Speaker 1: Talk to your zoom h six about crack cocaine abuse.
Speaker 1: Some amount of crack cocaine is perfectly normal for recording
Speaker 1: device you to use. It is part of the recording industry.
Speaker 1: But everyone can overdo it. And if your zoom h
Speaker 1: six starts not reading cards, or for example, stealing from
Speaker 1: you in ordered upon your stuff to buy more crack cocaine,
Speaker 1: you might need to do an intervention. This has been
Speaker 1: Robert Evans and a public service announcement about the zoom
Speaker 1: h six handhold recorder. How's that? Are we good? Is
Speaker 1: that a good way to introduce a podcast? What depends answer?
Speaker 1: That's a great question, Sophie. Scholars have debated for decades
Speaker 1: which show this is. But personally it is the opinion
Speaker 1: of myself, uh and a large body of researchers at
Speaker 1: Oxford and Cambridge that this is. It could happen here
Speaker 1: a podcast about how things are falling apart and how
Speaker 1: maybe put them back together. One of these days figured out.
Speaker 1: I'm here with Garrison and Chris. How are you guys?
Speaker 1: How how are y'all doing? Just just absolutely splendid. I'm
Speaker 1: extremely excited that every time I leave twitters a new
Speaker 1: mass shooting. There's there was, Like this has been weekend.
Speaker 1: There have been quite a few mass shootings in the
Speaker 1: last forty eight hours, and there's a non zero chance
Speaker 1: there's been at least one between when we record this
Speaker 1: podcast and when you listen to it. I'm not trying
Speaker 1: to be flippant. That's just a reality. UM. So I
Speaker 1: think we're going to talk about the two most recent ones,
Speaker 1: one of which UM was the mass shooting in Buffalo,
Speaker 1: New York by a four chan motherfucking white supremacist very
Speaker 1: much patterned after the twenty nineteen eight Chan shootings, particularly
Speaker 1: the christ Church massacre UM. And then the day after.
Speaker 1: I guess it's not technically a mass shooting because only
Speaker 1: one person was killed, thankfully, UM. But there was a
Speaker 1: shooting that was certainly an attempt to be a mass
Speaker 1: shooting because he attempted to close the exit and stop
Speaker 1: people from leaving at a a Taiwanese church UM in
Speaker 1: southern California, UM, which was stopped by the congregation before
Speaker 1: nearly as many people could get killed. UM. It appears
Speaker 1: to be it's just come out UM, motivated by nationalist
Speaker 1: hatred of Taiwan by a Chinese man UM. That's the
Speaker 1: broad understanding of both. Its complicated. Yeah, I'm sure we'll
Speaker 1: get into that, but we should probably deal with them chronologically. UM.
Speaker 1: The Buffalo shooting is it's one of those things I
Speaker 1: made a big chunk of my bones as a journalist
Speaker 1: in the field that I used to spend most of
Speaker 1: my time reporting and covering the eight Chan shootings, and
Speaker 1: after every one of those in twenty nineteen, I had
Speaker 1: an article within about two hours. I haven't written anything
Speaker 1: about this one. I don't plan to because there's not
Speaker 1: much to say. It is what we've seen before. UM.
Speaker 1: I know there's some debate over how much of the
Speaker 1: man and as there should be over like how much
Speaker 1: of the manifesto you can take at face value, which
Speaker 1: is none of it, um, and as to whether or
Speaker 1: not there might be something more going on here. But
Speaker 1: it is kind of my opinion from the information we have,
Speaker 1: that this is the kind of attack we've seen before
Speaker 1: and the kind of attack we will probably see again
Speaker 1: more than once before the years over. You know, this
Speaker 1: is someone who was radicalized primarily against uh the immigration
Speaker 1: or the existence really of people who are not white
Speaker 1: in the United States, um and believes that the best
Speaker 1: way to cleanse the country of people who are not
Speaker 1: white is to carry out mass shootings that will radicalize
Speaker 1: other people and that will lead further to the breakdown
Speaker 1: of civil society in the United States by pushing it
Speaker 1: kind of like hot button issues like gun control, um,
Speaker 1: in order to further you know, it's an accelerationist sort
Speaker 1: of attack. UM. So yeah, that's that's what I'm seeing here. Yep.
Speaker 1: I mean it's yeah, like like we said, it's very
Speaker 1: very much riffing off of christ Church. I mean, at
Speaker 1: least over half of his manifesto was like specifically rich manifesto, which,
Speaker 1: of course that manifesto itself was was ripped from a
Speaker 1: lot of other manifestos. It's kind of this just a
Speaker 1: series of like launching the medic language from one shooting
Speaker 1: to another, just kind of compiling into this massive conglomerate
Speaker 1: that's all based on trying to convince more people to
Speaker 1: do the same act. Um. That's really that's that's why
Speaker 1: when people are like talking about this and people try
Speaker 1: to limit the attention on the manifestos and that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff, because it's it's all crafted specifically to get
Speaker 1: other people to do the exact same thing. Um, it's
Speaker 1: it's filled with themes, filmed with filled filled with in jokes,
Speaker 1: full of like in grip up group stuff to convince
Speaker 1: people to kind of go down a similar path, and
Speaker 1: all of it's carefully crafted that way. The one really
Speaker 1: interesting thing about this is that there's not only manifesto
Speaker 1: but also like unless seven hundred pages of diaries that
Speaker 1: he posted as well, um and dogs from from like
Speaker 1: over like like like from a long, long long time,
Speaker 1: tracking his inner thoughts. But also like again, he posted
Speaker 1: it and he knew he was gonna do this. There's
Speaker 1: no telling how how accurate that is. It's all it's
Speaker 1: all in this package that he wants to present to people.
Speaker 1: So a lot of the navy gritty are is not
Speaker 1: even worth talking about in a lot of a lot
Speaker 1: of cases. No, and I'm not I think there's broadly speaking,
Speaker 1: things you can learn. And I'm also to be clear,
Speaker 1: I'm not against researchers studying, and I think it should
Speaker 1: be absolutely I am against just finding a thing in
Speaker 1: there and like posting it. Like when I when I
Speaker 1: made my post, I was pretty careful to note a
Speaker 1: couple of things that seemed consistent based on other aspects
Speaker 1: of the like things that he claimed about his radicalization
Speaker 1: that seemed consistent with what we were seeing. Like he
Speaker 1: noted that he was primarily radicalized online. That seems plausible
Speaker 1: to me because of how fucking online the manifesto is. Um. Like,
Speaker 1: and and it's one of those folks are not entirely
Speaker 1: wrongfully bringing up the fact that the great Placement white
Speaker 1: genocide sort of conspiracy theory that seems to have motivated
Speaker 1: this fellow is basically identical to Ship Tucker Carlson says,
Speaker 1: that's not not that's that's not what radicalized him though,
Speaker 1: But that's not what radicalized Yes, this is not a
Speaker 1: dude who was watching Fox right. That's something I've been
Speaker 1: frustrated by looking at the discourse because yes, obviously Tucker
Speaker 1: shouldn't be talking about this because he's normalizing this very
Speaker 1: rhetoric that you find in these manifestos. But he did.
Speaker 1: He did not find this from Tucker. This is like
Speaker 1: it's it's it's a whole whole different ball game. Um.
Speaker 1: And when there's that conflation, I do find it to
Speaker 1: be slightly frustrating. Yeah, And some of the problem with
Speaker 1: discussing this is the problem with discussing basically any of
Speaker 1: these attacks is that the mass media coverage of it
Speaker 1: is nearly always going to flatten it to a degree
Speaker 1: that works in the favor of the people who are
Speaker 1: using this as propaganda of the deed. Yeah, and we
Speaker 1: can talk about maybe are there ways to detern that,
Speaker 1: you know, I've definitely that's something that I've spent a
Speaker 1: decent amount of my career kind of struggling with. It's
Speaker 1: it's a tough thing to do because, um, one of
Speaker 1: the things that's very frustrating that we've we've seen in
Speaker 1: the wake of this attack, and that we see in
Speaker 1: the wake of basically every politically motivated attack is a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of people from a whole different bunch of
Speaker 1: belief systems insides immediately trying to spin it in order
Speaker 1: to push the narrative they think is useful for the
Speaker 1: attack to have, and some of them believe legitimately what
Speaker 1: they're saying. Like the folks, I think most of the
Speaker 1: people who are like this is you know, Tucker Carlson's
Speaker 1: doing are generally just folks who have not spent as
Speaker 1: much time in the fever swamps as we have and
Speaker 1: see oh, Tucker Carlson's talking about this, this this get carried
Speaker 1: out of shooting. They must be related, right. I don't
Speaker 1: think that's like, that's wrong, but I don't think that's malicious.
Speaker 1: And then you get folks who are malicious with it, right,
Speaker 1: like you have the folks right. One of the one
Speaker 1: of the narratives we've seen form, particularly from what I
Speaker 1: like to call the ship head left, Um, is folks
Speaker 1: being like, well there was a san and Rod the
Speaker 1: black Sun. It's a Nazi a culty symbol. People who
Speaker 1: are more nerds about Nazis we even equipped that. But
Speaker 1: that's that's the broad strokes of what it is. Um.
Speaker 1: And it's it's a symbol that's definitely on some as
Speaker 1: off gear. It's also on a has been on a
Speaker 1: bunch of ship well before there was an since it's
Speaker 1: all over the place. And um, the reason he did it,
Speaker 1: the reason he had a black son on some ship
Speaker 1: was not because of the azof Battalion um it. In fact,
Speaker 1: he talked about wanting to break up NATO a bunch,
Speaker 1: but it was because the san and Rad was on
Speaker 1: the chest of the plate carrier of the christ Schurt shooter. Yes,
Speaker 1: but there's all, he's a big fan of the christ
Speaker 1: Church shooter. There's all of these people who are like, yeah,
Speaker 1: authoritarian left or whatever who are being like, oh, how
Speaker 1: can Americans condemn this attack when this guy is using
Speaker 1: as of imagery and there there's no telling how genuine
Speaker 1: they are with this, Like, there's there's no telling if
Speaker 1: if they actually know what they're doing, or if they're
Speaker 1: just or if they're just being like if they're purposely misinformed,
Speaker 1: or what's going on. It's like he doesn't mind, it
Speaker 1: doesn't matter. But yeah, my my assumption with those folks
Speaker 1: is that they are doing it because if you are
Speaker 1: a competent, paid propagandist, you want to always be pushing
Speaker 1: the narrative in a way that furthers whatever it is
Speaker 1: your job to push. And if your job is connecting
Speaker 1: Ukraine to every bad thing that happens, and a mass
Speaker 1: shooting that has nothing to fucking do with with Ukraine
Speaker 1: or the Ukrainian government, um, if you can connect it
Speaker 1: back to them, then you're back in your wheelhouse, right,
Speaker 1: Because maybe you're not so strong talking about the fact
Speaker 1: that you and some of the people around you have
Speaker 1: been friendly with fucking Tucker Carlson. Uh, and he pushes
Speaker 1: a similar narrative to the one this mass shooter used.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's uncomfortable. What is comfortable is saying, no, this
Speaker 1: guy who did this bad thing is tied to these
Speaker 1: other bad people who are tied to this group, that
Speaker 1: my entire career is about attack sacking. That's a much
Speaker 1: stronger position to be in, you know, if you're you know,
Speaker 1: a propagandist. It's just like you see folks on the
Speaker 1: right who don't want to grapple with the fact that
Speaker 1: this was a right wing or who carried out a
Speaker 1: terrorist attack based on an ideology that even motherfucking Ben
Speaker 1: Shapiro has pushed elements of. Um, you don't want to
Speaker 1: deal with that, So you call him a leftist because
Speaker 1: we saw the same thing with christ Turn He could Yeah,
Speaker 1: he made a couple of vague he's not a leftist.
Speaker 1: He repeatedly identified himself as right wing and as a fascist,
Speaker 1: as a Nazi, UM, as an ethno nationalist, UM. But
Speaker 1: he made like a couple of vague comments that they're
Speaker 1: taking out of context and being like, see, he was
Speaker 1: on the left. What she wanted to happen, that what
Speaker 1: she wanted to happen. That's why he put it in there. Right,
Speaker 1: It's like it is like it is all part of
Speaker 1: the bit. It's all this, it's it's it's it's all
Speaker 1: of this, like like irony poisoned thing that they do
Speaker 1: on purpose to give any one a propaganda out or
Speaker 1: give anyone a propaganda it's all Yeah, if you'll remember
Speaker 1: it before, it's not it's not new, but it's frustrating. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In the christ Church Manifesto, arrant Um said that he'd
Speaker 1: been radicalized by Candice Owens, who's like a person who
Speaker 1: says a bunch of shitty, fucked up stuff. I don't
Speaker 1: like Candace Owens, but like had nothing to do with
Speaker 1: that guy's radicalization, right, Like that's not that's not where
Speaker 1: he's fucking coming from. Um. But he did it because
Speaker 1: he wanted to, because because it's fucking it's ship posting,
Speaker 1: you know. It's to muddy the water. It's to get
Speaker 1: people like it's too it's to reduce the ability of
Speaker 1: people trying to grapple with what has happened, to accurately
Speaker 1: see what has happened and accurately identify the problem and
Speaker 1: respond to a big, big motive for the stuff is
Speaker 1: to cause this kind of social and discourse chaos. Right.
Speaker 1: They want people, they want everyone to be confused, and
Speaker 1: they want everyone to be fighting each other and distance
Speaker 1: agreeing on basic terms. Right. The whole, the whole point
Speaker 1: of this is to encourage gun control legislation, which we'll
Speaker 1: get the right match, to cause people be to be
Speaker 1: more willing to do mass shootings or to do a
Speaker 1: tax against government. Right. It's it's it's all part of
Speaker 1: the very basic accelerationist like talking points and tactics, and
Speaker 1: the confusion is not accidental, it's all. It's it's all.
Speaker 1: If you, I think a good way to look at this,
Speaker 1: if you like fighter planes and helicopters in a combat
Speaker 1: zone will have a type of countermeasure they will launch
Speaker 1: if someone shooting a missile that's like a tracking missile,
Speaker 1: heat seeking or whatever at them. It's called chaff, and
Speaker 1: it basically it looks to the missile the same as
Speaker 1: a helicopter does. So you shoot a bunch of these
Speaker 1: out and the missile goes and hits something that's not
Speaker 1: the fucking helicopter, but to its sensors looks like a helicopter.
Speaker 1: That's what they're doing. They're shooting out chaff. They're getting
Speaker 1: you to like about box with shadows rather than potentially
Speaker 1: landing a blow against like the central problem. And the
Speaker 1: central problem is not an easy one to grapple with
Speaker 1: without all that stuff around it, right, because the the
Speaker 1: issue here is how the way in which the Internet
Speaker 1: enables radicalization, the way in which online communities are prone
Speaker 1: to radicalization, UM, the way in which uh, the conservative
Speaker 1: media and aspects of like just basic American history play
Speaker 1: into this specific people who want to do violence in
Speaker 1: this way for this reason, um, which is why the
Speaker 1: cops don't notice them even when they're on their radar,
Speaker 1: which is why that like the warning signs don't get spotted. Um.
Speaker 1: And the ways in which, I think, more than anything,
Speaker 1: the ways in which the Internet has created a perfect
Speaker 1: incubation chamber for radical violence. And that is one of
Speaker 1: the stories here, right. Um. You know people are focusing
Speaker 1: on gun control, um, which this guy bought his gun
Speaker 1: in the state of New York, which has the most
Speaker 1: restrictive gun laws in the country. UM. Was more relevant
Speaker 1: even if you're on that end, is this guy was
Speaker 1: deeply involved in like tactical Reddit. This guy was heavily
Speaker 1: involved in in tactical videos and training videos, in talking
Speaker 1: with other people about the best weapons, the best ways
Speaker 1: to use them, and if you watch the I don't
Speaker 1: watch the video. But he was competent, he engaged, competently,
Speaker 1: he did, he maximized his ability to do damage. He
Speaker 1: took out somebody, um with a gun who was attempting
Speaker 1: to stop him. Um, that ship, the stuff that he
Speaker 1: did to prepare tactically worked. And the kind of tactical
Speaker 1: chunks of of of reddit of the internet which are
Speaker 1: not all right wing, but a hell of a lot
Speaker 1: of them are, and a hell of a lot of
Speaker 1: them have gone in very scary directions in the last
Speaker 1: couple of years. Um. Not only do I suspect contributed
Speaker 1: to his radicalization, but I can say certainly contributed to
Speaker 1: his ability to effectively kill people. Yeah. I mean, he
Speaker 1: had like over five pages just on what helmet he
Speaker 1: picked out. He had pages on what socks he was wearing,
Speaker 1: which is not which is for multiple reasons. It's one
Speaker 1: to make the actual act more effective. It's two to
Speaker 1: inspire not like discourse like this, but also to to
Speaker 1: get people to replicate what he did. Right, It's crafting
Speaker 1: all of these symbols that people like. Oh he picked
Speaker 1: out these socks. I mean, I'm gonna these socks. I'm
Speaker 1: going to get these socks. And it's it's it's all
Speaker 1: this branding thing. Um, we should take we should take
Speaker 1: a break, and then I want to come back and
Speaker 1: talk about some ME medic language stuff. You know who
Speaker 1: else can give you good advice on socks? Oh all right,
Speaker 1: here's ads Okay, Um, I want to talk about some
Speaker 1: ME medic language stuff because this was all heavily riffing
Speaker 1: and I specifically you use the term riffing um off
Speaker 1: of the christ Church shooting, which itself was riffing with
Speaker 1: other stuff, right, but he went so far. I mean
Speaker 1: the christ Church shooting was a copycat shooting of the
Speaker 1: anders Bredvik shooting, or at least descendant of whatever term
Speaker 1: you want to use. But that's what inspired the christ
Speaker 1: Church shooting. And it's I mean, he was for for
Speaker 1: the Buffalo shooting. He was testing on different live streaming platforms.
Speaker 1: He was doing all the stuff to craft a very
Speaker 1: specific image, and like images are very very very powerful.
Speaker 1: We've talked about like me magic. But if we want
Speaker 1: to get silly about it. Um. But he was very
Speaker 1: very much involved in crafting these things that could be
Speaker 1: replicated visually. Um. That's that's why he wanted to live stream.
Speaker 1: It's so bad. It's that he just the same way,
Speaker 1: the same way of christ Church was. And this is
Speaker 1: like really important for why we don't share this type
Speaker 1: of stuff and why we why we specifically clamped down
Speaker 1: on this, on this, on this style of propaganda, and
Speaker 1: why we really encourage people not to share it, not
Speaker 1: to look at it, not to do that stuff. Because
Speaker 1: he he does in a few parts of the manifest
Speaker 1: that he did right, Um, he does. He didn't say
Speaker 1: like watching the christ Church video was very impactful for him,
Speaker 1: which I don't disagree with. I'm sure, I'm sure it was.
Speaker 1: He he did change, he even and he did great
Speaker 1: links to recreate um. And this is why we people
Speaker 1: who are like researchers and people who kind of hand
Speaker 1: try to handle this kind of stuff um in like
Speaker 1: in their time on Earth, Uh, are so particular about this.
Speaker 1: Like a thing last year, like a year and a
Speaker 1: half ago, there was this film company based in New
Speaker 1: Zealand who wanted to make a christ Church film. Uh.
Speaker 1: And they want they were going to film a recreation
Speaker 1: of the shooting, but they said, like, oh, but it's
Speaker 1: too to show the horror and to show the impact
Speaker 1: hit on the victims doesn't fucking matter. It matter, It
Speaker 1: matters zero amount, because once you put that language into cinematography,
Speaker 1: you are giving them basically ammunition to help create propaganda
Speaker 1: and will get more more people killed. This is why
Speaker 1: the same thing we see the same thing on fucking
Speaker 1: um roadblocks, we see people recreate the christ Church shooting
Speaker 1: on roadblocks. There was actually a major problem like a
Speaker 1: year ago. Specifically, it was a huge problem of people
Speaker 1: recreating the footage inside this game engine. And it's it's specifically,
Speaker 1: it's it's very it's a very powerful tool that they
Speaker 1: used to spread around. It's targeted specifically people ages twelve
Speaker 1: to eighteen. This this guy was eighteen years old. Um,
Speaker 1: it's he was heavily involved in online gaming. He was
Speaker 1: really heavy Reddit user, specifically, um he loved discord. So
Speaker 1: it's these are the places where where it spreads even
Speaker 1: more so than now to Yeah, and I would say,
Speaker 1: we know and that called him like a four chance
Speaker 1: shooter because number one he definitely was familiar with with
Speaker 1: Pole and number was there, he announced his livestream there.
Speaker 1: I do agree with you read it was a bigger
Speaker 1: part of his radicalization. I suspect, and in a lot
Speaker 1: of and Discord probably, and I suspect he did purposefully
Speaker 1: minimize the extent to which conversations on discord were part
Speaker 1: of his radicalization journey in particular, that would be my
Speaker 1: assumption at the moment. But for countering this type of rhetoric,
Speaker 1: in this type of propaganda, right, because they're they're trying
Speaker 1: to make themselves look cool, They're trying to make themselves
Speaker 1: look tactical. They're trying to look they're trying to make
Speaker 1: themselves they look like they're in a video game. They
Speaker 1: make it look like they're in a movie. Right, They're
Speaker 1: trying to be cinematic. He was, he was testing on
Speaker 1: different cameras. Um he tested like a go pro. He
Speaker 1: just said, he test out his phone camera, right, trying
Speaker 1: to get this specific look. And then we just we
Speaker 1: just talked about how he was tactically proficient in some ways,
Speaker 1: but in handling this type of thing, we have to
Speaker 1: when we're crafting counter stuff to make this, to make
Speaker 1: this thing less likely, we need to not even focus
Speaker 1: on that we need to make them look stupid, make
Speaker 1: them look juvenile, make them look like they're pathetic, make
Speaker 1: them look like they're stupid and silly, like they're Larper's.
Speaker 1: That's one of the things that saved god knows how
Speaker 1: many lives at kind of the high point of the
Speaker 1: eight Chance shootings in nineteen was that fucker in Hall,
Speaker 1: Germany tried to carry one out and got the piss
Speaker 1: beat out of him by a dude at a mosque
Speaker 1: um and was photographed the next day in court just covered.
Speaker 1: It's like beat two ship um. That image probably saved
Speaker 1: some lives. They want to be cool, they want to
Speaker 1: be mamdic, they want to be spread around as a symbol,
Speaker 1: and we need, like culturally, need to. Yes, this is
Speaker 1: obviously very scarce, this is a very real threat for
Speaker 1: many for many people, many people of color, many black people,
Speaker 1: many many Muslims, people of different religions, Jewish people, queer people.
Speaker 1: But we need to when when specifically crafting rhetoric and
Speaker 1: propaganda against these things, we need to make them look pathetic,
Speaker 1: right that that that's what it needs to be framed as,
Speaker 1: because if you make them look scary and competent, that's
Speaker 1: actually gonna make these things worse because they love that, right,
Speaker 1: Like as if you film the Christ, if you do
Speaker 1: any kind of like movie about the Christ shooting, no
Speaker 1: matter how you shoot it, they're gonna love it. If
Speaker 1: you're shooting people in pain, they they want that. They
Speaker 1: want that. It's that's that's what they're looking for. You
Speaker 1: need to specifically frame this as these people larning and
Speaker 1: these people being pathetic and people being terminally online um
Speaker 1: and having bad social skills like you need, you need.
Speaker 1: You need to frame it in this way that makes
Speaker 1: them look not desirable because their whole point is to
Speaker 1: craft is desirable and visually stunning propaganda. Um. And I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's that's I've been thinking about this for the
Speaker 1: past because it's just been so much. But like I
Speaker 1: identify these people, isn't the problem? Right? Like this guy
Speaker 1: he is he was talked to you by by counselors
Speaker 1: last year because they were for he was gonna do
Speaker 1: a school shooting. Um, Like there was a lot of
Speaker 1: the red flags and stuff, and like he was, he
Speaker 1: was taught, he was talked to you by people before
Speaker 1: this happened. Like he wasn't an unknown factor. He wasn't
Speaker 1: an unknown of the vector to make to make this,
Speaker 1: to make you know, to be this a person that
Speaker 1: couldn't do this, But there's there's no way. People are
Speaker 1: very People are good at finding these people before they
Speaker 1: do it, but we're bad at actually stopping them from
Speaker 1: doing it once we found Once we find them, uh,
Speaker 1: there's there's really no power to stop it. Um and
Speaker 1: interrupting any kind of radicalization pipeline, it's really hard. So
Speaker 1: it's more about laying the groundwork to make the pipeline
Speaker 1: look pathetic so it's harder to happen again. But always
Speaker 1: counting this stuff is frustrating because if there was a
Speaker 1: good strategy, we wouldn't be here. B be deeply I
Speaker 1: want to move on to the Yeah, it's time to California,
Speaker 1: but at the at the end of this to close out,
Speaker 1: be deeply suspicious, if not outright contemptuous, of anyone who
Speaker 1: posits a simple solution to these shootings, whether that solution
Speaker 1: is gun control, whether it's expanded police powers, whether it's
Speaker 1: fucking arming everybody so that they can shoot shooters. Anyone
Speaker 1: who proposes a simple solution this, this is a deeply
Speaker 1: complicated problem. UM, because we let a number of horrible, horrible,
Speaker 1: obvious problems go on for way too long, and the
Speaker 1: solution to this will be painfully agonizingly difficult and will
Speaker 1: take time, and there is there is not a simple,
Speaker 1: all encompassing way to deal with this. UM. One of
Speaker 1: the things that you can do right now to better
Speaker 1: prepare yourself to potentially deal with this problem is take
Speaker 1: a stop the bleed course, carry an iPad I fact
Speaker 1: and a gunshot wound kit UM as often as possible.
Speaker 1: And that continues to be my best immediate advice to people, UM,
Speaker 1: because that there's no downsides to doing that and it
Speaker 1: could and does save lives and other shootings. All right,
Speaker 1: let's move on in other news. In other news, the
Speaker 1: next shooting. Yeah, hooray, Yeah, Okay, this is a weird one, UM.
Speaker 1: And I think the thing we need to make clear
Speaker 1: of front is that this happened yesterday. UM A recording
Speaker 1: still don't yeah a time of recording. Details are still emerging,
Speaker 1: and it's weird. There's a lot of potential to so
Speaker 1: so for people who don't know. UM. A Presbyterian church
Speaker 1: in California was attacked by a Chinese guy. This is
Speaker 1: this is a time when East Church, um, it's mostly
Speaker 1: senior citizens. And okay, so there there's there's a few
Speaker 1: important things up fronts that people should probably understand about.
Speaker 1: This one is that, okay, so Taiwan. Taiwan is ruled
Speaker 1: by military digctatorship, but for like basically the better part
Speaker 1: of the post World War two period, it is ruled
Speaker 1: by military dictatorship run by the Nationalist Party of the
Speaker 1: cam T. The cam T is extraordinary in this period.
Speaker 1: It is extraordinarily violent. They they assassinate people all over
Speaker 1: the place. They kill people on American soil, They killed
Speaker 1: they trained death squads in Latin America, and you know,
Speaker 1: they're they're they're known for the sort of humanity communism,
Speaker 1: but eventually they're sort of toppled by revolution isn't quite
Speaker 1: the right word. But as you know, the CAMPT as
Speaker 1: a party is still around today and is one of
Speaker 1: the two sort of major like so many political parties,
Speaker 1: but they're not like the sort of desk they're not
Speaker 1: exactly the sort of dest squad mafia party that they
Speaker 1: were through most of the twentieth century. Um the sort
Speaker 1: of the sort of progressive forces that work to overthrow
Speaker 1: the dictatorship, a lot of them coalesced into a party
Speaker 1: called the d d P. And one of the things
Speaker 1: about the d DP is and there's a lot of
Speaker 1: sort of complicated town these political stuff here, but they
Speaker 1: are very very closely connect connected to the Presbyterian Church
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways. And this I don't know
Speaker 1: the specifics about this church, but there is there is
Speaker 1: a very strong connection between and then the d d
Speaker 1: P are Okay, pro independence is putting it too strongly,
Speaker 1: but if you're a pro independent, like you want to
Speaker 1: want to be an independent country and you don't want
Speaker 1: them to sort of like either continue, Well, Okay, this
Speaker 1: is the problem with town these politics. It's enormously convoluted.
Speaker 1: I there's a lot of stuff going on at any time,
Speaker 1: and the people are going to get mad at you
Speaker 1: if the supplications they're making. But yeah, the short version
Speaker 1: of the story is that the sort of anti cc
Speaker 1: P pro independence e forces are and the sort of
Speaker 1: like progressive movement to sort of lumped into the d DP,
Speaker 1: and those are the people who are getting shot like
Speaker 1: because yeah, because again there's there's a very strong connection
Speaker 1: between Westbyterian Church and p UM and the KMT who again,
Speaker 1: I mean, okay, they've had an extremely complicated relationship with
Speaker 1: the Communist Party over the last hundred years. It's incredibly baffling.
Speaker 1: But they've basically swung around towards being more favorable to China.
Speaker 1: And there are there are some fact extremist factions of
Speaker 1: it that are that support unific like just unification. Um.
Speaker 1: What seems to have happened here is okay, so this
Speaker 1: the the shooters families seems to have been like deported
Speaker 1: from China to Taiwan and he like did not like
Speaker 1: it in Taiwan. And and and and this is where
Speaker 1: it starts to get very murky. Um. The police statement
Speaker 1: we have says that, you know, it's about sort of
Speaker 1: racial it's it's it's it's an anti Taiwanese animus. But
Speaker 1: that can mean a lot of things. And yeah, and
Speaker 1: then this this again, I keep saying it's murky, and
Speaker 1: it's because it's it's genuinely murky. There's a chance that
Speaker 1: this is one of one of the things that's been
Speaker 1: happening since the Hong Kong protests is a solidification in
Speaker 1: mainland China sort of anti of anti Tiwanese sentiment has
Speaker 1: sort of lumped in in this sort of like nationalist
Speaker 1: anti Hong Kong thing. There was there was a hardening
Speaker 1: of rhetoric against Taiwan, but also there's a lot of
Speaker 1: there's a lot of people in Taiwan, like like especially
Speaker 1: canti hardliners on the hard right who like really really
Speaker 1: really intensely hate like the sort of like the sort
Speaker 1: of progressive anti CCP, pro independence people. And you know,
Speaker 1: and this is something we don't we don't know what
Speaker 1: his affiliation is. He was like it was like he
Speaker 1: was like it was like his sixties, right, yeah, well
Speaker 1: and this is this is this is this is weird
Speaker 1: because there's a lot of things that that could be
Speaker 1: true about this because of how old he is. Like again,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean she he is around when the
Speaker 1: KMT is is straight up at desk aat party, right,
Speaker 1: So it could be that it could be she's sort
Speaker 1: of like independently radicalized. There's been some like rumors might
Speaker 1: be too weak of a word, but there there there
Speaker 1: have been some kind of sketchy reporting that like his
Speaker 1: ex was leaving for Taiwan and that that may have
Speaker 1: played a part in it. But you know, violence between
Speaker 1: the KMT and people who don't like the KMT is
Speaker 1: a thing that there wasn't a there was a very
Speaker 1: large amount of in the US for a lot of reasons.
Speaker 1: And even though the CAMT is sort of like I mean,
Speaker 1: the their alignment that China has like flipped in the
Speaker 1: past about forty years, I I don't know. I'm really
Speaker 1: really desperately hoping that that's this isn't going to set off,
Speaker 1: because I mean, there's already been a lot of especially
Speaker 1: around Hong Kong, there's been a lot of physical violence,
Speaker 1: like people attack each other at protests about between for example,
Speaker 1: people who's prote their Hong Kong protests and Chinese like
Speaker 1: CCP nationalists. But this is something different, very weird, very
Speaker 1: embedded in the time when these context and I don't
Speaker 1: think we fully understand what's going on here. Um. The
Speaker 1: ever thing again is like this guy he like he
Speaker 1: lived in times one, Like he was speaking Taiwanese, like
Speaker 1: when when he was initially like going into this church
Speaker 1: to infiltrate before we shot at everyone, So like he
Speaker 1: this isn't like this, This this is and I think
Speaker 1: people are reporting it like this because they don't know
Speaker 1: what's going on. But like this. This isn't a case
Speaker 1: of like a guy who is from mainland China who
Speaker 1: like decided that he hated to time when these people
Speaker 1: like this, He he was there, he like he speaks,
Speaker 1: he speaks time when he is, he like on understands
Speaker 1: the time when he's political situation very in depth, which
Speaker 1: presumably is why he targeted the specific church. But other
Speaker 1: than that, it's it's the motives are still kind of murky.
Speaker 1: And this is the other problem with it, which is
Speaker 1: that like the sheriff's like there's no way that the
Speaker 1: sheriffs have any idea what they're looking at, like that
Speaker 1: they're apparently reading his personal notes, and it's like I
Speaker 1: don't trust their analysis of it. Good lord, no, yeah,
Speaker 1: like these if you weren't here, we would have to
Speaker 1: find someone else who understands that conflict in order to
Speaker 1: talk about it. I don't feel comfortable like trying to
Speaker 1: figure out or analyze that guy's notes. I sure as
Speaker 1: ship don't trust some fucking sheriffs. It's like yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know, yeah, And I think that that's I
Speaker 1: don't know. I will say like this I think was
Speaker 1: like the worst possible scenario for what that shooting is about,
Speaker 1: because this is a kind of this is a kind
Speaker 1: of violence that it was really intense, like right after
Speaker 1: World War two and sort of like and you know,
Speaker 1: there there's been periods where like, yeah, I mean people
Speaker 1: have been like people have gotten killed here, but it
Speaker 1: hasn't been that violent in a long time. And I
Speaker 1: don't know, I'm hoping this is just one guy who
Speaker 1: had a particular grievance who I don't know, like was
Speaker 1: it was pushed by sort of external factors. But if
Speaker 1: this is a sign of like if this is a
Speaker 1: sign of sort of anti Tiwanese like nationally, well, okay,
Speaker 1: so there's one other thing that that we need to
Speaker 1: talk about because that's unclear because there's two kinds of
Speaker 1: potential right wing Chinese nationalism at play here, and it's
Speaker 1: unclear which one is happening because there are there are
Speaker 1: people who are right wing Chinese nationalists who are like
Speaker 1: pro CCP right, but there's also a kind of like
Speaker 1: a kind of like it shifted, but there's also like
Speaker 1: a a like a CAMG nationalist based right in Chinese
Speaker 1: nationalism which favors sort of like reunification with China, but
Speaker 1: is is not the same thing as as the sort
Speaker 1: of mainland nationalism and has its own particular, like very
Speaker 1: local political grudges, like with with the d DP and
Speaker 1: with the sort of like progressive movements in time one
Speaker 1: and I don't know and anything beyond that is kind
Speaker 1: of like trying to figure out which one it is, like,
Speaker 1: we just don't know unless the police, unless the police
Speaker 1: actually decided to like show us this guy's notes or
Speaker 1: like give us recordings of what he's been saying. Uh,
Speaker 1: we're not gonna know. And maybe maybe by the time
Speaker 1: this is out, like there will be more stuff. But
Speaker 1: right now it's very muddled, very bad. The fact that
Speaker 1: this guy also I think was an American citizen but
Speaker 1: was born in China has gotten every like even even
Speaker 1: the Chinese media outlets are saying extremely weird stuff because
Speaker 1: they're confused by it. So it is a it is
Speaker 1: a muddled is a muddled mess, I mean, And everything
Speaker 1: about this last weekend's been uddled. There's been so many
Speaker 1: different mass shootings this weekend. There's been people being paring
Speaker 1: away about copycat mash shootings to know. Yesterday there was
Speaker 1: reporting that a gunman entered a church in Buffalo, um
Speaker 1: that was not actually true. It's someone someone in the
Speaker 1: church yelled, um, like there's a gunman or something or
Speaker 1: like um or like get the gun down or something um,
Speaker 1: and it caused people to create this this the kind
Speaker 1: of rumor, but that there wasn't actually someone with a
Speaker 1: gun it was it was this someone was like reacting
Speaker 1: to the sermon that was that that was being had. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, everyone's been super paranoid about every stuff and
Speaker 1: all this kind of stuff, as as they should be.
Speaker 1: So sorting through sorting through all this stuff is very
Speaker 1: complicated and uh, not a great time because it's not
Speaker 1: it's not fun um and we shouldn't have to do it,
Speaker 1: but it sucks. Do you think it's also worth noting
Speaker 1: that the police did not stop, uh, I know, specifically,
Speaker 1: they did not stop the one in the church, the
Speaker 1: past pastor, a pastor, hit the hit him with a
Speaker 1: hit him with steel chair, and then they hog tied
Speaker 1: him with an extension toward and then the police came,
Speaker 1: which is so dope. Um. I'm sorry they were ever
Speaker 1: in that position. They should never have to be in
Speaker 1: that position. But it's turned out more and more people
Speaker 1: are having to do themselves because it's not also the
Speaker 1: first time that a mass shooter has been stopped by
Speaker 1: someone hitting them with a chair. If I'm not mistaken,
Speaker 1: that's how the Gifford shooter was stopped eventually, or part
Speaker 1: of how he was stopped to somebody fucking deck him
Speaker 1: with a chair. It's yeah, it's it's really useful to
Speaker 1: have something beyond just your limbs. Yea. If someone is
Speaker 1: trying to shoot you with the gun, ideally you get away.
Speaker 1: But if you can't get away, trying to hit them
Speaker 1: in the face with something heavy is certainly a choice
Speaker 1: that has saved a number of people's lives. God what
Speaker 1: what an absolutely dogshit country. It's not a great time.
Speaker 1: And when I you know, I noted earlier anyone trying
Speaker 1: to sell you like simple solutions, and I mentioned gun
Speaker 1: control on that, which is not to say that like
Speaker 1: the outrageously easy, how how ridiculously easy it is to
Speaker 1: get any kind of gun in this country. Obviously that's
Speaker 1: a factor in these shootings. My my um hesitance to
Speaker 1: take gun control as a if you'll forgive the term
Speaker 1: magic bullet to fix any of this is number one,
Speaker 1: the sheer number of guns that are already propagated, number two,
Speaker 1: the fact that a lot of gun control measures boiled
Speaker 1: down to making it harder for poor people to get guns,
Speaker 1: and neither of these shootings seem to have been poor
Speaker 1: people shooting up UM folks. And just also the fact
Speaker 1: that while some states are capable of passing additional gun
Speaker 1: control number one, New York's basically done everything it's constitutional
Speaker 1: to do are e restricting gun ownership UM and federally,
Speaker 1: Biden and their Dems can't protect Roevie Wade. There's sure
Speaker 1: a ship not gonna pass any federalfect people want as well,
Speaker 1: like they're specifically doing this to get this stuff started
Speaker 1: so that it increases plays. Whether or not to agree
Speaker 1: with my fundamental claim, you don't have to. You can
Speaker 1: believe that if gun to control were to be passed,
Speaker 1: it could be the solution, but it's not gonna be.
Speaker 1: And so like as as regards those of us trying
Speaker 1: to survive, UM, we have to look in other directions
Speaker 1: because you're not going to get an assault weapons span.
Speaker 1: It's just not happening. Yeah, I mean the one good
Speaker 1: I don't I don't say good thing, but it has
Speaker 1: been nice to see pool slowly uh dropping the whole
Speaker 1: like londe wolf terminology. That is a positive development because
Speaker 1: these are not not a lone wolf. It's it's part
Speaker 1: of a very it's part of an intentional effort to
Speaker 1: cause these things to happen. Part the groups may be decentralized,
Speaker 1: but they are not anything they are but they Yeah,
Speaker 1: they are decentralized in acephalis, but they are deeply, deeply
Speaker 1: sophisticated and connected, just not in a way you can
Speaker 1: drone strike easily. Well yeah, and I think I would
Speaker 1: have some target suggestions anyway, get knifefack, do stop the
Speaker 1: and don't don't feed into their propaganda in the way
Speaker 1: their propaganda um organized with folks in your neighborhood. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: well kids, adults, boys and girls, and individuals of non
Speaker 1: binary or other gender identities. Uh. Cats who happened to
Speaker 1: be listening in um airwolf the helicopter if you're listening
Speaker 1: in everybody, every sentient creature listening. You know. I do
Speaker 1: believe that things can get better. So part of that
Speaker 1: is not letting the crimes that these the things that
Speaker 1: these people do, Like, part of the purpose of an
Speaker 1: attack like this is to make people feel hopeless and overwhelmed.
Speaker 1: It's to blackpill you you know, to to to utilize
Speaker 1: some of their terminology. So the way to fight against
Speaker 1: it is, among other things, if you're talking about immediate
Speaker 1: things you can do, go out and do something nice
Speaker 1: to help people. And you know, I would say like
Speaker 1: as as sort of like one brief last note, like yeah,
Speaker 1: like in Taiwan they overtoe the dictatorship and oh hey,
Speaker 1: it turns out people stop getting assassinated by the KNT
Speaker 1: American soil. So you know, over overthrow your governments and
Speaker 1: YouTube can make peace with your enemies. Yeah, overthrow your government,
Speaker 1: overthrow another government. You know, it's all good. It's all good, baby.
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