Speaker 1: All Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Welcome to another rewind episode of vike it Happened Here.
Speaker 2: Last year, we did a series of episodes in the
Speaker 2: United States War and trans People. Since then, things have
Speaker 2: only gotten worse. Even an electoral defeat, transphobic politicians across
Speaker 2: the country have only doubled and tripled down on their
Speaker 2: attempts to wipe trans people out for good. So today
Speaker 2: we're going to revisit part three of that series, called
Speaker 2: the Turf International, in which we look at the transnational
Speaker 2: network of transphobes who built the modern anti trans movement
Speaker 2: and see how they function in both Mexico and the US.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Ikeodappen Here, a podcast that this week is
Speaker 2: about the war on trans people. I'm your host, Christopher Wong.
Speaker 2: If you've been around the left long enough, you've probably
Speaker 2: heard people called transclusionary radical feminism, or terfism a colonial ideology. Broadly,
Speaker 2: the accusation of colonialism is about the erasure of non
Speaker 2: Western genders to fall outside the Christian gender binary. But
Speaker 2: urfs are colonial in another sense as well, exported by
Speaker 2: white academics to a network of fall feminist and anti
Speaker 2: trafficking groups, the ideology has imposed itself on the global
Speaker 2: South with devastating and violent consequences. As a product of
Speaker 2: this colonial imposition, Mexico has become one of the front
Speaker 2: lines in the war against trans people. I spoke to
Speaker 2: Emmie Flores and Juliana Neuhauser, two members of the Sexual
Speaker 2: and Gender Dissonance Resistance Network, a group of activists aligned
Speaker 2: with the Zapatistas who've been documenting and resisting the spread
Speaker 2: of turfs in Mexico.
Speaker 3: When the new turf waves started in Mexico several years back,
Speaker 3: at the time, I thought thought of it as something
Speaker 3: of like a radicalization that went too far, you know,
Speaker 3: like kind of like thinking back to like the New Left,
Speaker 3: and there was a point during the New Left when
Speaker 3: l like suddenly everybody joined a maoist cult and they
Speaker 3: were angry for the right reasons, but it just went off.
Speaker 3: At some point, I thought that's what was going on
Speaker 3: in Mexico. But then it started to come out more
Speaker 3: that more and more turf groups were had ties to
Speaker 3: political parties and one of the and foreign agents. And
Speaker 3: one of the one of the most dramatic cases is
Speaker 3: from Teluca, a city near Mexico City. Just recently at
Speaker 3: the International Women's date protests, like there were turf groups
Speaker 3: that had made a pinata out of the trans flag,
Speaker 3: had been burning the trans flag also in this same city.
Speaker 3: One of the main turf groups turns out that they're
Speaker 3: leader is on government payroll. And if you've seen Roma,
Speaker 3: for example, the incident, the political incident that happens in
Speaker 3: that movie was based on a real incident from the
Speaker 3: seventies and the tactics of that political party, which is
Speaker 3: the party that controls the state government of the state
Speaker 3: to lucas In basically it hasn't changed and they seem
Speaker 3: to have been using these turfs basically as shock troops.
Speaker 3: At one point, there were two sit ins outside the
Speaker 3: state Congress, one to push for a gender identity a
Speaker 3: law and another to push for the legalization of abortion,
Speaker 3: which are obviously both important things. The ladder, however, was
Speaker 3: controlled by these turf groups, who later mysteriously never seemed
Speaker 3: to appear at other protests asking for the legalization of abortion,
Speaker 3: but they were there. They ran off the trans encampment.
Speaker 3: One of the big incidents was defending the Sanctity women's
Speaker 3: bathroom with barbed wire wrapped baseball bats.
Speaker 2: Jesus, These groups have deep ties to right wing Mexican
Speaker 2: political parties, the police, and the growing Turf International.
Speaker 4: And they seem to be very chummy with the local police.
Speaker 3: Their leader gives classes, but its like trainings to build
Speaker 3: the state government.
Speaker 4: Like you know, you can see live streams of the
Speaker 4: quote unquote protests, and it was mostly them like drinking
Speaker 4: coffee with the cops, like they were on first name
Speaker 4: basis with the cops. While the other camp had like
Speaker 4: Translomen that were too scared to go to the bathroom
Speaker 4: because they were going to be attacked. And so that's
Speaker 4: the starkest group, I think, right the delcatives, which are
Speaker 4: It's funny because almost every party has their own their
Speaker 4: own group. But yeah, also it's no surprised that pri
Speaker 4: is the scariest.
Speaker 3: Yeah. We should also say that these groups are affiliates
Speaker 3: with Sheila Jeffries' Women's Declaration International. And so this is
Speaker 3: also a case of an ideology developed in the first world,
Speaker 3: in this case England, which is largely a safe country
Speaker 3: where even as fascist an ideology as urfism doesn't or
Speaker 3: only very rarely leads to real violence, but it gets
Speaker 3: exported to countries that are not safe where it does
Speaker 3: turn into real violence. So another affiliate of Sheila Jeffreys
Speaker 3: Woman's declaration in Mexico would be LEAs Brujs del Mar,
Speaker 3: who is another case of At first they seemed to
Speaker 3: be a group that was just they just radicalized a
Speaker 3: bit too far. Then photos came out of their leader,
Speaker 3: who was on the time one hundred a couple of
Speaker 3: years back with Felipe Calderon, an ex president of Mexico
Speaker 3: and like by far one of the worst in the
Speaker 3: country's history, and not like just.
Speaker 4: Oh I saw you walking in the street. She was
Speaker 4: at a book signing. It was not a casual encounter.
Speaker 4: It was a clear sign of admiration. And it's been
Speaker 4: more than confirmed since then that her political ambitions lie
Speaker 4: with the PAN, the farthest right mainstream political party in Mexico.
Speaker 2: This political alliance between the Turfs and the right has
Speaker 2: benefits for both sides. The Turfs gained funding institutional backing
Speaker 2: for their war against trans people. The right gained a
Speaker 2: way to attack the vaguely center left Mexican President Andrea's
Speaker 2: Manuel Lopez overdoor by blaming him and trans people from
Speaker 2: Mexico's horrific wave of femicides while distracting from its actual
Speaker 2: sources durn the War on drugs. Mexico's transpopulation, however, gained
Speaker 2: a new Western educated threat.
Speaker 4: When I say the radical feminism was a complete import
Speaker 4: it's from its very beginning. In the For a long while,
Speaker 4: there was like one turf in Mexico and she was
Speaker 4: She's called jian Maria Yoyotel. Don't even try to pronounce
Speaker 4: her name. I don't think she can even pronounce her
Speaker 4: name because she's white as hell and she always dresses
Speaker 4: like she's a fucking Rachel dollars hell from Mexico.
Speaker 3: Yeah, music irony that the first originary turf in Mexico
Speaker 3: is also the Mexican Raciel doll as well, right, because she.
Speaker 4: Went abroad and was like the only Mexican everyone knew.
Speaker 4: So even though she's white as hell and has blue eyes,
Speaker 4: she started wearing some Coachella motherfucking ass feathers and shit.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, I've seen I've seen these pictures. It's it is,
Speaker 2: it is like it is. It is the Mexican ver
Speaker 2: of and not even just the beas version. It is
Speaker 2: the Mexican version of those people at Cochella who like
Speaker 2: wear indigenous headdresses who are just like just like look
Speaker 2: look like they're descended from like Hydrik Himbler or something incredible, and.
Speaker 4: Like she's she has like she has like half French,
Speaker 4: half Spanish name and she changed it to a half
Speaker 4: Maya half Nato name. It's growth. So this this person
Speaker 4: has been active since the seventies. Right, she went to
Speaker 4: she was present in the first Pride in Mexico and
Speaker 4: uh she that was that was also the two year
Speaker 4: anniversary of the sixty eight massacre. So Pride was from
Speaker 4: the start really leftist here in Mexico, but it also
Speaker 4: had these kind of people the who who went to
Speaker 4: the UK, friends and the United States. And I think
Speaker 4: she was there when uh Is Raymond was like sending
Speaker 4: her friends with guns to threatened trans women, right, so
Speaker 4: that's she. She was there when the turf Wars were
Speaker 4: at at the highest point during the seventies and then
Speaker 4: came back and she participated in a lot of history
Speaker 4: of Mexican feminism. But the time she came back in
Speaker 4: twenty sixteen with that letter with that backing because she
Speaker 4: is also close to Jenny's Raymond with the Coalition and
Speaker 4: against Trafficking in women who the Coalition against Traffiican, the
Speaker 4: Coalition against Traffickan and Women cat w has a lot
Speaker 4: of After the turf Wars, they went underground in the
Speaker 4: in academia and the universities right because they were no
Speaker 4: longer accepted, but they were in the process of building
Speaker 4: NGOs that could globally affect policy on UH, specifically sex
Speaker 4: work and trans rites. And you can tell that John
Speaker 4: Maria saw that that was her only opportunity to resurface
Speaker 4: UH and to make her seventies as she saw that
Speaker 4: the seventies redven discourse was retro now and so she
Speaker 4: became like this UH found founding matriarch for the new
Speaker 4: generation of transfos, one of them which is Laura Lequana,
Speaker 4: who is part of FEMBA and the GEH. Maria and
Speaker 4: Lequana were not faced at all by the accusations of
Speaker 4: aligned with the reactionaries because they know their history, they
Speaker 4: know where they come from, and they know that this
Speaker 4: is how Darkin survived, This is how UH, how Sheila
Speaker 4: Jefferies and Jennie Raymond survived. This is where you get
Speaker 4: the fucking in. Jean Maria and Brussel mar turned the
Speaker 4: whole environment around them into these uh well these serve questions.
Speaker 4: The only two issues that we talk about nowadays in
Speaker 4: Mexican feminism are are precedent and trans people. It's kind
Speaker 4: of gross Jesus.
Speaker 3: And that like remember, like there's only a handful of
Speaker 3: states that have legalized abortion. There's femicides happening all the time,
Speaker 3: and but we're we continue to debate these two issues
Speaker 3: over and over and over again like a feedback group,
Speaker 3: and like, as trans people, we don't have any choice
Speaker 3: because we're the targets of this right and it's not
Speaker 3: it's not an academic debate. Last fall, there was some
Speaker 3: tar who had taken over a public park to set
Speaker 3: up their separatist space and there was a disabled CIS
Speaker 3: woman and her trans girlfriend who are denied entergy at
Speaker 3: the park and threatened with tasers. And so when they're
Speaker 3: taking over these public spaces and using violence to defend them,
Speaker 3: because the next week there was a protest over this
Speaker 3: and there they taste a trans man and it's like
Speaker 3: this is like a public park, like of course we
Speaker 3: have to defend ourselves.
Speaker 2: The Coalition Against Trafficking in Women for kat w an
Speaker 2: International Anti Sex worker group, which provided a refuge for
Speaker 2: white TERFs driven from mainstream feminism in their home countries,
Speaker 2: has been a major source of terf influence in Latin America.
Speaker 4: The reason there is so much important of this ideology
Speaker 4: towards radical feminists in Mexico, it's that they needed something
Speaker 4: to say and something to do and something to fill
Speaker 4: the void in organizing and in NGOs. And the people
Speaker 4: who stepped up were Jenny's Raymond's cat W Right, the
Speaker 4: Collition against Affian and Women who since the nineties spent
Speaker 4: ah a decade and a half building contacts in the
Speaker 4: Indie un in the oas in several international organisms to
Speaker 4: extend their influence across the whole content and specifically in
Speaker 4: Latin America. And you can see this affecting stuff like
Speaker 4: stuff like Venezuela where they broke up sex worker unions
Speaker 4: two to with the the right and in Mexico. The
Speaker 4: founding leader of the Mexican branch of cat W, Teresa Ujoa,
Speaker 4: used to be a UN employee, specifically it's drug and
Speaker 4: crime segment and before she was like a radical feminist,
Speaker 4: she used to conduct drug raids in Japa's and Yeah
Speaker 4: and after that she became the founding member of w
Speaker 4: Latin American and the Caribbean. And with Jennie Raymond, they
Speaker 4: you can see them go together to the nineteen ninety
Speaker 4: five Beijing Conference on Women and they influenced, like they
Speaker 4: were a big part of why gender is not recognized
Speaker 4: as a social construct by the UN. They allied with
Speaker 4: the Holy See, with the representative from the Vatican in
Speaker 4: the UN, got together with a couple of radical feminists
Speaker 4: and pushed back against gender being recognized as a social
Speaker 4: construct nineteen ninety five. So that's the level of influence
Speaker 4: these groups had in Mexico. These groups, which morphed into
Speaker 4: the cap W supported the Warren Rocks from the get go.
Speaker 4: They were very in some of the biggest events inaugurating
Speaker 4: the Warren Drugs. They were present right there. Because if
Speaker 4: you're fighting drug trafficking, it's very easy to just sleep
Speaker 4: the word human right there. Right, No politician is gonna
Speaker 4: say no. They all fucking love to say, yeah, I'm
Speaker 4: hardened on human trafficking. And the way that showed itself
Speaker 4: was just targeting trans sex workers and migrant sex workers
Speaker 4: and with that and that feeding the agenda of Jennie's
Speaker 4: Raymond perfectly. Sila Jeffries gotta basically survived the whole two
Speaker 4: thousands on writing garbage for reports for the UN. Most
Speaker 4: of her published works during the two thousands and early
Speaker 4: twenty tens is stuff paid for Cadolu and they in
Speaker 4: twenty sixteen they started pushing for more and more anti
Speaker 4: trans legislation worldwide because they could see the writing on
Speaker 4: the world right. They were behind the Women's Declaration. The
Speaker 4: Shila Jeffers is not okay. She is part of Cadoli.
Speaker 4: She's I think Cadouble Australia. She has her own other
Speaker 4: collectic called Space International, which is behind Foster Sesta by
Speaker 4: the way in the US, where she allied with a
Speaker 4: couple of conservative sheriffs to write that legislation. So we
Speaker 4: could go on and on. How like people that read
Speaker 4: our trans issues think are gone and forgotten by history. Right,
Speaker 4: The authors of these horrible books that haunt us to
Speaker 4: this day are still active, and not just in the US.
Speaker 4: They're active in Mexico, in the UK, in France, in
Speaker 4: South Africa, in Korea. Korea is huge in I think
Speaker 4: I would say Korea is has as big a problem
Speaker 4: as Mexico and the UK. We just don't talk to
Speaker 4: them as much and we can't realize that. But if
Speaker 4: you check them the languages that have signed the Shila
Speaker 4: Jeffers Declaration against Trands People, which is as specifically generocidal declaration,
Speaker 4: it doesn't stop at the legislation. It wants to exterminate
Speaker 4: us outright. Yeah, and most of them, you are going
Speaker 4: to see a lot of Brazilian flags, a lot of
Speaker 4: Mexican flags, a lot of Korean flags, even more than
Speaker 4: United States flags. And if you track the USA flags,
Speaker 4: it's mostly like weird randos that have yoga classes and shit.
Speaker 4: It's not relevant politicians. But if you track the other countries,
Speaker 4: you're going to find some of the biggest collectives in
Speaker 4: their own countries. You're gonna find or just spooks, right,
Speaker 4: You're gonna find a lot of people who have really
Speaker 4: weird careers that spend a lot of time in Italy
Speaker 4: and Uganda. It's it's a never ending ribbit whole of
Speaker 4: of of spooks, of conservatives, of has been feminists that
Speaker 4: have regranted it as NGOs to get money from those
Speaker 4: groups and directed towards breaking up trans rights, towards affecting
Speaker 4: sex workers, towards breaking unions, breaking student movements. It's a
Speaker 4: global movement that is birthed by conservative thought, but getting
Speaker 4: more and more reactionary and more and more organized as
Speaker 4: time goes by.
Speaker 2: That international transphobic movement has increasingly found purchase in the US.
Speaker 2: I spoke to Lee Leaville and Kai Shiver's, two members
Speaker 2: of Health Liberation Now with intimate experience with the turf
Speaker 2: movement who spent years particulously documenting its rise. So my
Speaker 2: first question is, can y'all explain what Wolf actually is?
Speaker 2: And I guess subsequent to that, what their relationship to
Speaker 2: hands across the aisle is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so Wolf is They're a transphobic feminist group with
Speaker 1: at this point extensive ties to right wing organizations. They've
Speaker 1: worked with Family Policy Alliance here Atage Foundation, Alliance Defending Freedom, Concerned,
Speaker 1: Wouin for America, Family Research Culture, among others.
Speaker 5: But they.
Speaker 1: They got their start and they started back in twenty
Speaker 1: thirteen around when they're founded by Lear Keith, who also
Speaker 1: was one of the leaders of Deep Green Resistance, and
Speaker 1: she basically got like kind of run out of anarchists
Speaker 1: and environmentalist groups and then kind of like went over
Speaker 1: to established like turf communities to try and recruit there.
Speaker 1: So they sort of like started out trying to like
Speaker 1: recruit from these like older turf and transphobic lesbian communities.
Speaker 1: And then after Trump got elected and you know, the
Speaker 1: conservative Christians on the far right became more mobilized and
Speaker 1: more empowered. They kind of like rebranded themselves and were like, oh,
Speaker 1: let's form alliances with these right wing groups, and they
Speaker 1: kind of like traded their sort of like like crunchy
Speaker 1: lesbian feminists like like image for like Kara Danski, who
Speaker 1: like you know, is a straight, fairly feminine looking woman
Speaker 1: who used to work for the CLU and like a Democrat,
Speaker 1: and like you know, she's way more presentable to like
Speaker 1: a conservative audience. You know, by working with the right,
Speaker 1: then they have access to like money and power and
Speaker 1: they can get easier for the.
Speaker 5: Get on the media.
Speaker 1: Like Kidansky is no longer with Wolf, but like she
Speaker 1: was with them for years and still has relations like
Speaker 1: like good relations with them, and she's been on the
Speaker 1: Tucker Carlson Show like many times. So I think one
Speaker 1: of the important pieces when it comes to understanding like
Speaker 1: how this relationship with the rights started. So in late
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen, Wolf put forward their filing against the US
Speaker 1: Department of Justice and US Department of Education, right, and
Speaker 1: they were going up against aspects of like trying to
Speaker 1: reform Title NIND to include gender identity, you know, to
Speaker 1: protect folks who need to be able to use the like.
Speaker 5: Women's restroom or locker room or whatever.
Speaker 1: Right, And this is the case that they ended up
Speaker 1: getting some of that ADA funding for. So it's like
Speaker 1: one of the first official seeds I guess of the
Speaker 1: direct collaboration ended up happening. Those a lot of that
Speaker 1: stuff did eventually end up getting leaked, and then they
Speaker 1: started doing some more official collaborations just a few months
Speaker 1: later when they were working with like Family Policy Alliance
Speaker 1: to file amicus briefs against Gavin Grimm again on a
Speaker 1: bathroom case. Yeah, they took something like I think it
Speaker 1: was like fifteen thousand dollars from the Alliance depending Freedom,
Speaker 1: which is one of the main like right wing groups
Speaker 1: like like trying to pass all these like anti TRAMS bills,
Speaker 1: like going after pediatric transition and trans girls and in
Speaker 1: them and sports. So they took that money and then yeah,
Speaker 1: then later like I think, like the whole working with
Speaker 1: Family Policy Alliance, I believe was the first time they
Speaker 1: like publicly allied with with the White Ring group.
Speaker 5: I think, so that happened in January of twenty seventeen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then they've just sort of like, yeah, like
Speaker 1: they also were involved with like the amicus brief against
Speaker 1: was it Amy Stephens another Supreme Court case. I can't remember,
Speaker 1: it wouldn't surprise me. And like members of both have
Speaker 1: appeared on like Heritage Foundation panels. They helped like release
Speaker 1: a parent resource guide and an anti transparent resource guide
Speaker 1: that was also sponsored by like Heritage Foundation, Family Policy Alliance.
Speaker 2: This this this is very similar to almost exactly what
Speaker 2: you see in Mexico, with just sort of slightly less
Speaker 2: physical violence, which yeah, it's it's a lot of you know.
Speaker 2: And the other thing is that these are to a
Speaker 2: large extent exactly the same organizations. And that was one
Speaker 2: of the other things I want to talk about was
Speaker 2: the influence of Sheila Jeffries and the Women's Declaration, which
Speaker 2: has been all over this whole movement.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The one thing to point out, so like you know,
Speaker 1: the Women's Declaration International is in this in the US
Speaker 1: is led by Kardanski who doo she like basically like left.
Speaker 1: She worked at Wolf for a long time and still
Speaker 1: has lots of connections with them, is on good terms
Speaker 1: with them, but she like left and now is like
Speaker 1: working with Women's Declaration International of the US branch. So
Speaker 1: and also she winds up having kind of like a
Speaker 1: foot in both worlds at the same time too, So
Speaker 1: like she'll like the US chapter of Women's Declaration International
Speaker 1: previously like Women's Team in Rights campaign before they had
Speaker 1: to rebrand, they would.
Speaker 2: But if if you if you read this, yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, exactly exactly.
Speaker 1: So what what ends up happening is that Karen Danski
Speaker 1: will either like have the chapter sponsor particular events or
Speaker 1: she herself will become actively involved in the formation of
Speaker 1: the events, right, which we saw happen with women pick
Speaker 1: at d C last year where they were parking themselves
Speaker 1: outside of that was like it was a that was
Speaker 1: that was a whole big thing. Oh god, it was
Speaker 1: a purchase that happened on International Women's Day to protest
Speaker 1: the Equality Act. Yeah, NBC, it's not like it's people's
Speaker 1: first time dealing with the Equality Act either.
Speaker 5: I mean, like so.
Speaker 1: Prior prior to that point which and this starts to
Speaker 1: go into the like hands across the Aisle Coalition because
Speaker 1: they were actively involved in opposing the Equality Act as well.
Speaker 1: So to kind of roll back a little bit the
Speaker 1: hands across the Aisle Coalition.
Speaker 5: This was something that started.
Speaker 1: Developing in early twenty seventeen, you know, not that long
Speaker 1: after Wolfe started building the more direct relationships with the Right,
Speaker 1: and so that the people of this coalition would have
Speaker 1: like you would have members of the Right itself, and
Speaker 1: in the pro sets of that, towards the beginning of
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, in May, they filed this joint letter to
Speaker 1: the House of Representative Speaker Nancy Pelosi to oppose things
Speaker 1: like the Equality Act, and they did so alongside with
Speaker 1: Natasha Chart representing wolf Concerned Women for America, American College
Speaker 1: of Pediatricians, Family Research Council, you know, a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of really just awful names, and they're, oh, yeah, the
Speaker 1: adyf was involved on that one too. Yeah.
Speaker 2: It's really the rose gallery of all of the people
Speaker 2: who were anti gay marriage until still are but have
Speaker 2: downplayed it. And yeah, all the people who let the
Speaker 2: anti gay marriage campaigns, all of the sort of weird
Speaker 2: right wing pseudo medical bodies. The next thing what it
Speaker 2: to ask about is what's been happening in the last
Speaker 2: couple of years with the fusion, Because you already have
Speaker 2: your your alliance between the Turfs and the evangelicals, but
Speaker 2: in the last couple of years we've seen a I
Speaker 2: don't know if if full scale is the right term
Speaker 2: to use for, but we've seen a merger of this
Speaker 2: with Save the Children Eqanon stuff. I'm wondering if you
Speaker 2: can talk about that.
Speaker 5: That's okay.
Speaker 1: So that's an interesting one because, like I've I've been
Speaker 1: digging into the timeline of this stuff extensively. It's like
Speaker 1: I've got hundreds hundreds of listings, trying to figure out
Speaker 1: where different pieces are coming from and trying to understand.
Speaker 5: Like the phases.
Speaker 1: Right, so you've got like the formation, the solidification, and
Speaker 1: then the escalation, and we're kind of in the escalation
Speaker 1: stage right now. But so one of the things that
Speaker 1: I started to notice is that elements of this crossover,
Speaker 1: like the cross pollination that was happening, actually pre dated
Speaker 1: certain key events that we now know are affiliated with QAnon. Right,
Speaker 1: So if we think about the actual development of QAnon itself,
Speaker 1: so You've got the pizza Gate thing that was happening
Speaker 1: in like October twenty sixteen. I believe that was, you know,
Speaker 1: right before Trump was getting elected, and you know, kicking
Speaker 1: up some stuff about like you know, Hillary Clinton's emails
Speaker 1: and stuff like that to go up against her election
Speaker 1: campaign and opposition to Trump, and then you know, folding
Speaker 1: in the harassment towards Comet Ping Pong to the point
Speaker 1: where like Edgar Madison Wells shows up at Comet Ping
Speaker 1: Pong in December of twenty sixteen with an AR fifteen
Speaker 1: style rifle and starts, you know, firing off as shots
Speaker 1: and stuff like that.
Speaker 5: Right, And so eventually.
Speaker 1: Most people know the timeline of the q and on
Speaker 1: drops happening around like October twenty seventeen. Like if you
Speaker 1: look up the original like the first known que drops,
Speaker 1: I believe that was like October twenty eight, twenty seventeen,
Speaker 1: on four Chan. But the thing is that if you
Speaker 1: look at references to save the Children or Save our
Speaker 1: Children on like Twitter, the hashtags, and you're also looking
Speaker 1: for transphobia related stuff, you can actually start to see
Speaker 1: that crossover happening before the original que drops happened, Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I found tweets that were connecting trans inclusion education in
Speaker 1: schools to pedophilia and using the save the Children hashtag
Speaker 1: in August of twenty seventeen, the que drops hadn't started yet,
Speaker 1: so this is something this pattern continues to happen, right
Speaker 1: There were also multiple tweets or Facebook posts or whatever
Speaker 1: that would start to use things like save the Children,
Speaker 1: save our Children, wake Up America, and stuff like that
Speaker 1: before you would have the big scale takeover by QAnon
Speaker 1: when things were starting to get really popular, because the
Speaker 1: save the Children thing really went viral in the summer
Speaker 1: of twenty twenty, but you could still see elements of
Speaker 1: it before that point repeatedly. So another early instance of
Speaker 1: using both save the Children and wake Up America hashtags
Speaker 1: started happening on April I believe that is of twenty nineteen.
Speaker 1: And bear in mind, wake up America is a hashtag
Speaker 1: that's not only used by QAnon proponents in relation to
Speaker 1: the whole like acceleration as I'm trying to, you know,
Speaker 1: deep state stuff, but also like Aaron Brewer, one of
Speaker 1: the people that was involved in some of the clinic
Speaker 1: protests harassments, was using that. No, it wasn't just it
Speaker 1: was wasn't just Brewer, it was like both Brewer it was.
Speaker 1: That was the clinic protest that involved both partners Peltical
Speaker 1: kr PEC, which Brewer was a member like one of
Speaker 1: the founders of at the time and one of the
Speaker 1: leaders of and uh Joey Bright's like can't I get
Speaker 1: a witness, Like they teamed up to stage a bunch
Speaker 1: of clinic protests and they used wake up of Like
Speaker 1: wake of America was one of the slogans that they
Speaker 1: used in one of the hashtags.
Speaker 2: There to make to make to make sure we're getting this. Uh,
Speaker 2: these are protests against clinics that offered gender firming care.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah that mm hmm yeah that
Speaker 1: that happened that one. So yeah, the wake Up America
Speaker 1: one was in so like City, New York City and LA.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And they also, I mean, speaking of pastakes, they also
Speaker 1: have used the slogan pull back the Curtain, which has
Speaker 1: also been used by uh like anti choice activists. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like that was I remember, like like finding like they
Speaker 1: use pull back the curtain a lot to be like
Speaker 1: what they mean is like they're like expose the evil
Speaker 1: gender industry. But like there's other this like.
Speaker 5: Anti abortion group. I'm blinking on which one off the
Speaker 5: top of my head.
Speaker 1: But they also use that pull back the curtain to
Speaker 1: go after planned parenthood, Yeah, which I think is like problem,
Speaker 1: like that doesn't I'm for a direct connection, but it
Speaker 1: seems like that's too much of a coincidence in a
Speaker 1: lot of One of the one of the things that
Speaker 1: I really want to stress about this called like what
Speaker 1: I call tanon thing, is that like the seeds for this,
Speaker 1: the cross pollinase that we are seeing happening between the
Speaker 1: gender critical movement, Pizzagate, and QAnon, like these were already
Speaker 1: in place before QAnon formally developed as its own phenomenon.
Speaker 5: This keeps happening.
Speaker 1: It's you can't really like figure out where one particular
Speaker 1: type of rhetoric is necessarily coming from in terms of
Speaker 1: its source, because it just keeps going back and forth repeatedly.
Speaker 5: People are acting like.
Speaker 1: They're coming up with a lot of the same ideas
Speaker 1: together because in the end, in the end, they are
Speaker 1: of the same roots. They are in fundamental agreement with
Speaker 1: each other, whether they're calling themselves different names.
Speaker 2: I think that's that's worries me in a lot of ways.
Speaker 2: Partly because you know, I mean, this has always been
Speaker 2: something where if you look at the rhetoric that these
Speaker 2: people are spreading, it's like it's explicitly the extermination is
Speaker 2: like it's it's you know, like they they're they're strochiatric terrorists,
Speaker 2: like in search of a like a quote unquote low
Speaker 2: wolf and in a lot of you know, and in
Speaker 2: the seventies, I think they were. There's there's a lot
Speaker 2: more explicit violence that these people are doing directly, and
Speaker 2: now they're kind of like they're they're they're trying to
Speaker 2: find people who will do their already work for them,
Speaker 2: and there are places where they found them already. We've
Speaker 2: seen this in Mexico and in the US. The people
Speaker 2: who they seem to be recruiting are people who are
Speaker 2: extremely dangerous. I mean, we've we've seen QAnon people have
Speaker 2: killed enormous numbers of people. You know, We've there's a
Speaker 2: long history of abortion clinic bombings and people getting asassinated
Speaker 2: from that. I mean, I think, you know, one of
Speaker 2: the connections that I've been sort of like looking at
Speaker 2: is the extent to which this stuff is connected to
Speaker 2: the Atlanta shooting. Because if you if you look at
Speaker 2: the stuff. The Atlanta shooter believes it's you know, like
Speaker 2: he's in this like in the same sort of Christian
Speaker 2: patriarchal pje and his thing is specifically about sex workers.
Speaker 2: But hey, look if you look at uh yeah, not
Speaker 2: particularly Asian sex workers. And you know, if if you
Speaker 2: if you look at the anti trafficking groups and you
Speaker 2: look at the Christian AI trafficking groups and you look
Speaker 2: at the vent diagram with them and the turfs, it's like,
Speaker 2: oh and that particular and yeah, there's there's this kind
Speaker 2: of vice closing in on trans people where on the
Speaker 2: one hand you have these people attempting to employ the
Speaker 2: violence of the state, and on the other hand you
Speaker 2: have this sort of strochiatric terrorism where they're attempting to
Speaker 2: incite violence by sort of individuals. And then also, I mean,
Speaker 2: I think I think there's you know, there's there's sort
Speaker 2: of two forms of this.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: There's the explicit people who are explicitly like quote unquote
Speaker 2: political right, you have your sort of like ideological street fascist.
Speaker 2: You have like you know, you have your people with
Speaker 2: baseball bass covered in barred wire. But then you also
Speaker 2: have the stuff that's been fueling antiation violence where it's
Speaker 2: not necessarily like you know, there is this is an
Speaker 2: organization that like haze Asian people, it's we will just
Speaker 2: sort of passively increase the rhetoric until the level of
Speaker 2: violence increases.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, it kind of got like you've got the
Speaker 1: street bashed and then you've got the intellectual fash. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, and and I think but I think also there's
Speaker 2: there's another like if it was just those people, I
Speaker 2: think it'd be less bad. But but there's also just
Speaker 2: the way in which just random people who are encountering
Speaker 2: this become very quickly radicalized and it becomes part of
Speaker 2: sort of I mean and stretch Trobic violence has always
Speaker 2: been part of the sort of background violence the same
Speaker 2: way that anti black and so it's I mean, you know, okay,
Speaker 2: the level of anti black violence is much higher, but
Speaker 2: like the level of violence against black trans people in particular,
Speaker 2: and the level of antiation violence we've been seeing that
Speaker 2: has just sort of be it's just a part of
Speaker 2: the background violence of American society, and that the levels
Speaker 2: of those things, the more this rhetoric gets circulated and
Speaker 2: the more this activism happens, that background level of violence increases,
Speaker 2: and that to me is also terrifying because it means
Speaker 2: like it's not just sort of like fascisty you can track,
Speaker 2: it's just someone on the street.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Yeah, they're just sort of like trying to
Speaker 1: like like associate like well, I mean a lot of
Speaker 1: the e like yeah, like people like like I feel
Speaker 1: like in Aaron alex Ara and the Gender Mapper and
Speaker 1: Joey Brighten stuff like that, like they're they're hardcore like eliminationists,
Speaker 1: Like they're like they're say over and over the compinal compromise.
Speaker 1: And I would also especially like anti fascist networks to
Speaker 1: pay more attention to it because you know that solidarity
Speaker 1: with trans paople is just as important as solidarity with
Speaker 1: like a racial and ethnic minorities when it comes to
Speaker 1: combating fast right, especially since like there are a number
Speaker 1: of us that are in multiple categories, So like let's
Speaker 1: all work together and try to like you know, be
Speaker 1: proactive about combating the threat.
Speaker 5: Right. So, my my tnon.
Speaker 1: Collections, I guess like I only have two reports on
Speaker 1: it so far because getting into the full detail is
Speaker 1: just it is a lengthy project and I keep getting
Speaker 1: distracted by the conversion therapy.
Speaker 5: There's so much stuff to research.
Speaker 1: And there's more like two people and yeah, anyway, so
Speaker 1: else in terms of finding the like the original kind
Speaker 1: of like broader views of TNN, both like what it
Speaker 1: is in terms of like the one oh one kind
Speaker 1: of stuff, and also like the timeline of where it
Speaker 1: came from, you can find it on Health Liberation noow
Speaker 1: dot com. We have a little tap there that has
Speaker 1: like analysis and then if you go down to key issues,
Speaker 1: you can find a TNON tag there, right, and it'll
Speaker 1: have that stuff in there.
Speaker 2: This has been a thing that throughout this entire series,
Speaker 2: which is that most of the information on this stuff
Speaker 2: has been compiled by a very small number of trans people,
Speaker 2: and that cannot stay the states of this because there
Speaker 2: are just not enough trans people and they are extremely overworked. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and if that's a project that you can take up,
Speaker 2: please do that.
Speaker 1: Yes, please, yes, please hands on deck, all, hands on
Speaker 1: the back.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because the seriousness of this is such that if
Speaker 2: you want there to be trans people living in a
Speaker 2: way that does not actively destroy them, you have to
Speaker 2: act now.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Basically, yeah, this has been it could happen here a
Speaker 2: product of cool zone media. Suppress your local turfs before
Speaker 2: it's too late. Goodbye. What Happen Here is a production
Speaker 2: of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
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Speaker 1: find sources for It could happen here, updated monthly at
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