Speaker 1: On April four, Dr Martin Luther King was shot and
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Speaker 1: was arrested. Case closed right James Sylvay was a pawn
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Speaker 1: as I was concerned, did not match the circumstances. This
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Speaker 1: Wednesday on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe. Now, Hey, everybody, Robert
Speaker 1: Evans here, and I wanted to let you know. This
Speaker 1: is a compilation episode. So every episode of the week
Speaker 1: that just happened is here in one convenient and with
Speaker 1: somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in
Speaker 1: a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening
Speaker 1: to the episodes every day this week, there's gonna be
Speaker 1: nothing new here for you, but you can make your
Speaker 1: own decisions. Welcome to it happens sometimes the podcast where
Speaker 1: it's happened. Shit, Um, Garrison, Chris, somebody, somebody, somebody picked
Speaker 1: this up. This is on you. Anybody anybody got help
Speaker 1: out of this one? Okay, Well, you know what podcasts
Speaker 1: this is. You've been listening, presumably for months, or this
Speaker 1: is your first time listening. If so, I've probably lost
Speaker 1: you already with that Bush League introduction. Jesus christ Um,
Speaker 1: I'm Robert Evans. This is a show about how things
Speaker 1: fall apart and how to maybe stop them from falling
Speaker 1: apart as much. And today we're talking to some people
Speaker 1: who were in kind of the best case scenario situation
Speaker 1: for having a bunch of authoritarians try to UH dominate
Speaker 1: your country, by which I mean we're talking to some
Speaker 1: Chilean activists who who who won? Um, inasmuch as it's
Speaker 1: it's possible to win in the world. UM, it's a
Speaker 1: pretty exciting situation. UM happening there. I'm excited to introduce
Speaker 1: people to like what's been going on. But first I
Speaker 1: want to introduce our guests for today. UM, y'all wanna
Speaker 1: you'll wanna say hello. Hello. My name is Jeremiah. I'm
Speaker 1: from the United States. I've lived in Chile for the
Speaker 1: last ten years, and I'm Stephanie Ahead, I'm a Chilian
Speaker 1: and I'm leaving here with with my my husband. And Hi.
Speaker 1: I'm Nicholas. Um, I'm too, and I have been living
Speaker 1: here for my whole life. Yeah. So we started a
Speaker 1: small group called Unitos to do some activism to try
Speaker 1: to get out the vote for the Plelicito, to try
Speaker 1: to UH last year to get the constitution approved to
Speaker 1: be voted on, and and it was successful. So we
Speaker 1: are proud of the small bit of work that we
Speaker 1: did to help that happen. And so today the constitution
Speaker 1: is being written and it's a very exciting time. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I want to let's pull back a little bit
Speaker 1: because the last time we we talked about UM, Chile
Speaker 1: on behind the bastards in two thousand nineteen, when UM
Speaker 1: a protest that started as some I think it's fair
Speaker 1: to say zoomers protesting a fair increase by like jumping
Speaker 1: fares at the at the underground the subway, UM was
Speaker 1: met with police doing police stuff, which was met with
Speaker 1: people taking to the streets and very significant numbers, which
Speaker 1: is the thing that by now a lot more people
Speaker 1: are experienced with. But unlike kind of what happened in
Speaker 1: my country, you did it. You made him blink, and
Speaker 1: and that's what the plebiscite is, right, Like the there
Speaker 1: was an agreement made to give because Chile was still,
Speaker 1: if I'm not mistaken, governed under the same constitution that
Speaker 1: that Pinochet had had, right UM, and Pinochet famously not
Speaker 1: a great guy. UM, So I wonder if you might
Speaker 1: give us kind of an overview of y'all's experience during
Speaker 1: that time time, from like the start of the protests
Speaker 1: to oh ship, we might actually get to change things
Speaker 1: at a pretty fundamental level in our country. UM. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it was incredible time about exactly two years ago,
Speaker 1: so just the eighth of October was just a two
Speaker 1: year anniversary. And um, as you said, it all started
Speaker 1: with um literal high schoolers, sixteen year olds who were
Speaker 1: protesting a thirty paso increase, which is, you know, like
Speaker 1: increase in the metro. But we of course have one
Speaker 1: of the most expensive metros in the world and a
Speaker 1: very low um uh minimum wage here. And so as
Speaker 1: you said, they went out there and started to jump
Speaker 1: the turnstiles, but in massive groups, hundreds of them going
Speaker 1: to the metro together and all jumping um together. And
Speaker 1: in response, the government ended up closing the metros. And
Speaker 1: so it was this Friday night, UM, and we were
Speaker 1: having dinner and uh, suddenly the metros were all closed
Speaker 1: and everyone had to just walk home from work or
Speaker 1: dinner or where they were. And that was kind of
Speaker 1: the beginning of everything. And it was almost like the
Speaker 1: government brought it on themselves, because suddenly there were thousands
Speaker 1: of people in the streets just because they had no
Speaker 1: other way to get home and from there, Uh, they
Speaker 1: there were protests, and the protests were met with extreme
Speaker 1: police oppression and water cannons and tear gas and all
Speaker 1: of that, and UM. Eventually it led to one March,
Speaker 1: which had over a million people throughout Chile marching and
Speaker 1: UM a series of marches and protests basically every week
Speaker 1: for months. UM and finally UH it came down to UH.
Speaker 1: They announced that there would be this Plebilist site and
Speaker 1: it was a vote, UM, yes or no to create
Speaker 1: a new constitution, because yes, Chile is still There were
Speaker 1: some reforms in the early two thousands to the constitution,
Speaker 1: but UM still U we live under the constitution written
Speaker 1: by him Gustman, UM kind of you know, Cha's right
Speaker 1: hand man, and we happen to live. Nico is our
Speaker 1: good friend and also our next door neighbor, and we
Speaker 1: live about four blocks from the Plaza UM formerly Plaza Italia.
Speaker 1: Now the protesters have deemed it Plaza Dignidad, and so
Speaker 1: we've been just in the middle of it. And UH
Speaker 1: for for a couple of months, our our whole neighborhood
Speaker 1: was like a war zone and UH, just really crazy
Speaker 1: protests every single day and and tear gas and all
Speaker 1: of that, and it was it was really intense for
Speaker 1: a while, and it still is. You know. UM, last Friday, UH,
Speaker 1: we you know, were met with tear gas and water
Speaker 1: cannons again. So it's it's it's even though the kind
Speaker 1: the constitution is being written again and the pledgliscite was
Speaker 1: a year ago, but the police are still out there
Speaker 1: being bastards. Yeah. I'm curious what each of you kind
Speaker 1: of sees as the moment when or if you because
Speaker 1: maybe I was going too optimistic, right Like I guess
Speaker 1: I'm wondering, do you think that a corner has been turned,
Speaker 1: and and if so, what was kind of the moment
Speaker 1: each of you felt that like, oh my god, we
Speaker 1: might actually this isn't just gonna be like showing up
Speaker 1: to get the ship kicked out of us. We were
Speaker 1: going to get somewhat least of what we're fighting for.
Speaker 1: Wait technic Yeah, I mean I think that like that
Speaker 1: particular moment was when we finally went to the elections
Speaker 1: to who you call the referendum for the for this
Speaker 1: new constitution, and we were kind of skeptic about the
Speaker 1: percentage of people who approved this new constitution because a
Speaker 1: few months ago or a few weeks before this referendum,
Speaker 1: we have like continuing questions polls. We had the polls
Speaker 1: and they were kind of fifty, so we're kind of
Speaker 1: skeptic about are we gonna have a new constitution or not?
Speaker 1: And that the same night, I mean, the process very quick,
Speaker 1: so after I know, the this thing close at six
Speaker 1: pm and then you have the results like three hours later.
Speaker 1: So on the same day we're having the results and
Speaker 1: it was like eighty against twenties. So it was like
Speaker 1: kind of shocking. I mean, we I think that nobody
Speaker 1: was expecting to have this kind of eight percent of
Speaker 1: the people until they were I want to throw to
Speaker 1: the being the you know, tech constitution. So it's kind
Speaker 1: of like, I know, I will say that the best moment. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's this. There's an American, a deceased American um sociologist
Speaker 1: who who wrote an essay that I find quite influential
Speaker 1: called the Shock of Victory, and it's about how activists
Speaker 1: often failed to take advantage of of their momentum, like
Speaker 1: because they're kind of surprised at the success early on,
Speaker 1: and then they don't properly take advantage of what they
Speaker 1: have when they have it, and and you know, progress
Speaker 1: gets turned back, which I think we've seen happen in
Speaker 1: the United States in the wake of of what happened
Speaker 1: here last summer. Why do you think that that hasn't
Speaker 1: happened in Chile? What do you think it is that
Speaker 1: that that enabled UM, you you all to actually keep
Speaker 1: the pressure on and and take advantage of that that
Speaker 1: mint in time, which which never I guess that's what
Speaker 1: I'm impressed with the most, is that you you all
Speaker 1: did manage to make that momentum work for you rather
Speaker 1: than kind of letting it pull you off balance. And
Speaker 1: I guess I'm just trying to get a handle on
Speaker 1: on how UM. I guess for me, what I think
Speaker 1: it's lost a lot in the conversation is UM the
Speaker 1: premier LINEA, so the first line of defense. And so
Speaker 1: you have UM a bunch of young people, anarchists, you know,
Speaker 1: just crazy young people who went out there to fight
Speaker 1: with the cops every single day, and it was really
Speaker 1: impressive and a lot of times we uh, I don't know,
Speaker 1: I feel like they don't get the credit they deserve
Speaker 1: because you know, they're the delintements and that you know,
Speaker 1: we talk a lot about the big marches when there
Speaker 1: was a million people in the street and and obviously,
Speaker 1: like Nico said, winning the vote by seventy percent showed
Speaker 1: that it was something that everyone in Chile wanted. But
Speaker 1: it never would have happened if it weren't for the
Speaker 1: this small group of of fighters who were there every
Speaker 1: single day, facing tear gas and water cannons and police
Speaker 1: beating them up with you know, throwing rocks and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. So I think that's the main thing. It
Speaker 1: wasn't like once a month or even once a week.
Speaker 1: It was every single day, and they were there on
Speaker 1: the front line, and it none of this would be
Speaker 1: possible without them. That's fascinating to me because obviously things
Speaker 1: like that, groups like that existed here, like in Portland,
Speaker 1: went every night for not as long, but for not
Speaker 1: an insignificant amount of time, and it was those same
Speaker 1: It was a lot of these kind of young anarchists,
Speaker 1: front liners who were willing to go toe to toe
Speaker 1: with the cops every night. But you didn't have you
Speaker 1: didn't have that kind of larger, more moderate popular lists
Speaker 1: backing them up. And I guess one of the things
Speaker 1: I'm curious about is what was kind of the you
Speaker 1: mentioned you don't think they get the credit they deserve.
Speaker 1: Was there a broad attitude that like, these people are
Speaker 1: the ones going face to face with the cops so
Speaker 1: that those of us, you know, people who are older,
Speaker 1: people who aren't and it's going to ship people who
Speaker 1: can't physically take as much abuse can still show up
Speaker 1: or was it. I'm kind of curious how how those
Speaker 1: people represented what they were doing and how it how
Speaker 1: it was seen by most of kind of the more
Speaker 1: moderate people who still supported change around you, because that
Speaker 1: that dynamic exists in any mass protest movement, and I'm
Speaker 1: it worked where you are, and I'm trying to get
Speaker 1: a handle on maybe how it was different than what
Speaker 1: I saw in Portland. Uh so now a lot of
Speaker 1: them are in Yo and um or without one eye,
Speaker 1: so is uh, it's really terrible because we have all
Speaker 1: these new beautiful process but we are you know, uh,
Speaker 1: really completely democracy with liberty with the for this guy
Speaker 1: or or democracy for all this um person that loose
Speaker 1: eyes or uh yeah and everyone that was injured. Um so, yeah,
Speaker 1: a lot of protests nowadays. Actually, I think today right
Speaker 1: now there's a protest going on to free the political
Speaker 1: prisoners um and uh. But yeah, I mean I think
Speaker 1: they're even among you know, obviously of the country voted
Speaker 1: for the new constitution. So there's a lot of different
Speaker 1: points of view there. But but yeah, there was division
Speaker 1: even among the left. A lot of people said, you know,
Speaker 1: this is not the form of this is not the
Speaker 1: way to protest, and we should not be violent and
Speaker 1: you know, burning things and um. But but there was
Speaker 1: a lot I mean, you saw a lot of the
Speaker 1: opposite where people were were saying, just as you said,
Speaker 1: like those out there on the front line are the
Speaker 1: reason that the older people and others can come out
Speaker 1: and feel safer to protest because the Primary LINEA is
Speaker 1: kind of taking the brunt of the violence from the police,
Speaker 1: and that allows the older people and those who are
Speaker 1: are less confrontational to be out there in protest. So
Speaker 1: for me, some of some of the most inspiring signs
Speaker 1: I remember seeing are like folks that are eighty years
Speaker 1: old and they have signs that say, you know, Gracia
Speaker 1: sala Primary LINEA. You know, like thank you to the
Speaker 1: front liners who who are taking that violence so that
Speaker 1: they are able the others to to protest um in
Speaker 1: a more peaceful way. That's such a fascinating situation to
Speaker 1: me that you've got You've got these these more radical
Speaker 1: frontliners who were, as you say, critical in allowing this,
Speaker 1: this really groundbreaking change to occur in your society. But
Speaker 1: at the same time, things haven't changed enough that Number one,
Speaker 1: the cops will beat the ship out of them, I'm
Speaker 1: guessing are still largely employed, um and and a bunch
Speaker 1: of them are in jail. Do you have much hope
Speaker 1: that at the very least there will be something to
Speaker 1: like get these people out or is it is that
Speaker 1: maybe a bridge. I don't know, I don't know your
Speaker 1: country obviously, Well, you know, I'm curious, like, do you
Speaker 1: feel like there's much hope in pushing for that, because
Speaker 1: it seems like, you know, those people need to be free. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, most of these guys who are in prison
Speaker 1: and they have spent like, oh no, like twelve months
Speaker 1: in prison without any evidence, so only the world of
Speaker 1: the cops against them. So after I know, like thirteen
Speaker 1: months for two months, they will finally get released because
Speaker 1: they have they have no evidence, or they could they
Speaker 1: you may find that the police they made up all
Speaker 1: the evidence, so they they finally go out. But I mean,
Speaker 1: you spend like almost a year in prison, that's yeah,
Speaker 1: it's clearly like political. I mean you're a political prisoner,
Speaker 1: like they got They got you in prison with no evidence,
Speaker 1: without any probit process. They keep you in prison for
Speaker 1: a year. Um, who's gonna pay for that? I mean
Speaker 1: you lost a year. Yeah, Like we're talking so far
Speaker 1: about the sacrifice is made here. What do you think
Speaker 1: with this new constitution? You and your your your fellow Chileans.
Speaker 1: What are you gonna get? Like? How what are the
Speaker 1: changes that are seemed to be most concrete and the
Speaker 1: ones that you think are most important. I think already
Speaker 1: it's been groundbreaking. I believe it's the only constitution ever
Speaker 1: to be written by a plurality of women and and
Speaker 1: also to have a representation from the indigenous peoples. And
Speaker 1: so it's already been very um inspiring and groundbreaking. Um.
Speaker 1: The President of the Constitutional Convention is a very inspiring
Speaker 1: um Mapuche leader woman. UM. And the good thing is
Speaker 1: that the right um it represents less than one third
Speaker 1: of the Constitutional Convention, so they don't have the power
Speaker 1: to block um anything uh as far as only by
Speaker 1: the right. So we will see. But they literally just
Speaker 1: started writing the constitution last week. So yeah, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: still but that's I mean, that's that's a significant Is
Speaker 1: there a kind of a broad agreement that one of
Speaker 1: the things that needed to happen here was a redress
Speaker 1: of grievances between the indigenous people UM and the and
Speaker 1: the state because it's it sounds like that's a significant
Speaker 1: chunk of what's what's been already agreed upon. Just but
Speaker 1: like how this is coming together? Yeah so, uh, well,
Speaker 1: Nicole probably tell a lot more about this than I could.
Speaker 1: But Um, there's a big deal with the United with
Speaker 1: the indigenous people in the South and the government UM
Speaker 1: basically waging war against the indigenous people. Actually, uh, two
Speaker 1: weeks ago, Nia the current right wing president UM declared
Speaker 1: a state of emergency in the South and he just
Speaker 1: extended it for fifteen more days. So we have the
Speaker 1: military in the south, um, and they are you know,
Speaker 1: with the tanks and attaching attacking the the Mapuche and
Speaker 1: other indigenous people there. And uh so Yeah, a big
Speaker 1: aspect of Chile right now is the the the fight
Speaker 1: between and and the oppression of the government against the
Speaker 1: native people. And and it's a cultural thing too. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's really heavy everyone. Most people here in Chile
Speaker 1: are are mixed, you know, between the the natives and
Speaker 1: and the white men and everything. And you know the
Speaker 1: Europeans um, but the Mapuche and the other indigenous groups
Speaker 1: have really not um received a lot of respect in
Speaker 1: the last thirty years. And and so yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: big aspect. Yeah, I'll say, like for me, it's very
Speaker 1: inspiring to have like the pressing of this new constitution
Speaker 1: to be uh I'm a picture woman. Oh um, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I guess that the most important thing, like
Speaker 1: the thing that this indigenous people want to call is
Speaker 1: the land. I mean land for them is the most
Speaker 1: important thing. And that's what the government only for the
Speaker 1: last three hundred years they have been taken from to them. Um.
Speaker 1: They are now like trying to claim again their their
Speaker 1: their space. So I mean let's call that this new
Speaker 1: constitution will bring them back their land, um, their respect
Speaker 1: that they deserve. Now there's been a lot of discussion
Speaker 1: about this new constitution as I think the term used
Speaker 1: as an ecological constitution um, and it's it's the necessity
Speaker 1: of it addressing a lot of the climate, not just
Speaker 1: climate change, but like a lot of the things caused
Speaker 1: by climate change, like unequal access to water. Um. There's
Speaker 1: been discussion in the Asio Coasta of of the f
Speaker 1: I m A and GEO has Has is arguing currently
Speaker 1: that the Constitution needs to enshrine a human right to
Speaker 1: water and recognize it as a common good. Um. It's
Speaker 1: obviously again they're writing it this week, so it's kind
Speaker 1: of unclear if that's going to happen. Um. But I'm
Speaker 1: I'm wondering kind of what you what y'all think it's
Speaker 1: actually because as you've talked about, you know, with the
Speaker 1: protests ongoing, with the military being deployed in the South,
Speaker 1: this is not a finished fight. Um, It's just a
Speaker 1: fight that a lot of progress has been made on.
Speaker 1: What do you think is reasonable to expect from this
Speaker 1: new constitution in terms of of of climate change, in
Speaker 1: terms of ecological justice. I will so I think the
Speaker 1: right of the of water. H So water is privatized here,
Speaker 1: so chileans here in Santiago, we have to pay a
Speaker 1: Spanish company too for our water. Sure. UM. I would say,
Speaker 1: like the economy in this country is based on like strativism,
Speaker 1: So you have like the most productive thing is mining,
Speaker 1: and then you have like the forest three. Um, all
Speaker 1: these things like they have an enormous impact on the
Speaker 1: environment and the people. Until I mean the people who
Speaker 1: live right next to these kind of things, they don't
Speaker 1: get anything from them. I mean, the poorest places are
Speaker 1: like right next to the first three, rightness to the mining.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of like we're creating a lot of
Speaker 1: income from these things, but we're not getting anything from
Speaker 1: them and all. I mean. Also, it's not like a
Speaker 1: thing like let's get everything back to the state, I
Speaker 1: mean to the state, because it's it's more than that.
Speaker 1: It's just like like, um, ecological equality equity. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not saying we should take all of the private
Speaker 1: water and give it to the state as much as
Speaker 1: it's saying everyone who lives here has a has a
Speaker 1: personal right to enough water to survive. Yeah. So you
Speaker 1: have rounds where small little towns and they don't have
Speaker 1: any water to drink because all of their water is
Speaker 1: to the going to the farm owned by Nestley to make,
Speaker 1: you know, to grow avocados to sell to Europe and
Speaker 1: the United States. So um, yeah, it's it's uh, it's
Speaker 1: it's a pretty crazy thing. One of the things that's
Speaker 1: most interesting to me about your situation is you you
Speaker 1: are in a place where not entirely similar dissimilar from
Speaker 1: the United States, you have a police in a military
Speaker 1: that are heavily dominated by by right wing ideology. Obviously,
Speaker 1: like the United States is partly responsible for that. In
Speaker 1: your case, we we funded it for a very long time.
Speaker 1: Um and uh, and so it's still an ongoing fight.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, clearly the people are unhappy
Speaker 1: enough with that situation and hold like that they were
Speaker 1: able to make they were able to force the folks
Speaker 1: with with guns to um, to recognize that they can't
Speaker 1: hold on to everything that they wanted to hold onto.
Speaker 1: And I, I guess, I'm what, how can we do that? Um?
Speaker 1: I'm very impressed by like, and you know, watching from
Speaker 1: the sidelines, I was just so happy to see this
Speaker 1: not go where I think we were all scared it
Speaker 1: might go, you know, in either the direction with like Syria,
Speaker 1: where it turns into this horrible blood bath or where
Speaker 1: everything gets crushed you know it. And and I I'm wondering,
Speaker 1: like why you think on a on a broader scale,
Speaker 1: what do you think was responsible for those people with
Speaker 1: access to the guns deciding we can't hold onto this. Like, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm just I'm so intensely curious about that because it's
Speaker 1: it's it's important for a lot of people and a
Speaker 1: lot of other parts of the world. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think it was just the protest and
Speaker 1: the daily protests and and just getting pressure, keeping the
Speaker 1: pressure on. And at some point, you know, it's like, hey,
Speaker 1: this is not good for the economy, you know, like
Speaker 1: so all of the rich people, um, and you know,
Speaker 1: the ten families that are in control of you know,
Speaker 1: sixty or seventy percent of the wealth of the country. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they at some point had to recognize that this
Speaker 1: was something that that you know, had reached its boiling
Speaker 1: point and and that they could no longer respond with
Speaker 1: just force because they tried it and it didn't work
Speaker 1: for months and it was just months and months of
Speaker 1: protests and um and uh. And obviously that caused a
Speaker 1: hit to the economy, and that caused a hit to
Speaker 1: the wallets of of the ultra rich. And so at
Speaker 1: some point they realized that they had no other move
Speaker 1: to play than to accept it in some way and uh.
Speaker 1: And that's how we got, you know, this new constitution
Speaker 1: that is being written. One thing I was interested about
Speaker 1: is did geography of the protest because I know Chile
Speaker 1: very urban population. And also it was is it like
Speaker 1: it's like a quarter of the population or something lives
Speaker 1: in Santiago, like in that area. And I'm yeah, so sorry.
Speaker 1: I just want to note, if I'm not mistaken, there
Speaker 1: were only five. You have kind of communes instead of states,
Speaker 1: is what they're called. Um, like ten voted in favor
Speaker 1: of the referendum and only five voted against it. If
Speaker 1: I'm not mistaken, Well, communes are within cities like different
Speaker 1: It's like Burroughs in New York, but we have different
Speaker 1: regions instead of states. And um, and I think they
Speaker 1: all voted. Yeah, there might be like seven voted. But
Speaker 1: what you might be thinking of, um, yeah, Robert, you
Speaker 1: might be thinking of communes in Santiago. Where Santiago is
Speaker 1: very Um. So it's all on the Rio Mapocho, the
Speaker 1: river which goes east to west across the city. And
Speaker 1: basically you have this like very rich part on the
Speaker 1: east and up into the hills and um, and then
Speaker 1: it gets poorer and poorer as you go to the west.
Speaker 1: And um. Yeah. For the vote for the constitution, Um,
Speaker 1: it was everyone voted for the constitution except for these communes,
Speaker 1: these ultra rich in the east. Oh, wow, amazing. Okay.
Speaker 1: Thing something I was curious about this was so when
Speaker 1: when the protests were going on, um, because you know,
Speaker 1: Chile's had like huge protests before, I mean even the
Speaker 1: last decade. What I was interested stid also with this
Speaker 1: time is like, well, hey, what do you think it's
Speaker 1: different about this than say like two thousand eleven wasn't thirteen?
Speaker 1: And then be in terms of like the geographic breakdown
Speaker 1: of where people are and where they're going? Is it
Speaker 1: that you know? So so you have this have this
Speaker 1: classified in the city, but we're we're the working class districts,
Speaker 1: like we're people staying there in the stra structure where
Speaker 1: they like moving from those places like to protest inside
Speaker 1: of the richer urban areas. I would say, like, I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: we have like many protests in the past, but there
Speaker 1: were more kind of like I don't know, like students protests,
Speaker 1: and then you have like you know, like the university protests.
Speaker 1: But when we have like this protest like that the
Speaker 1: one we have on to Townside nineteen, it's like something
Speaker 1: that unites everyone. I mean, you don't have to be
Speaker 1: a student, you don't have to go to university to protest.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's something that it's affecting everyone. I mean
Speaker 1: the fairs of the Metro, they affect everything, and they
Speaker 1: in equality in the country affects everyone. So UM, I
Speaker 1: mean that I guess that's that's the thing that make
Speaker 1: this protests of the todasan nineteen unique in this term. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think it was actually a problem when all
Speaker 1: the protests were happening. A lot of people were saying,
Speaker 1: we can't keep going to the plaza. You know, the
Speaker 1: cops are just going to wait for us in the plaza,
Speaker 1: and you know it's going to be a ship show,
Speaker 1: and we need to you know, protest all over And
Speaker 1: there were protests across Chile and every single major city. UM,
Speaker 1: but I will say the majority of the protests have
Speaker 1: been um here in the plaza and close to Lamoneta
Speaker 1: where the presidential palace and UM but some of the
Speaker 1: most memoriable protests and and the Coast and Eera Center,
Speaker 1: the tallest building in Latin America, which is a mall
Speaker 1: and a monument to this idea that Pinera has of
Speaker 1: UM the way of Chile being an oasis in South America.
Speaker 1: We're not like other countries where we're like the United States,
Speaker 1: you know, where this capital is some capitalists oasis and exactly. Um.
Speaker 1: But but yeah, so some of the most memorial protests,
Speaker 1: they weren't super common, but we're exactly that where the
Speaker 1: people said, you know what, we're not going to the plaza,
Speaker 1: We're going to Coast Nara Center, or we're going to
Speaker 1: Vita Kara, We're going to where the millionaires live, where
Speaker 1: they work. And um. That those were really powerful. And
Speaker 1: so that's when you started to see like all of
Speaker 1: those banks and malls and just blocks and blocks of
Speaker 1: what the rich folk like to call Sanhattan, you know,
Speaker 1: Santiago Manhattan, the skyscraper part of the city, and it
Speaker 1: was just all boarded up, you know. Um because there
Speaker 1: there were definitely a couple of weeks where the protests
Speaker 1: went that way and and and yeah, it was inspiring.
Speaker 1: What I keep coming back to when I look about
Speaker 1: like why it worked, It wasn't because the front liners
Speaker 1: just kept the pressure up, because the front liners did.
Speaker 1: In a lot of places here, the front liners stayed
Speaker 1: out well after everyone else stopped coming out. It's that
Speaker 1: the population kept up the pressure. Like the there were
Speaker 1: like Chile as a as a as a nation, as
Speaker 1: a as a people kept up the pressure in in
Speaker 1: a in a pretty significant way, um as opposed to
Speaker 1: kind of fading back after the first couple of weeks.
Speaker 1: And I mean it, I think I'm sure the question
Speaker 1: of why it happened has a lot to do with,
Speaker 1: like you said, inequality, you know, things that have been
Speaker 1: going on for decades. It's it's a it's a complex situation,
Speaker 1: but it does seem like that's one of the big
Speaker 1: takeaways that if you can you can secure even in
Speaker 1: even in a pretty terrifying situation, a lot of concessions,
Speaker 1: a lot of of what you need. But but people
Speaker 1: have to have to keep putting themselves out there. Yeah. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: I would say it's a couple of things. Um. One
Speaker 1: is um as you mentioned, I think it's like the
Speaker 1: culture of protests here, you know, especially in the last
Speaker 1: ten years, like um with the revolution, Penguin and mices
Speaker 1: inn um, you know, and there were and the feminist
Speaker 1: protests them and um. So it's it's not something that
Speaker 1: just happened two years ago. It's the last decade or
Speaker 1: two has has been the people, especially the young people,
Speaker 1: going out there and protesting. And that's That's one thing
Speaker 1: that's inspiring about boris the candidate for president. The election
Speaker 1: is next month, So the left wing candidate, Boridge, and
Speaker 1: he came out of that movement. He was a student
Speaker 1: protester and a leader of the student movement, and so
Speaker 1: I think it's like it grew out of that, it
Speaker 1: grew out of kids in high school saying this is
Speaker 1: just what we do. This is normal. We go out
Speaker 1: there and protest when when ship happens. And and the
Speaker 1: other thing is, yeah, you know, we always say here
Speaker 1: in Chile after the protests started, Um, it's not thirty
Speaker 1: pace those it's thirty years, you know, thirty years of neoliberalism,
Speaker 1: of this revolving door of center right and center left
Speaker 1: and and just continuing on with the um economic oppression.
Speaker 1: And the other thing I feel like people don't understand
Speaker 1: is that, uh, you know, people either think Chile is
Speaker 1: like the United States or they think it's like Peru
Speaker 1: or something, you know, and it's really neither. In Chile,
Speaker 1: the minimum wage is half of what the United States is,
Speaker 1: which is already terrible. But um, the cost of living
Speaker 1: here is almost the same as you guys in Portland.
Speaker 1: I mean, not the housing probably, but like you know,
Speaker 1: food and stuff. Yeah, yeah, it's like Europe. You know,
Speaker 1: I could move to Berlin and live cheaper than here.
Speaker 1: You know, it is hard to of three times that,
Speaker 1: you know. So so I think it's that's the other
Speaker 1: thing is people just they they had no other choice,
Speaker 1: you know, and we're just bore down by by thirty years,
Speaker 1: you know, after twenty years of the dictatorship, thirty years
Speaker 1: of this terrible wages and um just neoliberalism, and so
Speaker 1: so I think it's it's partially that and partially just
Speaker 1: like the culture of protests that grew out of the
Speaker 1: student movements in in the early two thousand's, mm hmm. Yeah.
Speaker 1: There was one thing that was interested also about that
Speaker 1: I don't remember seeing much of at the time, was
Speaker 1: what was too late organized labor doing during this That's
Speaker 1: a good question. Honestly, labor hasn't been a big part
Speaker 1: of the protest, at least from my point of view.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't know, Yeah, I mean, it took
Speaker 1: a pretty strong hit during the Pinochet years off, I'm
Speaker 1: not mistaken, So there was kind of that, Like I
Speaker 1: guess that does make sense, sure, Yeah, Honestly, I don't
Speaker 1: know a whole lot about labor history here in Chile.
Speaker 1: But um, but yeah, it definitely is. I mean you
Speaker 1: would see, you know, um union groups in the streets
Speaker 1: here and there, but um, but but definitely they weren't
Speaker 1: a leading voice in the protest. I would say. Yeah, So,
Speaker 1: I guess that leads into the other. I guess one
Speaker 1: of the other things that, from from my understanding, has
Speaker 1: been happening all across Latin America, but but in in
Speaker 1: Chile in particular, is the rise of the informal sector
Speaker 1: and people just sort of not having access to sort
Speaker 1: of stable wages in labor. And I'm wondering about, Okay,
Speaker 1: so organized labors, like the classical unions aren't really involved
Speaker 1: in this, and I guess I'm I'm interested in how,
Speaker 1: if I'm right that that you're dealing with a lot
Speaker 1: of people who aren't doing traditional labor stuff, what was
Speaker 1: the process that was able to get people mobilized. It's like,
Speaker 1: especially people who just have no sort of like people
Speaker 1: who are in the informal sector and people who aren't
Speaker 1: involved in this sort of older classical organizations. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't know. I guess I would just say it's like
Speaker 1: that that culture of protests. UM. That comes from the
Speaker 1: young people who in the last twenty years, and then
Speaker 1: of course, UM, the older folks who um you know
Speaker 1: uh lived through the dictatorship, and of course, UM there
Speaker 1: were an incredible protest at that time too. And and
Speaker 1: so I don't know. I mean, honestly, I was even
Speaker 1: after living here for you know, six years, UM, I
Speaker 1: was shocked. I never thought it would come to this.
Speaker 1: I never thought I would see, you know, over half
Speaker 1: a million people in the streets of Santiago. Um. And
Speaker 1: and I would never never thought we'd see a new constitution. So, UM,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't I don't have the answer
Speaker 1: is it's uh, it's surprising to me. But UM, what
Speaker 1: I will say though, is I don't want to paint
Speaker 1: a Rosie portrait of Chile right now because if like
Speaker 1: we mentioned, you know, uh, tomorrow night, if you guys
Speaker 1: go to uh Galeria Seema c I m a on
Speaker 1: YouTube or Instagram. Um, they have a live feed of
Speaker 1: the plaza four blocks from our house. And every Friday,
Speaker 1: you know, you the protests come out and sometimes the
Speaker 1: cops are are right away and they make a whole
Speaker 1: perimeter with two cops and all of the you know,
Speaker 1: tanks and everything, UM, blocking entrance to the plaza in
Speaker 1: every direction. Sometimes they let the people protest, but then
Speaker 1: at ten o'clock, you know, after the sun comes down,
Speaker 1: they come out there, and you know it's it's the
Speaker 1: same thing were a young woman was was killed a
Speaker 1: couple of weeks ago. So and the other thing is
Speaker 1: that we have this election coming up, and uh, this
Speaker 1: guy Cast, extreme right winger Pinochetista, UM, just like they
Speaker 1: call him the Chilean Bosonaro, a real piece of ship.
Speaker 1: And uh he has um, he has really risen in
Speaker 1: the polls in the last month or two. UM. The
Speaker 1: right wing candidate Sitchell, who won the right wing primaries. UM.
Speaker 1: It was kind of going to be the successor to Pinera,
Speaker 1: the current right wing president. UM. Because in Chile, you know,
Speaker 1: you can't run consecutive you can't have consecutive terms. UM.
Speaker 1: But Sitchell just kind of was not a great candidate
Speaker 1: and uh kind of blew it and and he went down,
Speaker 1: and and now Cast is going up. And it's really
Speaker 1: scary to think about Cast getting into the second round, UM,
Speaker 1: where it will probably be him verse Boridge and UM.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, you know, even though the constitution was
Speaker 1: approved by seventy of the country. Um, you know, it's
Speaker 1: very possible that this election is going to come down
Speaker 1: to a runoff between a you know, moderate socialist like Boridge,
Speaker 1: um not the most extreme leftist in fact, known as Amario,
Speaker 1: you know, very yellow bellied year in Chile, that's his nickname. Um.
Speaker 1: But it will probably Right now, it's looking like it's
Speaker 1: going to come down to him and cast who is
Speaker 1: like almost a return to the dictatorship. So it's it's
Speaker 1: pretty scary, geez. So it's just this there's just so
Speaker 1: much fighting to do. Yeah, it's just so much fighting
Speaker 1: to do. Um, I mean I I uh yeah, um,
Speaker 1: do you have do any of you have anything else
Speaker 1: you want to make sure you say or talk about
Speaker 1: before we kind of close out for the day. Oh no,
Speaker 1: I will say, like three days ago, just pay my
Speaker 1: I finally paid my whole student loan. Like like, I've
Speaker 1: been working for more than ten years in my life,
Speaker 1: I mean since I finished Liniar City and I've been wasted,
Speaker 1: I mean, all my savings. I just pay this fucking
Speaker 1: student loan. I guess that you guys in this in
Speaker 1: the States are like the same like I don't know,
Speaker 1: except for people don't pay off their student stays there forever.
Speaker 1: And I just, I just I would like to wish
Speaker 1: to the other, to the coming people that I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't wish that future for my from I mean
Speaker 1: for the future people in this country. I don't wish
Speaker 1: anyone that I mean university, I mean all students should
Speaker 1: be UM study for free. I mean it's like unconsiderable
Speaker 1: for me. Yeah, So that was a big part of it.
Speaker 1: And then also the I pay pension system here which
Speaker 1: is totally privatized, and so you you the government just
Speaker 1: takes your money for retirement. You get to choose between
Speaker 1: four or five options which are private companies, and then um,
Speaker 1: if you make money, then uh, the company takes you know,
Speaker 1: their chunk of your your retirement as the payment for
Speaker 1: managing your fund. But if you lose money, then it's
Speaker 1: on you. So literally, you know, Stephie's mom is like,
Speaker 1: you know, checking on her retirement. How did I do
Speaker 1: this year? It's like, oh, you lost two thousand dollars
Speaker 1: this year. That's that's your requirement, Davids. You know, so
Speaker 1: you and you have you know, people here trying to
Speaker 1: live on you retirements of one hundred dollars a month. Wow,
Speaker 1: the military is receiving ten thous dollars a month, you know,
Speaker 1: So that was a big part of it, um. But
Speaker 1: I think what I always come back to here in
Speaker 1: Chile is, like we've said, the activist renamed the plaza Plaza,
Speaker 1: dig me Dad, And that's what it all comes down to,
Speaker 1: is just we're not asking for you know, ponies, as
Speaker 1: Hillary Clinton would say, We're not we're not asking for
Speaker 1: the moon. We're just asking for basic dignity that everyone deserves.
Speaker 1: And it's as simple as that. So we just have
Speaker 1: to cross our fingers and hope that we've done enough
Speaker 1: that that you know, at a minimum, you know, people
Speaker 1: can live and retire with some dignity, that's all. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh, and that enough ecological justice can be gained
Speaker 1: that people can survive what's coming um. Which it's it's
Speaker 1: nice to see at the very least that that's a
Speaker 1: central topic of discussion, um, Whereas in the United States,
Speaker 1: everyone in power seems fine with just ignoring the increasing
Speaker 1: problems right now. So I don't know, you know, I
Speaker 1: I again, I also don't want to be painting too
Speaker 1: rosy a picture as you've, as you've repeatedly clear, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of of struggle left still. Um, but at
Speaker 1: least you've you've you've achieved a lot. And I I'm
Speaker 1: just heartened by by hearing your story and and and
Speaker 1: hope that more people pay attention to what's happened there
Speaker 1: and try to take lessons from it, because I think
Speaker 1: we all need to be we all need to be
Speaker 1: gearing up um as as I'm sure you all will
Speaker 1: continue to continue to do anything else before we close out. UM. No,
Speaker 1: that's it. I mean, I completely agree. I think that
Speaker 1: just like the messages that like, you know, better things
Speaker 1: are possible, like real, real, real change can happen. You know,
Speaker 1: like this started, uh two years ago with high schoolers protesting,
Speaker 1: and now we're going to have a vote on a
Speaker 1: new constitution. And it's going to be an ecological constitution
Speaker 1: of blurring natural national constitution, um with respect for the
Speaker 1: indigenous people. It's it's uh, it's written by you know,
Speaker 1: an equal amount of men and women and everything and
Speaker 1: and so yeah, just I think for me, it's so
Speaker 1: easy for us who have grown up and you know,
Speaker 1: under the gloom of neoliberalism to to just get really
Speaker 1: depressed and fatalistic about it. And uh so for me,
Speaker 1: I feel the same way, like it's just such an
Speaker 1: inspiration and the Chilean and and especially the Chilean youth. Um.
Speaker 1: But but yeah, um, it's just an inspiration and uh
Speaker 1: and proof that that change can happen. Um. But it's
Speaker 1: not just voting. And you know, like Chileans have elected socialists,
Speaker 1: you know, the former president was a socialist, but it
Speaker 1: was just the same neo liberalism bullshit. So I think,
Speaker 1: you know, voting is great, but like that's just not
Speaker 1: enough and so you have to, um, you know, get
Speaker 1: out in the streets and try to organize and make
Speaker 1: real change in other ways as well. All Right, yeah,
Speaker 1: I agree entirely. Thank you all for coming on. Um.
Speaker 1: I couldn't appreciate it more And I hope you have
Speaker 1: a lovely rest of your day and a lovely continuing
Speaker 1: to uh stick it to the sons of bitches conquer
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Speaker 1: Hey Leeth the listeners tag here. Last season on Lethal Lit,
Speaker 1: you might remember I came to Hollow Falls on a
Speaker 1: mission clearing my aunt best name and making sure justice
Speaker 1: was finally served. But I hadn't counted on a rash
Speaker 1: of new murders tearing apart the town. My mission put
Speaker 1: myself and my friends in danger. Though it wasn't all bad,
Speaker 1: I'm going to be reality tig I like you, but
Speaker 1: now all signs point to a new serial killer in
Speaker 1: Hollow falls. If this game is just starting, you better
Speaker 1: believe I'm gonna win. I'm tig Torres and this is
Speaker 1: Lethal Lit. Catch up on season one of the hit
Speaker 1: murder mystery podcast Lethal Lit, a tig Tara's Mystery out now,
Speaker 1: and then tune in for all new thrills in season two,
Speaker 1: dropping weekly starting February nine. Subscribe now to never miss
Speaker 1: an episode. Listen to Leave the Lit on the I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to it could happen here. The show that
Speaker 1: is only introduced competently when either someone besides me is
Speaker 1: the one hosting the episode, or when I have a
Speaker 1: guest that I feel embarrassed about being incompetent in front of.
Speaker 1: And and this is this is the latter case, because
Speaker 1: today I'm talking with my friend and uh AT fired colleague,
Speaker 1: Molly Conjure. Molly, Welcome to the show. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: I got to do that like a professional. Welcome to
Speaker 1: the show. That's like an NPR shit right. I know
Speaker 1: people have been saying on the twitch stream that I
Speaker 1: have a very soothing NPR style. Boint you would be great.
Speaker 1: I would love to hear you uh, talking in NPR
Speaker 1: about how it's it's rad that those those people broke
Speaker 1: the windows on those police cars or whatever. No, I
Speaker 1: can't be allowed in respectable spaces. I can't be allowed there.
Speaker 1: They let me talk on a panel at Harvard one
Speaker 1: time and I accidentally said fun in front of a
Speaker 1: bunch of people. I mean, I assume Harvard students know
Speaker 1: a funk word or two. That one. Speaking of funk words,
Speaker 1: there's a couple of funk words who are under trial
Speaker 1: right now for inciting mass violence that led to human
Speaker 1: death and suffering. Um, you wanna you want to give
Speaker 1: us the overview we're we're talking today about, you know,
Speaker 1: do Unite the Right rally and Charlottestill in two thousand
Speaker 1: seventeen that led to three deaths, one as the result
Speaker 1: of direct violence. Had their higher who was murdered murdered
Speaker 1: by the fascist James Field, currently in prison for forever. Um, Yeah,
Speaker 1: forever that you know. His trial concluded a while ago. Um,
Speaker 1: But there has been churning through the legal system, a
Speaker 1: trial against Richard Spencer Jason Kessler, who was the main organizer.
Speaker 1: Um can't well, there's other uh plaintiffs, right, Yeah, a
Speaker 1: lot of a lot of fascists about you know, all
Speaker 1: of the things that they did, the fact that they
Speaker 1: clearly intended this to be a violent uh riot assault whatever,
Speaker 1: like they wanted to have it be a fucking lynching essentially,
Speaker 1: And there's a lot of evidence, including things they said
Speaker 1: to each other about building armies to murder people. Um. Anyway, Molly,
Speaker 1: you want to take it from here. I think I've
Speaker 1: introduced the situation. There's a trial going on. You have
Speaker 1: been listening to every day of it and covering it
Speaker 1: on Twitch very ably. UM, and I just kind of
Speaker 1: wanted to catch up with you. You also wrote an
Speaker 1: article in Slate with our friend Emily Gortchynsky about, um,
Speaker 1: what's like largely the jury selection of the trial. So
Speaker 1: I was wondering if you could just kind of give
Speaker 1: us an overview of what's happened so far, if your
Speaker 1: thoughts on it. Um. Yeah, that that seems that seems good. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So there's just right at the outset, this is a
Speaker 1: civil trial, right, this is not a criminal trial. No
Speaker 1: one's going to the No one's going to jail at
Speaker 1: the end of this. Some of the jail you call it, Oh,
Speaker 1: what's that? The Who's goal. We call it the Who's
Speaker 1: goal on this show. That's the property, Okay, Um, some
Speaker 1: of them already in jail obviously, Like you said, James
Speaker 1: Fields is serving twenty nine life sentences to that of life,
Speaker 1: it's a lot of life. So he was He was
Speaker 1: charged in in Virginia State courty by the Commonwealth of Virginia.
Speaker 1: He was convicted at trial of first degree murder and
Speaker 1: several counts of aggravated malicious wounding. Um. He was so
Speaker 1: that trial happened. He actually went to trial for that,
Speaker 1: but then he pleaded guilty in federal courts. Who was
Speaker 1: charged in two separate courts for the same underlying events,
Speaker 1: And in federal court he pleaded guilty to twenty nine
Speaker 1: federal hate crimes. Um. He pleaded guilty to hate crimes.
Speaker 1: So there's no debate about whether these were hate crimes. Right,
Speaker 1: and he pleaded guilty too. He pleaded guilty to avoid
Speaker 1: the death penalty because a hate crime, murder is a
Speaker 1: capital crime. So in this lawsuit, right, this this civil
Speaker 1: lawsuit against Deep Breath, Jason Kessler, Richard Spencer, Christopher Campbell,
Speaker 1: James Alex Field, Gang Got America, Andrew England Moonbase Holdings,
Speaker 1: Robert Asmond Or Raid, Nathan Tomiko, Elliott Klein, Identity Europe,
Speaker 1: Matthew Parrot, Matthew Himbuch, Traditionalist Worker Party, Michael Hill, Michael
Speaker 1: Tubsley of the South, Jeff Scoop now that the National
Speaker 1: Socialist Movement, Nationalist Front, Augustus oly Invictus, Reternal Order of
Speaker 1: the Alt Knights, Mike Kinevich, Loyal White Nights of the
Speaker 1: KKK East Coast, Knights of the KKK East Coast, Knights
Speaker 1: of the True Invisible Empire. Several of those parties have
Speaker 1: been dismissed from the suit. That's a lot, It's a
Speaker 1: lot of bad guys, right, Um, several of those parties
Speaker 1: have been dismissed from the suit. Augustus and Victus defaulted.
Speaker 1: Um kind of itchiness. That means the fact that he defaulted,
Speaker 1: Does that mean he was like, yes, right, he offered
Speaker 1: no defense. Yeah, so that's what that means. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean he's been dealing with a lot, what would. He's
Speaker 1: had some problems, he's been jails, he abducted his wife
Speaker 1: at gunpoint. Um. I think he's out of jail now,
Speaker 1: but he's had some personal problems. He's had some personal problems.
Speaker 1: So the underlying claim with the lawsuit is a section
Speaker 1: complaint a conspiracy to deprive people of civil rights. This
Speaker 1: is fundamentally at it's at his core an anti clan statute. Right,
Speaker 1: it was designed to disrupt clan organizing. Um. And that's
Speaker 1: kind of what it's being used for here, right. This
Speaker 1: is so the lawsuit was brought by by nine plaintiffs
Speaker 1: who were harmed people who got hurt at the rally.
Speaker 1: Most of the plaintiffs were physically injured in the car attack,
Speaker 1: although not all of them. Um, But these are people
Speaker 1: who are seeking damages, right, Like for all all the
Speaker 1: mootional weight, all the sort of social ramifications, fundamentally this
Speaker 1: is a case about damages. So the jury is going
Speaker 1: to say, Okay, these people were harmed. Do we believe
Speaker 1: they were harmed by a conspiracy to commit acts of violence?
Speaker 1: Conspiracy to commit racially motivated accidents? Right, So all of
Speaker 1: those elements have to there was k guys want to
Speaker 1: do racial violence when they assaulted people? Yeah? Was their conspiracy?
Speaker 1: Was it motivated by racial animus? And were overt acts
Speaker 1: of violence committed? And did those acts of violence harm
Speaker 1: these people? In a way that entitles them to damages.
Speaker 1: That's all the jury has to decide. Right, should be
Speaker 1: an open shed case, not a lot nowhere, but it
Speaker 1: does seem like kind of an open and shut case.
Speaker 1: It does, right, So, I guess if there are people
Speaker 1: out there who are not familiar with the events of
Speaker 1: that day, a lot of alt right groups, you know,
Speaker 1: overt Neo Nazi organizations, the Literal Clan, the Literal American
Speaker 1: Nazi Party, like Neo Confederate succession. David's Duke was there.
Speaker 1: David Duke was there. David Duke, who Elliott Klein described
Speaker 1: as an ideological grandfather when he was asking other organizers
Speaker 1: that he can invite him. Um, these guys came together,
Speaker 1: they came to Charlotte'sville. They brawldened the streets, they beat people,
Speaker 1: They hit them with shields. A Literal Clan wizard fired
Speaker 1: his gun at a black band while screaming die N word. Well, now, okay,
Speaker 1: it seems like you're reaching a bit to call that
Speaker 1: racially motivated. Well, that's something they're trying to litigate now, right,
Speaker 1: So you're probably familiar with the video of DeAndre Harris
Speaker 1: being beaten nearly to death by morrows of several different
Speaker 1: hate groups. Right, So one of the guys that beat
Speaker 1: him was a tv a P member. One of them
Speaker 1: was a League of the South member, and they worked
Speaker 1: together to beat this young man nearly to death while
Speaker 1: he was lying on the ground. And so that today
Speaker 1: they were talking about like, well, can we really say
Speaker 1: that was racially motivated? You know, can we really say
Speaker 1: can we really say? Yeah? Um? Yeah, I think we can.
Speaker 1: I think we can. Um. You know, his mother has
Speaker 1: been on podcasts since his conviction. I'm referring to Jacob Goodwin,
Speaker 1: the t TPP member, the man who used a t
Speaker 1: w P riot shield provided to him by Matthew Heinbach
Speaker 1: to beat this young man. His mother goes on Nazi
Speaker 1: podcast still to describe how her son is a martyr
Speaker 1: for the white cause there's no ambiguity. But where are
Speaker 1: you getting racially motivated from that moment? Right? Like there's
Speaker 1: a there's a picture of her with her arm around
Speaker 1: her son. Her son's like seven feet tall. He's a
Speaker 1: giant boy. To get her arm around her large adult son,
Speaker 1: and he's wearing a T shirt with a giant picture
Speaker 1: of George Lincoln Rockwell on it. Ah, you love the
Speaker 1: deep cuts, so you know. And Billy Roper's Christmas party, Yeah,
Speaker 1: another another Nazi. Right, So there's not a lot of
Speaker 1: ambiguity here for the average person. But so you know,
Speaker 1: like you were saying, Emily and I wrote about jury selection,
Speaker 1: jury selection is um so corporate seedings are generally speaking
Speaker 1: open to the public. Anyone can go to their local
Speaker 1: courthouse and you can sit through a trial. You can
Speaker 1: sit through the war deer process. You can see how
Speaker 1: a jury gets chosen. You can go trial hopping, get
Speaker 1: wasted re entertainment. As long as you say quietly, they
Speaker 1: can't make you leave. It's like a library. It's very
Speaker 1: discouraging because the whole point is to pic jurors who
Speaker 1: have never encountered reality. You pick people who don't have
Speaker 1: any opinions, right, because you want them to be able
Speaker 1: to be impartial. And the best way to make sure
Speaker 1: your jury is going to be impartial is to pick
Speaker 1: people who don't have any opinions. And if you don't
Speaker 1: have any opinions on whether or not it's good for
Speaker 1: Nazis to beat people in the streets. I would say
Speaker 1: that in and of itself as an opinion that you
Speaker 1: already have right the ability do not have an opinion
Speaker 1: about that. The jury selection took three days because they
Speaker 1: had to go through this process of speaking to each
Speaker 1: jury individually. Usually they'll they'll do it in batches, where
Speaker 1: they ask questions of people in batches, um. But this
Speaker 1: was so sensitive they didn't want to tame the jury pool,
Speaker 1: so they did it one by one. So it took
Speaker 1: three days, um. And they chose jurors who didn't have
Speaker 1: opinions about the existence of racism in the United States. Okay,
Speaker 1: that seems unbiased. Again, It's this thing you keep seeing
Speaker 1: where it's like, well, we can't let people have a bias,
Speaker 1: so it has to be people who have never heard
Speaker 1: of white supremacy, which is like, then that's a bias
Speaker 1: in favor of white supremacy. But of course that's the
Speaker 1: default of the system. It's like that's the tear, right,
Speaker 1: Like you stick white supremacy on the scale and you
Speaker 1: tear it, but then you add awareness of white supremacy
Speaker 1: and suddenly there's weight on it. You know, it's sorry,
Speaker 1: it's very frustrating. I know, you know, it's frustrating. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: I shouldn't frustrating to sit through listening to them to
Speaker 1: ask people, you know, because they had to fill out
Speaker 1: a questionnaire ahead of time, so so they can sort
Speaker 1: of sift through obvious knows um. And one of the
Speaker 1: questions was, you know, how do you feel about how
Speaker 1: concerned are you about these different kinds of prejudice, you know,
Speaker 1: prejudice against black people, prejudice against Hispanic people, prejudice agast
Speaker 1: Jewish people, are prejudice against white people. And a lot
Speaker 1: of people indicated that they were very concerned about anti
Speaker 1: white racism, and a lot of jurors were asked follow
Speaker 1: up questions about like, well, why aren't you more concerned
Speaker 1: about anti white racism. Why did you say you don't
Speaker 1: care about that because it's not real. Yeah, because I've
Speaker 1: never seen it in my entire life. Um, but okay,
Speaker 1: but we seated a jury. We did see the jury
Speaker 1: and there were you know, there's always concerned in a
Speaker 1: case like this that you just won't be able to
Speaker 1: get an impartial jury. But we got it could be worse, right,
Speaker 1: it could be worse. Um. There is a guy on
Speaker 1: the jury who said that in high school he was
Speaker 1: the victim of a racially motivated attack by by a
Speaker 1: Samoan person. Um because they didn't like white people. M hmm,
Speaker 1: I wonder what that person was doing. Slash say, black
Speaker 1: people who believe that they have a right to exist
Speaker 1: without being subjected to racism not impartial, can't be on
Speaker 1: the jury. But a white guy who says he was
Speaker 1: the victim of a hate crime because some and didn't
Speaker 1: like Howley's God, so people talking about like I don't
Speaker 1: like it when folks not from my island come here
Speaker 1: and function up and make it expensive. Yeah, that's anti
Speaker 1: white racist. Incredible, incredible. You know, it could be a worster,
Speaker 1: it could be a worse story, but it's not ideal. Um, God,
Speaker 1: where did we go from there? It's been It's been
Speaker 1: a little bit of a blur. Um can't well and
Speaker 1: Spencer don't have lawyers? Right? Well? Yeah, okay, so right
Speaker 1: because can't well, can't can't well? It is for people
Speaker 1: who aren't aware. Can't Well is representing himself and tell
Speaker 1: correct me if I'm wrong here. But he started by
Speaker 1: acknowledging the old saying that a person who represents themselves
Speaker 1: as a fool as a lawyer, but then said, but
Speaker 1: I'm not a fool in this case. Yeah, he said,
Speaker 1: you may have heard this, but that's not true here.
Speaker 1: That's not the case here. Unbelievable. And I didn't even
Speaker 1: stay in a Holiday and Express last night. Oh god.
Speaker 1: Really he seriously made a Holiday and Express joke while
Speaker 1: he was Oh my god. But the follow up, the
Speaker 1: follow up was, but I did stay in the Central
Speaker 1: Virginia Regional Jail because that is where he staying. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean because he's in prison for sexually or not
Speaker 1: for for harassing and threatening and blackmailing another Nazi, right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: he was transported here from the federal prison and Mary
Speaker 1: in Illinois, where he is a guest until next Christmas. Um.
Speaker 1: So he had filed motions to exclude the fact that
Speaker 1: he's currently incarcerated, as is his right right late, like
Speaker 1: if you are a yeah, yeah, absolutely, in a you know,
Speaker 1: in a criminal case or in a in a simple case,
Speaker 1: it is it is your right to have the jury
Speaker 1: not see you in a jumpsuit. And I respect that,
Speaker 1: I think perfectly. Absolutely. Yeah. So he went to great
Speaker 1: links to make sure that the jury would never see
Speaker 1: him in cuffs, that the marshals wouldn't bring him in
Speaker 1: in irons, that he would change before the jury arrived
Speaker 1: at the Cornouse. All very reasonable and no one's going
Speaker 1: to get to talk about it, but he brought it
Speaker 1: up in his an opening statement. I'm here from prison.
Speaker 1: I'm here from prison. By the way, I'm in prison
Speaker 1: for the other crimes I committed, But they're not related
Speaker 1: to these crimes. They're not related to these crimes except
Speaker 1: to the extent that he's unable to shut the funk up.
Speaker 1: He's only in prison because he emailed the FBI or
Speaker 1: recording him him doing the crime that he's in prison for.
Speaker 1: He's he's really a very cunning man. But I think
Speaker 1: you know so, as much as those crimes aren't relevant
Speaker 1: to this case, I think it is very relevant to
Speaker 1: his trial strategy, right, that he has this belief that
Speaker 1: all the things he did that were wrong they were right. Actually,
Speaker 1: he just needs to explain to us why he did
Speaker 1: them and then we'll understand. Right, he's in prison because
Speaker 1: he tried to talk his way out of a thing
Speaker 1: that he did that was wrong by telling everyone that
Speaker 1: he did do it. Yes, I did it because I
Speaker 1: had to. You didn't have to make an extortionate threat
Speaker 1: to rape another man's wife in front of their children.
Speaker 1: You didn't actually have to do that. Yeah, that's really
Speaker 1: I mean I would I might argue, and perhaps I'm
Speaker 1: an extremist, but there's no situation in which you would
Speaker 1: ever have to do that. Nobody made you email the
Speaker 1: FBI about how you did that, but you did. Actually,
Speaker 1: I would have told you that was a bad idea.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's there's some snarky stuff in some in
Speaker 1: some of the affidavits about how like he called the
Speaker 1: Keen Police Department trying to tattletale on other people so
Speaker 1: often that they were tired of taking his calls. Unbelievable.
Speaker 1: What an amazing man, like he's he's a piece of ship,
Speaker 1: but he is legitimately an incredible person. I mean, if
Speaker 1: you wrote this, no one would believe it. Right, this
Speaker 1: is so heavy handed, it's so goofy, Like when he
Speaker 1: was paying Elmer in guns his law he paid his
Speaker 1: lawyer in guns, and then he ran out of guns
Speaker 1: and had his lawyer stopped working for him. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: doesn't have a lawyer anymore because he ran out of
Speaker 1: guns to pawn. Although I can't anymore because now he's
Speaker 1: a convicted I gotta say, running out of guns to
Speaker 1: pawn for your lawyer. It's pretty cocked. He even had
Speaker 1: to sell the bucket of loose bullets he used to
Speaker 1: keep us a prop on his desk, I mean, really
Speaker 1: devastating stuff. Um. So he doesn't you're you're down to
Speaker 1: the brad, You're down to the rails when you're two
Speaker 1: at that really the bottom of the barrel. So he's
Speaker 1: proceeding pro say, which, unfortunately, unfortunately for everyone involved, means
Speaker 1: he gets to talk a lot, a lot, a lot
Speaker 1: a lot, which means he gets to cross examine his
Speaker 1: own witnesses. Right, So the first two witnesses the plaintiffs
Speaker 1: put on were two of their plaintiffs, right, two young
Speaker 1: people who were injured in these events. The first witness
Speaker 1: they put on Natalie as the v a student who
Speaker 1: had her skull fractured in the car attack. She had
Speaker 1: to learn how to walk again, She had to see
Speaker 1: a neurologist to retrain her eyes to track movement. I mean,
Speaker 1: she was very badly injured. Um. And so she testified
Speaker 1: at length about the damage that was done to her.
Speaker 1: Because again this is a case about damages, so the
Speaker 1: jury needs to learn who is this person, what happened
Speaker 1: to them? What did it call them physically, mentally, emotionally,
Speaker 1: financially Um, Because what they're going to be asked to
Speaker 1: do is to put a dollar amount on So they
Speaker 1: had to meet her and hear about her injuries, um,
Speaker 1: and hear about her motivation for being there. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: she's a young queer Latino woman as she's the first
Speaker 1: college student in her family, and she's a very impressive
Speaker 1: young woman, and she was very composed on the stand
Speaker 1: us as awful as the content was. Um. But then
Speaker 1: every single one of the defendants gets to cross examine her.
Speaker 1: Richard Spencer gets to cross examine her. Christopher Campell gets
Speaker 1: to cross examine her. James Klennich, who took the case.
Speaker 1: He's Kessler Demigo and Identity Europea's lawyer, James Klenicch. She's
Speaker 1: an Ohio based attorney who said on the record that
Speaker 1: he took this case with the express purpose of opposing
Speaker 1: Jewish influence. Great great Klenich gets to cross examined her.
Speaker 1: Matt Heimbuck's new lawyer, Josh Smith, used to be the
Speaker 1: campaign spokesman for Paul Neilon, was endorsed by Trump at
Speaker 1: one point in his run for Congress. And as also
Speaker 1: just a straight up Nazi who's repeatedly threatened to murder you. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: one time he spent all day posting pictures of a
Speaker 1: deer that he said that he named after me. He said,
Speaker 1: I named this dear Molly. You know, he's been all
Speaker 1: days stalking at posting pictures of it, posting pictures of
Speaker 1: this gun um. And then he posted a picture of
Speaker 1: the dear stage like a lynching. And then he spelled
Speaker 1: my name out in its entrails and posted pictures of that.
Speaker 1: So you're just like a really normal guy Paul Neeland,
Speaker 1: which totally completely with it. Um them. His campaign spokesperson
Speaker 1: when he ran for Congress was the Holocaust denying um
Speaker 1: former Jew Josh Smith. Josh Smith was born Daniel Nussbaum.
Speaker 1: He changed his name to hide his Jewish past. Oh,
Speaker 1: that is an old story among the Nazis. I mean,
Speaker 1: we talked about the guy who invented uh sea monkeys,
Speaker 1: but yeah, it's basically the same case. And you know
Speaker 1: who else hides there? I okay, Um, this was meant
Speaker 1: to be an ad plug. Normally Sophie would jump in
Speaker 1: and stopped me from doing that. None of these avertise
Speaker 1: none of these satisers are plaintiffs in the current case
Speaker 1: that you're covering. That's a guarantee, that is, that is
Speaker 1: an absolute promise. David Duke is not about to sell
Speaker 1: you dick pills. No, no, no, although he could use them.
Speaker 1: We're back, Um, all right, Molly, sorry, please continue where
Speaker 1: where we got distracted thinking about David Duke trying to
Speaker 1: sell you dick pills? Yeah, I have That's not good
Speaker 1: for anybody, right, So everybody gets to cross examined. The
Speaker 1: witness Josh Smith is himbox new lawyer. Um, Glennich used
Speaker 1: to be a lot of these guys lawyers, and then
Speaker 1: he sort of dropped them over time as they became uncooperative.
Speaker 1: They are all these motions to withdraw clench, slowly dropped
Speaker 1: clients over the last two years. Um, he dropped can't
Speaker 1: Well as a client because Can't Well wouldn't stop posting
Speaker 1: about hurting ROBERTA. Kaplan, who's the lead counsel for the plaintiffs. ROBERTA. Kaplan,
Speaker 1: Femish famous Jewish lesbian lawyer. You know she was on
Speaker 1: the US v Inser the I'm losing it, absolutely losing it.
Speaker 1: The Supreme Court case that gave us gay marriage right. ROBERTA.
Speaker 1: Kaplan brought us gay marriage essentially. So she you know,
Speaker 1: famous Jewish lesbian that is a well known portion of
Speaker 1: her identity. And kett Well kept posting um anti Semitic
Speaker 1: remarks about her, and finally Kalinicch was like, you're making
Speaker 1: it really hard to be your lawyer, and you don't
Speaker 1: pay me um and Klenich dropped Heimbuch as a client
Speaker 1: in t because Heimbuch just stopped answering his calls. Great
Speaker 1: smart people. Yeah. So Matt Parrott, who's Matt Heimbuch's father
Speaker 1: in law but also the husband of the woman that
Speaker 1: he was sleeping. This complicated. There's a chart. There's a chart.
Speaker 1: Matt Heimbuck and Matt Parrot founders of the Traditional Worker Party,
Speaker 1: best friends for a long time. For Child's wives, big problems,
Speaker 1: big problems for them. The Night of Wrong Wives, the
Speaker 1: Knight of the Wrong Wives. So Matt Parrot was technically
Speaker 1: Matt Heimbach's father in law during the time period which
Speaker 1: Heimbach was fucking parent's wife. Very classy people. Not a
Speaker 1: great situation. So they lost their lawyer. Um Parent very
Speaker 1: publicly told all Traditionalist Worker Party members to destroy evidence.
Speaker 1: So we knew that, right. That was on the record
Speaker 1: from the beginning that Matt parent was like, hey, everyone
Speaker 1: in t TVP, if you did any crimes, delete it right,
Speaker 1: delete your social media, delete your pictures. Like we weren't there, right,
Speaker 1: and that's a crime. That's a crime. That is a
Speaker 1: crime right there. But an interesting thing that we learned
Speaker 1: to date. But I don't think we did know before. Um.
Speaker 1: In November, so they played a recording of a conversation
Speaker 1: between Matt Heimbach and Christopher Cantwell and this was during
Speaker 1: examination of Heimbuch. Heimbuch was on the stand, um, and
Speaker 1: they're talking about like, you know, you didn't produce discovery.
Speaker 1: You said you lost your phone, this, that and the other.
Speaker 1: You know, after you beat your wife, she threw away
Speaker 1: your phone. Um. So he said I couldn't turn over
Speaker 1: my social media accounts because my wife deleted them because
Speaker 1: we had an argument about me taking out the trash, right,
Speaker 1: Like we had this domestic dispute about the trash and
Speaker 1: she deleted all my accounts, so I couldn't turn them over. Um. Well,
Speaker 1: today we found out that he told can't well. In
Speaker 1: ten so a year after the lawsuit was filed. When
Speaker 1: a lawsuit was filed against you, you have a legal
Speaker 1: obligation to not do things like this. He told can't
Speaker 1: well that after a conversation with his lawyer, on the
Speaker 1: advice of his lawyer, he deleted those accounts. Oh, oh great,
Speaker 1: there's just a record of him criming. Yeah, that's a crime,
Speaker 1: and it also a crime for his lawyer to have
Speaker 1: advised him to do that. Great. Um, again, that's there's
Speaker 1: no direct evidence who told him to do that, but
Speaker 1: we do have a recording of him saying a lawyer
Speaker 1: told him to So that's not great. That's not a
Speaker 1: good situation. Is he going to get charged with anything
Speaker 1: for that? I am curious. You know, I'm not a lawyer.
Speaker 1: Just for everyone listening, I'm not a lawyer. I didn't
Speaker 1: go to law school. I didn't even finish undergrad I'm
Speaker 1: not a lawyer. Um, but I have listened to a lawyers.
Speaker 1: But I am I am curious. What with what frequency
Speaker 1: can perjury charges be sought in a civil case? Right,
Speaker 1: it's still under Oh it's like it is still perjury.
Speaker 1: But how common is that to be pursued because they're perjuring? Yeah, perjury,
Speaker 1: perjurer doing the thing the right always does, which is
Speaker 1: trust that the law will never actually come after them
Speaker 1: for their many crimes, and there's there's a good chance
Speaker 1: they'll be right. You know, like Hinbuch said, you know
Speaker 1: when he was asked, have you ever provided security for
Speaker 1: Richard Spencer? And he said no? And it's okay, Well
Speaker 1: there's like a hundred pictures of you doing that at
Speaker 1: multiple events. Um. You know, they're claiming they don't know
Speaker 1: each other, Like, here's all these pictures of you guys
Speaker 1: hanging out. Um, god, where else are we? Um? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm curious, you know, one thing that kind of especially
Speaker 1: because of the written house thing. And we're actually we'll
Speaker 1: be talking to a lawyer tomorrow night about or tomorrow
Speaker 1: about the written house thing. Um. Every cool person shares
Speaker 1: the same lawyer. Uh um. But yeah, because of that,
Speaker 1: I'm kind of curious, what what is your what since
Speaker 1: do you get of this judge? There's no good judges,
Speaker 1: there's no good judges. But it could be yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean I'm not saying like yeah, but how is it?
Speaker 1: It could be? It could be a lot worse. You know,
Speaker 1: Trump appointed a shipload of federal judges pretty recently. Judgment
Speaker 1: is eighty five years old. He's a Clinton appointee. He's
Speaker 1: a Clinton appointee, so it's could be worse, could be worse.
Speaker 1: He's been on the bench, you know since I was
Speaker 1: an elementary school UM, and he's very old, and he
Speaker 1: doesn't he has it's a little bit hard of hearing.
Speaker 1: But he's not stupid. Um. There's a lot of people,
Speaker 1: I think we are really frustrated with some of the
Speaker 1: things he's allowing to happen. He's he's really allowing these
Speaker 1: these pro sed defendants to sort of run rough shot
Speaker 1: over the procedure. But you know, like I said before
Speaker 1: we started recording, it's really hard to apply. I get
Speaker 1: like the your sense of how things are supposed to
Speaker 1: work doesn't really apply in court. Right. There's a very rigid,
Speaker 1: sort of outdated set of rules and procedures, and they
Speaker 1: don't feel right. They don't feel logical or reasonable or fair.
Speaker 1: But there is a specific way that it works, and
Speaker 1: it is hard to watch, especially if you've never seen
Speaker 1: it before. And because of the emotionally fraught nature of this,
Speaker 1: it's particularly frustrating to be to be listening on this
Speaker 1: line and saying, like, why are they allowed to do
Speaker 1: this to this witness. Well, legally, you can cross examine
Speaker 1: your witnesses, even if you are the person who hurt them.
Speaker 1: It's not a good system, but it is how it works. Um.
Speaker 1: But he's um And I also think there's there's concern
Speaker 1: about appellate issues, there's concern about his trial, and so
Speaker 1: they're really going out of their way not to give
Speaker 1: anyone any excuse to say, well, this was not fair
Speaker 1: to me. They're going to say it anyway, but they
Speaker 1: they're really letting them have a long leash in a
Speaker 1: way that feels very bad. But at the same time
Speaker 1: I can't kind of understand it. Yeah, I wish they
Speaker 1: hadn't done so much Holocaust denial, like on on the road,
Speaker 1: that would be good. They put an expert on today,
Speaker 1: who's um Dr Debra Lipstad, who's an expert in Holocaust denial,
Speaker 1: to sort of talk about what the Holocaust is. I
Speaker 1: guess in case the jury doesn't know. God, that's bleak.
Speaker 1: That's bleak because they chose this jury based on them
Speaker 1: never having heard of Jews. You know, it's a bunch
Speaker 1: of like middle aged people from Green County who have
Speaker 1: never met a Jewish person, So they had to put
Speaker 1: on a professor to say, okay, when he says gas
Speaker 1: the K words, we're talking about gas chambers, gas chambers
Speaker 1: from the Holocaust. They didn't start out with gas chambers.
Speaker 1: He started with mass shootings. But it was too messy.
Speaker 1: I mean, she was literally recounting sort of the evolution
Speaker 1: from the Asans group and you know, shootings in the
Speaker 1: fields to the because of the gas chambers. Like we
Speaker 1: we had to talk all the way through it, um
Speaker 1: because it seems unnecessary, but again for the jury, it
Speaker 1: might be necessary. And so when Asma Door, Robert don't
Speaker 1: want to take anything for granted, you know, yeah, right,
Speaker 1: and you really have to sort of lay out these connections, right,
Speaker 1: because the idea is you have to prove a conspiracy
Speaker 1: and you have to prove the conspiracy was racially motivated. Um.
Speaker 1: And so when asma Door is the racist wizard name
Speaker 1: that m. Robert Ray uses when he writes for the
Speaker 1: Daily Stormer. When Asmador keeps saying we're going to gas
Speaker 1: the K words, everyone knows what I mean when I
Speaker 1: say that, right, yes, yeah, okay, you know he keeps saying,
Speaker 1: you know, the plan is to gas the kwords. You know,
Speaker 1: g T, K R W n UM gas the K
Speaker 1: words race war now he keeps saying, he keeps saying,
Speaker 1: keeps saying it. And the torch March he Pepper sprays
Speaker 1: a bunch of people which he is currently a fugitive
Speaker 1: of justice for UM. He's UM, he's wanted for felony
Speaker 1: in um Almarrale County. He's missing UM. So he says
Speaker 1: he's going to do it, then he does it, and
Speaker 1: then afterwards he's on video saying, yeah, I guessed half
Speaker 1: a dozen K words, so you can see from A
Speaker 1: to B to C. And then we have this expert saying, Okay,
Speaker 1: what he's saying is a direct reference to the Holocaust, right. Um,
Speaker 1: It's like he's like you said, it's pretty open and shut.
Speaker 1: It's pretty straightforward A to B two see. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: we have these discord leaks um if you want to
Speaker 1: browse them. They're on Unicorn Riot, and almost immediately after
Speaker 1: the rally, Unicorn Riot had these discord leaks um the
Speaker 1: entire server, the Charlesville two point oh server where they
Speaker 1: planned this out, where they're in the discord saying yeah,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be so great, We're gonna do so much violence.
Speaker 1: We're gonna we're gonna hurt people. We're gonna bring shield,
Speaker 1: we're gonna bring base, really explicitly talking about the plan,
Speaker 1: making jokes about hitting people with cars. Um, now the
Speaker 1: entire discord will be admitted. UM it it has been authenticated.
Speaker 1: They received another copy of it via subpoena directly from discord.
Speaker 1: It's real. It's evidence as much as can't well doesn't
Speaker 1: like that. But more than that, UM, we have, you know,
Speaker 1: some first person authentication. We heard deposition testimony from Elliott
Speaker 1: Klein's ex girlfriend, UM, the woman that he was living
Speaker 1: with in seventeen. So in the summer of seventeen, he
Speaker 1: was living with this woman that he had just met
Speaker 1: and it entered into a romantic relationship with Um. She
Speaker 1: has since left the movement. She has a lot of
Speaker 1: regret about her involvement in that time period. And you know,
Speaker 1: there's a little people have a lot of mixed feelings
Speaker 1: about what it means to leave the movement, what it
Speaker 1: means to a tone, is it possible to redeem yourself
Speaker 1: for having been a part of something like that. We
Speaker 1: don't have to litigate that, but we do have to, Well,
Speaker 1: we do have to recognize that her testimony is damning.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is not this is not Elliott Klein
Speaker 1: putting on a show in public. This is not Elliott
Speaker 1: Klein posturing for his friends. This is Eli at home
Speaker 1: in bed with his girlfriend talking about his fantasies of
Speaker 1: killing all the Jews. Um, and her testimony was pretty harmful. Um,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't think, yeah, it's not great. You know. Really
Speaker 1: you have to wonder how the jury is taking this
Speaker 1: right these people who have no concept or context for
Speaker 1: this for years. Yea hours of this woman sort of
Speaker 1: near tears talking about how her boyfriend said that he
Speaker 1: was going to put her in a breeding camp once
Speaker 1: they had the ethno state. Uh. Not nice, really not
Speaker 1: nice stuff. And she also tested You know, we have
Speaker 1: the messages from the discord where people are posting memes
Speaker 1: and jokes about hitting protesters, but Samantha testified that at
Speaker 1: private parties at Richard Spencer's house in the summer. Of
Speaker 1: these private parties with the organizers of the event at
Speaker 1: Richard Spencer's apartment, people explicitly discussed the legality of hitting
Speaker 1: people with their cars. This is not random people in
Speaker 1: the discord that Richards could say, oh, I don't know him,
Speaker 1: I never met him. I never posted in discord. This
Speaker 1: is somebody sitting on your couch Richard. Um. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: you know, Samantha said that during that time period, um
Speaker 1: Klein was building an army for Richard, and Kessler texted,
Speaker 1: Spencer is something similar, right that, where we'll build an army,
Speaker 1: my liege fucking dorcass ship. But when one fun surprise
Speaker 1: from Samantha was that during that time period Klein was,
Speaker 1: you know, planning to provide his militia in the form
Speaker 1: of Adentnity Europa, right at least these street troops he
Speaker 1: was going to provide to Spencer to build the movement,
Speaker 1: but that when the time came, he always knew that
Speaker 1: he would kill Richard to take control. These people are
Speaker 1: all such fucking it's a shame that what they actually
Speaker 1: are is deniable assets for the most day juris folks,
Speaker 1: you know, the fucking the fucking Bannon types, because if
Speaker 1: if all of the fascists were this dumb, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: be so worried. And it's hard, it's hard to walk
Speaker 1: the line between you know, really getting a kick out
Speaker 1: of some of these moments where you're genuinely funny, right,
Speaker 1: but you remember, like, these people are very dangerous. These
Speaker 1: people are responsible for a death. These people, it's this
Speaker 1: emotional whiplash right of the plaintiffs getting on and saying, yes,
Speaker 1: my life was ruined. I still have nightmares, I still
Speaker 1: have to go to physical therapy. And then can't Well
Speaker 1: getting up there and asking Heimbach if he's a federal agent, right,
Speaker 1: like I think so, We've only seen one of the
Speaker 1: defendants on the stand so far, but I have a
Speaker 1: strong feeling can't Well, it's going to use every opportunity
Speaker 1: that he has his frenemies under oath to ask them
Speaker 1: if they snitched on him. Yeah, that's that's going to
Speaker 1: be pretty funny. It's gonna be great. You gotta laugh
Speaker 1: sometimes life's too hard. But Can't Well is really using this.
Speaker 1: I think you know he has nothing to lose, right,
Speaker 1: This is a case about damage is he has no
Speaker 1: money for them to take. He has thirty thousand dollars
Speaker 1: in credit card debt and his car got repossessed once
Speaker 1: he went to prison. He has nothing for them to take.
Speaker 1: The only person he knows who did have anything is
Speaker 1: Ian Freeman, who's currently facing federal charges for some sort
Speaker 1: of complicated bitcoin money laundering scam through a fake church. Um.
Speaker 1: So he doesn't even have any friends to help him.
Speaker 1: That's an interesting case, but I don't have time for
Speaker 1: it now. But he has, he has nothing for them
Speaker 1: to take. He's already a felon. He can't have a
Speaker 1: gun anymore. I think he's just using this as an opportunity,
Speaker 1: as a platform to get his message out there and
Speaker 1: to harm the people he thinks harmed him. So every
Speaker 1: chance he gets, he's trying to force witnesses to ducks people. Right.
Speaker 1: He asked one of the plaintiffs, Devin Willis, when another
Speaker 1: young man who was who was injured at the torch
Speaker 1: march um a plaintiff in this case, He asked him
Speaker 1: he forced him to name the names of the non
Speaker 1: parties who were also counter demonstrating at the statue. These
Speaker 1: people's names have not been on the record. They you know,
Speaker 1: judgment at him. Do that made him do that? That's
Speaker 1: and you know, you could if you were, I don't know,
Speaker 1: a complete baby brained idiot, you could say, well, you
Speaker 1: know that maybe there was a legal reason that he
Speaker 1: needed those names. There's not, and we know there's not,
Speaker 1: because he tried to do it again today. Um. There
Speaker 1: was a non party witness, a young woman who lived
Speaker 1: in one of the dorm rooms right by the rotunda.
Speaker 1: They're called the lawn rooms. It's a prestigious opportunity. Only
Speaker 1: super high achievers get to live in those beautiful historic
Speaker 1: law rooms. So she lived right near where the torch
Speaker 1: mark was happening, and she heard it, and she went
Speaker 1: outside and she looked at it. Um, she's not a
Speaker 1: party to the suit. She has no knowledge of these
Speaker 1: people or what happened. She just saw this thing happen.
Speaker 1: And she testified to that, um, And he tried to
Speaker 1: you know. She had made some passing remark that she
Speaker 1: had heard from another student that maybe there would be
Speaker 1: a thing on campus right that they knew about the
Speaker 1: rally the next day, but like, I don't know, maybe
Speaker 1: these guys will try and come here, just like be
Speaker 1: on your toes right, not anything specific. Big. She was not.
Speaker 1: She's not an activist. She's not. She didn't know anything, right,
Speaker 1: And so he was grilled her, tell me who told
Speaker 1: you that? Tell me who told you that? How did
Speaker 1: you know that? And he said, on the record, direct quote,
Speaker 1: I want to know who infiltrated our communications. So he's
Speaker 1: trying to use this this moment where he has someone
Speaker 1: under oath to extract information about who snitched. He wants
Speaker 1: to know who infiltrated their secret communications, which is him
Speaker 1: admitting their secret communications that weren't turned over in discovery,
Speaker 1: which wasn't smart of him to do. But he's using
Speaker 1: this process to get names of people who he can harass.
Speaker 1: And we know that's what they're doing because while he
Speaker 1: was getting these names from that other witness, you know
Speaker 1: the names of the people at the statue. Jason Kessler,
Speaker 1: the lead defendant, right that, the defendant whose name is
Speaker 1: on the lawsuit, the lead organizer of the rally, is
Speaker 1: posting all this time. He's posting through it, posting through it.
Speaker 1: If you had a good lawyer, he would tell you
Speaker 1: not to post through your own conspiracy trial. Um. So
Speaker 1: wal Cantwell is extracting these names from this poor young man.
Speaker 1: Kessler's posting them. He's posting their pictures and their legal
Speaker 1: names and describing their involvement. These people who are not
Speaker 1: party to this lawsuit. And there's no way to interpret
Speaker 1: that other than as as a vehicle for harassment. Um,
Speaker 1: so there's I think there will be there will be
Speaker 1: collateral damage of this lawsuit, but I hope that it
Speaker 1: does UM have the intended deterrent effect. Right, Um, sorry
Speaker 1: to be talking at length for a while, but just insummation, insummation,
Speaker 1: I think, UM. Inside the courtroom, this is a case
Speaker 1: about damages. Right. The judge is very clear that like,
Speaker 1: stop talking about broader societal impact. You can't tell the
Speaker 1: jury about that. That's not relevant to this case. This,
Speaker 1: legally speaking, is a case about did this thing happen
Speaker 1: where these people hurt by it? What is the dollar
Speaker 1: amount of their pain? Legally speaking, that's it. But outside
Speaker 1: the courtroom, this is about deterrence, right, This is about
Speaker 1: setting a precedent that if you do this, if you
Speaker 1: plan a rally knowing that the people who come to
Speaker 1: your rally will hurt people because you told them that's
Speaker 1: the goal. Right. Even if you're not the one who
Speaker 1: swings the stick, even if you're not the one pressing
Speaker 1: the accelerator, you are responsible and you can be held accountable.
Speaker 1: Not as an important message, yeah, we will like your
Speaker 1: life will be ruined if you participate in this ship.
Speaker 1: That even if you don't have anything for us to take.
Speaker 1: We will put a garnishment on you that will follow
Speaker 1: you to the fucking grave. Yep. And I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's I would agree what I think is important here.
Speaker 1: Um Molly, I think that's that's everything. For now. We're
Speaker 1: still how much how much longer do we have to
Speaker 1: go through this? The court watch a jig. Well, it's
Speaker 1: scheduled for four weeks. It's been one and a half,
Speaker 1: and there was there was some some anxiety and handwringing
Speaker 1: about how maybe four weeks won't cut it. Yeah, Jesus,
Speaker 1: so I'm regretting my decision to actively live tweets. So
Speaker 1: like I'm transcribing in real time for eight hours a day.
Speaker 1: It happens your fingers are using a laptop. Are you
Speaker 1: doing it on a phone? I'm doing it on a laptop,
Speaker 1: thank God. So, because of covid um, no one can
Speaker 1: go into the courthouse because there's so many parties in
Speaker 1: this case, and there's the plague, and no one can
Speaker 1: go into the courthouse except for there's there's a press
Speaker 1: room where fifteen people who got pre approved by a
Speaker 1: federal court can go and sit and look at a
Speaker 1: monitor Um, but I'm sitting at home. I'm comfy at home,
Speaker 1: so I'm thank god. Yeah that would be and I was.
Speaker 1: I was disappointed. You know, I kind of wanted to
Speaker 1: see I love to see you, love the courtroom ambiance.
Speaker 1: But I'll be honest and less work. I'm way less
Speaker 1: worried about getting stabbed here at home. That is true.
Speaker 1: That is true. People are less likely to get stabbed
Speaker 1: at home, or more likely one of the two. Um,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Tell us in the comments where you
Speaker 1: think people are most likely to get stabbed. Uh and um, Molly,
Speaker 1: thank you so much. Thank you both for what you're
Speaker 1: doing and for coming on the show. Is there any
Speaker 1: where the listeners can find slash support you? Would you
Speaker 1: like people to mail you knives? What? Oh? Mail me knives? Yeah,
Speaker 1: but not as a threat, like as a fun thing,
Speaker 1: fun knives for fun. I did get a large machete
Speaker 1: in the mail the other day, and before I saw
Speaker 1: the little gift note, I was confused. Oh good, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm glad you're getting a gift machetes. Yeah. Yeah, my
Speaker 1: my friendship is a sheep farmer in North Carolina sent
Speaker 1: me a large blade. Yep. Um no, but So if
Speaker 1: you're interested in reading moment by moment live transcription of
Speaker 1: people screaming Holocaust denial at a federal judge, Um, you
Speaker 1: can check me out on Twitter. That's at Socialist Dog mom.
Speaker 1: That's what happens when you make a little joke with
Speaker 1: your friends, when you have five followers and um, and
Speaker 1: then you end up using it professionally, and then you
Speaker 1: wish national news repeatedly. I don't. Then people are posting
Speaker 1: your mug shot making fun. You know, your bullshit mug shot.
Speaker 1: You look great, but it's bullshit. Um, nobody looks good
Speaker 1: after they get left in a hot van like a dog. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but that's true. Well, Molly, that's gonna be the end
Speaker 1: of the episode. So why don't we, Why don't we
Speaker 1: sing a song and and and roll out? Hopefully not
Speaker 1: the song that Heimbuch included in his Christmas letter to
Speaker 1: James Fields in prison. Oh God, that must have been
Speaker 1: really special. Jeez, I'll have to look that up. I
Speaker 1: did come across in my my browsing through Fascist Telegram
Speaker 1: the other week, an entire album dozens of songs that
Speaker 1: we're all Nazi covers of Blink one eight two's entire discography, everything, everything,
Speaker 1: and they called it, of course, they called it blink like.
Speaker 1: Of course it was I don't I don't even know,
Speaker 1: like I don't even know like how to talk about that.
Speaker 1: It was just the thing that I found. Do you
Speaker 1: know hampt Install, the guy who studies malicious Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's got a particular fascination with white power wrap. Oh god, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's never any good, although there was a there was
Speaker 1: a fun in one of the h Bomber Guy videos
Speaker 1: he found finds this flat earth Nazi who has a
Speaker 1: wrap that's amazing. Alright, partial, I'm partial to can't wells distracts, Yeah, god,
Speaker 1: Chris camp Well, well, thank you, Molly, and uh off
Speaker 1: we go into the wild blue yonder. I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: to smoke some legal weed and fall asleep, face down,
Speaker 1: hopefully not thinking about this trial. I Am not going
Speaker 1: to smoke some legal weed because that's federally a crime. Molly,
Speaker 1: have a good day, Molly, thank you for listening. When P. T.
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Speaker 1: Leisure on the Black Effect podcast Network, I Heart Radio, app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back
Speaker 1: to it could happen here. The podcast that is occasionally
Speaker 1: introduced competently as it sort of was today because our
Speaker 1: guest today is someone who is very near and dear
Speaker 1: uh to me and to like almost every other person
Speaker 1: that I know and work with. Um, Moira Meltzer Cohen. Moira,
Speaker 1: you are a lawyer, uh, focusing on civil rights and
Speaker 1: movement kind of cases. Uh. And you are the lawyer
Speaker 1: of yeah, like every everybody I respect in the world. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: You're the person that I text whenever I need to know, Hey,
Speaker 1: was this a crime? Um or it never is, and
Speaker 1: it never is. I'm law abiding, very law abiding. UM,
Speaker 1: and uh, yeah, we wanted to have you on both
Speaker 1: because you're always a breath of sunshine and because, um,
Speaker 1: there's some like lost stuff happening these days. We just
Speaker 1: had our mutual friend Molly Conjure on to talk about
Speaker 1: the Charlottesville case, which is quite a thing. Today was
Speaker 1: the day today. Today had some had some moments, Chris
Speaker 1: can't Well and Richard Spencer representing themselves separately, each cross
Speaker 1: examining each other. I have so many thoughts, but mostly
Speaker 1: my thoughts involved laughing. It's very very funny. It's it's
Speaker 1: it's the funniest of of an incredibly tragic and infuriating situation.
Speaker 1: Something finely funny finally happened. Um, so at least there's
Speaker 1: that often very funny in spite of himself. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: I would love one day to just get you on
Speaker 1: and duo, we can do a reading of some of
Speaker 1: Chris can't Well's better legal filings. Um. These guys quite
Speaker 1: the legal mind, Robert. I think I maybe didn't ever
Speaker 1: tell you about the fact that we um did a
Speaker 1: quorums feel, which is a performance of the story of
Speaker 1: Esther Um, Oh my God, traditionally done at Poorham, which
Speaker 1: is a Jewish holiday UM, and it was based on
Speaker 1: the complaint that he filed God. Those of Twitter the
Speaker 1: third was prominently featured in the role of Hayman. For
Speaker 1: the those of you who don't know, Chris Cantwell, the
Speaker 1: crying Nazi from the Unite the Right rally has been
Speaker 1: incarcerated for a year or so now UM and continues
Speaker 1: to put out his own legal motions, generally handwritten UM,
Speaker 1: alleging all kinds of conspiracies from the people who did
Speaker 1: not call the FBI and admit to committing several crimes.
Speaker 1: We should, we should absolutely absolutely do a crossover with
Speaker 1: dandel Harper um and to discuss Wells legal genius. But
Speaker 1: but today more we wanted to have you on because
Speaker 1: there is another case that a lot of folks are
Speaker 1: rightly concerned about, because it has some pretty dire implications
Speaker 1: depending on how it goes in a number of ways.
Speaker 1: The trial of Kyle Rittenhouse UM. For the I mean,
Speaker 1: everyone knows Kyle written House took a gun illegally across
Speaker 1: state lines to a protest so he might have the
Speaker 1: chance to shoot people. Um. And then shot people. This
Speaker 1: is my opinion about what happened. Obviously, the legal case
Speaker 1: is unfolding. UM. There's been a lot of talk online
Speaker 1: on on Twitter and whatnot about how obviously unfair the
Speaker 1: judges being. This is what the talk on Twitter is about.
Speaker 1: And it's because of a couple of things. One is
Speaker 1: that the judge and and again I'm before I cut,
Speaker 1: I go to you, Moira. I'm just explaining kind of
Speaker 1: the way the discourse has been. The discourse has stated like, well,
Speaker 1: the judge said, you can't call Kyle, you can't call
Speaker 1: the people that he killed victims, but you can call
Speaker 1: the people that he killed looters and arsonists. Um. And
Speaker 1: so people are saying, look at this very clear example
Speaker 1: of how how bad the justice system is. UM. And
Speaker 1: I wanted to bring you on for a number of reasons,
Speaker 1: including the fact that, like there's a lot of stuff
Speaker 1: that seems fucked up and in fact is sucked up,
Speaker 1: you could argue, but it's also like like pretty normal
Speaker 1: justice system stuff and some stuff that seems fucked up
Speaker 1: but actually isn't. This is not I'm not necessarily talking
Speaker 1: about the Rittenhouse case here, just in general, and we
Speaker 1: talk about the law. So I guess I wanted to
Speaker 1: have you on to explain to us what's happening in
Speaker 1: your opinion and how normal, abnormal, good, bad are kind
Speaker 1: of the things that we're seeing, the decisions we're seeing
Speaker 1: this judge make UM in this case so far, Yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: absolutely so. The trial, UM, I think when you asked
Speaker 1: me to comment on this, Um, the trial had not started.
Speaker 1: The trial has now started. It has been characterized by
Speaker 1: the defense saying the N word be here this morning,
Speaker 1: I think was dismissed for making a cruel and nakedly
Speaker 1: racist joke. Uh. And apparently the judge had a fit
Speaker 1: of peak about the media's response to his evidentiary rulings,
Speaker 1: which are what you've asked me to come discuss, um,
Speaker 1: Which is itself actually one of the more unusual things
Speaker 1: about this how this trial is going. Um. It's always
Speaker 1: a little bit hard for me to appine on a
Speaker 1: case that is not my case. UM. I feel tentative
Speaker 1: about it. Um. This would never be my case because
Speaker 1: I would not represent a white supremacist, and I am
Speaker 1: not a prosecutor and would never be a prosecutor. And
Speaker 1: I was not able to look at the briefing, because
Speaker 1: although all of the briefing was ostensibly publicly filed, it
Speaker 1: is not actually publicly available. UM. I had a very
Speaker 1: interesting conversation with the Clerk of court and Kenosha told
Speaker 1: me that if I mailed her a request, she would
Speaker 1: fax me the briefing at a dollar twenty five a page.
Speaker 1: And I said, thank you very much, goodbye. UM. So
Speaker 1: I'll do my best to speak to these rulings, UM,
Speaker 1: and the sort of larger issues as I see them. UM.
Speaker 1: As you noted, there's been a lot of kind of
Speaker 1: salacious headlines about the evidence here in this case, UM,
Speaker 1: and I think those headlines are really they're less about
Speaker 1: what's actually happening in the case, and they're more reflective
Speaker 1: of the sort of pearl clutching UM liberal impulse to
Speaker 1: to notice the totally self evident hypocrisy of the legal system. UH,
Speaker 1: and then to conclude that because certain groups are shown
Speaker 1: more leniency, the way to resolve this hypocrisy is to
Speaker 1: make sure everyone is pleased and prosecuted and punished as
Speaker 1: viciously as the left is, which is not actually the
Speaker 1: goal that I have. And just to clarify when I
Speaker 1: when I talk about liberals as I as I will
Speaker 1: probably do a little bit. Um. I don't mean like,
Speaker 1: I mean liberal as opposed to radical Um. People who
Speaker 1: are more or less okay with the underlying big systems, uh,
Speaker 1: like capitalism and white dipremacy and hetero patriarchy and like,
Speaker 1: maybe are more concerned with the iterations of those things
Speaker 1: that are particularly ghost but they don't actually mind the
Speaker 1: systems themselves that or the way that those systems are
Speaker 1: reiterated and enforced by, for example, the American criminal legal system. UM.
Speaker 1: So you know, I think the kind of liberal read
Speaker 1: on these rulings is not only not legally sound, um,
Speaker 1: I think it's actually incredibly dangerous. And it's watching this
Speaker 1: unfold and watching the liberal commentary on it, I think
Speaker 1: is one of the things. It's one of the ways
Speaker 1: that I can really see liberal liberals and liberalism losing credibility, um,
Speaker 1: because because they're sort of calling out this hypocrisy and
Speaker 1: at the same time, there's a little bit of a
Speaker 1: double standard that they want to um, that they want
Speaker 1: to propose an enforce UM. So okay, So I'll talk
Speaker 1: about the rulings that you discussed. UM. The first one
Speaker 1: is that the judge. Um, so that the prosecution is
Speaker 1: not allowed to refer to the people at in House
Speaker 1: killed as victims. Um. I will remind you, as I
Speaker 1: remind all of my clients continuously, UM, that the law
Speaker 1: is at best adjacent to common sense understandings of justice
Speaker 1: and even frankly common sense understandings of reality. Um. Obviously
Speaker 1: the people that Kyle Rittenkow's killed were victims. Um. But
Speaker 1: as my beloved colleague Sandy reminded me, uh it, the
Speaker 1: concept of victimhood, the status of victimhood is among the
Speaker 1: things that needs to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt
Speaker 1: at this trial. Yeah right, um. And so in in fact,
Speaker 1: this is a totally straightforward ruling. It is a ruling
Speaker 1: that I would argue for as a defense attorney and
Speaker 1: that I expect to win where I trying in murder case.
Speaker 1: So you know, it's one of those things like you
Speaker 1: have to overcome this, this you have to overcome when
Speaker 1: you're thinking about a trial, like the fact that you
Speaker 1: know he's guilty, because the point of a trial is
Speaker 1: that everyone like there's a process. Right, we don't just
Speaker 1: do street justice because that's what written House did. Um.
Speaker 1: Like we're we're you have to like one of the
Speaker 1: It is troubling to me the extent that people are like, well,
Speaker 1: he he should be presumed like we should be referring
Speaker 1: to the people he shot as victims before he has
Speaker 1: been adjudicated as guilty, because like, that's that's important, Like
Speaker 1: the presumption of innocence matters, and it's it's it's also
Speaker 1: something that's very unfair, Like there's a person in Portland,
Speaker 1: Alexander Dial, who got in trouble for taking a hammer
Speaker 1: out of a Nazi's hand during a rally um and
Speaker 1: has been charged with several felonies and because his trial
Speaker 1: kept getting delayed, spent two and a half years under
Speaker 1: pre trial conditions. So the presumption of innocence is hardly equal,
Speaker 1: but it is important. Yeah, exactly, and I think that
Speaker 1: you know, we'll talk about this, I think in a
Speaker 1: little bit, but that's exactly the issue, right, is that, um,
Speaker 1: we need to be enforcing the equal application of the
Speaker 1: presumption of innocence, not being you know, rapidly going after
Speaker 1: the right in the same way that we are used
Speaker 1: to uh law enforcement and the judiciary going after the left. UM.
Speaker 1: The other ruling that the made um which you mentioned
Speaker 1: was that he said that the defense is authorized to
Speaker 1: characterize the people that written has killed as looters or
Speaker 1: rioters if there's evidence presented that they were in fact
Speaker 1: looting and were rioting. I would, if I were, you know,
Speaker 1: in this case, which of course I'm not, I would
Speaker 1: object to this on the grounds that it is prejudicial
Speaker 1: in bullshit and it's sucked up in bullshit. Yeah. Yes,
Speaker 1: that said, I am not super surprised by that ruling. UM.
Speaker 1: I would say, it's likely within the sound discretion of
Speaker 1: the judge and if you know, when if the prosecution disagrees,
Speaker 1: it's a matter for appeal. UM. You know, I think, UM.
Speaker 1: One of the things the judge said about this, actually
Speaker 1: that I think is really important and correct, UM, is
Speaker 1: that he has uh a tremendous amount of discretion in
Speaker 1: making of an and cherry rulings. Rulings. UM. One of
Speaker 1: the rulings he made was that he's admitting the testimony
Speaker 1: of an expert witness, UM, which you know, I think
Speaker 1: a lot of people are also quite upset about. UM.
Speaker 1: But that said, again, this is not that unusual, and
Speaker 1: it's very difficult for him to deny that motion to
Speaker 1: have his evidence or his testimony admitted because the prosecution
Speaker 1: routinely uses use of force experts in similar trials. Um.
Speaker 1: So now we're they're just on the other side of
Speaker 1: the table. Yeah. So you know, first of all, I
Speaker 1: get that these rulings don't make us feel good. Um,
Speaker 1: but they aren't that strange. And as I said, the
Speaker 1: judge has tremendous discretion in these matters. Um. I was
Speaker 1: thinking about how to illustrate this, and it occurred to
Speaker 1: me that I think the last time I was on
Speaker 1: one of your podcasts, you asked me whether cocaine was illegal. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: what are we landing on that? By the way, so
Speaker 1: I think the first time you asked me, I was
Speaker 1: a total kill joy and was like, of course it's
Speaker 1: a legal provert um. But if I had actually taken
Speaker 1: your question more seriously, I think a better answer probably
Speaker 1: would have been nobody knows. Um. For precisely this reason,
Speaker 1: because the real question is not what the law says.
Speaker 1: The real question is how, or whether, or against whom,
Speaker 1: or to what degree and under what circumstances will that
Speaker 1: law be enforced? And these are always open questions and arguments,
Speaker 1: and judges have a ton of power this case is
Speaker 1: no exception. So you know, again, not only are these
Speaker 1: rulings pretty standard, but there I think within the judge's discretion.
Speaker 1: Some of them I really dislike. Some of them make
Speaker 1: total sense to me. Um, and I think that what
Speaker 1: is happening is is not necessarily sound legal analysis, but
Speaker 1: liberals sort of trying to argue that Writtenhouse should be
Speaker 1: more harshly prosecuted by saying that these specific rulings are
Speaker 1: unfair or unusual. It's a little bit like the liberals
Speaker 1: crying out now because people are putting like, let's go
Speaker 1: brandon on printing it on rifle receivers and saying like, well,
Speaker 1: the Secret Service should investigate it. Well, if they do that,
Speaker 1: then some then like thirty if they do that, and
Speaker 1: like one company gets a fine, forty people are going
Speaker 1: to go to prison for having red flags on their
Speaker 1: body armor. Like that's the way it works in this country.
Speaker 1: But the right thing, Yeah, any any anarchists for the
Speaker 1: three D printer is gonna immediately go to jail. Yeah
Speaker 1: that's not like that is correct. Yeah, So I guess
Speaker 1: the thing that I want to point out here is
Speaker 1: that what is actually unusual about this case is not
Speaker 1: these rulings, it is that Written House is going to
Speaker 1: trial at all. And the reason Written House is going
Speaker 1: to trial is able to go to trial is largely
Speaker 1: because this prosecution is fundamentally calculated it not to be repressive. UM. So,
Speaker 1: I want to kind of zoom out and get away
Speaker 1: from the weeds of the potentiary rulings. Um So, in
Speaker 1: its simplest expression, when we talk about the difference between
Speaker 1: state and federal jurisdiction, we're saying, kind of, um, jurisdiction
Speaker 1: for dummies, Uh, overly simplified is stuff that happens inside
Speaker 1: or only impacts a given state is typically prosecuted by
Speaker 1: the state. And if it impacts if your offense conduct
Speaker 1: or alleged defense conduct impacts more than one state, um,
Speaker 1: then it is or can be prosecuted by the federal
Speaker 1: Department of Justice. So Kyle Rittenhouse crosss state lines with
Speaker 1: a pretty serious firearm and he shot three people. This
Speaker 1: puts us immediately into a federal jurisdiction land. Um. He
Speaker 1: did this in the context of an uprising for racial
Speaker 1: justice that has been characterized by the fact that those
Speaker 1: rising up on the side of racial justice have been
Speaker 1: subject to intense repression by the federal government. D o
Speaker 1: J has shown themselves to be fire breathingly enthusiastic of
Speaker 1: opicizing their jurisdiction over heavy offenses based on totally tenuous
Speaker 1: grounds um for people on the left or who are
Speaker 1: perceived to be on the left. UM. D o J
Speaker 1: has asserted jurisdiction in order to prosecute people for um,
Speaker 1: absolutely trivial but politically motivated offenses that would be left
Speaker 1: to the state to prosecute absent the politics of the accused. UM.
Speaker 1: They have a certain federal jurisdiction on really flimsy basis,
Speaker 1: like that a local police building or vehicle um, belongs
Speaker 1: to a department that has received federal funding, so property
Speaker 1: damage against it comes a federal offense. One thing they're
Speaker 1: doing that is unusual is the federal government is as
Speaker 1: certain concurrent jurisdiction to prosecute offenses. So I know there's
Speaker 1: someone in Courtland who is simultaneously being prosecuted by MULTNOMA
Speaker 1: and also the federal government UM for allegedly throwing some
Speaker 1: accelerant on a police building. UM. Right, So it is
Speaker 1: very curious that written House who quite clearly did something
Speaker 1: that would you know fall under federal jurisdiction is not
Speaker 1: being federally charged, and it matters a lot for how
Speaker 1: the case proceeds, UM, because the way that federal prosecutions
Speaker 1: operate is that the Feds will typically stack these indictments
Speaker 1: UM in a way that really puts tremendous pressure on
Speaker 1: them to plead guilty UM, which is not typicly the
Speaker 1: case or it doesn't happen in the same way in
Speaker 1: a state prosecution. So UM, you have these staffed indictments
Speaker 1: with multiple, multiple counts ranging you know, all all kinds
Speaker 1: of conduct UM, often involving you know, a conspiracy, which
Speaker 1: can be very very easy to prove UM, and a
Speaker 1: guilty finding on any of those counts could be like
Speaker 1: a mandatory minimum of five to ten years. And then
Speaker 1: if you're looking at, um, you know, a guilty on
Speaker 1: more than one or all of those counts, you're looking
Speaker 1: at a sentence potentially concurrent sentences that are tantamount to
Speaker 1: dying in prison. Right. And so this creates tremendous pressure
Speaker 1: on federal defendants to negotiate a pre trial disposition to
Speaker 1: take a guilty plea UM. So again, Kyle Writtenhouse crosses
Speaker 1: state lines with this firearm which gets used in the
Speaker 1: in the commission of an act of violence. And I
Speaker 1: feel extremely confident that any federal prosecutor could come up
Speaker 1: with a stack of counts against him within about ten
Speaker 1: minutes without breaking a sweat um. But you know, so
Speaker 1: you know, if you think about him being in that position,
Speaker 1: you think through, Okay, if I go to trial, what
Speaker 1: is what are likely outcomes if Kyle Rittenhouse went to
Speaker 1: trial federally, and even if he prevailed on a self
Speaker 1: defense right, which which could happen if you were found
Speaker 1: guilty on one or more of the lesser charges, he
Speaker 1: would still be looking at really really serious time. Right.
Speaker 1: But that's not where we are, right, Um, we are
Speaker 1: in a really weird place where like in a federal context,
Speaker 1: we wouldn't even be like talking about evidentiary rulings because uh,
Speaker 1: he would almost certainly not be going to trial, right
Speaker 1: or you know, if he had a reasonable lawyer, he
Speaker 1: would probably be negotiating a plea. I'm curious, what do
Speaker 1: you think about because one argument I've heard, and I'm
Speaker 1: certainly in no position to evaluate this personally, is that
Speaker 1: if federal charges had been placed on him, you know,
Speaker 1: when the crime Trump would have pardoned him. Um, I
Speaker 1: don't know. Yeah, Like I've heard people argue that that, like, well,
Speaker 1: at least with the state charges, he can't be pardoned
Speaker 1: by President Trump. Like, I'm in no position to really
Speaker 1: evaluate that, but I'm curious what you think about that. Hey,
Speaker 1: honestly can't even yeah, speculate about what might have happened.
Speaker 1: That is very interesting. I do think that if if
Speaker 1: d o j wanted to charge him at this point,
Speaker 1: I mean not but like there, I think wasn't opening
Speaker 1: for that to happen after Trump left. Expect there is
Speaker 1: a very interesting foy A request to be made to
Speaker 1: d o j UH to see what kind of memo
Speaker 1: was circulated about whether or not they were going to
Speaker 1: pick this one up. They clearly declined to prosecute Um.
Speaker 1: I the only thing that I could come up with,
Speaker 1: to be honest, and I looked and did not really
Speaker 1: see any meaningful discussion of this, of their decision not
Speaker 1: to prosecute Um. The only thing that occurred to me
Speaker 1: is that they might have been reluctant to a set
Speaker 1: jurisdiction over a minor, but they can prosecute anyone over
Speaker 1: the age of fifteen as an adult if they engage
Speaker 1: in violent crimes, or if they are alleged to have
Speaker 1: engaged in violent crimes. So that's not it wouldn't entirely
Speaker 1: undermine their ability to do so. UM. So you know,
Speaker 1: for whatever, you know, for whatever reason, they didn't, I
Speaker 1: think it is worth noting. I think it is, as
Speaker 1: I said, very curious. UM. And it's particularly curious in
Speaker 1: light of the intense federal repression that has been faced
Speaker 1: by people perceived to be on the left, you know. So,
Speaker 1: like again, I want to be very clear, I don't
Speaker 1: I'm not suggesting that I want him to be federally prosecuted. UM.
Speaker 1: I don't. Particularly I'm not interested in arguing for more
Speaker 1: prosecutions or for making the state the arbiter of political
Speaker 1: righteousness or um, giving the state more enforcement power or
Speaker 1: more resources. Um. You know. But you know, and look
Speaker 1: at no shade to Kenosha, Wisconsin. All right, But UM,
Speaker 1: one of the things that the UH federal prosecutors are
Speaker 1: really have a lot of experience doing is digital forensic investigations,
Speaker 1: and UH in this case, one of the sort of
Speaker 1: critical questions is did he have specific intent to go
Speaker 1: across state lines and engage in violence. And I suspect
Speaker 1: that if you were to access all of his texts
Speaker 1: and metadata and social media posts, that you could probably
Speaker 1: find evidence of that specific intent. And I think that
Speaker 1: the federal government is probably better positioned to do that
Speaker 1: than the prosecutors uh in Kenosha, and they decided not to, right, so,
Speaker 1: you know, and that is exactly the kind of investigation
Speaker 1: that they mounted against Daniel Baker, who justs a the
Speaker 1: yoga teacher in Tallahassee, who just got three and a
Speaker 1: half years for posting vague, sort of incoherent, mutually contradictory,
Speaker 1: kind of not at all frightening. Yeah, it's not I
Speaker 1: wouldn't be threats, but I hesitate to to that. You know,
Speaker 1: he posted some stuff on social media and and now
Speaker 1: he's going to do. Yeah, my attitude on the nature
Speaker 1: of what he posts that like, if prior to his prosecution,
Speaker 1: you had brought that post, but to me, I said, well,
Speaker 1: probably not a great idea to post. But also literally
Speaker 1: every week a right winger in the Portland area posts
Speaker 1: something significantly more actual. Right now, Chandler pappas currently being
Speaker 1: charged with assaulting six police officers in the state capital
Speaker 1: and Salem just announced that he's doing armed training as
Speaker 1: a convicted felon outside of Portland's uh later this November. Um,
Speaker 1: which if he's if he touches a firearm, he should
Speaker 1: go away, Like based on the letter of the law,
Speaker 1: he should go to prison for years. Like that's the
Speaker 1: way the law is written. Nothing's going to happen to him.
Speaker 1: He's going to get to train people with guns and
Speaker 1: continue to carry guns, and it's it's fine for him.
Speaker 1: Um anyway, whatever, I'm sorry. I guess your your listeners
Speaker 1: can't see that. I have my head. Um, yeah, I mean, look,
Speaker 1: what Daniel Baker did was certainly ill advised, if it
Speaker 1: would characterize I have clients who have been visited by
Speaker 1: the Secret Service or have been visited by the FBI
Speaker 1: for saying stuff that when they call me and they're like, well,
Speaker 1: I just said this, and I'm like, yeah, I know
Speaker 1: that you're not gonna actually do that, but maybe don't
Speaker 1: you know it's it's not it's ill advised, but it's
Speaker 1: protected by the very First Amendment more or less. And
Speaker 1: you know I've said this before. I don't think the
Speaker 1: solution to two um being surveilled on social media is
Speaker 1: self censorship. I think it is courage, but I also
Speaker 1: think that discretion is the better part of ball or
Speaker 1: so yes, pick your battles and maybe, yeah, understand that
Speaker 1: it's not fair, you know. Yeah, and also like what
Speaker 1: do you gain by you know, being bumsteous on the internet.
Speaker 1: It's one of those things where, yeah, if that guy
Speaker 1: had had a high dollar lawyer, Um, if he if
Speaker 1: he'd been a rich person, yeah, maybe he would have
Speaker 1: gotten away with it. Um, who knows, but like he
Speaker 1: it's it's he certainly would have gotten No. I can
Speaker 1: certainly say he would have gotten away with it if
Speaker 1: he'd been a right winger, because a bunch of them
Speaker 1: do every single day. Um. I can't make any speculation
Speaker 1: about that particular case, but I can say that the
Speaker 1: people who are being surveilled intensely and targeted for that
Speaker 1: kind of repression are not the people on the right. Um.
Speaker 1: The people on the right are able to make those
Speaker 1: kinds of statements and not be particularly taken seriously even
Speaker 1: when they should be. And people on the left are
Speaker 1: presumed to be you know, Antifa super soldiers. Um. So
Speaker 1: you know, I think the decision not to assert federal
Speaker 1: jurisdiction in the written House case is interesting. It is
Speaker 1: a noteworthy, really curious about what was going on there. UM,
Speaker 1: and it has had a sort of cascade of effects,
Speaker 1: including UM. I doubt that the forensic digital investigation was
Speaker 1: as good as it would have been had it been
Speaker 1: federal UH. And I doubt that the I mean, he's
Speaker 1: facing multiple charges, but I don't think that he would
Speaker 1: have been as likely to go to trial had he
Speaker 1: been federally charged. UM. So again, I don't you know,
Speaker 1: this is not an argument for more federal prosecution. But
Speaker 1: like I think the breathless outrage that we're seeing in
Speaker 1: you know these headlines UM, where people are correctly identifying
Speaker 1: the hypocrisy of the criminal legal system. UM. I think
Speaker 1: it's sort of an exercise in point missing UM. You know,
Speaker 1: this prosecution UM, like many of the prosecutions that we see,
Speaker 1: or the prosecutions that don't happen at all, UM, that
Speaker 1: involve members of the dominant class or people who uphold
Speaker 1: the values of the dominant classes. UM, is sort of
Speaker 1: proof a concept that it's possible to effectively allocate the
Speaker 1: burden of proof to the prosecution. It's possible not to
Speaker 1: go super hard on people and punish them for exercising
Speaker 1: their trial, right. Um. Right, I mean it's it's possible
Speaker 1: two treat all people accused of offenses in this way. UM,
Speaker 1: and I would much rather. I mean, obviously, my ultimate
Speaker 1: goal is to uh dismantle the entire system, you know.
Speaker 1: But but in the meantime, I don't think what we
Speaker 1: need is more vicious prosecution of the right. I think
Speaker 1: we need consistent and commensurate prosecution or lack of prosecution.
Speaker 1: We need to you know, Uh, I think that seeing
Speaker 1: the way that the right is treated should be evidence
Speaker 1: for an argument for the possibility of, um treating all
Speaker 1: people with more leniency rather than you know, intense the
Speaker 1: intense federal repression that we are facing and have been facing,
Speaker 1: you know since the Palmer rates. Um. So yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: ah um. Well, that uh is the stuff I wanted
Speaker 1: to ask about. Is there anything else? Um? I mean sure,
Speaker 1: I deitely go off on liberals somewhere, please, UM. I
Speaker 1: mean Garrison is a huge and of liberals. He's got
Speaker 1: actually a full back tack two of Barack Obama and
Speaker 1: Bill Clinton. But they're they're in the volleyball scene from
Speaker 1: top Gun. Um. It's an incredible tattoo. He did it
Speaker 1: all freehand on his own back. Amazing. Um, this is
Speaker 1: like the garretson. I hope I don't receive any stones.
Speaker 1: I hope I don't get any awful fan art. Now, someone,
Speaker 1: someone do it? Come on, come on, photoshop Garrison's head
Speaker 1: onto onto Roger Stone's back and the photoshop Nixon's head
Speaker 1: out and the volleyball scene from Top Gun with Bill
Speaker 1: Clinton and Barack Obama. Do it? Do it? Someone's kind
Speaker 1: of do it is definitely going to do it. This
Speaker 1: is you consume me for this, and you'd be right
Speaker 1: to do so. Um. But let's get back to and
Speaker 1: I might represent you the trial of the Trial of
Speaker 1: the century. Yeah, that sounds great. I think this is
Speaker 1: a trend that we see with people who are not
Speaker 1: necessarily focused on looking at the ways that the law
Speaker 1: is always going to be used first and worst against
Speaker 1: the already most vulnerable. Right, So we've seen things like, Um,
Speaker 1: I think there's just this very well documented liberal impulse
Speaker 1: and I think it's very well intentioned, but it's very dangerous,
Speaker 1: um to do things to like assume that the system
Speaker 1: somehow works um or should work, and that it just
Speaker 1: needs to be like followed more closely, and that if
Speaker 1: we push for things like, um, if we like, use
Speaker 1: the law to constrain things that I would agree are
Speaker 1: the most harmful um, excesses of bigotry, right, Um, that
Speaker 1: the law would be a good tool for UM for
Speaker 1: addressing violence and bigotry. The law does not. That is
Speaker 1: not what kind of tool the law is. UM. When
Speaker 1: we push for things like laws regulating political speech, including
Speaker 1: so called hate speech, laws regulating what are referred to
Speaker 1: as hate crimes, laws UM, regulating who can carry a
Speaker 1: firearm and what they might look like. UM, you know,
Speaker 1: pushes for limiting the places or circumstances under which you
Speaker 1: could protest UM or demonstrate, right um, which you know,
Speaker 1: which was done. Um. There there was a real big
Speaker 1: UM push to UH forbid UH anti choice activists from
Speaker 1: protesting outside of UM clinics, right, which I understand, Right,
Speaker 1: But what actually is the upshot of doing that? When
Speaker 1: we see this kind of push to use the law
Speaker 1: as a tool to enforce a particular political agenda, it
Speaker 1: is not you know, it's it's just a very ill
Speaker 1: conceived way to approach this, because the law is never
Speaker 1: going to protect the most vulnerable UM. Well, these structures
Speaker 1: of power that up remain in place, and so you know,
Speaker 1: it's just always going to be leveraged against the people
Speaker 1: who have the least amount of power, and and so
Speaker 1: you know, this this sort of response to the written
Speaker 1: House stuff, to me, is just essentially a recuperation of
Speaker 1: that impulse. Yeah, I mean, it's it's a little like
Speaker 1: that old I think the joke has attributed to Gandhi.
Speaker 1: I don't know if Gandhi actually said it, but like
Speaker 1: he was asked, what do you think of Christian civilization?
Speaker 1: And he said, I think it would be a wonderful idea.
Speaker 1: What do you think of the fair and equal rule
Speaker 1: of law? Sounds nice? Um, but it was neither mars Yeah,
Speaker 1: one of the two. Um yeah, maybe both, maybe both.
Speaker 1: I don't know that we ever saw them together. Um,
Speaker 1: all right, so I don't know. I I it's it's
Speaker 1: obviously it's too early to It's one of those things
Speaker 1: where all of the complaining about the unfairness of the
Speaker 1: trial of written House winds up getting um rammed into
Speaker 1: a legal wall. Metaphorically, Uh may seem silly in content
Speaker 1: or in in retrospect, or he may this may be
Speaker 1: the thing that ignites a new wave of vigilante showing
Speaker 1: up at protests with guns, but it seems to be untouchable.
Speaker 1: Like really, the big fears that they don't set a
Speaker 1: precedent that will allow other people to use quote unquote
Speaker 1: self defense claims and effort just to kill black activists,
Speaker 1: to kill activists on the left, to kill people wearing
Speaker 1: you know, black hoodies and bandanas r. Because that's the
Speaker 1: that's the big fear out of this situation. Because my
Speaker 1: my expectation is that if written House gets off um
Speaker 1: or even just gets very minor, like if it's if
Speaker 1: he's if he's out of jail quickly within about six months,
Speaker 1: he's going to be a millionaire. Um. Absolutely, Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: the way the right wing works. I would gently ask
Speaker 1: you to think about what happened as if he doesn't
Speaker 1: because he's convicted, we are going to see a deepening
Speaker 1: of the oppression that is faced by everyone on the
Speaker 1: left as well. We lose either way. Yeah, is on
Speaker 1: the table. There's no winning, I guess, I think, I
Speaker 1: mean part of it, I guess depends on what he's
Speaker 1: convicted for. Um, because some of the stuff has I
Speaker 1: would it seems to me some of the things he's
Speaker 1: charged with. If convicted, there's more potential negative implications across
Speaker 1: the political aisle than than with others. Um Like if
Speaker 1: if it's ruled murder, I don't know, that feels less worried.
Speaker 1: I mean, I have some concerns about the crossing state
Speaker 1: line stuff. I don't know. I mean, none of it's
Speaker 1: none of it's good. I guess where I am is.
Speaker 1: I remember vividly how much the situation on the ground
Speaker 1: chain after Kenosha, just in in in Portland even I mean,
Speaker 1: Garrison can can back me up with that. They were
Speaker 1: there for that too, Like it was a It was
Speaker 1: a significant shift in the feeling of deadliness, you know,
Speaker 1: whenever there was a right wing left wing confrontation. Um
Speaker 1: and someone someone died a few days later, someone died
Speaker 1: a few days later in in a fucking gunfight. Um
Speaker 1: And I I don't know. I don't know, Moira, Uh,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't I don't want Rittenhouse to
Speaker 1: get off Scott free for shooting three people. You're absolutely right,
Speaker 1: there's no there's no winning with the legal system. The
Speaker 1: only way to win is not to play. The only
Speaker 1: way to win is not to play, So form your
Speaker 1: own breakaway civilization Ki and Gandhi Yeah uh and and
Speaker 1: Ron Hubbard take to the Sea. Yes, yeah, always Look,
Speaker 1: I don't I don't think. Um, I'm not looking for
Speaker 1: him to prevail on the self defense and not like,
Speaker 1: none of this is going to make me feel good.
Speaker 1: But I think that whether or not he is punished,
Speaker 1: whether or not he is convicted, there will be negative recussions,
Speaker 1: and all of those negative consequences will redound to the
Speaker 1: detriment of the people who are already facing the most
Speaker 1: intense federal repression. Yeah that is I mean, in fairness, like,
Speaker 1: this is the case of a child who killed two
Speaker 1: people and is now we are determining whether or not
Speaker 1: this child will spend the rest of their life in
Speaker 1: a cell. None of this should make anyone feel good
Speaker 1: no matter what happens. It's a thoroughly bleak story. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's because this kid is never going to have a
Speaker 1: chance to grow up and be like, oh I was
Speaker 1: being like a horrible I don't know the level be
Speaker 1: able to adjust to anything else rather than being this
Speaker 1: person that like culturally has been created right there. They
Speaker 1: are like a cultural thing, They're an item, they're not
Speaker 1: a person anymore, and they'll never be able to escape that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was a piece of ship when I was seventeen,
Speaker 1: and if I had had access to an a R
Speaker 1: fifteen and a chance to feel like a hero, I
Speaker 1: might have done something horrific too, And instead you were
Speaker 1: just doing sloppy steaks and it's fine and now it's fine. Um,
Speaker 1: have you watched? I think you should leave? Moira? I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: have you watched? I think you should leave? Moira? No?
Speaker 1: Oh it's good, it's good. Alright, I'll check it out. Um, um,
Speaker 1: I'll take a look. Yeah, I don't know. Um, well,
Speaker 1: thank you, Moira. Uh, this is always appreciated. Um, it's good.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Like, were you we've talked a bit
Speaker 1: about anarchism. How many? How much? How much of like
Speaker 1: your belief about the way the world ought to be
Speaker 1: and is came as a result of getting into the
Speaker 1: guts of the legal system. Do you mean did I
Speaker 1: become more devoted to anarchism and I went to law school. Um?
Speaker 1: I didn't become less devoted to it. But I remember
Speaker 1: when I was going to law school, people kept saying, oh,
Speaker 1: you're going to become really conservative and I was like,
Speaker 1: I don't think that's true. That seems seems fake. Uh.
Speaker 1: And in fact, I remember um being in my criminal
Speaker 1: procedure class and just thinking, how in the world can
Speaker 1: anyone at any law school read Miranda, which is a
Speaker 1: case where someone is, you know, just horrifically abused by
Speaker 1: police in order to extract a state in it. How
Speaker 1: could anybody read this case and not come out of
Speaker 1: law school with a deep contempt for law enforcement. You know,
Speaker 1: I know that it happens. I don't know how always uplifting, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it. It is. It's important to know, you know.
Speaker 1: I when I was when I was younger and poor, uh,
Speaker 1: and dealing with things like taxes, I would often go
Speaker 1: like years without paying them, and I would like ignore
Speaker 1: debts and bills until like like my student loans, until
Speaker 1: it became like a serious problem because I didn't want
Speaker 1: to look at it. I didn't even want to like
Speaker 1: look at the scale of the issue and grapple with it.
Speaker 1: I just wanted to run away from it. And when
Speaker 1: I actually like sat down and figured out my situation
Speaker 1: and like really came to understand like what what I
Speaker 1: needed to do in order to deal with those problems
Speaker 1: like it was stressful and it sucked, and it was
Speaker 1: fucking days of work, but getting understanding the scope of
Speaker 1: the problem I'd gotten myself into was a necessary step
Speaker 1: to like fixing the situation. And I think the same
Speaker 1: is true with like this kind of ship. It's not fun,
Speaker 1: nobody who is. I think a reasonable person like wants
Speaker 1: to dig into the US justice system and get into
Speaker 1: the guts of it because it's bleak as hell. But
Speaker 1: you need to because it's it's you can't escape it
Speaker 1: unless you flee the country and live in a place
Speaker 1: with no extradition treaties, UM or international waters. I feel
Speaker 1: like you're talking about a lot of the people you've profiled. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean Ecuador does sound nice. I'm sure it's lovely
Speaker 1: this time of year. Um. Yeah, I think you're right.
Speaker 1: You need to be able to have a sort of
Speaker 1: clear eyed assessment so that we can actively identify and
Speaker 1: effectively address the problems. Unfortunately, I think the problems are
Speaker 1: so um all encompassing that I don't know that there's
Speaker 1: I would venture to say that there is not a
Speaker 1: real totalizing solution that doesn't involve total abolition. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: agree with you. But in the meantime, I mean, I
Speaker 1: think there are there are things that we can do
Speaker 1: to to advocate for our clients, or as an individual,
Speaker 1: you can do to protect yourself. And that's why it
Speaker 1: is important to have some sort of working understanding, um,
Speaker 1: because you can keep yourself and the people around you
Speaker 1: at least somewhat safer if you do understand the beast um.
Speaker 1: Even though your goal is to is to destroy it. Uh,
Speaker 1: And that's I think the only reasonable goal when you
Speaker 1: really understand it, it's still behooves you to to understand it.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's the same with like it, the same
Speaker 1: with what what Garrison and I do with the fucking
Speaker 1: Nazi spending all this time and weird telegram channels like
Speaker 1: reading what they're trying to understand them, because you do
Speaker 1: need to understand them to effectively combat them. Well, it's
Speaker 1: not for the faint of heart. No, no, yeah, neither
Speaker 1: is what you do. UM. The messages is that we're
Speaker 1: all well adjusted and we're all great for that boat.
Speaker 1: Nobody secondary trauma. There's no secondary trauma in international waters Moire.
Speaker 1: I have that that that my my old friend l R.
Speaker 1: H told me that just you and the open sea
Speaker 1: and a bunch of twenty year old searching for gold
Speaker 1: that I buried in a past life, live in the dream. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he is both fascinating and terrifying. Yeah. UM just just
Speaker 1: like just like our legal system system. And that wraps
Speaker 1: up this episode that brings us around. UM, anything you
Speaker 1: want to plug any any place, maybe our listeners could
Speaker 1: could send donations that would help somebody who's themselves against
Speaker 1: a wall at the moment. Would certainly suggest that people
Speaker 1: look into whatever bail funds are local to them. There's
Speaker 1: one I know in New York called COVID Bailout NYC.
Speaker 1: That's um doing incredible work right now to get people
Speaker 1: off Rikers Island, which is having a humanitarian crisis of
Speaker 1: just unbelievable scope. UM. It sounds to me like the
Speaker 1: conditions on Rikers right now are at least as bad
Speaker 1: as the conditions that led to the Attica uprising. UM.
Speaker 1: So I would always, always UM direct people to give
Speaker 1: money to local bail funds. I also want to plug
Speaker 1: the National Lawyers Guild UH Anti Federal Repression or Federal
Speaker 1: Defense hotline, which is too one to six seven nine
Speaker 1: to eight one one two one to six seven nine
Speaker 1: to eight one one if you call that number, or
Speaker 1: you can call that number if you are having unwanted
Speaker 1: contact with federal agents, and you can be advised by
Speaker 1: an attorney who is me about your rights and responsibilities
Speaker 1: with respect to federal agents, and I will try to
Speaker 1: connect you with appropriate resources in your area. UM. This
Speaker 1: is not the hotline to call if you've been injured
Speaker 1: by a police officer. UM. This is the hotline to
Speaker 1: call if you have been visited by the FBI. UM,
Speaker 1: don't talk to cops. If you are contacted by law enforcement,
Speaker 1: say I am represented by counsel. Please leave your name
Speaker 1: and number and my lawyer will call you. UH. And
Speaker 1: remember that you cannot talk your way out of an arrest,
Speaker 1: but you can talk your way into a conviction. All
Speaker 1: great points, all great things to be aware of. UM.
Speaker 1: Speaking of great things to be aware of. Be aware
Speaker 1: that we'll be back tomorrow, unless this is a Friday,
Speaker 1: in which case we'll be back next week. From now
Speaker 1: until the heat death of the universe. Thank you so much, Laura,
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Speaker 1: brings you compelling, real life adoption stories told by the
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Speaker 1: to it could happen Here a podcast about the continual
Speaker 1: state of bad things happening and how sometimes you can
Speaker 1: make them less bad or not happen. And today we're
Speaker 1: gonna I'm Christopher Wong, by the way, and today we're
Speaker 1: gonna be talking about Bosnia, a place where things went
Speaker 1: about as bad as they possibly can, and about how
Speaker 1: they're heading in very scary directions now. And with us
Speaker 1: to talk about this is Arnessa Kustra. Arnessa is a
Speaker 1: genocide survivor and a academic expert on genocides in general. Arnessa,
Speaker 1: how how are you doing? You know, I'm doing okay.
Speaker 1: I think all things considered, you know, being sort of
Speaker 1: bombarded on a daily basis with you know, possible threats,
Speaker 1: um and talks about you know, a new conflict war
Speaker 1: brewing in the Balkan. This is the thing. Not an
Speaker 1: easy thing to convent, definitely not. Yeah, but other than that,
Speaker 1: I'm doing great. Thanks for asking. I'm glad, I'm glad.
Speaker 1: I'm glad you could be here with me today. Because
Speaker 1: the Balkans extremely complicated place, which I guess his story
Speaker 1: of both places. But yeah, and so I guess that
Speaker 1: that's that's where I wanted to go with my first question,
Speaker 1: because reading about what's happening now, my first instinct was
Speaker 1: go back to the day and accords. But I'm actually
Speaker 1: not sure that that's that that's that's that's even the
Speaker 1: best place to start. And so I wanted I wanted to,
Speaker 1: I guess ask you if so, okay, so if if,
Speaker 1: if you're coming into looking at the Balkans for the
Speaker 1: first time and you're trying to understand what's going on, now,
Speaker 1: where do you think it is the best place to
Speaker 1: start on it? Because I think you know the best. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're talking about so much history, honestly, but the thing is,
Speaker 1: let's you know, let's start with the death of Tito
Speaker 1: that's always a good place, I think, because that's really
Speaker 1: when things started to kind of shift in the Balkans
Speaker 1: and the former you know socialist udo Slavia was really
Speaker 1: once Tito died and his place became you know empty
Speaker 1: as this sort of unifying factor of all the various
Speaker 1: ethnicities and nationalities within Yugoslavia. You know, once he was gone,
Speaker 1: that sort of left this vacuum that needed to be filled.
Speaker 1: And unfortunately, instead of being filled by another socialist you know,
Speaker 1: pro equality, pro unity leader, it was filled with a
Speaker 1: nationalist um, which is kind of where we still are unfortunately. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, it started obviously with with little things I think,
Speaker 1: with little sort of conversations and and little subtle I
Speaker 1: guess you know, Ethno nationalist rhetorics, and it just kind
Speaker 1: of like grew and spiraled from there, and obviously, you know,
Speaker 1: that sort of thing led to Miloshevich and Kosovo giving
Speaker 1: his infamous speech, which kind of really gave that full
Speaker 1: fledged stamp on. Okay, yes, this is a ultra nationalists,
Speaker 1: you know, ethno nationalist president that we now have, UM,
Speaker 1: who's threatening war across the other ethnicities. What do we
Speaker 1: do next? Um? And at that point you know, that's
Speaker 1: when you sort of see the other countries start to secede,
Speaker 1: you know, Slovania and Croatia they're attacked by Serbia and
Speaker 1: then obviously eventually it goes down to Bosnia. Um and yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it starts with the ethno nationalism as it
Speaker 1: always does. I think, um, you know, I don't think
Speaker 1: we're anything special in terms of having conflict with our neighbors.
Speaker 1: Look at France and England or in our or America
Speaker 1: and Mexico or anyone. Really it's just, you know, I
Speaker 1: think people make it sound as if we're special or
Speaker 1: we have these ancient hatreds, but you know that's not
Speaker 1: really true. It all comes down to the freaking politics
Speaker 1: and the leaders. And unfortunately, you know, Miloshevitch was removed,
Speaker 1: but is policy is um beliefs continue to kind of
Speaker 1: stick around, you know, I think, uh, you know, people
Speaker 1: think of people like Miloshevich and adavankata Ji, who were
Speaker 1: you know, genocidal war criminals, as a thing of the past.
Speaker 1: But really you look at you know, the Serbian president
Speaker 1: Um or the Repubska president Middle Thought, and there are
Speaker 1: really just the continuation of katach and relationship wch Um.
Speaker 1: So nothing you know, has fundamentally changed since Tito died,
Speaker 1: except you know, we got some new agreements, we got
Speaker 1: some new territories, some new ethnic lients drawn up, and
Speaker 1: not a new pretty buildings too. We have those as well,
Speaker 1: but we don't really have that coexistence um, at least
Speaker 1: that on paper, not in politics certainly. I want to
Speaker 1: go back for a second too, I guess the moment
Speaker 1: of Chito dying because it's always been a sort of
Speaker 1: interesting thing looking at it for me because I remember,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, so from from setting Chinese history
Speaker 1: right there, there's a period where in the seventies were okay,
Speaker 1: like everyone's looking for reform in China, and you know
Speaker 1: what what you would consider like the sort of the
Speaker 1: I guess you could call them the I don't know,
Speaker 1: left and right is complicated in China, but you know,
Speaker 1: like there there are a lot of sort of what
Speaker 1: you would call like the sort of left socialist like
Speaker 1: democratic reformers. Who are you know, I mean people people
Speaker 1: like they're looking at Yugoslavia as a model and they're going, oh,
Speaker 1: we can have like workers participation and we can have
Speaker 1: we can have these democratic enterprises and then that just implodes,
Speaker 1: and and yeah, I wonder if we could talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about more about that, because my my very
Speaker 1: limited understanding of it was like there's an economic crisis
Speaker 1: from the oil shocks, and then once Tito dies, it's
Speaker 1: just like the wheels come off the whole system. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's a really good way of like putting it. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, like life in Yugoslavia, I don't think it
Speaker 1: was like ever perfect, and I definitely don't think it
Speaker 1: was a perfect system. I think you know, me being
Speaker 1: a Bosnian who was born to Vary, I think pro
Speaker 1: Yugoslav parents. Um. I just like many of my you know,
Speaker 1: fellow Yugoslavs or x Yugoslavs habitancyemed to look at Yugoslavia
Speaker 1: with like rose colored lenses. You know. We think about
Speaker 1: the coexistence, the unity, the multi ethnic part, the worker
Speaker 1: owned you know, socialist models, the fact that our parents, um,
Speaker 1: you know, we're able to provide for their families and
Speaker 1: take vacations and travel and um, you know, get together
Speaker 1: and all these sort of wonderful things. But in the background,
Speaker 1: really in the sort of depths of the you know,
Speaker 1: politics and the economic issues were kind of always there. UM.
Speaker 1: You know, the one thing that Tito did was obviously
Speaker 1: he relied unlike I think other socialist leaders of his
Speaker 1: time is you know, he basically worked with anyone, you know,
Speaker 1: the non aligned movement, but also with the West, with Europe,
Speaker 1: you know. So uh, he was a very picky choosy
Speaker 1: I think was you know, the betterment of the country
Speaker 1: by kind of any means necessary. UM. But I think,
Speaker 1: you know, he made mistakes, just like um other leaders do.
Speaker 1: And I think obviously we had, you know, two issues.
Speaker 1: One he was sick, he was dying, um. And and
Speaker 1: too there was an economic crisis happening. Um. And three
Speaker 1: then we had like the economic reforms, which really shifted
Speaker 1: the entire I mean they just they very much shifted
Speaker 1: the the system that the Yugoslav people were very much
Speaker 1: used to. UM. It became more and more prior, you know,
Speaker 1: privatized after his death. UM. And And you know, Miloroshevich
Speaker 1: he was he was a banker, he was a businessman.
Speaker 1: He was he was who he was. UM. And I
Speaker 1: don't think that he ever really pretended to be a socialist,
Speaker 1: which is why I get so upset when American leftists
Speaker 1: call him a socialist or call him an anti imperialist,
Speaker 1: because those aren't even words that you know, he himself
Speaker 1: would have really used to describe himself. I think, but
Speaker 1: but I think, you know, there was just it was
Speaker 1: that sort of thing where there's an economic crisis brewing,
Speaker 1: they have no ways to really fix it. People are broke,
Speaker 1: people are starving. Suddenly the ownership, the worker you know
Speaker 1: owned sort of model is being shifted, it to a
Speaker 1: more privatized model, and people are just not happy. What's
Speaker 1: a good way to distract from that? You know, It's
Speaker 1: just we see it happen everywhere. It's not a new
Speaker 1: it's not like a new, you know tactic. It's a
Speaker 1: tactic that everyone has utilized. Blame it on the other. Um. So,
Speaker 1: Yugoslavia didn't really have you know, immigrants that they could
Speaker 1: blame it on, but they had Muslims. So and they
Speaker 1: had the Kastovo you know, Albanians and the Bossians and
Speaker 1: that was, you know enough, and suddenly the conversation really shifted.
Speaker 1: And obviously I'm simplifying all of this a lot, so
Speaker 1: much more complicated. Um but you know, there there are
Speaker 1: books out there and and that obviously go into a
Speaker 1: great you know level of detail, um into the actual
Speaker 1: sort of break up, so I can give some recommendations later.
Speaker 1: But um, yeah. But I think in in that sort
Speaker 1: of very simplistic kind of sense is there was an
Speaker 1: economic crisis happening. A good way to sort of distract
Speaker 1: that was the use of ethno nationalism, and it just
Speaker 1: kind of spiraled from there. I think, you know what
Speaker 1: Miloshevitch and what people like Miloshevitch always want, it's more
Speaker 1: power for themselves. And so his whole thing wasn't really
Speaker 1: ever about keeping Yugoslavia intact as Yugoslavia. It was keeping
Speaker 1: this vision of a greater Serbia alive. Because the thing is,
Speaker 1: you know, if we had not had a person like Miloshevitch,
Speaker 1: if we just had somebody who was you know, the second,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe more or less worse or better, who cares.
Speaker 1: I think people would have been fine. I think, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't see this like war breaking now. But instead
Speaker 1: we had Miloshevich who was like way more concerned about
Speaker 1: consolidating power, exerting that control. When he realized that he
Speaker 1: could use ethno nationalism to get to his goals, of
Speaker 1: course he was going to use that of course, like
Speaker 1: who wouldn't you know, we see it today with like
Speaker 1: what Trump did. He utilized, you know, Muslims and immigrants
Speaker 1: and refugees and black people, all his scapegoats to distract
Speaker 1: from all the other things that are wrong with him,
Speaker 1: his leadership and the overall country. And Miloshevich did the same.
Speaker 1: He just did what any other politician did. And you know,
Speaker 1: that's the thing I think, you know, in thinking about Bosnia, Croatia,
Speaker 1: Slovenia and all these countries that started to succeed, I
Speaker 1: think if they had felt comfortable with, you know, staying
Speaker 1: in a country that is multi ethnic, at least in
Speaker 1: the case of Bosnian's. I'm not going to speak for
Speaker 1: the Slovanians or Croatians because they have their own, i
Speaker 1: think complicated identity. But with Bosnian, are are saying collectively,
Speaker 1: I think while we're not a monologue, not monolith, but
Speaker 1: collectively was always where are united? We are multi ethnic,
Speaker 1: multi religious, multi cultural, and it's such a big part
Speaker 1: of like our entire history and identity. And so if
Speaker 1: the choices being you know, under served control being secondary citizens,
Speaker 1: not having that equality, not having that multi ethnicity, of
Speaker 1: course we're not going to take that choice. Of course,
Speaker 1: people are gonna want to you know, when when you
Speaker 1: have like that, you know, that boot on your neck
Speaker 1: of saying like we're going to control you, we're gonna
Speaker 1: take your land and we're gonna basically rule over you.
Speaker 1: Nobody wants to deal with that. And you know, unlike
Speaker 1: a lot of the other countries in former Yugoslavia, Bosnia
Speaker 1: really was the most multi ethnic. It had one of
Speaker 1: the highest rates of you know, mixed ethnic marriages and
Speaker 1: multi religious marriages, and that kind of remains true even today.
Speaker 1: So especially in places like sorry Evo, Mostadeluka, you know,
Speaker 1: the bigger cities, it has this very proud history of
Speaker 1: you know, coexistence and multiethnic co existence. So I think
Speaker 1: what happened for so many people was just a huge
Speaker 1: amount of shock. Um, my own family, so many people
Speaker 1: in my own family just did not think it could happen. Now.
Speaker 1: They grew up with this idea of a united you know,
Speaker 1: multi ethnic Yugoslavia, brotherhood and unity. These are our neighbors,
Speaker 1: our friends, our teachers, are lovers, you know whatever. There
Speaker 1: they work with us, they live next to us. Of first,
Speaker 1: they're not gonna you know, turn against us. And I
Speaker 1: think even while all the politicians were fearmong rowing, while
Speaker 1: you know, Miloshevitch and Karta Duge were sort of leading
Speaker 1: their campaigns of you know, especially as lamophobic provacad propaganda, um,
Speaker 1: you know, in in newspapers, on the radio, on TV,
Speaker 1: any chance that any speech that they gave, they talked
Speaker 1: about how the Muslims were coming, we were going to
Speaker 1: make their daughters wear her jobs, we were gonna take over.
Speaker 1: We're going to kill them, you know before that's why
Speaker 1: they have to kill us, because they don't call us
Speaker 1: we're going to kill them. It was whole, you know,
Speaker 1: really brilliant propaganda campaign in so many ways that has
Speaker 1: now been replicated in so many other Can Can we
Speaker 1: talk about that specifically for yes? Second, because I think
Speaker 1: there's something interesting in the way that like the way
Speaker 1: that you get people to do with genocide always seems
Speaker 1: to be, like you, it's extremely hard to get someone
Speaker 1: to like just murder their neighbor because they don't like them.
Speaker 1: You have to do this like they're about to exterminate us,
Speaker 1: and that's why we have to like strike first. And
Speaker 1: that Yeah, that that that aspect of it I think
Speaker 1: is is something that I see a lot when when
Speaker 1: I do this, and you know you you have you
Speaker 1: have done more geneside studies. I want to hear. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, here's the thing. UM, it's so funny. I
Speaker 1: gave like an interview UM on this specific topic I
Speaker 1: don't know, like two years ago, and I remember turning
Speaker 1: to the guy who's interviewing me because he was just
Speaker 1: like his look on his face was I just don't understand,
Speaker 1: Like I don't. I can't wrap my mind about how
Speaker 1: people could do that to their friends, neighbors, students, you know,
Speaker 1: people they were sworn to like protect and and people
Speaker 1: they lived with their entire lives. How could they do that? Well,
Speaker 1: you know, I turned to him and I said, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, if I told you right now go kill him,
Speaker 1: you know you probably wouldn't. But if I came to
Speaker 1: you day in and day out, and I slowly started
Speaker 1: to kind of whisper in your ear, and I started
Speaker 1: to tell you, you know, he's been really really I
Speaker 1: don't know, he's been saying a lot of stuff about you.
Speaker 1: He's been quite negative or I don't know, you know,
Speaker 1: do you think he's kind of acting weird? I feel
Speaker 1: like he might be planning something. You may be planning
Speaker 1: to take over your house. You may be planning to,
Speaker 1: I don't know, probably attack your sister. I think he's
Speaker 1: gonna kill your sister. I think you might make your
Speaker 1: sister wear her job. So it's these very like slow,
Speaker 1: subtle things. And that's the thing that people don't understand.
Speaker 1: You know. Violence never interrupts, like, never erupts out of nowhere,
Speaker 1: you know it. It's always planned. It bruised, and it bruise,
Speaker 1: and it bruised, and then it explodes. You know. Then
Speaker 1: there's the thing. But it comes slowly. And that's how
Speaker 1: it wasn't he was slofty. It wasn't this sudden. You know. Yes,
Speaker 1: we're brothers and sisters. Forever, Go Tito, go Yugoslavia too.
Speaker 1: You know, Oh, I hate you because you're a Muslim,
Speaker 1: and I hate you because your servant. I hate you
Speaker 1: because you're a proact. No, that was not the case.
Speaker 1: The case was that this was a very slow campaign
Speaker 1: of propaganda that started in the eighties, almost immediately after
Speaker 1: Tito's That's let's say it started very slow, started with
Speaker 1: the you know, with the sort of I think disenfranchisement
Speaker 1: of the coast of all Albanians um and kind of
Speaker 1: the targeting of them um. And again, yes, there was
Speaker 1: this economic component on of it, but the way they
Speaker 1: wanted to kind of sidetrack that was, you know, well,
Speaker 1: you're you're hungry because the coast of Albanians are not,
Speaker 1: you know, and they're taking your jobs again some more, uh,
Speaker 1: you know tactics that we see. Yeah, so it's not
Speaker 1: it's not that much different, but yeah, you know, it
Speaker 1: starts slow and and the Militievitch and the cottage and
Speaker 1: the Maladich kind of campaigning was God, it was brutal.
Speaker 1: I mean, like I always say, it was kind of
Speaker 1: brilliantly executed in that it really got two people so
Speaker 1: much that then again, you know, they turned neighbor against neigbor.
Speaker 1: It was it was subtle in the beginning. It was
Speaker 1: that sort of what are the Muslims up to? Can
Speaker 1: we trust them? Can you trust your neighbor? Can you
Speaker 1: trust the Muslims? You know, talking about islam sization, talking
Speaker 1: about aliyaz Abiga, which is book that he wrote when
Speaker 1: he was like I don't know eighteen or or whatever, like,
Speaker 1: and you know, talking about World War two. This was
Speaker 1: another thing like, like everybody knows that there was a
Speaker 1: period in World War Two where you know, a lot
Speaker 1: of service were killed by the usha UH and by
Speaker 1: the Nazi collaborationists. And I think obviously that's a real
Speaker 1: fear for you know, for a certain group of people
Speaker 1: who went through that. So there is a lot of
Speaker 1: that as well. You know, that's going to happen again,
Speaker 1: That's going to happen again. Meanwhile, there was no grand plan.
Speaker 1: There was never even talks of you know, committing violence
Speaker 1: or even you know, talks of you know, seceding from
Speaker 1: Yugoslavia or anything. It was all it was all set
Speaker 1: in motion by the Serbian leadership, you know. And I
Speaker 1: think that's what people don't understand. The Bousian leadership, while
Speaker 1: not perfect, we're simply reacting to what the Serbian leadership
Speaker 1: was in many ways making them do. And and that's
Speaker 1: kind of where you know, what happens in these situations.
Speaker 1: You know, they kind of push you and push you
Speaker 1: and push you until they're able to get you know,
Speaker 1: some sort of rise out of you, or response out
Speaker 1: of you, or or get you on that sort of
Speaker 1: offensive where you have to defend yourself. You have to
Speaker 1: defend your identity. You have to defend who you are,
Speaker 1: you have to it justify it also in many ways.
Speaker 1: So yeah, the you know, the sort of propaganda campaign. God,
Speaker 1: there was you know obviously the funny things were like
Speaker 1: things like they're going to make you wear the h job,
Speaker 1: but it was also very insiduous because they would target
Speaker 1: like these you know villages where they were like Bosnians
Speaker 1: and Serbs, you know, living together, and they're quite small,
Speaker 1: but they knew that like in the village obviously usually
Speaker 1: have a gun or you know shotgun because of the
Speaker 1: animals or you know, working or whatever. So they were
Speaker 1: like target them specifically with like the you know, the
Speaker 1: radio and instead of like the big cities, like they
Speaker 1: worked up to the big cities, but they really started
Speaker 1: in like specific sort of areas like in eastern Bosnia,
Speaker 1: especially because there was like a lot of um i
Speaker 1: think majority Muslim like villages in that area up that
Speaker 1: would also have like nearby served villages. So yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean there was that there was you know then sort
Speaker 1: of taking over all the radio stations and um kind
Speaker 1: of going full force. They think like in the sort
Speaker 1: of early days of the war, like we're talking April May.
Speaker 1: They you know, they would get people like pretending that
Speaker 1: they were Bosnians, they were actually Serbs, and they would
Speaker 1: like talk about how they went to you know, kill
Speaker 1: all Serbs or something like that. Um. There was also
Speaker 1: when they were like having people in concentration camps where
Speaker 1: they like started kind of putting them in those concentration camps. Initially,
Speaker 1: they they would make the victims into concentration camps. The
Speaker 1: Muslims basically you know, say that, oh, they're just there
Speaker 1: as a refugee and the Serbian army is like protecting um,
Speaker 1: and they're making me feel really welcome and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: So it was right at the beginning between especially eighty
Speaker 1: nine too, like the propaganda was so visible and it
Speaker 1: really escalated, and it was like suddenly everywhere and you
Speaker 1: would hear Carategic and little Worshovitch talk about you know,
Speaker 1: the Muslims and the things that we wanted and you know,
Speaker 1: the things that the goals that we had, which after all,
Speaker 1: we're not you know, nobody was saying it. There wasn't
Speaker 1: like a single person that was saying these things that
Speaker 1: they were attributing to us. But that didn't matter what
Speaker 1: they were just doing was instilling enough fear and enough
Speaker 1: doubt in the population to eventually get them to take
Speaker 1: up arms when the time comes. And unfortunately, that's precisely
Speaker 1: what happened. When the time came. You know, a lot
Speaker 1: of people did take up arms, whether or not they
Speaker 1: wanted to. They had enough of that doubt and fear
Speaker 1: so in their minds over the course of you know,
Speaker 1: several years that they ended up feeling like I have
Speaker 1: to protect myself. And I'm not saying that's the case
Speaker 1: for every certain person. I think some a lot of
Speaker 1: you know, especially in higher leadership pomissions, a lot of
Speaker 1: them were just sociopaths who wanted to kill. And I
Speaker 1: don't think it mattered why or how, because you're always
Speaker 1: going to get those kind of people. But I think
Speaker 1: when we're talking about how how that shift happened so last,
Speaker 1: we have to obviously discuss the propaganda. A huge amount
Speaker 1: of propaganda that I went into, uh, you know, implementing
Speaker 1: it such a tangent that that was really great. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think, you know, yeah, I mean, I guess, like,
Speaker 1: I think it's incredibly important for everyone to understand the
Speaker 1: propaganda it works. Like if you just say something over
Speaker 1: and over and over again, like it does you know
Speaker 1: of event eventually it pays off, and you know the
Speaker 1: quote unquote payoff here is the genocide. And I guess, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure how far into detail you want to
Speaker 1: get into this here, but but I think one thing
Speaker 1: I want to kind of focus on because I think
Speaker 1: from from reading what you've been saying about this, that
Speaker 1: this wound up being a big deal with like why
Speaker 1: things are sort of still fucked now, which is that
Speaker 1: like the international response to this. Like I mean, one
Speaker 1: of the things I'm always just like haunted by is
Speaker 1: there's this quote by mid Irand who's the Prome Mr
Speaker 1: of France. He's like this, sup wants to be the socialist.
Speaker 1: He's like the guy that like they finally put in
Speaker 1: power after like all of the stuff in the sixties,
Speaker 1: and he has this lyon about like I'm sorry, I wish,
Speaker 1: I wish I told up the exact quote, but it's
Speaker 1: it's basically like, I I know the quote. Yeah, do
Speaker 1: you want to say exactly I know the quote? Um,
Speaker 1: it's uh, it's what was it a peaceful but necessary
Speaker 1: reconstruction of a Christian europe Um And Bosnia does not belong.
Speaker 1: So I remember that differently. It's really stayed with me
Speaker 1: for such a long time because he said that at
Speaker 1: a time where the Bosnian Muslims were just completely defenseless. Um,
Speaker 1: they were being dragged the way to concentrate to shim camps.
Speaker 1: The massacres were already well underway. We're not talking about stuburdance.
Speaker 1: We're talking about sorry about uh um even stub at
Speaker 1: ninety two. You know, this is all um, the things
Speaker 1: that happened in places like witch quoins running and all
Speaker 1: these like places that you that I think the vast
Speaker 1: majority of people don't really know about any here about,
Speaker 1: like in a lot of my family is from there.
Speaker 1: Within a span of three months, that entire town, the
Speaker 1: entire town which was once almost entirely Bosnia muslim Um,
Speaker 1: was ethnically cleansed, and that was done through forced deportations,
Speaker 1: concentration camps, mass rapes and rape camps of women and
Speaker 1: obviously a lot of murders. You know. So we're talking
Speaker 1: about one small town that took you know, three three months,
Speaker 1: and my family when it comes to that town, on
Speaker 1: both my mother's and my father's side, interestingly enough, has
Speaker 1: like such a long history. My parents fell in love
Speaker 1: there when they were like kids, so you know, they
Speaker 1: you know, my grandmother's house was there, my grandfather's house
Speaker 1: was there, um on like both sides and they, you know,
Speaker 1: so is this beautiful little town where you know, Bosnians
Speaker 1: and Bosniaks and Serbs and Coad lived in Jews Roma
Speaker 1: and you know, my parents talk about the beauty of
Speaker 1: it and this wonderful sort of experience that they had
Speaker 1: when they lived there. My mom is from saraebo Um
Speaker 1: and I saw my i as well obviously, but the
Speaker 1: Kad was like the place that she would go kind
Speaker 1: of like for the weekend, just because of the family
Speaker 1: that we had there. UM so very special. I think
Speaker 1: in her heart my grandpa's heart as well, and you know,
Speaker 1: within it's just like so hard to like fathom that
Speaker 1: within just a few months that talent was completely ethnically
Speaker 1: climes and that the international community knew this and did nothing.
Speaker 1: You know, there is and I believe it's in the
Speaker 1: Clinton tapes as well, but there's this thing about how
Speaker 1: they had provided aerial footage of the massacres that were
Speaker 1: being that were being enacted in places like Pittgal and
Speaker 1: Swannique where oh my god, depare military served forces did
Speaker 1: some horri horrifying acts of like violence and torture against
Speaker 1: the civilians. UM. And they had you know, showed it
Speaker 1: to the Clintons, and they showed it to the French
Speaker 1: and the English, and they did nothing. You know, they
Speaker 1: knew that a genocide was unfolding, UM. And the Dayton
Speaker 1: Peace Agreement wasn't signed until so the international UM community
Speaker 1: I think as just as much of a responsibility in
Speaker 1: the you know, the genocide of the Bosniaks as Serbia does,
Speaker 1: because they sat there and they watched when they had
Speaker 1: all the power to stop it. They always had the
Speaker 1: power to stop it. They had the power to stop
Speaker 1: it before it even before even one person got killed, UM.
Speaker 1: And and two they it's not even that they just watched,
Speaker 1: it's that they purposely left the Muslims defenseless because Serbia
Speaker 1: had all the Yugoslav army, all the weapons, all the
Speaker 1: you know, everything, all the tools that they needed to
Speaker 1: commit Jenna's side, they already had it, and all the
Speaker 1: arsenal everything, UM. And you the was army was like
Speaker 1: the most powerful in the region at the time. And
Speaker 1: I think the fourth third third or fourth most powerful
Speaker 1: in like the Europe Turkey areas, so we you know,
Speaker 1: quite a powerful army. And there was Bosnia which had
Speaker 1: no weapons, no military um. You know, you see these
Speaker 1: pictures of like civilians fighting against you know, tanks and
Speaker 1: mortar shells and snipers, and it's like these you know,
Speaker 1: youths basically and like converse and jeans and like an
Speaker 1: army jacket playing soldier because that's all we had. You know,
Speaker 1: we had the homemade weapons, we had, um, you know,
Speaker 1: how to make your own bomb books kind of thing,
Speaker 1: and trying to basically descend ourselves with anything that we could. Um.
Speaker 1: They specifically did not lift the arms embargo, knowing that
Speaker 1: they were leaving us defenseless. Like they just knew there
Speaker 1: was no way. There's no doubt on everything that we
Speaker 1: have read about the international community response, everything that Clinton
Speaker 1: mackand John mayor Major Major um not mayor Major have
Speaker 1: said you know about it during that period shows us
Speaker 1: that they absolutely knew that we were defenseless, you know.
Speaker 1: And this wasn't you know a lot of people say
Speaker 1: I didn't know about the Boss Angela side, but it
Speaker 1: was discussed. You know. I looked at the archived footage. Um,
Speaker 1: it was talked about it on television, it was brought
Speaker 1: up in parliament and incentive that was people at the
Speaker 1: time who are like, why are we leaving the Bosnians
Speaker 1: defense lives? Why are we you know, not helping them,
Speaker 1: Why are we allowing them to be allowed into slaughter?
Speaker 1: This is genocide blah blah blah. So even as early
Speaker 1: as there was still people who knew about this stuff,
Speaker 1: we're telling the leaders but nothing. Yeah, I think I
Speaker 1: think like that part also, like it's it's not just
Speaker 1: that like they did nothing like they like they did
Speaker 1: worse than doing nothing, like Mitterran's actively cheering it on,
Speaker 1: Like you know, the arms embargo is just like the
Speaker 1: arms embargo if you're applying in arms embargo on a
Speaker 1: conflict where one people one side has tanks and the
Speaker 1: other side has like molotovs, like you are actively supporting
Speaker 1: one of the sides. And I think that like that
Speaker 1: just like is completely lost in how like almost everyone
Speaker 1: seems to talk about the now because there's like you know,
Speaker 1: because because when you sort of get like interventions later,
Speaker 1: like people are like, oh, look, the wester was like
Speaker 1: planning to intervene here, the whole time, and it's like no,
Speaker 1: like they were literally cheering, was cheering. Like it's like,
Speaker 1: it's so frustrating because you know, we you take what
Speaker 1: we know about. And here's the thing. I know that
Speaker 1: Islamophobia escalated after nine eleven, but Islamophobia has existed for
Speaker 1: a very long time. And I think talked to the
Speaker 1: black Muslims of America, they will tell you more, you know,
Speaker 1: better than than I could ever tell you about the
Speaker 1: history of Islamophobia in the United States. So it's Alamophobia
Speaker 1: was always an aspect of life. And in Europe, Islamophobia
Speaker 1: just like anti Semitism. I mean, it is like the
Speaker 1: staple of European cultural cuisine. So to say yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like it's like yeah, it's like there's a there's a
Speaker 1: there's an they have they have like they have like
Speaker 1: the like the the tri force of Europeans, of European
Speaker 1: civilization is anti Semitism, Islamophobia and hating the Roma. Just
Speaker 1: like however the force. And so I think the sort
Speaker 1: of thing about the explicitness of European leadership, especially at
Speaker 1: the time in in you know, effectively ensuring that we
Speaker 1: were killed off because in Muslim country in Europe could
Speaker 1: not exist. And that's the thing that they said, literally
Speaker 1: set a Muslim country in Europe cannot exist. Like the
Speaker 1: fact that that was so open and brazen like kind
Speaker 1: of takes me back, but it really like tells you
Speaker 1: how much Islamophobia informed. I think the international community responds
Speaker 1: on this, and it's so interesting to me now. I
Speaker 1: think I've seen it over the past, I would say,
Speaker 1: especially five years, the sort of leftist genocide and sort
Speaker 1: of leftist anti imperialist kind of defense of Miloshevich and
Speaker 1: oh they were the you know, the Serbs were the
Speaker 1: actual victims blah blah blah and NATO blah blah blah,
Speaker 1: Western intervention. And I'm just like, oh, my god, read
Speaker 1: a book, read an article from that, read their actual quotes.
Speaker 1: There's no way that you can actually convince me that Europe,
Speaker 1: fortress Europe, and the United States of America would do
Speaker 1: anything that would benefit, you know, the Muslims. Was this
Speaker 1: what was one of the things I think was it's
Speaker 1: really interesting to me about the way that the sort
Speaker 1: of like left shandi sides nihilism works, like it always
Speaker 1: seems to be roogins lomophobia, like and I remember started
Speaker 1: seeing this with Bosnia to where they're like, oh, yeah, well,
Speaker 1: it's it's because it's because what's okay, they have two things.
Speaker 1: One it's like, well, the Bossians were Nazis been the
Speaker 1: second one was that, oh well the boss the Bossians
Speaker 1: were like altra hottists. And it's like, it's the exact
Speaker 1: same thing you see with China. And it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's because all the weakers are like lafi Jo hottest
Speaker 1: iss c I A. And it's like no, yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it's it's it's honestly laughable at this point. It
Speaker 1: really is. And it also just you know, obviously I'm
Speaker 1: a leftist. You know, I'm gonna cheer the left on
Speaker 1: to an extent, but that is my red line. The
Speaker 1: genocide analyism really is my red line. And the reason
Speaker 1: it's it's, you know, my red line isn't just because
Speaker 1: I'm a genocide survivor, but because it's like, oh, for
Speaker 1: god's sake, the data, the statistics, the research, the forensic
Speaker 1: the analysis, the specific quotes, videos, articles, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: all of those things exist and are out there, and
Speaker 1: all you have to do is actually do your research
Speaker 1: and you will find out that actually know you're in
Speaker 1: the wrong. And the other thing is what you just
Speaker 1: said about the sort of thing of painting you know,
Speaker 1: the Muslims is like the Nazis and the you know,
Speaker 1: the extremist um. You know. The thing about like the
Speaker 1: Bassian Muslims is like, we don't hide the fact that
Speaker 1: there were people of our community that participated in Nazi crimes.
Speaker 1: There isn't this goal of concealing those crimes, of minimizing
Speaker 1: the crimes or pretending that they were right. Um, there
Speaker 1: is I'm sure a French group of people who defend
Speaker 1: these kinds of people, like there is a French when
Speaker 1: I'm talking about the collective sort of Bosnian um, you know,
Speaker 1: state level response as well as like an individual response
Speaker 1: is that the you know, the Nazi division had like
Speaker 1: seventeen thousand Bosnian soldiers and there's millions of Bosnians in
Speaker 1: the country. The vast majority ended up joining the Partisans
Speaker 1: and stood against the Nazis. And the thing is, you
Speaker 1: can't when it comes to Yugoslavia and World War Two
Speaker 1: and the Holocaust, you can't just say that the Bosnians
Speaker 1: were Nazi leboration is because the thing is, so were
Speaker 1: the Serbians. So are the Serbs, so are the Croats.
Speaker 1: At that time, Let's be honest, who the hell wasn't
Speaker 1: a Nazi collaboration is now it just doesn't excuse it,
Speaker 1: absolutely not. But what it does sort of show is
Speaker 1: that that history, that period um in Yugoslav history is
Speaker 1: really complicated because you know, you had the Gusta sia
Speaker 1: Um and then you had the Chechniques and then there's
Speaker 1: a period where the Chechniks were against us the Sha
Speaker 1: right because like used to show we're killing Serbs and
Speaker 1: Romans and Jews. But then the Chechniques turned around and
Speaker 1: there you know, these Serb nationalists, they start killing the
Speaker 1: Jews and the Roma and then they start working with
Speaker 1: the hand down the Jews in the Roman and then
Speaker 1: they start working with them to stand against the you know,
Speaker 1: the Tito's Partisans Um. Meanwhile, you know Tito's Partisans had
Speaker 1: a multi ethnic coalition like and we're talking about Serbs, Bosnians, Romans,
Speaker 1: use Croats, Albanians, you know, all sorts of people who
Speaker 1: were very like, you know, anti Nazism. So you know,
Speaker 1: we're we're gonna we're gonna win, We're gonna rebuild our
Speaker 1: our country, we're gonna you know, make this beautiful sort
Speaker 1: of you know, multi ethnic kind of state, which they did,
Speaker 1: which is amazing. But yeah, but it is a complicated
Speaker 1: sort of piece of history. So you can't really say, oh, yes,
Speaker 1: they're the Nazi collaborationists because um, at some point or
Speaker 1: not everybody was, and at some point or not everybody was. Also. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like like it's when when when you when you
Speaker 1: start getting into like it becomes this like you know,
Speaker 1: it becomes a way of just getting people to I
Speaker 1: don't know how to describe it, like, you know, when
Speaker 1: when when it starts being like this specific ethnic group
Speaker 1: as a whole is responsible for all of these crimes.
Speaker 1: Just like no, they're not like that's that's not that's
Speaker 1: not how this works. Like it's not like like like
Speaker 1: they're like there are like there, Yeah, there's gonna be
Speaker 1: people in the ethnic group who did things that were awful.
Speaker 1: There's also going to be people, especially especially in inaction
Speaker 1: like this, there's there's a lot a lot of probably
Speaker 1: more people who fought them. Yeah. Yeah, that's such an
Speaker 1: interesting statement because I'm going to compare to the Bosnian
Speaker 1: response after the genocide, which has consistently been No, we
Speaker 1: don't believe that every single service bad, and we are
Speaker 1: only talking about those that took place, took part in
Speaker 1: these crimes, and those that concealed them. And that has
Speaker 1: always been the collective and state level response of all Bosans.
Speaker 1: Now you have to think about I have a friend
Speaker 1: who's who, who's nine members of her family were killed
Speaker 1: in Stubberty in July. That's an absorbinate number of people.
Speaker 1: These were women, children, and men and elderly. There was
Speaker 1: no discrimination when it kim comes to her. I've sat
Speaker 1: with her as she's read all the names of her,
Speaker 1: you know, killed family members. That woman, with all the
Speaker 1: pain that she survived with being there as a young
Speaker 1: girl in the midst of genocide, in the midst of
Speaker 1: these her horrifying crimes, has never once publicly or privately
Speaker 1: to me said, yes, old serbs are the same, Yes,
Speaker 1: all of them are war criminals. Yes all of them
Speaker 1: hate us, absolutely not. And the thing is, I think
Speaker 1: about myself as well, Like you know, my earliest childhood
Speaker 1: memories me being shot at by a sniper, knowing my
Speaker 1: father was in a concentration camp, knowing that my grandmother
Speaker 1: was just killed by a bomb, um knowing that, you know,
Speaker 1: my biological dad was dying in a hospital from an attack,
Speaker 1: and my mother could also be killed because she was
Speaker 1: pregnant with my brother at the time. And so these
Speaker 1: are my earliest childhood memories. Um, they're not very happy memories.
Speaker 1: And I know why those things happened, you know, I
Speaker 1: know why I was being shot at by a sniper,
Speaker 1: and it was because I was bossy, and it it
Speaker 1: was because I was Muslin, and because I was seen
Speaker 1: as the enemy, even though I was you know, a
Speaker 1: little kid at you know, six seven years old, um,
Speaker 1: and absolutely not a threat to anyone, and nobody should
Speaker 1: have been shooting at me. They did anyway, Even though
Speaker 1: that happened, I never had that feeling of all serbs
Speaker 1: are awful. All serbs are you know, I'm going to
Speaker 1: paint them all with a brush. But a lot of them, unfortunately,
Speaker 1: especially on the you know, the the ultra nationalists that
Speaker 1: continue to not just the night the Genis night, but
Speaker 1: also glorified and celebrate it. They do paint everyone with
Speaker 1: the same brush, you know. And and the worst thing,
Speaker 1: the funniest thing, is that they paint themselves with the
Speaker 1: same brush. You know, they they think that they to
Speaker 1: speak for every single serve person um, and that's the
Speaker 1: tragic path. Like I'm not, I'm not. I get accused
Speaker 1: of like constantly talking about serves and I'm like, I
Speaker 1: absolutely am not. I'm talking about the nationalists that I
Speaker 1: will call out all the nationalists, whether they're CAUSI Inserpient, Croatian, American, whatever,
Speaker 1: but we're talking about you know, what you're doing to
Speaker 1: me and your response to my criticism of nationalism is
Speaker 1: actually the thing that's ruining your reputation. Yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: the it's it's deth the nationals, caamp it, it's it's
Speaker 1: you have you have to conflate all of the individual people,
Speaker 1: the ethnic group, and the state. They all they all
Speaker 1: have to be this like you know, this must be
Speaker 1: this organic totality and it's not true. It's just not.
Speaker 1: But that's you know, that's that's that's the sort of
Speaker 1: it's it's the motus apperanda behind their entire ideology, and
Speaker 1: it's what they deploy, you know, it's what they deploy
Speaker 1: when the genocides, is what they deploy when they have
Speaker 1: to sort of like you know, sort of promoted openly
Speaker 1: or less openly afterwards. Yeah, it's like that justification, it's
Speaker 1: how they justify it, I know. And like we all
Speaker 1: know about the ten stages of genocide, but my colleague Um,
Speaker 1: who's brilliant actually has often talked about that denihalism is
Speaker 1: not really the final stage of genocide. It is in
Speaker 1: fact triumphalism, Um, And that's what we're actually seeing in Bosnia.
Speaker 1: You know, we're not I get genocide denialism from American
Speaker 1: leftists and like British leftists who are on a certain spectrum,
Speaker 1: and obviously I don't get genocide denialism from ethno nationalist Serbs.
Speaker 1: What I get from them actually is very openly celebrating
Speaker 1: and threatening another genocide. They're not in my mentions saying,
Speaker 1: oh there was no genocide, uh, Darren, my mentions saying
Speaker 1: no one shoots a Staba and so, which is basically
Speaker 1: a slogan that says knife fire, Serboniza, and it's like
Speaker 1: basically a threat that another Sherebania will occur. They're in
Speaker 1: my mentions, in my emails and in my d MS
Speaker 1: sending me threats about how they can't wait till I'm
Speaker 1: put in a rape camp again. How they can't wait
Speaker 1: untill they kill my family, until sorry ever gets bombed again,
Speaker 1: and how you know we're they're gonna finish the job.
Speaker 1: How Rat is a hero because he killed all those
Speaker 1: you know people in Serbonizza and sorry able to be sugared. Um.
Speaker 1: Kata Juch is a hero because he's the same Inlshi,
Speaker 1: which is a hero because he believes in a greater Serbia.
Speaker 1: These people don't hide it, um, And that's the thing.
Speaker 1: So it's it's very like just today, you know, first
Speaker 1: thing in the morning, I opened my Twitter and the
Speaker 1: first thing that I see is a bossy activist arrested
Speaker 1: for protesting the dot com Latch mural which the Serbian
Speaker 1: police were guarding. They were guarding a mural get like
Speaker 1: a mural of a war criminal who committed genocide, who
Speaker 1: who everybody knows committed genocide, a mural glorifying him. They
Speaker 1: were got the police were guarding you know, the mural
Speaker 1: and inflicting damage on innocent civilians who were there too,
Speaker 1: you know, protest against the mural. And so I think
Speaker 1: that really tells you so much the issue in the Balkans.
Speaker 1: This has when it could happen here join us tomorrow
Speaker 1: for part two of this interview, which we discuss the
Speaker 1: dangers of what's currently happening in Bosnia. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: find us on Twitter it Happened Here pod, and you
Speaker 1: can find us on Twitter and Instagram for the rest
Speaker 1: of our shows at cool Zone Media. I'm Colleen with
Speaker 1: Join me the host of Eating Wall Broke podcast while
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Speaker 1: Could It Could Happen? Here a podcast about bad things
Speaker 1: happening and how they can continue to happen if you
Speaker 1: don't stop them. I'm your host, Christopher Wong, and today
Speaker 1: we're doing part two of the interview with genocide expert
Speaker 1: Arness Acustra, focusing on the absolutely horrifying things that have
Speaker 1: been happening in Bosnia recently. Is you and if you
Speaker 1: hope you enjoy can can you give an explanation of
Speaker 1: what's happened in the last couple of weeks because it's
Speaker 1: terrifying and I don't think enough people are talking about it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean yeah, So that's where are we now? Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm just going to talk briefly about the
Speaker 1: date and agreement because I think, yeah, yeah, the audience
Speaker 1: speech to understand what the dating agreement is, and I
Speaker 1: was going to talk about it earlier, but I went
Speaker 1: off on a tangent, So my apologies. Um, so obviously
Speaker 1: you know where the war is happening, The genocide is happening,
Speaker 1: um Staverns. The worst of the genocide happens, you know
Speaker 1: eight thousand people are killed in just a matter of
Speaker 1: a few weeks, few days really, Um, the international community
Speaker 1: does not act at that time. UM. Towards the end
Speaker 1: of the year, another attack happens, since Sarievo and Marcalis
Speaker 1: civilians are once again targeted waiting for bread fruit. I
Speaker 1: think it was humanitarian aid at the market, and that
Speaker 1: that's kind of when the international community starts to open
Speaker 1: their eyes a bit and negotiations start and not to
Speaker 1: bory with the details of no gagotiation process was absolutely
Speaker 1: ridiculous and every single time to discuss it, it was
Speaker 1: about splitting Bosnia down ethnic lines, and that's ultimately what
Speaker 1: happened with the eight In agreement. Yes, peace quote unquote
Speaker 1: peace was achieved, but the Dayton Agreement mandated so that
Speaker 1: there would be a three member presidency. So instead of
Speaker 1: having one president, we would have a three member presidency.
Speaker 1: It's a rotating presidency. There would be a Croat representative,
Speaker 1: a Bosnia representative, and a Server representative. That also means
Speaker 1: that there's no representatives for anyone who's another whether it's
Speaker 1: the identified Yugoslav, Roma, Jewish, Bosnian, but not Boshnak like
Speaker 1: they you know, it's just there's no space for the
Speaker 1: other in this constitution with the state in peace agreement.
Speaker 1: But that's for another day. Um. They also split the
Speaker 1: country down by ethnic lines. So all of those genocides
Speaker 1: and ethnic cleansing that the Serbs had just been committing
Speaker 1: all over eastern Bosnia up in the north. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: basically the interest national community said, good job, here's your
Speaker 1: own territory that you ethnically cleanse um. So they split
Speaker 1: the country down, you know, these ethnic lines, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, the war stops. And then now we have
Speaker 1: to sort of contend with this you know, peace agreement
Speaker 1: with the new constitution. We we get this um called
Speaker 1: the OHR Office of the High Representative. The High Representative
Speaker 1: is basically a person who holds the highest power in
Speaker 1: the country. They're not a Bosnian. They're actually kind of um,
Speaker 1: they're put in place there by the international community. So
Speaker 1: the OHR kind of you know, comes and breaks us
Speaker 1: up when we're squabbling over issues. And this has been
Speaker 1: anything from things like the flag, like the new flag
Speaker 1: of Bosnia, the flag of Bosnia that was the flag
Speaker 1: of Bosnia had to sort of be a place because
Speaker 1: the OHR deans that it would be you know, offensive
Speaker 1: to the Serbs or the Croats um and the same
Speaker 1: thing was like the national anthem. So they hold a
Speaker 1: lot of power. Now just recently we switched a chart representative,
Speaker 1: so we have a new high representative. Before it was
Speaker 1: Valentinianscope and his final kind of part of his you know,
Speaker 1: time as the High Representative was to enact a law
Speaker 1: against genocide denihalism, which the Bosnians have really been campaigning
Speaker 1: for for years because you know, um, I think in
Speaker 1: your birthplace, in the place where the worst crime ever
Speaker 1: could you know happen to you, happen to you, where
Speaker 1: you know, fifty women were raped, a hundred thousand people
Speaker 1: were killed, Um, six hundred plus mass graves were you know,
Speaker 1: dug up to hide the crimes and the massacres. People
Speaker 1: want to be be able to you know, know the
Speaker 1: truth and and and and be feel safe with the truth.
Speaker 1: So the genocide denialism law was good. But this is
Speaker 1: kind of when things started to you know, shift a bit,
Speaker 1: because I think Dotta came out. Melanadte, who is currently
Speaker 1: the Serb member of the Presidency who controls the Bublical Subsco,
Speaker 1: which is the entity where that's considered the Serb entity,
Speaker 1: but Bosniacs also lived there as well. Um, he came
Speaker 1: out and he said, well, if they passed the genocide
Speaker 1: denialism law, we're going to succede within eight days. And
Speaker 1: obviously that didn't happen months ago. And here's here's the thing, um,
Speaker 1: Milanard Dodeck has been threatening succession for years now. This
Speaker 1: is not anything new. What is new is the fact
Speaker 1: that this time he seems to talk about not just
Speaker 1: talk and threaten about up succeeding, but actually has started
Speaker 1: to kind of drop the papers and not a not
Speaker 1: to legally succeed, which he is not allowed due to
Speaker 1: the date and agreement. Um, but he is. He has
Speaker 1: drought up the papers to start pulling out of all
Speaker 1: the national level. So you know, Bosnia is the country,
Speaker 1: republican subscuise and entity. The Federation is an entity, but
Speaker 1: both of them are accountable to the national sort of
Speaker 1: state level institutions. He's basically at this point, you know,
Speaker 1: been saying I'm gonna republica subscott Deserve. We're leaving, like
Speaker 1: we're we're gonna form our own army. Yeah, we're gonna
Speaker 1: pull out all all the Bosnian state institutions. Um, we're
Speaker 1: gonna have serve only, you know, serve only. Courts, serve only, lawyers,
Speaker 1: serve only, justices, serve only, I don't know, passport, whatever,
Speaker 1: control serve basically anything that was at a national level,
Speaker 1: whether it's like a healthcare institution or like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: procurement for supplies for the office. They're gonna have it
Speaker 1: as like serve only. Obviously, I think the dagger is
Speaker 1: right there. Served only. Where have we heard that before?
Speaker 1: We heard that nineties And the biggest sort of brad
Speaker 1: flag has really been this thing about them forming that
Speaker 1: a public scot army, and they're not even talking about
Speaker 1: forming a new army. They he specifically stated the words
Speaker 1: reforming that Republic of Scott Army. Now, the Republican of
Speaker 1: Scott Army, you know, was led by kaa In. These
Speaker 1: are the same people that put girls as young as
Speaker 1: ten and twelve years old into rape camps, that killed
Speaker 1: babies as old as you know a few months, that
Speaker 1: killed um, you know, elderly women as old as a
Speaker 1: hundred years old. You know, these these were the guys
Speaker 1: that were going village to village, city to city killing, torturing,
Speaker 1: bombing the hell out of Sorry though, these were the
Speaker 1: guys that you know, would throw like three thousand to
Speaker 1: four thousand mortar shells on SORRYO and snipe it. I
Speaker 1: don't even know how many times, like tens of thousand
Speaker 1: times per day. It's just these are the bad guys basically.
Speaker 1: Um So, I think there's an alarm right now going
Speaker 1: in Bosnia. And it is the reason why so many
Speaker 1: of us are quite worried, quite frightened, because on one hand,
Speaker 1: he has threatened, he has made you know, Don has
Speaker 1: made plenty of rest before. But on the other hand,
Speaker 1: in prior times, the international community has somewhat gotten involved.
Speaker 1: You know, the US has sanctioned him, the UK has
Speaker 1: scolded him, the EU has said, like, you gotta chill
Speaker 1: out otherwise you know, Sorbia doesn't get into the EU.
Speaker 1: You know, there's there's always been some sort of of
Speaker 1: I don't know, influence there, the o h r's influence
Speaker 1: as well. But in recent years the international community has
Speaker 1: not stood by its responsibility to the date agreement. I mean,
Speaker 1: here's the thing. They implemented this agreement. They made it
Speaker 1: so that we, the Bosnia's have to abide by it,
Speaker 1: but they also have a responsibility to ensure that it
Speaker 1: is actually being upheld and that they're doing their jobs
Speaker 1: in importance with the international like with the Date and Agreement,
Speaker 1: so you know, the Date and Agreement was very kind
Speaker 1: of specific that it was one a temporary solution and
Speaker 1: to the international community was to work on finding a
Speaker 1: more permanent solution that will bring about you know, actual
Speaker 1: sort of reconciliation and justice and all of these things.
Speaker 1: But they didn't. They you know, they've left sort of
Speaker 1: bousing it to kind of live up on its own,
Speaker 1: um and and now they're not really doing much. I mean,
Speaker 1: the EU is the U s they're doing their typical
Speaker 1: thing of strongly worded open letters UM and Dottic seems
Speaker 1: less afraid than ever before. He seems very brash. I mean,
Speaker 1: he is a fool and a half and an ultra nationalist,
Speaker 1: but right now I feel like he has so much confidence,
Speaker 1: and I think he also knows that like the US
Speaker 1: and the EU have so many bigger problems to worry
Speaker 1: about rather than Bosnia, and so we're just out a
Speaker 1: priority so he can play around with it. And then
Speaker 1: we're also you know, seeing like the Secretary of State
Speaker 1: Matthew Palmer hanging out with him. The day after this
Speaker 1: man openly stated on national television that he is reforming
Speaker 1: and they're being very cozy and very friendly and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. And here's the thing. I've never been really
Speaker 1: a big believer on the international community, because, come on,
Speaker 1: like I have him, experience speaks for itself. I've already
Speaker 1: lived lived their help, and I'm like, no, thanks, please
Speaker 1: stay away. But I don't live in that world. I
Speaker 1: live in a world where, you know, I'm from a
Speaker 1: small country that is unfortunately very dependent on outsiders and
Speaker 1: on the international community. So while I would love to say, well,
Speaker 1: fuck the EU, fuck the US, we don't need them,
Speaker 1: the reality is that we do need them. We do
Speaker 1: need them to do their jobs. And because if they don't,
Speaker 1: I am really worried that the situation is going to
Speaker 1: continue to escalate further and further. And this appeasement of Dotty,
Speaker 1: especially in the last several years, has gone on so
Speaker 1: much that at this point I think you have to
Speaker 1: like start to wonder, like, do these does the international community,
Speaker 1: you know, even want peace and stability in Bosnia or
Speaker 1: did they benefit from our constant instability and what is
Speaker 1: their long term plan. But that's kind of where we're
Speaker 1: at right now. I think there there's you know, there's
Speaker 1: the people in in Bosnian politics and activist circles right
Speaker 1: now who are calling on US leadership or calling on
Speaker 1: EU leadership, and there's a lot of oh, no, the
Speaker 1: EU sucks, the US will help us, the U s sucks,
Speaker 1: the EU will help us, Turkey is gonna help us, No,
Speaker 1: Turkey sucks. There's a lot of like disagreement. Um. I
Speaker 1: think the reality is that, oh my god, does it
Speaker 1: suck that we aren't in this position where we have
Speaker 1: to rely on external sources because once again we are
Speaker 1: feeling alone. Once again, we're sort of being back into
Speaker 1: a corner and once again we're being threatened with a
Speaker 1: prospect of, you know, a new war. And I think
Speaker 1: the reality is the minute, the minute that he gives
Speaker 1: that green light for that the Republican scott Army to
Speaker 1: be formed, there will be violence. We've seen what happened before.
Speaker 1: We cannot afford to even have one act of violence.
Speaker 1: We cannot afford to have even one person injured, let
Speaker 1: alone die, Because these people in Bosnia, on all sides
Speaker 1: have suffered so unbelievably much. They are exhausted, they are
Speaker 1: still bearing their loved once twenty six years later, they
Speaker 1: still haven't you know, found that peace. They're worried and
Speaker 1: scared for their future, and they deserves so much more,
Speaker 1: they really really do. So I think, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm hoping and praying that. Um. You know, we obviously
Speaker 1: continue talking about this issue, and we try to pressure
Speaker 1: those people in power to you know, calm the situation down,
Speaker 1: but the reality is that this is going to be
Speaker 1: our future for as long as they never exists, and
Speaker 1: until the Bosnian constitution is completely reformed and dating is
Speaker 1: completely either thrown out or reformed to actually allow for
Speaker 1: a you know code, actual multi ethnic United country that's
Speaker 1: not broken up across ethnic you know aligns, and it's
Speaker 1: not ethnically segregated, we're going to continue being in the situation.
Speaker 1: So yes, for right now, I think, let's talk about
Speaker 1: this and let's kind of pressure those powerful people, but
Speaker 1: really a long term it's time to start thinking about
Speaker 1: ending the date and agreement, and it's time to start
Speaker 1: thinking about actually building that you know, multi ethnic, multi cultural,
Speaker 1: multi religious country that we fought for, you know, you're
Speaker 1: saying like okay, like what what what is you know,
Speaker 1: what what is Europe actually wants out of this? And
Speaker 1: you know, I mean I think it's pretty clear, like okay,
Speaker 1: so you know it, the Day and accords are like okay,
Speaker 1: we're just gonna give all of the ethernnationalists like their
Speaker 1: own fiefdom. Right, It's like, okay, here, here's your award
Speaker 1: for the genocide. You get your like yeah, and I
Speaker 1: think you know, like that's that's that's that's that's a
Speaker 1: very classical you know that that that's what Europeans do. Right,
Speaker 1: It's like, yeah, they come in the sport of the
Speaker 1: nationalists and it's like, you know, they they don't want this,
Speaker 1: like they don't actually want like if a functioning, multi ethnic,
Speaker 1: multiracial society because you know, oh oh the horror weight
Speaker 1: hold on what if other people look at that and go, wait,
Speaker 1: why why do we have Like yeah, I think that
Speaker 1: I don't know. I think you see this both you know,
Speaker 1: back back and what they were originally doing in the nineties,
Speaker 1: and you know, they come in later and they're like, oh, hey,
Speaker 1: look we're heroes. We uh helped them do the genocide,
Speaker 1: and then kind of sort of did something maybe later
Speaker 1: and I think, like, yeah, I don't know, just the
Speaker 1: possibility of that happening again, the possibility of its just
Speaker 1: being you know, this is like, oh, hey, we have Bosty,
Speaker 1: this this is where we do press tours for like
Speaker 1: why the American Army is good and like fun anyone
Speaker 1: else who actually lives there. Yeah, I mean, like, come on,
Speaker 1: they're America. Like, let's be honest here, Like I'm not
Speaker 1: saying they're all powerful entity, but what I am saying
Speaker 1: is that if they really wanted to, the people who
Speaker 1: are in power would not be in power, right Like,
Speaker 1: but these people, people like Dotty, people like Dragon Schovich,
Speaker 1: who is the Croatian at No nationalist leader who is also,
Speaker 1: by the way, directly involved in this mess. And and
Speaker 1: once again we're seeing that thing of the nineties of
Speaker 1: you know, Croatia and Serbia want to split Bosnia up
Speaker 1: and you know, break it for themselves. Basically, Um, that's
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's just now instead of Ryman and Looshevitch,
Speaker 1: it's now Chovich and uh, you know Dotty. I talk
Speaker 1: about Dotic a lot more because I think he's a
Speaker 1: more immediate threat, but it's important that we don't forget
Speaker 1: that Bosnia is also facing the Croatian threat as well. Um.
Speaker 1: And you know, but but I think about it this way,
Speaker 1: like I know for a fact that if these people
Speaker 1: did not benefit the system somehow, they would not actually
Speaker 1: be in power. But they do. They do benefit them
Speaker 1: and I think, you know, in a modain Albright called
Speaker 1: Dot like a breath of fresh air um in you know,
Speaker 1: the nineties when he came to power and then and
Speaker 1: now here we are you know, um got its threatening
Speaker 1: more and threatening succession and talking about serve only you know,
Speaker 1: spaces and serve only armies and it's just it's exhaust thing.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's it's it's also funny. It is funny
Speaker 1: when you think about it, because the reality is that
Speaker 1: it doesn't it never had to be like this, and
Speaker 1: it doesn't have to feel like this in the future either.
Speaker 1: But unfortunately it will continue to be like this because
Speaker 1: that's just you know, what the powerful want, like what
Speaker 1: those actually will have some power one And that's the
Speaker 1: thing that sucks because when you you know, I feel
Speaker 1: like I'm starting to sound conspirator, but I'm not. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, when you when you think about like Europe
Speaker 1: overall and how they looked at Bosnia. I think for
Speaker 1: the last you know, hundred years um and their policy
Speaker 1: towards Bosnia. It's really difficult for me to kind of
Speaker 1: be filled with any sort of confidence about what their
Speaker 1: plans are. You know. Yeah, I mean it's it's it's
Speaker 1: Europe in the United States, two countries that historically have
Speaker 1: never done anything bad, have never done any genocides, and
Speaker 1: have never yeah, just absolutely annihilated countries. Yeah, yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just, you know, they're the good guys. So like
Speaker 1: you said, you know, Bosnia's there are so much is
Speaker 1: like this press store for you know, these politicians to
Speaker 1: come and to talk about why we're such a great
Speaker 1: example of the peace process when we're really we're not,
Speaker 1: you know, And the thing is, don't you know they'll
Speaker 1: come on and they'll say, well, while Dayton wasn't perfect,
Speaker 1: it was the best solution at the time, and it's
Speaker 1: like it was not, you know, but but they have
Speaker 1: convinced that themselves that this was like a win for
Speaker 1: intervention and win for the international community. Now, don't get
Speaker 1: me wrong, I alongside everyone I know, is extremely happy
Speaker 1: that the war ended and that the genocide ended, um.
Speaker 1: And I think until you're in that position of growing
Speaker 1: up in the midst of you know, all these bombs
Speaker 1: and murders and tortures all around you, and you know,
Speaker 1: the only style do you ever hear are the sounds
Speaker 1: of bombs and mortars falling and sniper shooting at you,
Speaker 1: you won't really know how it feels when that finally
Speaker 1: stops and when you have some peace, and how difficult
Speaker 1: um it can be to think about obviously any future
Speaker 1: sort of prospects of war um. And I think that's
Speaker 1: that all so is a is a contributing factor to
Speaker 1: the overall instability of Bosingia because for twenty six years now,
Speaker 1: our policy as a people, but as a country as well,
Speaker 1: has been as long as there's no shooting, which is
Speaker 1: not a sound policy because you know, settling for the
Speaker 1: bare minimum is not helping any of us. Our youths
Speaker 1: are leaving in observed absurd amounts to Germany, to Austria,
Speaker 1: to the United States. People are struggling for for jobs,
Speaker 1: people are struggling to find food. You know, all of
Speaker 1: these things, um, on top of the threat of war
Speaker 1: and violence and conflicts. So it's just it's not a
Speaker 1: sound policy, and I'm just hoping, um, it will change
Speaker 1: eventually somehow. I mean, I'm going to keep doing my part,
Speaker 1: which is, you know, yelling and yelling at people in
Speaker 1: in there on Twitter and in person and pressuring them
Speaker 1: to do the right thing to obviously talk about this.
Speaker 1: But um, yeah, I just feel like we have such
Speaker 1: a long, long, long, long road ahead of us. And um,
Speaker 1: you know, peace is a process. It's a process. So
Speaker 1: I think where just at the beginning of that process. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so much more to do, I think. I think that's
Speaker 1: a good place to end on with just the realization that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, if if, if there's no fundamental change in
Speaker 1: the structures and the forces and in the politics that
Speaker 1: created a warth created genocide, like it's going to happen again. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so you you you have to actually change it.
Speaker 1: You can't just sort of put this band aid on
Speaker 1: it and put it in stasis and just leave all
Speaker 1: the structures intact. You have to now you have to
Speaker 1: knock them over before you can build something else. Yeah, absolutely, Yeah,
Speaker 1: unnessa think thank you so much for talking with me. Um,
Speaker 1: where can people find you? And what books do you
Speaker 1: want to read because as as as we've said over
Speaker 1: and over again on this podcast, do not get your
Speaker 1: information from podcast. Actually, read books is the thing you need,
Speaker 1: what you need to do. UM. Yeah, well if you Obviously,
Speaker 1: I know our audience can't see yet, but here's my
Speaker 1: little one of my little selections of books on Bosnia. UM. Obviously,
Speaker 1: people can find me on Twitter. Um, you know, type
Speaker 1: in my name A R N E s A. But
Speaker 1: my at is at ore are are r A F
Speaker 1: s A. Yeah. Twitter is probably the best place. But
Speaker 1: also I have a book out so if people want
Speaker 1: to read it. It is about the Bosnian genocide UM.
Speaker 1: And it is based on real life experiences of my
Speaker 1: family and friends. It's called Letters from Diaspora. It's more
Speaker 1: so on the emotional UM side of things. But if
Speaker 1: you want to learn about the conflict from a leftist perspective,
Speaker 1: I always recommend UM. And I don't know where it's
Speaker 1: going out, but I always recommend UM Bosnia, Kosova and
Speaker 1: Yugoslavia by Mike Kardadigis UM. It's the Marxist perspective on
Speaker 1: the breakup of Yugoslavia. UM. Additionally, I have a pdf
Speaker 1: on my Twitter of tons of books So if you
Speaker 1: want to learn more about Yugoslavia, about Islam and the Balkans,
Speaker 1: about the history of Bosnia, about the war Jetta side,
Speaker 1: feel free to shoot me a d M. I have
Speaker 1: a handy little guy that I hand out constantly. Two people. Um,
Speaker 1: And there's also a list of books on like my
Speaker 1: website and stuff like that. Yeah, I think I can
Speaker 1: post it. We can put a link to it in
Speaker 1: the description. I've I've read some stuff on there. It's
Speaker 1: very good. You should read it. Thanks. I pry myself
Speaker 1: on really good reading list depending on topic. Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: well Vanessa, thank you again. And yeah, this this has
Speaker 1: when it could happen here? Find us that it could
Speaker 1: happen here pod on Twitter, Instagram. The rest of the
Speaker 1: show is that we do are You can find it
Speaker 1: at the cool Zone on the same places and yeah,
Speaker 1: oh boy, genocide bad hope there's no more work to
Speaker 1: stop them. Hey, We'll be back Monday with more episodes
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