Speaker 1: That's happening here. Ship. We didn't want it to. We
Speaker 1: were like, uh, it shouldn't happen here. That would be bad.
Speaker 1: But now it is. And I'm Robert Evans. This is
Speaker 1: the podcast about things are kind of falling apart and
Speaker 1: maybe it would be good if they didn't fall apart,
Speaker 1: or at least if while they were falling apart, we
Speaker 1: did something that was better than the thing that fell apart. Anyway, Hi, everybody,
Speaker 1: this is a podcast. I'm Robert Evans. As you can
Speaker 1: note from this horrible introduction, which was was incompetently done,
Speaker 1: half acidly done. Uh, subsequent weeks of the show are
Speaker 1: going to be very different from the first week. We
Speaker 1: started off with five very scripted episodes. My vision kind
Speaker 1: of at the start of this was that first week
Speaker 1: of this, the first five episodes would be ever green,
Speaker 1: so that when we have new people over the coming
Speaker 1: months and years, we can say, hey, if you want
Speaker 1: to know what we're about, listen to episodes one through five.
Speaker 1: It lays out our philosophy what this show is, kind
Speaker 1: of gives you the background we think you need to
Speaker 1: understand where we are in the world right now. Um,
Speaker 1: but of course this is a daily show. I'm not
Speaker 1: going to be writing a ten thousand words script every
Speaker 1: single day, because that would literally be writing a novel
Speaker 1: length work every week, and that would very quickly drive
Speaker 1: me to drink. And also I don't think would be
Speaker 1: as interesting as trying to be nimble. Um. So, this
Speaker 1: week we're gonna try to give you kind of an
Speaker 1: idea of what most of the weeks of the show
Speaker 1: will be like. It's going to be a mix of
Speaker 1: kind of breaking news coverage of some ongoing stories, speculation, interviews,
Speaker 1: um so with I don't know, probably a little bit
Speaker 1: of further ado. I would like to introduce I would
Speaker 1: like to start this, this episode, this show, this beautiful
Speaker 1: thing or terrible thing, whatever it winds up being either
Speaker 1: beautiful or terrible, by introducing my team, the people who
Speaker 1: actually do the most of the work on this while
Speaker 1: I extract their surplus value and turn it into fancy liquors.
Speaker 1: First off is Sophie Lichterman. Uh, Sophie, you exist, Hi? Apparently, Hey,
Speaker 1: you're my executive producer. It's your job to make sure
Speaker 1: that I do things like turn on my computer, um,
Speaker 1: and that we have guests. Uh. Next up is Garrison
Speaker 1: Davis Garrison, What what are you? That's a good question. Um,
Speaker 1: I read books and articles and occasionally go to places
Speaker 1: to learn about different resistance movements. I guess yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: We we actually sent you out to an Earth First
Speaker 1: gathering a couple of weeks ago, and we're gonna have
Speaker 1: some episodes about your experiences there in the very near future,
Speaker 1: and I'm excited for that. Um. We also sent you
Speaker 1: to a waffle house where you saw a guy get stabbed.
Speaker 1: So really it's been quite a week of journalism for you,
Speaker 1: and they're also there are also be some content around
Speaker 1: that trip in the near future as well. I got
Speaker 1: to talk to some other other researchers the climate change
Speaker 1: and um, how that affects extremism, and look forward to
Speaker 1: Garrison's three part or Fear and Loathing in the waffle
Speaker 1: House in South Carolina in the very near future. I'm
Speaker 1: excited for that quite a bit myself. Uh. And then last,
Speaker 1: but certainly not at least, we have Christopher and Christopher,
Speaker 1: how are you doing. Um, I'm doing pretty good. Well, okay,
Speaker 1: I say I'm doing pretty good. I've I've just you know,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm I am also a researcher, and being a
Speaker 1: researcher means I've just come off of about six hours
Speaker 1: of reading about Japanese war crimes. So that's what I do.
Speaker 1: Kind of by definition, no one on this team is
Speaker 1: ever doing all that well, which is which is the job. Christopher,
Speaker 1: you are probably most prominently to people who use Twitter
Speaker 1: the ice must be destroyed guy on Twitter. And I
Speaker 1: became aware of you because if you're incredibly well researched
Speaker 1: threads UM, particularly focusing on the history of revolutionary movements,
Speaker 1: anarchist movements and include mainly like Southeast and in mainland Asia,
Speaker 1: which is not a history political or or cultural that
Speaker 1: I knew much about, UM, And so we brought you
Speaker 1: onto Behind the Bastards UM to fill out for the
Speaker 1: fact that I am not capable of, for example, doing
Speaker 1: a mouse dung episode with any sort of competence UM.
Speaker 1: And you've done a lot of great stuff there and
Speaker 1: you will be You are a history of particularly like
Speaker 1: left wing political movements nowhere UM in a way that
Speaker 1: I can never be UM. And I have a great
Speaker 1: deal of admiration for your ability to do that research.
Speaker 1: So you will be helpful. Uh when when I say
Speaker 1: wouldn't it be neat if someone had done this? And
Speaker 1: you say, actually they did and here's how many people died,
Speaker 1: And I say, oh damn, Okay, well that's good, Chris.
Speaker 1: What are you reading about this week? Yeah? This this week? Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is this is the this is the Japanese war crimes,
Speaker 1: deep dive, this is Yeah, it's mostly been forced labor.
Speaker 1: I made an executive decision that I was not going
Speaker 1: to start reading about comfort women and that particular kind
Speaker 1: of Japanese war crimes one hour before this podcast started.
Speaker 1: But oh yeah yeah, so ah, man, that's the good.
Speaker 1: That's the good war crimes right there. Um, I I
Speaker 1: don't know, I I've spent like when it comes to
Speaker 1: military history, I definitely spent less time in the Pacific
Speaker 1: theater than I have uh in the Western theater. But
Speaker 1: my god, like some of the Unit seven thirty one
Speaker 1: ship is just among the darkest stories in history. But
Speaker 1: that's not what this podcast is about. So, guys, I
Speaker 1: brought everyone here today because number one, I wanted to
Speaker 1: introduce the audience to the team, and number two I
Speaker 1: kind of wanted to ask a big question, um, which
Speaker 1: is you know, we had our first week where I
Speaker 1: sort of laid out the scope of the problems confronting everybody.
Speaker 1: Climate change, UM, the the rising authoritarian movements around the globe, UM,
Speaker 1: the danger of weaponized unreality, and kind of the fundamentally
Speaker 1: separate reality tunnels that people are getting increasingly trapped in
Speaker 1: that make peaceful coexistence almost impossible. UM. And we attempted
Speaker 1: in in that first week of shows to provide people
Speaker 1: with some reasons for hope, with some paths forward. UM,
Speaker 1: I am, despite it all, uh, not black pilled. And
Speaker 1: and our goal is to avoid being a black pilled
Speaker 1: podcast Garrison. You want to explain to the nice people
Speaker 1: what black pilled means. All right, So I think followers
Speaker 1: of of you and us as in a Hole are
Speaker 1: probably familiar with pill culture of the coming coming coming
Speaker 1: from the matrix. The term red pill got used a
Speaker 1: lot by the far right, especially during Gammer Gate, to
Speaker 1: be like introducing a new idea to someone's pilling someone.
Speaker 1: If you're and if you're getting someone to become like
Speaker 1: a conservative or for or like an alright person, you're
Speaker 1: red pilling them. UM. So that that was what got popular,
Speaker 1: and then because that became like a much more viral meme,
Speaker 1: and pill was just got to be used on various
Speaker 1: various other ideologies and even just like things. So if
Speaker 1: I'm drinking coffee, I'm taking my coffee pill, etcetera. Bad
Speaker 1: jokes by people who don't have much better things to do. UM.
Speaker 1: But black pill is like uh, is like a duomer
Speaker 1: pill or like a nihilism pill. It's like not being
Speaker 1: able to see hope for the future. Everything is like
Speaker 1: just like avoid you don't be able to see that,
Speaker 1: you can't see the light at the end of the tunnel. UM.
Speaker 1: So that's kind of what black pill means when it's
Speaker 1: used like online UM generally it's it's true. It's it's
Speaker 1: people who are making like propaganda or making content who
Speaker 1: are or or just you know, people like on forms,
Speaker 1: chat rooms and stuff. We're trying to get other people
Speaker 1: to become this kind of dysfunctional nihilist um and not
Speaker 1: be able to really see any any future. UM. And
Speaker 1: you know, there's a lot of issues with this, but
Speaker 1: particularly it comes from kind of a very like privileged
Speaker 1: place in in in a lot of ways, because the
Speaker 1: people who are you know, seeped in this are not
Speaker 1: gonna be the ones facing the worst consequences of climate
Speaker 1: change or you know, localized collapses. UM. So that's that's
Speaker 1: kind of the problem with this whole black pilling thing.
Speaker 1: And it's because it's becoming increasingly pop are online. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I've seen a lot of this, so obviously, UM.
Speaker 1: I I spend some time on the collapse subreddit because
Speaker 1: that's a good information aggregator UM. And I have some
Speaker 1: fans there, so they've been commenting on the first week
Speaker 1: of shows, and one person was like, I I think
Speaker 1: that he's he always understates the damn it, like how
Speaker 1: serious climate change is going to be, and sort of
Speaker 1: made the point that like basically, we're all going to die. UM.
Speaker 1: And that's that's not that's not gonna happened. That's not
Speaker 1: the situation. Number one, UM, have you heard if you
Speaker 1: have you all heard of the Toba catastrophe. No, it's
Speaker 1: an interesting thing. I just got informed about this and
Speaker 1: have been doing a little bit of reading. It was
Speaker 1: a super volcanic eruption that occurred about seventy five thousand
Speaker 1: years ago. UM. And so like what does present day Sumatra, Indonesia,
Speaker 1: it's one of the largest explosive eruptions in world history. UM.
Speaker 1: And there's a theory and this is so this is
Speaker 1: you know, obviously too far, too long ago, first hard evidence,
Speaker 1: but there's a theory that this caused a global like
Speaker 1: volcanic winter that lasted as long as a decade and
Speaker 1: may have caused a thousand year long cooling episode. And
Speaker 1: this is y'all may have heard that there are a
Speaker 1: number of scientists who think that about seventy thousand years
Speaker 1: ago there was a massive population bottleneck where the global
Speaker 1: human population was reduced to an incredibly tiny number, which
Speaker 1: is why like everyone can kind of trace their lineage
Speaker 1: back to one of a very small number of people,
Speaker 1: and kind of the theory is that the Toba explosion
Speaker 1: caused that bottleneck. It was just so devastating to life
Speaker 1: on Earth that like it caused or specifically to human life,
Speaker 1: that it it reduced the global human population down to
Speaker 1: a very tiny number. Um. But also if that's true,
Speaker 1: we we did make it. It was seventy five thou
Speaker 1: years ago. Like we're doing all right, which is not
Speaker 1: to say, like when I say we're doing all right,
Speaker 1: I mean the human species exists in sufficient number to
Speaker 1: maintain biodiversity, right. I think people underestimate how many people
Speaker 1: are who life right now? Yeah, and how adaptable our
Speaker 1: species is. And that doesn't mean the problem is not
Speaker 1: nightmarishly severe, because it is. The question is number one,
Speaker 1: how miserable is life going to be? How many we
Speaker 1: could still human beings could exist in completely sufficient numbers
Speaker 1: for the maintenance of the population, and billions of people
Speaker 1: could still die as a result of climate change, And
Speaker 1: that's a problem, Like that's a that's a real issue,
Speaker 1: But it is also not. Um, it's not a guarantee
Speaker 1: that that many people will die, that we will let
Speaker 1: it get that bad. It is at this point a
Speaker 1: guarantee essentially based on all of the best that we have,
Speaker 1: that we're going to hit one and a half degrees um. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: and almost certainly two degrees just kind of based on
Speaker 1: where things are politically now three degrees. Four degrees is
Speaker 1: not a guarantee and can be stopped. Um. It is
Speaker 1: an uphill battle. Uh And And but also because we
Speaker 1: are talking about not just billions of human lives, but
Speaker 1: hundreds or if not thousands of species around the planet.
Speaker 1: Um depend on us curbing emissions and us reversing to
Speaker 1: the extent that that's possible. As much of the damage
Speaker 1: as we can UM and I think it is kind
Speaker 1: of the height of selfishness to just look at the
Speaker 1: scale of the problem and go, well, we're doomed, so
Speaker 1: don't try to do anything. So like, ever since that
Speaker 1: climate report came out, there's been two narratives online that
Speaker 1: I've seen quite a bit, which is does individual impact matter?
Speaker 1: And what will the quality of life be? These are
Speaker 1: these are both impossible to questions to answer. I mean
Speaker 1: the first the first one was a little bit easier because,
Speaker 1: like generally world individual consumer choices matter, probably not very much.
Speaker 1: Of course, not that's not that's that we can look
Speaker 1: at the history of how that's been pushed by certain companies.
Speaker 1: I think a lots of people are already familiar with that,
Speaker 1: which doesn't mean there's no And I do want to
Speaker 1: be clear here when I when we say your your
Speaker 1: individual decisions as a consumer are not going to UM
Speaker 1: fix the problem in any meaningful degree. Learning how to
Speaker 1: be comfortable and happy with less, learning how to personally
Speaker 1: emit less, those are all still useful adaptations because part
Speaker 1: of the story, part of the solution is how do
Speaker 1: we fix this. Part of the solution is how do
Speaker 1: we as individuals and communities adapt to this, and we
Speaker 1: are going to have to adapt to less. That is
Speaker 1: going to be a necessity. You can just look at
Speaker 1: how in a lot of places weed crops have are
Speaker 1: fifty lower than the harvest was last year in some
Speaker 1: reasons like ninevah in Iraq, in northeastern Syria, um like
Speaker 1: calamitous under production as a result of how bad this
Speaker 1: summer is. That's going to continue to happen. We are
Speaker 1: going to have to deal with less, not just because
Speaker 1: we'll have less available, but because if we're trying to
Speaker 1: take care of our community, that might mean even if
Speaker 1: we can afford to consume at the level where we
Speaker 1: need to personally do more, get by with less so
Speaker 1: that we can give more to other people in our
Speaker 1: community who can't afford anything. There's a and that's again
Speaker 1: not going to taking care of the people in your neighborhood.
Speaker 1: You know, setting up a four block radius where you
Speaker 1: make sure there's you know, free fridges and soup kitchens
Speaker 1: or whatever isn't going to fix climate change. But community
Speaker 1: resiliency is an important part of building any building the
Speaker 1: kind of dual power that I think is going to
Speaker 1: be necessary to find climate change. It's also just a
Speaker 1: necessary survival adaptation, and the fact that there are things
Speaker 1: to do, the fact that there's so much to do
Speaker 1: both to solve the problem on a big scale and
Speaker 1: to take care of the people around us, that all
Speaker 1: of us have a responsibility to do because we as
Speaker 1: people are responsible for each other. Um, I think means
Speaker 1: it's immoral to lose hope. Yeah, this is also precisely
Speaker 1: the wrong one went to do it because and and
Speaker 1: this this is one of you know, one of the
Speaker 1: one of the reasons I'm excited to be doing this
Speaker 1: is that I don't think generally the broad public has
Speaker 1: a particularly good understanding of what's been happening the last
Speaker 1: three years, which is that well, and you know, you
Speaker 1: can go back into the decade, right, you know, so
Speaker 1: I I like started doing activism stuff around thirteen with
Speaker 1: the sort of second wave of revolutions from from the
Speaker 1: air Spring, and so you know, and over the course
Speaker 1: of that decade, you have you have an increasing series
Speaker 1: of revolutions and they kind of they kind of peter
Speaker 1: out and they kind of start to lose around but
Speaker 1: then in eighteen they start again, and you know, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna I'm gonna read a partial, like enormous emphasis on
Speaker 1: partial list of places that had either full scale revolutions
Speaker 1: or hundreds of thousands of millions people in the street.
Speaker 1: So okay, starting starting Fromen, you have Haiti, Sudan, Algeria, Honduras, Chila, Ibraq,
Speaker 1: Hong kong I, rands on their like third version of this.
Speaker 1: Lebanon's had about three, Columbia's had three, h France at
Speaker 1: the general strikes. There's also the Yello vest. There's there
Speaker 1: was there was a six d person general striker p
Speaker 1: there was There's been a bunch of stuff in India,
Speaker 1: the farmer's protests. There's been stuff in Ecuador and Popua
Speaker 1: Catalonia briefly, and you know, there there's something there, like
Speaker 1: there there were a bunch of roadblockades last year in Canada,
Speaker 1: like Canada when it went into revolt over a bunch
Speaker 1: of pipeline stuff. And then you know, and then and
Speaker 1: then and then there was last summer, and last summer
Speaker 1: was sort of in the US and that that was
Speaker 1: sort of this this this capstone of like the second
Speaker 1: wave of revolutions in that decade, and you know, the
Speaker 1: thing like this wave that that that again, that's that's
Speaker 1: a very partial list, and that that sort of wave
Speaker 1: of upheople right, it's it's a sign of both the
Speaker 1: fact that you know, everyone realizes that the world is
Speaker 1: just crumbling, right, and also that you know, people people
Speaker 1: have sort of started to figure out that, like, you know,
Speaker 1: the sort of ordinary political processes don't work, and that
Speaker 1: if you get enough people together, you can like the
Speaker 1: ordinary political process to cease to function. And you know,
Speaker 1: I mean people there there's been a huge if forget
Speaker 1: everyone to forget this last summer. But you know, people
Speaker 1: were fighting the Secret Service at the gates of the
Speaker 1: White House, like the president, like Donald truck was yeah,
Speaker 1: like you know, like the like you know, the you know,
Speaker 1: for for for about a week there, the cops completely
Speaker 1: lost control of most major cities. Like you know, I'm
Speaker 1: in Chicago and in Chicago, god, the street drinking in
Speaker 1: Portland was beautiful. Just teenagers smoking cigarettes walking down the
Speaker 1: right in front of the police station. Yeah, it's sorry,
Speaker 1: I mean it's incredible. People like people, people like just
Speaker 1: took control of them, like the Bracle Mile it was,
Speaker 1: you know, and you saw for a very brief moment
Speaker 1: just like what what a world without the police, for example,
Speaker 1: would look like right, And you know, it was a
Speaker 1: lot of parties, there's a lot of celebration, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of people sort of there's there's a lot of
Speaker 1: arts everywhere, right, And I think, what what have you
Speaker 1: seen over the last three years? What we've seen ability
Speaker 1: of the last decade is that you know, cycles revolutions
Speaker 1: like this, You used to get them once every like
Speaker 1: three decades, two, right, we got to in a decade.
Speaker 1: And all the things that cause that, like all of
Speaker 1: the all things thats inate financial class, everything that was
Speaker 1: bad that caused everyone to go into the streets is
Speaker 1: still happening, and they're still getting worse. And so this
Speaker 1: is this is going to keep happening. This sort of
Speaker 1: unrest is gonna keep happening. And and our job and
Speaker 1: our responsibility is to make sure that you know the
Speaker 1: product if this is actually a better world, because you
Speaker 1: know they're there, there's there's basically you know this this
Speaker 1: is the thing you learned study history that there's always
Speaker 1: almost always bad things happening, there's almost always resistance to it,
Speaker 1: and that resistance can win. And I think that's you know,
Speaker 1: like that that's that's the important part of this. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's it's this um. One of the things that
Speaker 1: you're getting at there is one of the things that
Speaker 1: I think most toxically the left, particularly in UM in
Speaker 1: the West, HASH has lost in recent times, which used
Speaker 1: to be a huge aspect of not just the anarchists left,
Speaker 1: although it was massive among anarchists, but about the organized
Speaker 1: left in general in the West. Was internationalism. Was this
Speaker 1: idea that like the struggles in Spain, the struggles of
Speaker 1: workers in Germany and England and uh in China, in
Speaker 1: Poland and Indonesia, where we are all connected, and like
Speaker 1: you would have the magazines that were like, you know,
Speaker 1: part of these different workers organizations would have stories and
Speaker 1: experiences from protests and strikes and uprisings all around the world,
Speaker 1: and there was this this strong sense of international solidarity
Speaker 1: and that has collapsed, and the collapse of it is
Speaker 1: a long story. I think we should probably do a
Speaker 1: special on it at some point. Aspects of it started
Speaker 1: in World War One when there was this big understanding
Speaker 1: among socialists in World War One that like, well, if
Speaker 1: push comes to shoven there's a big European war, the
Speaker 1: workers won't fight, right, We won't we won't massacre each other,
Speaker 1: and then they did. Um Because you know, nationalism is
Speaker 1: the hell of a drug. There's a lot of again
Speaker 1: we're not doing the topic justice, but but a big
Speaker 1: part of why it's so thoroughly dead right now is
Speaker 1: these this this multinational series of kind of propaganda campaigns
Speaker 1: orchestrated by a number of different governments, including our own,
Speaker 1: in order to you know, in the case of like
Speaker 1: Russian disinformation propaganda, make all these different left wing or
Speaker 1: all these different kind of populist uprisings and populist movements
Speaker 1: that are anti Russian political interests, call them color revolutions.
Speaker 1: And you see, you know, the same thing is done
Speaker 1: by the Chinese government, and our government does the same thing.
Speaker 1: Like it's not a it's not a case of like, well,
Speaker 1: we're better or or they're better. It's a case of like, well,
Speaker 1: all of these governments have a vested interest in people
Speaker 1: not seeing their interests as in common and their struggle
Speaker 1: as the same. Um. But people are still struggling, and
Speaker 1: one of the missing ingredients in the last couple of
Speaker 1: years of increasing as as as Christopher did a great
Speaker 1: job of playing out of increasingly massive um sustained revolts
Speaker 1: against state power and against the global system that is
Speaker 1: grinding us all under its boot heel. Is that, Um,
Speaker 1: we did not have as as much of an international
Speaker 1: kind of solidarity as we as we should have, UM,
Speaker 1: And I think that's going to be necessary if we're
Speaker 1: going to do you know, we talked about this in
Speaker 1: the first week of episodes, um, and you were just
Speaker 1: talking about a version of this, Chris. I think the
Speaker 1: only thing that's really the only thing likely to get
Speaker 1: us out of this without you know, blood letting on
Speaker 1: a scale that nobody really wants to think about is
Speaker 1: the equivalent of a heart attack at the centers of capital,
Speaker 1: which can only happen when enough people are like, well,
Speaker 1: I'm just not going to keep doing ship like I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna keep I'm not going to keep doing the
Speaker 1: ship that like keeps this system moving forward. Um, because
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, you can like send
Speaker 1: cops out to beat people, but you can't make me work.
Speaker 1: Um And Uh, that could do something. People who are
Speaker 1: telling you it can't happen, or it can't work or
Speaker 1: it can't be done are are full of ship. And
Speaker 1: one of the things I want to cover that we
Speaker 1: will at some point. Is how the how the movement
Speaker 1: in Hong Kong came to a broad consensus about their
Speaker 1: list of demands, And obviously that is in the process
Speaker 1: of being crushed, you know, um in the long run,
Speaker 1: there's and there's there's certainly criticisms to make, but also
Speaker 1: they were up against a kind of insurmountable challenge really
Speaker 1: without any kind of um aid from overseas. You know,
Speaker 1: it was it was, it was. It was a noble,
Speaker 1: doomed fight. But there's a lot of lessons, including how
Speaker 1: this very decentralized movement came to an accordance about a
Speaker 1: list of demands that that then became internationally recognized as
Speaker 1: like these are the demands of this movement. Um. And
Speaker 1: I think there's there's powerful lessons for kind of what's
Speaker 1: going to be necessary for all of us in in
Speaker 1: in that process. UM. Because I think hoping to kind
Speaker 1: of overnight get everyone on board with we have to
Speaker 1: overthrow the government and established socialism, I just don't see
Speaker 1: that happening. Um. I. I we can't get Americans on
Speaker 1: board with whether or not masks stop a pandemic. Um.
Speaker 1: But could you get Americans, could you get a wide
Speaker 1: variety of working class people from around the world on
Speaker 1: board with, you know, a more focused list of things
Speaker 1: that like they see is like well this this. You know,
Speaker 1: you can get a lot of people who if you
Speaker 1: have them talking about the politicians they support or like
Speaker 1: how they identify politically, will get into screaming arguments. But
Speaker 1: if you talk about like, boy, it sure seems like
Speaker 1: we're all getting fucked over by this pretty same small
Speaker 1: group of rich people, They'll all be like, yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm more or less agree with that. If you say, like, hey,
Speaker 1: it seems like the government's corrupt and shitty and incompetent
Speaker 1: and never takes care of any of us, they all
Speaker 1: agree with that, and you can get them. You can
Speaker 1: if you focus on, hey, here's what we all need
Speaker 1: to advocate for together, because it will make all of
Speaker 1: our lives better. I think you'll have an easier time
Speaker 1: with that than trying to convince somebody who's been educated
Speaker 1: for fifty years to think socialism as the devil to
Speaker 1: identify personally as a socialist. And maybe that's a little
Speaker 1: less important than getting that person to agree that we
Speaker 1: need to seize the wealth of the billionaire class UM
Speaker 1: and reinvest it in a world that is sustainable and
Speaker 1: survivable for all of us. I don't know that seems
Speaker 1: like a better shot to me, So I guess the
Speaker 1: question to ask is what gives each of you hope
Speaker 1: right now. There's a couple of things. I think back
Speaker 1: to the moment when I was reporting from the steps
Speaker 1: of the Federal courthouse in Portland two or three nights
Speaker 1: into things getting really fucking crazy, and I was standing
Speaker 1: next to this middle aged mom with a respirator who
Speaker 1: had gotten tear gas horribly the night before and come
Speaker 1: came back out, and we were all yelling at the
Speaker 1: or they were all yelling at the federal agents inside,
Speaker 1: and she said, I don't see why we have to
Speaker 1: wait it out here. Let's kick down the damn door.
Speaker 1: And then she tried to do it. UM. And that, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, there were some real moments. I think about
Speaker 1: the line the pa length of Chud's with weapons breaking
Speaker 1: and running last year UM, when enough of the city
Speaker 1: came out to push them back. UM. I think about
Speaker 1: the I think about the fact that UM, an unprecedented
Speaker 1: mutual aid effort, was organized by huge numbers of regular
Speaker 1: people around India to try to fill in the craps,
Speaker 1: the well cracks, and the craps from their their government's
Speaker 1: complete failure to handle the pandemic earlier this year. UM,
Speaker 1: I think about, uh, what people would activists have been
Speaker 1: doing in Puerto Rico for years as the US government
Speaker 1: has consistently failed to deliver any sort of meaningful disaster relief. UM.
Speaker 1: I think about the fact that while we are all,
Speaker 1: every single person listening to this, ruled by venal cowards
Speaker 1: who think of nothing but their own short term interests
Speaker 1: and will kill the world to maintain those interests. Um,
Speaker 1: the vast majority of us would give the shirts off
Speaker 1: of our back to a neighbor in immediate traumatic need
Speaker 1: because that's just what people generally do. Yeah. Mutual the
Speaker 1: the heightened popularity mutual aid is something that's talked about
Speaker 1: a lot in terms of what is giving people more hope.
Speaker 1: I guess the other thing is like be able to see,
Speaker 1: but like both see and experience a lot of like
Speaker 1: um quote unquote, like many anarchies, UM like popping up
Speaker 1: in different places and getting to like see the world
Speaker 1: through a different through, like through like a different lens
Speaker 1: for for even for however, briefly, you know, that's part
Speaker 1: of you know, what happened staying at like the stop
Speaker 1: line three camp. Part of what happened at like the
Speaker 1: Earth First camp is like you get to very briefly
Speaker 1: look at like the world without the same systems of
Speaker 1: a hierarchy that we live in every day, and it's
Speaker 1: like almost intoxicating, Like the way like once you can
Speaker 1: experience that, you're like, why can't it always be like this?
Speaker 1: Um and getting more people to experience that many anarchy
Speaker 1: can will I think help people be more able to
Speaker 1: like yeah, I'll I'll go across the country to help,
Speaker 1: you know, do something for this pipeline to help protect
Speaker 1: the specific forest. And then even like like even like
Speaker 1: locally whenever there's like a you know, whether it's be
Speaker 1: like a forest by are in your area, a hurricane,
Speaker 1: be like, yeah, I'm gonna go help with the with
Speaker 1: the relief efforts, because one, you're making people's lives better
Speaker 1: and to it actually does feel good, like it actually
Speaker 1: like it be able to being able to work as
Speaker 1: a person with other people outside the regular systems of
Speaker 1: hierarchy is super interesting. When we're stuck in such like
Speaker 1: a repetitive cycle of you know, of our jobs and
Speaker 1: of our bills and of all this kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: but able to go outside of that. For however, brief
Speaker 1: is is is a new thing that can get you
Speaker 1: to really change your outlook on certain things. We saw
Speaker 1: us a bit, you know, with the temporary autonomous zones
Speaker 1: popping up. Um. We saw this a bit with like
Speaker 1: the Red House in Portland, um. And like these these
Speaker 1: things are by no means without flaw, Like there's a
Speaker 1: lot of the same systems of oppression, like misogyny um
Speaker 1: is still like in these spaces a lot um. You know,
Speaker 1: there's there's still a lot of you know, like men
Speaker 1: who get guns who want to be like the security
Speaker 1: which can replicate a lot of police. Like we're going
Speaker 1: to have to do an episode on protest security has
Speaker 1: to and why those two children got fucking murdered. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like like these these mani anarchies are not like
Speaker 1: they doesn't make all these things go away, um. And
Speaker 1: it actually gets a really good example of these Even
Speaker 1: when you get to get rid of certain hierarchies, some
Speaker 1: are still seeped into a lot of people's brains, Like
Speaker 1: misogyny is one of them. And having having power over
Speaker 1: other specific people. UM, so those are all things to address.
Speaker 1: But being like you know at the top line three
Speaker 1: camp that that was like run by um indigenous and
Speaker 1: two spirit women, and that was like a y very
Speaker 1: different environments then all of them like Redhouse and the
Speaker 1: A Z s Um Red House was an eviction defense
Speaker 1: in Portland's that was extremely successful in its goal, which
Speaker 1: was to stop the eviction, but also had some problematic
Speaker 1: elements people declaring themselves security and like threatening teenagers with
Speaker 1: paintball guns over graffiti like some dumb ship, which doesn't
Speaker 1: take away from the effective and very powerful aspects of it.
Speaker 1: But you know, we should be able to analyze accurately
Speaker 1: the failures and the successes of of things that are
Speaker 1: kind of within our our wheelhouse of ship we broadly
Speaker 1: agree with. Otherwise we're just cheer leading without analysis. Chris, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think there's a few things. So there's a there there.
Speaker 1: There's a line from a Uruguayan journalists whose name I'm
Speaker 1: about to butcher roul Zebitchy. I think um and he
Speaker 1: he talks about how struggle like it's like it's like
Speaker 1: a bolt of lightning that sort of illuminates a night
Speaker 1: sky and what what what what that what that illumination,
Speaker 1: what that bolt of lightning shows you is you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's the previously obscure relation to domination and power,
Speaker 1: and you know it, it's it shows you all of
Speaker 1: the things that were sort of hidden before. And I
Speaker 1: think this is what happened a lot over the summer, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, one of the things I always
Speaker 1: think about was that so if if you had told
Speaker 1: like even you know, even in the beginning of one
Speaker 1: if you had told me that like even ten percent
Speaker 1: of Americans would have supported burning down a police station, no,
Speaker 1: it's it's impossible, right, And then you know, after it happens,
Speaker 1: the like you know that burning down the police station
Speaker 1: had a higher approve of reading the both presidential either yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know, and this is something and you know,
Speaker 1: in that moment, right like you know, the sort of
Speaker 1: normal public opinion, everything shifted dramatically, just instantly, in a
Speaker 1: manner of a week. Everyone went from sort of you know,
Speaker 1: I say, if here obviously that there's always been people
Speaker 1: struggling against the police, but it went from you know,
Speaker 1: no one and no one in the US could ever
Speaker 1: publicly say that they wanted a police station to get
Speaker 1: burned down without like Fox News personally taking a mob
Speaker 1: on them too. More than half the country thinks this
Speaker 1: is good and and that that kind of transformation, the
Speaker 1: way that it is actually possible for things to change
Speaker 1: extremely quickly, and its possible things to get better extremely quickly,
Speaker 1: and it's possible possible people's for for people to get
Speaker 1: to to get used to and sort of and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it's worth noting that a huge part of
Speaker 1: why a plurality of Americans supported burning the Third Precinct
Speaker 1: was because a a single citizen with a camera had
Speaker 1: the courage to film something that was wrong, and that
Speaker 1: that instantly changed a lot of people's minds. Um, people
Speaker 1: who would not have supported that. And if it had
Speaker 1: just been sort of like if that had not been
Speaker 1: a part of the of the equation, um. But because
Speaker 1: the inhumanity of state violence was was rendered so stark
Speaker 1: before them, there was for most decent people nothing to
Speaker 1: do but say, well, yeah, what else were they going
Speaker 1: to do? You know? Um? And as often as not,
Speaker 1: like more than I think works of political theory or
Speaker 1: tracks or newsletters or grand speeches, it is moments like
Speaker 1: that that galvanized people into changing things. Is just seeing
Speaker 1: something that's like all right, well fuck it, we gotta
Speaker 1: like we gotta fox some ship up. Um. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: less eloquent than the quote you read, but what Chris
Speaker 1: said was it was way more eloquent but prettier. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I stole this. I stole this people who are better
Speaker 1: at it than I am. But yeah, that's all. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I also I also would say whatever a thing,
Speaker 1: you know, is it like they're like the control of
Speaker 1: the state. The controls are capitalism, the control of you know,
Speaker 1: these sort of systems of depression. It's not total and
Speaker 1: it never it never has been in it probably can't be.
Speaker 1: There's there's always places where the state, for one reason
Speaker 1: another is either forced to withdraw or has or you know,
Speaker 1: it decides it doesn't want to be anymore. And you know,
Speaker 1: you know there there's there, there's a good example of this,
Speaker 1: and well, you know, partially can you can look at
Speaker 1: what happening north in Syria, which you know is is
Speaker 1: its own sortain episode of its own right, But I
Speaker 1: mean one of one of these show on that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like you know, but but I think like the state
Speaker 1: withdraws and then you know, there's there's sort of organizations
Speaker 1: there that can actually like take power in a way
Speaker 1: that's not quite that's not taking power. And then you know, subsequently,
Speaker 1: I think, I think maybe more importantly is just the
Speaker 1: reality of the feminist movement in you know. So so
Speaker 1: the p k K is the Kurdish Yeah yeah, we're
Speaker 1: Workers Party and started up in the mountains. Yeah yeah, yeah, yes,
Speaker 1: and the list is now you know, a post I
Speaker 1: guess you'd say, yeah, yeah, And you know, like they
Speaker 1: like that. That movement was an incredibly hierarchical movements and
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways it was a very patriarchical
Speaker 1: movement because you know, it's it's a classical Martist Londonist movement, right,
Speaker 1: they have they have a great leader, everyone follows a
Speaker 1: great leader, everything sort of passes down, and and it
Speaker 1: was mixed in with these kind of very traditional Kurdish
Speaker 1: militant because Kurds have a long tradition of like kind
Speaker 1: of militant warrior culture. So yeah, incredibly patriarchal in a
Speaker 1: number of ways. Yeah. And then but then inside of it,
Speaker 1: like a feminist movement in Burches and in a lot
Speaker 1: of ways they win like they're there. You know, this
Speaker 1: is this is how you get from this sort of
Speaker 1: incredibly hierarchical institution to one that's significantly what democratic, that's
Speaker 1: more a gallaternie on gender lines. That that that's how
Speaker 1: you get all of that is there there. You know,
Speaker 1: there's an internal feminist movement inside the PKK, and it
Speaker 1: wins and and you know, I mean and part part
Speaker 1: of that also has to do with Opo, who's leader
Speaker 1: the p KK, sort of having a sort of ideological
Speaker 1: come around. But you know, the the fact that it
Speaker 1: is possible to you know, when when when you when
Speaker 1: you have a radical movements that is doing a lot
Speaker 1: of good things in some ways, in some ways it's
Speaker 1: also incredibly flawed. It's possible for it to make it better.
Speaker 1: And it's also it's possible for for you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's possible to mount to consistent five for patriarchy in
Speaker 1: in these spaces and win I think, is you know,
Speaker 1: or I mean, you know, maybe not win, but at
Speaker 1: least very dramatically change the balance of power. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: some I think it is incredibly important important to study
Speaker 1: because it's it's a case of you have this movement
Speaker 1: that the p KK that has done some really messed
Speaker 1: up stuff and has some very problematic aspects in its history,
Speaker 1: but it's also effective at doing a number of things,
Speaker 1: including armed resistance. And you have internally this movement democratize
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways. You have it, you have
Speaker 1: it shed a lot of its patriarchal structure while still
Speaker 1: maintaining its capacity for resistance, and it never stops. There's
Speaker 1: always been and still are things that the p k
Speaker 1: K does that that I'm not going to support or
Speaker 1: defend um because there's some, although a lot less of
Speaker 1: them now, and if you're going to kind of compare
Speaker 1: them to the people they're fighting, I think they're committing
Speaker 1: less war crimes in the Turkish government at the moment um.
Speaker 1: But it's it's hopeful because part of what is necessary
Speaker 1: is and part one of the things I think that people,
Speaker 1: particularly online left get wrong is this kind of throw
Speaker 1: the baby out with the bathwater sort of thing. You
Speaker 1: get this a lot in the in the in the
Speaker 1: dialogue around US veterans where there's a chunk of the left,
Speaker 1: it's like, well, they're all war criminals and funk everyone
Speaker 1: who chooses to do that, and it's like, Okay, well,
Speaker 1: you're going to ignore number one, like people who are
Speaker 1: eighteen years old, and depending on where they grew up.
Speaker 1: A simple fact about human beings is that if everyone
Speaker 1: around you when you're a child tells you this is
Speaker 1: a good thing to do, an a moral thing to do,
Speaker 1: you will probably grow up believing that is a good
Speaker 1: and a moral thing to do. And some of those
Speaker 1: people grow up to realize like, oh, you know what,
Speaker 1: it was actually pretty fucked up. Uh, And and this
Speaker 1: this is bad and I want to agitate and organize
Speaker 1: against this thing without wanting to condemn and say like, also,
Speaker 1: all of my friends are murders because you know what
Speaker 1: they're they're they're not um not in the sense that
Speaker 1: like every single person there is knowingly mass occurring civilians.
Speaker 1: Is everybody enabling uh, structures that kill civilians? Yes? And
Speaker 1: so are you, and so am I and so is
Speaker 1: everybody listening to this. If you pay your taxes, if
Speaker 1: you um, if you exist in this society, you are
Speaker 1: enabling like every time you fill up your fucking gas tank. Um,
Speaker 1: you're you're a part of it. We're all a part
Speaker 1: of it. Um. And so I think this, this, I
Speaker 1: think is the kind of condemnation culture is less effective
Speaker 1: in this understanding that, like, if we accept that things
Speaker 1: are fucked up and we agitate to make them less
Speaker 1: fucked up. Um, you can sometimes accomplish remarkable things within
Speaker 1: very flawed structures and systems. Um. And I think that's
Speaker 1: better than I don't know, trying to just score points
Speaker 1: over how much you know about how bad things suck.
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess in in conclusion, uh, I think
Speaker 1: society could be improved somewhat. I think the things that
Speaker 1: are currently killing people could kill less people. Um. And
Speaker 1: I think everybody has some responsibility to try and force
Speaker 1: changes that make the world less violent and horrible. Uh.
Speaker 1: And if you think the world could be less island
Speaker 1: and horrible, um, then then I think we're more or
Speaker 1: less on the same side, unless you think it could
Speaker 1: be less horrible by murdering all of the Democrats because
Speaker 1: they're harvesting the adrena chrome of babies, in which case
Speaker 1: we're not really on the same side. To kind of
Speaker 1: go full circle to the first thing we talked about
Speaker 1: with like doom stuff, I think it's important to also
Speaker 1: remember like we're we're not even we're barely even deciding
Speaker 1: how we're going to live going forward. Right now, we're
Speaker 1: at like at the pivotal point where we're deciding what
Speaker 1: the Earth is going to be like in three hundred years,
Speaker 1: like we are, and I would like this podcast to
Speaker 1: also not be anthropocentric. I wanted to also focus on
Speaker 1: like we're just part of this planet and there's other
Speaker 1: species and other things that all that are all self
Speaker 1: reliant on each other to continue going um. And we're
Speaker 1: not just deciding how long someone like you know, me
Speaker 1: is going to live or people you know younger than me.
Speaker 1: It's deciding like we're like we're like we're at the
Speaker 1: end of the human climate. We are now entering a
Speaker 1: new age and we're deciding what that's going to be.
Speaker 1: And it can be really really bad, or it can
Speaker 1: be only a little bit bad, and we can and
Speaker 1: we can adapt to that little little little bit of badness.
Speaker 1: But I think it's really really bad that's going to
Speaker 1: be very difficult. And that's where like we can't not
Speaker 1: do anything right now because we're deciding so many important
Speaker 1: things for centuries and even like millennia to come. And
Speaker 1: that's like the other thing to help us not get
Speaker 1: stuck in the black pill. Yeah, that's an incredibly important
Speaker 1: point because it is like you, we're we're all we're
Speaker 1: not just deciding like how livable is this, How pleasant
Speaker 1: is the climate going to be for us? How livable
Speaker 1: is it going to be for It's like we're deciding
Speaker 1: are there going to be iguanas in the future? Are
Speaker 1: there going to be truth slots? Are there going to
Speaker 1: be redwoods and salmon? You know? Are we going to
Speaker 1: have clouds? Will we have clouds in a century? Um?
Speaker 1: I hope the es to all of it, And like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that is why it is this. Um, the folks who
Speaker 1: have spent billions of dollars kind of fighting against any
Speaker 1: effective action against climate change and kind of muddying the
Speaker 1: issue until it was too late to stop what's going
Speaker 1: to be inevitably going to be a very dark scenario already. Um,
Speaker 1: those people are now pushing the idea that like, well,
Speaker 1: there's nothing that can be done, or there's nothing that
Speaker 1: like we we can't none of the actions we take
Speaker 1: would be worth taking and like whatever, or like there's
Speaker 1: there's a variety of different kind of tax they've taken,
Speaker 1: but they have a vested interest in the the reaction
Speaker 1: that I see from a lot of people on the left,
Speaker 1: which is like, well we're fucked, just prepare for collapse
Speaker 1: like that. They win, they win if you take that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they would love they love that reaction. They're they're finally
Speaker 1: like the new way, like the old way to pass
Speaker 1: by people as by saying no, this isn't real, this
Speaker 1: isn't a problem. The new way that passed by people
Speaker 1: are saying this is a huge problem that can't be fixed,
Speaker 1: and all they want is for people to be pacified.
Speaker 1: And we have to actually resist that because that's the
Speaker 1: easy thing to do. That's the thing that makes our
Speaker 1: brains feel more comfortable, like we can like we can
Speaker 1: relax into the doom, right, And we have to actively
Speaker 1: fight that every day because it always infects our brains
Speaker 1: and if it affects my brain like it, you can't
Speaker 1: you can't escape, but you have to actively fight it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The reality is that if we accept doom, we will
Speaker 1: all burn to death separately. Whereas if we take all
Speaker 1: of their ship and we lock the worst of them
Speaker 1: away in a dark hole for trying to kill the
Speaker 1: planet um and we stop building a society around the
Speaker 1: poisons that they profit from, then maybe there will be
Speaker 1: claw slots and clouds in a hundred years um, and
Speaker 1: that's worth fighting for. Do it do it for the iguanas?
Speaker 1: Do it for what for the iguanas? H The anthropolgist
Speaker 1: David Graber wrote something about neoliberalism where he said, deliberalism
Speaker 1: is it's it's not an engine that produces anything economically,
Speaker 1: as an engine that produces despair. That's you know, that's
Speaker 1: its sole job. And not only is it so job,
Speaker 1: it will sacrifice its own continue to existence to make
Speaker 1: sure that people can't actually can't not only like I
Speaker 1: can't imagine in the future, but are just sort of
Speaker 1: are so beaten down that you know that the engine
Speaker 1: of despair cans use him. They do nothing. And you
Speaker 1: know I would say this, You know, the reason the
Speaker 1: state cracks down so hard isn't because it's strong. It's
Speaker 1: because it's weak. The you know, the the the the
Speaker 1: reason that sort of engine and despair has to keep going,
Speaker 1: Why why they have to keep telling you that it's
Speaker 1: im possible, is because it is. If it were genuinely
Speaker 1: impossible for us to do anything, they wouldn't have to,
Speaker 1: like you know that there wouldn't be any need for propaganda,
Speaker 1: right if if they were, if they weren't actually genuinely
Speaker 1: afraid of the possibility that you know, we decided not
Speaker 1: to give in to despair and do something. Yep, that's
Speaker 1: as good as a note to end on as we're
Speaker 1: going to find. So, uh, don't give in to despair.
Speaker 1: Do it for the Iguanas. Uh and uh, you know
Speaker 1: uh of products and services you can follow, can follow.
Speaker 1: You can follow cool Zone Media on Twitter and Instagram.
Speaker 1: You can uh you know you're probably already subscribed to
Speaker 1: it could it could Happen Here pod because you're listening
Speaker 1: to it, but if you're not, should probably subscribe to that.
Speaker 1: You can follow, You can follow, You can follow the
Speaker 1: podcast that Happen Here pod on Instagram in Twitter too, Yep.
Speaker 1: Follow the things, Listen to the things that will help
Speaker 1: us keep making more stuff. God speed, goodbye, and speed
Speaker 1: for the Iguanas.