1 00:00:01,720 --> 00:00:04,960 Speaker 1: Call zone media. 2 00:00:05,440 --> 00:00:08,440 Speaker 2: The richest man in the world does a Nazi salute 3 00:00:08,640 --> 00:00:11,520 Speaker 2: while giving a speech at the inauguration of the new president. 4 00:00:12,320 --> 00:00:16,000 Speaker 2: He does a second one in another age. It is 5 00:00:16,040 --> 00:00:19,440 Speaker 2: the most significant event in world history. It's maybe the 6 00:00:19,480 --> 00:00:23,760 Speaker 2: third most fascist event of the day. NBC re uploads 7 00:00:23,800 --> 00:00:26,599 Speaker 2: the address and cuts away from the sig hail a 8 00:00:26,680 --> 00:00:32,160 Speaker 2: broadcasted live. You refresh your timeline. Everyone is arguing about 9 00:00:32,159 --> 00:00:35,200 Speaker 2: whether it was even a Nazi salute. You watch the video. 10 00:00:35,840 --> 00:00:40,040 Speaker 2: It's a Nazi salute. The second one is a Nazi salute. 11 00:00:40,640 --> 00:00:43,320 Speaker 2: None of the headlines will say that Elon Musk did 12 00:00:43,360 --> 00:00:47,199 Speaker 2: a Nazi salute. The articles won't say it either. You 13 00:00:47,240 --> 00:00:50,479 Speaker 2: can't tell whether they've been cowed to submission by the 14 00:00:50,520 --> 00:00:53,960 Speaker 2: threat of a defamation lawsuit, or if they're already running 15 00:00:53,960 --> 00:00:57,640 Speaker 2: cover for the new regime. You scroll through your timeline. 16 00:00:58,040 --> 00:01:01,240 Speaker 2: They made my gender illegal, tried to repeal the fourteenth 17 00:01:01,280 --> 00:01:05,760 Speaker 2: Amendment through executive order to end birthright citizenship. You can't 18 00:01:05,800 --> 00:01:11,000 Speaker 2: follow it. It's too much. The world has become a spectacle, 19 00:01:12,040 --> 00:01:16,320 Speaker 2: and that spectacle is trying to kill you. Welcome to 20 00:01:16,319 --> 00:01:21,679 Speaker 2: ikodap and here I'm your host, Mia Wong. In societies 21 00:01:21,880 --> 00:01:26,240 Speaker 2: where modern conditions of production prevail. All of life presents 22 00:01:26,280 --> 00:01:31,120 Speaker 2: itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. So wrote the 23 00:01:31,160 --> 00:01:35,080 Speaker 2: French social theorist Gee to Board in his seminal nineteen 24 00:01:35,120 --> 00:01:39,640 Speaker 2: sixty seven work The Society of the Spectacle. The Board 25 00:01:39,760 --> 00:01:42,720 Speaker 2: is typically written off as just another theorist of early 26 00:01:42,800 --> 00:01:46,640 Speaker 2: mass media, and today his work is generally confined to 27 00:01:46,640 --> 00:01:50,680 Speaker 2: the art world, which is, to be fair largely a 28 00:01:50,680 --> 00:01:53,080 Speaker 2: demonstration of the fact that nobody who talks about him 29 00:01:53,080 --> 00:01:55,640 Speaker 2: has ever gotten past the opening paragraph of the book 30 00:01:55,960 --> 00:01:57,560 Speaker 2: and made it to the part where he demands the 31 00:01:57,600 --> 00:02:01,639 Speaker 2: formation of armed workers councils. But this is the age 32 00:02:01,640 --> 00:02:04,840 Speaker 2: of the spectacle. In ways when Nightmarish that de Board 33 00:02:04,880 --> 00:02:09,280 Speaker 2: could ever have predicted, his elaborate metaphor is rendered thuddingly 34 00:02:09,360 --> 00:02:14,640 Speaker 2: literal quote. Everything that was directly lived has moved away 35 00:02:14,720 --> 00:02:20,160 Speaker 2: into representation, and indeed living has been replaced by the 36 00:02:20,200 --> 00:02:25,839 Speaker 2: image of living. This phenomena is called instagram. The spectacle. 37 00:02:26,080 --> 00:02:29,760 Speaker 2: Society of the Spectacle opens is not a collection of images, 38 00:02:30,320 --> 00:02:35,639 Speaker 2: but a social relation among people mediated by images. Today 39 00:02:35,960 --> 00:02:38,760 Speaker 2: we literally call the collection of images we use to 40 00:02:38,760 --> 00:02:43,960 Speaker 2: relate to each other social media. Quote. Lived reality is 41 00:02:44,000 --> 00:02:49,040 Speaker 2: materially invaded by the contemplation of the spectacle, while simultaneously 42 00:02:49,080 --> 00:02:55,440 Speaker 2: absorbing the spectacular order, giving it positive cohesiveness. A reality 43 00:02:55,480 --> 00:02:59,320 Speaker 2: TV star, the old human symbol of the spectacle, in 44 00:02:59,360 --> 00:03:02,359 Speaker 2: which everything that was directly lived has been transformed into 45 00:03:02,360 --> 00:03:07,160 Speaker 2: a representation, is now a president the second time, driven 46 00:03:07,240 --> 00:03:10,440 Speaker 2: by streamers and influencers and podcasters, who stand as the 47 00:03:10,480 --> 00:03:14,440 Speaker 2: new human symbols of the spectacle. They have invaded real 48 00:03:14,480 --> 00:03:19,000 Speaker 2: society and now rule it directly. In the nineteen sixties, 49 00:03:19,400 --> 00:03:21,800 Speaker 2: the debate was whether you could ignore the spectacle because 50 00:03:21,800 --> 00:03:26,559 Speaker 2: it wasn't real. The Board's elegant solution was that contemplating 51 00:03:26,600 --> 00:03:30,280 Speaker 2: the spectacle makes it real. None of that matters anymore. 52 00:03:31,080 --> 00:03:34,359 Speaker 2: You can't ignore the spectacle because it's here. It has 53 00:03:34,400 --> 00:03:38,920 Speaker 2: physically invaded the world. Donald Trump is the president. The 54 00:03:39,040 --> 00:03:44,200 Speaker 2: richest man on earth is Nazi, saluting Elon Musk. The 55 00:03:44,240 --> 00:03:48,080 Speaker 2: autonomous force to Board, described as a spectacle, no longer 56 00:03:48,160 --> 00:03:51,680 Speaker 2: operates at the abstract level. It is the president of 57 00:03:51,720 --> 00:03:59,560 Speaker 2: the United States. Everything is rendered thuddingly, transcendently literal into 58 00:03:59,560 --> 00:04:03,120 Speaker 2: Board's usage. The spectacle is the management of society by 59 00:04:03,240 --> 00:04:09,200 Speaker 2: mediating people's social relations through images. This sounds complicated, but 60 00:04:09,240 --> 00:04:13,440 Speaker 2: on an intuitive level, you already understand this. You and 61 00:04:13,520 --> 00:04:15,960 Speaker 2: I relate to each other through the one way mirror 62 00:04:16,000 --> 00:04:19,920 Speaker 2: of a podcast app. You relate to others by reacting 63 00:04:19,920 --> 00:04:23,000 Speaker 2: to their TikTok videos. You watch the bombs fall on 64 00:04:23,080 --> 00:04:26,760 Speaker 2: Palestine on Twitter. You relate to each other and the 65 00:04:26,800 --> 00:04:31,760 Speaker 2: world through images, and that relation is a system of control. 66 00:04:33,040 --> 00:04:36,440 Speaker 2: As de Board describes it, that mediation takes you out 67 00:04:36,480 --> 00:04:39,880 Speaker 2: of the real world, a world that you can actually 68 00:04:40,040 --> 00:04:43,080 Speaker 2: change with your actions, and thrust you into the world 69 00:04:43,080 --> 00:04:47,200 Speaker 2: with the spectacle, a world where reality is quote an 70 00:04:47,240 --> 00:04:52,279 Speaker 2: object of mere contemplation. Today we call this the discourse. 71 00:04:53,040 --> 00:04:56,440 Speaker 2: The work that inspired the nineteen sixty eight revolutions called 72 00:04:56,440 --> 00:05:00,960 Speaker 2: it the spectacle. Why does it feel like this, the rot, 73 00:05:01,320 --> 00:05:05,360 Speaker 2: the decay, the unreality of the moment that consumes you 74 00:05:05,480 --> 00:05:08,920 Speaker 2: until one day Donald Trump is president and the next 75 00:05:09,200 --> 00:05:14,960 Speaker 2: he's president again. To Board has a simple answer. It's 76 00:05:15,000 --> 00:05:20,320 Speaker 2: because the entire political, economic, and technological system is designed 77 00:05:20,360 --> 00:05:25,599 Speaker 2: to make you isolated, afraid, and alone. Quote. Technology is 78 00:05:25,640 --> 00:05:30,000 Speaker 2: based on isolation, and the technical process isolates in turn. 79 00:05:30,960 --> 00:05:34,799 Speaker 2: From the automobile to television, all of the goods selected 80 00:05:34,839 --> 00:05:37,960 Speaker 2: by the spectacular system are also weapons for a constant 81 00:05:37,960 --> 00:05:43,679 Speaker 2: reinforcement of the condition of isolated lonely crowds. Later, he writes, 82 00:05:44,000 --> 00:05:46,800 Speaker 2: what binds the spectators together is no more than an 83 00:05:46,800 --> 00:05:51,600 Speaker 2: irreversible relation at the very center which maintains their isolation. 84 00:05:52,640 --> 00:05:57,440 Speaker 2: The spectacle reunites the separate, but reunites it as separate. 85 00:05:58,920 --> 00:06:02,040 Speaker 2: This is why the world feels like an endless doom. 86 00:06:02,080 --> 00:06:07,960 Speaker 2: Scroll Instagram, TikTok live streaming this podcast. They're all based 87 00:06:07,960 --> 00:06:11,599 Speaker 2: on isolation. Look at what happened to social media during 88 00:06:11,640 --> 00:06:14,960 Speaker 2: the isolation of the pandemic. How it came to consume 89 00:06:15,120 --> 00:06:17,599 Speaker 2: even more of our lives with the promise of connection 90 00:06:18,040 --> 00:06:22,400 Speaker 2: that simply rendered us more and more and more isolated. 91 00:06:23,160 --> 00:06:27,360 Speaker 2: The spectacle, given technological form in the social media app, 92 00:06:28,080 --> 00:06:30,800 Speaker 2: turns us into a mass in which we are all 93 00:06:31,360 --> 00:06:37,080 Speaker 2: somehow terrifyingly alone. We're not people who form a crowd 94 00:06:37,240 --> 00:06:39,680 Speaker 2: that could do anything from celebrate a holiday to burn. 95 00:06:39,760 --> 00:06:45,960 Speaker 2: The third precinct were spectators with listeners were viewers or 96 00:06:46,160 --> 00:06:51,719 Speaker 2: chat not living but commenting on the image of living. 97 00:06:53,040 --> 00:06:58,479 Speaker 2: The spectacle the app the image mediates or social relations 98 00:06:58,520 --> 00:07:02,320 Speaker 2: with each other and ensures that together in a lonely crowd, 99 00:07:02,640 --> 00:07:06,320 Speaker 2: we wrought in isolation and do only the two things 100 00:07:06,360 --> 00:07:13,080 Speaker 2: the capitalist system needs us to do. Work and consume atomize. 101 00:07:13,080 --> 00:07:17,840 Speaker 2: Individuals are the ideal subject of capitalism, the basis on 102 00:07:17,920 --> 00:07:21,880 Speaker 2: which everything is built. You entered into a free contract 103 00:07:21,880 --> 00:07:25,200 Speaker 2: to live under a state, says a social theorist. You, 104 00:07:25,720 --> 00:07:29,120 Speaker 2: the individual, gave up your labor to your boss voluntarily, 105 00:07:29,280 --> 00:07:34,120 Speaker 2: in another free contract between individuals, says the economist. Do 106 00:07:34,240 --> 00:07:36,960 Speaker 2: not organize with anyone else to get paid more for 107 00:07:37,080 --> 00:07:39,560 Speaker 2: that labor, or God help you. Try to create a 108 00:07:39,600 --> 00:07:42,040 Speaker 2: system where you aren't forced to sell your labor every day. 109 00:07:42,680 --> 00:07:47,440 Speaker 2: That's cheating, says the politician. Your job is to sell 110 00:07:47,480 --> 00:07:51,240 Speaker 2: your labor, buy these products, and comment on a world 111 00:07:51,280 --> 00:07:55,720 Speaker 2: in which someone else is acting. The isolation of the 112 00:07:55,760 --> 00:08:00,920 Speaker 2: spectacle ensures that we're incapable of collective action. Not only 113 00:08:01,000 --> 00:08:04,640 Speaker 2: because we're incapable of forming a collective we're not even 114 00:08:04,680 --> 00:08:07,600 Speaker 2: engaging in the world in which action can take place. 115 00:08:08,400 --> 00:08:11,880 Speaker 2: The extent of the advance of the spectacle today is 116 00:08:11,960 --> 00:08:15,800 Speaker 2: such that the unfolding of the economic system is designed 117 00:08:15,800 --> 00:08:19,280 Speaker 2: to turn every part of you into a commodity, not 118 00:08:19,360 --> 00:08:24,360 Speaker 2: just your labor, but your identity, your beliefs, everything that 119 00:08:24,440 --> 00:08:28,680 Speaker 2: you are is sold to everyone else a spectacle, and 120 00:08:28,720 --> 00:08:33,520 Speaker 2: in turn, everything that defines you becomes the spectacle itself. 121 00:08:34,720 --> 00:08:37,920 Speaker 2: In a world where there is no action, just the 122 00:08:37,960 --> 00:08:42,680 Speaker 2: image of someone else's actions somewhere else, a commercialized political 123 00:08:42,720 --> 00:08:46,720 Speaker 2: identity is much easier to adopt than actually doing politics. 124 00:08:47,280 --> 00:08:49,800 Speaker 2: You don't have to do politics. You can just put 125 00:08:49,800 --> 00:08:52,079 Speaker 2: on a red hat and watch the man on TV 126 00:08:52,280 --> 00:08:56,199 Speaker 2: make the liberals angry. You don't need relations with your family, 127 00:08:56,640 --> 00:09:00,280 Speaker 2: you have Facebook groups. Your relations to the world world 128 00:09:00,440 --> 00:09:04,920 Speaker 2: are relations to images. David Graber wrote that the ultimate 129 00:09:04,960 --> 00:09:07,240 Speaker 2: hidden truth of the world is that it is something 130 00:09:07,280 --> 00:09:10,080 Speaker 2: that we make and could just as easily make differently. 131 00:09:11,360 --> 00:09:15,400 Speaker 2: But the second, slightly less ultimate hidden truth is that 132 00:09:15,480 --> 00:09:20,079 Speaker 2: almost everything we think of as objects, money, capital, commodities 133 00:09:20,760 --> 00:09:25,480 Speaker 2: are really just relations between people abstracted out onto something physical. 134 00:09:26,440 --> 00:09:29,079 Speaker 2: We interact with each other by using objects as forms 135 00:09:29,080 --> 00:09:32,480 Speaker 2: of command. What do you think money is? Instead of 136 00:09:32,520 --> 00:09:36,600 Speaker 2: having real, equal social relations, And that makes it all 137 00:09:36,640 --> 00:09:39,800 Speaker 2: the more dire that the social relations that compose this 138 00:09:39,960 --> 00:09:43,200 Speaker 2: world are no longer even relations with each other at all, 139 00:09:43,960 --> 00:09:58,160 Speaker 2: but relations with images. The spectacle is a strategy of 140 00:09:58,200 --> 00:10:05,040 Speaker 2: control rights quote where the real world changes into simple images, 141 00:10:05,840 --> 00:10:09,480 Speaker 2: the simple images become real beings and effective motivations of 142 00:10:09,559 --> 00:10:14,520 Speaker 2: hypnotic behavior. The spectacle is a tendency to make one 143 00:10:14,559 --> 00:10:18,680 Speaker 2: see the world by various means of specialized mediations. It 144 00:10:18,720 --> 00:10:23,080 Speaker 2: can no longer be grasped directly. As a spectacle advances, 145 00:10:23,440 --> 00:10:26,840 Speaker 2: even rebellion is reduced to meaningless attacks on the symbols 146 00:10:26,840 --> 00:10:32,560 Speaker 2: of power, never touching power itself. Quote. But when the 147 00:10:32,559 --> 00:10:37,400 Speaker 2: insurgents managed to penetrate parliaments, presidential palaces, and other headquarters 148 00:10:37,400 --> 00:10:41,280 Speaker 2: of institutions, as in Ukraine, in Libya or in Wisconsin, 149 00:10:42,640 --> 00:10:47,000 Speaker 2: it's only to discover empty places that is empty of 150 00:10:47,040 --> 00:10:51,480 Speaker 2: power and furnished without any taste. So wrote the Invisible 151 00:10:51,480 --> 00:10:55,680 Speaker 2: Committee of the Distant halcyon Days of twenty fourteen, it 152 00:10:55,720 --> 00:10:59,720 Speaker 2: could have been written yesterday. Nine years later, the insurgents, 153 00:11:00,240 --> 00:11:05,400 Speaker 2: now on the right, produced their masterpiece, Brazil's even more 154 00:11:05,480 --> 00:11:10,920 Speaker 2: ineffectual Cousin of January sixth, known forever as January eighth, 155 00:11:11,559 --> 00:11:14,560 Speaker 2: on that day in twenty twenty three. For reasons that 156 00:11:14,600 --> 00:11:17,760 Speaker 2: are almost totally incomprehensible to anyone whose mind has not 157 00:11:17,840 --> 00:11:22,040 Speaker 2: been utterly melted by prolonged and terrible exposure to the spectacle, 158 00:11:23,000 --> 00:11:29,240 Speaker 2: supporters of defeated President JayR. Bolsonaro stormed Brazil's capital. Bolsonaro, 159 00:11:29,360 --> 00:11:34,360 Speaker 2: of course, had already fled to Florida. The Presidential Palace, Congress, 160 00:11:34,720 --> 00:11:37,959 Speaker 2: and the Supreme Court were literally empty when the protesters 161 00:11:38,000 --> 00:11:42,040 Speaker 2: took them. There was nothing to be one, nothing to 162 00:11:42,080 --> 00:11:46,320 Speaker 2: be gained. The protesters vain hopes that simply seizing the 163 00:11:46,360 --> 00:11:49,640 Speaker 2: symbols of power would trigger a military coup to remove 164 00:11:49,679 --> 00:11:54,800 Speaker 2: Lula and restore the Bolsonara regime evaporated like a morning dew, 165 00:11:55,679 --> 00:12:01,680 Speaker 2: leaving nothing in their wake. January sixth at least attacked 166 00:12:01,760 --> 00:12:05,080 Speaker 2: the site of the ritual of power while the ritual 167 00:12:05,160 --> 00:12:09,199 Speaker 2: was technically in progress. The attack was of course, designed 168 00:12:09,200 --> 00:12:13,880 Speaker 2: to stop the certification of the election Congress was at 169 00:12:13,960 --> 00:12:17,840 Speaker 2: least in session, even if that attack, too, was the 170 00:12:17,880 --> 00:12:21,000 Speaker 2: culmination of a series of ineffectual reruns of the Broke 171 00:12:21,040 --> 00:12:24,840 Speaker 2: Brothers Riots, in which right wing political operatives did manage 172 00:12:24,840 --> 00:12:27,199 Speaker 2: to steal an election by stopping the vote count in 173 00:12:27,280 --> 00:12:31,959 Speaker 2: Florida in two thousand. On January eighth, no one was 174 00:12:32,000 --> 00:12:37,720 Speaker 2: even there, So how do we get out? Lashing out 175 00:12:37,760 --> 00:12:41,559 Speaker 2: at the symbols of power is pointless. You can't ignore 176 00:12:41,600 --> 00:12:47,600 Speaker 2: them either Elon's Nazi salute really does represent something. The 177 00:12:47,640 --> 00:12:50,560 Speaker 2: opening of any solution is to go to the source. 178 00:12:51,520 --> 00:12:57,560 Speaker 2: Trump and Elon are symptoms, not the disease. The spectacle 179 00:12:57,640 --> 00:13:02,160 Speaker 2: is born of capitalism, management strategy designed to suppress any 180 00:13:02,160 --> 00:13:04,920 Speaker 2: attempt to end or even rearrange the terms of the 181 00:13:04,960 --> 00:13:09,559 Speaker 2: class system. Trump and Elon were likewise produced by two 182 00:13:09,600 --> 00:13:14,080 Speaker 2: settler colonies. They are, in their own ways, the manifestation 183 00:13:14,360 --> 00:13:18,600 Speaker 2: of the evil of colonialism and racism. The Board's solution 184 00:13:18,720 --> 00:13:21,960 Speaker 2: to these problems, of course, well the solutions that people 185 00:13:22,000 --> 00:13:25,360 Speaker 2: bother to read. There is a staggeringly racist section of 186 00:13:25,400 --> 00:13:28,880 Speaker 2: this work about how time passes in China that I 187 00:13:28,960 --> 00:13:34,600 Speaker 2: simply cannot recommend. But the Board's solution was workers' councils, 188 00:13:35,360 --> 00:13:37,319 Speaker 2: and he got his wish the next year between the 189 00:13:37,360 --> 00:13:42,040 Speaker 2: factory occupations of nineteen sixty eight. It nearly worked. But 190 00:13:42,080 --> 00:13:44,560 Speaker 2: the last workers council fell a quarter of a century 191 00:13:44,640 --> 00:13:48,400 Speaker 2: ago in Argentina, and there's no sign at the workers council. 192 00:13:48,640 --> 00:13:51,600 Speaker 2: The definitive fighting form of the working class for over 193 00:13:51,640 --> 00:13:57,720 Speaker 2: a century is coming back. In some ways. This is liberating. 194 00:13:58,200 --> 00:14:01,760 Speaker 2: One hundred and seventy years ago, Marx wrote this in 195 00:14:01,800 --> 00:14:05,600 Speaker 2: the eighteenth through mayor of Louis Bonaparte, his own response 196 00:14:05,640 --> 00:14:08,920 Speaker 2: to a nation's nationalist attempt to restore its former glory 197 00:14:08,960 --> 00:14:12,760 Speaker 2: by invoking the name of a previous leader. The social 198 00:14:12,800 --> 00:14:16,120 Speaker 2: revolution of the nineteenth century cannot take its poetry from 199 00:14:16,160 --> 00:14:20,200 Speaker 2: the past, but only from the future. It cannot begin 200 00:14:20,320 --> 00:14:23,480 Speaker 2: with itself before it has stripped away all superstitions about 201 00:14:23,480 --> 00:14:28,160 Speaker 2: the past. In the days and weeks and months, and 202 00:14:28,280 --> 00:14:31,080 Speaker 2: God help us all years to come, we're going to 203 00:14:31,120 --> 00:14:34,440 Speaker 2: have to assemble a new fighting form, and no one 204 00:14:34,520 --> 00:14:40,120 Speaker 2: knows what it looks like yet. We could perhaps look 205 00:14:40,160 --> 00:14:42,760 Speaker 2: at the airport protests from the first months of the 206 00:14:42,800 --> 00:14:47,640 Speaker 2: original Trump administration, or masses of people, including a very 207 00:14:47,680 --> 00:14:50,520 Speaker 2: young Mia who had not quite realized what gender she was, 208 00:14:51,560 --> 00:14:55,360 Speaker 2: occupied airports all across the country to stop the implementation 209 00:14:55,480 --> 00:14:59,200 Speaker 2: of Trump's Muslim ban by physically forcing the government to 210 00:14:59,280 --> 00:15:03,200 Speaker 2: release the people had detained in the airports. The power 211 00:15:03,320 --> 00:15:06,600 Speaker 2: of those protests was that they directly located the site 212 00:15:06,640 --> 00:15:10,680 Speaker 2: where power was operating the airport and took them. The 213 00:15:10,720 --> 00:15:14,680 Speaker 2: weakness of those protests was that people went home, and 214 00:15:14,720 --> 00:15:17,680 Speaker 2: they went home because they had been told time and 215 00:15:17,720 --> 00:15:21,400 Speaker 2: time and time again by the ACLU and by other 216 00:15:21,480 --> 00:15:24,840 Speaker 2: legal organizations that the fight was over, that they could leave, 217 00:15:25,360 --> 00:15:28,360 Speaker 2: and that the Muslim Bans would be defeated by the courts. 218 00:15:29,320 --> 00:15:31,800 Speaker 2: Most of you lived through it. Some of you remember 219 00:15:32,040 --> 00:15:35,160 Speaker 2: the Muslim ban was never defeated by the courts. It 220 00:15:35,240 --> 00:15:39,280 Speaker 2: could possibly have been defeated in those moments, it wasn't. 221 00:15:41,080 --> 00:15:43,560 Speaker 2: The contest was taken away from the real sight of 222 00:15:43,640 --> 00:15:47,880 Speaker 2: power and into a domain largely ruled by the ruling class. 223 00:15:48,760 --> 00:15:51,720 Speaker 2: But we can learn from both January eighth and the 224 00:15:51,760 --> 00:15:56,840 Speaker 2: airport protests. Marching to a building doesn't guarantee you're actually 225 00:15:56,960 --> 00:16:02,560 Speaker 2: targeting power. You must understand how the system is operating 226 00:16:03,080 --> 00:16:06,800 Speaker 2: before you attempt to go up its works. A thousand 227 00:16:06,880 --> 00:16:10,560 Speaker 2: miniature January eighths is no solution at all. You must 228 00:16:10,560 --> 00:16:13,920 Speaker 2: do the hard work of sifting through the tangle of 229 00:16:14,000 --> 00:16:17,560 Speaker 2: rumors and lies and attempting to work out the actual 230 00:16:17,680 --> 00:16:24,040 Speaker 2: structure of repression. It starts with community self defense. It 231 00:16:24,080 --> 00:16:27,680 Speaker 2: starts with actually engaging with each other instead of the 232 00:16:27,800 --> 00:16:32,240 Speaker 2: mediated images generated by an algorithm. You want to break 233 00:16:32,240 --> 00:16:35,400 Speaker 2: out of the spectacle. Talk to the people around you, 234 00:16:36,240 --> 00:16:39,040 Speaker 2: talk to the trans people and the immigrants in your life, 235 00:16:39,080 --> 00:16:43,160 Speaker 2: and find out what they actually need. Figure out the 236 00:16:43,240 --> 00:16:46,520 Speaker 2: concrete steps you can take to organize the people around you, 237 00:16:47,640 --> 00:16:49,880 Speaker 2: and the steps you can take to lift them out 238 00:16:49,920 --> 00:16:54,200 Speaker 2: of their despair. We're not going to develop a new 239 00:16:54,240 --> 00:16:59,000 Speaker 2: fighting form glued to our phones alone in a digital crowd. 240 00:17:00,360 --> 00:17:02,920 Speaker 2: We're going to figure it out by talking to each other, 241 00:17:03,240 --> 00:17:07,400 Speaker 2: by acting in the real world, not by being rendered 242 00:17:07,440 --> 00:17:12,199 Speaker 2: passive observers of the spectacle. We're going to do it 243 00:17:12,600 --> 00:17:16,680 Speaker 2: by finding the real places where power operates and taking them, 244 00:17:17,240 --> 00:17:20,480 Speaker 2: and above all, we're going to do it together. 245 00:17:23,400 --> 00:17:25,879 Speaker 1: It Could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media. 246 00:17:26,080 --> 00:17:29,120 Speaker 1: For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website 247 00:17:29,200 --> 00:17:32,800 Speaker 1: Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, 248 00:17:32,880 --> 00:17:36,440 Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can 249 00:17:36,480 --> 00:17:38,800 Speaker 1: now find sources for It Could Happen here, listed directly 250 00:17:38,840 --> 00:17:41,120 Speaker 1: in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.