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