:19.760 --> 0:51:22.720 They still do that, but it's pretty cool. 0:51:23.360 --> 0:51:27.359 Yeah, exactly. I've seen people come by and drop off 0:51:27.480 --> 0:51:32.040 like bags of like dried beans and lentils. I think 0:51:32.080 --> 0:51:36.600 it's really fascinating that how organically these two groups sort 0:51:36.600 --> 0:51:40.160 of come together and in their common goal, but also 0:51:40.239 --> 0:51:44.640 that the two different strategies kind of strengthen. 0:51:44.160 --> 0:51:47.640 Each other, right, Yeah, Like obviously you've got people who 0:51:47.640 --> 0:51:52.440 wouldn't think of occupying forests, but then they find themselves 0:51:52.840 --> 0:51:56.319 in solidarity with people who do. And I think that's 0:51:56.360 --> 0:51:59.839 really cool that, like you said, there was no prior communication. 0:52:00.160 --> 0:52:03.280 These folks just arrived, began the occupation, and the locals 0:52:03.320 --> 0:52:05.480 will like, guess, this is exactly what we needed. Thank you. 0:52:06.000 --> 0:52:08.400 In so far as I understood it, that's how it happened. 0:52:08.600 --> 0:52:12.080 As I said earlier, like the combination of text tactics 0:52:12.160 --> 0:52:15.839 just make their path towards their goal so much more 0:52:15.880 --> 0:52:20.920 tangible because by occupying the forests, they can't start like 0:52:21.320 --> 0:52:26.080 early construction in the area, or I know some municipalities 0:52:26.120 --> 0:52:29.759 or cities kind of begin with the with the destruction 0:52:30.320 --> 0:52:33.239 prior to having permission. But then it's like, oh, yeah, 0:52:33.360 --> 0:52:37.080 we've already started, so it's of no use anymore. Which 0:52:37.360 --> 0:52:39.480 I'm not sure how common it is in other countries, 0:52:39.560 --> 0:52:43.120 but I've heard of that in a with an activist 0:52:43.120 --> 0:52:48.600 circles in the Netherlands and all the wild Is committee 0:52:48.640 --> 0:52:52.160 is like doing the court cases and filing legal motions 0:52:52.200 --> 0:52:55.080 and yeah, I think I think it's a really warm 0:52:55.160 --> 0:52:56.280 and friendly contact. 0:52:56.680 --> 0:52:59.600 Yeah, that's so it's kind of nice to see exactly. 0:53:00.320 --> 0:53:03.560 Okay, I have one other clip. How does it make 0:53:03.600 --> 0:53:06.560 you feel that the neighbors are so supportive as you 0:53:06.600 --> 0:53:11.400 said that they're bringing food on a regular basis. I've 0:53:11.400 --> 0:53:14.359 seen I think a few who brought materials even like 0:53:14.680 --> 0:53:20.400 screws or nails. What does that do with your morale 0:53:20.600 --> 0:53:21.400 or your motivation? 0:53:21.600 --> 0:53:26.279 Yeah, I think we wouldn't really be here if they 0:53:26.320 --> 0:53:32.920 would be broad the busy puts, But of course they 0:53:32.920 --> 0:53:36.000 are not because It's just a very stupid idea to 0:53:36.680 --> 0:53:43.399 destroy this valuable nature fruit. But yeah, we we help 0:53:43.400 --> 0:53:47.520 each other a lot, and we yeah, we keep each 0:53:47.560 --> 0:53:51.680 other strong by supporting each other. And they were very 0:53:52.520 --> 0:53:57.759 moved by us being here. And they even cats, they're angels, 0:53:59.239 --> 0:54:00.520 which you don't like to be good. 0:54:05.120 --> 0:54:08.200 Yeah, that's it, Okay. 0:54:08.600 --> 0:54:10.920 Is there anything else you would like to share or 0:54:11.040 --> 0:54:13.080 to have on on the record. 0:54:14.600 --> 0:54:17.239 Yeah, we would like to invite everyone to come here. 0:54:19.000 --> 0:54:21.880 There's more inforant wonder mist and that snow blocks that 0:54:22.120 --> 0:54:30.000 are and yeah, there will still be the whole court case, 0:54:30.040 --> 0:54:32.920 so there was a chance we stay longer. But they 0:54:32.960 --> 0:54:40.360 also have the legal right to to evictors. 0:54:39.800 --> 0:54:41.319 Which would also be paying for it. 0:54:42.719 --> 0:54:54.120 Yeah. 0:54:54.160 --> 0:54:56.759 Obviously people who share will be familiar with Like for 0:54:56.800 --> 0:55:01.440 ourt occupation in Atlanta, what's the state respond to this 0:55:01.520 --> 0:55:01.960 look like? 0:55:02.480 --> 0:55:05.759 For a long time, there has been very little state response. 0:55:06.760 --> 0:55:10.399 While I was there, the permit to develop the area 0:55:10.600 --> 0:55:14.680 was granted, but for the most part, there's occasional a 0:55:14.760 --> 0:55:17.680 car that drives by. I did receive word that a 0:55:17.719 --> 0:55:20.640 few days ago, a few cops came in onto the terrain, 0:55:21.680 --> 0:55:25.279 took pictures of everything, and the next morning there was 0:55:25.280 --> 0:55:29.920 a drone flying over the camp. Yeah. Yes, so things 0:55:29.960 --> 0:55:33.920 are like tensing up a bit and we'll have to 0:55:33.960 --> 0:55:36.759 see how We'll have to see how it goes. Obviously, 0:55:36.840 --> 0:55:39.799 like the case is still like in the judicial so 0:55:40.440 --> 0:55:43.879 we'll have to see what comes from that. But up 0:55:43.960 --> 0:55:46.920 until now, things have been quiet and peaceful. 0:55:47.160 --> 0:55:51.440 Okay, Yeah, because I think people sometimes obviously make the 0:55:51.560 --> 0:55:55.400 US really strive to lead the world in police violence, 0:55:55.480 --> 0:55:58.759 but I think that those people underestimate the capacity of 0:55:58.800 --> 0:56:00.720 European dates stay violent. 0:56:01.239 --> 0:56:04.799 That's definitely true. Like our lack of guns makes it 0:56:04.800 --> 0:56:07.759 that not many people are getting shot by police, but 0:56:08.440 --> 0:56:12.600 against activists or protests, police can be pretty pretty violent. 0:56:13.160 --> 0:56:16.799 I don't have much experience with Belgium police myself. I've 0:56:16.840 --> 0:56:20.799 heard conflicting stories about them. I was at the May 0:56:20.840 --> 0:56:25.719 first celebration in Brussels, became incredibly prepared, and then it 0:56:25.760 --> 0:56:31.040 was all okay, literally nothing note worthy to mention. But 0:56:31.080 --> 0:56:33.359 then when I speak to other people, I hear like, oh, 0:56:33.400 --> 0:56:37.200 you know, Belgium police worse than the Dutch. But then 0:56:37.239 --> 0:56:40.120 that very also varies from city to city, and that's 0:56:40.160 --> 0:56:43.000 a whole nother rabbit hole to go down into. Yeah, 0:56:43.880 --> 0:56:47.960 so for now, not much police action against the activists. 0:56:48.719 --> 0:56:50.640 Not sure if or when that will. 0:56:50.520 --> 0:56:54.920 Change, right, So if people wanted to they said everyone 0:56:55.080 --> 0:56:57.560 was welcome. Yes, and I presume they can drop in 0:56:57.640 --> 0:56:59.960 for the day, or they can go and stay ruperiod, 0:57:01.160 --> 0:57:03.680 or they can you know, commit staying until the forest 0:57:03.760 --> 0:57:07.439 to say, is it easy to access? Can you walk there? 0:57:07.520 --> 0:57:10.440 Could you like I take I guess ironically maybe could 0:57:10.480 --> 0:57:11.360 you take a bus? 0:57:11.800 --> 0:57:16.560 And there is a trem that stops pretty close by. 0:57:17.120 --> 0:57:20.440 They have an Instagram account that I don't know from 0:57:20.480 --> 0:57:22.960 the top of my head because I don't use Instagram. 0:57:23.200 --> 0:57:24.320 We'll link in the notes. 0:57:24.720 --> 0:57:27.160 I think if you just search for like a woomble 0:57:27.360 --> 0:57:32.040 mesa or womble hemp meths and you'll find something. You 0:57:32.080 --> 0:57:34.040 can contact them there and they can give you more 0:57:34.080 --> 0:57:37.440 details on how exactly to get there. Yeah, you can 0:57:37.480 --> 0:57:39.920 come by for a day, you can comby for two weeks, 0:57:40.160 --> 0:57:43.360 that's up to you. You're welcome there. What I would 0:57:43.400 --> 0:57:46.120 like to urge everyone is if you plan on going there, 0:57:46.280 --> 0:57:50.000 contact them about the supplies they need. When I arrived there, 0:57:50.080 --> 0:57:54.000 I got some like some small kitchen knives and like 0:57:54.080 --> 0:57:58.200 literally for cutting veggies, and some canned foods and some 0:57:58.280 --> 0:58:02.440 first aid supplies because it is largely donation based what 0:58:02.480 --> 0:58:06.080 they're doing there. So yeah, anything that you can spare 0:58:06.240 --> 0:58:10.040 or can purchase for them would be greatly appreciated. To 0:58:10.120 --> 0:58:13.040 check the website, check their Instagram. There might be a 0:58:13.080 --> 0:58:16.680 Facebook page. I think there is a Facebook page for 0:58:16.760 --> 0:58:21.400 those still using Facebook, So yeah, I would recommend it, like, 0:58:21.840 --> 0:58:25.560 go over there, help out. They're very friendly people if 0:58:25.560 --> 0:58:28.640 you're interested in doing something like this. This is like 0:58:28.840 --> 0:58:30.160 a very entry level thing. 0:58:30.520 --> 0:58:33.320 Yeah, like you said, it's not just like a good 0:58:33.320 --> 0:58:35.680 thing to do, it's also a nice fun thing to do. 0:58:35.760 --> 0:58:40.480 Like it's these spaces could be really healing, just live 0:58:40.640 --> 0:58:43.000 being among like minded people like you said, and in 0:58:43.080 --> 0:58:44.800 nature exactly. 0:58:44.920 --> 0:58:47.240 And like when I was there, they gave like a 0:58:47.240 --> 0:58:51.760 climbing workshop, so they taught me how I should climb 0:58:52.240 --> 0:58:55.080 a tree with like gear around my waist and everything. 0:58:55.560 --> 0:58:56.040 It's cool. 0:58:56.320 --> 0:58:59.560 Yeah, and follow the agreements that people make between each 0:58:59.600 --> 0:59:03.280 other site that there's not really any rules. You're free 0:59:03.320 --> 0:59:05.360 to come for a day, you're free to stay for 0:59:05.440 --> 0:59:09.320 two weeks, that's entirely up to you. Just it's nice 0:59:09.360 --> 0:59:11.720 to help out, and even if it's just help with 0:59:11.800 --> 0:59:16.240 cutting vegetables for dinner. Yeah, that's already incredibly appreciated. And 0:59:16.360 --> 0:59:18.600 in the meantime people can do other stuff that needs 0:59:18.600 --> 0:59:23.120 to happen around the camp. And yeah, in terms of activism, 0:59:23.200 --> 0:59:25.680 this is a small step to do, but it can 0:59:25.720 --> 0:59:29.560 also just be a really good experience for yours, for 0:59:29.680 --> 0:59:33.960 you and all the while helping the locals and helping 0:59:33.960 --> 0:59:37.200 the activists, which is the sort of mutual aid that 0:59:37.280 --> 0:59:39.000 I would prefer to see a lot more. 0:59:39.440 --> 0:59:39.680 Yeah. 0:59:39.720 --> 0:59:42.200 Yeah, I think it's great that it's integrated with the community, 0:59:42.240 --> 0:59:45.160 and I think it's great that it's accessible for people 0:59:45.360 --> 0:59:48.800 and hopefully folks will go bring something that they need. 0:59:49.040 --> 0:59:52.080 It's cool that they can, you know, share skills. I've 0:59:52.160 --> 0:59:54.720 learned a lot in different activist spaces. I think that's 0:59:54.720 --> 0:59:58.600 really cool. Mick, is there anywhere that people can follow 0:59:58.640 --> 0:59:59.400 you if they'd like to. 1:00:00.440 --> 1:00:03.240 Yes, I have a Twitter account now because I don't 1:00:03.280 --> 1:00:08.280 see enough horrible shit. It's at two Sober Possums or 1:00:08.320 --> 1:00:11.600 under the name Mick Smith, m I c K S 1:00:11.920 --> 1:00:15.040 M I T. I don't think i've posted anything yet, 1:00:15.280 --> 1:00:19.000 so I'll think of something funny. But feel free to 1:00:19.040 --> 1:00:22.360 reach out there if for reasons. Yeah, I'm cool with that. 1:00:22.800 --> 1:00:24.720 Great well, thank you very much. I was. I think 1:00:24.760 --> 1:00:27.439 that's really interesting. I hope people will go. If you go, 1:00:27.600 --> 1:00:29.480 you know, send us a little message, let us know 1:00:29.760 --> 1:00:31.400 how your experience was in the forest. 1:00:31.440 --> 1:00:31.920 I'd love that. 1:00:32.000 --> 1:00:32.880 It would make me happy. 1:00:33.400 --> 1:01:01.040 Likewise, what's jd My advances? This is it could happen 1:01:01.120 --> 1:01:05.240 here a podcast that's not Behind the Bastards. But today 1:01:05.440 --> 1:01:09.760 we're doing a little mini episode on our future possible 1:01:10.000 --> 1:01:16.080 vice president JD Vance Garrison. How are you feeling today, 1:01:16.200 --> 1:01:17.480 Welcome back to the program. 1:01:17.640 --> 1:01:18.000 Thank you. 1:01:18.080 --> 1:01:19.080 I'm feeling pretty good. 1:01:19.320 --> 1:01:19.720 Yeah. 1:01:19.800 --> 1:01:21.720 Yeah, I got a great five hours of sleep. I'm 1:01:21.760 --> 1:01:22.320 good to go. 1:01:22.720 --> 1:01:24.480 Oh, I slept eleven Good for you. 1:01:24.520 --> 1:01:27.520 No, I've also been in the researching bad people whole 1:01:28.120 --> 1:01:29.560 which keeps me up late at night. 1:01:29.920 --> 1:01:33.000 Yeah. I have to do the Walls episodes tonight so 1:01:33.040 --> 1:01:35.120 we can go back to back on the vps. But 1:01:35.160 --> 1:01:38.560 I decided to start with JD. Vance, And you know, 1:01:38.640 --> 1:01:41.920 I had debated with myself is this guy worth a 1:01:41.960 --> 1:01:46.000 full bTB episode? And I decided ultimately like no, you know, 1:01:46.080 --> 1:01:49.000 I just don't think there's enough to him yet that 1:01:49.080 --> 1:01:52.000 he deserves that. Perhaps that will change in the future. 1:01:52.320 --> 1:01:55.440 But what I wanted to do was give the listener, 1:01:55.440 --> 1:01:58.280 who I'm guessing has mostly just heard a few disjointed 1:01:58.280 --> 1:01:59.280 things about JD. 1:01:59.600 --> 1:02:03.640 A few few things, one or two things, maybe one specific. 1:02:03.200 --> 1:02:06.920 Thing, one specific They probably they're probably aware of Hillbilly Elogy. 1:02:07.000 --> 1:02:09.280 That was like a pretty pretty big book in the day, 1:02:09.320 --> 1:02:12.120 and the movie was panned and that was kind of news. 1:02:12.320 --> 1:02:15.120 They probably heard the couch fucking stuff. And then they've 1:02:15.120 --> 1:02:17.960 heard allegations that he's like a straight up fascist, and 1:02:18.280 --> 1:02:21.480 you know, he thinks that single women should be dragged 1:02:21.480 --> 1:02:23.680 out into the street and shot or something like that. 1:02:23.880 --> 1:02:25.520 If you have a cat and you're a single woman, 1:02:25.560 --> 1:02:27.360 you are onto logically evil. 1:02:27.280 --> 1:02:30.600 Yeah, yeah, yeah, a sociopath. And so I wanted to 1:02:30.600 --> 1:02:33.000 provide some context for how he went from if you 1:02:33.000 --> 1:02:35.920 can remember back to twenty sixteen, he was a liberal 1:02:36.040 --> 1:02:38.040 darling for having written Hillbilly Elogy. 1:02:38.160 --> 1:02:38.360 Right. 1:02:38.400 --> 1:02:41.160 He was this guy, this like never Trump conservative who 1:02:41.200 --> 1:02:44.400 was explaining to everyone how the evil of trump Ism 1:02:44.440 --> 1:02:48.280 had infested and you know, latched onto the minds of 1:02:48.320 --> 1:02:50.920 small town Americans. Right, That's kind of how he was 1:02:50.960 --> 1:02:54.360 framed today, where he's like this hard right maga guy, 1:02:54.640 --> 1:02:58.120 literally Trump's you know, future right hand man, with what 1:02:58.280 --> 1:03:02.760 sounds like explicitly dictatorial ambitions, and the mystery of this story, 1:03:02.800 --> 1:03:07.640 all of it comes down to Peterteel Right. Many such cases, Yeah, 1:03:08.480 --> 1:03:10.920 as is often the case, he's a major part of 1:03:10.960 --> 1:03:14.080 life why things wind up where they are. The bones 1:03:14.120 --> 1:03:16.480 of JD's background story are kind of important, so I'm 1:03:16.520 --> 1:03:18.440 just going to give them rapidly. He was born in 1:03:18.480 --> 1:03:22.320 August nineteen eighty four in Middletown, Ohio, born under the 1:03:22.360 --> 1:03:25.520 name James Donald Bowman, but his parents divorced when he 1:03:25.560 --> 1:03:28.520 was a toddler. His dad, his biodad, is pretty much 1:03:28.520 --> 1:03:31.240 out of the picture right away. He is eventually adopted 1:03:31.240 --> 1:03:34.040 by his mother's third husband, whose last name is Hamil, 1:03:34.280 --> 1:03:35.520 and that's the name he's going to serve in the 1:03:35.560 --> 1:03:38.760 Marines under. His mother was not very together. There's a 1:03:38.800 --> 1:03:41.360 lot of neglect and poverty and some drug abuse in 1:03:41.400 --> 1:03:44.480 his early life before his grandparents moved him from Kentucky 1:03:44.720 --> 1:03:47.440 to Ohio. Now a lot of ink has been spilled 1:03:47.440 --> 1:03:51.640 when the subject of Vance's supposedly autobiographical book, Hillbilly Elegy, 1:03:51.720 --> 1:03:53.720 which paints him as a member of the aggrieved and 1:03:53.760 --> 1:03:58.160 abused white underclass, the forgotten men of American politics, I'm 1:03:58.200 --> 1:04:01.240 not interested in relitigating this stupid book, except to say 1:04:01.240 --> 1:04:04.120 that I had a kind of similar background. My dad 1:04:04.200 --> 1:04:07.520 was in the picture, but socioeconomically it was kind of similar. 1:04:07.560 --> 1:04:09.760 We grew up in a very poor and troubled small town. 1:04:10.160 --> 1:04:13.480 Eventually my caretakers got me out of there into a 1:04:13.520 --> 1:04:16.280 more functional part of the country. And I can see 1:04:16.360 --> 1:04:19.160 I see JD's book as kind of cynically positioned to 1:04:19.240 --> 1:04:22.360 take advantage of the liberal outpouring of sympathy for rural 1:04:22.400 --> 1:04:25.920 whites that followed Trump's twenty sixteen victory, an attempt to 1:04:25.960 --> 1:04:28.360 position himself as someone who can explain why this part 1:04:28.360 --> 1:04:31.240 of the country swept Trump into power. Now, the reality 1:04:31.280 --> 1:04:32.960 is that this part of the country did not sweep 1:04:33.000 --> 1:04:35.200 Trump into power. The core of Trump support in twenty 1:04:35.200 --> 1:04:39.280 sixteen were aggrieved, but financially comfortable, suburban white people. Vance 1:04:39.360 --> 1:04:41.960 did not write about poor folks addicted to oxy in 1:04:42.000 --> 1:04:44.520 the hollers with any real empathy. He painted them as 1:04:44.560 --> 1:04:47.360 helpless fools and mental children, in himself as better for 1:04:47.400 --> 1:04:49.080 getting out. And that's really all I have to say 1:04:49.080 --> 1:04:52.400 on the matter. To me, his early life suggests a 1:04:52.400 --> 1:04:54.600 young man who wanted to set himself up for a 1:04:54.680 --> 1:04:57.560 career in public life and took the most expedient actions 1:04:57.560 --> 1:05:00.360 to do so. And that is the context in which 1:05:00.440 --> 1:05:03.200 I see his service in the US Marine Corps. He 1:05:03.320 --> 1:05:05.680 joined the Marines and got himself the job that would 1:05:05.680 --> 1:05:08.160 get him as close to action as possible without requiring 1:05:08.200 --> 1:05:11.800 that he actually do anything. His specific gig was public 1:05:11.840 --> 1:05:15.200 affairs for a marine aircraft wing, So he is writing 1:05:15.200 --> 1:05:18.120 about the shit that this aircraft wing is doing, which 1:05:18.160 --> 1:05:20.920 is about the least job that you can actually have 1:05:21.080 --> 1:05:23.440 in the military. He wrote that he was quote lucky 1:05:23.440 --> 1:05:27.240 to escape any real fighting. After finishing his term, he 1:05:27.280 --> 1:05:29.560 got a BA in polysci And I'm not saying that 1:05:29.840 --> 1:05:32.560 you have to fight for you know, most of what 1:05:32.600 --> 1:05:35.280 the military does is not literally fighting. I'm just saying 1:05:35.360 --> 1:05:39.360 I see his specific positioning himself with this job as 1:05:39.560 --> 1:05:42.800 him wanting to have Marine on his CV when he 1:05:42.840 --> 1:05:46.520 goes into politics. Right, that's my allegation, right, not that 1:05:46.520 --> 1:05:48.120 there's anything wrong with not. 1:05:48.120 --> 1:05:51.440 Fighting, sure, I mean, and it's also just good to 1:05:51.520 --> 1:05:55.560 point out considering most of the rights attacks against Walls 1:05:55.640 --> 1:05:59.440 right now are also about him not actually like seeing combat, 1:06:00.000 --> 1:06:02.960 and Advance has gone after him for that specifically. Yeah, 1:06:03.000 --> 1:06:07.960 trying to like allude to like Advance having more combat experience. Yeah, 1:06:08.080 --> 1:06:11.240 both men did not like fire bullets at enemy combatants. 1:06:11.520 --> 1:06:13.840 No, and most people don't. But what I see with 1:06:14.000 --> 1:06:17.120 Vance's service is I did this because it was a 1:06:17.160 --> 1:06:20.240 line in my resume, whereas you don't do twenty four 1:06:20.360 --> 1:06:24.360 years in the National Guard like just to set up 1:06:24.400 --> 1:06:26.720 your political career. Now, you do that because you want 1:06:26.720 --> 1:06:27.880 to be in the National Guard. 1:06:28.280 --> 1:06:31.120 Yes, Waltz was definitely more like a career man in 1:06:31.160 --> 1:06:31.600 that sense. 1:06:31.960 --> 1:06:35.360 Yeah, yeah, absolutely. After finishing his term, he got a 1:06:35.440 --> 1:06:39.000 BA in polysci and philosophy from Ohio State and during 1:06:39.040 --> 1:06:41.280 his first year in college he worked for a Republican 1:06:41.280 --> 1:06:42.840 States senator. He's going to work for a couple of 1:06:42.920 --> 1:06:46.600 Republicans in his college in grad school, you know, law 1:06:46.640 --> 1:06:49.680 school years. Then he attended Yale Law School, where he 1:06:49.680 --> 1:06:51.960 made friends with Jamil Giovanni, who would go on to 1:06:52.000 --> 1:06:55.520 be a Conservative parliamentarian in Canada. He was mentored by 1:06:55.560 --> 1:06:58.320 Professor Amy Chua, who wrote a book about being a 1:06:58.360 --> 1:07:00.560 Tiger mom that made a lot of people angry and 1:07:00.640 --> 1:07:02.560 was beloved by the chunk of the country who thinks 1:07:02.560 --> 1:07:05.680 the children have it too easy. Chua helped to convince 1:07:05.760 --> 1:07:08.840 him to write Hillbilly Elegy, which might be her worst sin, 1:07:08.920 --> 1:07:11.760 almost definitely is her worst sin. I can forgive some 1:07:11.880 --> 1:07:14.120 terrible acts towards children if you don't write the book 1:07:14.200 --> 1:07:17.920 Hillbilly Elogy. It was when Vance graduated from Yale that 1:07:17.960 --> 1:07:20.240 he first made contact with the man who would come 1:07:20.280 --> 1:07:24.480 to define his adult political journey. Peter Teel, the PayPal 1:07:24.560 --> 1:07:28.400 co founder and serial entrepreneur investor, had taken a rapid 1:07:28.400 --> 1:07:31.640 turn from his earlier libertarian politics thanks to a growing 1:07:31.680 --> 1:07:34.400 interest in a line of political philosophy known mostly as 1:07:34.600 --> 1:07:38.880 neo reactionary or NRX thought, although today you'll more often 1:07:38.920 --> 1:07:41.520 hear it described as the new right. I'm not in 1:07:41.520 --> 1:07:44.600 love with either of those terms for this particular chunk 1:07:44.640 --> 1:07:47.160 of the right, But I think neo reactionary is better 1:07:47.240 --> 1:07:47.760 than new. 1:07:47.640 --> 1:07:49.960 Right, not as bad as dark Enlightenment. 1:07:50.120 --> 1:07:52.080 It's not as bad as dark and we'll talk the 1:07:52.200 --> 1:07:54.960 worst of these three terms, by far the worst of 1:07:55.000 --> 1:07:58.200 the three terms. So I tend to stick with neo reactionary. 1:07:58.280 --> 1:08:01.480 Although if you hear new right being used' that's also 1:08:01.560 --> 1:08:02.400 what this refers to. 1:08:02.560 --> 1:08:05.000 That's a term I've used sometimes. Yeah, yeah, what time 1:08:05.040 --> 1:08:07.919 period is is is this like twenty seventeen, like where 1:08:07.960 --> 1:08:08.560 are we at here? 1:08:08.600 --> 1:08:12.520 Twenty eleven is when he sees Peter Teal speak at Yale, 1:08:12.720 --> 1:08:15.880 which he describes as like the moment around which his 1:08:15.960 --> 1:08:16.639 life pivots. 1:08:16.840 --> 1:08:18.920 So this is pre the publishing of his book. 1:08:19.320 --> 1:08:22.200 Yes, yes, yes, he publishes he'llbilli Elogy in twenty sixteen. 1:08:22.400 --> 1:08:24.280 Okay, so he kind of got in on the ground 1:08:24.280 --> 1:08:25.479 floor of some of this kind of stuff. 1:08:25.560 --> 1:08:28.280 Yes, he is very early in Teal world. He is 1:08:28.280 --> 1:08:29.600 one of the first, He's going to be one of 1:08:29.640 --> 1:08:31.040 We're getting to that. But I want to talk about 1:08:31.040 --> 1:08:33.439 what neo reactionaries are because the rest of this isn't 1:08:33.439 --> 1:08:34.960 going to make sense unless we go into that. 1:08:35.120 --> 1:08:35.719 So sure. 1:08:36.080 --> 1:08:39.160 Vanity Fair writer James Pogue rather ably described the New 1:08:39.240 --> 1:08:42.240 Right as a worldview in direct competition to the liberal 1:08:42.280 --> 1:08:45.800 idea that economic growth and technological innovation would lead us 1:08:45.840 --> 1:08:48.960 to a better future. Instead, the growth of big tech surveillance, 1:08:49.040 --> 1:08:52.400 nanny state governance, and social justice culture war dominance has 1:08:52.439 --> 1:08:56.080 created a system of oppression that will destroy everything good 1:08:56.120 --> 1:08:59.599 in the world if not stopped. The primary high priest 1:08:59.640 --> 1:09:02.040 of this fool of thought is Curtis Yarvin. Who in 1:09:02.080 --> 1:09:05.080 the early aughts from about two thousand and seven twenty fourteen, 1:09:05.479 --> 1:09:10.720 blogged prolifically as Mincius Moldbug. Now Yarvin is a computer programmer. 1:09:10.800 --> 1:09:12.760 He is this guy who has had for most of 1:09:12.760 --> 1:09:16.080 his career this desire to create a new computer operating 1:09:16.120 --> 1:09:19.439 system that would like fix the way in which knowledge 1:09:19.479 --> 1:09:22.200 is disseminated in a way that sounds kind of magical 1:09:22.240 --> 1:09:24.559 to me. He never quite gets it working. And he 1:09:24.760 --> 1:09:29.160 blogs about political philosophy the same way he talks about programming, 1:09:29.200 --> 1:09:32.440 which he has this dream for a way to reorient 1:09:32.600 --> 1:09:36.479 society after a soft, kind of peaceful coup. He always 1:09:36.479 --> 1:09:39.040 emphasizes how peaceful it needs to be, that will be, 1:09:39.400 --> 1:09:41.360 you know. Again, it's his way if he wants to 1:09:41.400 --> 1:09:44.759 program society to make it work perfectly, you know, based 1:09:44.760 --> 1:09:47.360 on his sort of set of values. And he writes 1:09:47.360 --> 1:09:52.160 a series of essays about how he wants to reorient society. 1:09:52.600 --> 1:09:56.400 And these essays become kind of the central underpinning ethos 1:09:56.479 --> 1:09:58.840 of the messi assortment of philosophies that we call neo 1:09:58.880 --> 1:10:00.880 reactionaries the new right. 1:10:01.080 --> 1:10:01.360 Now. 1:10:01.800 --> 1:10:04.640 The basic idea is that this liberal nightmare healthscape can 1:10:04.680 --> 1:10:07.360 only be stopped and turned back by replacing democracy with 1:10:07.439 --> 1:10:11.240 an essentially monarchic system. Pogue describes Jarvin as arguing for 1:10:11.400 --> 1:10:14.120 quote a Caesar like figure to take power back from 1:10:14.120 --> 1:10:17.240 this devolved oligarchy and replace it with a monarchical regime 1:10:17.320 --> 1:10:20.040 run like a startup. As early as twenty twelve, he 1:10:20.080 --> 1:10:24.080 proposed the acronym rage retire all government employees as a 1:10:24.120 --> 1:10:26.479 shorthand for a first step and the overthrow of the 1:10:26.520 --> 1:10:29.799 American regime. What we needed, Yarvin thought, was a national 1:10:29.880 --> 1:10:33.800 CEO or what's called a dictator. Now. A lot of 1:10:33.880 --> 1:10:37.800 guys in the aughts become enraptured by Jarvin's ideas because 1:10:37.800 --> 1:10:40.639 the way Jarvin writes, he spends most of his free 1:10:40.680 --> 1:10:43.439 time because he gets bought out of a company he's in, 1:10:43.479 --> 1:10:45.560 and he doesn't wind up like super rich, but he 1:10:45.600 --> 1:10:48.000 winds up comfortable enough that he's for a while just 1:10:48.040 --> 1:10:50.720 spending like five hundred bucks a month on books and 1:10:50.760 --> 1:10:54.080 reading like old reactionary tracts, like books from the eighteen 1:10:54.200 --> 1:11:00.360 hundreds of like monarchists arguing against the Enlightenment and socialism alike. 1:11:00.720 --> 1:11:03.240 And so he peppers his essays with a lot of 1:11:03.280 --> 1:11:07.120 different kind of archaic flourishes a lot of Latin, a 1:11:07.160 --> 1:11:11.000 lot of like references to Greek and Roman philosophical figures, 1:11:11.040 --> 1:11:14.400 and that is fucking catnip for a certain kind of guy. 1:11:14.840 --> 1:11:17.320 No, it makes it makes it seem like esoteric. It's 1:11:17.320 --> 1:11:19.720 like it's kind of like, yes, liked hidden knowledge. It's 1:11:19.760 --> 1:11:22.679 being like rediscovered that like holds the key to fix 1:11:22.720 --> 1:11:23.559 all of our problems. 1:11:23.680 --> 1:11:28.240 Yes, he is. If you've read Enders game, he's doing 1:11:28.280 --> 1:11:31.360 what Ender's brother does an Enders game, where he's writing 1:11:31.360 --> 1:11:34.599 his little essays for the Internet, trying to like overthrow 1:11:34.640 --> 1:11:37.360 the government using them. And there's a certain certain kind 1:11:37.360 --> 1:11:40.000 of guy who is just deeply attracted to that idea. 1:11:40.040 --> 1:11:42.400 One of those kinds of guys is a philosopher called 1:11:42.479 --> 1:11:46.559 Nick Land. Land is an interesting character. We talk about 1:11:46.600 --> 1:11:49.720 him a little during our AI Cult episodes. He's a 1:11:49.800 --> 1:11:52.559 dude who comes out of academia and kind of has 1:11:52.680 --> 1:11:57.160 has now moved around to essentially like fascist political philosophy 1:11:57.200 --> 1:12:00.000 would be kind of the quickest way to describe Land today. 1:12:00.040 --> 1:12:02.880 Although he's a complicated fellow. But he is the guy 1:12:02.920 --> 1:12:06.040 who who comes up with the term dark enlightenment for 1:12:06.160 --> 1:12:08.640 Curtis's writing. And this is the way in which a 1:12:08.640 --> 1:12:11.240 lot of these guys, A lot of the guys especially 1:12:11.240 --> 1:12:14.479 who are going to come into Jarvin's work around, you know, 1:12:14.520 --> 1:12:17.160 the mid aughts are going to think about it right 1:12:17.200 --> 1:12:20.840 where it's this, he has pulled the wool from my eyes. Right, 1:12:20.920 --> 1:12:24.400 he has made it clear how doomed democracy is, that 1:12:24.439 --> 1:12:27.200 it's fundamentally evil. And now that I've had this dark revelation, 1:12:27.240 --> 1:12:29.519 I can never look at the world the same way again. 1:12:29.880 --> 1:12:31.960 Right, And like Land was trying to do the same 1:12:32.000 --> 1:12:35.120 thing for like the previous like fifteen years, and he 1:12:35.160 --> 1:12:39.160 attracted a small batch of like kind of like academic followers, 1:12:40.000 --> 1:12:41.920 A whole bunch of his colleagues kind of got more 1:12:41.960 --> 1:12:44.640 popular than him because they were slightly more reasonable in 1:12:44.680 --> 1:12:45.680 many ways. 1:12:45.400 --> 1:12:47.920 Because Lance writing is never going to be like the 1:12:48.000 --> 1:12:52.360 most viral thing on earth, right, like no, yeah, and 1:12:52.400 --> 1:12:54.840 mode Bugs is a little better written for that, although 1:12:54.880 --> 1:12:58.000 both of them are too dense. The guys who are 1:12:58.000 --> 1:13:00.120 going to, like like Vance is going to be the 1:13:00.120 --> 1:13:01.880 guys who are going to take his theories into like 1:13:01.920 --> 1:13:04.719 mainstream politics, are going to need to trim the fat off. 1:13:04.960 --> 1:13:08.040 You know. It's also worth noting Jarvin is the guy 1:13:08.080 --> 1:13:11.200 who introduces the term the red pill to right wing politics. 1:13:11.560 --> 1:13:12.639 Right, Oh, I didn't know that. 1:13:12.800 --> 1:13:16.880 Yes, as far as I've ever seen, Jarvin is the 1:13:16.920 --> 1:13:19.960 guy who like starts using the red pill in like 1:13:20.000 --> 1:13:22.680 a really concerted way to describe, like coming to these 1:13:22.760 --> 1:13:25.599 understandings about you know, race science has a decent amount 1:13:25.600 --> 1:13:27.840 to do with it earlier in Yarvin's writing career. But 1:13:27.920 --> 1:13:30.720 like all of these ideas that we now call neo reactionary, 1:13:30.960 --> 1:13:34.080 like that's that's a Jarvin original. He thinks the matrix 1:13:34.160 --> 1:13:36.720 is a work of genius, of course, which it is, 1:13:36.760 --> 1:13:40.559 but maybe not in the way that he thinks slightly. Yeah, 1:13:40.960 --> 1:13:44.760 So anyway, Peter Teel falls in love because Teal is 1:13:44.760 --> 1:13:47.200 by by two thousand and nine, Teal's writing stuff about 1:13:47.200 --> 1:13:50.400 how he thinks democracy is incompatible with liberty. Right, And 1:13:50.400 --> 1:13:52.800 when Peter Teel refers to liberty, he's not talking about 1:13:52.800 --> 1:13:56.240 like your freedom to like to love the people that 1:13:56.280 --> 1:13:58.840 you want to love, or do with your body what 1:13:58.920 --> 1:14:00.640 you want to do with your body, talking about his 1:14:00.720 --> 1:14:02.680 freedom as a guy with a lot of money to 1:14:02.840 --> 1:14:05.760 not have to pay taxes. Right, that's primarily what all 1:14:05.800 --> 1:14:08.840 of these guys mean by freedom. So Teal by two 1:14:08.840 --> 1:14:12.160 thousand and nine is already enraptured with these anti democratic ideas, 1:14:12.439 --> 1:14:14.800 and he finds Jarvin. It's kind of unclear to me, 1:14:14.880 --> 1:14:17.640 does Jarvin actually start him on that road or I 1:14:17.680 --> 1:14:20.000 think it's more that he has started down that road, 1:14:20.360 --> 1:14:22.719 and he thinks Jarvin is doing a really good job 1:14:22.880 --> 1:14:26.040 of setting up what he's been thinking. So he starts 1:14:26.080 --> 1:14:28.479 pumping money into Jarvin. He funds some of his like 1:14:28.560 --> 1:14:32.479 software ambitions. He's just kind of generally supporting him, and 1:14:32.520 --> 1:14:35.760 he begins pumping money increasingly over the early to mid 1:14:35.760 --> 1:14:39.000 aughts into an array of influencers and thinkers who are 1:14:39.040 --> 1:14:41.519 in alignment with what we might call mold buggy in 1:14:41.640 --> 1:14:44.559 thought right, and he's doing that up to this present day, 1:14:44.840 --> 1:14:47.639 Pog writes. Teal has also funded things like The Edge 1:14:47.680 --> 1:14:50.120 Lordy and Post Left. Infected New People sent him a 1:14:50.160 --> 1:14:52.439 film festival which ended his week long run of parties 1:14:52.439 --> 1:14:55.080 and screenings in Manhattan just a few days before nat 1:14:55.160 --> 1:14:58.240 Con began. He's long been a big donor to Republican 1:14:58.280 --> 1:15:01.559 political candidates, but in recent years has grown increasingly involved 1:15:01.560 --> 1:15:04.200 in the politics of this younger and weirder world, becoming 1:15:04.200 --> 1:15:07.400 something like an afarious godfather or genial rich uncle, depending 1:15:07.400 --> 1:15:10.559 on your perspective. Podcasters and art world figures now joke 1:15:10.600 --> 1:15:13.880 about their hope to get so called Teal bucks. And 1:15:13.920 --> 1:15:17.360 if you're familiar with like the Red Scare podcast and 1:15:17.400 --> 1:15:20.200 those ladies you're familiar with, like the Dime Square set, 1:15:20.640 --> 1:15:24.120 a lot of them are into neo reactionary thought and 1:15:24.280 --> 1:15:27.760 are the people that that paragraph is referring to right now. 1:15:27.800 --> 1:15:31.719 While podcasters and cultural influencers have long been useful to Teal, 1:15:32.040 --> 1:15:34.439 he's also tried to collect up and coming politicians with 1:15:34.560 --> 1:15:37.360 uneven success. In twenty eleven, he gave a talk at 1:15:37.439 --> 1:15:39.720 Yale while Vance was still a student, and discussed the 1:15:39.720 --> 1:15:43.559 stagnation of technological progress in the United States. Vance wrote 1:15:43.600 --> 1:15:46.280 that Teal was then quote possibly the smartest person I'd 1:15:46.280 --> 1:15:49.000 ever met, And this moment is the moment that his 1:15:49.080 --> 1:15:52.439 whole life pivots around meeting Peter Teal at Yale in 1:15:52.479 --> 1:15:54.599 twenty eleven. We're going to talk about what comes after, 1:15:54.680 --> 1:15:58.240 But Garrison, you know what isn't receiving any money from 1:15:58.280 --> 1:15:58.800 Peter Teal. 1:15:59.320 --> 1:16:01.479 We also can say that there's no way to know 1:16:01.520 --> 1:16:02.080 what he's doing. 1:16:02.160 --> 1:16:05.479 Right, It's entirely possible. It's entirely possible that we are 1:16:05.520 --> 1:16:08.880 funded one by Peter Teal, And if so, thank you. 1:16:08.920 --> 1:16:10.280 Got to get those Teal books. 1:16:20.479 --> 1:16:23.720 And we're back. I've just uncovered that Peter Teal is 1:16:23.760 --> 1:16:27.160 the mind behind Chumba Casino Garrison. This goes so much 1:16:27.200 --> 1:16:28.040 deeper than I thought. 1:16:29.000 --> 1:16:31.799 What if Peter Tiel instead just got really into sports betting, 1:16:31.960 --> 1:16:35.240 you know, instead of dealing with all this weird like 1:16:35.520 --> 1:16:42.240 esoteric traditionalist, like like eighteen eighties racism philosophy. What what 1:16:42.320 --> 1:16:44.840 if instead he just got really into I don't know, 1:16:45.200 --> 1:16:47.240 the Bucks that's probably a sports team, right. 1:16:47.240 --> 1:16:50.040 He put eight billion dollars on the Raiders. 1:16:50.840 --> 1:16:51.719 He took a bath. 1:16:51.800 --> 1:16:52.439 He's fucked. 1:16:53.000 --> 1:16:56.080 He got addicted to it too, gone. We can save 1:16:56.160 --> 1:16:58.880 so many lives. Sports betting really couldn't save lives. 1:16:59.120 --> 1:17:02.759 I've always said that Vance decided to abandon his planned 1:17:02.840 --> 1:17:04.559 career in law, although I'm not sure I believe that 1:17:04.560 --> 1:17:05.679 was ever his intended path. 1:17:05.840 --> 1:17:06.600 Absolutely not. 1:17:07.000 --> 1:17:10.559 No, he does a couple of years in law, and 1:17:10.640 --> 1:17:13.360 he claims that Teal also is who made him decide 1:17:13.400 --> 1:17:16.600 to convert to Christianity by defying the social template. I 1:17:16.640 --> 1:17:19.759 had constructed that Christians were dumb and atheists were smart. 1:17:20.080 --> 1:17:21.920 I don't know how much to believe that he's actually 1:17:21.920 --> 1:17:22.479 a Catholic. 1:17:22.720 --> 1:17:25.719 Maybe I don't know, but like there's this whole new 1:17:25.840 --> 1:17:28.480 batch of like yes people who are like a philosophically 1:17:28.520 --> 1:17:30.840 Catholic or like yeah, they're Catholic in like a quote 1:17:30.880 --> 1:17:35.000 unquote Hegelian sense when when they instruct these like larger 1:17:35.080 --> 1:17:38.480 models of like human evolution and they view like Christianity 1:17:38.479 --> 1:17:40.880 as this like yes, sing that will drive the human 1:17:40.920 --> 1:17:44.599 species towards its like perfected form. And definitely the dark 1:17:44.720 --> 1:17:48.080 Enlightenment to people are a significant chunk of kind of 1:17:48.080 --> 1:17:50.840 what caused you to develop. And we're seeing that now 1:17:50.880 --> 1:17:53.439 with like these fake movements like the Hegelian egirles, which 1:17:53.439 --> 1:17:55.439 are kind of like with the like weird step child 1:17:55.439 --> 1:17:59.599 of some of these like Dimes Square like influencer philosophy stuff. 1:17:59.680 --> 1:18:03.679 Yeah, and I would say he's definitely not a Catholic 1:18:03.720 --> 1:18:05.840 in the sense that your aunt is right. 1:18:06.120 --> 1:18:08.360 No, no, no, no, no, no no no. 1:18:08.400 --> 1:18:10.200 He is a Catholic in the sense that, like he 1:18:10.280 --> 1:18:13.759 believes there are things about social order and the roles 1:18:13.800 --> 1:18:17.519 that people should have in society that Catholicism gets right. 1:18:17.720 --> 1:18:21.160 And that's the sense in which he's a Catholic. Right, 1:18:21.800 --> 1:18:24.879 So in twenty sixteen, the same year that Vance publishes 1:18:24.960 --> 1:18:29.519 Hillbilly Elegy and becomes a liberal darling, he joins Mythral Capital, 1:18:29.680 --> 1:18:33.040 a venture capital firm founded by Teal Peter Teel Advance. 1:18:33.160 --> 1:18:35.920 All of these guys pretty much every time they create 1:18:35.960 --> 1:18:38.120 a company, it's named after something in the Lord of 1:18:38.120 --> 1:18:38.559 the Rings. 1:18:38.640 --> 1:18:40.879 Fucking A. J. R. R. Tolkien bullshit. 1:18:41.439 --> 1:18:43.479 He would be so unhappy with this. 1:18:43.920 --> 1:18:46.439 Because Tolkien was also a Catholic monarchist, but in a 1:18:46.560 --> 1:18:47.520 very different. 1:18:47.160 --> 1:18:51.760 Way, in a super different way. Yes. So the two 1:18:51.880 --> 1:18:54.080 young men that Teal adopts that he makes what are 1:18:54.120 --> 1:18:58.400 called generational bets in is Blake Masters and JD. Vance. 1:18:58.439 --> 1:19:00.720 And his bet is that if I really bankroll and 1:19:00.800 --> 1:19:04.759 back these guys, they are going to be major figures 1:19:04.840 --> 1:19:09.320 in US politics right for decades to come. And his 1:19:09.360 --> 1:19:11.320 first step is he makes them rich. He helps them 1:19:11.320 --> 1:19:13.960 get jobs and stuff that they get wealthy in. You know, 1:19:14.200 --> 1:19:16.559 Masters is recruited in the same way as Vance. He's 1:19:16.560 --> 1:19:18.840 given a cushy job in venture capital. He's handed a 1:19:18.840 --> 1:19:20.680 shitload of Teal books to see what he can make 1:19:20.720 --> 1:19:22.680 of them. And Vance is, you know, both of them 1:19:22.680 --> 1:19:24.720 are decent enough at this Vance is okay at it, 1:19:24.760 --> 1:19:27.400 and within two years he gets hired for one hundred 1:19:27.400 --> 1:19:30.280 and fifty million dollar fund out of Washington that focuses 1:19:30.320 --> 1:19:33.559 on finding young companies and overlooked US cities, places that 1:19:33.560 --> 1:19:36.559 weren't seen as traditionally tech hups. Soon after this, he 1:19:36.600 --> 1:19:38.840 goes into business on his own, if we can call 1:19:38.880 --> 1:19:41.360 it on your own when Peter Teal is the guy 1:19:41.360 --> 1:19:43.679 who backs your new company entirely, right. 1:19:43.760 --> 1:19:46.800 Sure, I do love that that Peter Teel somehow picked 1:19:46.840 --> 1:19:50.639 the two most uncharismatic up and coming dudes. 1:19:51.080 --> 1:19:54.440 I mean, look at Peter, what does he know about charisma? 1:19:54.680 --> 1:19:58.200 Yeah, but like it is fun that he made these 1:19:58.200 --> 1:20:01.120 two bets, and Mark Kelly just destroyed one of them. 1:20:01.439 --> 1:20:05.320 Yeah, criticize the bad for what you will, but one 1:20:05.360 --> 1:20:09.400 of these weirdos go up against an astronaut on a 1:20:09.479 --> 1:20:10.439 public debate. 1:20:11.360 --> 1:20:15.200 Jesus Christ, you know, say what you will about electoralism. 1:20:15.240 --> 1:20:17.880 I'm excited to see the Walls Vance debate because I 1:20:17.880 --> 1:20:18.679 think it'll be funny. 1:20:18.880 --> 1:20:22.679 Yeah, well, because Vance has big daddy issues and Walls 1:20:22.680 --> 1:20:26.160 has strong daddy energy, so we could be in for 1:20:26.200 --> 1:20:30.160 a very interesting night. So Vance forms his own venture 1:20:30.240 --> 1:20:33.640 capital form Narya Capital. This is another lord of the 1:20:33.720 --> 1:20:36.759 Rings reference. Narya is one of the rings of power, 1:20:37.080 --> 1:20:40.880 which the rings of power are bad, very famously. You're 1:20:40.920 --> 1:20:44.800 part of a con. An evil monster creates them to 1:20:45.160 --> 1:20:48.639 enslave you. If you are wearing one of the rings 1:20:48.680 --> 1:20:53.360 of power, you have been enslaved by Saarron. That's the point. 1:20:54.160 --> 1:20:55.679 They're very famously bad. 1:20:55.800 --> 1:20:56.000 Yeah. 1:20:56.040 --> 1:20:59.120 Yeah. And of course one of the major investments Naria 1:20:59.200 --> 1:21:02.960 Capital makes is into Pallentier, which is also named. 1:21:03.600 --> 1:21:06.360 Also famously used by the Evil Wizard. 1:21:06.880 --> 1:21:10.879 Yes, famously used by the Evil Wizard. Now, in twenty sixteen, 1:21:11.000 --> 1:21:13.840 Vance portrayed himself as a never Trumper, calling the future 1:21:13.840 --> 1:21:16.160 president want to be dictator? Well, ye know how many 1:21:16.160 --> 1:21:18.280 people in America didn't he Rape is one of the 1:21:18.320 --> 1:21:20.840 things Vance says about Trump. So he is like not 1:21:21.560 --> 1:21:25.080 holding his punches against the man broken clock. But behind 1:21:25.120 --> 1:21:28.000 the scenes he is in the process of being anointed 1:21:28.040 --> 1:21:29.960 by the teal crowd, who again see him as a 1:21:30.000 --> 1:21:32.600 bet in the future of American politics. Now, this is 1:21:32.640 --> 1:21:34.760 not something I can claim to know with confidence, but 1:21:34.800 --> 1:21:37.519 it seems to me from the extant information that Vance's 1:21:37.520 --> 1:21:40.760 anti trumpism was performative, calculated to sell books. When he 1:21:40.760 --> 1:21:42.479 thought he might have a future with a new more 1:21:42.520 --> 1:21:47.360 conservative Democratic Party triangulating to battle populous trump Ism. The 1:21:47.360 --> 1:21:49.839 fact that he remained close to Teal during this whole period, 1:21:49.840 --> 1:21:52.679 and that Teal spoke at the twenty sixteen RNC strikes 1:21:52.720 --> 1:21:54.759 me as evidence of a lack of any core political 1:21:54.800 --> 1:21:57.800 beliefs beyond a personal desire for power. Now, it is 1:21:57.840 --> 1:22:00.720 worth noting that, as a younger man, none of the 1:22:00.800 --> 1:22:04.639 signs of social conservatism. He is always an economic conservative. 1:22:04.680 --> 1:22:06.559 He's willing to work with Republicans right. He's one of 1:22:06.560 --> 1:22:09.680 these guys who you could definitely see economically being in 1:22:09.720 --> 1:22:12.320 line with their Republicans. But he does not evince any 1:22:12.400 --> 1:22:16.439 kind of bigotry in his early life, particularly towards LGBT people. 1:22:16.800 --> 1:22:18.840 One of his best friends from law school is a 1:22:18.840 --> 1:22:22.559 transgender woman, Sophia and Nelson. He describes her in Hillbilly 1:22:22.600 --> 1:22:25.960 Elogy as an extremely progressive lesbian and wrote in an 1:22:25.960 --> 1:22:28.439 email to her, I recognize now that this may not 1:22:28.560 --> 1:22:30.640 accurately reflect how you think of yourself, and for that 1:22:30.720 --> 1:22:33.040 I am really sorry. I hope you're not offended, but 1:22:33.080 --> 1:22:36.799 if you are, I'm sorry. Love you, JD. Sophia responded 1:22:36.800 --> 1:22:38.920 the next day, saying if you had written gender queer, 1:22:39.040 --> 1:22:41.439 radical pragmatist, nobody would know what you mean. 1:22:42.040 --> 1:22:43.960 Many such cases, right. 1:22:44.680 --> 1:22:46.360 The text of their emails has been shared with The 1:22:46.400 --> 1:22:49.240 New York Times by Nelson. After Vance took a hard 1:22:49.280 --> 1:22:52.000 turn to lean into the rights anti trans bigotry. This 1:22:52.160 --> 1:22:54.479 was a move that pleased Teel himself, who has a 1:22:54.720 --> 1:22:57.559 very law He has been anti trans and pushing anti 1:22:57.560 --> 1:23:01.320 trans rhetoric for years before this was a mainstream thing 1:23:01.360 --> 1:23:04.200 on the right, before the Matt Walsh types really started 1:23:04.200 --> 1:23:07.360 pivoting Republican messaging around it. Right, Yeah, And I'm going 1:23:07.400 --> 1:23:10.120 to quote from the Times here. Nelson, now a public 1:23:10.120 --> 1:23:12.800 defender in Detroit, said they visited each other's homes, talked 1:23:12.840 --> 1:23:15.639 on zoom during the pandemic, and exchanged long emails discussing 1:23:15.680 --> 1:23:17.920 a range of subjects, from minutia of daily life to 1:23:17.960 --> 1:23:21.320 weighty discussions of current events and public policy issues. Nelson 1:23:21.360 --> 1:23:24.559 attended mister Vance's wedding in Kentucky in twenty fourteen. They 1:23:24.600 --> 1:23:27.360 pondered doing a podcast together. He suggested they call it 1:23:27.439 --> 1:23:30.439 The Lunatic Fringe, but Nelson and mister Vance had a 1:23:30.479 --> 1:23:32.600 falling out in twenty twenty one when Vance said he 1:23:32.640 --> 1:23:36.120 publicly supported an Arkansas ban on gender affirming care from minors, 1:23:36.360 --> 1:23:39.320 leading to a bitter exchange that deeply hurt Nelson. He 1:23:39.720 --> 1:23:42.240 achieved great success and became very rich by being a 1:23:42.280 --> 1:23:44.519 never Trumper who explained the white working class to the 1:23:44.560 --> 1:23:47.719 liberal elite. Nelson said, now he's amassing even more power 1:23:47.760 --> 1:23:51.160 by expressing the exact opposite. And I think that's interesting. 1:23:51.200 --> 1:23:53.840 It does kind of point to the whole There's no 1:23:54.000 --> 1:23:56.880 core to this guy. There's nothing that he has ever 1:23:56.960 --> 1:24:02.720 really cared about other than positioning himself most advantageously. And 1:24:02.960 --> 1:24:05.719 I really do think that that gets at what actually 1:24:05.800 --> 1:24:07.439 is inside JD. Vance. 1:24:07.600 --> 1:24:10.120 I mean, I mean, a proximity to political power is 1:24:10.160 --> 1:24:12.599 the driving force for a lot of yeah, a lot 1:24:12.640 --> 1:24:15.040 of like people who get into politics. 1:24:15.240 --> 1:24:18.559 Yes, frankly, yes, like yes, yeah, that's that's it. Now, 1:24:18.600 --> 1:24:20.679 it's relevant that twenty twenty one was the year Vance 1:24:20.720 --> 1:24:23.200 chose to pivot away from never Trump rhetoric and lean 1:24:23.200 --> 1:24:26.120 into the right wing culture war bullshit. Narya had been 1:24:26.160 --> 1:24:28.320 founded in twenty nineteen. It had been backed by one 1:24:28.360 --> 1:24:30.880 hundred million dollars from Peter Teal, as well as funding 1:24:30.920 --> 1:24:34.759 by Eric Schmidt and Mark Andresen. Their investments included Strive 1:24:34.840 --> 1:24:38.599 asset management and investment funds started by Vivek Ramashwami, who 1:24:38.640 --> 1:24:40.200 was Teal's classmate at Yale. 1:24:40.439 --> 1:24:42.440 Oh I did not know they were classmates. 1:24:42.640 --> 1:24:45.639 Uh huh, oh, yeah, it's the class the shit fell on. 1:24:46.240 --> 1:24:48.200 For two years, he'd been allowed to keep up the 1:24:48.240 --> 1:24:51.479 fiction of a principled economic conservative who was horrified by 1:24:51.479 --> 1:24:53.639 the bigotry and corruption of Trump World. But by twenty 1:24:53.680 --> 1:24:56.720 twenty one, with Trump out of office and Biden's presidency underway, 1:24:56.920 --> 1:24:59.719 Teal made it clear that he needed something else from Vance. 1:25:00.120 --> 1:25:02.320 We get our best texture of what Vance believed by 1:25:02.400 --> 1:25:05.040 late twenty twenty one from Pogue's Vanity Fair piece, which 1:25:05.080 --> 1:25:07.840 was written about a neo reactionary summit in October of 1:25:07.840 --> 1:25:11.400 twenty twenty one. Quote. Vance believes that a well educated 1:25:11.439 --> 1:25:15.040 and culturally liberal American elite has greatly benefited from globalization, 1:25:15.200 --> 1:25:17.640 the financialization of our economy, and the growing power of 1:25:17.680 --> 1:25:20.320 big tech. This has led an ivy League intellectual and 1:25:20.439 --> 1:25:23.720 management class a quasi aristocracy. He calls the regime to 1:25:23.800 --> 1:25:26.280 adopt a set of economic and cultural interests that directly 1:25:26.320 --> 1:25:28.840 opposed those of people in places like Middletown, Ohio, where 1:25:28.880 --> 1:25:31.040 he grew up in the vancy. In view, this class 1:25:31.080 --> 1:25:32.920 has no stake in what people on the new right 1:25:33.000 --> 1:25:35.840 call the real economy, the farm and factory jobs that 1:25:35.920 --> 1:25:39.320 months disdained class life in Middle America. This is a 1:25:39.320 --> 1:25:41.920 fundamental difference between New right figures like Vance and the 1:25:41.960 --> 1:25:44.880 Reaganite right wingers of their parents' generation. To Vance, and 1:25:44.920 --> 1:25:48.519 he said, this culture war is class warfare. Vance recently 1:25:48.560 --> 1:25:50.360 told an interviewer, I got to be honest with you, 1:25:50.439 --> 1:25:52.640 I don't really care about what happens to Ukraine, a 1:25:52.720 --> 1:25:54.760 flick at the fact that he thinks the American led 1:25:54.760 --> 1:25:57.760 global order is as much about enriching defense contractors and 1:25:57.840 --> 1:26:00.439 think tank types as it is about defending America's interest. 1:26:00.720 --> 1:26:02.679 I do care about the fact that in my community 1:26:02.760 --> 1:26:04.680 right now, the leading cause of death among eighteen to 1:26:04.680 --> 1:26:07.600 forty five year olds is Mexican fentanyl. His criticisms of 1:26:07.600 --> 1:26:10.519 big tech as enemies of Western civilization often get lost 1:26:10.520 --> 1:26:12.800 in the run of Republican outrage over Trump being kicked 1:26:12.800 --> 1:26:15.360 off Twitter and Facebook, although they go much deeper than this. 1:26:15.720 --> 1:26:18.200 Dance believes that the regime has sold an elusive story 1:26:18.200 --> 1:26:20.960 that consumer gadgets and social media are constantly making our 1:26:21.000 --> 1:26:23.680 lives better, even his wages stagnate and technology feeds an 1:26:23.680 --> 1:26:28.200 epidemic of depression. Now he is backed entirely by social 1:26:28.240 --> 1:26:30.879 media money. Sure Teel is one of the major backers 1:26:30.920 --> 1:26:34.400 of Facebook. Right, of course, he is supported entirely by 1:26:34.439 --> 1:26:36.639 the money of the people he claims to hate, who 1:26:36.680 --> 1:26:38.080 he claims are destroying America. 1:26:38.200 --> 1:26:40.280 I do find this to be really interesting because it's 1:26:40.320 --> 1:26:44.920 like a more conservative right reaction to like right wing neoliberalism. Right, 1:26:45.439 --> 1:26:47.360 this is so different. Even though all these guys like 1:26:47.400 --> 1:26:50.000 kind of talk about how they're like they're like Reaganites, right, 1:26:50.120 --> 1:26:53.760 They're really not. Now they're going back to a much 1:26:53.800 --> 1:26:57.799 more nineteen like twenties style of conservatism. Almost yes, before 1:26:57.840 --> 1:27:00.880 like the Southern split before like like a new Deal 1:27:00.920 --> 1:27:03.720 and we solidified more of like the Democrats being this 1:27:03.800 --> 1:27:07.240 liberal party, this this more fiscally conservative party on the right, 1:27:07.400 --> 1:27:09.599 and then that kind of gave way to like Thatcher 1:27:09.640 --> 1:27:13.120 right England and the neoliberal takeover of the entire world. 1:27:13.280 --> 1:27:15.599 It's like they're looking at how like neoliberalism has been 1:27:15.640 --> 1:27:19.559 totally subsumed even by like the Democrats and like you know, 1:27:19.800 --> 1:27:22.680 centrist left liberals, and they're reacting to it with this 1:27:22.800 --> 1:27:27.120 much more socially conservative backlash. Yes, and that is really 1:27:27.160 --> 1:27:29.080 the entirety of what's happened to the Republican Party the 1:27:29.160 --> 1:27:31.160 last the last four years. And Trump's only a small 1:27:31.200 --> 1:27:33.320 part of that, because even Trump doesn't really care about 1:27:33.320 --> 1:27:35.960 some of these types of like culture war issues now 1:27:36.640 --> 1:27:38.800 that these guys care about, Like these guys are even 1:27:38.840 --> 1:27:40.479 like further to the right of Trump on like most 1:27:40.520 --> 1:27:43.439 things in this kind of social vein and like where 1:27:43.439 --> 1:27:46.920 you're viewing like you said, like a like culture war 1:27:47.000 --> 1:27:50.400 is class war in terms of like this culture war 1:27:50.479 --> 1:27:53.280 is like beating down like the poor white working class. 1:27:53.560 --> 1:27:55.679 Yeah. Absolutely, these small. 1:27:55.479 --> 1:27:58.680 Town farms aren't the real economy. They simply aren't. The 1:27:58.760 --> 1:28:01.120 real economy is cal of Ornia and Texas. 1:28:01.360 --> 1:28:04.280 These beliefs, there's an element to which they sound compelling 1:28:04.320 --> 1:28:06.320 because parts of this are the stuff that everyone on 1:28:06.360 --> 1:28:09.840 the left has complained about neoliberalism, but like his solutions 1:28:09.840 --> 1:28:12.559 are fantasies. Like, for one thing, the people who are 1:28:12.600 --> 1:28:14.920 backing him are the same kinds of people and often 1:28:14.960 --> 1:28:17.920 the same people who were very much gung ho behind 1:28:17.920 --> 1:28:20.880 getting rid of American factory jobs in order to maximize 1:28:20.880 --> 1:28:24.719 their profits and the consolidation of farmland into these giant 1:28:24.760 --> 1:28:26.639 agricultural conglomerates, right, Like. 1:28:26.920 --> 1:28:29.880 He abandoned this part of the country because yes, because 1:28:29.920 --> 1:28:32.200 he knows it sucks. Like, yes, it's not like a 1:28:32.240 --> 1:28:35.479 pleasant place to live, like a decent life. It's very hard, 1:28:35.520 --> 1:28:36.440 it's very difficult. 1:28:36.640 --> 1:28:39.559 Yeah, And it's in part because these kind of people 1:28:39.600 --> 1:28:41.960 who came out of the Reagan era, like have no 1:28:42.200 --> 1:28:46.000 use for factory workers or farmers in the United States. 1:28:46.400 --> 1:28:49.800 All of that can be consolidated into these vast enterprises 1:28:49.840 --> 1:28:52.479 that when there are human workers necessary, we can just 1:28:52.600 --> 1:28:56.879 grab undocumented people from across the border. Right anyway, speaking 1:28:56.920 --> 1:29:11.000 of grabbing people, these ads will grab you. Dah, We're back. 1:29:11.960 --> 1:29:16.639 So by late twenty twenty one, Curtis Jarvin is still 1:29:16.720 --> 1:29:19.840 a major figure in the neo reactionary movement. Vance has 1:29:19.880 --> 1:29:23.920 started quoting him kind of obliquely, and in fact, during 1:29:23.920 --> 1:29:27.720 this twenty twenty one National Conservative Conference that Pogue pivots on, 1:29:28.400 --> 1:29:32.280 Vance makes direct reference to something that Yarvin has written 1:29:32.280 --> 1:29:35.240 his ideas about, like we need this red Caesar when 1:29:35.280 --> 1:29:37.720 he says during an interview, we are in a late 1:29:37.760 --> 1:29:40.559 Republican period. If we're going to push back against it. 1:29:40.600 --> 1:29:42.360 We're going to have to get pretty wild and pretty 1:29:42.360 --> 1:29:44.000 far out there and go in directions that a lot 1:29:44.040 --> 1:29:47.920 of conservatives right now are uncomfortable with. And you know 1:29:47.960 --> 1:29:51.120 what that means is this late Republican he's talking about 1:29:51.160 --> 1:29:54.679 Republican Rome before Caesar, you know, makes his play for power. 1:29:54.800 --> 1:29:58.040 Like that's explicitly what he is comparing it to. And 1:29:58.080 --> 1:30:00.320 it's because Jarvin's big thing is, we don't I don't want 1:30:00.320 --> 1:30:02.280 a left or a right wing dictator. We want a 1:30:02.360 --> 1:30:05.840 king for the whole country right that's going to represent everybody, 1:30:06.200 --> 1:30:08.360 which is just not what kings do, It's not what 1:30:08.439 --> 1:30:09.120 dictators do. 1:30:09.760 --> 1:30:11.599 This is so clearly there's also just like a fascist 1:30:11.680 --> 1:30:14.320 line of argument, like an actual like actual like like 1:30:14.439 --> 1:30:17.960 ideologically fascist, and no people call like, you know, Reagan 1:30:18.000 --> 1:30:22.400 a fascist, but like he's not, He's a neoliberal. Neoliberals suck. Yes, 1:30:22.439 --> 1:30:25.679 these guys are going back like actual like fascist political theory. 1:30:26.080 --> 1:30:28.320 That's what Mullbug is reading, that's what he's writing about. 1:30:28.680 --> 1:30:31.120 And in twenty twenty one, Vance is saying this, I 1:30:31.120 --> 1:30:33.320 think Trump is going to run again in twenty twenty four. 1:30:33.400 --> 1:30:34.880 I think that what Trump should do if I was 1:30:34.880 --> 1:30:37.200 giving him one piece of advice, Fire every single mid 1:30:37.280 --> 1:30:40.280 level bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace 1:30:40.320 --> 1:30:42.559 them with our people. And when the courts stop, you 1:30:42.600 --> 1:30:45.439 stand before the country and say the Chief Justice has 1:30:45.439 --> 1:30:48.120 made his ruling, now let him enforce it. Which he's 1:30:48.200 --> 1:30:51.519 quoting Andrew Jackson there, But he's describing like the end 1:30:51.520 --> 1:30:52.559 of democracy, a. 1:30:52.600 --> 1:30:56.080 Dictatorial takeover, right, and laying out with a plan that 1:30:56.200 --> 1:30:58.679 is very similar to a Project twenty twenty five y which 1:30:58.640 --> 1:31:01.160 I know Vance does have something small connections too, because 1:31:01.200 --> 1:31:03.040 a lot of his friends were involved in the planning 1:31:03.040 --> 1:31:03.240 of that. 1:31:03.720 --> 1:31:05.600 But you can see Project twenty twenty five and what 1:31:05.680 --> 1:31:08.360 Vans is saying here, These are all downstream of what 1:31:08.479 --> 1:31:11.360 Jarvin's saying in twenty twelve of this rage acronym, replace 1:31:11.400 --> 1:31:14.200 all government employees, right to retire all government employees. You know, 1:31:14.800 --> 1:31:16.160 by the way, you will be glad to know that 1:31:16.200 --> 1:31:18.920 by twenty twenty one, Yarvin has stopped openly using the 1:31:19.000 --> 1:31:22.479 term dictator. So that's good. He just he just calls 1:31:22.479 --> 1:31:23.800 it a monarchy a lot. 1:31:23.880 --> 1:31:25.720 Now, Oh, okay, that's good. Yeah, that's good. 1:31:25.880 --> 1:31:29.040 Now. JD's pivot, which he often credits with his conversion 1:31:29.040 --> 1:31:32.280 to Catholicism, although you can see he's been on this 1:31:32.479 --> 1:31:35.439 road for much longer than that. Was perfectly timed for 1:31:35.479 --> 1:31:38.200 his Senate run in twenty twenty two. Peter Teel was 1:31:38.240 --> 1:31:41.160 his biggest donor, providing fifteen million to the superpack that 1:31:41.240 --> 1:31:42.960 backed him, which at the time at least was the 1:31:43.040 --> 1:31:45.559 largest amount ever given to boost a Senate candidate. 1:31:45.680 --> 1:31:47.920 Yeah, is fifty million for a Senate run is crazy? 1:31:48.080 --> 1:31:50.960 It's nuts. JD had been a long shot candidate at 1:31:50.960 --> 1:31:54.000 first because he's very unlikable, but the Teal money allowed 1:31:54.000 --> 1:31:55.960 for a major ad blitz and the kind of media 1:31:56.080 --> 1:31:58.920 prep work that only a well funded pack can provide. 1:31:59.520 --> 1:32:02.479 His pack published the data on an open Medium page 1:32:02.560 --> 1:32:06.000 with a username at protect Ohio values forms, which allowed 1:32:06.000 --> 1:32:08.400 the pack to send info and advice to Vance without 1:32:08.479 --> 1:32:12.320 violating federal campaign finance loss. Vance had been hit early 1:32:12.400 --> 1:32:14.960 for comments made a few years back negative to Trump, 1:32:15.000 --> 1:32:17.040 but he clawed his way back into the MAGA good 1:32:17.040 --> 1:32:20.599 graces by appearing on Breitbart News, Tucker Carlson's Fox Show, 1:32:20.640 --> 1:32:23.360 Steve Bannon's war Room podcast, and most of all, by 1:32:23.360 --> 1:32:26.559 positioning to himself as a violent opponent of immigration from 1:32:26.600 --> 1:32:29.880 a write up in Politico. In February, Thompson, Who's the 1:32:29.920 --> 1:32:32.160 guy running the pack, posted a memo to the medium 1:32:32.160 --> 1:32:34.320 site arguing that Vance had an opening to zero win 1:32:34.360 --> 1:32:36.960 on immigration and border security, noting that he had a 1:32:36.960 --> 1:32:39.360 personal connection to the issue given his mother's struggles with 1:32:39.400 --> 1:32:41.439 drug addiction. The issue was near and dear to the 1:32:41.479 --> 1:32:44.160 primary voters, the memo argued, and crucially could help in 1:32:44.240 --> 1:32:47.280 nabbing Trump's support. To win a Trump endorsement, a candidate 1:32:47.320 --> 1:32:49.240 has to show a growing ballot share. To get that, 1:32:49.280 --> 1:32:51.840 a candidate has to own a critical issue, the memo read, 1:32:52.080 --> 1:32:55.200 JD can do that, and that's exactly what JD does. 1:32:55.520 --> 1:32:58.000 When he takes the stage at the Conservative Political Action 1:32:58.120 --> 1:33:00.799 Conference in Florida later that month, he focuses his speech 1:33:00.920 --> 1:33:03.720 entirely on immigration, and when his campaign goes up with 1:33:03.760 --> 1:33:06.280 its first TV ad, it shows a direct to camera 1:33:06.400 --> 1:33:08.960 Vance telling viewers that he nearly lost his mother to 1:33:09.040 --> 1:33:13.400 poison coming across our border. Now by mid April, Trump 1:33:13.400 --> 1:33:16.559 has become convinced that Vance's past mean remarks were water 1:33:16.680 --> 1:33:18.760 under the bridge, and he calls an associate of Peter 1:33:18.880 --> 1:33:21.960 Teal to say, Hey, I'm moving closer to endorsing Vance. 1:33:22.360 --> 1:33:25.360 Teal by this point has also introduced Vance to David Sachs, 1:33:25.360 --> 1:33:28.320 who adds another million dollars to his super PACs war chest. 1:33:28.760 --> 1:33:31.640 On April fifteenth, Convinced by Vance's rising poll numbers and 1:33:31.640 --> 1:33:35.599 impressive fundraising, Trump makes an official endorsement. This helps pull 1:33:35.680 --> 1:33:37.639 Vance over the top, and he ekes out a narrow 1:33:37.640 --> 1:33:40.960 win in the election that followed. The next year, Vance 1:33:41.040 --> 1:33:44.400 repaid the favor, writing a January Wall Street Journal op 1:33:44.439 --> 1:33:46.799 at where he endorses Trump as a candidate. In twenty 1:33:46.840 --> 1:33:49.280 twenty four. This was back in. This is the start 1:33:49.280 --> 1:33:52.040 of twenty twenty three. The Republican primary is just gearing up, 1:33:52.040 --> 1:33:54.080 and the end of it is in enough doubt. You 1:33:54.120 --> 1:33:56.080 can remember back then. It sounds silly now, but people 1:33:56.160 --> 1:33:59.280 really thought DeSantis had a shot, right, And so he 1:33:59.439 --> 1:34:02.360 is Vance. This is kind of in before any of 1:34:02.400 --> 1:34:05.920 the other major Republican figures and backing Trump for his 1:34:06.479 --> 1:34:07.639 reducts round right. 1:34:07.720 --> 1:34:09.240 Yeah, he's like one of the first to fall in 1:34:09.320 --> 1:34:09.760 line here. 1:34:09.960 --> 1:34:12.400 Yeah. And there's a few people like Sarah Huckabee Sanders 1:34:12.479 --> 1:34:14.600 had been seen as a potential Trump VP pick, but 1:34:14.640 --> 1:34:18.400 she waits months to actually endorse Trump. Officially, so Vance 1:34:18.439 --> 1:34:20.799 gets in on the ground floor, and this impresses Trump 1:34:20.920 --> 1:34:22.680 that he is someone who he can count on to 1:34:22.720 --> 1:34:25.680 be loyal. Vance wins more praise the next month, when 1:34:25.720 --> 1:34:29.120 a train carrying hazardous materials to rails in East Palestine. 1:34:29.120 --> 1:34:31.599 In Ohio, Trump makes a visit to the town as 1:34:31.640 --> 1:34:34.040 one of the first stops on his campaign, and Vance 1:34:34.200 --> 1:34:36.639 organizes the visit and he does apparently a good job 1:34:36.680 --> 1:34:39.000 of this. Trump says to his entourage, this guy is 1:34:39.040 --> 1:34:40.720 turning out to be fucking incredible. 1:34:41.320 --> 1:34:41.439 Now. 1:34:41.520 --> 1:34:44.479 By this point, Vance has befriended Trump's oldest son, Donald 1:34:44.479 --> 1:34:47.040 Trump Junior, and set himself to the task of well 1:34:47.080 --> 1:34:49.360 and truly kissing ass to get on that twenty twenty 1:34:49.360 --> 1:34:52.600 four ticket. By late January of this year, Vance and 1:34:52.600 --> 1:34:55.400 his team had received enough friendly feedback from Trump World 1:34:55.400 --> 1:34:57.559 that they decided to invest in a full court press. 1:34:57.920 --> 1:35:01.080 Vance began showing up on TV networks that I'm considered enemies, 1:35:01.120 --> 1:35:03.840 doing a reverse Buddhaj edge and throwing himself into the 1:35:03.920 --> 1:35:06.160 enemy camp to take shots on behalf of the boss. 1:35:06.600 --> 1:35:09.200 He also devoted himself to raising money for Trump from 1:35:09.240 --> 1:35:12.559 the Silicon Valley VC set. Most of these guys were 1:35:12.600 --> 1:35:15.960 Teals friends dudes like David Sachs. What finally put him 1:35:15.960 --> 1:35:18.519 over the top, though, was an article Donald Trump Junior 1:35:18.560 --> 1:35:21.360 gave his dad from bright Bart News about the man 1:35:21.479 --> 1:35:24.799 then seen as Trump's most likely VP pick, Doug Bergham, 1:35:25.040 --> 1:35:28.479 governor of North Dakota. The article's title was, Carl Rove 1:35:28.600 --> 1:35:32.439 endorses Doug Burgham for Vice President and I do love that. 1:35:32.560 --> 1:35:35.479 Carl Rove's endorsement is the fucking kiss of death right 1:35:35.560 --> 1:35:39.479 now for a fucking VP candidate. Very funny place for 1:35:39.560 --> 1:35:42.200 his story to have wound up. Not a bad call 1:35:42.240 --> 1:35:44.400 by Trump, though, I gotta say, actually it is a 1:35:44.400 --> 1:35:46.920 bad call for Trump. But also I get it. I 1:35:46.960 --> 1:35:49.559 read one Politico article that argues this was the final 1:35:49.600 --> 1:35:52.479 straw for Trump. It was this Carl Rove article. I 1:35:52.520 --> 1:35:55.200 can't actually speak to that. It is worth noting that 1:35:55.280 --> 1:35:57.680 in the months leading up to the RNC, Trump is 1:35:57.720 --> 1:36:00.880 also being subjected to a charm campaign by all of 1:36:00.960 --> 1:36:04.679 Peter Teal's friends. This huge pile of wealthy Silicon Valley 1:36:04.720 --> 1:36:08.160 investors from the Washington Post quote. In the weeks before 1:36:08.240 --> 1:36:11.479 former President Donald Trump announced his vice presidential pick, some 1:36:11.560 --> 1:36:14.080 of tech's biggest names launched a quiet campaign to push 1:36:14.160 --> 1:36:17.000 for one of their own. Ohio Senator JD. Vance, the 1:36:17.040 --> 1:36:20.759 former president, fielded repeated calls from tech entrepreneur David Sachs, 1:36:21.000 --> 1:36:24.760 pallanteer advisor Jacob Helberg, and billionaire venture capitalist Peter Teal, 1:36:24.880 --> 1:36:27.800 Vance's former employer and mentor employing him to add the 1:36:27.840 --> 1:36:30.800 one time Silicon Valley investor to the ticket. According to 1:36:30.800 --> 1:36:33.680 three people familiar with the entreaties, all caps, we have 1:36:33.720 --> 1:36:36.320 a former tech VC in the White House. Greatest country 1:36:36.320 --> 1:36:40.920 on Earth. Baby. Delian Ashparov, of a partner at Teal's 1:36:40.920 --> 1:36:44.160 founder's fund, wrote on X after the announcement of Vance's nomination. 1:36:44.360 --> 1:36:49.240 Delian Sparova s Parov something like that, Jesus Christ, I 1:36:49.320 --> 1:36:54.920 know it's fucking exhausting, but that is, you know, the JD. 1:36:55.040 --> 1:36:56.960 Vance story, more or less, that's where he comes from. 1:36:56.960 --> 1:36:59.040 That's who wants him to be the VP. It's all 1:36:59.040 --> 1:37:01.280 of these fucking ghouls who want to own the world 1:37:01.320 --> 1:37:05.719 and become It's these people who have achieved the highest 1:37:05.800 --> 1:37:09.240 level of financial success you can achieve in any society 1:37:09.320 --> 1:37:12.680 on the earth right now, and they found that it's 1:37:12.760 --> 1:37:15.120 kind of empty. And it's kind of empty in part 1:37:15.160 --> 1:37:17.479 because people can still be mean to you, and they 1:37:17.520 --> 1:37:19.800 don't have to care what you believe just because you 1:37:19.880 --> 1:37:20.799 have a lot of money. 1:37:21.920 --> 1:37:26.040 They don't like neoliberal capitalism because it fundamentally still has 1:37:26.120 --> 1:37:29.240 a shred of like a democratic value. Yeah, and that 1:37:29.360 --> 1:37:32.360 makes them too mad. Yeah. So instead they are going 1:37:32.439 --> 1:37:35.000 back to like a much a much more like archaic 1:37:35.120 --> 1:37:39.040 system where they can still maintain their personal wealth while 1:37:39.080 --> 1:37:43.360 being like very influential through like a dictatorial means. They're 1:37:43.360 --> 1:37:46.639 still like fundamentally capitalists, but almost in like a more 1:37:46.720 --> 1:37:49.479 like fascistic feudal sense, like they. 1:37:49.320 --> 1:37:52.200 Want to be lords. Well, that's exactly it, that's what 1:37:52.280 --> 1:37:54.920 they really want. They are terrified of death. And what 1:37:54.960 --> 1:37:57.439 they're terrified of more than anything. What scares the mostly 1:37:57.479 --> 1:37:59.639 about death is the idea that like all the success 1:37:59.680 --> 1:38:01.360 they've scene goes away. 1:38:01.600 --> 1:38:02.920 It's meaningless, it doesn't matter. 1:38:03.080 --> 1:38:07.160 Fundamentally, all of this passes. No one is on top forever, 1:38:07.520 --> 1:38:09.840 nobody is like matters. 1:38:09.520 --> 1:38:11.960 No one's in a care about PayPal in twenty years. 1:38:12.040 --> 1:38:15.040 That's the price of time, right, and they want to 1:38:15.200 --> 1:38:19.120 stop the clock. That's fundamentally what near reactionaries are. There 1:38:19.120 --> 1:38:22.959 are people who think I am special, I am super special. 1:38:23.439 --> 1:38:27.040 The world should be oriented around recognizing how special I 1:38:27.080 --> 1:38:31.200 am forever, and anything I can do to turn back 1:38:31.240 --> 1:38:34.880 the clock is necessary justified like that. That's what these 1:38:34.880 --> 1:38:36.520 people are. That's what they believe fundamentally. 1:38:36.920 --> 1:38:40.400 Like imagine being so mad that no one will remember 1:38:40.439 --> 1:38:42.960 PayPal in two hundred years, that you try to install 1:38:43.000 --> 1:38:46.120 a fascist takeover yes, Yes, of the United States of 1:38:46.160 --> 1:38:46.880 America so. 1:38:46.840 --> 1:38:51.160 That PayPal always matters. It's these fucking guys anyway, Garrison. 1:38:51.280 --> 1:38:54.559 That's the James Donald Vance story. Not his name. 1:38:54.600 --> 1:38:55.160 Is that his name? 1:38:55.320 --> 1:38:57.760 No, of course not. Maybe I forget. I forget. I 1:38:57.800 --> 1:39:01.240 always forget what JD stands for, who can? Who gives 1:39:01.240 --> 1:39:04.040 a shit? Hopefully he's not going to matter much longer. 1:39:04.640 --> 1:39:06.240 This is this is this is this is My biggest 1:39:06.240 --> 1:39:08.760 thing going going into November, is that you know, if 1:39:08.800 --> 1:39:11.360 the Democrats win on on on, like on their ticket, 1:39:11.680 --> 1:39:14.320 that still means plenty of bad things around the world. Yeah, 1:39:14.360 --> 1:39:17.880 but I also really don't want these freaks in there, 1:39:18.400 --> 1:39:21.400 Like I really don't want them. They're they're like they're 1:39:21.439 --> 1:39:24.000 like spooky. They're trying to do like this like like 1:39:24.200 --> 1:39:26.760 esoteric larp in like the White House, like come on, 1:39:27.080 --> 1:39:27.719 and most. 1:39:27.520 --> 1:39:29.920 Of the things that need to happen for the world 1:39:30.000 --> 1:39:32.760 to get better can't happen while these people are in 1:39:32.840 --> 1:39:35.599 power right like or close to power like they there 1:39:35.680 --> 1:39:38.800 needs to be damage done to them, and I'm I'm 1:39:38.840 --> 1:39:41.960 hopeful about that if nothing else in this election. 1:39:41.880 --> 1:39:44.439 And like electoral damages is only like one type. They 1:39:44.439 --> 1:39:46.640 have to be like culturally humiliated, like they have to 1:39:46.640 --> 1:39:49.400 be like culturally like rejected, being like no, like you 1:39:49.400 --> 1:39:52.640 you are not actually the wizards of culture that you 1:39:52.760 --> 1:39:54.880 kind of want to be, like no one likes what 1:39:54.960 --> 1:39:56.640 you do, no one likes what you believe like that 1:39:56.640 --> 1:39:58.760 that it has to be like this this larger this 1:39:58.920 --> 1:40:01.880 larger like col battle. That's why they have like the 1:40:01.880 --> 1:40:04.559 culture wars. This is like super important thing. That's why 1:40:04.600 --> 1:40:07.240 they're so scared of like queer and trans people, especially 1:40:07.360 --> 1:40:09.559 queer and trans people like that are like influential, whether 1:40:09.600 --> 1:40:11.320 they be like you know, like teachers, whether they be 1:40:11.320 --> 1:40:14.599 working like in media, making movies, television, writing books. That's 1:40:14.600 --> 1:40:16.000 where they're so freaked out with that kind of stuff. 1:40:16.000 --> 1:40:17.360 That's what they're trying to get out of schools. That's 1:40:17.360 --> 1:40:20.920 why they're trying to stop Woke Disney. It's because they 1:40:20.960 --> 1:40:23.360 know that no one's gonna want to listen to these 1:40:23.360 --> 1:40:25.720 freaks when like gay people can make a good art 1:40:25.920 --> 1:40:29.360 or like give a good history lesson. Yeah, that's like 1:40:29.400 --> 1:40:32.720 there's that's like the strongest like anecdote to these like 1:40:32.920 --> 1:40:37.559 just really really bizarre like esoteric ramblings about wanting to 1:40:37.600 --> 1:40:41.360 go back to like nineteen ten like racist science, just weird, 1:40:41.479 --> 1:40:42.000 weird shit. 1:40:42.439 --> 1:40:46.080 Yeah, you know. I think that these guys delved too 1:40:46.120 --> 1:40:48.600 deep and too greedily if we're going to continue the 1:40:48.640 --> 1:40:51.040 Lord of the Rings references, which by God, they're not 1:40:51.080 --> 1:40:53.840 going to let us stop doing so. And I think 1:40:53.880 --> 1:40:55.599 that there was this thing we used to I used 1:40:55.640 --> 1:40:57.479 to talk about a lot when I tried to explain 1:40:57.560 --> 1:41:02.400 like far right terminology to people back twenty nineteen, twenty eighteen, 1:41:02.479 --> 1:41:06.160 five decades ago, a thousand years ago. That's my l 1:41:06.280 --> 1:41:09.280 ron moment. I was there Garrison a thousand years ago. 1:41:10.280 --> 1:41:13.120 We talked about like the term hide your power level, right, 1:41:13.280 --> 1:41:16.000 which these Nazis used to use, and they've just completely 1:41:16.080 --> 1:41:18.439 given up on that. No, and the thing that they 1:41:18.439 --> 1:41:20.479 are seeing there was like all this. I was reading 1:41:20.479 --> 1:41:22.400 that twenty twenty two article by Poe, which I think 1:41:22.439 --> 1:41:24.800 is a really important snapshot because it's these people about 1:41:24.800 --> 1:41:27.320 to head into twenty twenty four and they they know 1:41:27.520 --> 1:41:30.800 before the dims do how badly down Biden is. Right, 1:41:30.840 --> 1:41:34.759 the Democrats have not really taking seriously what a dangerous 1:41:34.800 --> 1:41:37.639 position Joe Biden was going to be in for reelection yet. 1:41:38.160 --> 1:41:40.679 But they also think that like, wow, all these young 1:41:40.720 --> 1:41:43.639 people are showing up at our lame parties. That means 1:41:43.640 --> 1:41:46.640 there's a broader sweep. All young people are becoming like 1:41:46.720 --> 1:41:49.040 closer to reactionarys. 1:41:48.360 --> 1:41:50.400 Becoming like all weird treadcats. 1:41:50.840 --> 1:41:54.840 Yeah, we're capturing the culture. And that's just absolutely not 1:41:55.080 --> 1:41:57.559 what was happening. And it would have been obvious if 1:41:57.600 --> 1:42:01.000 like they had been capable of actually like listening to people. 1:42:01.400 --> 1:42:04.680 But what we're seeing now is they did the most 1:42:04.720 --> 1:42:07.440 dangerous thing you could do. Is they predicted and understood 1:42:07.479 --> 1:42:11.360 one thing about the future, but nothing else right, And 1:42:11.400 --> 1:42:14.960 so they understood the weakness that Joe Biden represented and 1:42:15.040 --> 1:42:18.479 kind of the weakness of his control over the Democratic Party, 1:42:18.800 --> 1:42:22.400 but they did not understand that, like other things are possible, right, 1:42:22.479 --> 1:42:26.000 and including the fact that like Joe Biden and largely 1:42:26.040 --> 1:42:28.760 the other people who were running the Democratic Party might 1:42:28.800 --> 1:42:32.040 come to understand that weakness too, And after a disastrous 1:42:32.080 --> 1:42:36.080 debate and a shooting, go, you know what, let's change course. 1:42:37.840 --> 1:42:40.720 And I really think that that, above all else might 1:42:40.760 --> 1:42:43.760 be what fucks them is they completely came out of 1:42:43.800 --> 1:42:46.680 the woodwork. They were tired of having to pretend they 1:42:46.680 --> 1:42:49.439 didn't want a king. They thought their time had come, 1:42:49.600 --> 1:42:52.200 and perhaps it has not. Well still, we'll all see, 1:42:52.240 --> 1:42:52.960 we'll all see. 1:42:53.200 --> 1:42:56.000 Well, I'm super excited to hear what kind of just 1:42:56.240 --> 1:43:01.360 unhinged and bizarre things Tim Walls has done. Yeah, in 1:43:01.439 --> 1:43:02.560 the next tale. 1:43:02.760 --> 1:43:05.120 Yeah, I'm just going to accuse him of having been 1:43:05.360 --> 1:43:07.720 the Zodiac killer. You know that that's worked on a 1:43:07.720 --> 1:43:08.360 couple of guys. 1:43:08.400 --> 1:43:09.040 Seems to work. 1:43:09.080 --> 1:43:12.200 Actually, yeah, So we're just going to do that. Call 1:43:12.240 --> 1:43:15.320 it a night. Anyway, this has been JD vance. We've 1:43:15.360 --> 1:43:18.720 been it could happen here, Go to Hell, I love you, 1:43:19.520 --> 1:43:22.320 Clean your couch, Clean your couch. Shit, I need to 1:43:22.360 --> 1:43:47.160 do that. Welcome back to It could happen here a 1:43:47.320 --> 1:43:52.599 podcast about Tim Walls. And in this episode, Garrison and 1:43:52.640 --> 1:43:56.639 I are going balls to the walls. Are you happy 1:43:56.680 --> 1:43:57.400 with that? Garrison? 1:43:58.000 --> 1:43:59.799 What's skivitying your Biden? 1:44:01.200 --> 1:44:02.120 What does that even mean? 1:44:02.560 --> 1:44:04.640 All right, let's get going some fucking. 1:44:04.479 --> 1:44:07.439 Ging z bullshit Garrison because I won't take part in it. 1:44:08.439 --> 1:44:11.599 Yeah, I'm excited to hear about how Walls is either 1:44:12.160 --> 1:44:14.760 great or terrible or probably a mix of both. 1:44:15.200 --> 1:44:18.920 Yeah. I mean, he's a politician and a pretty successful one, 1:44:18.960 --> 1:44:20.840 so it's definitely going to be a mix of both. 1:44:21.280 --> 1:44:24.320 For jd Vance, I figured the most relevant thing to 1:44:24.360 --> 1:44:26.240 do is to talk about, like what does he actually 1:44:26.280 --> 1:44:28.320 believe and where does he come from in the right, 1:44:28.880 --> 1:44:31.479 because people had gotten pieces of that, but I feel 1:44:31.479 --> 1:44:34.479 like unless you put it all together, it's not as useful. 1:44:34.560 --> 1:44:37.720 So I hope we did that with Walls. He's not 1:44:38.080 --> 1:44:40.920 a guy where there's anything sinister for you to know, 1:44:41.000 --> 1:44:42.759 So I think the useful thing is kind of going 1:44:42.800 --> 1:44:45.479 through his whole political biography and just kind of talk about, 1:44:45.520 --> 1:44:48.880 like what is this guy done in his public life? Right, 1:44:49.240 --> 1:44:50.960 That's kind of what I wanted to do here, so 1:44:51.000 --> 1:44:53.800 that people actually know, you know, whether or not you 1:44:54.240 --> 1:44:56.479 are making your mind up about whether or not to vote, 1:44:56.520 --> 1:44:59.880 you're voting for harm reduction, you're anti electoral Here's this 1:45:00.080 --> 1:45:02.000 guy who may or may not wind up being the 1:45:02.120 --> 1:45:04.519 vice president, and here's what he's actually done in the 1:45:04.560 --> 1:45:07.120 past when he's had any kind of power. It's worth 1:45:07.120 --> 1:45:09.680 noting that kind of at this point here, Walls is 1:45:09.880 --> 1:45:13.120 maybe the most popular politician at his level in the country. 1:45:13.640 --> 1:45:15.680 This has happened very suddenly, but he's got something like 1:45:15.720 --> 1:45:20.799 a plus sixteen net favorability among moderates, which is insane. 1:45:21.080 --> 1:45:21.760 Yeah, that's a lot. 1:45:22.080 --> 1:45:23.360 Yeah, it's wild. 1:45:23.600 --> 1:45:25.560 As someone who's looked at a lot of the favorability 1:45:25.640 --> 1:45:28.920 ratings the past six months. Yeah, that is astonishingly high, 1:45:29.120 --> 1:45:31.120 especially gotpared to where we were like two months ago 1:45:31.160 --> 1:45:34.880 with Skibbity Biden, which was yeah, very low, quite dire. 1:45:35.200 --> 1:45:39.360 He's incredibly popular with the normies because basically everyone in 1:45:39.400 --> 1:45:42.960 the country has positive memories of a guy like Tim Walls, 1:45:43.360 --> 1:45:46.040 like whether it was like your favorite social studies teacher 1:45:46.200 --> 1:45:50.320 or your dad. There is like a kind of rotund, balding, 1:45:50.640 --> 1:45:54.559 very mechanically capable man probably somewhere in your life that 1:45:54.600 --> 1:45:57.599 you have fond memories of, and Walls dredges those up. 1:45:57.960 --> 1:45:59.839 We are of a very Freudian country. 1:46:00.240 --> 1:46:02.960 Yes, for an idea of how like rapidly people have 1:46:03.080 --> 1:46:05.120 gone from not really knowing who this guy is to 1:46:05.200 --> 1:46:08.080 loving him. On August eighth, a UGU of Survey should 1:46:08.120 --> 1:46:10.960 him with a net favorability rating of plus eleven, which 1:46:11.000 --> 1:46:13.519 was up from plus one, and a survey conducted in 1:46:13.680 --> 1:46:17.040 late July. In the same time frame, Jade Vance has 1:46:17.040 --> 1:46:18.800 seen his approval ratings steadily drop. 1:46:19.120 --> 1:46:21.479 Yeah, isn't he like at like negative points? 1:46:21.600 --> 1:46:21.800 Oh? 1:46:21.920 --> 1:46:25.200 Yes, yes, yes, by any stretch of the imagination, at 1:46:25.240 --> 1:46:27.640 negative points. And if you're just kind of looking at 1:46:27.680 --> 1:46:30.080 Tim's life, which we're not really getting into because we 1:46:30.120 --> 1:46:31.879 have limited time here and it's not the most important 1:46:31.880 --> 1:46:34.120 thing I thought we could be talking about. But he 1:46:34.160 --> 1:46:36.840 has a long history of doing decent things in his 1:46:36.880 --> 1:46:40.439 personal life kind of most notably in the early nineties, 1:46:40.439 --> 1:46:43.120 like ninety three ninety four, he sponsored the Gay and 1:46:43.200 --> 1:46:46.240 Lesbian Alliance at his high school. And his reasoning was that, 1:46:46.280 --> 1:46:48.280 you know, he was a soldier in the National Guard 1:46:48.320 --> 1:46:50.479 and the football coach at that point, and he decided, 1:46:50.960 --> 1:46:53.680 you know, him sponsoring the club in particular would have 1:46:53.720 --> 1:46:55.880 the biggest impact. And I honestly, I think that's the 1:46:55.960 --> 1:46:57.200 kind of thing that might have saved lives. 1:46:57.360 --> 1:46:57.559 Yep. 1:46:57.680 --> 1:46:59.759 Good thing to have done. Anyway, this isn't an episode 1:46:59.760 --> 1:47:01.799 about his life and background. We're not going to litigate, 1:47:01.880 --> 1:47:03.640 which we're not going to always any time litigating the 1:47:03.640 --> 1:47:07.080 attacks on his military career, which seemed to confusingly say 1:47:07.120 --> 1:47:09.320 that after extending his time in the Guard by four 1:47:09.400 --> 1:47:12.320 years to participate in Operation during Freedom, he owed his 1:47:12.400 --> 1:47:14.519 soldiers staying on even longer to fight in Iraq. I 1:47:14.520 --> 1:47:16.960 could make the point that no grunt in any US 1:47:17.080 --> 1:47:19.439 war ever found themselves in the shit and said, boy, 1:47:19.439 --> 1:47:22.519 I wish the commands Sergeant major was here. But given 1:47:22.520 --> 1:47:25.200 that JD Vance was played onto stage at the RNC 1:47:25.439 --> 1:47:27.360 to a song with the refrain we got to get 1:47:27.360 --> 1:47:29.800 out of Iraq and take our country back, I just 1:47:29.840 --> 1:47:32.240 don't think these attacks are worth acknowledging it. All right, 1:47:32.479 --> 1:47:34.960 the right has already acknowledged that was a stupid war 1:47:35.000 --> 1:47:37.240 to fight in. Walls decided not to fight in it. 1:47:37.360 --> 1:47:40.120 Good for him now when it comes to the current 1:47:40.200 --> 1:47:42.200 war that is on everyone's minds, or one of the 1:47:42.200 --> 1:47:44.800 wars that's on everyone's minds. Walls is fine on Ukraine, 1:47:44.960 --> 1:47:46.680 but when it comes to the war that he's not 1:47:46.800 --> 1:47:50.000 fine on the genocide in Gaza. Walls is in no 1:47:50.080 --> 1:47:53.280 way that I can find really better than Kamala Harris. 1:47:53.760 --> 1:47:55.960 But he did take a stand against the Iraq war 1:47:56.000 --> 1:47:57.880 back when that mattered, which is I guess a little 1:47:57.880 --> 1:48:00.719 bit of a point, but again doesn't really matter today, 1:48:01.080 --> 1:48:03.280 And in any case, we're far afield from the subject, 1:48:03.320 --> 1:48:07.520 which is what has Tim done in politics. So Tim's 1:48:07.840 --> 1:48:10.120 political career he came late in life to that. He 1:48:10.160 --> 1:48:12.759 was a social studies teacher. For a couple of decades, 1:48:12.800 --> 1:48:15.800 he was a coach. He lived in Nebraska, then moved 1:48:15.840 --> 1:48:18.639 to Minnesota, and in two thousand and six, after retiring 1:48:18.640 --> 1:48:22.519 from the guard he was elected to Minnesota's first congressional district. 1:48:22.920 --> 1:48:25.599 Now this was a tough campaign. His opponent in this 1:48:25.720 --> 1:48:29.440 race was a sixth term Republican incumbent, Gil Gutneckt. 1:48:29.560 --> 1:48:32.160 Wait wait, wait, wait, good necked good Neckt. 1:48:32.160 --> 1:48:35.160 I'm guessing his family were knights, and it was used 1:48:35.160 --> 1:48:37.040 to be like good night or something like that, like 1:48:37.120 --> 1:48:41.080 gut k n Echt. But I don't know enough about 1:48:41.160 --> 1:48:43.600 ancient German to tell you if that's really where his 1:48:43.640 --> 1:48:47.040 last name came from. Yeah, yeah, But Walls came in 1:48:47.120 --> 1:48:49.200 that he kind of goes against this guy who had 1:48:49.240 --> 1:48:52.200 promised not to run for another term and then decided, actually, 1:48:52.200 --> 1:48:53.880 I don't want to give up power. Not a thing 1:48:53.920 --> 1:48:56.479 that's ever happened again, and Walls kind of came in 1:48:56.520 --> 1:48:59.680 both when this guy had violated his promise to not 1:49:00.080 --> 1:49:04.040 run again and near the peak of disillusionment and exhaustion 1:49:04.560 --> 1:49:07.880 with neo cons Right, this is kind of the twilight 1:49:08.080 --> 1:49:11.960 of the Bush years. Even conservative Americans are pretty fucking 1:49:12.040 --> 1:49:16.080 tired of the Republican Party right this second, and Walls 1:49:16.200 --> 1:49:19.360 exhibited a notable ability to connect with rural Americans who 1:49:19.439 --> 1:49:23.040 mostly voted read. He did so with basically no funding 1:49:23.160 --> 1:49:25.600 or larger national operation behind him. From a write up 1:49:25.600 --> 1:49:28.080 in The New York Times, he had no money, no nothing, 1:49:28.120 --> 1:49:31.280 said Representative Betty McCollum of Minnesota, who that cycle worked 1:49:31.280 --> 1:49:34.639 on House Democrats recruitment team under their campaign chief Rama Manuel. 1:49:35.080 --> 1:49:37.240 He had a grassroots campaign that he had put together 1:49:37.280 --> 1:49:38.960 that I just knew was going to be dynamite. So 1:49:39.000 --> 1:49:41.240 I went back and I told Rama Manuel, this guy's 1:49:41.240 --> 1:49:43.200 going to win. He's great, and rom looked at me 1:49:43.280 --> 1:49:46.559 like I was crazy. Walls was a dark horse candidate 1:49:46.600 --> 1:49:49.720 and would claim around that time that his whole inspiration 1:49:49.800 --> 1:49:52.000 for getting into politics was when he tried to take 1:49:52.080 --> 1:49:55.000 two students to a rally for President George Bush and 1:49:55.040 --> 1:49:57.280 they were kicked out because one student had a John 1:49:57.400 --> 1:50:00.679 Kerry button. Now I found a blog by the Republican 1:50:00.760 --> 1:50:03.479 staffer who kicked them out where he admits he made 1:50:03.479 --> 1:50:05.360 a dumb call. He was kind of trying to be 1:50:05.360 --> 1:50:08.559 a dick. He had seen Walls out protesting against Bush 1:50:08.840 --> 1:50:10.960 like the day before, and he knew he was going 1:50:11.000 --> 1:50:12.679 to kick them out of the rally, but he made 1:50:12.680 --> 1:50:15.120 them stand in line for a long time before he 1:50:15.200 --> 1:50:17.160 kicked them out, and he was like, I shouldn't have 1:50:17.160 --> 1:50:20.760 done that. But his angle was that Walls wanted to 1:50:20.800 --> 1:50:22.880 get denied and kicked out so that he could make 1:50:22.920 --> 1:50:24.519 a big deal about it and use it as a 1:50:24.520 --> 1:50:27.479 line on the campaign trail. That's probably what happened. 1:50:27.920 --> 1:50:31.479 Regardless, this is a very funny little domino leading to 1:50:31.640 --> 1:50:32.439 big domino. 1:50:33.120 --> 1:50:36.160 Everyone likes Walls, who tends to meet him. Joe Biden 1:50:36.560 --> 1:50:38.280 for the last year or two has seems been trying 1:50:38.280 --> 1:50:39.760 to get him to do more events with Walls, just 1:50:39.800 --> 1:50:42.160 because he put Biden in a good mood. I think 1:50:42.160 --> 1:50:44.280 that's a big reason why Kamala picked him. He just 1:50:44.280 --> 1:50:46.719 seems to be a very likable guy. But he's very 1:50:46.760 --> 1:50:49.160 okay with lying to get what he needs. I mean, 1:50:49.200 --> 1:50:50.080 he's a politician. 1:50:50.120 --> 1:50:50.840 He's a politician. 1:50:51.080 --> 1:50:53.479 Another good example of this would be his duy. Right 1:50:53.560 --> 1:50:56.160 when he was thirty one, he got a duy, and 1:50:56.600 --> 1:50:58.960 he is at times claimed basically that's why I decided 1:50:58.960 --> 1:51:01.599 to like, I stopped drinking. I changed my life, I moved, 1:51:01.600 --> 1:51:03.960 you know, I got my shit together. But his campaign 1:51:04.000 --> 1:51:06.320 manager made a statement recently, Oh, he wasn't drunk. He 1:51:06.360 --> 1:51:08.840 just couldn't hear the cop. I don't know who to trust, 1:51:08.840 --> 1:51:11.839 politician or cop in this case, but the CoP's attitude 1:51:11.920 --> 1:51:13.720 is like, well, I would be fine if he had 1:51:13.760 --> 1:51:16.639 just like fixed his shit up, but he definitely was drunk. 1:51:16.880 --> 1:51:19.280 And I don't have any trouble believing that a man 1:51:19.320 --> 1:51:22.720 in rural Nebraska, a football coach in rural Nebraska, drove 1:51:22.800 --> 1:51:23.360 drunk once. 1:51:23.520 --> 1:51:26.040 Right, No, that is not the most surprising thing in 1:51:26.080 --> 1:51:26.439 the world. 1:51:26.680 --> 1:51:29.000 So I think he's a guy who's certainly he's not 1:51:29.360 --> 1:51:31.840 naive political actor, right, He's not one of these guys 1:51:31.880 --> 1:51:34.479 who's so so good and pure that he's not willing 1:51:34.520 --> 1:51:37.120 to like fudge in order to make shit work for him. 1:51:37.120 --> 1:51:39.679 And that's probably what he did at this Bush event 1:51:39.880 --> 1:51:42.599 right now. That said, it would be hard to overstate 1:51:42.600 --> 1:51:44.960 what a difficult task he picked for himself and trying 1:51:44.960 --> 1:51:48.400 to unseat Gutneck. At the time that Walls ran, Minnesota's 1:51:48.439 --> 1:51:51.240 first district had been held by one other Democrat in 1:51:51.280 --> 1:51:54.320 the last hundred years, so he was the second Democrat 1:51:54.360 --> 1:51:56.640 in a century to win in that district, and as 1:51:56.640 --> 1:51:59.000 soon as he left, by the way, a Republican took back. 1:51:59.040 --> 1:52:02.439 Over his six terms in Congress, he was one of 1:52:02.439 --> 1:52:05.240 the more interesting legislators in the country. Walls was a 1:52:05.360 --> 1:52:08.519 risk taker, supporting liberal votes on major issues even when 1:52:08.520 --> 1:52:12.400 he was politically vulnerable. He opposed Republican legislation to make 1:52:12.439 --> 1:52:16.240 doctors vulnerable to criminal penalties for performing abortions. He supported 1:52:16.280 --> 1:52:19.240 a climate cap and trade bill on greenhouse gas emissions 1:52:19.280 --> 1:52:22.040 that failed, and this really pissed some folks off. He 1:52:22.120 --> 1:52:24.920 supported the Affordable Care Act, and kind of one of 1:52:24.960 --> 1:52:27.400 the more notable things about him is there's stories of 1:52:27.520 --> 1:52:29.920 when he was running for reelection, he would do town 1:52:29.960 --> 1:52:33.040 halls in southern Minnesota and he would get attacked by 1:52:33.120 --> 1:52:35.880 these red voters who had supported him early on for 1:52:35.960 --> 1:52:39.400 backing the Affordable Care Act, and rather than like backing off, 1:52:39.439 --> 1:52:41.599 he would lean into it and argue with them and 1:52:41.640 --> 1:52:45.040 try to convince them. And you know, his numbers with 1:52:45.360 --> 1:52:50.280 conservative rural Republicans got worse and worse every cycle basically, 1:52:50.320 --> 1:52:52.559 so you could argue how good he was, but it 1:52:52.640 --> 1:52:54.719 is worth something to me that he didn't back off. 1:52:54.760 --> 1:52:57.200 He didn't do the well this might, you know, fuck 1:52:57.240 --> 1:52:59.559 up my chances of reelection. Like he's never really been 1:52:59.680 --> 1:53:02.760 that kind of guy. There's things that he believes and 1:53:02.800 --> 1:53:05.280 he will just kind of like jam his flag into 1:53:05.360 --> 1:53:08.920 the mud over them. That said, Tim was a pragmatist. 1:53:09.080 --> 1:53:11.559 He voted for a resolution calling for the withdrawal of 1:53:11.640 --> 1:53:14.799 US forces from Iraq within ninety days, but when that failed, 1:53:14.840 --> 1:53:17.559 he voted in favor of continuing funding for the wars 1:53:17.600 --> 1:53:21.280 in Iraq and Afghanistan. Tim also received an a from 1:53:21.320 --> 1:53:23.559 the NRA during much of his time in office, voting 1:53:23.560 --> 1:53:25.880 against gun control based on what seemed to be a 1:53:26.000 --> 1:53:29.360 natural inclination to firearms and hunting. Walls may have been 1:53:29.400 --> 1:53:31.680 the best shot in the Minnesota National Guard during the 1:53:31.680 --> 1:53:33.960 time when he was there. He's apparently a very good shot. 1:53:34.280 --> 1:53:36.640 He is an avid and skilled turkey hunter, and if 1:53:36.680 --> 1:53:38.360 you talk to people who want game in the US, 1:53:38.400 --> 1:53:41.280 Turkey is one of the more difficult game to hunt. 1:53:41.880 --> 1:53:45.120 He developed a reputation as a guy who wouldn't apologize 1:53:45.160 --> 1:53:47.559 for voting with liberals, but who would go across the 1:53:47.560 --> 1:53:50.280 aisle when it mattered. During his time on the Veterans 1:53:50.320 --> 1:53:53.880 Affairs Committee, which he ultimately chaired, he voted with Republicans 1:53:53.880 --> 1:53:56.480 to make it easier for the VIA to fire employees, 1:53:56.720 --> 1:54:00.000 even with union opposition, and he also pushed through change 1:54:00.120 --> 1:54:03.080 just to improve GI Bill college access for veterans post 1:54:03.160 --> 1:54:05.559 nine to eleven. One of the things I find interesting 1:54:05.560 --> 1:54:07.880 about his record is that in twenty eighteen, he voted 1:54:07.880 --> 1:54:10.920 against most of his party opposing an overhaul of the 1:54:11.040 --> 1:54:15.000 VA healthcare system. He agreed everyone agrees that the system 1:54:15.040 --> 1:54:17.800 needed to be overhauled, but he argued the proposal in 1:54:17.840 --> 1:54:21.200 place would force the VIA to cannibalize itself, basically starving 1:54:21.200 --> 1:54:23.960 the organization to try and fix it. And his attitude was, well, 1:54:23.960 --> 1:54:25.880 it needs to get fixed. I'm not going to vote 1:54:25.920 --> 1:54:28.080 for a change that might be worse than what we 1:54:28.200 --> 1:54:32.160 currently have. While chairing this committee, Walls made strong connections 1:54:32.200 --> 1:54:35.720 to Nancy Pelosi, who like basically everyone really came to 1:54:35.880 --> 1:54:37.360 like Walls, and she's going to be one of the 1:54:37.400 --> 1:54:39.840 people who's one of the strongest voices for picking him 1:54:39.920 --> 1:54:43.600 as VP, and we will be back to talk about 1:54:43.600 --> 1:54:45.840 more of that. But first, Garrison, you know who else 1:54:45.880 --> 1:54:46.959 loves Nancy Pelosi? 1:54:47.120 --> 1:54:50.760 Probably these products and services. If they come from San Francisco. 1:54:50.320 --> 1:54:52.520 They're based in the Bay Area. She will break their 1:54:52.600 --> 1:55:06.720 kneecaps if they don't like her enough. Ah, and we're back. 1:55:07.440 --> 1:55:11.200 So one of the big shifts for Tim during his 1:55:11.280 --> 1:55:14.360 time in Congress was away from the NRA. This started 1:55:14.440 --> 1:55:17.560 after in twenty seventeen, after the Las Vegas mass shooting, 1:55:17.680 --> 1:55:20.120 and then after the Parkland mass shooting, and then in 1:55:20.120 --> 1:55:22.800 February of twenty eighteen, he writes an op ed supporting 1:55:22.840 --> 1:55:25.880 what he calls common sense gun reform and donates the 1:55:26.000 --> 1:55:29.360 NRA contributions to his campaign That cycle to some sort 1:55:29.400 --> 1:55:33.000 of I think gun control cause. Walls's common sense gun 1:55:33.040 --> 1:55:35.680 regulations include an assault weapons ban, and he is currently 1:55:35.720 --> 1:55:37.840 in line with the Democratic Party on that if you 1:55:37.840 --> 1:55:41.120 were curious. That same year, twenty eighteen, he launched his 1:55:41.160 --> 1:55:44.440 campaign for governor of Minnesota. By this point, Walls had 1:55:44.440 --> 1:55:47.440 bled much of his ability to win rural red votes. 1:55:47.480 --> 1:55:49.920 It is accurate to say he was only really good 1:55:49.920 --> 1:55:53.120 at this during his early years in Congress, his margins 1:55:53.120 --> 1:55:55.400 grew a lot narrower over time, and once he hit 1:55:55.400 --> 1:55:57.960 the governor's office, his support was largely in the cities. 1:55:58.000 --> 1:56:00.920 Now it's one of those things where I think there's 1:56:01.280 --> 1:56:03.400 been debate, Like some people have arguable he's not maybe 1:56:03.400 --> 1:56:05.360 not the best VP pick because he actually isn't all 1:56:05.360 --> 1:56:07.720 that good at getting these red rural votes. But I 1:56:07.800 --> 1:56:10.400 just don't see that as where the elections coming down to. 1:56:10.520 --> 1:56:15.600 Walls has great favorables with like suburban white people and 1:56:16.160 --> 1:56:20.600 a particularly suburban like moderates, and that is like one 1:56:20.640 --> 1:56:23.120 of the most important demographics to win. So I don't 1:56:23.160 --> 1:56:25.640 believe the fact that he's he's kind of bled his 1:56:25.680 --> 1:56:30.040 support with rural conservatives is really necessarily a mark against 1:56:30.120 --> 1:56:33.200 him in an electoral sense. One thing I do appreciate 1:56:33.200 --> 1:56:35.800 about Walls is how direct he is to people I dislike. 1:56:36.360 --> 1:56:39.080 He decides in twenty eighteen to run for governor, and 1:56:39.160 --> 1:56:40.960 during that run he has a meeting with a bunch 1:56:40.960 --> 1:56:44.240 of business leaders at a luxury hotel. The president of 1:56:44.240 --> 1:56:48.240 a machining company asks if Walls felt corporate taxes hurt workers, 1:56:48.480 --> 1:56:52.360 and Walls replied, we're not taxing people, We're taxing corporations, 1:56:52.560 --> 1:56:54.440 and I want to quote from a CNBC write up 1:56:54.760 --> 1:56:56.360 for Jeff Baker, it was a bit of an O 1:56:56.480 --> 1:56:58.880 shit moment. That's not what I wanted to hear, said Baker, 1:56:58.920 --> 1:57:02.879 president of McFarlane truck Lines. There's a lot of stories 1:57:02.960 --> 1:57:06.040 like that. He's been very willing to tax the wealthy 1:57:06.080 --> 1:57:09.680 and to tax corporations to pay for things like children's lunches. 1:57:10.080 --> 1:57:13.560 This is a consistent Walls move and it's something that 1:57:13.640 --> 1:57:16.920 he absolutely is unapologetic about, and I think that's fine. 1:57:17.040 --> 1:57:19.840 Minnesota currently taxes corporate income at nine point eight percent, 1:57:19.960 --> 1:57:22.480 the highest rate in the nation. Walls did not back 1:57:22.520 --> 1:57:24.680 down on this during his time in office. In fact, 1:57:24.680 --> 1:57:27.800 that CNBC report found that quote Walls's policy battles have 1:57:27.840 --> 1:57:30.880 a common theme. Walls supported either higher taxes on the 1:57:30.960 --> 1:57:34.640 rich or businesses, and corporate leaders fought back. One of 1:57:34.640 --> 1:57:36.920 their fights was over a one percent ser tax on 1:57:37.000 --> 1:57:40.600 passive investment income over a million dollars. Another was a 1:57:40.680 --> 1:57:43.240 tax on the wealthy. Walls signed into law that limits 1:57:43.240 --> 1:57:46.200 standard and itemized deductions for households with gross incomes over 1:57:46.240 --> 1:57:49.880 two hundred and twenty thousand dollars. Due to Republican control 1:57:49.920 --> 1:57:53.640 of the legislature. Walls's first term was not hugely eventful 1:57:53.760 --> 1:57:57.120 up until the COVID nineteen pandemic. This is because Republicans 1:57:57.160 --> 1:57:59.600 retained control of the state legislature and were able to 1:57:59.640 --> 1:58:02.360 stop much of his plan perform. We did get to 1:58:02.360 --> 1:58:05.360 see more of the politician Tim Walls during COVID when 1:58:05.360 --> 1:58:08.480 he stood up against Republican resistance more common sense pandemic 1:58:08.600 --> 1:58:11.200 safety regulations. He earned a lot of hate from the 1:58:11.280 --> 1:58:13.440 right for some of the more extreme COVID restrictions in 1:58:13.480 --> 1:58:16.480 the country, which were put in place in Minnesota. In particular, 1:58:16.560 --> 1:58:19.040 Walls threatened citizens with up to ninety days in jail 1:58:19.120 --> 1:58:21.600 during the shelter in place period and threatened twenty five 1:58:21.640 --> 1:58:25.760 thousand dollars fines for meeting in public. Minnesota instituted a 1:58:25.840 --> 1:58:28.560 COVID hotline where people could inform on their neighbors if 1:58:28.600 --> 1:58:31.720 they saw rules being broken. And I get why the 1:58:31.800 --> 1:58:34.880 right is uncomfortable with this. I'm not fully comfortable with 1:58:34.920 --> 1:58:38.240 this kind of stuff either, But given what was going 1:58:38.280 --> 1:58:39.840 on at the time, I'm not going to slam the 1:58:39.880 --> 1:58:42.240 man for trying to save lives in a very uncertain 1:58:42.320 --> 1:58:46.160 and desperate situation. You know it beats the nothing that 1:58:46.200 --> 1:58:48.640 a lot of state governors did, so I guess that's 1:58:48.720 --> 1:58:51.280 kind of where I stand on that shit. Not long 1:58:51.320 --> 1:58:55.520 after the pandemic lockdown started, George Floyd was murdered in Minneapolis. 1:58:55.960 --> 1:58:59.200 Walls mobilized the National Guard after three days of riots, 1:58:59.280 --> 1:59:02.120 earning praise from President Trump on June first, who said 1:59:02.200 --> 1:59:05.120 what they did in Minneapolis was incredible. They went in 1:59:05.160 --> 1:59:08.920 and dominated, and it happened quickly. And this is you know, 1:59:09.000 --> 1:59:11.440 the National Guard do a lot of very violent shit 1:59:11.680 --> 1:59:13.760 coming into crackdown on these protests. I know a lot 1:59:13.840 --> 1:59:16.920 of people who were the ones cracked down upon. It's 1:59:16.960 --> 1:59:19.880 one of those things where, yeah, he's a governor, you know, 1:59:19.960 --> 1:59:22.800 I think pretty much any governor in this situation would 1:59:22.800 --> 1:59:25.080 have sent in the National Guard in that sort of. 1:59:25.040 --> 1:59:28.280 Situation, especially after the burning of the Third Precinct. 1:59:28.040 --> 1:59:31.280 Especially after the Priconct got burnt. Which doesn't excuse it. 1:59:31.280 --> 1:59:34.320 It's just like, well, yeah, he's not an anarchist, right like, 1:59:34.360 --> 1:59:38.040 he's not your communist like revolutionary hero. He is the 1:59:38.040 --> 1:59:41.560 governor of Minnesota. I'm just really not surprised that this happened. 1:59:42.080 --> 1:59:45.440 It's you know, a pretty normal thing for a guy 1:59:45.720 --> 1:59:49.520 in his position to have done yeah now, like every 1:59:49.520 --> 1:59:52.280 other dim in creation. During the height of the uprising, 1:59:52.320 --> 1:59:55.720 Walls voice support for a wide host of police accountability reforms. 1:59:56.000 --> 1:59:59.120 He even voiced some degree of support for Indian qualified immunity, 1:59:59.440 --> 2:00:01.720 but this did not last long, and as the backlash 2:00:01.760 --> 2:00:04.680 against police reforms swelled up after the election, Walls joined 2:00:04.680 --> 2:00:07.280 many iems and pulling back and even quashing moves for 2:00:07.400 --> 2:00:11.080 greater police accountability. When he ran for reelection, he did 2:00:11.120 --> 2:00:14.760 so as a tough on crime, law enforcement friendly democrat. 2:00:14.920 --> 2:00:19.360 Right many such cases. Now, he did push through some 2:00:19.800 --> 2:00:24.160 accountability measures. He used fifteen million in COVID funds to 2:00:24.200 --> 2:00:27.960 pay for grants for community violence prevention. He pushed through 2:00:28.200 --> 2:00:31.760 some requirements to increase data sharing from the police Licensing Board. 2:00:32.160 --> 2:00:34.760 He pushed through a demand for state law enforcement to 2:00:34.920 --> 2:00:37.560 share footage of police killings with the family of the 2:00:37.680 --> 2:00:40.880 victim within five days. These are, I think we can 2:00:40.920 --> 2:00:46.160 all say, minor accountability moves, very very very minor, he said. 2:00:46.160 --> 2:00:48.800 Of these moves. They build trust in police, they build 2:00:48.800 --> 2:00:51.200 trust in the systems, They build trust among communities, and 2:00:51.240 --> 2:00:53.800 they provide the community with some basic closure and understanding 2:00:53.800 --> 2:00:56.600 for families. Nothing builds trust, like a video of your 2:00:56.600 --> 2:00:58.040 cousin getting shot in the back. 2:00:58.360 --> 2:01:00.640 Yeah, I have the biggest accountability thing that you get. 2:01:01.000 --> 2:01:02.440 First look at the murder video. 2:01:02.760 --> 2:01:08.040 I don't know, Okay, I like, yes, I do think 2:01:08.080 --> 2:01:11.200 you probably have to legislate that because otherwise police just 2:01:11.240 --> 2:01:13.160 won't give it up at all. But like, yeah, I 2:01:13.200 --> 2:01:14.840 wouldn't hang my hat on that. 2:01:14.960 --> 2:01:18.840 It is ignoring the main issue at play, Yeah, which 2:01:18.840 --> 2:01:21.480 is the fact that we have murder right videos. 2:01:21.760 --> 2:01:24.760 It's like, come on now. There were some bigger reforms, 2:01:24.760 --> 2:01:28.280 including limitations on no knock warrants, although again not like 2:01:28.320 --> 2:01:30.320 a ban or anything, but it lacked a lot of 2:01:30.320 --> 2:01:32.600 the stuff that activists in the state had pushed for, 2:01:32.760 --> 2:01:35.720 including limits on police stops of motorists, and Walls had 2:01:35.760 --> 2:01:38.600 agreed that there needs to be more movement in this direction, 2:01:38.680 --> 2:01:42.240 particularly after the murder of Philando Casteele. It also left 2:01:42.240 --> 2:01:45.000 out and asked for end to the statute of limitations 2:01:45.000 --> 2:01:48.960 for wrongful death cases against officers. Walls had personally voiced 2:01:49.000 --> 2:01:53.000 support for a ban on officers with white supremacist gang affiliations, 2:01:53.240 --> 2:01:56.600 but this was also left out. Ultimately, State Rep. John 2:01:56.640 --> 2:01:59.120 Thompson said to Walls at the time, you have the 2:01:59.160 --> 2:02:01.560 power to do so, and all I've been getting from 2:02:01.600 --> 2:02:04.040 your office is lip service. And I mean that we 2:02:04.080 --> 2:02:06.400 don't need a news conference from you, governor. We need 2:02:06.440 --> 2:02:10.200 a leader. So you're not gonna get a lot of 2:02:10.240 --> 2:02:13.640 police reform under Tim Walls. That's just a pretty consistent 2:02:13.720 --> 2:02:16.680 reality of the guy that said he can be forced 2:02:16.680 --> 2:02:18.920 to do some things if you scare him enough. So 2:02:19.280 --> 2:02:22.120 you know, keep that in mind. I guess first, keep 2:02:22.160 --> 2:02:24.160 in mind these ads, and then we'll talk about the 2:02:24.240 --> 2:02:33.080 environment and stuff, which is a happier story for Walls. 2:02:36.400 --> 2:02:40.320 We're back. So Walls ran for reelection under the slogan 2:02:40.440 --> 2:02:44.080 one Minnesota, and he managed another solid victory. Up to 2:02:44.120 --> 2:02:46.520 this point, you would say he'd been a pretty standard 2:02:46.600 --> 2:02:49.480 dim governor in a swing state. But something happened in 2:02:49.520 --> 2:02:52.280 the twenty twenty two midterms that changed the course of 2:02:52.320 --> 2:02:55.520 Walls's career in maybe the nation. The Democrats won a 2:02:55.520 --> 2:02:59.080 slim majority in the state legislature. As David Schultz, a 2:02:59.120 --> 2:03:02.760 political science perform or at Hamlin University, told CNN, Walls's 2:03:02.800 --> 2:03:06.120 message immediately jerked away from one Minnesota to damn the 2:03:06.160 --> 2:03:10.879 torpedoes and fuck the Republicans. Quote that agenda included codified 2:03:10.920 --> 2:03:14.280 protections for abortion access, restored voting rights for felons who've 2:03:14.280 --> 2:03:17.840 completed their sentences, driver's licenses for people regardless of their 2:03:17.920 --> 2:03:21.520 legal status, a state child tax credit, free public college 2:03:21.520 --> 2:03:24.440 for families making less than eighty thousand annually, protections for 2:03:24.480 --> 2:03:27.879 gender affirming care, a paid family and medical leave program. 2:03:28.200 --> 2:03:30.880 Walls signed legislation to move the state towards achieving one 2:03:30.920 --> 2:03:33.600 hundred percent clean energy by twenty forty and to establish 2:03:33.640 --> 2:03:37.040 a universal free school meal program that provides breakfast and lunch. 2:03:37.760 --> 2:03:40.680 And that is a real solid spate of shit for 2:03:40.720 --> 2:03:42.640 a governor to get done. And all of this is 2:03:42.680 --> 2:03:45.480 about in a year, right, Like most of the shit 2:03:45.480 --> 2:03:48.240 that Walls has gotten done as governor has been very recently, 2:03:48.560 --> 2:03:51.800 because the dims had just taken back control, right, and 2:03:51.840 --> 2:03:55.520 it's very narrow control. Amy Koch, a Republican and former 2:03:55.600 --> 2:03:59.120 Minnesota Senate majority leader, said Walls definitely had not governed 2:03:59.160 --> 2:04:02.040 like a moderate, and un like other governors with trifecta control, 2:04:02.400 --> 2:04:06.200 had not emphasized in making deals with Republicans. Everything that 2:04:06.240 --> 2:04:08.280 went forward was signed. She said, I'm not sure what 2:04:08.320 --> 2:04:10.040 that says about him, but it definitely puts a Dent 2:04:10.120 --> 2:04:12.440 in his argument that he's just this moderate Democrat from 2:04:12.480 --> 2:04:15.480 the Midwest. And this is why progressives, many of them, 2:04:15.720 --> 2:04:19.000 are excited about Walls, is that when he actually had 2:04:19.040 --> 2:04:22.080 the opportunity, he was willing to say, Fuck the Republicans, 2:04:22.160 --> 2:04:23.960 let's get some shit done. I don't care that we 2:04:24.000 --> 2:04:27.840 only have one vote, right, yeah. Now, Walls has stated that, 2:04:27.880 --> 2:04:31.120 in his opinion, political capital exists to be spent improving 2:04:31.160 --> 2:04:34.000 people's lives. And this is an area where you can 2:04:34.040 --> 2:04:36.040 say that he's put his money where his mouth is, right, 2:04:36.080 --> 2:04:40.360 this is how he actually governed. Now, it's worth noting. Obviously, 2:04:40.400 --> 2:04:43.120 he also promised to burn political capital on major police 2:04:43.120 --> 2:04:45.120 reform and he gave that up. So you know, the 2:04:45.120 --> 2:04:46.680 fact that he says he's going to do something like 2:04:46.720 --> 2:04:48.840 any politician, not a guarantee it's going to happen. 2:04:49.360 --> 2:04:51.800 Well, and some of one of the more upsetting things 2:04:51.800 --> 2:04:54.280 but not surprising things, is now that Kamala has basically 2:04:54.320 --> 2:04:56.760 secured the nomination, she has rolled back many of the 2:04:56.760 --> 2:04:58.920 progressive policies that she ran on in twenty twenty when 2:04:58.920 --> 2:05:01.040 those seems to be more pre popular, right, you know, 2:05:01.200 --> 2:05:04.480 that's not necessarily Walls, that is that's Kambala. But but 2:05:04.520 --> 2:05:07.040 they're running on the same ticket. And again, like, it's 2:05:07.040 --> 2:05:09.400 not surprising that she's not advocating for Medica for all 2:05:09.440 --> 2:05:12.240 now that she is the actual nominee, right, But it 2:05:12.280 --> 2:05:14.320 still is, you know, disappointing for people who are like, hey, 2:05:14.640 --> 2:05:17.440 her actual policies four years ago were actually relatively progressive, 2:05:17.880 --> 2:05:19.880 and now they are slightly more kind of in line 2:05:20.240 --> 2:05:24.120 with like the mainstream Democratic Party views on most of 2:05:24.160 --> 2:05:24.800 these issues. 2:05:25.040 --> 2:05:27.160 Right. And again, one of the reasons, maybe for a 2:05:27.200 --> 2:05:30.240 little bit of hope, is that Walls has not really 2:05:30.280 --> 2:05:33.880 been that guy during his time with the executive power, right, 2:05:33.920 --> 2:05:36.040 and kind of the area where he's been best maybe 2:05:36.080 --> 2:05:39.200 actually is climate change. Right, This is the thing dim 2:05:39.240 --> 2:05:42.360 seem to like to compromise on the most. And Tim's 2:05:42.360 --> 2:05:44.720 history here is interested in me, particularly because he's got 2:05:44.760 --> 2:05:48.000 he doesn't have a perfect record, but it's genuinely pretty positive. 2:05:48.440 --> 2:05:51.080 His major achievement was a policy passed in twenty twenty 2:05:51.120 --> 2:05:53.839 three that required Minnesota to have a carbon free electric 2:05:53.880 --> 2:05:56.000 grid by twenty forty. Now, this is the kind of 2:05:56.040 --> 2:05:59.440 legislation that could just be virtue signaling, but Walls didn't 2:05:59.480 --> 2:06:01.520 just say yep, we'll get it. Done by twenty forty, 2:06:01.520 --> 2:06:04.160 when I won't be the fucking governor anymore. He backed 2:06:04.160 --> 2:06:07.120 it up by approving a historic amount of state spending 2:06:07.160 --> 2:06:11.440 on energy. The legislation included rebates on climate friendly technology 2:06:11.560 --> 2:06:14.240 like air source heat pumps and electric vehicles, as well 2:06:14.280 --> 2:06:16.760 as spending to improve home insulation and one hundred million 2:06:16.800 --> 2:06:21.200 dollars for city extreme weather preparedness. Walls also signed a 2:06:21.200 --> 2:06:23.680 bill to cut red tape for winden solar farms and 2:06:23.680 --> 2:06:26.920 transmission lines, and the speed up permitting for infrastructure needed 2:06:26.920 --> 2:06:28.960 to replace colon gas plants. So it was not just 2:06:29.000 --> 2:06:31.720 a yeah, we'll definitely do this. It was a well, 2:06:31.720 --> 2:06:33.600 there's certain things that need to happen for this to 2:06:33.600 --> 2:06:36.200 be possible, and I am going to work to make 2:06:36.240 --> 2:06:37.920 it easier to do those things. I'm going to make 2:06:37.920 --> 2:06:40.880 sure that we're passing legislation that makes it easier to 2:06:40.920 --> 2:06:43.720 do those things. And that that shows me someone who 2:06:43.760 --> 2:06:46.040 sees this as important as not just a thing that's 2:06:46.120 --> 2:06:48.320 virtue signaling, but as we need to figure out what 2:06:48.400 --> 2:06:52.480 the actual concrete steps are to make this doable, and 2:06:52.520 --> 2:06:54.160 that's something that gives me a little bit of hope. 2:06:54.560 --> 2:06:57.080 The more questionable side of his environmental history is the 2:06:57.080 --> 2:07:00.920 Inbridge Line three pipeline, which he and state regulators approved 2:07:00.920 --> 2:07:04.360 in twenty twenty. This angered a lot of local environmental 2:07:04.360 --> 2:07:07.480 groups and several indigenous tribes in the area. The pipeline 2:07:07.520 --> 2:07:10.040 was argued to be necessary because the old one was 2:07:10.120 --> 2:07:12.280 corroding and a spill risk, and of course, when the 2:07:12.280 --> 2:07:17.000 new pipeline was constructed, workers punctured multiple aquifers. This seems 2:07:17.040 --> 2:07:19.320 to have been a case of Walls being the politician 2:07:19.320 --> 2:07:22.440 that he is. Trade unions supported the project because jobs, 2:07:22.800 --> 2:07:24.800 and it's also worth noting this is twenty twenty, so 2:07:24.840 --> 2:07:27.280 the dims do not have a majority in the legislature, 2:07:27.320 --> 2:07:29.560 and there's just a lot less of a stick available 2:07:29.600 --> 2:07:31.320 to Walls at this point. So you know, maybe he 2:07:31.320 --> 2:07:34.800 would have ruled differently, or maybe he would have acted differently, 2:07:35.000 --> 2:07:37.440 you know, have been in a more friendly situation. 2:07:37.800 --> 2:07:41.120 Yeah. I reported on this back in twenty twenty one. Yeah, 2:07:41.160 --> 2:07:44.160 we did a two part series on stop Line three 2:07:44.480 --> 2:07:48.839 where I traveled to the pipeline. Yeah, it's not surprising, 2:07:49.040 --> 2:07:52.440 especially with pressure from trade unions to approve this pipeline. 2:07:52.800 --> 2:07:55.240 From what I've seen, he did not have much to 2:07:55.320 --> 2:07:59.560 do with the police crackdown on protesters. I've seen that alleged. 2:08:00.040 --> 2:08:01.920 I'm not finding much to back that up. There's a 2:08:01.960 --> 2:08:05.080 lot of like county sheriffs and other task forces working 2:08:05.120 --> 2:08:08.360 directly with the pipeline company, like you know, Walls never 2:08:08.840 --> 2:08:11.560 used National Guard against these people. I don't see much 2:08:11.880 --> 2:08:15.240 from him being personally involved in suppressing these protests beyond 2:08:15.240 --> 2:08:17.760 the fact that he's the governor. Like he's the top 2:08:17.800 --> 2:08:20.240 guy in charge. He could shut that all down if 2:08:20.680 --> 2:08:22.839 but he also doesn't need to be like actively involved 2:08:22.840 --> 2:08:26.320 for that to happen, right, police will do it themselves, right, 2:08:26.360 --> 2:08:29.400 And that seems to be mostly what took place. 2:08:29.480 --> 2:08:30.880 Yeah, that seems fair to say. 2:08:31.000 --> 2:08:33.920 And most of the extreme charges that top line three 2:08:33.920 --> 2:08:36.880 protesters were getting, like a felony theft for locking down 2:08:37.280 --> 2:08:41.720 onto construction equipment mostly have since all been dismissed in 2:08:41.760 --> 2:08:44.040 the courts or at least taken down to a lower 2:08:44.080 --> 2:08:45.440 and more appropriate charge. 2:08:45.640 --> 2:08:48.400 Yeah. So again, like with everything about this guy, he's 2:08:48.400 --> 2:08:51.360 not perfect. He's not without some fucked up things in 2:08:51.360 --> 2:08:55.000 his background. He's a politician, but on ballance a better 2:08:55.120 --> 2:08:59.600 history on environmental stuff than most governors in the country. 2:09:00.000 --> 2:09:03.160 I should also note here under Walls, Minnesota passed the 2:09:03.240 --> 2:09:06.720 nation's most comprehensive ban on PFAS chemicals, a category of 2:09:06.760 --> 2:09:09.320 industrial compounds that do not break down and run off 2:09:09.480 --> 2:09:11.560 and have been associated with a bunch of cancers and 2:09:11.600 --> 2:09:14.200 other health risks. It is a band that rolls out 2:09:14.240 --> 2:09:17.600 over an eight year timeframe, so you know, maybe it's 2:09:17.640 --> 2:09:20.640 not like who knows how well it will actually get executed, 2:09:20.640 --> 2:09:23.360 but literally no other state has passed a ban this strong. 2:09:23.400 --> 2:09:26.800 So I'm putting it in the ups for Walls category. Now, 2:09:27.680 --> 2:09:29.920 that is kind of what I had to say. I 2:09:29.920 --> 2:09:32.760 didn't want to end talking a little bit more about Palestine, 2:09:32.760 --> 2:09:35.680 because again, Walls has a very mixed record here at best. 2:09:36.400 --> 2:09:39.360 While he was in the House, he received APAX endorsement 2:09:39.520 --> 2:09:42.080 and spoke at the group's twenty ten conference, where he said, 2:09:42.080 --> 2:09:45.600 this Israel is our truest and closest ally in the region, 2:09:45.640 --> 2:09:48.320 with a commitment to values of personal freedoms and liberties, 2:09:48.560 --> 2:09:51.800 surrounded by a pretty tough neighborhood. You know, I might 2:09:51.880 --> 2:09:54.920 quibble with me most of that, well, except with our 2:09:54.960 --> 2:09:57.080 closest ally in the region. That's kind of hard to 2:09:57.160 --> 2:10:01.440 argue with. After October seventh, he or state flags flown 2:10:01.440 --> 2:10:04.920 at half staff and condemned the Hamas attacks. In early March, 2:10:04.920 --> 2:10:08.240 he began endorsing calls for a permanent working ceasefire a 2:10:08.240 --> 2:10:11.000 few days after Harris called for a six week ceasefire. 2:10:11.600 --> 2:10:15.840 He's made statements about how the uncommitted protesters should be 2:10:15.880 --> 2:10:18.880 listened to, the same thing about college protesters. But he 2:10:18.960 --> 2:10:22.200 is not. He's not backing an embargo, right, He's not 2:10:22.640 --> 2:10:25.640 you know, pushing any kind of like stick to actually 2:10:25.720 --> 2:10:29.040 force Netanyahu's hand in any way. You would not say 2:10:29.080 --> 2:10:32.760 he's the worst Democrat on Gaza, but he's not, you know, 2:10:33.600 --> 2:10:35.120 particularly good either. 2:10:35.320 --> 2:10:38.080 He didn't lie about volunteering with the IDF. He did not. 2:10:38.280 --> 2:10:40.560 He did not lie about volunteering with the IDF as 2:10:40.560 --> 2:10:43.040 a teenager. That's that's one thing we can say. 2:10:43.640 --> 2:10:46.360 But unfortunately the bar is quite low these days. 2:10:46.440 --> 2:10:50.320 Yeah, so you know that's Tim Walls a political biography. 2:10:50.680 --> 2:10:52.839 I hope you now can walk away being like, Okay, 2:10:52.960 --> 2:10:55.040 that's that's more or less who Tim Walls is. 2:10:55.520 --> 2:10:57.600 I do. I do feel it's important to end with 2:10:57.720 --> 2:11:01.200 one more kind of anecdote about Walls that I learned 2:11:01.240 --> 2:11:05.480 this morning, Okay, is that on I believe his first 2:11:05.600 --> 2:11:08.160 date with his with his suite to be wife. When 2:11:08.160 --> 2:11:11.400 he was teaching geography, he took her to see the 2:11:11.480 --> 2:11:16.560 movie Falling Down, the nineteen ninety three Michael Douglas masterpiece, 2:11:16.720 --> 2:11:21.160 incredibly based, which I feel like every single politician should 2:11:21.200 --> 2:11:22.280 be forced to watch. 2:11:23.080 --> 2:11:26.240 I would make it a mandatory part of graduation. You know, 2:11:26.400 --> 2:11:28.560 that was that was an important movie for me. 2:11:29.840 --> 2:11:32.480 It is a pretty funny first date movie. It's not 2:11:32.560 --> 2:11:34.320 the worst, you know, It's not like it's not like 2:11:34.360 --> 2:11:37.440 American Psychoach, which is also a great movie, but you know, 2:11:37.480 --> 2:11:40.240 it is. It is a curious first pick. But I 2:11:40.240 --> 2:11:42.240 think it is important that whoever is sitting in the 2:11:42.240 --> 2:11:45.640 White House is familiar with Falling Down. Yeah, as it 2:11:45.680 --> 2:11:48.640 as it kind of displays American male violence. 2:11:48.880 --> 2:11:53.120 It predicted a kind of guy who was just starting to, like, yeah, 2:11:53.240 --> 2:11:56.360 creep up into public consciousness when the movie came out, 2:11:56.400 --> 2:11:58.960 and who now commits a mass shooting every four weeks. 2:11:59.240 --> 2:12:02.760 Yeah. Yeah, So I think that is a very funny anecdote. 2:12:03.000 --> 2:12:06.120 Watch Falling Down, folks. It's a great date movie. You know, 2:12:06.240 --> 2:12:09.560 maybe double Parrot with Event Horizon and really really gets an. 2:12:09.480 --> 2:12:10.360 Ax in Christ. 2:12:12.800 --> 2:12:14.440 All right, Garret, that's the end of the episode, how 2:12:14.480 --> 2:12:15.400 you feeling pretty good? 2:12:15.440 --> 2:12:18.200 Pretty good? Honestly, well, you know, not great. You know, 2:12:18.400 --> 2:12:21.720 actually the whole situation politically in the country is kind 2:12:21.720 --> 2:12:22.320 of a nightmare. 2:12:22.400 --> 2:12:24.000 It's fine, it's fine. 2:12:24.040 --> 2:12:26.320 Somehow, I feel slightly better than I did two months ago. 2:12:26.680 --> 2:12:28.440 I'm gonna tell you, this is the best it's been 2:12:28.480 --> 2:12:31.200 in a while, and maybe maybe the best in the 2:12:31.280 --> 2:12:32.400 ll ever be again. 2:12:32.680 --> 2:12:35.280 Which also just points to how low the bar is 2:12:35.280 --> 2:12:35.720 at the moment. 2:12:35.800 --> 2:12:40.839 Yeah, yeah, it's fine. Look, best case scenario, Matt Walsh 2:12:41.160 --> 2:12:45.720 is mad. It is a little further than mad. We'll see, 2:12:45.760 --> 2:12:48.080 We'll see if we can get like a welfare check 2:12:48.120 --> 2:12:50.919 over at his house. Anyway. That's the end of the episode. 2:12:51.160 --> 2:13:22.560 Good night and good luck, Carl Walls. 2:13:26.120 --> 2:13:28.839 In the last few weeks, indeed the last few months, 2:13:29.160 --> 2:13:30.480 the eyes of the world have been on the a 2:13:30.520 --> 2:13:33.440 Trustees aflicted on the people of Palestine on a daily basis. 2:13:34.320 --> 2:13:37.080 For the first time in most of our lifetimes, tens 2:13:37.080 --> 2:13:39.200 of thousands of people have taken to the streets to 2:13:39.200 --> 2:13:42.040 lift their voices for a stateless station of Palestine and 2:13:42.120 --> 2:13:46.000 against Israel's une checked mass murder of civilians. It's something 2:13:46.080 --> 2:13:48.720 I never thought I would see in the US, and 2:13:48.840 --> 2:13:50.880 one of my first visits here, I was staying at 2:13:50.880 --> 2:13:53.000 a bed and breakfast in the Bronx in late December. 2:13:53.600 --> 2:13:55.400 It was cold and now I was wearing a kafir 2:13:55.440 --> 2:13:58.400 to stay warm, as I still often do. I remember 2:13:58.400 --> 2:14:00.120 wearing it while I was talking to small guys. That's 2:14:00.160 --> 2:14:02.160 what I was waiting for the train, and we talked 2:14:02.160 --> 2:14:05.160 about Palestine for a long time. I ended up giving 2:14:05.200 --> 2:14:06.760 one of them my kafir and he gave me some 2:14:06.760 --> 2:14:09.600 cool badget so I still have one jacket somewhere. I 2:14:09.640 --> 2:14:12.360 was hopeful after that, but since then I've lived here 2:14:12.400 --> 2:14:14.720 for more than a decade. It was really not for 2:14:14.760 --> 2:14:17.240 about fifteen years that I saw someone else in the 2:14:17.360 --> 2:14:20.480 US without a direct connection to Palestine who wanted to 2:14:20.480 --> 2:14:23.240 show up for the Palestinians. It's an important cause, and 2:14:23.280 --> 2:14:25.240 it's one that we've been supporting here on our podcast 2:14:25.280 --> 2:14:28.040 with our coverage and speaking for myself also with my 2:14:28.080 --> 2:14:31.879 presence when I can. But as the word looked at Gaza, 2:14:32.280 --> 2:14:36.280 bombs also fell on Kurdistan. It's equally hard, if not harder, 2:14:36.400 --> 2:14:38.840 to find solidarity for the Kurdish freedom movement in the 2:14:38.920 --> 2:14:43.040 United States. I have a Kurdish Kafir as well. A 2:14:43.120 --> 2:14:45.080 Kurdish migrant that there met in the mountains gave it 2:14:45.120 --> 2:14:47.440 to me on one cold night last year after I 2:14:47.440 --> 2:14:47.960 said good. 2:14:47.840 --> 2:14:48.360 Evening to him. 2:14:48.360 --> 2:14:51.640 In Comanche. Stinks of campfires and cigarettes and I wearried 2:14:51.680 --> 2:14:54.840 all the time. I don't think anyone has ever recognized 2:14:54.880 --> 2:14:58.320 it l alone said anything positive about it. But someone 2:14:58.320 --> 2:15:00.200 did once ask me if it was a rast thing. 2:15:01.320 --> 2:15:04.000 So while our eyes have been on Gaza, those of 2:15:04.040 --> 2:15:07.000 Turkish drones and warplanes have been on the mountains of 2:15:07.040 --> 2:15:10.600 southern Kurdistan. Bombs have been going off in Kurdistan for 2:15:10.600 --> 2:15:14.880 a very long time. Indeed, before Gernica, Britain was dropping 2:15:14.920 --> 2:15:17.560 bombs on people in the Middle East without paintings to 2:15:17.600 --> 2:15:21.960 commemorate it. Stick boundaries and alliances have changed a lot 2:15:22.000 --> 2:15:26.200 since those first bombs, as has technology, but the fact 2:15:26.240 --> 2:15:28.680 that death from above has remained a consistent tool of 2:15:28.760 --> 2:15:32.640 the colonial state hasn't changed. When I was in Kurdistan 2:15:32.720 --> 2:15:35.680 in October of twenty twenty three, it was amidst almost 2:15:35.720 --> 2:15:39.240 constant drone strikes. I had to conduct my interviews in 2:15:39.240 --> 2:15:42.320 a climate of secrecy and concern, somewhat for my own 2:15:42.320 --> 2:15:45.160 safety but also for the safety of my interviewees who 2:15:45.200 --> 2:15:48.200 took great and serious personal risks to come and meet me. 2:15:49.000 --> 2:15:52.000 One of the people I met was Zagarros Heuer, a 2:15:52.080 --> 2:15:58.040 spokesman for the Kurdistan Communities Union or in Kurdish Komasievakin Kurdistdani. 2:15:58.640 --> 2:16:01.960 It's generally known as a casey k by It's Curtis's initials. 2:16:02.360 --> 2:16:04.880 Recently I connected with Zagros again and I asked him 2:16:04.920 --> 2:16:06.840 to explain the latest rounte of aggression. 2:16:07.080 --> 2:16:10.480 Hello, dear James, I hope you're doing well. As far 2:16:10.520 --> 2:16:13.640 as your first question is concerned, I can say that 2:16:13.720 --> 2:16:20.120 this operation has started from sixteenth of April, six days 2:16:20.240 --> 2:16:24.720 before advanced visit to Baghdad, and in the last weeks 2:16:25.240 --> 2:16:31.839 the Tekish Army has extended these operations and this invading 2:16:31.920 --> 2:16:37.520 army has moved further deep into the Iraqi territory and 2:16:37.840 --> 2:16:43.720 the Kurdistan region. Now they have set up checkpoints, they 2:16:43.840 --> 2:16:50.520 stop civilians, they interrogate them. According to CPT report, CPT 2:16:50.720 --> 2:16:57.560 stands for Community Community Peace Making Teams. It is a 2:16:57.720 --> 2:17:03.400 civil society organization active in Iraq and Curlison region of Iraq. 2:17:04.240 --> 2:17:10.920 According to CPT report, in the last months, there has 2:17:10.959 --> 2:17:16.760 been two hundred thirty eight bombardments in those areas and 2:17:16.879 --> 2:17:20.800 the two thousand hectares of agricultural land have been burned 2:17:22.000 --> 2:17:26.959 to ashes. And now six hundred two villages are under 2:17:27.000 --> 2:17:31.560 the threat of displacement and one hundred and sixty two 2:17:31.600 --> 2:17:34.240 of them have already been displaced. They have been raised 2:17:34.240 --> 2:17:39.080 to earth. From the start of this year, according to 2:17:39.200 --> 2:17:44.000 CPT data, oney seven hundred attacks have been have been 2:17:44.040 --> 2:17:52.600 done and this comes against the backdrop of attacks in 2:17:52.640 --> 2:17:57.280 twenty twenty three where one thousand, five hundred forty eight 2:17:57.400 --> 2:17:58.840 bombardments have taken place. 2:17:59.360 --> 2:18:02.119 If you're not familiar with the kk on whose behalfs 2:18:02.160 --> 2:18:04.520 Agros is speaking, you can think of it as the 2:18:04.600 --> 2:18:08.200 umbrella group that unites of various Kurdish freedom movements in Bakur, 2:18:08.640 --> 2:18:14.480 North Bashur or South, Rajava or West, and Rodjulat or 2:18:14.560 --> 2:18:18.280 East to use the Kurdish terms. These parts of the 2:18:18.360 --> 2:18:22.120 Kurdish homeland are found in different states respectively. They are 2:18:22.120 --> 2:18:26.240 in Turkey, Iraq, Syria, and Iran. In each of these states, 2:18:26.640 --> 2:18:30.920 Kurdish people represent a minority. Under the Assad regime in Syria, 2:18:31.160 --> 2:18:34.080 Syrian Kurds were stripped of their citizenship and forced out 2:18:34.120 --> 2:18:35.879 of their homes and what is known as the Arab 2:18:35.920 --> 2:18:39.840 Belt program. In Turkey, they've been bombed, banned from speaking 2:18:39.879 --> 2:18:42.760 their language, and even have their very existence denied by 2:18:42.800 --> 2:18:46.240 the state. In Iran, tens of thousands of Kurds were 2:18:46.280 --> 2:18:48.800 killed when they rose up for autonomy in nineteen seventy nine, 2:18:48.840 --> 2:18:51.599 and they still cannot teach their children in their own language. 2:18:52.040 --> 2:18:56.240 In Iraq, they were subjected to genocidal violence, chemical weapons, 2:18:56.720 --> 2:18:59.560 and the murder enforced Arabization of tens of thousands of 2:18:59.680 --> 2:19:02.160 Kurds what is known as the anphal If you ever 2:19:02.200 --> 2:19:06.000 find yourself in Solomania or Slimani as it's known in Kurdish, 2:19:06.440 --> 2:19:09.280 you can visit the incredible museum there, which documents a 2:19:09.320 --> 2:19:11.920 tortured history of the Kurdish people at the hands of 2:19:11.920 --> 2:19:15.920 the Iraqi state. It's a very moving place. On entering 2:19:15.920 --> 2:19:18.680 the museum, you'll walk through a hallway that's covered from 2:19:18.680 --> 2:19:23.000 floor to ceiling with broken pieces of mirrors. Each represents 2:19:23.000 --> 2:19:26.760 a life cut short during the Anphile. After this entrance, 2:19:27.160 --> 2:19:30.520 the first exhibit you'll see has a large sign that says, 2:19:31.280 --> 2:19:33.879 in those days, we had no friends but the mountains. 2:19:35.160 --> 2:19:38.040 It's an old and sometimes overused aphorism about the Kurds, 2:19:38.120 --> 2:19:41.320 but it's not untrue. In the mountains of southern Kurdistan. 2:19:41.720 --> 2:19:44.959 The Kurdistan Freedom Movement aims to liberate the Kurdish people 2:19:45.040 --> 2:19:47.600 from all four states and indeed from the state altogether, 2:19:48.480 --> 2:19:50.440 and it's in these mountains that's found a place where 2:19:50.440 --> 2:19:54.160 it could avoid state violence. The mountains of Kurdistan have 2:19:54.280 --> 2:19:58.600 long provided a safe place, and especially in recent years, 2:19:58.680 --> 2:20:02.680 the mountains of Iraqi curtiss done controlled by Bathet Talabani's 2:20:02.720 --> 2:20:05.880 Patriotic Union of Kurdis DAN, which shares power in the 2:20:05.959 --> 2:20:09.760 Kurdistan Autonomous Region of Iraq with the Kurdistan Democratic Party 2:20:10.080 --> 2:20:14.039 headed by Masud Barzani. The Kurdish Freedom Movement that is 2:20:14.080 --> 2:20:18.039 the KSEYK has been able to exist largely without the state. This, 2:20:18.200 --> 2:20:20.200 of course, has always been unpopular in Anchor, and it 2:20:20.240 --> 2:20:23.880 didn't Baghdad. A recent offensive by Turkey seek not only 2:20:24.000 --> 2:20:28.039 to displace the PKK that's the Kurdistan Workers Party which 2:20:28.080 --> 2:20:30.440 is part of the k c K and its allies 2:20:30.480 --> 2:20:33.760 from the mountains, but also to extend their state control there. 2:20:34.520 --> 2:20:34.680 Now. 2:20:35.280 --> 2:20:36.960 I could go on find a diversion about James C. 2:20:37.080 --> 2:20:39.320 Scott here, but that's another episode that I'm working on, 2:20:39.680 --> 2:20:43.880 so I'll spare you instead. I asked Mohammed Hamasila, a 2:20:44.000 --> 2:20:47.520 Kurdish historian, to explain the impact of this latest round 2:20:47.560 --> 2:20:50.400 of aggression and how local people felt about it. 2:20:50.680 --> 2:20:58.840 People he had in the p K controlled area, what 2:20:58.920 --> 2:21:03.879 are even in could the son who who selves our 2:21:03.959 --> 2:21:09.440 sympathy with pick Ak sympathy with the sympathy so they 2:21:09.640 --> 2:21:16.440 see that that the really extra stuggle against an enemy 2:21:16.560 --> 2:21:21.880 went to invent the whole sun went to move Some 2:21:22.200 --> 2:21:25.720 want to burn the vocal stand is in my point 2:21:25.760 --> 2:21:29.160 of view, it's it's not that the case of of 2:21:29.800 --> 2:21:33.520 Peak a k of and there are there they have 2:21:33.720 --> 2:21:37.360 the same issue on the same stand with with with 2:21:38.120 --> 2:21:45.360 with the with the Sirian part of of star people 2:21:45.840 --> 2:21:51.000 here so especially getting one or not the pewty control. 2:21:51.120 --> 2:21:51.600 I think that. 2:21:53.320 --> 2:21:57.080 With the the struggle of Java, the struggle of of. 2:21:58.760 --> 2:22:02.039 And they did very issue. 2:22:03.360 --> 2:22:10.560 For their people and they have actually very concrete program 2:22:11.400 --> 2:22:12.560 for the future. 2:22:12.920 --> 2:22:15.880 Turkey, however, seeing the existence of the movement as a 2:22:15.959 --> 2:22:18.880 threat to its national security, has begun a campaign to 2:22:18.920 --> 2:22:20.760 eliminate the movement wherever it finds it. 2:22:21.640 --> 2:22:21.880 As M. 2:22:21.920 --> 2:22:24.600 Hubbard mentioned, the history of the Kurdish people in Turkey 2:22:24.720 --> 2:22:27.200 is one that's riddled with state of violence, and it's 2:22:27.280 --> 2:22:29.960 that which I want to discuss today. Turkey has long 2:22:30.080 --> 2:22:33.280 vacillated between the genocidal denial of the existence of Kurdish people, 2:22:33.800 --> 2:22:35.920 recognizing that they exist only in so far as it 2:22:36.000 --> 2:22:38.879 allows them to be targets for bombing. We could really 2:22:38.920 --> 2:22:42.840 start this history almost anywhere in the twentieth century. Indeed, 2:22:43.160 --> 2:22:46.279 following a series of suppressed rebellions, the entirety of northern 2:22:46.360 --> 2:22:49.160 Kurdistan was closed military area in which Turkey did not 2:22:49.360 --> 2:22:52.160 allow foreigners from nineteen twenty five to nineteen sixty five. 2:22:53.000 --> 2:22:55.080 But I want to start it just after a coup 2:22:55.120 --> 2:22:59.040 in nineteen eighty, when Abdullah Oujerlan had recently founded the 2:22:59.120 --> 2:23:02.640 PKK or Kerdistein Workers' Party and was beginning to view 2:23:02.640 --> 2:23:05.800 a vision of Kurdish liberation that was rooted in a Marxist, 2:23:05.879 --> 2:23:10.000 Leninist and socialist analysis and ideas of national liberation. Soon 2:23:10.080 --> 2:23:13.080 after the nineteen eighty coup, Turkey began to refer to 2:23:13.120 --> 2:23:15.880 the Kurds as Mountain Turks, and although it doesn't do 2:23:15.959 --> 2:23:18.959 this as much anymore, it did recently release school books 2:23:19.000 --> 2:23:22.879 in Diarbacere, a majority Kurdish region that made no reference 2:23:22.920 --> 2:23:25.360 to the Kurds or their language, and asserted that people 2:23:25.440 --> 2:23:29.480 that spoke a dialect of Turkish don't they speak Kurdish. 2:23:30.720 --> 2:23:33.520 It's this denial of their very existence. Zagreus told me 2:23:33.879 --> 2:23:36.000 they made the Kurdish Freedom Gorillas take up arms in 2:23:36.080 --> 2:23:38.800 nineteen eighty four, which is actually forty years ago yesterday. 2:23:38.840 --> 2:23:40.240 You're listening to this on the day it comes out. 2:23:40.879 --> 2:23:47.040 But after the military of nineteen eighty and the inhuman 2:23:47.240 --> 2:23:53.160 tortures in the notorious prison of the Arbaker Armed City, 2:23:53.959 --> 2:23:59.000 the movement embarked on a strategy of legitimate self defense 2:23:59.120 --> 2:24:04.160 and which manicure struggle against the Turkish state, starting from 2:24:05.080 --> 2:24:07.520 fifteen of August nineteen eighty four. 2:24:08.040 --> 2:24:10.560 Since then, there have been periods of ceasefire and periods 2:24:10.600 --> 2:24:14.160 of conflict, with tens of thousands of lives lost. Both 2:24:14.240 --> 2:24:16.800 sides have killed civilians as part of their attacks on 2:24:16.879 --> 2:24:20.359 the other. The most recent fire was signed in twenty thirteen, 2:24:20.879 --> 2:24:24.280 and as a result, the PKK began slowly withdrawing to 2:24:24.360 --> 2:24:28.040 the mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan. In twenty fifteen, when the 2:24:28.160 --> 2:24:31.800 Syrian Kurdish YPG and YPGA fighters were leading the battle 2:24:31.800 --> 2:24:35.600 against ISIS. Turkey broke the ceasefire between the PKK and 2:24:35.640 --> 2:24:39.280 itself began attacking the Kurdish fighters, forcing them into a 2:24:39.360 --> 2:24:42.360 war on two fronts. As far as Turkey is concerned, 2:24:42.400 --> 2:24:49.080 the YPG, YPJ, KCK, ybs in a Zed Areas and 2:24:49.160 --> 2:24:52.320 all other elements of the Kurdistan Freedom Movement are just 2:24:52.400 --> 2:24:54.800 different names for the PKK, which it considers to be 2:24:54.879 --> 2:24:59.119 a terrorist organization. Everyday life for Kurdish people in Turkey 2:24:59.160 --> 2:25:02.400 can be hard. I've spoken to hundreds, if not thousands 2:25:02.440 --> 2:25:05.400 of them in the last year, often sitting around fires 2:25:05.440 --> 2:25:08.680 in the mountains, working together to build wooden shelters for 2:25:08.720 --> 2:25:11.400 their children, or sharing the balls of beans that my 2:25:11.480 --> 2:25:14.240 friend's cooked because the state refused to feed the people 2:25:14.320 --> 2:25:17.280 it was detaining in the open air for days. These 2:25:17.320 --> 2:25:21.320 aren't conversations I recorded, because that wouldn't be safe. There's 2:25:21.320 --> 2:25:24.080 a very real danger of these folks not getting asilum 2:25:24.360 --> 2:25:26.560 and being sent back to a country where they've seen 2:25:26.600 --> 2:25:30.800 their friends murdered, their election results denied, their job applications 2:25:30.840 --> 2:25:33.680 thrown away, and their language suppressed. Having them on the 2:25:33.720 --> 2:25:35.800 record would be a huge risk to their safety. And 2:25:36.680 --> 2:25:39.320 not every interaction I have with people, even people I'm 2:25:39.360 --> 2:25:41.600 writing about, has she turned into content to go between 2:25:41.640 --> 2:25:45.200 the adverts. So sometimes I just do things because I 2:25:45.320 --> 2:25:47.360 like to do them. If you'd like to know more 2:25:47.400 --> 2:25:49.440 about these stories, you could find a link to a 2:25:49.480 --> 2:25:51.480 piece I wrote for the Kurdish Piece Institute in the 2:25:51.520 --> 2:26:11.080 show notes. Anyway, here's an ad break. The situation in 2:26:11.160 --> 2:26:14.560 Iraq is different. The Kurdish's an Actoma's region enjoys a 2:26:14.600 --> 2:26:17.560 great degree of autonomy from Baghdad. They're chiefly run by 2:26:17.560 --> 2:26:21.560 two parties, the KDP and the p UK. The KDP 2:26:21.959 --> 2:26:24.600 enjoys influence in a Bile or how La and Kurdish 2:26:25.080 --> 2:26:28.080 in Slomania. The p UK is in control. In these areas, 2:26:28.480 --> 2:26:31.920 especially those of the KDP, a more neoliberal vision of 2:26:32.040 --> 2:26:35.560 Kurdish identity is pursued. And how Laeri saw skyscrapers lit 2:26:35.640 --> 2:26:38.680 up all night, huge mansions, but also the whole areas 2:26:38.680 --> 2:26:40.680 of the city struggling to get by or sometimes not 2:26:40.760 --> 2:26:43.640 even having actives a year around water. The vision of 2:26:43.720 --> 2:26:46.320 Kurdish identity here is not a threatening to Turkey, and 2:26:46.440 --> 2:26:48.480 the KDP seems to take the line that the PKK 2:26:48.720 --> 2:26:51.520 or to keep it struggle within the Turkish borders. The 2:26:51.640 --> 2:26:54.440 p UK has been more sympathetic to the KDK. The 2:26:54.520 --> 2:26:58.160 PKK it's often in the mountains near Slamanian du Howk 2:26:58.520 --> 2:27:02.040 that Turkey targets Kurdish rillers and their infrastructure. For the 2:27:02.120 --> 2:27:05.840 last forty years, Turkey has remained extremely hostile to division 2:27:05.879 --> 2:27:09.400 of Curdish liberation, with the democratic and federal system that 2:27:09.520 --> 2:27:12.640 Ojerland and the movement that follows him have adopted. I 2:27:12.760 --> 2:27:15.720 asked Zagorros to explain the connection between the Kurdish struggling 2:27:15.720 --> 2:27:18.280 in North and East Syria, which many listens will probably 2:27:18.320 --> 2:27:21.119 be familiar with, and the element to the Kurdish freedom 2:27:21.160 --> 2:27:23.280 movement in other parts of Kurdistan, which they might not 2:27:23.360 --> 2:27:26.680 be familiar with, and I'll ask interview. I spoke to 2:27:26.800 --> 2:27:29.480 Zagros about history in Spain. Now it is history. To 2:27:29.480 --> 2:27:32.360 give me a history lesson. By the way, he calls 2:27:32.360 --> 2:27:37.200 the Ojilan leader appo here Raber appo in Kurdish, it's 2:27:37.240 --> 2:27:40.400 a common contraction that's used all over Kurdistan, and Appo 2:27:40.520 --> 2:27:42.840 is also the evocative form of the Commandji word for 2:27:42.879 --> 2:27:43.720 a paternal uncle. 2:27:44.240 --> 2:27:48.800 A leader uncle migrated to the Middle East. He migrated 2:27:48.840 --> 2:27:53.240 to Syria and Lebanon. I mean months before the military 2:27:53.320 --> 2:27:57.040 coup in Turkey is the military coup of nineteen eighty. 2:27:58.400 --> 2:28:01.080 He went there on his own. There was only one 2:28:01.400 --> 2:28:06.800 comrade with him. First he entered the city of Kogani 2:28:07.560 --> 2:28:14.080 and from the he found his way to Lebanon to Beirut. 2:28:14.640 --> 2:28:18.080 In Lebanon he made relations with the Palatinian groups. He 2:28:18.240 --> 2:28:21.200 even took part in the resistance of the Palastinian groups 2:28:21.240 --> 2:28:26.480 against the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. For nearly twenty years, 2:28:26.959 --> 2:28:30.480 he waged the freedom of cruggle from Lebanon and Syria. 2:28:31.120 --> 2:28:36.040 In doing so, he educated, he trained, and organized the 2:28:36.120 --> 2:28:41.520 Kurdish people in Rajawa Kerkistan. In this sense, his struggle 2:28:41.680 --> 2:28:47.240 is twofold. First day. He developed self awareness in the 2:28:47.280 --> 2:28:51.120 people of Rajawa with regard to the natural and cultural identity, 2:28:51.200 --> 2:28:56.040 and brought the Rajawa people together, who had been divided 2:28:56.120 --> 2:29:02.280 by the many Arab builds and demographic change operations of 2:29:02.440 --> 2:29:08.840 the bath regime. All these organizational activities were done despite 2:29:08.879 --> 2:29:12.720 the Sudian regime, and he managed to run a delicate 2:29:13.760 --> 2:29:18.760 balance to foil the repressive measures of the Syrian regime. 2:29:18.920 --> 2:29:22.640 There I just interject here to explain these terms. Bath 2:29:22.680 --> 2:29:25.480 Is Syria and Haffazala Said and his son Bashi al 2:29:25.480 --> 2:29:28.560 A Said attempted to divide and deny the existence of 2:29:28.600 --> 2:29:31.360 the Kurdish people in many ways. Some of these included 2:29:31.400 --> 2:29:35.360 omitting them from censuses, denying them citizenship, prohibiting the public 2:29:35.440 --> 2:29:38.600 use of their language, and demographic transfers to installed belts 2:29:38.640 --> 2:29:42.439 of Arab people in areas that were majority Kurdish. Nonetheless, 2:29:42.879 --> 2:29:45.800 as I'd also saw benefit allowing the PKK to exist 2:29:45.879 --> 2:29:48.840 within his borders, especially in the parts of Lebanon that 2:29:48.959 --> 2:29:51.600 Syria occupied, in order to use them as a tool 2:29:51.640 --> 2:29:52.520 against other states. 2:29:53.280 --> 2:29:58.480 Secondly, he got this Nationally and culturally aware people of 2:29:58.600 --> 2:30:05.280 Rajena support the struggle in North Kydalstan. Therefore, thousands of 2:30:05.840 --> 2:30:10.879 Rajawa youth were first organized and educated in villages in cities, 2:30:11.920 --> 2:30:15.840 and then they joined the guerrilla struggle and fought in 2:30:16.400 --> 2:30:22.520 North Kandestan in Baku Kalistan. This struggle served to unite 2:30:23.080 --> 2:30:29.640 Rajawa and North Karalistan Baku Karalistan and developed shared national 2:30:30.920 --> 2:30:37.560 political awareness and attitudes. Thousands of Rojawa youth boys and 2:30:37.760 --> 2:30:41.800 girls film martyr in the ranks of the guerrilla struggle. 2:30:42.840 --> 2:30:45.520 Leader Apple tried to reach out to all cities, to 2:30:45.640 --> 2:30:48.320 all villages, to all families, and even to all individuals 2:30:48.400 --> 2:30:54.240 in Rojawa, Kedistan. This has created a strong national, social, cultural, 2:30:55.240 --> 2:30:59.120 and let's say, a philosophical point between Leader Apple and 2:30:59.200 --> 2:31:04.080 the Rajava people. And because a neglected and divided people 2:31:04.640 --> 2:31:06.240 had igunited around him. 2:31:06.560 --> 2:31:08.920 This isn't an episode about the entire history of the PKK, 2:31:09.160 --> 2:31:11.680 and I wouldn't be the person to write that, but 2:31:12.080 --> 2:31:15.080 I will attempt to speed run it here anyway. Up 2:31:15.160 --> 2:31:18.119 I was arrested in Arabia in nineteen ninety nine. Ever 2:31:18.200 --> 2:31:20.840 since then he's been held in prison, often without access 2:31:20.879 --> 2:31:23.080 to visitors or his lawyers, and at some points on 2:31:23.160 --> 2:31:26.600 an island where he was a solitary prisoner surrounded by hundreds, 2:31:26.600 --> 2:31:29.720 if not thousands, of guards. His human rights are almost 2:31:29.840 --> 2:31:32.840 universally knowledge to have been violated by this arrangement, and 2:31:32.959 --> 2:31:36.920 despite a quarter century of detention and Turkish moves towards Europe, 2:31:37.360 --> 2:31:39.240 there seems to be no willingness on a part of 2:31:39.320 --> 2:31:42.000 the Turkish state to release him. In his time in jail, 2:31:42.360 --> 2:31:44.959 he began to read more and correspond with many thinkers, 2:31:45.080 --> 2:31:49.360 including Murray Bookchin. Bookchin influenced his thinking a great deal, 2:31:50.000 --> 2:31:53.600 and gradually, through this and other influences, Arsland moved away 2:31:53.640 --> 2:31:57.560 from a Marxist Leninist analysis and national liberation goals and 2:31:57.720 --> 2:32:02.160 instead began to conceive feminist and ecological revolution that decentralized power, 2:32:02.760 --> 2:32:05.040 ensured all authority positions were shared by a man and 2:32:05.080 --> 2:32:08.160 a woman, and valued the environment as much or more 2:32:08.240 --> 2:32:12.520 than the economy. This libertaria left ideology came to be 2:32:12.600 --> 2:32:16.000 known as democratic confederalism, and it is a guiding ethos 2:32:16.080 --> 2:32:18.360 for Java and indeed the Casey Care as a whole. 2:32:19.360 --> 2:32:21.800 The civil war in Syria provided an opening that the 2:32:21.879 --> 2:32:26.000 Kurdistan Freedom movement took advantage of as ASAD forces withdrew 2:32:26.040 --> 2:32:29.600 from their regions to fight elsewhere. Didn't spring from the 2:32:29.680 --> 2:32:33.119 ground in twenty eleven, but instead they'd spent decades building 2:32:33.160 --> 2:32:36.480 a movement that they felt could replace the state. Today, 2:32:36.560 --> 2:32:39.359 millions of people live, work and play under a democratic 2:32:39.400 --> 2:32:42.320 confederist ideology in the Autonomous Area of North and East Syria, 2:32:42.360 --> 2:32:45.640 where it was last year. It's not paradise, but it's 2:32:45.680 --> 2:32:48.800 a special place, and by any metric, life there is 2:32:48.840 --> 2:32:51.360 better than in the rest of Syria. Right now. For 2:32:51.440 --> 2:32:54.879 over a decade, they've navigated a complex system of adversaries, 2:32:55.040 --> 2:32:58.760 including the Syrian State, the Islamic State, and the Turkish State. 2:32:59.360 --> 2:33:01.560 Just this week, all three of them have tried to 2:33:01.640 --> 2:33:06.160 attack Rajava. More than fifteen thousand people men and women 2:33:06.760 --> 2:33:10.000 have died in the decade long war against the Islamic State, which, 2:33:10.400 --> 2:33:14.360 contrary to much reporting, remains ongoing. I sexually car bombed 2:33:14.360 --> 2:33:16.600 a place not far from where I stayed last October 2:33:17.160 --> 2:33:21.200 after I'd come home. At times, the USA has supported 2:33:21.240 --> 2:33:23.440 the people of Vjavre in their battle against Islamic State, 2:33:23.720 --> 2:33:26.240 but it's also stood by as Turkish bombs fell on them. 2:33:26.640 --> 2:33:29.240 But though Rajava is by far the biggest territorial area 2:33:29.280 --> 2:33:32.640 which to democratic confederalism is in practice, much as a 2:33:32.720 --> 2:33:35.440 movement remains in the mountains of southern Kurdistan in what 2:33:35.600 --> 2:33:38.960 is technically Iraqi territory, there are many more Kurdish people 2:33:39.000 --> 2:33:42.160 in Turkey, and as a recent election results show, revolution 2:33:42.240 --> 2:33:44.360 by the ballot box is not really an option for them. 2:33:45.000 --> 2:33:48.439 Rajavre enjoys autonomy, but it is still very much ideologically 2:33:48.520 --> 2:33:50.840 twinned with the part of the movement that remains in 2:33:50.879 --> 2:33:54.080 the mountains and dedicated to its struggle against the Turkish state. 2:33:55.000 --> 2:33:58.400 Turkey in return, has crossed the border with Iraq to 2:33:58.520 --> 2:34:01.959 attack the KCK and anyone else you gets called the crossfire. 2:34:02.920 --> 2:34:05.840 As Gross explained, this is not new, but the recent 2:34:05.959 --> 2:34:07.200 change has been notable well. 2:34:08.000 --> 2:34:14.040 During the eighties, nineties and even after two thousand, the 2:34:14.120 --> 2:34:19.959 Turkish Army used to do military operations to the other 2:34:20.080 --> 2:34:23.400 side of the border into the Iraqi border for several months, 2:34:24.240 --> 2:34:27.720 to a draw back to the other side of the 2:34:27.760 --> 2:34:33.520 border to its own border afterwards after several months, and 2:34:34.040 --> 2:34:38.560 in that period it only had limited number of barracks 2:34:38.600 --> 2:34:43.720 and bases in the Iraqi and the Iraqi territory. The 2:34:43.879 --> 2:34:48.280 change now is that Teki has built a new military 2:34:48.400 --> 2:34:54.480 roads from Scratch to the Credit Sad region to northern Iraq. 2:34:55.280 --> 2:34:58.840 It has built more than one hundred big and small 2:34:59.080 --> 2:35:03.480 military basis barracks in the area and has no intention 2:35:03.600 --> 2:35:07.360 to withdraw. As I said, the ultimate goal is to 2:35:08.400 --> 2:35:12.000 is to annex all these lands to the Turkish territory. 2:35:12.320 --> 2:35:16.160 Today, Turkish troops can be found deep inside Iraq according 2:35:16.200 --> 2:35:19.680 to the Community Peacemaker teams. Since December of twenty seventeen, 2:35:20.120 --> 2:35:23.320 Turkish forces have built over forty bases anywhere from nine 2:35:23.360 --> 2:35:26.560 to twenty five kilometers into Iraqi, Kurdistan's territory south of 2:35:26.600 --> 2:35:30.560 its border end quote. They have dispatched hundreds of troops 2:35:30.600 --> 2:35:34.200 and military vehicles into another state, set up checkpoints, and 2:35:34.320 --> 2:35:37.120 even killed civilians a member of the Kig's military. The 2:35:37.160 --> 2:35:43.560 Peshmerga fighting has caused massive wildfires. For example, in Sagale village, 2:35:43.640 --> 2:35:46.200 about fifty five percent of the agricultural land has been 2:35:46.280 --> 2:35:51.280 burned by Turkish attacks. Incidentally, Turkish selling the Autonomous area 2:35:51.360 --> 2:35:54.000 of North and East Syria has also caused similar fires 2:35:54.040 --> 2:35:57.640 and destruction of crops in agricultural areas. The Kurdish freedom 2:35:57.640 --> 2:36:00.959 movement is very well established in the mountains southern Kurtis Down, 2:36:01.520 --> 2:36:04.000 where they live in tunnels and caves. These they're not 2:36:04.160 --> 2:36:06.119 caves of tunnels like you played in a little child. 2:36:06.360 --> 2:36:10.280 We're talking about villages underground. This makes tracking them very hard. 2:36:10.840 --> 2:36:13.400 As we heard another episode, many of the fighters said 2:36:13.400 --> 2:36:16.800 to Curtis Down as Syrian Arabs, repurposed by Turkey and 2:36:16.879 --> 2:36:19.760 ginned up on anti Kurdish sentiment. But this is perhaps 2:36:19.800 --> 2:36:22.160 the least concerning of the ways that the tunnels are 2:36:22.200 --> 2:36:25.040 being attacked. Zagros explained. Some of the other things that 2:36:25.080 --> 2:36:25.800 they've seen. 2:36:26.240 --> 2:36:30.840 Is that they use dogs. They tie explosives to the 2:36:30.920 --> 2:36:34.160 dogs and send the dogs into the tunnels and they 2:36:34.360 --> 2:36:38.120 explode the doves wire remote control. 2:36:38.360 --> 2:36:40.840 In addition to the dogs, he says that the Turkey 2:36:40.879 --> 2:36:43.560 state uses chemical weapons inside the tunnels, and they are 2:36:43.560 --> 2:36:47.840 also reports of suicide bombers deathonating themselves. The KTK also 2:36:47.959 --> 2:36:52.279 claims the Turkey uses thermobaric bombs sometimes called bunker busters, 2:36:52.400 --> 2:36:55.000 which create a huge pressure wave from subsequent vacuum. 2:36:55.400 --> 2:36:59.360 Also, they are using tenmobodic bombs. We have documented the 2:36:59.440 --> 2:37:04.200 use of these thermobotic bumps. There are remnants of these bumps. 2:37:04.680 --> 2:37:08.240 They are using thermobotic or vacuum bumps against the tunnels, 2:37:09.160 --> 2:37:13.720 and they are using some form of explosives which are 2:37:14.760 --> 2:37:19.840 more powerful than thermobotic bumps. Got some freedom grillas have 2:37:19.920 --> 2:37:22.360 developed literature for it because they do know what kind 2:37:22.400 --> 2:37:25.080 of explosive we did. But it has the effect of 2:37:25.120 --> 2:37:29.280 a nuclear bomb. We got some freedom grilla called nuclear bomb. 2:37:30.320 --> 2:37:33.760 They call it so because the effects are high are 2:37:33.840 --> 2:37:36.800 higher than the thermobotic bombs. 2:37:37.280 --> 2:37:39.600 I asked Mohammed to explain how people reacting to the 2:37:39.680 --> 2:37:40.400 current situation. 2:37:41.320 --> 2:37:46.240 You know, you know in some parts of I coul 2:37:46.320 --> 2:37:52.279 understand actually the areas under the control or the influence 2:37:52.440 --> 2:37:59.720 of CHA instead of KDP. And you know that people 2:37:59.800 --> 2:38:03.520 here have dislike this issue is like the Parson of 2:38:03.720 --> 2:38:08.240 Turkey to this area. It's not just in past telling 2:38:08.360 --> 2:38:14.000 people besides the Picaka elements and telling people and building 2:38:14.600 --> 2:38:18.600 the whole agricultural area and you know, so and so on. 2:38:19.200 --> 2:38:21.480 So it's kind of an inversion. 2:38:21.640 --> 2:38:26.240 And but here some people on forces in in the 2:38:26.440 --> 2:38:30.520 southern part of Kurdasa or you know, Iraqi for Dastan 2:38:31.480 --> 2:38:36.520 like the sympathy with the Picaky sympathy, okay, as they 2:38:38.000 --> 2:38:44.680 see that, they're so they're struggling against Turkey because if 2:38:44.720 --> 2:38:46.680 there is no big a gay, even there is no 2:38:46.800 --> 2:38:52.360 bigger gay, the Turkish forces will will not withdraw from 2:38:52.480 --> 2:38:57.400 Kutsa when it controlled, any area of iraqis to be 2:38:57.560 --> 2:39:02.840 saved or Southa, it will not withdraw. And it's it's 2:39:03.000 --> 2:39:06.720 excuse is speaker ky, But thanks so on Earth this 2:39:07.440 --> 2:39:08.480 telling something else. 2:39:09.000 --> 2:39:12.320 Despite what both my guests have seen as alienation of 2:39:12.360 --> 2:39:16.000 the local population, Turkey's continuing with its attacks. I asked 2:39:16.040 --> 2:39:18.560 aggress what do you thought the goals of this Turkish 2:39:18.560 --> 2:39:19.600 invasion of Iraqua. 2:39:19.879 --> 2:39:24.440 The invasion and annexation of these lens is the prime 2:39:24.520 --> 2:39:30.680 goal of Turkey. This goal is a long term goal 2:39:31.760 --> 2:39:36.080 of the Turkish state since it has been created after 2:39:36.160 --> 2:39:42.640 the Luzan Agreement. It has two aspects. Firstly, Turkey lays 2:39:42.760 --> 2:39:48.119 claim to what was once part of the Ottoman Empire 2:39:48.680 --> 2:39:52.360 one hundred years ago. Lays claims to the cities like 2:39:52.520 --> 2:39:57.400 Mussil and Kirkuk and claims that these these are lens 2:39:57.520 --> 2:40:02.840 of a Turkey. So the the invasion operation in the 2:40:02.959 --> 2:40:06.680 area of Batina isap in Matina and Avashin. In the 2:40:06.800 --> 2:40:10.280 areas around the cities of Armedia, Dea luxA and the Hook, 2:40:11.160 --> 2:40:15.440 there are attempts to take control of these mountainous areas 2:40:16.200 --> 2:40:25.320 and to materialize those long range goals. Turkey already has 2:40:25.360 --> 2:40:30.360 a has a big military base near Musul I think 2:40:30.480 --> 2:40:33.280 fifteen to twenty kilometers in northern Musuil. It is called 2:40:33.280 --> 2:40:37.240 the Bashika Base. So if Teki manages to invade all 2:40:37.320 --> 2:40:40.880 these areas in Badina I mean in the cities of 2:40:41.280 --> 2:40:44.400 the Hook, mountainous areas of the Hook, Turkey would be 2:40:44.440 --> 2:40:49.880 able to create a land bridge between these areas and 2:40:50.800 --> 2:40:53.400 its base in Musil, and it will be far easier 2:40:53.560 --> 2:40:58.240 for Turkey too. Let's say an ex city of Muslim 2:40:58.240 --> 2:41:06.160 and Kirkuktu It's lands. Secondly, Turkey has a long term 2:41:06.400 --> 2:41:11.720 goal of democratic demographic change in Kurdistan. As you know, 2:41:11.840 --> 2:41:16.160 Kurdistan is a land, the ancestral land of the Kurts, 2:41:16.640 --> 2:41:21.280 being divided between four countries Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria 2:41:22.200 --> 2:41:25.680 being divided by borders. People from one side of the 2:41:25.760 --> 2:41:27.720 border are Kurdish, put on the other side of the 2:41:28.080 --> 2:41:32.959 ark Kurdish. In many cases, the borderline go through the cities. 2:41:33.040 --> 2:41:35.560 They divide the cities. They have divided the villages. They 2:41:35.600 --> 2:41:40.000 have divided the tribes they have they have divided large populations. 2:41:40.360 --> 2:41:43.640 They have even divided families. This is one of the 2:41:43.760 --> 2:41:45.600 characteristic of the border in Kurdistan. 2:41:45.959 --> 2:41:47.640 In fact, Turkey has Pigan so I think of an 2:41:47.640 --> 2:41:51.120 Arab belt program is owned in Syria seeking to resettle 2:41:51.160 --> 2:41:55.080 Syrian refugees. Turkish backs Syrian anti government rebels in the area, 2:41:55.200 --> 2:41:57.720 so it took from Java in military operations over the 2:41:57.840 --> 2:42:01.440 last eight years. This is part of Turkey's plan to 2:42:01.520 --> 2:42:04.040 return as many as a million Syrian migrants to a 2:42:04.080 --> 2:42:06.320 country still in the grips of a brutal civil war, 2:42:07.080 --> 2:42:09.720 and pushed the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria 2:42:10.040 --> 2:42:14.400 back from the Turkish borders or crush it altogether. For Turkey, 2:42:14.520 --> 2:42:17.879 there's no distinction between Java and the PKK, and thus 2:42:17.959 --> 2:42:21.119 Turkey claims the entirety of Ajava is a haven for terrorism. 2:42:22.120 --> 2:42:25.760 Many Kurdish fighters and international volunteers who fought Isis for 2:42:25.920 --> 2:42:28.520 years died fighting the Turkish army in a Frien and 2:42:28.560 --> 2:42:31.000 the many other territories at Turkey has expanded into since 2:42:31.000 --> 2:42:34.200 twenty seventeen. The fighting there was fierce and saw the 2:42:34.240 --> 2:42:37.560 wig and the wipej the men's and women's armed forces 2:42:37.680 --> 2:42:41.480 of Rejava battling a NATO army with modern armor and 2:42:41.600 --> 2:42:47.240 modern airpower. After taking significant losses, they retreated and I 2:42:47.280 --> 2:42:49.680 asked Sagarus what this means for people living in a 2:42:49.720 --> 2:42:52.720 free who had just managed to return to some semblance 2:42:52.760 --> 2:42:56.080 of normalcy after Assad's forces left and attack from me 2:42:56.160 --> 2:42:57.840 on Nusra Front became less frequent. 2:42:58.240 --> 2:43:02.480 This is genocide. I'man forcing people to leave their lands 2:43:02.680 --> 2:43:07.240 and replacing those people with people which are not from 2:43:07.360 --> 2:43:11.440 that land. Forcing people to leave the ancestral land lands 2:43:11.560 --> 2:43:14.880 which they have lived on for thousands of years, for 2:43:15.000 --> 2:43:20.080 more than ten thousand years, and getting Arab Jihades Cheching 2:43:20.160 --> 2:43:23.640 jihadis to live in those areas, it is a genocide 2:43:24.240 --> 2:43:28.520 along with the ecocide which is now taking place. Thousands 2:43:28.600 --> 2:43:33.520 of hectares of forests of agricultural land are now burning. 2:43:33.600 --> 2:43:38.600 So what Turkey does is femicide, is ecoside, is genocide 2:43:38.840 --> 2:43:43.200 in Kurdistan and these let's say, what now happens to 2:43:43.280 --> 2:43:45.680 the curse is the same thing that happened to the 2:43:45.879 --> 2:43:50.360 Armenians one thousand years ago. The genocide of the Armenians 2:43:51.040 --> 2:43:54.600 was done by the people who had the same mentality 2:43:54.720 --> 2:43:57.959 and the same mindset of are the one I can say. 2:43:58.120 --> 2:44:02.520 So these areas are very strategic for the Kurds. They 2:44:02.720 --> 2:44:07.000 bind the four parts of Kurdistan together demographically. And now 2:44:07.520 --> 2:44:15.360 Arduan wants to draw a Jihadis buffer zone between these areas. 2:44:16.959 --> 2:44:21.879 If occurred from Syria wants to go to the Kurdistan 2:44:22.280 --> 2:44:24.760 under the invasion of Turkey, we call it North Kurdistan. 2:44:25.560 --> 2:44:29.920 He will have to go through cities and areas populated 2:44:30.000 --> 2:44:33.360 by Arab jihadists, by Chech and jihadists by Turkman jihadists 2:44:34.200 --> 2:44:37.600 by jihadists have been which have been collected from around 2:44:37.640 --> 2:44:41.760 the world. So this buffer zone, which is more than 2:44:41.879 --> 2:44:46.560 one thousand kilometers long according to Arduna's plan and thirty 2:44:46.640 --> 2:44:52.040 to forty kilometers wide, is expected to be inhabited to 2:44:52.160 --> 2:44:58.560 be settled by the Jahadis which Ardouan has gathered from 2:44:59.040 --> 2:45:02.840 x d ASH members ext not remembers Al Qaeda. 2:45:15.440 --> 2:45:15.840 At present. 2:45:15.920 --> 2:45:19.119 It's Turkish occupation. It's a situation in parts of Syria, 2:45:19.640 --> 2:45:21.960 but it's also increasingly becoming likely it will be the 2:45:22.040 --> 2:45:24.840 situation in parts of Iraq. This is often the case, 2:45:25.440 --> 2:45:28.600 say to trying to use divisions in Kurdistant to their advantage, 2:45:29.000 --> 2:45:31.320 and Turkey in particular is relying on the well worn 2:45:31.400 --> 2:45:34.560 excuse of counter terrorism to mount its incursions deep into 2:45:34.600 --> 2:45:37.000 a rock. Here's Mohammed explaining. 2:45:36.600 --> 2:45:41.640 That Pek is thinking like in such a way to 2:45:41.760 --> 2:45:46.040 support to support maybe pick again. They don't say orally 2:45:46.120 --> 2:45:55.600 that that thing, and KDP says that follow the instruction 2:45:56.080 --> 2:46:02.800 of Turkey and the actually here, the force an influence 2:46:02.920 --> 2:46:07.880 of Turkey and even Iran in the Buty controlled area 2:46:08.680 --> 2:46:15.200 is very strong and people here as people of the nation, 2:46:16.520 --> 2:46:22.680 I am not feeling comfort with such impassion such issues. 2:46:23.120 --> 2:46:27.039 So we are lot like the owner of our right 2:46:27.360 --> 2:46:32.560 decision in the area. So we're divided within Iran, Iran 2:46:32.840 --> 2:46:36.040 and Turkey and so on, so and we are not 2:46:36.320 --> 2:46:41.800 depending on our people. You know, thousands of people kill 2:46:42.080 --> 2:46:50.160 for the nation, analysts, you know, hopes and now people 2:46:50.280 --> 2:46:56.160 are frustrate with such such issues, with such situation. 2:46:56.680 --> 2:46:58.760 Mahmad also said that was really frustrating for him to 2:46:58.800 --> 2:47:02.520 see Curish politicians influence by the states that they've been 2:47:02.560 --> 2:47:03.880 trying to escape for a century. 2:47:04.320 --> 2:47:08.640 So we are here illustration from the north, Turkey, from 2:47:08.720 --> 2:47:13.600 the east, Iran, from the south, Iraq and all are 2:47:13.720 --> 2:47:20.040 they working that the people who pay thousands thousands of 2:47:20.360 --> 2:47:24.200 of of you know Martyr Souther and so of uh, 2:47:25.120 --> 2:47:28.600 you know, loss of the people. Why you are not 2:47:29.600 --> 2:47:34.600 depending on your will or the force of your people, 2:47:35.280 --> 2:47:40.520 Why you are became like like a feather, a feather 2:47:41.840 --> 2:47:46.640 to the to the windsor of so forth, which are 2:47:47.160 --> 2:47:51.640 not you're they're not your friends. Even in the east 2:47:51.680 --> 2:47:55.600 and the North and the south, there are not new 2:47:56.120 --> 2:47:59.560 But if you depend on your own people, on your 2:47:59.680 --> 2:48:05.680 own historical hard and we have you know, we have 2:48:05.920 --> 2:48:09.120 the legacy of this issue. We have the legacy of 2:48:09.440 --> 2:48:12.320 struggle in this area from nineteen sixstiers. 2:48:13.160 --> 2:48:17.000 Indeed, the evasion of southern Kurdistan would not be possible 2:48:17.200 --> 2:48:21.040 without the consent of both the Iraqi and Kurdistan regional authorities. 2:48:21.720 --> 2:48:26.480 Sagress mentioned. Turkish President Worship Type du One visited Baghdad 2:48:26.640 --> 2:48:29.480 on April the twenty second. This was his first visit 2:48:29.520 --> 2:48:33.360 to Iraq since twenty eleven. During the visit, Iraqan Turkey 2:48:33.440 --> 2:48:36.720 signed the Joint Security Agreement allowing Turkey to conduct military 2:48:36.760 --> 2:48:42.240 operations deep within Iraqi territory. In return, Iraqi received desperately 2:48:42.320 --> 2:48:44.080 needed water from Turkey and. 2:48:44.160 --> 2:48:47.840 Now in those areas, tens of thousands of Turkish troops, 2:48:48.520 --> 2:48:53.160 hundreds of tanks, armored vehicles, drones, rods have been deproved 2:48:53.200 --> 2:48:56.680 to the area. They are active every day, and they 2:48:56.760 --> 2:49:00.480 are invading northern Iraq at a time and when the 2:49:00.600 --> 2:49:05.360 border guards of Iraqi Iraqi Army border guards are standing 2:49:05.440 --> 2:49:10.280 by and just watching. As you may know, as the 2:49:10.320 --> 2:49:14.199 result of the agreement between the Iraqi State and Turky State, 2:49:15.080 --> 2:49:18.800 Iraqi border guard forces, let's say they were decided to 2:49:18.879 --> 2:49:23.160 be sent to the Iraqi Turkish border but now these 2:49:23.240 --> 2:49:27.320 border guards are not under the Turkish Iraqi border. The 2:49:27.400 --> 2:49:31.760 border that we now these border guards have been deployed 2:49:32.480 --> 2:49:37.440 forty kilometers thirty kilometers deep into the Iraqi territory. They 2:49:37.520 --> 2:49:40.680 don't go to the border. They are guarding the invading 2:49:40.720 --> 2:49:41.480 Turkish army. 2:49:41.720 --> 2:49:44.080 For the people of the region, this means yet more 2:49:44.160 --> 2:49:48.360 trauma and more displacement. They're already more than one million 2:49:48.440 --> 2:49:50.960 displaced people in southern Kuristar. Some of them are living 2:49:51.000 --> 2:49:54.520 in pretty terrible conditions. I've seen those refugee camps when 2:49:54.560 --> 2:49:58.600 I was there last October, but these operations have created more. 2:49:59.320 --> 2:50:03.360 Here's just one anecdotic displacement shared by CPT on their website. 2:50:03.920 --> 2:50:06.680 We met a man named Kakbashir who had tried to 2:50:06.680 --> 2:50:09.680 build a cafe here. His dreams of a cafe had 2:50:09.720 --> 2:50:12.840 been shattered by Turkish artillery and small arms fire coming 2:50:12.879 --> 2:50:16.040 from the Turkish base on the hillside nearby. He was 2:50:16.120 --> 2:50:19.400 originally from Segedde village, but had been displaced to Ghani 2:50:19.520 --> 2:50:22.880 Village by the Turkish military five years ago due to 2:50:22.959 --> 2:50:25.520 the loss of his farm in Seagatee. He has planted 2:50:25.600 --> 2:50:28.360 some vegetables next to the side of his cafe He 2:50:28.440 --> 2:50:31.280 gave each CPT member some sweet basil and invited us 2:50:31.320 --> 2:50:34.800 to his village. When we arrived, a man dressed in 2:50:34.920 --> 2:50:39.520 immaculate traditional Kurdish clothes stood transfixed staring into the valley. 2:50:40.360 --> 2:50:44.640 He was staring at Mejia Village his home. Mijia is 2:50:44.720 --> 2:50:47.200 one of at least nine villages displaced by the recent 2:50:47.240 --> 2:50:51.360 Turkish operation. Kakbashir told us that displaced people from the 2:50:51.480 --> 2:50:54.120 valley would visit this place daily to gaze upon their 2:50:54.160 --> 2:50:55.960 cut off towns and farmland below. 2:50:57.240 --> 2:51:00.080 Despite month of shading embalming, the military trunk holds the 2:51:00.160 --> 2:51:03.720 Kurdistan Freedom Movement remain intact, and the more obvious damage 2:51:03.720 --> 2:51:07.560 has been done to civilians rather than military targets. The hPG, 2:51:07.800 --> 2:51:10.320 which is the fighting arm of the Bikka, has been 2:51:10.360 --> 2:51:14.320 able to obtain loitering anti aircraft munitions shut down several drones, 2:51:14.760 --> 2:51:16.880 but it's still unable to shoot down fighter jets like 2:51:16.920 --> 2:51:19.680 the US provided F sixteens to the currently bombing them. 2:51:20.240 --> 2:51:23.360 For civilians without mounting caves or tunnels to hide in. 2:51:23.760 --> 2:51:26.440 The impact is severe and people who have faced oppression 2:51:26.480 --> 2:51:30.720 and persecution from Saddam Hussein Isis, numerous other states and 2:51:30.800 --> 2:51:34.480 groups are now once again being displaced. I want to 2:51:34.560 --> 2:51:36.800 finish up with the end of Zagorro's message to me, 2:51:37.440 --> 2:51:39.640 in which he made a comparison with Palestine, like I 2:51:39.800 --> 2:51:43.240 did at the start on the day of thus intrude Zagros. 2:51:43.440 --> 2:51:45.960 Bombs made in the US had just been falling from 2:51:46.000 --> 2:51:49.880 Israeli planes on too civilians in Palestine again, and we 2:51:50.000 --> 2:51:52.920 discuss the fact that all the solutions being discussed hinged 2:51:52.920 --> 2:51:55.840 around the need for states, one state or two states 2:51:55.959 --> 2:51:58.760 to solve the problem. But this was a problem created 2:51:58.840 --> 2:52:01.600 by states, and it was state sending bombs to another 2:52:01.640 --> 2:52:05.039 state to drop on children. Both in Kurdistan and in Palestine. 2:52:05.520 --> 2:52:08.960 There was a problem. Here's a cross reflection on nearly 2:52:09.040 --> 2:52:12.480 ten months of bombing in Palestine and Kurdistan. And I 2:52:12.600 --> 2:52:14.840 just want to explain here that Abu Baka or Baghdadi 2:52:14.920 --> 2:52:16.800 was at one point the leader of ISIS. He's dead 2:52:16.879 --> 2:52:20.080 now and when he says Dash, he's referring to the 2:52:20.240 --> 2:52:21.800 former so called Islamic state. 2:52:22.120 --> 2:52:26.320 The struggle that is now waged in the mountains of 2:52:26.840 --> 2:52:34.760 Kurdistan against the invading Turkish army. It is a continuation 2:52:35.200 --> 2:52:41.920 of the struggle against Dash in Iraq and Assyria, because 2:52:42.480 --> 2:52:48.080 ideologically there is no difference between Ardovan and Abba Baghadadi. 2:52:48.879 --> 2:52:53.320 Baghdadi first took Musul, and now Aldovan wants to invade 2:52:53.400 --> 2:52:59.840 Mussul too. Aldowan attacks all those places which have been 2:53:00.040 --> 2:53:05.240 hubs of resistance against Dash. He attacks Sinjar, he attacks Kobani, 2:53:05.320 --> 2:53:09.520 He attacks Candil Mountains, which are the home of those 2:53:09.640 --> 2:53:14.080 who inspired and organized the fight against Aj. On the ground, 2:53:16.320 --> 2:53:21.560 Erdogan's army is Dash in native uniforms, in native fatigues. 2:53:22.760 --> 2:53:27.360 In recent days, Arduan accuses Natenno of committing genocide against 2:53:27.400 --> 2:53:32.760 the Palacinians. Ntenno also accuses Erdogan of committing genocide against 2:53:32.800 --> 2:53:36.800 the Kurts. In fact, what these two men say against 2:53:36.800 --> 2:53:41.560 each other is is, to some extent right, both of 2:53:41.680 --> 2:53:45.240 them have been commissioned by the forces of capitalist modernity 2:53:45.920 --> 2:53:51.480 to eliminate two people, to eliminate the Curs and the Palatinians. 2:53:53.080 --> 2:53:57.680 What n'itanejo does against the Palacinians is exactly what Erdoonan 2:53:57.920 --> 2:54:02.040 is doing against the Kurts. What is needed is to 2:54:02.280 --> 2:54:06.160 draw the attention of the world's public opinion to the 2:54:06.240 --> 2:54:11.720 atrocities of Dugan's regime and the genocidal and ecosidal crimes 2:54:11.800 --> 2:54:16.400 he commits against the Kurdish people and their land, which 2:54:16.480 --> 2:54:22.560 is Kurdistan. The struggle in Palestine and Kurdistan are one struggle, 2:54:22.800 --> 2:54:27.720 the struggle of two people against genocide and examination. Both 2:54:27.760 --> 2:54:32.560 struggle needs support from the youth, from the women all 2:54:32.600 --> 2:54:39.279 around the world, from democratic forces, from intellectuals, students, unions, workers, 2:54:39.560 --> 2:54:43.720 from all people. People need to be united against Ardowan 2:54:43.800 --> 2:54:47.400 as they were united against Dash, as they are now 2:54:47.520 --> 2:54:52.480 united against the genocidal attacks in Palestine. The Turkish regime 2:54:53.640 --> 2:54:57.760 can be protested everywhere in many ways. Turkish goods and 2:54:58.040 --> 2:55:02.240 commodities can be boycotted because they are the source of 2:55:02.360 --> 2:55:07.680 funds for Ardowan's war machine, for Ardowan's genocidal army. The 2:55:07.680 --> 2:55:11.040 delegations can be formed and they can come to visit 2:55:11.120 --> 2:55:13.720 Kurdistan and see with their own eyes the extent of 2:55:14.120 --> 2:55:19.280 ecoside and genocide in Kurdistan. Free journalists can shed more 2:55:19.400 --> 2:55:24.879 light on the atrocities of Aardovan in Kurdistan. Revolutionary youth, 2:55:25.040 --> 2:55:29.200 revolutionary people, men and women can come and join the 2:55:29.320 --> 2:55:33.280 struggle in the mountains of Kurdistan. Kurdistan is your home. 2:55:38.600 --> 2:55:41.720 Hey, We'll be back Monday with more episodes every week 2:55:41.840 --> 2:55:43.680 from now until the heat death of the universe. 2:55:44.800 --> 2:55:47.120 It Could Happen Here as a production of cool Zone Media. 2:55:47.360 --> 2:55:50.000 For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website 2:55:50.080 --> 2:55:52.240 cool Zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the 2:55:52.320 --> 2:55:55.720 iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. 2:55:56.360 --> 2:55:58.400 You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated 2:55:58.520 --> 2:56:01.520 monthly at cool zone Media dot com slash sources. 2:56:01.720 --> 2:56:02.520 Thanks for listening.