Speaker 1: Also media.
Speaker 2: Hey everybody, Robert Evans here and I wanted to let
Speaker 2: you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode
Speaker 2: of the week that just happened is here in one
Speaker 2: convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to
Speaker 2: listen to in a long stretch if you want. If
Speaker 2: you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
Speaker 2: there's going to be nothing new here for you, but
Speaker 2: you can make your own decisions.
Speaker 3: Hello, and welcome through. You can happen here. It's James
Speaker 3: today and I'm joined by Luca and Sailor. They're both
Speaker 3: from Breadblock, which is a mutual aid group in San Diego.
Speaker 3: How are you doing today?
Speaker 4: We're doing great, great.
Speaker 1: How are you wonderful?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm thriving. I've just received my seventy fifth COVID
Speaker 3: booster I think, I think so having a little miserable day,
Speaker 3: but that's okay, not going to get novel coronavirus, which
Speaker 3: is always nice. So can you guys start out by
Speaker 3: maybe explaining, well, what Breadblock does, how long it's done it,
Speaker 3: and why it does it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So we are a mutual a group. We mostly
Speaker 5: provide hot food. That's like the core of our services.
Speaker 5: We feed about one hundred people like like eighty to
Speaker 5: one hundred people depending on the day weekly in East
Speaker 5: Village in San Diego. We also provide clothing and harm
Speaker 5: reduction supplies and other things like tampons and plan b
Speaker 5: when we can get our hands on it, and we
Speaker 5: try to be we are there like at the same
Speaker 5: time every day. I will not say the exact location,
Speaker 5: but if you are interested in getting involved, you can
Speaker 5: always reach out And that's like what we're doing right now,
Speaker 5: and that happens weekly and sale am I missing anything?
Speaker 6: Yeah, So this form of what we're doing with bread
Speaker 6: Block in a more organized way has We've only been
Speaker 6: doing it a few months. However, Initially we started doing
Speaker 6: it in twenty twenty one when I started getting into
Speaker 6: harm reduction stuff and I was working at a strange
Speaker 6: exchange and realized a lot of people would be asking
Speaker 6: for food and we weren't getting that out there, and
Speaker 6: so that's why the initial idea came about. And then
Speaker 6: we just had enough people who were willing to do
Speaker 6: it in a weekly manner, so that's how we chose
Speaker 6: that location.
Speaker 4: And started doing that.
Speaker 6: There's just a lot of people down there on those nights, so.
Speaker 5: It's time to happen at the same time that a
Speaker 5: harm reduction services happen the needle exchange, So it's at
Speaker 5: a time when a lot of people are down there
Speaker 5: and the amount of time are like collective doing this
Speaker 5: specific thing as exist is I believe since end of
Speaker 5: March early April is how long we've been like consistently
Speaker 5: providing services every week.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's great. That's a long time. So especially through
Speaker 3: like some it could be a difficult time. If you
Speaker 3: don't have a house in San Diego, it gets increasingly
Speaker 3: it gets very hot, and the streets themselves get hot,
Speaker 3: and that becomes dangerous for people.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: So I want to start with like, at some point, right,
Speaker 3: say that you were doing a syringe exchange and you
Speaker 3: are like, these people need to be fed. They are hungry,
Speaker 3: and now we're here and you're feeding them every week, right,
Speaker 3: But you had to do a whole lot of things
Speaker 3: in between here and there. And like I know this
Speaker 3: because listeners email me all the time. So many people
Speaker 3: want to do that too, and it might not exist
Speaker 3: where they are. They might not know, So, like, can
Speaker 3: you explain how you went about like seeing a need
Speaker 3: and then organizing to meet that need.
Speaker 6: Yeah, So I guess what came before that was we
Speaker 6: had already built relationships with each other around our leftist
Speaker 6: ideals and art and protesting and different stuff. So we
Speaker 6: already knew a lot of people who were who were
Speaker 6: interested in mutual aid and that capacity. Yeah, but I
Speaker 6: will say things like Instagram have helped just meet more
Speaker 6: people who are looking to get involved in mutual aid.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Like Selah said, we had like had spent some time
Speaker 5: building community with each other and getting a core group
Speaker 5: of people that trust each other, that had gone to
Speaker 5: protests together, that were maybe in like affinity groups already
Speaker 5: with each other, and then there was just sort of
Speaker 5: like enough of us that were in community with each
Speaker 5: other at the time that when Sala was like the
Speaker 5: Encampment band is like really making things so much worse
Speaker 5: for people in communities and we really need to do something,
Speaker 5: we were like, all just like it just happened because
Speaker 5: we were all sitting in a room together one night
Speaker 5: after a like social event, and Sala was like, we
Speaker 5: need to talk about this, and we were like, okay, yeah,
Speaker 5: we like need to do this, and we had enough
Speaker 5: people where we could pull together a first distro and
Speaker 5: then a second and then gradually adding like more organizations
Speaker 5: so that we could continue doing it sustainably over time.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, that's like I want to be opinion the
Speaker 3: camping band, because the Camping Band is making things worse
Speaker 3: for people who are already having a hard time just
Speaker 3: surviving here, and it fucking sucks, and it's tod glorious fault.
Speaker 3: You shouldn't vote.
Speaker 4: Yep.
Speaker 3: Let's talk about though, Like I want to get into
Speaker 3: nuts and bolts, right, feeding one hundred people, Right, you
Speaker 3: need a giant ass pan, you need loads of food,
Speaker 3: you need a place where you can cook. How did
Speaker 3: you identify all those things and how did you get
Speaker 3: to a place where you could regularly have those things?
Speaker 6: So in twenty twenty one, when I had initially started
Speaker 6: this with kind of a different group of people, but
Speaker 6: there were definitely over us, we just did it and
Speaker 6: like used my mom's kitchen and bound some big pots
Speaker 6: and just made it happen. And I feel like, if
Speaker 6: you have the will to make it happen, you're going
Speaker 6: to figure it out. And you know, maybe in the
Speaker 6: beginning it was a lot more chaotic, which you know,
Speaker 6: we are anarchists, so we're okay with the chaos. But
Speaker 6: it just after doing it a week after week, it
Speaker 6: just became more streamlined. And you know, we just buy
Speaker 6: a lot of essential bulk food and we have a
Speaker 6: few giant popsy We like to make.
Speaker 4: Soup a lot.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Currently, our kitchen is like like, our cooking equipment includes
Speaker 5: two large pots and a rice cooker that someone recently
Speaker 5: donated to us. And then we needed a fridge, so
Speaker 5: we got a free fridge off offer up and cleaned
Speaker 5: it up and put some cool stickers on it and
Speaker 5: then plugged it into a garage. Currently, the kitchen that
Speaker 5: we use is like a couple of us just like
Speaker 5: live together, and so we use our kitchen and we
Speaker 5: have access to our garage and we just stored the
Speaker 5: supplies in the garage. We stored the fridge in the garage,
Speaker 5: and we make it work through donations we get on Instagram.
Speaker 5: So we knew some comrades that work with the community fridges.
Speaker 5: There's like some community fridges in San Diego, and so
Speaker 5: they already had a relationship with a grocery store and
Speaker 5: so we were able to hop in on that and
Speaker 5: we get some donations from that, we get some donations
Speaker 5: from what's sale the group.
Speaker 7: Oh fortunate or fortunate.
Speaker 6: Yeah, And there's so much food waste that I feel
Speaker 6: like if we were to find the right people, we
Speaker 6: could be fully self supporting on just things that would
Speaker 6: be thrown away alone.
Speaker 3: Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we just have to meet the right people in
Speaker 4: order to do that. But we're getting there.
Speaker 6: Yeah, And I do want to say the kitchen is
Speaker 6: a small slash regular sized kitchen, so you don't have
Speaker 6: to have some big, crazy warehouse type kitchen to.
Speaker 4: Make this happen.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And then you're feeding people right like you're doing
Speaker 3: it like in the afternoon and evening. Have you found
Speaker 3: there were things that you said you like soup? But
Speaker 3: I know, like we fed a lot of people at
Speaker 3: the border last winter, right, and we found out that
Speaker 3: certain things work, certain things didn't work, and we always
Speaker 3: tried to keep it vegan because of people's religious needs preferences. Right,
Speaker 3: Is there anything like that that you found the works
Speaker 3: or doesn't work.
Speaker 6: We have done a lot of chili with our squad,
Speaker 6: and I know that Luca has done a lot of curry.
Speaker 6: So there are certain things and they can both be
Speaker 6: easily made vegan. Yeah, initially a lot of people when
Speaker 6: we would have vegan stuff would ask for me alternatives,
Speaker 6: to which I understand people, you know, they don't always
Speaker 6: have access to protein, so we tried out both options
Speaker 6: when we can nice.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it varies what we have because our group kind
Speaker 5: of functions with for like autonomous squads, like well semi
Speaker 5: autonomous that take turns doing the distross so that you're
Speaker 5: only really responsible for it once a month, which helps
Speaker 5: reduce burnout.
Speaker 3: Yeah, definitely, How does that work? Explain how you came
Speaker 3: up with that and how it's organized.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so this was kind of like something we've been
Speaker 5: talking about for a while. Some of us are like
Speaker 5: more into the theory than others, but we're just kind
Speaker 5: of talking about, like, oh, well, like how do we
Speaker 5: get more people involved? Because I think what happens oftentimes
Speaker 5: with these mutual aid groups is there's like a lot
Speaker 5: of people sitting in a group chat and there's like
Speaker 5: a small core of people who do end up doing
Speaker 5: the majority of the labor, and that often results in
Speaker 5: burnout for those people and building a resentment between like
Speaker 5: the people who are doing a lot and the other people.
Speaker 5: Because I think also like sometimes people feel left out
Speaker 5: and they don't feel like they can get involved, and
Speaker 5: then they feel like the people who are doing the
Speaker 5: core of the labor are like in charge and they
Speaker 5: have to defer to them, which creates a lot of problems,
Speaker 5: which I'm not saying like we don't have any of
Speaker 5: those problems, like we're still trying to work out the kinks.
Speaker 5: But the squads sort of like dynamic makes it so
Speaker 5: that groups of about like five to ten. Because of distro,
Speaker 5: you need about like six people to make it happen,
Speaker 5: so about five to ten people take turns, so you
Speaker 5: just rotate, so you have you know when your day is.
Speaker 5: It's once a month that you are responsible for the
Speaker 5: distro and you are responsible for choosing the food that
Speaker 5: you're cooking, making sure it gets cooked, organizing with your
Speaker 5: other comrades, getting the donations, all of that stuff. But
Speaker 5: you can always ask the larger group for help or
Speaker 5: extra hands if you need it. But it sort of
Speaker 5: shares that like responsibility, because I think the most stressful
Speaker 5: part oftentimes is like, oh, the distro happening tonight is
Speaker 5: on me and I and if I don't do it,
Speaker 5: it's not going to happen. Yeah, and so it sort
Speaker 5: of spreads like that sort of labor. But we have
Speaker 5: members who like show up to every single distro because
Speaker 5: they want to, and that's totally fine, even if they're
Speaker 5: in like whatever designated squad they're in, right.
Speaker 6: Yeah, for some people who show up like once every
Speaker 6: few months because they have other stuff going on, you know.
Speaker 4: So it's very open and you.
Speaker 6: Don't have to be in a squad and you could
Speaker 6: just to join whenever you have the time, with whoever's
Speaker 6: week it is. So it's pretty yeah, I would, but
Speaker 6: it does give a good sense of structure.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that helps a lot. I remember one day last year,
Speaker 3: last winter, and I was out building shelters with an
Speaker 3: Uzbek guy and a few Kurdish guys and we built
Speaker 3: these shelters and we built three of them, And afterwards,
Speaker 3: I was sitting down with some of my friends who
Speaker 3: are also there as volunteers, and they're all anarchists too.
Speaker 3: We each asked each other what we did, and then
Speaker 3: one of them said, so what do we all learn?
Speaker 3: What did you learn when you did that today?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 3: And I think that's a really valuable question that we
Speaker 3: should be asking ourselves in our organizing spaces. So like
Speaker 3: from your first distrow to now, I want to ask
Speaker 3: what did you learn?
Speaker 6: I would say, We've really learned how to trust each other.
Speaker 6: We're working on, you know, how to get consensus models,
Speaker 6: how to split the labor between different people, how to
Speaker 6: work with different people, and also yeah, like I said
Speaker 6: in the beginning, how to really how to trust each other,
Speaker 6: which you know, we all want to see the revolution
Speaker 6: happen at some point, and so I feel like one
Speaker 6: of the most important and valuable things we can be
Speaker 6: doing is building relationships and communities with each other where
Speaker 6: we can actually rely on each other. And so having
Speaker 6: a mutual task really helps with that.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And I think for me, like we've like tried
Speaker 5: to do stuff in the past like this, and I
Speaker 5: think the issue we've always run into was that, like
Speaker 5: sometimes there's like a tendency to want too much structure
Speaker 5: right away and be like, oh, if we don't have
Speaker 5: everything planned down, we don't know how everything's going to work,
Speaker 5: then we can't do it, and we need to figure
Speaker 5: everything out beforehand. And we learned a lot like doing it,
Speaker 5: and even like we didn't have everything figured out, like
Speaker 5: we're still working on like our consensus structure. We're still
Speaker 5: working on like how we're going to make like big
Speaker 5: decisions as a group, and like when the squads can
Speaker 5: make their own decisions and when the group can make
Speaker 5: their own decisions, and like we don't have everything figured out,
Speaker 5: Like it's very like loose, but we didn't need that,
Speaker 5: and we've been able to do a distro for like
Speaker 5: months and we don't have everything figured out. We have something,
Speaker 5: we had enough to get us started, and we're like
Speaker 5: working on like slowly adding things as we need to
Speaker 5: without like overburdening ourselves because I think sometimes like lots
Speaker 5: of layers and lots of complexities can really make it
Speaker 5: difficult to organize and adapt to what's happening on the ground.
Speaker 3: Definitely, I think, yeah, we can overcomplicate it and like
Speaker 3: be too anxious. Talking of anxious, I am anxious. So
Speaker 3: we have yet to pivot to advertisements. So let's do
Speaker 3: that and then we'll come back and we're back. Okay.
Speaker 3: So you spoke about like a lot about the logistics
Speaker 3: of cooking, which is great, but I know from experience
Speaker 3: of feeding hungry people can be a challenge, right, And
Speaker 3: it's no one's fault, especially when people are hungry, like
Speaker 3: we're not at ourselves. It's a whole advertising campaign built
Speaker 3: around that. So how do you organize your distroyage that
Speaker 3: should everybody feels that they're being taken care of. Everybody
Speaker 3: feels safe and knows that they're going to get enough
Speaker 3: to eat.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Well, that also goes back to something more we've learned
Speaker 6: is we try to have enough people at the distro
Speaker 6: so we can have different people doing different things, and
Speaker 6: sometimes that means one person is just walking around talking
Speaker 6: to people, de escalating a situation if needs be.
Speaker 4: And then we also figured out that at the end
Speaker 4: when we run out of food in order, but people
Speaker 4: who have.
Speaker 6: Been waiting in line don't get mad, which is understandable.
Speaker 6: You know, they've been waiting in line and there's no
Speaker 6: more food than they're hungry. Yeah, of course, we try
Speaker 6: to have like different snacks and like muffins or crinola
Speaker 6: bards and water just to hand out at the end
Speaker 6: for those people who still need something. And so sometimes
Speaker 6: we have music and we all just try to bring
Speaker 6: a good energy and so far nothing that we haven't
Speaker 6: been able to handle happens.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 4: I know.
Speaker 3: We found that music was really helpful when we were
Speaker 3: distributing food when really big groups at the border like
Speaker 3: play some music or have a friend who plays music,
Speaker 3: play some music, and then we'd always ask folks from
Speaker 3: the group who we were feeding to volunteer to help
Speaker 3: us in that it helped us so become language barriers
Speaker 3: and stuff.
Speaker 6: That's happened a couple of times as well where people
Speaker 6: have just stepped up and wanted to help, which has
Speaker 6: been great.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's nice and it gives us all. Like part
Speaker 3: of what we're doing with Mutual Aid isn't just meeting
Speaker 3: material needs. It's also like the difference between solidarity and charity, right,
Speaker 3: Like we're there too because we care about you as people,
Speaker 3: not just as like hunger mouths that we can take
Speaker 3: off a spreadsheet and working together is an integral part
Speaker 3: of that and it's what distinguishes us from charity model.
Speaker 6: And thankfully most of the time we have enough people
Speaker 6: if somebody needs to step aside and have a one
Speaker 6: on one conversation with somebody because that's what they need
Speaker 6: in that moment, and we can do that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, having floaters is really important, Like we always have
Speaker 5: like two people at least two people serving food, and
Speaker 5: then we have like a snack table, water table usually,
Speaker 5: and then we have a section for harm reduction that
Speaker 5: usually gets served on like another table, and then we
Speaker 5: have like a section for clothes depending on what we have,
Speaker 5: and people sort of like go down the assembly line
Speaker 5: kind of like going down grabbing the different things, and
Speaker 5: we give people like plastic bags that we get from
Speaker 5: grocery stores so they can get their things. But we
Speaker 5: also have like floaters usually so that like if someone's
Speaker 5: like having like a medical issue or someone's like upset
Speaker 5: or whatever is going on, someone can like step aside
Speaker 5: and spend some time with them. Like the other day,
Speaker 5: we had a woman who was not feeling well because
Speaker 5: of the heat, and she had been out and she
Speaker 5: needed to sit down. So we like grabbed one of
Speaker 5: our chairs and we sat her down and got her
Speaker 5: some water and just like talk to her. And we
Speaker 5: had a couple of people who could step aside and
Speaker 5: do that, and then everyone else just could keep like
Speaker 5: feeding people without it kind of stopping things. But she
Speaker 5: still got what she needed.
Speaker 6: And during that heat waves at one of the distros,
Speaker 6: I remember you ran across and thought somebody gatoring because
Speaker 6: they really were needed electrolytes. So we're lucky that we
Speaker 6: have enough people that we get to be able.
Speaker 3: To do stuff like that when we need to, right,
Speaker 3: And I imagine that regularity is really important, Like people
Speaker 3: know that you will be there and that they can
Speaker 3: come and you will feed them. Like that builds trust,
Speaker 3: right Like, and everyone I think benefits from middle structure
Speaker 3: and being unhealthed. It could be really fucking hard to
Speaker 3: find structure.
Speaker 6: Yes, exactly, And it's very hard to get like home
Speaker 6: cooked food.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is something I've encountered living in my cart,
Speaker 3: Like it's hard to get healthy food. The food you
Speaker 3: buy is shit. It's more expensive and it's less good
Speaker 3: for you. And like these things compound over time to
Speaker 3: have health and psychological consequences.
Speaker 4: Yeah, everything we cook we eat as well.
Speaker 6: And you know, if we're cooking or we're helping out
Speaker 6: with sister, of course it's.
Speaker 4: Not the mutual and mutual aid, we can also eat it.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's definitely something else we learned at the border
Speaker 3: was that, like, especially if we're cooking something that's maybe
Speaker 3: not a cultural cuisine, because we're meeting people from all
Speaker 3: over the world a lot of times it's like like
Speaker 3: you were saying, chili and carriage. It's like hot wet food, right,
Speaker 3: like you know, the big semi liquid pan of chili
Speaker 3: or whatever that we would cook and spaghetti and like
Speaker 3: folks being like what's that, We're like, oh, do I'm
Speaker 3: going to eat some? Do you want some?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: And like, I honestly had some of the happiest moments
Speaker 3: of last year. Just like I remember one day, I've
Speaker 3: been building yurts all day with that I was that
Speaker 3: guy and then we sat down and had our beans
Speaker 3: and just like talked about our lives and it was
Speaker 3: really sweet.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think that that is a moment of solidarity that
Speaker 3: you don't get when you're you know, I've seen NGOs
Speaker 3: in the US military tossing MRIs or refugees, and I
Speaker 3: ain't the same thing.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Now there shouldn't be like a line between like
Speaker 5: you and the people that you're providing mutual aid to.
Speaker 5: I mean, like it should you should never give someone
Speaker 5: food that you're not willing to eat yourself. And like
Speaker 5: if someone's hungry while we're cooking, like they can totally
Speaker 5: eat the food that we're making too. It's not like
Speaker 5: cordoned off. Yeah, like, of course, we like you know,
Speaker 5: we wear our ppe and we like you know, aren't
Speaker 5: getting our hands or whatever. But yeah, I mean because
Speaker 5: a lot of the people who are like, who do
Speaker 5: provide mutual aid and work in mutual aid groups like,
Speaker 5: are also people who may face houselessness or have trouble
Speaker 5: paying for groceries or something.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 6: Yeah, there's no separation you know, between us and them
Speaker 6: at the end of the day.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's super important. So I want to
Speaker 3: talk about the camping Maybe let's take another rab break.
Speaker 3: We'll talk about the camping ban when we come back.
Speaker 9: We are back.
Speaker 3: We are now discussing the topic which I love to
Speaker 3: talk about, which is evil things that Todd Gloria has done.
Speaker 3: And today it could be the whole podcast every day
Speaker 3: of the week for years. But we're going to talk
Speaker 3: about this camping ban. For folks who didn't listen to
Speaker 3: our camping ban episode, can you give me like a
Speaker 3: sixty second synopsis on the camping ban and then we
Speaker 3: can dive into what it's done.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 6: So, basically, earlier this year, the Supreme Court overturned of
Speaker 6: basically an ordinance that you don't have the ability to
Speaker 6: cite or arrest somebody if there's not shelter available, but
Speaker 6: they overturn that so now they can. And Gavin Newsom
Speaker 6: issue the Sleeping Order that the agencies have to clear
Speaker 6: encampment and ordered that cities and counties do the same.
Speaker 6: So now there's fourteen plus the cities in California that
Speaker 6: do have a camping band in place. So that's criminalizing
Speaker 6: living outside.
Speaker 3: The existence of unhouse people is now a crime. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so what have you seen post enforcement?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 6: So I also like work in the field of harm reduction,
Speaker 6: So you know, I do this in my free time
Speaker 6: because I want to do it, but I also do
Speaker 6: it for work, which there's definitely sometimes I feel weird about,
Speaker 6: like working for an organization and wish that I didn't
Speaker 6: have to.
Speaker 4: But it's just one of those things.
Speaker 6: And I've seen it's really hard and really sad because
Speaker 6: when people are in encampment a lot of times they
Speaker 6: build a sort of community and family and they learn
Speaker 6: how to take care of each other, and constantly being
Speaker 6: split up is destroying.
Speaker 4: These communities, and then they just have to.
Speaker 6: Travel further and further away so that they're disconnected from
Speaker 6: not only their community, but also real versus that they
Speaker 6: do have. And so it's just really hard, and sometimes
Speaker 6: we lose connections with people.
Speaker 4: We don't know where they went, you know, where they.
Speaker 6: End up in jail or it's been really horrible, And
Speaker 6: we're just talking about how it just seems like people
Speaker 6: don't really care and it's crazy that this is happening
Speaker 6: in our communities and people.
Speaker 4: Aren't talking about it and aren't outraged by it.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, these bands also have like a really nasty ripple
Speaker 5: effect because when these people got pushed out of San Diego,
Speaker 5: then they go to other cities that don't have an
Speaker 5: encampment band like Cheu La Vista National City and now
Speaker 5: Cheula Vista National City and other cities are advancing their
Speaker 5: own camping bands and citing an influx from San Diego. Right,
Speaker 5: So it's like creating this really awful, like just progressive
Speaker 5: expansion of these bands.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 6: And one one more thing I'll add is that some
Speaker 6: people are like, oh, well, that's just going to you know,
Speaker 6: be good, because these people are going to get into shelters,
Speaker 6: find alternative ways of getting help. But that's not what's
Speaker 6: happening because we have not had any more shelters. It's
Speaker 6: really hard to get into a shelter actually, And you know,
Speaker 6: since musselm has been governor, we've had apparently so many
Speaker 6: billions of dollars twenty four billions spent tackling homelessness, and
Speaker 6: it's like, what is there to show for it? Right,
Speaker 6: people still don't have a place to go, and even
Speaker 6: if they do get into a shelter, a lot of
Speaker 6: times there's so many rules and regulations that if somebody
Speaker 6: has a high level of mental health needs and they're
Speaker 6: not going to be able to stay there and there's
Speaker 6: just no solutions.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's giving the appearance of doing something to make
Speaker 3: homeowners right, people who they think matter happy. It's really bleak. Yeah,
Speaker 3: let's discuss a little bit then, like this camping band,
Speaker 3: as you say, it's supposed people to other cities, Like
Speaker 3: what do you think it does to the unhoused community?
Speaker 3: Like you talked a little bit about breaking up encampments,
Speaker 3: Like where do people end up? Right when their campments
Speaker 3: get broken up in the community, and like where do
Speaker 3: they end up? And how can people because this is
Speaker 3: this is nationwide right, Yeah, Gavin Newson is being a
Speaker 3: particularly odious turd about it, but like other people are
Speaker 3: the states doing it too. It's something of Unie San
Speaker 3: Diego for instance, people ending up in a riverbed. So
Speaker 3: can you talk about like the risks there and then like, yeah,
Speaker 3: the needs that it creates and how we can meet them.
Speaker 4: So you're right, some of them are ending up in
Speaker 4: river beds.
Speaker 6: There's also like what they refer to as the Island
Speaker 6: kind of close to Old Town where a lot of
Speaker 6: people have been going. But you know, you have to
Speaker 6: get a rash to go there, and it's not easy
Speaker 6: to get there. They don't have a lot of resources there.
Speaker 4: There's a lot of.
Speaker 6: Crime that happens, and it's not the best scenario. And
Speaker 6: other than that, for making these safe sleeping sites which
Speaker 6: are not actually safe and they're kind of like concentration
Speaker 6: camps and they're from people I've talked to actually live
Speaker 6: in them. They're not good places to.
Speaker 4: Be at, yeah at all.
Speaker 6: And it's just kind of like pushing the problem out
Speaker 6: of you without actually doing anything or providing anything meaningful
Speaker 6: to people.
Speaker 3: Yeah, which is the goal. I think it is to
Speaker 3: make property invisible.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 5: And the other thing that happens is like I live
Speaker 5: in an area where there are a lot of encampments,
Speaker 5: and there probably would be permanent encampments if it weren't
Speaker 5: for the band, And personally I would prefer that, because
Speaker 5: like what happens is these people get like moved like there,
Speaker 5: their encamment will like crop up, It'll be there for
Speaker 5: like maybe a week, and then like it'll disappear, and
Speaker 5: like I'll wake up one morning and they're gone, and
Speaker 5: all of their stuff often gets thrown away. They lose
Speaker 5: access to their things if they're not there to take it.
Speaker 5: They basically can take only what they can carry on
Speaker 5: their backs. If they're lucky. If they happen to be
Speaker 5: there when their stuff is being thrown away, they're they're sighted,
Speaker 5: they could be arrested. And then usually I see sometimes
Speaker 5: the same people come back, but they just had to
Speaker 5: like go find somewhere else. So they're basically being forced
Speaker 5: to be like migratory rather than like staying in one place,
Speaker 5: which means that it often It also makes like the
Speaker 5: people who live in neighborhoods, like because I can't form
Speaker 5: relationships with these people as much as I could before,
Speaker 5: Like I can't know my neighbors as much because my
Speaker 5: neighbors are constantly getting moved around, So like I'll like
Speaker 5: former relationship with someone and I'll be like, you know,
Speaker 5: like I'll be like their beer guy, and I'll like,
Speaker 5: you know, like there's people that I'll know that I'll like,
Speaker 5: go buy a beer for, go get water for if
Speaker 5: I see them and I know their name and that.
Speaker 5: But then when with the encamp ban, they might just
Speaker 5: disappear one day and I don't know if they got arrested,
Speaker 5: I don't know if they've just been displaced, and that's
Speaker 5: like not great for me, not great for them, not
Speaker 5: great for literally anyone around, because it's like people are
Speaker 5: safer if they're able to have like a stable place
Speaker 5: to be, Like, everyone is safer.
Speaker 3: Yeah, if ours stated goal is getting people off the streets,
Speaker 3: like chasing them around the streets, isn't doing that making
Speaker 3: it harder for people to find stability?
Speaker 6: Yeah, And you know, I've talked to people also about
Speaker 6: the reason sometimes they don't like the term homeless is
Speaker 6: because they're like, yes, we may not have a house,
Speaker 6: but we make our homes, we make a community, we
Speaker 6: make a home, and losing that sense of security, any
Speaker 6: little bit of security they have constantly having to move,
Speaker 6: not ever feeling comfortable or safe.
Speaker 3: You know, that's traumatizing, Taking a bad situation and making
Speaker 3: it worse, just what the state likes to do. I
Speaker 3: wonder like, before we finish up, a lot of people,
Speaker 3: like I said, want to start a mutual aid thing.
Speaker 3: Do you have any advice for them? Things that you
Speaker 3: would do if you were starting over, things that you
Speaker 3: feel like you did well. If you wanted to start
Speaker 3: bread bluck, now, how would you go about it?
Speaker 6: Start a group chat, maybe make an Instagram where you
Speaker 6: can post about it and find people who are also
Speaker 6: in dressed than that.
Speaker 4: Go to a local event? What else?
Speaker 5: Luka having like a place where people can like congregate
Speaker 5: with each other, like having a regular like community event
Speaker 5: to meet people and get to know each other and
Speaker 5: trust each other. I really wish that we had started
Speaker 5: like sooner, because I think we had the capacity to
Speaker 5: start sooner, like way beforehand, and I think it was
Speaker 5: like the incamment ban and like sayalah, being like we
Speaker 5: need to do this like happening it like it just
Speaker 5: takes like one person being excited enough about something and
Speaker 5: then like their comrades being like yeah, no, you're right,
Speaker 5: like we do need to do something, and I think
Speaker 5: people are really afraid to be that person to like
Speaker 5: push for something, to try to like wake other people
Speaker 5: up or like convince other people that you have to
Speaker 5: capacity to because I think the state can be really
Speaker 5: disempowering and they make you think that you need like
Speaker 5: a budget and you need like all of these things
Speaker 5: to like be able to provide people like aid or
Speaker 5: or like like mutually to provide people anything.
Speaker 1: And like we did it with like literally.
Speaker 5: Just like a couple of our members just like gave
Speaker 5: some money that we had and that we had, like
Speaker 5: you know, like we had like a couple hundred dollars
Speaker 5: that we got from people, and then that was enough
Speaker 5: to start and like you could literally start with like
Speaker 5: fifty bucks and figure it out.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we did not come from a place.
Speaker 6: Of any of us having a lot of money, so
Speaker 6: we've basically just had to figure it out.
Speaker 4: And anybody can figure it out, you know.
Speaker 6: I feel like our culture is so individualized, but we
Speaker 6: do have the capacity to come together and yeah, just
Speaker 6: take somebody being like all right, let's do this, and
Speaker 6: you'll you'll meet enough people who are also interested in that.
Speaker 6: Because people do want community at the end of the day,
Speaker 6: and people do want to help people.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Is there anything else you guys want to mention
Speaker 3: before we go?
Speaker 6: Yeah, The only last thing I wanted to mention is
Speaker 6: that we do have a lot of future goals of
Speaker 6: expanding and doing more street medicine as well.
Speaker 4: And expanding to different areas. We're also having.
Speaker 6: Mobile teams where we can go out and leave people
Speaker 6: who aren't in one location or who maybe have certain
Speaker 6: divisibilities and can't walk and get there. So we have
Speaker 6: a lot of ideas for that, and that just takes
Speaker 6: meeting more people who are into this and getting more
Speaker 6: funds and yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so hopefully that's something we can do.
Speaker 5: And I just wanted to briefly mention one of our
Speaker 5: members did some really great research on the way the
Speaker 5: Hillcrest Business Association is using the Encampment band to further
Speaker 5: harm and using they're actually using like private security to
Speaker 5: push people out so people can enjoy their night life
Speaker 5: without having to deal with an objectionable minority that wants
Speaker 5: to live however it pleases for fuck's sake, the quote
Speaker 5: from mister Ben Nicholas of the Hillcrist Business Association, So
Speaker 5: they have a initiative called Hillcrest Clean and Safe Program
Speaker 5: where they displace people from Hillcrest for the benefit of
Speaker 5: the businesses. And they have like if you go on
Speaker 5: a Voice of San Diego you can hear some like
Speaker 5: just the way they talk about these people is really
Speaker 5: insane and really dehumanizing, and it kind of notes how businesses,
Speaker 5: how like capitalism in the state, are working together hand
Speaker 5: in hand to displace our community members. So the business
Speaker 5: associations and the businesses themselves are being empowered by these
Speaker 5: encampment bands to further repetuate violence on peoples.
Speaker 6: Yet, yeah, and on that topic, the way that people
Speaker 6: actually are a dressing it here is making it so
Speaker 6: much worse. Like San Diego has a hot team which
Speaker 6: is part of the police department.
Speaker 4: It's called the Homeless Outreach Team.
Speaker 6: And they're supposedly supposed to help get people into shelters
Speaker 6: and stuff like that. But anybody I've talked to who
Speaker 6: have tried to reach out for them and ask, you know, okay,
Speaker 6: if you're going to move me, like I need to.
Speaker 4: Get into a shelter.
Speaker 6: One of them who I was talking to about this
Speaker 6: was in the seventies and very medically vulnerable, and instead
Speaker 6: of helping them find somewhere to go, they just put
Speaker 6: his car which she was sleeping in because it was unregistered,
Speaker 6: and so they're not actually helping at all.
Speaker 3: It's just a cop.
Speaker 6: And that's why, you know, just us regular people have
Speaker 6: to do something because the state's not going to.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I think that's a great thing. That's the
Speaker 3: fucking doc about the Hill Grest Business Association for people
Speaker 3: who aren'tailiar with San Diego. San Diego is like LGBTQA.
Speaker 3: A neighborhood is called Hillcrest. One in three of our
Speaker 3: trandth youth are run housed and like, I guess they
Speaker 3: don't matter to the Hill Grest Business Association. Not surprising,
Speaker 3: but just fucked up. Where can people if they want
Speaker 3: to support you, they want to follow you, if they
Speaker 3: want to come out and do food distro? Where can
Speaker 3: they find you on the internet?
Speaker 5: Yeah, they can find us on Instagram. Our Instagram is
Speaker 5: bread Block Underscore Distro. If you want to provide like
Speaker 5: direct funds, bread Underscore Block is our Venmo.
Speaker 4: Lots with the feed not o k b l oc Oh.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, b l oc like block.
Speaker 4: We are.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And I also wanted to mention a couple of
Speaker 5: comrades of ours are facing houselessness themselves, and there's a
Speaker 5: mutual aid post on our Instagram and you can also
Speaker 5: find them at ruster dot music that's our U s
Speaker 5: T e R Music or their venmo is also in
Speaker 5: a post on our page. They could really use some
Speaker 5: help because they are really big individuals who like show
Speaker 5: up all the time and help us cook and our
Speaker 5: a big part of our group, and you know also
Speaker 5: could use some mutual.
Speaker 3: Aid, yeah, people to help them. Thank you so much
Speaker 3: for your time, guys. Thank you for doing all that
Speaker 3: important work and thank you for sharing it with us.
Speaker 3: If people have questions, they can reach out to you, right, yes.
Speaker 4: Yes, of course, thank you so much for having them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you so much. It's much appreciated.
Speaker 8: Welcome to katap and here I'm Andrew Siege, a FUTUREE
Speaker 8: channel Andrewism.
Speaker 7: I'm joined by Garrison Davis.
Speaker 8: Hello there, once again, hello, and today I regret to
Speaker 8: inform you that you must come to Brazil.
Speaker 10: I've heard mixed things about about Brazil currently, but I'm
Speaker 10: not I'm not I'm not against the idea. I have
Speaker 10: considered it before.
Speaker 8: Yes, well we're not going to the Brazil of present
Speaker 8: times will actually be time traveling, continuing the somewhat informal
Speaker 8: series I've been doing on Latin American anarchism. We'll be
Speaker 8: dipping our tours into the sand and the sea, the
Speaker 8: farmlands and jungles, the mountains and deserts, the cities and
Speaker 8: villages that make up the land, and crowned of the
Speaker 8: potential liberty of the people forcil, particularly the struggles for
Speaker 8: anarchism that they would have had in the late nineteenth
Speaker 8: and early twentieth century. All this is of course down
Speaker 8: to the scholarship of people like Edgar Rodriguez, Jesse Cone,
Speaker 8: Philippe Correa, Rafael Vianna, the Silva Quan, William Dos Santos,
Speaker 8: Edline Toledo and Luigi Biondi and without further ado, let's
Speaker 8: get into it. So, the Portuguese landed in the region
Speaker 8: they will become known as Brazil in fifteen hundred. Prior
Speaker 8: to their colonization, the land was home to ethnic groups
Speaker 8: linked to four main language groups, the Irawak, the Tupi, Guarani,
Speaker 8: the Je and the Kalinago. Some of the specific ethnic
Speaker 8: groups included the Portiguara, Trema, Membe, Tavajara, Kayete, and so on.
Speaker 8: After Pedro Alvarez Cabra landed, the following centuries were marked
Speaker 8: by colonization and slavement. His lands were dispossessed and cleared.
Speaker 8: Plantations were established, roads were laid, bridges were built, and
Speaker 8: so on, all by the auctioned and purchased efforts of
Speaker 8: whipped and exploited human muscle the president. Slaved Africans in
Speaker 8: the society would sometimes flee into the jungles and form
Speaker 8: qui lumbos or fugitive slave settlements, including the famous Palmarrius,
Speaker 8: which survived for almost a century with the population of
Speaker 8: between eleven and twenty thousand. After Brazil gains independence from
Speaker 8: Portugal in eighteen twenty two, retaining its own monarchy, it
Speaker 8: experienced numerous maroonages, reforms, and popular revolts, including the Stembrada
Speaker 8: and Novembrada revolts, the uru Preto Uprising, the Sabinada and
Speaker 8: Bailadda revolts, the Carmanachem Revolt, the Guerra dos Ferapos revolt,
Speaker 8: Liberal Revolution, the Prior Revolution, the extremely late ablition of
Speaker 8: slavery in eighteen eighty eight, and the proclamation of the
Speaker 8: First Brazilian Republic in eighteen eighty nine. It was in
Speaker 8: this multuous sociopolitical landscape that anarchism would take root. As
Speaker 8: in much of Latin America, anarchism would be brought by
Speaker 8: immigrants through port cities like Rodighanio and Santos. Revolutionary ideas
Speaker 8: would also come to Brazil by way of Brazilians themselves.
Speaker 8: Some went to France and Portugal for their studies and
Speaker 8: discovered anarchism there. Others would find the words of Kropotkin
Speaker 8: and Malchester in the bookstores of their native cities. Doctor
Speaker 8: Fabio Luis, a Bahian hygienist and doctor, wrote two novels
Speaker 8: which sort to grapple with the social question of exploitation
Speaker 8: of man by man in Brazil. Doctor Luis also spent
Speaker 8: his time working alongside unions and helping to fight the
Speaker 8: yellow fever and smallpox epidemics of plagued his nature. Another novelist,
Speaker 8: Manuel de Mendounca, also published in this time, contributing to
Speaker 8: a slow growing liberteria and literary universe. These anarchist intellectuals,
Speaker 8: alongside others, would go on to launch a popular university.
Speaker 8: Other contributors propagation of Anarchism in Brazilian soil included Alicio
Speaker 8: de Carvallo, j Martins, Fontes, Pedro Docuto, Russia, Pombo Duel,
Speaker 8: Gonsalves de Silva, Maximino Maziel, Benjamin Morta, Francisco Vioti, et cetera.
Speaker 8: Anarchism in Brazil was actually quite diverse as well, as
Speaker 8: it found immigrants from Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Ukraine, Russia, Germany,
Speaker 8: Canada and England, alongside former black slaves and mestizos. It
Speaker 8: found children, and it found women. Limo Berreto Domingos Pasos,
Speaker 8: who was kind of known as the Brazilian Burcunan, Nino Vascos,
Speaker 8: Edgard Luinroth, Jose Oica, Mariela, La Serda de Mura, and
Speaker 8: Maria and Helio Suarez all made key contributions to development
Speaker 8: of anarchism in Brazil. Dozens of newspapers like Cli Ciavi, Pianchi, Lavigne,
Speaker 8: Livitario and O Deespertar would also be published. Hundreds of
Speaker 8: lectures would be hosted alongside language classes and artistic activities
Speaker 8: at anarchist cultural centers or at ten ms and schools
Speaker 8: like the Illis Euricluse School and the modern schools in
Speaker 8: South Paolo, which also provided literacy courses, a vocational trainer.
Speaker 8: Revolutionary plays we put on in theaters by groups such
Speaker 8: as Group, the Instructure and Group with dramatical helmina, blending
Speaker 8: entertainment with the syndicalist propaganda and front raising efforts for
Speaker 8: the labor movement. Worker's festivals feature in poetry, song, dance,
Speaker 8: and sport, raise money for anarchistyndicalist organizations and reinforced a
Speaker 8: sense of solidarity. The anarchist workers, being so numerously immigrant,
Speaker 8: attended to create a cosmopolitan counterculture centered on working class
Speaker 8: values and priorities. So all these projects and institutions, with
Speaker 8: the results of their efforts, Over a thousand foreign agitators
Speaker 8: would be deported from Brazil as a result of their
Speaker 8: radical efforts, and a few would even be killed. The
Speaker 8: food's anarchists be murdered by the state in Brazil was
Speaker 8: the Italian Polinice Mattei killed in South Paulo on the
Speaker 8: twentieth September eighteen ninety eight. Earlier that year, the first
Speaker 8: gathering of socialist leading workers in Brazil would take place
Speaker 8: in Rio Grande Rossoul, attended by delegates from various associations,
Speaker 8: anarchist groups, and a newspaper. As usual, the Italian immigrants
Speaker 8: were heavily represented. The anarchist immigrants even managed to establish
Speaker 8: a settlement known as the Guera Rima anarchist colony organized
Speaker 8: by Italian anarchists ar Tour Campanili. Perhaps the most notable
Speaker 8: contribution to anarchism by the Italians in Brazil was the
Speaker 8: Cecilia Colony, which deserves special attentions mentioning of course that
Speaker 8: this project, as with everything taken place in Brazil in
Speaker 8: this time, took place on colonial land, which seemingly went
Speaker 8: unacknowledged by the anarchists themselves, but it was regrettably common
Speaker 8: in the colonial conditions of Brazil. In the southern state
Speaker 8: of Parana, in the ural municipality of Palmira, a group
Speaker 8: of Italian anarchists led by Giovanni Rossi and Gigi Damiani
Speaker 8: founded the Senior Colony in eighteen ninety. The land was
Speaker 8: originally granted to them by Emperor Pedero the Second, but
Speaker 8: after the proclamation of the First Brazilian Republic, the new
Speaker 8: government did not acknowledge that land grant, and so the
Speaker 8: anarchists had to purchase it. Instead, the anarchists sought to
Speaker 8: experiment and creating a society based on collective ownership and
Speaker 8: free love. The built of communal shared for shelter and
Speaker 8: began the process constructing individual homes. The population of the
Speaker 8: colony quickly grew to almost three hundred people, including the
Speaker 8: Rossi himself, but by the end of eighteen ninety one,
Speaker 8: the colony was facing its first big challenge. They'd outgrown
Speaker 8: the infrastructure, with only twenty wooden houses in one community shed,
Speaker 8: the settlement simply couldn't sustain the influx of people, and
Speaker 8: to make matters worse, many of the settlers were industrial
Speaker 8: workers with little or no agricultural experience. Lack of farm
Speaker 8: and knowledge made it difficult for them to produce enough
Speaker 8: food to feed themselves. They tried to organize tasks based
Speaker 8: on people's existing skills. Artisans stuck to their trades, but
Speaker 8: the farmers struggled, especially with the differences between Italian and
Speaker 8: Brazilian soil. While they managed to plant crops like maize,
Speaker 8: the results weren't immediate. The money they brought they could
Speaker 8: buy groceries, tools, and seeds, but it wasn't enough to
Speaker 8: sustain them. Until their crops started yielding results, so many
Speaker 8: settlers had to seek work elsewhere, with some even taken
Speaker 8: government jobs. The colony wasn't just about farm in though.
Speaker 8: Over the years they built roads, sheds, bonds, a mill
Speaker 8: and even a fish tank. They planted a huge cornfield,
Speaker 8: dug wells and set up a nursery for seedlands. They
Speaker 8: even tried out free love with rossiumself participates in in
Speaker 8: a polyamorous relationship.
Speaker 7: Many such cases, many such cases.
Speaker 8: But despite all these efforts, the cracks were starting to show.
Speaker 8: In eighteen ninety two, seven families packed up and return
Speaker 8: to Italy. By the end of the year, the colonu's
Speaker 8: population had dwindled just twenty people. Oh dang, yeah, it's
Speaker 8: a very very rapid decline.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 10: The sustainability of these types of projects is always like
Speaker 10: the big thing, and especially when it comes to like
Speaker 10: food and farming like that is unfortunately the joke whenever
Speaker 10: people talk about these sorts of projects. Now all of
Speaker 10: these artists and craftsmens don't want to spend out time
Speaker 10: toiling away in the fields.
Speaker 8: Yeah. Yeah, it's a challenge that the persisted today.
Speaker 10: So far, it seems like there's like a decent mix
Speaker 10: of like labor organizing, like social organizing, like with like newspapers,
Speaker 10: like theaters, plays like that kind of like more like
Speaker 10: cultural engagement stuff with like unions and this little like
Speaker 10: anarchist society that they try. They've kind of like like
Speaker 10: sped run through a whole bunch of like I don't
Speaker 10: want to say like social anarchism, because that is a
Speaker 10: term that means something else. But there is a lot
Speaker 10: of stuff that's kind of very similar to that, at
Speaker 10: least like so far, and I'm not hearing very much
Speaker 10: stuff that leads me to believe there's like you know,
Speaker 10: a large degree of conflextuality towards the actual Brazilian Republic.
Speaker 10: But was that also like an aspect during this time period.
Speaker 8: They would end up engaging in a lot more heavy
Speaker 8: like you're talking about, like direct engagement with the state.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 8: I think in this early period, when they were still
Speaker 8: building up and spread in the wood, it was sort
Speaker 8: of a honeymoon period for the movement in a sense.
Speaker 8: A lot of the dramatic confrontations are very soon pendent. Okay, Okay,
Speaker 8: So the cracks were certain to show families had packed
Speaker 8: up and returned to Italy, the colony had gone down
Speaker 8: to just twenty people, and because a lot of the
Speaker 8: colonies made up of intellectuals, doctors, engineers, artisans, many of
Speaker 8: them left for nearby cities, where they founded the Jessepe
Speaker 8: Garibali Society, which I couldn't find much information on that
Speaker 8: particular society from that particular historical period in my research,
Speaker 8: but it seems to have been a mutual aid society.
Speaker 8: I'm not one hundred percent sure.
Speaker 10: I mean that would like make sense as it's like
Speaker 10: within like a bigger city.
Speaker 8: Yes, yes, And Garibaldi has a rather interesting history that
Speaker 8: I'm only recently learning about. And I didn't even know
Speaker 8: he went all the way to like South America and
Speaker 8: Sclevantin and stuff. But like I learned very recently that
Speaker 8: he had married, I believe, an indigenous or a Mestizo
Speaker 8: woman while he was in South America and they had
Speaker 8: like this very romantic, dramatic life together, leading battlefield side
Speaker 8: by side all that stuff.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah, So I'm not surprised that the Italian anarchists
Speaker 8: were perhaps inspired by Garibaldi, even if he himself was
Speaker 8: not an anarchist. Sure so, anyway, by eighteen ninety three
Speaker 8: new settlers had arrived, thankfully, and the colony was trying
Speaker 8: to manufacture shoes and wine barrels so they could make
Speaker 8: some sort of an income. They eventually grew to sixty
Speaker 8: four residents, and they established two wells and a new
Speaker 8: access road. But even with those new developments, the colony
Speaker 8: was still struggling. They were dealing with material poverty, the
Speaker 8: neighboring Catholic communities were extremely hostile toward them, and they
Speaker 8: also had to deal with very poor sanitation conditions. And
Speaker 8: then in their fourth year they also had a crop
Speaker 8: epidemic that pretty much decimated the colony. And of course,
Speaker 8: as high minded as the ideas may have been, there
Speaker 8: were the internal struggles. You know, Free love and communal
Speaker 8: living may have been central to the colony's philosophy, but
Speaker 8: not everyone adapted well to the ideals. In theory, they
Speaker 8: embraced the values, but in practice there were some insecurity
Speaker 8: and jealousy that of.
Speaker 7: Rose out of that also many such cases.
Speaker 8: Many such cases. By the end of eighteen ninety three,
Speaker 8: it was abundantly clear that the colony couldn't survive. Labor
Speaker 8: was in high demand the nearby cities, and despite efforts
Speaker 8: to attract new settlers through socialist propaganda in Europe. The
Speaker 8: colony just couldn't maintain its population, and eighteen ninety four
Speaker 8: Celia Colony officially came to an end. They have in
Speaker 8: many players and dramatizations of the story Cecilia Colony. Most
Speaker 8: of them, as you would imagine, are in Brazilian Portuguese,
Speaker 8: so good luck finding them.
Speaker 7: I'll try to find a dub somewhere maybe yeah.
Speaker 8: And its Olian Portuguese. But anyway, so, the experiment had
Speaker 8: held on for four dramatic years define pressure from the
Speaker 8: newly established Brazilian Republican government, heavy taxes and even military inclusions.
Speaker 8: Eventually material conditions disease and until the conflicts brought it
Speaker 8: Tourne and how we're entering into the twentieth century. Nineteen
Speaker 8: oh three saw the founding of the first fourmal structure,
Speaker 8: inspired by international syndicalism, the Federation of Class Associations. This
Speaker 8: organization would take part in the first Workers Congress in
Speaker 8: nineteen oh six, which brought together forty three delegates, predominantly
Speaker 8: anarchist from across Brazil, in over twelve sessions, discussing twenty
Speaker 8: three items of discussion Giovanni Grossi, the guy behind the
Speaker 8: Cecilia Colony, was among the attendees. The Congress sought to
Speaker 8: advocate for economic resistance societies and laid the foundation for
Speaker 8: the Brazilian Workers Confederation or COBB for Sure in nineteen
Speaker 8: oh eight, which united over fifty unions, primarily from Rio Deshaneio,
Speaker 8: South Baolo and Rio Grande Rossul. Between ninety oh five
Speaker 8: nineteen oh eight, the workers movement witnessed a surge in strikes,
Speaker 8: notably among shoemakers, reallymen and other industrial sectors. Portoal des
Speaker 8: gres saw at the general strike in nineteen oh six.
Speaker 8: South Paulo was the scene of insurrectionary strikes in nineteen
Speaker 8: oh six and nineteen oh seven as part of the
Speaker 8: campaign for the eight hour work day. In Santos. The
Speaker 8: strikes for the eight hour day only ended in nineteen
Speaker 8: twenty one, meaning they spent well over a decade close
Speaker 8: to two decades fighting for the eight hour day. Yeah
Speaker 8: The workers movement also held several congresses in this time,
Speaker 8: including the first and second South Paulo State Congresses, the
Speaker 8: first mass Cares, the First mass Heires State Labor Federation Congress,
Speaker 8: and the Parana Labor Congress, which affirmed the movement's commitments
Speaker 8: to anarchist cynicalism, and as with other anarchist groups around
Speaker 8: the world, they organized the demonstration to commemorate the death
Speaker 8: of Francisco Ferrere, the Modern School founder who inspired rational
Speaker 8: education efforts across Brazil. They also supported the Russian workers
Speaker 8: in both nineteen oh five and nineteen seventeen, supported Mexican
Speaker 8: workers and peasants in nineteen ten, and commemorated the Chicago
Speaker 8: Martyrs on subsequent mediates. Nineteen thirteen marked the second Brazilian
Speaker 8: Labor Congress, much larger than the Foost where there it
Speaker 8: it's from one hundred and seventeen bodies across eight states,
Speaker 8: debated twenty four items. In nineteen fourteen, anarchists in South
Speaker 8: Paulo organize a conference it's like two delegates to represent
Speaker 8: Brazil at the London Anarchist Congress, which is eventually and
Speaker 8: unfortunately canceled due to the outbreak of World War One.
Speaker 10: But this is such an interesting moment in like international
Speaker 10: anarchism that at least right now, just like we have
Speaker 10: like the Internet, but that sucks, like this style of
Speaker 10: like actual like like international like anarchism. It's just something
Speaker 10: that is I've I've never really been able to like
Speaker 10: experience before.
Speaker 8: But Garrison, you forgets in something we have discourse.
Speaker 10: Oh I'm sure they also had discourse, but they got
Speaker 10: to go to London to do their discourse, which sounds
Speaker 10: which sounds much better than doing it from my toilet
Speaker 10: on Twitter dot com. Sorry xx dot com, My apologies
Speaker 10: not that that's.
Speaker 8: True, though, I would much rather the discords take place
Speaker 8: in puson over you know, the discord suvas and the
Speaker 8: Switzer and Breddit threads.
Speaker 10: I mean, like especially in that like international aspect, Like
Speaker 10: there's there's certainly like like anarchist gatherings and like conferences
Speaker 10: and convergences, you know, within within countries.
Speaker 7: I've been to many in the United States.
Speaker 10: But yeah, this this sort of like like having anarchists
Speaker 10: in Brazil go to London to talk with anarchists from
Speaker 10: everywhere else in the world, like compare their experiences and
Speaker 10: compare notes. Yeah, then talk about like what their actual
Speaker 10: like political goals are. It's something that I think is
Speaker 10: just stalling, doesn't really exist anymore.
Speaker 8: And that's really a vital component for international solidarity because
Speaker 8: that's kind of solidarity, that kind of portunity is very
Speaker 8: difficult to find just through virtual interaction. There's something meaningful
Speaker 8: and shake and a Pusson's hand and embrace in them
Speaker 8: and laugh at and crying together in Pusson sharing a meal,
Speaker 8: I think really makes a difference.
Speaker 10: I mean, yeah, especially when you have like the spread
Speaker 10: of anarchism is built on that internationalism, Like you have
Speaker 10: anarchists from Portugal and Italy and Spain.
Speaker 8: The immigrant influence exactly is very very profound.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 8: But although there was the outbreak of war one closer
Speaker 8: to whom the anarchists were still involving themselves in that
Speaker 8: sort of regional discourse. I may have been flying to London,
Speaker 8: but they managed to meet with delegates from Argentina, Chile,
Speaker 8: and Uruguay at the International Peace Conference and the South
Speaker 8: American Anarchist Congress in October nineteen fifteen, all in an
Speaker 8: aim to foster both regional and international anarchist cooperation as
Speaker 8: the war raged on. In addition to the anti war propaganda,
Speaker 8: Brazil's anarchists continue to rally against unemployment rise and living costs,
Speaker 8: scarcity of basic foodstuffs, while resisting the capitalists the clergy.
Speaker 8: In the state, which sent young men to the slaughter
Speaker 8: on the battlefield. In response to the pressure levied by
Speaker 8: the libertarian proletaria, the government gave the go ahead for
Speaker 8: direct sale by the producer to the consumer without taxes levied,
Speaker 8: easing the hugging crisis in the country. So their struggles worked.
Speaker 8: This period and particularly from nineteen twelve to nineteen twenty,
Speaker 8: marked significant worker mobilization. The period from nineteen seventeen to
Speaker 8: nineteen twenty in particular, was marked by significant strikes, including
Speaker 8: the South Paulo General Strike of nineteen seventeen, which saw
Speaker 8: seventy thousand workers participate with sympathy strikes in the Rio Grande,
Speaker 8: Assul and Pirana demanding better working conditions, wages, and the
Speaker 8: eight hour workday. This period also witnessed an increase in
Speaker 8: unionization and the growth of the workers press, which provided
Speaker 8: critical platforms revolutionary ideas. In nineteen nineteen, an uprising exploded
Speaker 8: in Rio de Janeiro, leading to the death of three
Speaker 8: workers and the imprisonment or deportation of nearly one hundred.
Speaker 8: The government deployed police, troops and even naval warships to
Speaker 8: crush the resistance of the workers, and they also attempted
Speaker 8: to exploit racial divisions. They would take Afro Brazili and
Speaker 8: used them as scabs, and then once the strike was over,
Speaker 8: once they broke up this strike, they would fire those
Speaker 8: same black workers to reaffirm the privilege of white labor. Eventually,
Speaker 8: the government would concede and force capitalists to make some
Speaker 8: concessions where wages were concerned, but this came at a cost.
Speaker 8: Alongside the mass imprisonment and deportations, the state's efforts included
Speaker 8: infiltration of the unions, which eventually stayed reformist unions, into
Speaker 8: the leadership position of the working classes, supplanting the more
Speaker 8: revolutionary organizations. Thus, anarchism arguably entered a new era. In
Speaker 8: the nineteen twenties, there were still anarchist led labor congresses,
Speaker 8: including the Third Brazilian Labor Congress and the second and
Speaker 8: third rew Granded Assoul Labor Congresses, the latter of which
Speaker 8: endorsed a declaration of principles from the IWA and established
Speaker 8: an International Anarchists or Diarity Impact. But by the four
Speaker 8: to three or Granded as Soul Labor Congress, attended by
Speaker 8: sixteen workers organizations, two newspapers, six anarchist groups, SULB power
Speaker 8: militants and delegates from Uruguay, Paraguay and Argentina. Anarchist efforts
Speaker 8: in Brazil had to become much more clandestine. Following the deportations,
Speaker 8: the state intervention, the general oppression of the success of
Speaker 8: Brazilian regimes. The anarchist movement had indeed weakened, and I
Speaker 8: took another blow with the establishment to the Brazilian Communist
Speaker 8: Party the PCB, partially inspired by Bolshevism in nineteen twenty two,
Speaker 8: which absorbed many former anarchists, including Edgar Lunov, who authored
Speaker 8: its charter, and Astriguilo Perera, who served as its secretary
Speaker 8: general for nearly a decade before he was expelled. The
Speaker 8: PCB competed for union leadership and worked with the governments
Speaker 8: of Artur Bernandez Washington, Louise and Catulio Vargas. The suppressed
Speaker 8: the libertarian movement and the free trade unions. The Bernardes government,
Speaker 8: by the way, sent to thousands of political prisoners, including anarchists,
Speaker 8: into the remote penal colony of Clevelandia, thousands with the
Speaker 8: harsh conditions killed one hundreds Wow and the Louis San
Speaker 8: Vargas governments of course we're not any better.
Speaker 7: I was also wondering, like, where are the people like
Speaker 7: deported to?
Speaker 10: Like it sounded like they've been in Brazil for quite
Speaker 10: a while when you were like mentioning there was all
Speaker 10: those all those other people who were deported out of
Speaker 10: the country, Like where where did they go?
Speaker 8: Yeah, there was a story I was reading about that
Speaker 8: I didn't maintaince in my notes. Some only half remember
Speaker 8: in it, but one of my sources would have had
Speaker 8: it of the names I listed at the beginning, but
Speaker 8: they were spoken about how there were these I believe
Speaker 8: Portuguese people in Brazil, as in Portuguese from Portugal who
Speaker 8: have been there and there and working there and whatever
Speaker 8: for years and years and years, and because they hadn't naturalized,
Speaker 8: they were like subject to like these heavy attacks. And
Speaker 8: I believe some of them were deported as well. And
Speaker 8: so I'm assuming whatever country of origin they could be
Speaker 8: traced to, they would be deported there, or they're'd be
Speaker 8: deported to a neighbor in South American country. But I
Speaker 8: didn't really find specific details on where they were sent.
Speaker 8: I assume it's mostly their home countries or neighboring countries.
Speaker 10: Between that and like sending thousands of people to a
Speaker 10: penal colony with hundreds dying, like this is a massive
Speaker 10: wave of repression they're dealing with in like the early twenties.
Speaker 8: Here indeed, indeed, and unfortunately, their supposed allies weren't exactly
Speaker 8: a help. In nineteen twenty seven, the anarchists Antonio Dominquez
Speaker 8: and Damiao the Silver who murdered by the communists, who
Speaker 8: also wounded another ten members of the printers union and
Speaker 8: attacked and stole the assets of the footwear workers Union,
Speaker 8: so that further weakened the anarchist struggle when they were
Speaker 8: already dealing with that government repression. And in a sense,
Speaker 8: anarchists are like roaches. We just keep on struggling and surviving,
Speaker 8: and the persistence of anarchist resistance in spite of all
Speaker 8: this repression, we would trigger a further backlash by the bourgeoisie.
Speaker 8: We should also arise to challenge the survival of anarchism,
Speaker 8: and they left in general in Brazil, from the very
Speaker 8: same Italy that brought Many an anarchist, also came Many
Speaker 8: a fascist, which brings us to the Brazilian integralist movement.
Speaker 8: But to find out what happened in the nineteen twenties
Speaker 8: and thirties and onward. You'll have to wait for the
Speaker 8: next episode. I have an andrew sage you can find
Speaker 8: on YouTube dot com slash Andrewism and feature in dot
Speaker 8: com slash same true and this has been it could
Speaker 8: happen here. All powerful the people welcome to that could
Speaker 8: happen here. I'm addressage of future channel Andrewism. Today will
Speaker 8: continue in the last in American Anarchism series with that
Speaker 8: exploration of anarchism in Brazil. I'm joined by Garrison D.
Speaker 8: Hello there and once again thanks to the scholarship of
Speaker 8: Edgar Rodriguez, Jesse Cohen, Philippe Corea, Raphael Vianna, Li Silva Cowan,
Speaker 8: Williando Santos, Edieline Toledo, and Luigi Biondi. When we last
Speaker 8: left off, anarchist labor resistance in Brazil had triggered a
Speaker 8: turning point and a reaction. Weakened by the splits caused
Speaker 8: by the Bolsheviks and the military repression of the government,
Speaker 8: another faction would step in to cripple the anarchist cause
Speaker 8: even further. The Integralists in the nineteen twenties and nineteen thirties,
Speaker 8: Brazil saw the rise of the Brazilian Integralist Action, the
Speaker 8: aib A nationalist movement led by Pinio Salgado. During a
Speaker 8: trip to Europe, Salgado became enamored with Benito Mussolini's fascist
Speaker 8: movement in Italy. Upon his return to Brazil and at
Speaker 8: the height of Catulio Aragas's dictatorship, which was ushered in
Speaker 8: thanks to a cool weather the bren Alliance, Salgado founded
Speaker 8: this Society for Political Studies, gathering intellectuals who were sympathetic
Speaker 8: to fascism. Then he essumed the October Manifesto, laying out
Speaker 8: the groundwork for the Brazilian Integralist Action. The movement closely
Speaker 8: mirrored Italian fascism with its green shirted paramilitary wing, regimented demonstrations,
Speaker 8: and militant rhetoric. The Salgado publicly rejected racism, many members
Speaker 8: of his party adopted anti Semitic views. Integralism was financed
Speaker 8: in part by the Italian embassy, with the Roman salute
Speaker 8: and the Tupe word an nawe meaning you are my brother,
Speaker 8: as key symbols of the unity. Integralist action drew its
Speaker 8: support from lower middle class Italians. And Portuguese immigrants, alongside
Speaker 8: sections of the Brazilian military, particularly the navy. As the
Speaker 8: party grew, it became the dictator of Vargas's primary right
Speaker 8: wing basis support, especially after he began to crack down
Speaker 8: on the Communist Party. Integralists frequently engaged in street violence
Speaker 8: and terrorism aimed at leftist groups. In nineteen fifty one,
Speaker 8: Podagas introduced the Labor Regulations based and Mussolinian's Labor Charter.
Speaker 8: Independent industrial unions were banned. Union membership had to be
Speaker 8: registered with the Ministry of Labor, two thirds of the
Speaker 8: union membership had to be native born or naturalized Brazilians.
Speaker 8: Oh no, yeah, and union officers were required to either
Speaker 8: be resident in Brazil for ten years if naturalized, or
Speaker 8: thirty years if foreign born.
Speaker 10: That's pretty fucked up, I would assume. Also just very
Speaker 10: damaging to the entire labor movement in the country, A
Speaker 10: very intense series of restrictions.
Speaker 8: Yes, as a very immigrant empowered labor movement. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 8: that was definitely targeted. Definitely definitely targeted. Obviously, like the
Speaker 8: class consciousness of the immigrant workers was such a threat
Speaker 8: that they had to root them all from any position
Speaker 8: of influence within the sanctioned unions. Salgado and the Interioralists,
Speaker 8: of course, welcomed these degrees and work with the police
Speaker 8: to capture in the ten workers. The communeists also apparently
Speaker 8: welcome the impositions the Ministry of Labor. Meanwhile, anarchists and
Speaker 8: workers were weathering rightist violence. One time, integralists kicked down
Speaker 8: the doors of the Bakery Workers Union, the construction workers
Speaker 8: leave the mill and ware house operatives, Stonemason's Union and
Speaker 8: Union of Caffee Employees, destroy their assets and extra judiciously
Speaker 8: hauled away the workers as prisoners.
Speaker 10: So they just started like kidnapping people and doing like
Speaker 10: basically state sanctioned terrorism exactly.
Speaker 8: Another integralist, Gustavo Barosso, used his walking stick to break
Speaker 8: the arm of an anti fascist sixteen year old worker
Speaker 8: named neer Colejo as she was making a speech against fascism.
Speaker 7: Time is a flat circle.
Speaker 8: Indeed it is instead of sticks this time they're using cars.
Speaker 8: But it's the same same principle and sticks. Oh yeah,
Speaker 8: people are still collecting sticks.
Speaker 10: I have been hit by many a stick from a
Speaker 10: fascist at a street demo, but especially as the data hture.
Speaker 8: Hmm, down. So with all this violence the deal with
Speaker 8: in this time the anarchist presses had to hounked down
Speaker 8: and prepare to face further attacks. In nineteen thirty three,
Speaker 8: the Libertarian Anti Fascist Committee sounded alarm on the dire
Speaker 8: threat of integralism as what anarchist press wrote, like fascism,
Speaker 8: integralism means to enslave and fetter the people that has
Speaker 8: now defend our liberty like men. Let's we be forced
Speaker 8: to weep like mad men hereafter. On December twenty fourth,
Speaker 8: nineteen thirty three, the tensions were an all time high
Speaker 8: for when it humiliates and defeat at the Saloon ser
Speaker 8: gu Garcia Plinio Salgado's Integralists, known as the Green Shirts,
Speaker 8: planned a show of force to assert their dominance. Their
Speaker 8: target union leaders and leftists, particularly anarchists, who sit against
Speaker 8: their fascist vision for Brazil. According to reports from those
Speaker 8: of US on December first, the Integralists had organized eighteen
Speaker 8: companies of green in shirted marchers who would parade through
Speaker 8: the heart of South Paolo, prepared to crush any resistance
Speaker 8: that came their way. Reinforcements from Rudishonneio, led by Gustavo
Speaker 8: Barosso bolstered their numbers with five hundred trained assault troops
Speaker 8: prime to attack. The police, of course, were openly supported
Speaker 8: of the Interioralists and had even stationed machine guns at
Speaker 8: key points throughout the city to ensure the march went smoothly.
Speaker 8: Co Arleino de Olivera had an additional four hundred troops
Speaker 8: made up of infantry, fire brigade units and cavalry ready
Speaker 8: to intervene. Seems like clear overkill, but it was a
Speaker 8: shower force, so just to be expected. By the time
Speaker 8: the marchers reached the pressure that say, a huge crowd
Speaker 8: had gathered, some curious onlookers, others outright opponents of the
Speaker 8: fascist movement. As the Interroorists survived at the cathedral, cries
Speaker 8: of death to the Fascists and down with the Green
Speaker 8: Shirts echoed throughout the square. Suddenly shots rang out. Some
Speaker 8: say the fire and began accidentally when a machine gun
Speaker 8: set up by the civil Guard was nudged. Others claim
Speaker 8: it was the communists line in wait, ready to ambush
Speaker 8: the march. Regardless, chaos erupted before the anarchists had even
Speaker 8: initiated their planned attack. The scene quickly evolved into pandemonium,
Speaker 8: people fled in terror, shots continued to fire, and several
Speaker 8: were mortally wounded. The planned pledge of loyalty to Planio Salgado,
Speaker 8: the head of the Integralists, never took place that day,
Speaker 8: but by nineteen thirty seven, Salgado launched a presidential campaign,
Speaker 8: hoping to ride the wave of crow and support for
Speaker 8: his movement and become a dictator in his own right. However,
Speaker 8: when Varragas canceled the elections and established the authoritarian Estado
Speaker 8: Novo regime, he banned the Integralist Party along with all
Speaker 8: the others sideline in Salgado. In response, Integralist militants launched
Speaker 8: two uprisings in nineteen thirty eight, of which failed. Sagata
Speaker 8: was imprisoned and lead to exile to Portugal. After spending
Speaker 8: most of his life supporting the dictators of Brazil, his
Speaker 8: attempts to become one of his own utterly field.
Speaker 10: There's a few interesting things in this moment here, particularly
Speaker 10: like how the like initial struggle against fascism once again
Speaker 10: kind of laid at the feet of anarchists and communists
Speaker 10: had like a degree of hesitancy to like to like
Speaker 10: jump in fully and then also, like I find it
Speaker 10: interesting the way that these like this era of fascists
Speaker 10: in Brazil particularly, we're targeting unions, but as almost as
Speaker 10: a way just to target like immigrants, Like it was
Speaker 10: like the easiest way for them to actually just do
Speaker 10: anti immigrant violence was like through the unions.
Speaker 8: Yeah, anti immigrant violence is almost always anti worker violence
Speaker 8: as well.
Speaker 10: Yeah, no, no, in the States at least right now,
Speaker 10: we're just like seeing another kind of uptick in like
Speaker 10: anti immigrant rhetoric and violence, and yeah, a lot of
Speaker 10: it is tied to like labor, like how immigrants are
Speaker 10: are taking jobs away from the lower classes, that sort
Speaker 10: of thing.
Speaker 8: Huh. As always you remember that, you know it could
Speaker 8: happen here, and it's important to be constantly aware and
Speaker 8: on God against even the ghost, the shadow of fascism
Speaker 8: creeping up in your communities. It's easy to be treated
Speaker 8: by the media or by others as just oh, you're
Speaker 8: making a big deal about it, over exaggerates in the threat.
Speaker 8: But know, these things sinuwable very quickly. They need to
Speaker 8: be nipped in the bud. And it's largely thanks to
Speaker 8: anti fascists on the front lines that the situation is
Speaker 8: not as bad as it could be right now. Yeah,
Speaker 8: even though it is getting this every day. For the
Speaker 8: already weakened anarchists and labor movements in Brazil, Integralism had
Speaker 8: posed a dire threat. They were already splintered and in decline,
Speaker 8: struggling to maintain influence. An Integralism's rapid rise, with his
Speaker 8: militarized structure and anti leftist violence, fully suppressed their hopes.
Speaker 8: The communists weren't exactly a help either. The anarchists lost
Speaker 8: a significant strongholder their struggle on the premises of the
Speaker 8: Anti Clerical League and Heriodi Jhaneiro when communists sent to
Speaker 8: disrupt their meeting called the police on them, leading to
Speaker 8: the arrest of eight anarchists and the closure of the
Speaker 8: Anti Clerical League center and its newspaper. With the help
Speaker 8: of the Integralists, communists and leaders of Cardinal Sebastio Lem's
Speaker 8: Brazilian Catholic Party, Getulio Vargas faced little resistance in establishing
Speaker 8: his Estado Novo dictatorship. His authoritarian regime lasted from nineteen
Speaker 8: thirty seven to nineteen forty five and was marked by
Speaker 8: continuous crackdowns on labor, autonomy and anarchism. But despite the
Speaker 8: common claims the nineteen thirties marked the end of anarchism
Speaker 8: in Brazil, anarchists remained active in unions and cultural spaces
Speaker 8: despite repression. Anarchists published influential periodicals like A playbe and
Speaker 8: a Childdreta, and aimed to create a national anarchist political organization.
Speaker 8: Post nineteen forty five, in the era of re deemocratization,
Speaker 8: anarchists converged in South Pawerlo for Brazilian Anarchist Congresses in
Speaker 8: nineteen forty eight and nineteen fifty nine, which brought together
Speaker 8: veterans and motivated the re establishment of social centers. The
Speaker 8: anarchists resumed educational and cultural activities that I found in
Speaker 8: the Centro des Cultural Socil the CCS, which became a
Speaker 8: hub for anarchist intellectual life, hosted lectures, conferences, literary events,
Speaker 8: and even theater performances. The anarchists were back. The CCS
Speaker 8: had played a key role in building anarchist networks, even
Speaker 8: hosted exiles from Spain and helped establish similar cultural centers
Speaker 8: in the suburbs of sal Paolo and other cities across Brazil.
Speaker 8: In Rio de Janeiro, a similar space emerged in nineteen
Speaker 8: fifty eight. The Centrol de Studos put Fessor jose Ka
Speaker 8: or CEPJO, like the CCS, DECEPJO, hosted courses, lectures, and debates.
Speaker 8: In nineteen sixty one, it helps establish an anarchist publishing
Speaker 8: house called Mundo Libre in sarth Paulo. Union activity surged,
Speaker 8: with three hundred thousand workers striking in nineteen fifty three
Speaker 8: and another four hundred thousand in nineteen fifty seven. This
Speaker 8: period of intense mobilization provided an opportunity for anarchists and
Speaker 8: independent socialists to come together and form the Syndicalist Orientation
Speaker 8: Movement or MOS. Created in nineteen fifty three, MS aimed
Speaker 8: to fight for the autonomy and freedom of workers unions
Speaker 8: resistant state at corporate control. By nineteen fifty seven, they
Speaker 8: had enough momentum to contest union leadership positions, especially within
Speaker 8: the graphics sector. Despite these strides, however, the anarchists went
Speaker 8: one faced considerable challenges. The re democratization after nineteen forty
Speaker 8: five offered some room for growth, but the labor landscape
Speaker 8: was dominated by corporatist forces, the Communist Party and the
Speaker 8: Brazilian Labor Party anarchists found themselves battling for influence in
Speaker 8: a crowded political field. Their efforts to revitalize the movement
Speaker 8: were further stifled by a lack of resources and militants,
Speaker 8: which limited their presence in social movements. The momentum gained
Speaker 8: the nineteen fifties came to a crash in holds with
Speaker 8: the military coup of nineteen sixty four. Once again, Brazil
Speaker 8: entered a period of authoritarian rule, placing anarchist activists in
Speaker 8: a precarious position. In May nineteen sixty four, anarchists from
Speaker 8: Rio de Janeiro and South Paolo organized a secret meeting
Speaker 8: to strategize, focused on safeguard and anarchist resources. Many went underground,
Speaker 8: facing renewed repression and uncertainty about the future of their movement.
Speaker 8: They shifted focused to education and cultural spaces to survive
Speaker 8: with initiatives like the newspaper or Protesto and the publishing
Speaker 8: house Helminal. Anarchists, including young students new to the cause,
Speaker 8: formed the libertarian student movement the MEL in nineteen sixty seven,
Speaker 8: with the intention of fixing a position and fighting back,
Speaker 8: as well as having an active presence in class and
Speaker 8: ideological struggles market out directions more in accordance with the
Speaker 8: federalist principles which governed the life of every class organization.
Speaker 8: But after one student, Edson Louise, was murdered by the
Speaker 8: military police, the MEL and other student initiatives faced heavy
Speaker 8: persecution after the nineteen sixty Institutional Acts Number five. With
Speaker 8: the AI five, which suspended most civil rights including herbiest corpus,
Speaker 8: allowed for the removal from office of opposition politicians, enabled
Speaker 8: federal interventions and municipalities and states, and enabled the institutionalization
Speaker 8: of arbitrary detention, taught and extra judicial killing by the regime.
Speaker 8: This military dictatorship that group Brazil from nineteen sixty four
Speaker 8: to nineteen eighty five forced anarchist movements into survival mood.
Speaker 8: In Rio de Janeiro, the Centro de Studo's professor Jose Equitica,
Speaker 8: operated secretly, while in South Paulo, the Centro de Cultural
Speaker 8: Sociel kept the flame of anarchist thought alive through underground
Speaker 8: propaganda and secret meetings. These centers were vital in maintaining
Speaker 8: connections with international anarchist movements, insurance the ideology persisted despite
Speaker 8: the harsh political climate. You see the importance of international
Speaker 8: solarity for in its head yet again, and you see
Speaker 8: also the importance of having cultural centers, social centers, community
Speaker 8: centers where they movement contraw strength even when it's not
Speaker 8: directly engaged in labor organizing or direct political struggle. Just
Speaker 8: that rejuvenation of community is enough to maintain the survival
Speaker 8: of that ideological struggle, even all hope seems lost.
Speaker 10: No, I mean this is something like you see a
Speaker 10: lot especially after or during like a movement that's faced
Speaker 10: incredible repression. Is that kind of it goes back to
Speaker 10: kind of its earlier forms, at least in terms of
Speaker 10: like like the like the social aspects. In some ways,
Speaker 10: it feels like it's kind of regressing back to kind
Speaker 10: of where it like started back in the last episode
Speaker 10: with some of those like same like you know, like
Speaker 10: like underground newspapers all this. Like this this like a
Speaker 10: cultural engagements, as you said, kind of like a way
Speaker 10: to like keep the light alive during like an intense,
Speaker 10: like military style effort of repression.
Speaker 8: Yeah, it's really quite necessary. Unfortunately, in nineteen sixty nine,
Speaker 8: the headquarters of Sepchu was raided by Air Force agents.
Speaker 8: The invasion resulted in the arrass and prospers of eighteen members,
Speaker 8: including the anarchist Adiel Perez, who endured a month of
Speaker 8: imprisonment and torture. So between nineteen seventy two nineteen seventy
Speaker 8: seven anarchists were forced into even greater degrees of secrecy,
Speaker 8: meeting in very small, title knit groups. In terms of
Speaker 8: organizational strength, this might have been the lowest point for
Speaker 8: anarchism in Brazil, but things began to shift in nineteen
Speaker 8: seventy seven as a dictatorship started to lose its grip.
Speaker 8: That year, the anarchist periodical or Animigouret or The King's Enemy,
Speaker 8: was launched in Bihir, marking a significant moment for the movement.
Speaker 8: This newspaper brought together student and union militants from various
Speaker 8: parts of the country Bahir, Rioligheiro, Sapaolo, Prio, grand Rasul,
Speaker 8: Paraiba and Para. Despite internal conflicts and ideological differences, the
Speaker 8: paper played a crucial role in reorganizing the anarchist movement,
Speaker 8: either the influence of the counterculture or Inimiguorey tackled issues
Speaker 8: like revolutionary unionism, anarchist syndicalism, the student movement, gender sexuality,
Speaker 8: and political theory. The paper ran until nineteen eighty two,
Speaker 8: and after hiatus resumed briefly between nineteen eighty seven and
Speaker 8: nineteen eighty eight. During this same period there was the
Speaker 8: first sign of notable anarchist engagement with the labor movement
Speaker 8: in years. Following a wave of strikes involving more than
Speaker 8: forty eight thousand workers, anarchists began questioning the bureaucratic union
Speaker 8: structures in South Paolo to Collectivo, the Britario de Opposichiao
Speaker 8: Syndical or COLLOPS was formed, closely aligned with the ideas
Speaker 8: of the Metalworkers Opposition movement. Collapse was officially established during
Speaker 8: the first National Meeting of Workers in Opposition to the
Speaker 8: Trade Union Structure or ENTOS, held in September nineteen eighty
Speaker 8: in NITROI. This meeting brought together in union opposition from
Speaker 8: sixteen states across Brazil, further spark in the revival of
Speaker 8: anarchist involvement in the labor movement. But one of the
Speaker 8: most significant developments to come out in this period was
Speaker 8: the rise of the movement Ento dos Trabahaldoes Urai Semterre,
Speaker 8: the Landless Workers Movement or MST, emerging nineteen eighty four,
Speaker 8: just before the end of the military regime, the MST
Speaker 8: became a mass movement with distinctly anarchist communist characteristics. It
Speaker 8: adopted decentralized, non hierarchical structure that prioritized autonomous direct action
Speaker 8: principles deeply aligned with anarchism. However, the MST has resisted
Speaker 8: being identified as explicitly anarchist, avoiding the label to maintain
Speaker 8: broader support and avoid the stigma attached to anarchist movements.
Speaker 8: Over time, while maintaining its independence, the MST has built
Speaker 8: alliances with the various political parties, including the Workers' Party,
Speaker 8: which would go on to form the government in two
Speaker 8: thousand and two. But the nineteen eighties, Brazilian anarchism began
Speaker 8: reflecting the broader new social movements that had emerged globally
Speaker 8: after the nineteen sixties. Ecology, feminism, and new discourses on
Speaker 8: sexuality were now key components of anarchists. Thought. Then I
Speaker 8: saw the rise of pro homosexual actists like Nestor Penger,
Speaker 8: and Argentinian born intellectual who became a central figure in
Speaker 8: Brazilian anarchist Son.
Speaker 10: You know, some have considered me a pro homosexual, Okay,
Speaker 10: but but no mean this is a continued It is
Speaker 10: interesting to see this like starting with student movements and
Speaker 10: then getting back into kind of labor over time after
Speaker 10: they like rebuild their movement through students and then continuing
Speaker 10: to like adopt more and more like modern social views
Speaker 10: and like cultural engagement. Have an image here of one
Speaker 10: of their newspapers that has what looks like two men
Speaker 10: having sex right on the cover. That's like the seventies,
Speaker 10: which is which is quite something.
Speaker 8: Incredible, must have been very scandalous at the time.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 8: Where the nineteen nineties, as Brazil transitioned to the New
Speaker 8: Republic and embraced new liberalism, anarchists became key players in
Speaker 8: shaping a wave of social movements. They actively helped to
Speaker 8: create and integrate into these movements, advocating their principles and strategies.
Speaker 8: One prominent example was Brazil's involvement in the global anti
Speaker 8: globalization movement, inspired by protests like the Seattle Wto demonstrations
Speaker 8: in nineteen ninety nine. In Brazil, this movement began in
Speaker 8: Santos on the same date, led by anarchists, ecologists, and libertarians.
Speaker 8: By two thousand, a coalition of these groups emerged, particularly
Speaker 8: in South Parlo and continued to organize in actions against
Speaker 8: the liberal policies until two thousand and three. The protest
Speaker 8: targeted institutions like the IMF, the World Bank and WO
Speaker 8: and introduced the black block tactic to Brazil. Anarchists also
Speaker 8: helped to establish Brazil's Center for Independent Media CMI, part
Speaker 8: of the Global Indie Media Network, which aimed to challenge
Speaker 8: means stree media dominance. Active between two thousand and one
Speaker 8: and two thousand and five, CMI was a key platform
Speaker 8: for independent journalism across fourteen Brazilian cities. Beyond protests, anarchists
Speaker 8: were involved in broader social movements, contributing to housing struggles
Speaker 8: in South Power and rerosion Ero, as well as supporting feminists, indigenous,
Speaker 8: black and LGBT causes. They played significant roles in movements
Speaker 8: like the National Movement of Collectors of Recyclable Material MMCR,
Speaker 8: the previously mentioned Landless Workers Movement or MSD, and the
Speaker 8: Homeless Workers Movement the MTSD, reflecting their deep involvement in
Speaker 8: Brazil's diverse social landscape. In the early two thousands, the
Speaker 8: anarchists popular Union the UNIPA helped form networks such as
Speaker 8: the Class and Combative Student Network or the RCC and
Speaker 8: the Federation of Revolutionary Syndicalist Organizations of Brazil or the
Speaker 8: FOB further cement and anarchism's influence in students and workers struggles.
Speaker 8: Despite being considered part of a or a leftist current,
Speaker 8: anarchists specifically made a lasting impact on Brazil's social movement
Speaker 8: during this period. Today, Brazilian anarchism continues to evolve, shaped
Speaker 8: by the principles vispacifismo, a strategy we anarchists work alongside
Speaker 8: broader social movements or maintaining their own distinct ideology. Many
Speaker 8: anarchist federations have found common cause with groups like the MST,
Speaker 8: supporting their struggles or promoting their own vision of a stateless,
Speaker 8: non hierarchical society. The story of anarchists in Brazil is
Speaker 8: one of endurance, adaptability, and reinvention. Despite decades of repression,
Speaker 8: the movement has continued to shape Brazil's political landscape, from
Speaker 8: underground propaganda dune ditatorship to the mass mobilization of landless
Speaker 8: workers and intellectuals alike.
Speaker 10: Similar to what they were doing ninety years ago. We've
Speaker 10: also seen a resurgence of anarchist anti fascism in Brazil. Indeed,
Speaker 10: around the same time we kind of saw this rise
Speaker 10: in the United States as well as in Europe with
Speaker 10: the emergence of these like right wing populist politicians between
Speaker 10: like Trump and Bolsonario, you've been seeing more of like
Speaker 10: the black block style anarchism in Brazil, which often kind
Speaker 10: of in this era went hand in hand with like
Speaker 10: anti fascist action in organizing.
Speaker 8: Indeed, so that's been the story, very summarized account like
Speaker 8: I would recommend that you check out. Of course, the
Speaker 8: scholarship of the folks I mentioned the beginning, the resources
Speaker 8: all across the Internet, particularly the Anarchists Library discussing Brazilian anarchism.
Speaker 8: This has been it can happen here. I've been Andrew Siege.
Speaker 8: You can find me on YouTube dot com, stash Andrewism
Speaker 8: feature dot com stas Saint Drew. I've been here with
Speaker 8: Gare and that's a piece.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to It could Happen Here, a podcast in
Speaker 2: which every week I sit down with my friends Mia
Speaker 2: and Garrison and I walk them through a little backyard
Speaker 2: chemistry project. Now today we are building a common commonly
Speaker 2: used explosive no paters called oh What's that?
Speaker 9: Cason.
Speaker 7: That is, we cannot give those instructions on air.
Speaker 2: Oh oh oh, well, what about what about for our
Speaker 2: DX like hexogen safe? We can make hexogen right?
Speaker 7: I think you need a special H tech stamp or
Speaker 7: permit to teach that.
Speaker 9: Sorry, what if we talk about how to make it
Speaker 9: in roadblocks?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 7: Yeah, no, that's fine. They haven't. They haven't cracked roadblocks yet.
Speaker 7: They correct minecraft.
Speaker 9: That's good, that's good. The FEDS don't know about that one.
Speaker 7: Okay, they don't know about that one yet.
Speaker 2: Well, in that case, I'm going to read these this
Speaker 2: ingredient list for pet in that I found in a
Speaker 2: torrent of Taylor Swift songs. So this is I'm certain
Speaker 2: the best information available right now. Anyway, we're talking this
Speaker 2: week about explosives. We're talking particularly about the fact that
Speaker 2: Israel just carry out an attack against Tesblah, a militant
Speaker 2: organization in Lebanon, using pet in, which is one of
Speaker 2: the two ingredients in Semtex. It is commonly used as
Speaker 2: the detonator. It's a stable, high explosive, so it's often
Speaker 2: used to like basically trigger the larger explosive charge.
Speaker 9: Which is generally like hexygen.
Speaker 2: You know, you mix the two together with like plastic
Speaker 2: agents and you get like that's where you get the
Speaker 2: traditional plastic explosives. And it's come out recently that the
Speaker 2: Masad managed to sneak some of this stuff, well sneak's
Speaker 2: not even really the right word, but they managed to
Speaker 2: impregnate a batch of pagers and radios with pet in. Now,
Speaker 2: this was a pretty big story last week. I think
Speaker 2: a lot of people are focusing kind of on the
Speaker 2: wrong parts of it. But yeah, that's what we're going
Speaker 2: to be talking about today because there's an element of
Speaker 2: this story that hasn't gotten out, which is the degree
Speaker 2: to which what Israel did to hasblah here is something
Speaker 2: that anybody with roughly thirty thousand dollars could imitate to
Speaker 2: a surprising degree of fidelity. Like, this is an attack
Speaker 2: that is deeply easy to carry out, and the fact
Speaker 2: that Israel has kind of made the decision to pull
Speaker 2: this up is a kind of the breaking of a
Speaker 2: seal in a way, and I think it portins some
Speaker 2: very frightening things for all of us, and particularly for
Speaker 2: air travel.
Speaker 9: So that's what we're going to be talking about today.
Speaker 10: Do you think like the the either like hijacking or
Speaker 10: infiltration of the supply chain is as replicable for yes,
Speaker 10: a non state agency.
Speaker 2: Yes, that is the thing that is scariest about this
Speaker 2: attack to me, and that is going to be kind
Speaker 2: of the meat of what talking about. We should probably
Speaker 2: start by this sort of laying out the scale the attack.
Speaker 7: I mean, I also have one main question. What's a pager?
Speaker 2: So Garrison, once upon a time, Uh huh, we kind
Speaker 2: of had the ability to broadcast signals over large areas,
Speaker 2: but it was a real pain in the ass to
Speaker 2: like do that with a phone call or anything but
Speaker 2: a couple of words at a time. Oh so like
Speaker 2: a text message, like a text message, except for you
Speaker 2: can't really respond to it. Oh okay, but it looked
Speaker 2: pretty cool to clip on your belt in the late nineties,
Speaker 2: if you were like one of the doctors on the
Speaker 2: set of Er.
Speaker 9: Did you ever watch Er Garrison?
Speaker 7: Were you too young for that? That's the George Clooney show, right.
Speaker 2: Cluone tang, But yes, he looked great in it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: So that's that's where pagers came from. Was the television
Speaker 2: show Er, written by Michael Crichton, which means pagers are
Speaker 2: related to dinosaurs.
Speaker 9: And yeah, so.
Speaker 2: Israel managed to get We'll talk a little bit later
Speaker 2: about how, but they managed to get explosives in an
Speaker 2: unknown number, but certainly hundreds of these walkie talkies, particularly
Speaker 2: in the batteries. By the end of the first day
Speaker 2: of attacks, round a dozen people were dead and twenty
Speaker 2: seven hundred had been wounded.
Speaker 9: Many people.
Speaker 2: Seriously, there's like horrible videos of folks going flying off
Speaker 2: of bicycles and the like when this stuff detonates, Like
Speaker 2: it takes very little petn to create a pretty significant explosion,
Speaker 2: and we're looking at about like zero point one point
Speaker 2: one grams I think of explosive agent actually in each
Speaker 2: walkie talkie, which was enough to kill in May May
Speaker 2: shitload of people. Some of these folks were members of Hesbelah.
Speaker 2: I think HESBLA has confirmed that eight of their fighters
Speaker 2: were killed. At least four of the dead are children,
Speaker 2: and the second day of the attack, a bunch of
Speaker 2: radios went off as well. Another twenty people were killed
Speaker 2: and hundreds more wounded. So you're talking about a very
Speaker 2: sizable attack. Israel is not claimed credit for this, but
Speaker 2: the New York Times has done some pretty keep reporting
Speaker 2: on this, and per that quote, twelve current and former
Speaker 2: defense and intelligence officials who were briefed on the attack
Speaker 2: say the Israelis were behind it.
Speaker 9: And it's just also obvious that this was Israel who else,
Speaker 9: Like who else would do this?
Speaker 2: Now, one of the reasons I'm getting into this is
Speaker 2: that there were a lot like the first kind of
Speaker 2: concern that people had when this attack was carried out
Speaker 2: is like, oh shit, was this some sort of a hack?
Speaker 2: Did Israel exploit some sort of a glitch in how
Speaker 2: these products batteries worked and basically like hack them to
Speaker 2: cause a runaway thermal escalation within the battery that led
Speaker 2: to it detonating.
Speaker 10: Is all of our electronics just one hack away from
Speaker 10: turning from being turned into a bob No?
Speaker 2: And I understand why people focused on that aspect of it,
Speaker 2: but it led to I think some articles that are
Speaker 2: this is going to be one of those we always
Speaker 2: we try to I hope we usually managed to be
Speaker 2: the like calm voices in the room, but this is
Speaker 2: one of those cases where really people need to be
Speaker 2: less calm. And I do want to highlight an article
Speaker 2: that I think went in the wrong direction on that front.
Speaker 2: It's a CNN business piece called we still don't know
Speaker 2: how the Lebanon pager attack happened. Here's what we do
Speaker 2: know about our own electronic devices, and I'm going to
Speaker 2: read a quote from that. In short, your communications device
Speaker 2: is not at risk for exploding unless it's heavily tampered with,
Speaker 2: un least with explosives.
Speaker 9: Experts who spoke.
Speaker 2: To CNN set Justin Kappos, a cybersecurity professor at NYU,
Speaker 2: said that it's possible to cause damage to a variety
Speaker 2: of batteries, most commonly lithium batteries, but he said it
Speaker 2: seems like the devices were intentionally designed to explode when triggered,
Speaker 2: not a pager that everyone else in the world is using.
Speaker 2: If you're a normal person with a lithium ion battery,
Speaker 2: I would not be over concerned about this CAPO set
Speaker 2: and I think that that is an error, and we're
Speaker 2: going to get into as to why. But let's talk
Speaker 2: about how Israel did this first. And this is again
Speaker 2: all kind of per the New York Times reporting how
Speaker 2: Israel built a modern day trojan horse. They seem to
Speaker 2: be the first people who have kind of put all
Speaker 2: of this together to an extent that is probably pretty
Speaker 2: close to accurate. There are some debates as to like,
Speaker 2: did they actually have a detonator in here or did
Speaker 2: they cause a thermal because PETN, while it's very stable,
Speaker 2: can be set off by heat. So it's theoretically possible
Speaker 2: to get a battery hot enough that it can detonate PETN,
Speaker 2: but it's not going to be as reliable as using
Speaker 2: something like a bridge wire cap like a traditional like
Speaker 2: triggering device, and so it's a little bit unclear as
Speaker 2: to how this was made. But whatever the case, basically
Speaker 2: what Israel did is they made their own batteries for
Speaker 2: walkie talkies that were clones of an earlier kind of
Speaker 2: walkie talkie made by a Taiwanese company that were no
Speaker 2: longer in production. Right, so, this Taiwanese company had made
Speaker 2: real walkie talkies for a while, they stopped making them.
Speaker 2: Israel got their hands on some originals and manufactured copies.
Speaker 2: Now that is the part of this that would be
Speaker 2: hard to replicate. But the copies of the walkie talkies
Speaker 2: themselves were not the explosive agent. What actually where the
Speaker 2: explosives were was in the detachable battery, and Masad crafted
Speaker 2: batteries themselves for these walkie talkies and wove PETN into
Speaker 2: the batteries. So if you haven't really looked at a
Speaker 2: lithium ion battery like one of the kinds of batteries
Speaker 2: that you're going to like, I mean, it's similar to
Speaker 2: the ones in your phone, but it's just also like
Speaker 2: any kind of electronics battery. They are kind of these
Speaker 2: weird folded things, like they look just like a little
Speaker 2: square packet, usually with like a cord coming off of
Speaker 2: it if you actually look at the battery. But the
Speaker 2: way they're asseymbled is they're like laminated into an aluminum
Speaker 2: foil pouch. And while you are kind of doing that
Speaker 2: laminating process, you can basically just weave some PETN into
Speaker 2: like alongside the battery, and it will cost you a
Speaker 2: small fraction of the batteries, like life like, you won't
Speaker 2: get as much actual battery time out of it, but
Speaker 2: it's not going to detonate on its own. PTN is
Speaker 2: They actually just conducted in twenty twenty a study to
Speaker 2: show that it can last for years. This is like
Speaker 2: the compound we use in the detonators in our nuclear devices.
Speaker 2: Once you get a bunch of walkie talkies that are
Speaker 2: impregnated with this stuff out there. You could sit on
Speaker 2: them for years until like you needed to actually use them. Now,
Speaker 2: the key thing about this, it seems like when you're
Speaker 2: talking about wrapping a battery that's got you know, plastic
Speaker 2: explosives in it, well, that's the kind of thing that
Speaker 2: only a state level actor can do. And this is
Speaker 2: going to bring me to the source that I really
Speaker 2: want to get to people for this episode, which is
Speaker 2: an article by a guy named Andrew Hwang at Bunny's Studios.
Speaker 2: Andrew is a computer scientist. He's got a doctorate in
Speaker 2: philosophy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and kind of
Speaker 2: critically for some personal projects that he had done. Recently,
Speaker 2: he has manufied lectured his own lithium ion batteries, and
Speaker 2: in doing so, he's figured out like how to actually
Speaker 2: build a personal production line to make batteries like this
Speaker 2: that you could customize to fit into kind of basically
Speaker 2: any kind of electronic device you want. You can buy
Speaker 2: an entire pouch cell production line that will allow you
Speaker 2: to make your own custom lithium ion batteries using Alibaba
Speaker 2: dot Com. Yeah oh boy, Yeah, so that's great, right,
Speaker 2: or lithi Yeah, these are lithium pouch batteries, and it
Speaker 2: costs about fifteen thousand dollars in order to be able
Speaker 2: to make somewhere between like a few dozen and several
Speaker 2: hundred of these, right, So fifteen grand will provide you
Speaker 2: with all of the materials you need to from the
Speaker 2: ground up make at least, you know, probably a couple
Speaker 2: hundred pouch sell batteries.
Speaker 8: Right.
Speaker 2: And it's the kind of thing where it's not just
Speaker 2: any idiot could do it, but any reason intelligent person
Speaker 2: with the degree of like experience and engineering can do it.
Speaker 8: Right.
Speaker 2: Andrew is obviously a very smart guy with a lot
Speaker 2: of capabilities that you know, a layperson might not have.
Speaker 2: But basically any kind of competent engineer could figure this
Speaker 2: out pretty much. And you're talking again, a few thousand
Speaker 2: dollars to get potentially, you know, hundreds or even more
Speaker 2: of these made. Now, the other side of the attack
Speaker 2: here is that the Israelis created a bunch of shell companies.
Speaker 2: You know, they started manufacturing copies of these walkie talkies
Speaker 2: so that they could put their own explosives impregnated batteries
Speaker 2: in them. And then they built a bunch of shady
Speaker 2: ass companies in order to sell them. This was effectively
Speaker 2: what they were doing was creating like an Amazon like
Speaker 2: shipping company, right, and the same way that like anybody
Speaker 2: who wanted to, can you know, get a business license
Speaker 2: and get access to like a bunch of electronics and
Speaker 2: sell them on Amazon, like you could buy a consignment
Speaker 2: of a thousand walkie talkies, make your own batteries for them,
Speaker 2: and sell them on Amazon. Amazon does not do a
Speaker 2: particularly like any really checking up on the people who
Speaker 2: choose to sell through their site. And even if they
Speaker 2: were to do that, PETN is effectively impossible to find.
Speaker 8: Right.
Speaker 2: There is a way to scan for it, but it
Speaker 2: takes like a half hour per package, and it's the
Speaker 2: kind of thing where even if you're taking this stuff apart,
Speaker 2: unless you have someone who is like doing chemical tests
Speaker 2: on what's in there, anyone who's even someone who is
Speaker 2: moderately trained, is not going to be able to recognize
Speaker 2: a battery that's had some pet and put into it
Speaker 2: from like a regular battery. So I'm going to read
Speaker 2: another quote from that New York Times article about how
Speaker 2: the Masad kind of structured the shell companies here that
Speaker 2: allowed them to pose as a company making pagers. By
Speaker 2: all appearances, BAC Consulting was a Hungary based company that
Speaker 2: was under contract to produce the devices on behalf of
Speaker 2: a Taiwanese company, gold Apollo. In fact, it was part
Speaker 2: of an Israeli front. According to three intelligence officers briefed
Speaker 2: on the operation, BAC did take on ordinary clients, for
Speaker 2: which it produced a range of ordinary pages, but the
Speaker 2: only client that really mattered was Hesbelah, and its pages
Speaker 2: were far from ordinary.
Speaker 7: Why were hesblow using pages in the first place?
Speaker 11: Oh, yeah, I can talk about that.
Speaker 10: Couldn't they afford it an iPhone? Great question or something? Well,
Speaker 10: I think we'll let mea talk about that a second.
Speaker 10: But gar I will say an initial response to that.
Speaker 10: You know how like all of the activists in the
Speaker 10: United States after twenty twenty especially are saying like, hey,
Speaker 10: your phone isn't safe, don't use your phone, you know
Speaker 10: for any kind of like actions.
Speaker 9: The state can listen in on that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Well Hesbela has been paranoid about that for
Speaker 2: a long time, and the Masade actually has spent a
Speaker 2: lot of effort spreading rumors within Hesblah about how capable
Speaker 2: Israel's smartphone exploits are like how strong their ability to
Speaker 2: like listen and on conversations, and that played a significant
Speaker 2: role in changing like policy from the top and hes
Speaker 2: a lot to like we are going to use the
Speaker 2: lowest tech communications solutions possible, and we're going to talk
Speaker 2: some more about that.
Speaker 9: You know, it's not low tech.
Speaker 7: These products and services that support this very podcast.
Speaker 2: That's right, high tech and absolutely no explosives in them,
Speaker 2: probably but really there would be no way to tell
Speaker 2: if there were.
Speaker 9: And we're back Mia, you wanted to talk.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 11: The only thing I want to mention about that is
Speaker 11: so there's been a lot of focus in terms of
Speaker 11: the page you use on like on Hesbela trying to
Speaker 11: build this communications grid that's like more difficult to like
Speaker 11: do to compromise, Yeah, yeah, we well to compromise from
Speaker 11: like digitally right. But the other thing that's kind of
Speaker 11: going on here that I think is getting a lot
Speaker 11: less attention is that Lebanon's economy has been an absolute
Speaker 11: shit show for probably like eight nine years now. There's
Speaker 11: a massive dollars front kind of.
Speaker 2: The terminal like heart attack moment was that barge exploding,
Speaker 2: but it had not been doing it had been on
Speaker 2: the road down.
Speaker 11: I mean there were there were, I mean there were
Speaker 11: there have been huge riots there over. So part of
Speaker 11: what's going on is like there aren't dollars in the economy,
Speaker 11: and this has made everything unbelievably expensive, and one of
Speaker 11: the things that's unbelievably expensive is phone calls, and so
Speaker 11: there are I don't think there's been much coverage of this,
Speaker 11: but it's like there's also just regular people also use
Speaker 11: pages for things in order to set up what a
Speaker 11: phone call is going to be, because if you're going
Speaker 11: to have a phone call with someone, you have to
Speaker 11: make sure that both of you are like there. So
Speaker 11: it's it's not purely just a military thing. It's also
Speaker 11: just because of how unbelievably expensive like calling people has gotten,
Speaker 11: and this sort of terminal crisis of the Lebanese economy
Speaker 11: in the sense that like there aren't dollars to pay
Speaker 11: for things, and so we've gotten to this point where
Speaker 11: even even sort of stuff that we consider like fairly
Speaker 11: basically not that expensive, like phone service, has just gotten
Speaker 11: unbelievably expensive for everyone. And this is sort of caused Yeah,
Speaker 11: a lot of like regular people who have no affiliation
Speaker 11: with this whatsoever, to sort of move down the technology
Speaker 11: chain because it's just expensive.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and again it's this kind of perfect storm of
Speaker 2: like paranoia and economics sort of factors colliding here. But
Speaker 2: the sort of gist of it is Israel definitely wanted
Speaker 2: to push has a lot to adopting, Like they clearly
Speaker 2: had an understanding of what they could do and wanted
Speaker 2: deliberately to kind of push for this because it's a
Speaker 2: lot easier to get some a manufactured explosive and it
Speaker 2: would have been a lot harder to do this with
Speaker 2: like iPhones, right, Not that Israel hasn't done this with
Speaker 2: cell phones in the past, sure, very famously. Back I
Speaker 2: think it was the nine. There is this Palestinian man
Speaker 2: yahya Ayash, who was I think generally credited as like
Speaker 2: kind of an architect of like car bombing attacks, who
Speaker 2: the Masad killed with a cell phone that they had
Speaker 2: put it explosives in it. In that case, it was
Speaker 2: a very labor intensive process with a single phone meant
Speaker 2: to target and blow the head off of like one guy.
Speaker 2: This is like a much more reckless and much more
Speaker 2: like civilian casualty open operation. Again, I'm going to quote
Speaker 2: from that New York Times article in Lebanon's Baca Valley,
Speaker 2: in the village of Sarain, one young girl, Fatima Abdullah,
Speaker 2: had just come home from her first day of fourth
Speaker 2: grade when she heard her father's pager begin to beep.
Speaker 2: Her aunt said she picked up the device to bring
Speaker 2: it to him and was holding it when it exploded,
Speaker 2: killing her. Fatima was nine. It's probably worth noting here
Speaker 2: that while HESBLA is a militant group, they are also
Speaker 2: effectively the state in a decent chunk of Lebanon, and
Speaker 2: a lot of the folks who would have these because
Speaker 2: these these pagers and radios were generally seen as part
Speaker 2: of like a defensive measure, like if there is an attack,
Speaker 2: if we go to war again, these are our safe
Speaker 2: comm system, right Like this is our like low tech
Speaker 2: comm system to allow us to like stay in touch.
Speaker 2: So a lot of these people would have been folks
Speaker 2: whose role was more on the social side of things
Speaker 2: rather than like actual armed militants. You have no way
Speaker 2: of knowing who you're blowing up. Everyone's just getting these devices.
Speaker 2: And it's interesting to me that the Masad or that Netanyahu,
Speaker 2: because I'm sure this order had to have come from
Speaker 2: the top gave the order to carry out this attack. Now,
Speaker 2: they had had these in place for a while. Exactly
Speaker 2: when is a little bit unclear, but long enough that
Speaker 2: there was like a nickname for the attack itself that
Speaker 2: everyone knew they were going to carry out at some point.
Speaker 2: So it's a little bit like, I wonder why this
Speaker 2: was specifically targeted for this point in time. I kind
Speaker 2: of suspect it may have been due to the fact
Speaker 2: that Israel's actual like ground forces are still tied up
Speaker 2: in Gaza, and so they were looking for a way
Speaker 2: to escalate with Lebanon, with Hesbelah that didn't necessitate the
Speaker 2: deployment of forces that you know, would still have a
Speaker 2: massive impact and be disruptive, which this certainly was. But
Speaker 2: you know, when it comes to kind of us and
Speaker 2: like why we're talking about this today, it's the fact
Speaker 2: that this is I think a Pandora's Box style attack,
Speaker 2: right like you have at this point opened up the
Speaker 2: possibility to doing this to any actor that has the resources,
Speaker 2: and as we've noted about, fifteen grand will get you
Speaker 2: the capacity to manufacture battery packs like this. You can
Speaker 2: just go on Ali Baba and buy things like radios
Speaker 2: or there doesn't have to be that you could get
Speaker 2: you know, like most a lot of people now carry
Speaker 2: around battery devices, right, like external batteries to charge their
Speaker 2: phones when they're out. Sure, you can purchase those from
Speaker 2: Ali Baba by the thousand. You can disassemble them, stick
Speaker 2: in your own batteries, And it's not the kind of
Speaker 2: thing where you have to be capable of doing this
Speaker 2: on the scale that the Masade did. You could stick
Speaker 2: this and you could buy two thousand batteries. You could
Speaker 2: stick this in two hundred of them, your own replacement
Speaker 2: explosive packs, and you could just send those out into
Speaker 2: the world, right Especially. One of the things that scares
Speaker 2: me is the idea of you get a bunch of
Speaker 2: these shipped get you impregnate a few with explosives, but
Speaker 2: you have a bunch of batteries that you then have
Speaker 2: on you know, shipping through the air right and trigger
Speaker 2: in the air like while they're being shipped to a destination.
Speaker 2: Like it's the kind of thing you would eventually be
Speaker 2: able to unravel who had created the front companies and
Speaker 2: the like, But there really is nothing built into the
Speaker 2: system that would very effectively be able to tell that
Speaker 2: you'd done this as long as you there was a
Speaker 2: degree of caretaken in the manufacturing process. And I want
Speaker 2: to turn back to Andrew Hwang's article here, and this
Speaker 2: is him talking about the way in which you could
Speaker 2: hide the fact that you had impregnated these battery packs
Speaker 2: with explosives. Once folded into the core of the battery,
Speaker 2: it is sealed in an aluminum pouch. If the manufacturing
Speaker 2: process carefully isolates the folding line from the laminating line
Speaker 2: and or rinses the outside of the pouch with acetone
Speaker 2: to dissolve away any pet in residue prior to marking,
Speaker 2: no explosive residue can escape the pouch, thus defeating swabs
Speaker 2: that look for chemical residue. It may also well evade
Speaker 2: methods such as X ray fluorescence because the elements that
Speaker 2: compose the battery separator and PETN are too similar and
Speaker 2: too light to be detected, and through case methods like
Speaker 2: sours spatially offset Ramen spectroscopy would likely be defeated by
Speaker 2: the multi layer copper laminate structure of the battery itself,
Speaker 2: blocking light from probing inner layers. Thus, I would pose
Speaker 2: it that a lithium battery constructed with a pet in
Speaker 2: layer inside is largely undetectable. And this is from like
Speaker 2: folks I have talked to who have a degree of
Speaker 2: expertise in the matter. I think very accurate, and I think,
Speaker 2: you know, even if you're not striking air travel here
Speaker 2: number one, it would be easy to get stuff like
Speaker 2: this on planes and people. There was in December some
Speaker 2: somebody attempted to and just kind of their detonation method failed,
Speaker 2: which is kind of with explosives. When people don't die
Speaker 2: and explosive attacks, what always saves them is it's kind
Speaker 2: of tricky to get the detonators right. But I'm very
Speaker 2: worried that the masade has effectively provided people with a
Speaker 2: perfect plan of attack to fuck with air travel or
Speaker 2: to fuck with the supply lines, because it imagine, just
Speaker 2: like a couple hundred people over the space of a
Speaker 2: week or so have battery packs or other electronics detonate
Speaker 2: on their person, like or a couple of dozen people.
Speaker 2: What that does both to the economy, to the supply lines,
Speaker 2: Like the extent to which that would be disruptive in
Speaker 2: society is like, the potential is enormous, and the potential
Speaker 2: for like runaway terror is enormous.
Speaker 10: Yeah, I mean that was one of the first things
Speaker 10: that we talked about once news of this drop is
Speaker 10: like beyond the actual like physical injuries and death caused
Speaker 10: by this attack, this is like primarily an infrastructure attack.
Speaker 10: In this case completely destroys like the communications infrastructure of HESBLA.
Speaker 10: But in like, yeah, the strategy behind this attack, it
Speaker 10: can be used just to target various types of infrastructure,
Speaker 10: whether that be like supply chains, travel, It puts distrust
Speaker 10: in your own equipment, and certainly it's application on like
Speaker 10: airlines is obviously very worrying.
Speaker 2: Well, it's very worrying. And one of the things that
Speaker 2: I keep thinking about is the degree to which the
Speaker 2: way Amazon has restructured the economy, and particularly the way
Speaker 2: that like digital commerce works, has created an opportunity for
Speaker 2: a malicious actor to carry out an attack like this
Speaker 2: with excellent security. Because you don't even have to be
Speaker 2: the one shipping these out right. No, you can get
Speaker 2: I mean you have to shift them at some point,
Speaker 2: but you can ship them to a third party that
Speaker 2: is the actual company that deals with Amazon, if you
Speaker 2: have enough kind of resources and ingenuity behind it, basically
Speaker 2: set up a drop shipping scam where you were having
Speaker 2: someone else send explosives to Amazon, which provides a lot
Speaker 2: of opportunity for you to both get away and a
Speaker 2: lot of opportunity to you could seede with a couple
Speaker 2: of different manufacturers, different devices.
Speaker 10: It's like terrorism in the era of the gig economy. Yeah,
Speaker 10: And that was one of the reasons I like to
Speaker 10: Fincher's recent movie The Killer, Yeah, just in terms of
Speaker 10: how much of the gig economy was like worked into
Speaker 10: these traditional industries, whether that be like terrorism, because hitmen
Speaker 10: aren't really real.
Speaker 7: But certainly terrorism is.
Speaker 10: And I think there's a lot of ways that these
Speaker 10: things can be applied in this kind of bizarre uber
Speaker 10: Amazon world that we've created where the economy is just
Speaker 10: so fractured in all these little ways.
Speaker 11: There's also I think the sort of production angle to
Speaker 11: which is that because the way that manufacturing is happening
Speaker 11: has become so decentralized and because it's become based on
Speaker 11: these it's kind of less so now. But a lot
Speaker 11: of like Chinese manufacturing had worked like this, where you'd
Speaker 11: get these sort of like smaller pop up things, and
Speaker 11: each of these sort of like fairly small like production
Speaker 11: facilities is like shipping stuff to like a larger one
Speaker 11: who's like doing assembly or whatever. But that means that Yeah,
Speaker 11: like as you're saying with Alli Bob, it's like all
Speaker 11: of this stuff is just available to purchase because it's
Speaker 11: designed to be sold to these people who are like
Speaker 11: starting their sort of like small scale like production line.
Speaker 10: Yeah, there's no quality control, there's no intense vetting. It's
Speaker 10: all extremely accessible. It's very easy to infiltrate this process.
Speaker 2: Yeah, here's another line from that Andro Huang article on
Speaker 2: Bunny at Bunny's Studios, be you in an Ie Studios,
Speaker 2: which is his blog. You don't even have to go
Speaker 2: so far as offering anyone a bribe or being a
Speaker 2: state level agency to get tampered batteries into a supply chain.
Speaker 2: Anyone can buy a bunch of items from Amazon, swap
Speaker 2: out the batteries, restore the packaging and seals, and return
Speaker 2: the goods to the warehouse. And yes, there is already
Speaker 2: a whole industry devoted to copying packaging and security seals
Speaker 2: for the purpose of warranty fraud. The perpetrator will be
Speaker 2: long gone by the time the device is resold.
Speaker 11: Yeah, and the other worrying part about that too is
Speaker 11: that you know, okay, so getting the explosives to work
Speaker 11: is kind of difficult, right, Like bomb making is not easy, but.
Speaker 9: You have to have a degree of competence.
Speaker 11: Yes, but the actual cost fifteen thousand dollars like that,
Speaker 11: that's not even like you're looking at like a millionaire,
Speaker 11: Like that's just something your local dentist can afford to
Speaker 11: pull off.
Speaker 2: You could carry out an attack like this in terms
Speaker 2: of cash expenditure for the cost of like a reasonably
Speaker 2: nice car, which is not prohibitive to a large scale
Speaker 2: international terrorist organization.
Speaker 11: Or even just like a rich guy. Yeah, not even
Speaker 11: that rich guy can pull this off, yep, Which is.
Speaker 10: I guess the kind of the main inhibiting factor is
Speaker 10: we still don't quite know how Israel got these two detonates, yes,
Speaker 10: whether that is some sort of hack that overheated the battery,
Speaker 10: whether it was like a message that was sent out
Speaker 10: that like triggered something.
Speaker 7: Within the device.
Speaker 2: It seems to have been a message that mede the
Speaker 2: explosive detonates, because they did send a message immediately before,
Speaker 2: so it seems to have been tied to some extent
Speaker 2: with a message. Andrew Hwang kind of looked into and
Speaker 2: came to the conclusion that you could very well do
Speaker 2: a thermal runaway to set this off, but obviously the
Speaker 2: messade doesn't have any trouble getting a hold of military detonators.
Speaker 2: Wang also walked through how you could build a circuit
Speaker 2: into the actual battery itself, like a trigger circuit. You know,
Speaker 2: I'm just gonna go ahead, and I'm going to go
Speaker 2: ahead and talk about this a little bit when we
Speaker 2: come back, but let's do our second ad break now
Speaker 2: before we tell everyone how to detonated plastic explosives.
Speaker 9: This is going to be the one that gets all arrested. Yeah,
Speaker 9: and we're back.
Speaker 2: Here's a quote from Andrew on how these might have
Speaker 2: been detonated. Detonating the pet in is a bit more tricky.
Speaker 2: Without a detonator, PETN may conflagrate burn fast instead of
Speaker 2: detonating and creating the much more damaging shockwave. However, the
Speaker 2: Wikipedia page notes that an electric spark with an energy
Speaker 2: in the range of ten to sixty millidules is sufficient
Speaker 2: to initiate detonation. Based on available descriptions of the devices
Speaker 2: getting hot prior to detonation, one might suppose that detonation
Speaker 2: is initiated by a trigger circuit shorting out the battery pack,
Speaker 2: causing the internal polymer spacers to melt and eventually the
Speaker 2: cathode anode pairs coming into contact, creating a spark. Such
Speaker 2: a spark may furthermore be guaranteed across the pet in
Speaker 2: sheet by introducing a small defect, such as a slight
Speaker 2: dimple in the surrounding cathode anoid layers. Once the packets
Speaker 2: to the melting point of the spacers, the dimpled region
Speaker 2: is likely to connect, leading to a spark that then
Speaker 2: detonates the PETN layer sandwich between the cathode and anode layers.
Speaker 2: But where do you hide this trigger circuit? It turns
Speaker 2: out that almost every lithium polymer pack has a small
Speaker 2: circuit board embedded in it called the PCM or protection
Speaker 2: Circuit module. It contains a microcontroller, often in a tssop
Speaker 2: eight package, and at least one or more large transistors
Speaker 2: capable of handling the current capacity.
Speaker 9: Of the battery. And basically that's where you put it. Oops. Oops,
Speaker 9: and again I did talk to.
Speaker 2: Someone with expertise and explosives who said that they thought
Speaker 2: it was likelier that there was a conventional detonator, not
Speaker 2: because it would have been impossible to do with a
Speaker 2: thermal runway or the way that Andrew's set up, but
Speaker 2: because this is the masade, they have access to detonators,
Speaker 2: and a detonator guarantees that you get the proper kind
Speaker 2: of explosion. But again, even if you're using kind of
Speaker 2: the less Gucci method here, that would be available to
Speaker 2: a non state actor. If only fifty out of the
Speaker 2: three hundred devices you impregnate with explosives do a proper
Speaker 2: explosion and the rest just kind of conflagrate, well, that's
Speaker 2: still a very successful attack. You can do a tremendous
Speaker 2: amount of damage to people's sense of well being, into
Speaker 2: the economy to supply lines by carrying out an attack
Speaker 2: like that.
Speaker 10: This is so terroristic nature and like if any other
Speaker 10: group did this, like it has blood. Yeah, if homocitis attack.
Speaker 9: Oh my god, we would be we would be bombing
Speaker 9: them right now. Yeah.
Speaker 10: If some like just random like accelerationist network somehow pulled
Speaker 10: this off, like ye, we would be pully or hair out.
Speaker 7: We would we would like go to war over something
Speaker 7: like this.
Speaker 10: And the fact that it's like it's this type of
Speaker 10: attack is only okay when this one military does it
Speaker 10: is just I don't.
Speaker 7: Know what to do aniven, They've endangered.
Speaker 2: There, they have endangered everyone, right, Like, like every single
Speaker 2: person listening to this is less safe because it is
Speaker 2: reel carried out this attack.
Speaker 7: What is airport screening going to look like if this
Speaker 7: keeps happening?
Speaker 9: Importantly?
Speaker 2: Am I going to be able to take all of
Speaker 2: my batteries on the planes that I could play video
Speaker 2: games on a fourteen hour flight?
Speaker 9: Garrison? You know, Yeah, the plugs in the seats don't
Speaker 9: always work well.
Speaker 10: I mean, and even like what if you're able to
Speaker 10: do this to like the electronics of like the pilot jeez,
Speaker 10: and then you just you just like take out an
Speaker 10: entire airpa.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 10: It's like it's such a fucked up Pandora's box that
Speaker 10: it feels like there's gonna be no real consequences for
Speaker 10: which is just kind of yeah, things have been this
Speaker 10: past year, I guess.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 11: And the other the other issue with it is that
Speaker 11: like the only way to fix this would be an
Speaker 11: actual like you would you would have to change how
Speaker 11: our supply chains work, and it's like, well, no one's
Speaker 11: gonna do that.
Speaker 7: No one.
Speaker 11: There is no number of people that you like, maybe
Speaker 11: if they literally killed the president of the United States,
Speaker 11: maybe you could get enough political capital together to try
Speaker 11: to do something about it.
Speaker 2: But like, there's no way, no, and there's there's no way,
Speaker 2: and like the way the state will respond to this
Speaker 2: is by making air travel vastly worse. Right, Yeah, it's
Speaker 2: probably not the only thing that they will do. But
Speaker 2: that is like because there's just not an actual it's
Speaker 2: not really with present technology, there's not an easy way
Speaker 2: to actually find these things, like within kind of the
Speaker 2: context of like air travel, or the way in which
Speaker 2: like digital merchandising works, right, which is again why the
Speaker 2: Masad probably should have done this.
Speaker 7: What many reasons?
Speaker 9: What of many reasons, the dead kids being another.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I do want to conclude I've quoted a lot
Speaker 2: from Andrew Huang's wonderful article turning everyday gadgets into bombs
Speaker 2: is a bad idea, But I want to quote from
Speaker 2: his conclusion here. Not all things that could exist should exist,
Speaker 2: and some ideas are better left unimplemented. Technology alone has
Speaker 2: no ethics. The difference between a patch and an exploit
Speaker 2: is the method in which a technology is disclosed. Exploding
Speaker 2: batteries have probably been conceived of and tested by spy
Speaker 2: agencies around the world, but never deployed en Moss because
Speaker 2: while it may achieve a tactical win, it is too
Speaker 2: easy for weaker adversaries to copy the idea and justify
Speaker 2: its redeployment in an asymmetric and devastating retaliation. However, now
Speaker 2: that I've seen it executed, I am left with the
Speaker 2: terrifying realization that not only is it feasible, it's relatively
Speaker 2: easy for any modestly funded entity to implement. Not just
Speaker 2: our allies can do this. A wide cast of adversaries
Speaker 2: have this capability in their reach, from nation states to
Speaker 2: cartels and gangs to shady copycat battery factories just looking
Speaker 2: for a big payday. If chemical suppliers can moonlight and
Speaker 2: illicit drugs, what stops battery factories from dealing in bespoke munitions.
Speaker 2: The bottom line is we should approach the public policy
Speaker 2: debate around this, assuming that someday we could be victims
Speaker 2: of exploding batteries too. Turning everyday objects into fragmentation to
Speaker 2: grenades should be a crime, as it blurs the line
Speaker 2: between civilian and military technologies and that should be something
Speaker 2: everyone can agree on.
Speaker 10: Yeah, yeah, I think I think so Jesus Christ just
Speaker 10: as enacting terrorism through like the gig economy ecosystem. Yeah,
Speaker 10: and oh boy, what a fun time we've we've built
Speaker 10: for ourselves.
Speaker 9: What a great fresh hell for us all.
Speaker 11: Yeah, very excited first to have our first drop shipping
Speaker 11: terrorist attack.
Speaker 3: It's going to be great. It's going to be it's
Speaker 3: gonna be great.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 11: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Anyway, folks, maybe drive next trip you got to take,
Speaker 2: probably should note before we come out here. The obvious question,
Speaker 2: and there's not a long answer to this for obvious reasons,
Speaker 2: is like, well, couldn't nonstate actor get their hands on
Speaker 2: PETN or RDX, you know these kind of explosive compounds
Speaker 2: that you can make into plastic explosives. And the short
Speaker 2: answer is yes, any moderately competent chemist with the right
Speaker 2: ingredients could make this stuff and they're not super hard
Speaker 2: to find. But also a lot of people in commercial
Speaker 2: spaces particularly have access to pet in. It's a kind
Speaker 2: of thing that like is commonently demolition, right, yeah, it's
Speaker 2: coming to demolition. It's also something artists use a good amount.
Speaker 2: There is a specific formulation of pet in where they
Speaker 2: make it like a thin sheet that you can use
Speaker 2: to suddenly weld metals together explosively. And there are a
Speaker 2: couple of specific famous artists who like use petn in
Speaker 2: order to like make bob relief sort of artworks. So
Speaker 2: it's again not something that is like impossible for people
Speaker 2: who are not the masade to gain access to.
Speaker 11: You need a chemist, an engineer, and someone who knows
Speaker 11: how to set up businesses. And between the three years
Speaker 11: them they are going to have enough money to this,
Speaker 11: which is yeah, not great, Yeah.
Speaker 9: Not great. Anyway, everybody, have a good night, enjoy your
Speaker 9: explain flight.
Speaker 7: Hello, and welcome back to it could happen here in
Speaker 7: your daily dose of the horrors that are in fact
Speaker 7: already happening all around us. I'm your occasional host, Molly Conger,
Speaker 7: and I am delighted to be joined today by the
Speaker 7: critically acclaimed author of Culture Warlords, journalist researcher, sword enthusiast,
Speaker 7: Sandwich expert, and my friend Talia Lavin. Hello.
Speaker 12: Yeah, I once introduced myself at an event as a
Speaker 12: Sandwich historian, which I think was the pinnacle of my
Speaker 12: public speaking career.
Speaker 13: But this is the second Pinnacle. Hey, Molly, what's up.
Speaker 7: Thank you so much for coming on today to talk
Speaker 7: with me about your new book, Wild Faith, is coming
Speaker 7: out in just a few weeks October fifteenth.
Speaker 12: Right, yeah, Wild Faith, How the Christian Right is taking
Speaker 12: over America. Not the terrible b movie entitled Wild Faith.
Speaker 7: Yeah, the SEO is scrambled on that one. But the book, however,
Speaker 7: is very good. I mean, first of all, I just
Speaker 7: want to say, like, so, I've been reading the Gally
Speaker 7: copy that you sent me, which I honestly made me
Speaker 7: feel very fancy. I've never received a Galli copy of
Speaker 7: a book that's not out yet before, so I felt,
Speaker 7: you know, kind of a kind of a broadcasting professional
Speaker 7: with my special book.
Speaker 12: It's an exclusive club. You're one of like five people
Speaker 12: thus read it. Oh my god, that that's very exclusive. Yeah,
Speaker 12: well it's about to become a lot less exclusive, So
Speaker 12: feel special while.
Speaker 4: You can, right.
Speaker 7: But I realized when I was reading it, you know,
Speaker 7: I have my little sticky tabs because I'm reading a
Speaker 7: lot more books lately. Regrettably, not not not big time
Speaker 7: book guy he's reading. I read a lot of court documents,
Speaker 7: but I'm reading a lot of books right now. For
Speaker 7: research for my show, and it's like my little sticky tabs,
Speaker 7: And as I'm reading it, I realize I'm not marking
Speaker 7: passages that I think would be useful for us to
Speaker 7: talk about in this interview. I'm just putting my little
Speaker 7: tabs on passages that just like punched me in the gut,
Speaker 7: you know.
Speaker 12: Ah, sorry for punching you, no, but I mean, I
Speaker 12: mean with the way the power of your words, because
Speaker 12: like a lot of what I'm reading sucks.
Speaker 7: It's just right Like I spent all day yesterday reading
Speaker 7: like twenty five year old Issues of Resistance, which was
Speaker 7: the quarterly magazine for a white power music label. So this,
Speaker 7: I mean it's a real departure, so you know, really
Speaker 7: just reveling in the richness of the pros and the
Speaker 7: fact that it, you know, didn't want to kill me.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 12: No, I also have experienced, you know, Nazi research fatigue,
Speaker 12: and also just like the sort of lentless grimness of
Speaker 12: flowing through these like fundamentally hostile texts and also like
Speaker 12: academic texts, which are difficult in their own way. I
Speaker 12: try to write accessively or just like excitingly. I find
Speaker 12: that a lot of especially nonfiction sort of journalism me.
Speaker 12: Books tend to be a little dry, and I'm like,
Speaker 12: let's not be dry. Let's be like spicy and you know,
Speaker 12: like form and function, Like you're more likely to be
Speaker 12: moved by a message if you find the writing compelling.
Speaker 7: You know, it's just you have such a way with words.
Speaker 4: I mean, you know this.
Speaker 7: You're a professional writer. I don't want to embarrass you
Speaker 7: on the show.
Speaker 13: So I feel like I'm twirling my hair, like, yes,
Speaker 13: but I do write for a living.
Speaker 7: If you'll indulge me, if it's legal, if the publisher
Speaker 7: will allow this. I just want to read this passage
Speaker 7: from the introduction that I think is a good jumping
Speaker 7: off point, and it was one of the first things
Speaker 7: I marked because I was just like, oh, hell yeah,
Speaker 7: we're getting into this. There's there's good words in here, okay.
Speaker 7: The Christian Right is a force in American politics and
Speaker 7: has been for decades, half a century to be precise,
Speaker 7: during which it has steadily gained power. It started in
Speaker 7: school rooms, continued in courtrooms, and perseveres with the aid
Speaker 7: of people who are perfectly willing to call in bomb
Speaker 7: threats to hospitals and attempt to overturn elections. It features
Speaker 7: self proclaimed prophets with a distinct interest in politics, newly
Speaker 7: minted apostles with very definite ideas about spiritual battle and
Speaker 7: its earthly components, and pastors eager to usher in the
Speaker 7: end of the world. Its adherents have hymns and devotionals
Speaker 7: and speaking tongues on occasion, and the showiest among them
Speaker 7: are known to march through cities, blowing Ram's horns in
Speaker 7: an effort to topple, as Joshua once did, the wicked
Speaker 7: cities of the world. They have their own insular world,
Speaker 7: their own media apparatus. They have legislators who get fire
Speaker 7: in brimstone speeches from the badly carpeted rooms where laws
Speaker 7: are made. They have lawyers too, and in case the
Speaker 7: lawyers fail, there's always the promise of congregations that might
Speaker 7: coalesce into mobs or arsonists. Who's burning holy zeal coalesces
Speaker 7: into the tiny pinpoint of a molotop cocktail. And I
Speaker 7: knew from the intro that we were in for a ride.
Speaker 12: Yeah, it's like cast of characters, the worst people ever,
Speaker 12: but like, let's write about it in an exciting way.
Speaker 13: I think that one of the themes of the book.
Speaker 12: Is really how these extra legal extremist movements like the
Speaker 12: anti abortion terror movement, and the legal framework of a
Speaker 12: movement work together. I actually initially heard about this from
Speaker 12: a friend who's talking about how like during the gay
Speaker 12: rights movement, you had sort of the act up built
Speaker 12: demonstrations that diants, and then you have the sort of
Speaker 12: like more respectively coded like gay people who you know,
Speaker 12: we're talking to the government and trying to get elected
Speaker 12: and you know, really trying to influence research and that
Speaker 12: ever movement needs sort of a radical outside and then
Speaker 12: a respectable inside. And I'm like, oh, this works in
Speaker 12: like the acratic movements too, where you have like this
Speaker 12: you know, fringe that's burning down clinics, and then people
Speaker 12: steadily working for fifty years to like ban abortion, and
Speaker 12: they have the same DNA and they have the same goals.
Speaker 12: They just go about it differently but complement each other.
Speaker 12: And I think that's like a running theme in the book,
Speaker 12: is that like you have lawyers and you have legislators,
Speaker 12: and then you have mobs and they're sort of all
Speaker 12: working towards the same goals. And that's really what we're seeing,
Speaker 12: I think on the Christian Right after decades of building power.
Speaker 7: Yeah. One of the notes that I wrote down in
Speaker 7: that vein while I was reading was that, you know,
Speaker 7: the Christian Right drives its power across a spectrum, right
Speaker 7: from the clinic bomber to the senator. But it's not
Speaker 7: you know, you might say it's two sides of the
Speaker 7: same coin, but to me, it looks like this isn't
Speaker 7: too different spheres of power to sort of separate but
Speaker 7: coexisting or comorbid ideologies. They're just different numbers on the
Speaker 7: same dial. Right, it's turning up and turning down.
Speaker 12: Yeah, it's like the hand that lights the torch and
Speaker 12: the hand that puts it to the you know, pyre.
Speaker 12: They perform different functions, but they have really the same goals.
Speaker 12: And if like me, you view stripping half the populace
Speaker 12: of its bodily autonomy, imposing a theocracy, hounding queer people
Speaker 12: out of public life, slash into death as fundamentally violent goals, yeah,
Speaker 12: I don't think there's like a respectable iteration necessarily, there's
Speaker 12: just cosplaying respectability and right.
Speaker 7: You can say it with a tie on on the
Speaker 7: Senate floor, but it's it's the same message.
Speaker 12: Yeah, and I think so much of our mediaaratus and
Speaker 12: governmental apparatus is really sort of views like again, this
Speaker 12: like form and function, right, Like if you are if
Speaker 12: you say something politely, it doesn't really matter what you're saying,
Speaker 12: Like if you say something with a suit on in
Speaker 12: the register of like, you know, in a calm sort
Speaker 12: of Mike Penci and Rush Limbaugh and decaf as.
Speaker 13: He called himself.
Speaker 12: Boy, she says, did he say that, Yeah, that's what
Speaker 12: he called himself when he read it, did a like
Speaker 12: evangelical radio show.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 12: No, no matter what you say, as long as you
Speaker 12: are like white and you say it politely, like this
Speaker 12: is fundamentally sort of fine. And then if you look
Speaker 12: at it from you know, a step or two back,
Speaker 12: and you're like, no, actually, no matter how politely say it,
Speaker 12: this is like a violent, deeply unpopular theocratic agenda that
Speaker 12: like fundamentally is incompatible with multiracial democracy. I also think
Speaker 12: and running into this like well meaning liberals being like,
Speaker 12: but isn't there a separation of church and state? And
Speaker 12: I'm like, I don't know, do you fucking think there
Speaker 12: is in Alabama? Do you think there is an Arkansas?
Speaker 12: And all of these you know in Texas, Like all
Speaker 12: of these figures are like, we're Christians.
Speaker 13: We're making laws for Jesus, and.
Speaker 7: We have covenant marriages and we want you to too.
Speaker 12: Yeah, like we're gonna outlaw divorce because of God, and like,
Speaker 12: you know, women dying of sepsis in hospital parking lots
Speaker 12: is what Jesus wants and like, and I experienced this,
Speaker 12: I think you probably have to when you like report
Speaker 12: on you know, zealots and extremists, and people inevitably wind
Speaker 12: up like measuring other people's weep by their own bushel.
Speaker 12: In other words, they're like, they can't really believe this stuff,
Speaker 12: and it's like, no, they really do. They can't really
Speaker 12: have these goals. First of all, they do, but also
Speaker 12: does it matter, right, I mean the question of like
Speaker 12: impact versus intent. First of all, I think it's perfectly
Speaker 12: possible to be both a grifter and a true believer
Speaker 12: at the same time.
Speaker 7: That's just synergy maybe Yeah.
Speaker 12: And also fundamentally, this is a world premise done grievance,
Speaker 12: where it's this idea that like the world has got
Speaker 12: one O, We're on you. And so in a sense,
Speaker 12: grift is just like, well, you know, the world's corrupt
Speaker 12: and I'm fighting a righteous cause, So what does it
Speaker 12: matter the ethics that I sort of skip on along
Speaker 12: the way.
Speaker 7: I mean, once you've amped the stakes up to you're
Speaker 7: fighting the literal devil and everyone who's getting in my
Speaker 7: way is animated by actual demons from Hell. I mean,
Speaker 7: the steaks couldn't be higher. So you do what you
Speaker 7: have to do exactly, and it's this theory of power.
Speaker 7: And so then people sort of.
Speaker 12: Standing outside of that paradigm who are not keyed into
Speaker 12: this idea of like we're in an ethical spiritual battle,
Speaker 12: like and we must create like a Kingdom of Christ
Speaker 12: on Earth in America to win again devil, and then
Speaker 12: people outside being like, you're hypocrites, and it's like it's
Speaker 12: not a valid criticism to them because they're like, first
Speaker 12: of all, you're not like a Christian if you're a liberal,
Speaker 12: but also like you're not on our level, like we're
Speaker 12: fighting Lucifer and you're probably.
Speaker 13: A stand like on his team if you oppose us.
Speaker 12: So you know, a multitude of apparent hypocrisies can be
Speaker 12: excused by the idea that like this is a holy war,
Speaker 12: and in war, there's like all kinds of amart behavior
Speaker 12: that's OK, but doing holy war crimes, Yeah, exactly. I
Speaker 12: mean this is why, for example, you see a lot
Speaker 12: of like prominent female figures from Philish slaughleet, you know,
Speaker 12: in the seventies and eighties to like the tradwives now,
Speaker 12: and it's like, how does this fit in with your
Speaker 12: overall sort of idea that women should be chaste and
Speaker 12: submissive and meek and silent. I mean, first of all,
Speaker 12: tradwife stuff is often fetishish content.
Speaker 7: But yeah, I mean filish Filish made a living professionally
Speaker 7: saying that women shouldn't make a living professionally, but that
Speaker 7: contradiction doesn't matter.
Speaker 12: Yeah, I mean I think I call them valkyries for
Speaker 12: feminine submission in the book. Yeah, I mean, at the
Speaker 12: end of the day, like if you believe that this
Speaker 12: is your your calling, your mission, you know, your mission
Speaker 12: field in the service of the Lord to undo the
Speaker 12: demonic sort of influence of feminism, Like of course you're
Speaker 12: going to speak.
Speaker 7: You've been moved by God to do so. Yeah.
Speaker 12: And of course, like female leaders with the evangelical community,
Speaker 12: like sort of minority Republicans can be like knocked off
Speaker 12: their pedestal quicker and easier, but like they still can
Speaker 12: come out and exist and testify and schlafly throughout her
Speaker 12: very long prolific and lucrative career, you know, was like,
Speaker 12: I'm a housewife with six kids, and that was her.
Speaker 12: That was how she defined herself, even while being this
Speaker 12: incredibly proper and a figure and one of the sort
Speaker 12: of key architects of the current Christian right coalition of
Speaker 12: like right wing Catholics. She and Paul Lyric and Leonard
Speaker 12: Leo and some other right wing Catholics brought these Catholic
Speaker 12: values of being all about abortion to the evangelical right,
Speaker 12: which prior to the seventies is like, that's a weird
Speaker 12: Catholic thing.
Speaker 13: You don't really care I.
Speaker 7: Wanted to talk about that. So I'm not sure how
Speaker 7: sort of common knowledge this is, but the Protestant Christian
Speaker 7: community in the United States did not care about abortion
Speaker 7: until the seventies. It was not an issue in their communities.
Speaker 7: They were generally pro abortion. They were you know, the
Speaker 7: Baptists were in favor of Rob Wade.
Speaker 12: Yeah, the fucking Southern Baptist Convention came out in like
Speaker 12: seventy four. I think it was and was like, yeah,
Speaker 12: we approved Rob Wade.
Speaker 7: So it's not like, you know, opposition to abortion is
Speaker 7: baked into Christianity. It is baked into the American Evangelical
Speaker 7: Christianity of post nineteen seventy five or so because of
Speaker 7: this sort of conscious cynical political decision, And that I
Speaker 7: think is so interesting because you know, you get into
Speaker 7: this conversation of well, what are their deeply held beliefs
Speaker 7: and do they really believe it and does that matter?
Speaker 7: But we can pin down the moment they started believing
Speaker 7: this and we know why, and it's segregation.
Speaker 12: Yeah, I mean, first of all, I would say, like
Speaker 12: people can still like this is like several generations later
Speaker 12: of like constant barrages of extremely violent propaganda against abortion.
Speaker 7: Right, so the belief is sincere today, but you could
Speaker 7: look at it where it was born. Yeah exactly, it
Speaker 7: should have been aborted, right, Yeah, no, it definitely should
Speaker 7: not have been carried to term. But like it's it's crazy.
Speaker 7: And in addition, Tomi's book Randall Bahmer does some really
Speaker 7: good coverage of this.
Speaker 12: So the sort of general arc is like three sort
Speaker 12: of nineteen seventy you had this like generally conservative population
Speaker 12: of Southern Baptists who were like on board with McCarthyism,
Speaker 12: hated the godless reds, but kind of viewed politics as
Speaker 12: like worldly and not really their sphere, and we're not
Speaker 12: particularly politically engaged. And then brown versus a board of
Speaker 12: education passes immediately, the white Christian populist just disinvests these
Speaker 12: from the public schools, leaving multiple counties in the South
Speaker 12: without functionally any public education at all. And this mushroom
Speaker 12: after rain, kind of like patch of patches of parochial
Speaker 12: schools with church or Christian in the name start popping up,
Speaker 12: and they're all white schools. Their segregation academies is the
Speaker 12: sort of term of art for these, and they're explicitly
Speaker 12: under a Christian agis they're religious schools. Their tax exams
Speaker 12: as a result, and then in like the late sixties
Speaker 12: and seventies, the government was like, you can't be tax
Speaker 12: exempt and like considered a charitable organization if you are
Speaker 12: segregated and don't have any.
Speaker 13: Black students or minority students.
Speaker 12: And that is what woke the sleeping dragon of the
Speaker 12: Christian right really like, you know, get your filthy government
Speaker 12: hands off our tax exemptions. Like they just went, you know, nuts,
Speaker 12: they were really mobilized. You know, like these are the
Speaker 12: people who are like growing tomatoes at Ruby Bridges, Like,
Speaker 12: you know, they're really politically motivated for the first time
Speaker 12: because they're experiencing like a consequence for segregation. And so
Speaker 12: this is when like Jerry Fowell and Ralph Reid and
Speaker 12: you know, James Dobson start sort of coming forward and
Speaker 12: being more prominent.
Speaker 13: And then by the sort of mids seventies to eighties.
Speaker 12: You had these like savvy or political operators coming out
Speaker 12: and saying, hey, guys, segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.
Speaker 12: Is Like it's great that it really fired y'all up,
Speaker 12: but it has sort of a limited appeal.
Speaker 7: And they shot George Wallace. It's over.
Speaker 12: Yeah, Like there's gonna be a ceiling on that, And
Speaker 12: a lot of people think you suck. So why don't
Speaker 12: you get it on the ground on this new civil
Speaker 12: rights struggle abortion where you can fight for the unborn
Speaker 12: who conveniently will never disagree with you.
Speaker 7: Right, their voices don't have to be centered here. We
Speaker 7: can speak for them.
Speaker 13: I mean, they're the most convenient political constituency in history.
Speaker 7: Right, because they're so innocent and you can't milkshake duck
Speaker 7: a fetus. He's not even here.
Speaker 12: Yeah, he can't talk, but he's not gonna say shit.
Speaker 12: So I mean that's like the very capsule history. And
Speaker 12: then of course it becomes this idea of like the
Speaker 12: moral majority and where the guardians of America's soul and
Speaker 12: we're gonna get really weird about sex.
Speaker 13: Also, it's just.
Speaker 7: Like if you strip it all the way down to
Speaker 7: the studs, like the core of this is women are
Speaker 7: bleeding to death in hospital parking lots because Jerry Folwell
Speaker 7: didn't want to pay his taxes or stop being racist.
Speaker 13: Yeah, I mean that's not fair.
Speaker 12: No, people sometimes like are a little skeptical when I'm like,
Speaker 12: all of the hatreds are interconnected. But then you look
Speaker 12: at like concrete historical examples of like this world historical
Speaker 12: wave of misogyny. I mean, it's not that this population
Speaker 12: wasn't like weird about sex or weird about women.
Speaker 7: Like to start with. I mean, maybe they would have
Speaker 7: gotten here a different way, but that's how we got here.
Speaker 12: Yeah, we got here by just like no, we will
Speaker 12: pay taxes on our segregation academies. Bob Jones University's interracial
Speaker 12: dating ban is perfectly great, and we're gonna mobilize about it.
Speaker 12: And so what you have then now is just like
Speaker 12: fifty years of political lock step because and you see this.
Speaker 13: In like other religious communities.
Speaker 12: I mean, like, I know, like it's sort of notorious
Speaker 12: how much corruption slides by in New York because like
Speaker 12: the Considic communities vote as a block, Like it is
Speaker 12: very useful to have a congregation that all votes the
Speaker 12: same way. It's politically useful.
Speaker 7: I mean, what other populations can you get together once
Speaker 7: a week as a captive audience and speak to with
Speaker 7: authority if you can mobilize those people. And that's what
Speaker 7: Jerry Folwell saw, right, is like this is a great
Speaker 7: way to get a lot of people to vote the
Speaker 7: way I want them to vote.
Speaker 12: Yeah, And you know, the church has always been like
Speaker 12: a really prominent institution in American civil society, especially as
Speaker 12: the rest of sort of civil society has fallen away
Speaker 12: and degraded. Like churches are some of the only social
Speaker 12: outlets that Americans have. And what's interesting when you talk
Speaker 12: to evangelicals and next evangelicals is just like being a
Speaker 12: Republican is like part of their religious identity in a
Speaker 12: major way. It's like this is how you vote, and
Speaker 12: this is you know, how you dress, and this is
Speaker 12: how you go to church and so on. But like
Speaker 12: the idea of being a democrat is like not only
Speaker 12: you know, a little bit out of step with your community,
Speaker 12: it's heretical.
Speaker 7: I mean, that's how the demons give in.
Speaker 12: Yeah, yeah, demoncrats, I mean, and like, yeah, it's stupid.
Speaker 12: But it's also like half of the people saying demoncrats
Speaker 12: like literally mean democrats are aligned with Lucifer.
Speaker 7: And I think that's a point that I don't want
Speaker 7: to get lost on the listener.
Speaker 4: This.
Speaker 7: You know, this idea that people literally have demons in them,
Speaker 7: that demons are active in the world, that demons are
Speaker 7: motivating the actions of their enemies is real for them.
Speaker 7: And I'm not saying that to be derisive or you know,
Speaker 7: it's real. It's real. It is an animating factor for
Speaker 7: a lot of these people. And that's hard to wrap
Speaker 7: your mind around.
Speaker 4: I mean, I.
Speaker 7: Struggle with the idea that that is real for them.
Speaker 7: But like that's how you get things like satanic panic,
Speaker 7: and we see echoes of satanic panic in this idea
Speaker 7: of you know, groomers in kids' schools, they really have
Speaker 7: this fundamental, like foundational belief in this, you know, whether
Speaker 7: or not they're calling it demons, that the existence of
Speaker 7: some sort of ontological evil that is coming for their children.
Speaker 7: And like, once you arrive at the place where, like
Speaker 7: where you understand that that's real for them, their actions
Speaker 7: make more sense. Like they're not behaving irrationally if you
Speaker 7: if you truly believe that these things were happening, you'd
Speaker 7: act crazy too.
Speaker 12: Yeah, I mean, it's really hard to get people to
Speaker 12: step outside their own worldviews, and in both directions, right,
Speaker 12: Like I don't believe that demons are you know, abroad
Speaker 12: in the world and motivating like every element of political
Speaker 12: action to someone who.
Speaker 7: I'm starting to see them some places, but generally.
Speaker 12: To someone who does, my viewpoint is incomprehensible and vice versa.
Speaker 12: So I think part of I mean not that I'm
Speaker 12: like one of those people that's like polarization is the
Speaker 12: big problem, like you know, as opposed to anything with
Speaker 12: like concrete policy, like you know where it's like the
Speaker 12: big problem is we all don't like each other enough.
Speaker 12: And I'm like, no, the big problem is like people
Speaker 12: are espousing policies that will cause deaths, and like also
Speaker 12: that people like believe their political enemies are like literally
Speaker 12: agents of Satan. I would say, is like a bigger
Speaker 12: problem than polarization and the abstract. But yeah, I mean
Speaker 12: this this doctrine of sort of spiritual warfare, which if
Speaker 12: you like google it, it's just like, oh, this is
Speaker 12: the mindset and it's like you, the listener to it
Speaker 12: could happen here, like you've been drafted into the spirit
Speaker 12: war from like birth.
Speaker 7: Congratulations, private, and you're.
Speaker 12: Probably in the side of the devil, so good job.
Speaker 12: I mean, I don't know, like a lot of Americans
Speaker 12: believe in angels and demons and that's fine, but it's
Speaker 12: like when starts impinging on the political sphere in a
Speaker 12: very serious way, It's like, how far would you go
Speaker 12: if you believed your opponent was under the thrall of
Speaker 12: like Satan?
Speaker 13: You would go pretty damn far's.
Speaker 7: I mean that's why you know clinic bombings were and
Speaker 7: I guess are on the rise again, right, like these
Speaker 7: arsins of clinics. It's not like other kinds of crime
Speaker 7: in my mind, right, it's not a crime of passion
Speaker 7: or an interpersonal dispute. It is people who have been
Speaker 7: motivated by this belief that this is a place where
Speaker 7: a genocide is happening, that there's a holocaust going on
Speaker 7: in there, that people are ripping you know, actual living
Speaker 7: babies limb from limb, and if you really did believe that,
Speaker 7: their actions make sense, and that's why it happens so often, right,
Speaker 7: because these people are motivated by this belief that God
Speaker 7: commands them to take this action.
Speaker 12: Yeah, I mean there's your dual element to that. I mean,
Speaker 12: first of all, absolutely, yes, Like I've read some anti
Speaker 12: abortion terror manuals speaking of extremely unpleasant research, and it's
Speaker 12: just really like these people are murderers. It's mass murderers,
Speaker 12: Like you're like killing Hitler, right.
Speaker 7: And wouldn't you wouldn't you kill baby Hitler?
Speaker 13: Exactly?
Speaker 12: Poltical about baby Hitler in like a countrywide scale. And
Speaker 12: when specific abortion doctors have been mentioned in right wing media,
Speaker 12: those guys end up dead and that's not a coincidence.
Speaker 12: So there's there's that element of it, which is the
Speaker 12: majority of it.
Speaker 13: It's huge.
Speaker 12: But there's also this idea of demonic geography, where like
Speaker 12: demons can possess sort of places like abortion clinics or
Speaker 12: institutions like Planned parenthood or even the Democratic Party, which
Speaker 12: you know, I read a lot of demonology books, like
Speaker 12: Taxonomies of Demons. Pigs in the Parlor was this really
Speaker 12: big hit in like the seventies, and it's been like
Speaker 12: reissued and reissued and millions of copies, and it's just like,
Speaker 12: on one level, it's really compelling because it's like, are
Speaker 12: you tired, are you sad, are you feeling clumsy? You
Speaker 12: have like persistent stomach aches. It's demons and here's how
Speaker 12: you deal with that. And like, in a country with
Speaker 12: shitty healthcare, I can totally see why someone who's like
Speaker 12: really depressed might go to like an exorcist or a
Speaker 12: deliverance minister, which is the Protestant if.
Speaker 7: You'll try anything, and this guy's going to do it
Speaker 7: for free.
Speaker 12: I watch so many videos of deliverance ministers doing their thing,
Speaker 12: and it's like crazy. It's like people you know, are
Speaker 12: just like sitting there and they're like people praying over
Speaker 12: them and screaming in their face, like and they wind
Speaker 12: up vomiting and crying and it's all very like intense.
Speaker 12: And you know, if you think about it from a
Speaker 12: placebo effect perspective. For like one second, you're like, obviously
Speaker 12: this person would feel a weightlifted from them. They've had
Speaker 12: this ecstatic experience. And this isn't the majority of it.
Speaker 12: This is about fourteen percent of America identifies this as
Speaker 12: white evengels so many Protestants, and it's still so many
Speaker 12: people because people keep asking me, like how many people
Speaker 12: really believe should like this, and I'm like, well, about
Speaker 12: eighty to ninety percent of like people who identify as
Speaker 12: might evangelical Protestants vows most of these beliefs. So that's like,
Speaker 12: that's like thirty million people. Yeah, yeah, And then you
Speaker 12: add in the Catholic right, which is.
Speaker 7: Getting weirder every day.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 12: JD Vance, I hate women exist to reproduce, breathe you
Speaker 12: filthy sow. But like, even beyond the adult Catholic convert
Speaker 12: style weirdness, like right wing Catholics are an integral part
Speaker 12: of the Christian right, like Amy Cony Barrett, you know,
Speaker 12: antonin Scalia, that kind of thing. That's another bunch of millions.
Speaker 12: So this reactionary force has like numerically significant constituency. On
Speaker 12: the other hand, it definitely punches way above its weight
Speaker 12: in terms of right.
Speaker 7: They have an outsized influence of both you know, on
Speaker 7: the legislative floor and when it comes to you know
Speaker 7: who's racking up the most.
Speaker 12: Yeah, and also even like the culture wars right, like
Speaker 12: the sort of loudest culture warriors tend to at least
Speaker 12: come from like a background of I'm speaking for God
Speaker 12: or Christ is King or whatever it is, Like how
Speaker 12: many times have you and I encountered that an extremist
Speaker 12: contacts But also like the sort of more mainstream me,
Speaker 12: What the fuck the mainstream is? I don't know, it's
Speaker 12: full of piss, But like the more mainstream me, like
Speaker 12: Christian grifter, right, they come from this this I'm speaking
Speaker 12: from my faith. These are my religious principles. But like
Speaker 12: it is with noting again, just just to rewind in
Speaker 12: our conversation, but like the whole concept of religious liberty
Speaker 12: and religious freedom absolutely was like an ad slogan coined
Speaker 12: in the seventies around segregation.
Speaker 7: Right, religious freedom to do what I mean, it's like
Speaker 7: states rights, states rights to do what right?
Speaker 12: Yeah, Like you answer the question, yeah, it's it's religious
Speaker 12: freedom to have segregated schools, is the answer.
Speaker 7: To that, And you still see echoes of that with
Speaker 7: either still religious schools that can't accept federal grant money
Speaker 7: because they don't let students be gay, right, Like it's
Speaker 7: not racial segregation anymore, but they are refusing to admit
Speaker 7: gay students and that is a violation of federal civil
Speaker 7: rights law.
Speaker 12: Yeah, but that's where I mean, that's where that stillgan started.
Speaker 12: And then it's blossomed to include basically like a gay
Speaker 12: person came into my shop.
Speaker 7: Except they didn't, right, I know, there's no standing, right,
Speaker 7: Like that whole case was built a lie.
Speaker 1: Whatever.
Speaker 12: That's yeah, but it's like and the standing in the
Speaker 12: Supreme Court is so ridiculous. This, I mean, in many ways,
Speaker 12: this Supreme Court is the culmination and embodiment and apotheosis
Speaker 12: of like Christian right theocracy because you have these like
Speaker 12: absolutely bat shit religious zealots. I mean, Amy Cony Barrett
Speaker 12: is like from a cult, and in this unaccountable body,
Speaker 12: they're passing unpopular theocratic principles that the majority of the
Speaker 12: America public uh disagrees with. But like specifically what they
Speaker 12: are trying to enact and what they are what they
Speaker 12: are enacting is this theogratic agenda, where like the government
Speaker 12: is in your bedroom. The government is in your doctor's office,
Speaker 12: Like the government is sniffing your panties, and it's it's
Speaker 12: gross and it's upsetting and fundamentally, like theocracies are just
Speaker 12: very famously all up in your junk, Like they're obsessed
Speaker 12: with like controlling and censoring sexuality of all kinds of
Speaker 12: but particularly female sexuality and queer sexuality, like sniff those out.
Speaker 12: And so that's part of the reason why so many
Speaker 12: abortion arguments, Like, first of all, you have the like
Speaker 12: the you're murdering this cluster of cells, which is a
Speaker 12: full human baby. Like do you remember that article in
Speaker 12: The Guardian a couple of years ago that like showed
Speaker 12: the actual size of like fetuses at various stages of development,
Speaker 12: and it was like they were.
Speaker 7: Just like so little, like these little like little fingernails. Yeah,
Speaker 7: and it doesn't look like a tiny baby doll. That's
Speaker 7: just very small. Yeah, exactly, it's not like a mini
Speaker 7: baby like it like tides of gore. It's like literally
Speaker 7: like a tiny cluster of cells. So the anti abortion propaganda,
Speaker 7: like you are not immune to propaganda. It has like
Speaker 7: wormed its way into the popular consciousness just by virtue
Speaker 7: of its ubiquity and constant repetition being the key to
Speaker 7: successful propaganda. But so many of these arguments in addition
Speaker 7: to this this abortion is murder stuff is also just
Speaker 7: like you should have kept your legs closed, right, This
Speaker 7: is a this is a consequence, God did this to you.
Speaker 12: Yeah, Like sex for your sins a mortal sin and
Speaker 12: sex should be punished, and.
Speaker 7: I they must be doing it wrong.
Speaker 12: Like, I'm like, why do you want sex to have
Speaker 12: consequences and be punished? The like intensity of the misogyny
Speaker 12: around purity culture is so intense.
Speaker 7: I wanted to ask you, you know, about the experience
Speaker 7: of writing the book, right, So you know, your first book,
Speaker 7: Culture Warlords, was traumatizing for you to craft, right, because
Speaker 7: you had to spend so much time in these digital
Speaker 7: spaces in some in some cases physical spaces with you know,
Speaker 7: neo Nazis, four Chan guys, you know, aspiring terrorists, and
Speaker 7: so that's traumatic to experience, you know. But largely that
Speaker 7: experience was alone, like at your computer screen, sort of
Speaker 7: consuming this content that was eroding your soul. But the
Speaker 7: second half of this book is about child abuse, right,
Speaker 7: and you interviewed people who grew up in this movement
Speaker 7: about their lives, about their husband's raping them and their
Speaker 7: parents beating them as children, and like how did those
Speaker 7: experiences compare?
Speaker 3: And like what was that?
Speaker 10: How?
Speaker 7: I mean, how did you to do that? I don't
Speaker 7: even know how it'd begin to do that with care.
Speaker 12: I mean, I think my goal going in is like
Speaker 12: I'm not going to betray you, Like that was my
Speaker 12: guiding ethos of just like I view like your trust
Speaker 12: in me as a sacred thing, not like sacred in
Speaker 12: any formal religious sense, but just like you know, I
Speaker 12: view your trust in me as something that I hold
Speaker 12: very dearly. It's very important. I'm going to treat your
Speaker 12: pain with as much gentleness and respect as I can.
Speaker 12: And like I interviewed over one hundred people largely about
Speaker 12: their experiences with experiencing child abuse and an evangelical milieu
Speaker 12: as it's laid out with painstaking instructions, and like all
Speaker 12: of these parenting manuals. Actually, like I think reading the
Speaker 12: parenting manuals was even more disturbing than talking to people,
Speaker 12: because like people were like this fucked me up and
Speaker 12: it was wrong. And then these books are like, no,
Speaker 12: you must be your toddler because Jesus says so, and
Speaker 12: like here's exactly how to beat your toddler, and here's
Speaker 12: what you should use to beat your toddler, and here's
Speaker 12: the like supremely fucked up, like weird ritual that we prescribe,
Speaker 12: and then like reading those in tandem with like like
Speaker 12: the accounts of people who were like this specific thing
Speaker 12: like sucked me up for life and really messed up
Speaker 12: my ability to have like intimacy or self confidence or
Speaker 12: whatever all of that stuff.
Speaker 13: I mean, it was tough.
Speaker 12: I definitely took more time. Like I wrote Culture Warlords
Speaker 12: in nine months, so I was like totally immersed constantly.
Speaker 12: It just like didn't come up for ayer, yeah at all.
Speaker 12: And this one I was like, I need a little
Speaker 12: more time, guys, Like I wrote it over you know,
Speaker 12: almost three years. I also pretentiously started calling this philosophy
Speaker 12: Guarding your Heart because I really got lost in the
Speaker 12: sauce with Culture Warlords, Like I was in a dark
Speaker 12: place while I was writing it, and afterwards I was
Speaker 12: also the like it came out in mid COVID, so
Speaker 12: that didn't help either. But uh, it was a really
Speaker 12: really rough experience with I was like I'm going to
Speaker 12: keep writing, I'm going to write about sandwiches all the
Speaker 12: way through. I'm going to like make sure I have
Speaker 12: friendships and stuff that's grounding me. And I think consciously
Speaker 12: having that at the forefront of my mind really helped
Speaker 12: that being said, Like, what was really encouraging was all
Speaker 12: of these people who had experienced this sort of child
Speaker 12: abuse industrial complex in the evangelical community, where like we
Speaker 12: really value that someone wants to hear what we have
Speaker 12: to say, and also that it's someone from outside the
Speaker 12: community is like paying attention and thinks this is important,
Speaker 12: which is not to denigrate like expangelical voices, but more
Speaker 12: to say that, like, I guess there's a certain validation
Speaker 12: when someone who's like not didn't grow up in your
Speaker 12: corner of religiosity, dark corner.
Speaker 7: And sort of bringing it to an outside audience too.
Speaker 7: I think a lot of expangelicals their audience is largely
Speaker 7: their fellow expangelicals exactly.
Speaker 13: And I'm someone who, like I grew up as a Jew,
Speaker 13: and I'm like, yeah, this sucked. This terrible.
Speaker 12: I'm like appalled reading like to Train Up a Child
Speaker 12: by the Pearls or or The Strong Willed Child by
Speaker 12: jam Stobson which, like, to be clear, the strong willed
Speaker 12: child is a bad thing. It's a bad thing to
Speaker 12: have a child with us.
Speaker 7: You have to beat it out of them. Sure, literally,
Speaker 7: And I ran into this in the wild recently. I
Speaker 7: don't know if you have come across this guy online.
Speaker 7: Do you know the nineties movie The Little Rascals?
Speaker 13: Oh my god, alf from The Little Rascals turns out to.
Speaker 7: Be all Falfa. The guy who played Alfalfa's name is
Speaker 7: Bug Hall. He like, really like I don't got into
Speaker 7: a sort of main character situation over some posts about
Speaker 7: how he beats his infants. He beats infants because that's
Speaker 7: I guess, a good way to raise a baby.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 13: Also I think he's homeless.
Speaker 7: No, he's a surf. Oh he's a voluntary serfdom arrangement.
Speaker 13: Oh my god.
Speaker 12: Okay, well he sounds like a big rat school. Yeah,
Speaker 12: he's continued that trajectory of rascaldom. But don't be your kids.
Speaker 12: I mean, I will also say the reason why this
Speaker 12: book focuses so much on child abuse, which, like I
Speaker 12: encountered some some haters and losers and doubters along the
Speaker 12: way who were like, why are you focused so much
Speaker 12: on child abuse, and I was like, there are a
Speaker 12: lot of different theories about like how authoritarianism develops, but
Speaker 12: one of the big ones is focusing on the pedagogy.
Speaker 13: In authoritarian societies.
Speaker 12: The societies that become authoritarian, you know, evolve from democracy
Speaker 12: to authoritarianism, and beating the shit out of people from
Speaker 12: when they're in infancy and particularly when they display disobedience
Speaker 12: or ask why, or you know, just deviate from expectations.
Speaker 7: It's a great way to make an obedient brown shirt.
Speaker 12: Yeah, exactly, Like this is a recipe for future authoritarians,
Speaker 12: like the people I spoke to who had sort of
Speaker 12: broken away largely from this culture. But many of the
Speaker 12: sort of most obedient soldiers in the Army's Army of
Speaker 12: God like are that way. Because again, I can't overemphasize
Speaker 12: how much these parenting manuals, which spanned from like nineteen
Speaker 12: seventy to twenty fifteen, these texts, you know, the dates
Speaker 12: that they were published, emphasize having an obedient child. What
Speaker 12: you want is not like a child who's kind or
Speaker 12: curious or thoughtful or smart. It's obedient, instantly obedient. Don't
Speaker 12: make me count to three is the title of one
Speaker 12: of the books, and like, what you're creating is a
Speaker 12: culture of people who a like empathize with the aggressor
Speaker 12: at all times. So hence this admiration for strength and
Speaker 12: even admiration for cruelty, people who are trained to obey
Speaker 12: and obey without question, and people who are very acclimated
Speaker 12: to the use of violence.
Speaker 7: I mean, you're doing fascism in the home, right.
Speaker 12: So the the author, like Alice Miller, the author of
Speaker 12: the book For Your Own Good, lays out a pretty
Speaker 12: she was also a Holocaust survivor. She lays out a
Speaker 12: pretty strong case for like, you know, early twentieth century
Speaker 12: Germany having this poisonous pedagogy that also involved beating the
Speaker 12: shit out of your kids until I was illegal to
Speaker 12: love your children. Yeah, to obey you, and how basically
Speaker 12: this is how you make a torture. And the book
Speaker 12: is called for your Own Good, and yeah, I mean
Speaker 12: I really think it is like under valued in politics,
Speaker 12: Like how much this culture of corporal punishment, which is yeah,
Speaker 12: Americans have like moved away from universal approval of corporal punishment,
Speaker 12: We're still like a lot higher than other.
Speaker 13: Western democracies in that regard. And like on a national level.
Speaker 12: We're the only country in the world that hasn't ratified
Speaker 12: the UN Conventions on the Rights of a Child, which
Speaker 12: include like having a name and like not being beaten
Speaker 12: and not being thrown in to like juvi solitary.
Speaker 7: Oh well, that's why America can't touch that. We need
Speaker 7: to incarcerate the children.
Speaker 13: Yeah, the children yearn for the cells.
Speaker 12: But it's also just like a lot of it actually
Speaker 12: was like worries that like evangelicals like would sort of
Speaker 12: object to the the interference in there.
Speaker 7: It's an infringement on their religious freedom to be this
Speaker 7: shit out of babies.
Speaker 12: Yeah, and their parental rights, which is another buzzword of this,
Speaker 12: this movement.
Speaker 7: Pnal rights is a red flag for me.
Speaker 12: Oh yeah, no, I hear parental rights, and I think
Speaker 12: you want to beat the shit out of your kids.
Speaker 7: You don't want your children to learn science.
Speaker 12: Yeah, you out of homeschool and under educate your kids
Speaker 12: or miseducate you want to cause a measles outbreak exactly.
Speaker 12: But that's like for us, because we're weirdos. We're like
Speaker 12: obsessively clued into this stuff. If you're not, Like parental
Speaker 12: rights is like religious freedom is like it sounds good. Yeah,
Speaker 12: it's an effective marketing slogan, but like what it means
Speaker 12: is like we're going to show up at the school
Speaker 12: board and yell about how I mean.
Speaker 13: And Trump is like bought.
Speaker 12: Into this obviously because he knows where his bread is buttered.
Speaker 12: He has savvy Like he's like, you guys do the policy,
Speaker 12: but like his current parental rights based his biggest like
Speaker 12: policy that he's advocating is like denying federal funding to
Speaker 12: any school with any vaccine a mandate, which is basically
Speaker 12: just like make measles great again, like bring back diphtheria.
Speaker 12: I think, like, yes, the MAGA movement is sort of
Speaker 12: the the efflorescence, the apotheosis of this sentially building power,
Speaker 12: but like there's also just like fifty years of power
Speaker 12: building behind it. And like, even if Trump is defeated
Speaker 12: at the federal level, which like I profoundly hope he is,
Speaker 12: sorry to come out as like a you know, partisan
Speaker 12: a voter, like a hashtag a voter, but like I
Speaker 12: think it would be just a nauseatingly harrad. It's a
Speaker 12: horrifying thought that he I mean, first of all, you
Speaker 12: would absolutely enact every item in this theocratic agenda starting
Speaker 12: with a national abortion band like that would happen in
Speaker 12: the first hundred days, I think, which would just functionally
Speaker 12: plunge American women into like a very very dark septocemic nightmare.
Speaker 7: Yeah, the dark place that we're going as a coffin.
Speaker 13: Yeah yeah yeah.
Speaker 12: But even should he lose, which you know, hope, there's
Speaker 12: still twenty two states where abortion is outlawed or severely restricted,
Speaker 12: and these places are becoming care deserts. Like medical residents.
Speaker 12: My extremely sexy partner is a medical residence, so I
Speaker 12: know more about the state of medicine than I otherwise would.
Speaker 12: But like residents don't want to do their residencies in
Speaker 12: states with abortion restrictions.
Speaker 7: They're like, right, given a choice, gynecological providers just are
Speaker 7: practicing there anymore. Like even if you know, even though
Speaker 7: your primary focus is not abortions, or even if your
Speaker 7: primary focus is not you know, pregnancy care, they just
Speaker 7: don't want they just don't want to work there.
Speaker 12: Well, it's also first of all that, but second of all,
Speaker 12: it's like, if you're in the er, you're going to
Speaker 12: experience pregnancy loss because it happens in one in five pregnancy.
Speaker 7: Right, so they're choosing to work in states where they're
Speaker 7: not going to go to jail for doing medicine.
Speaker 12: Yeah, like they don't want to incur the moral injury
Speaker 12: of not being able to apply the standard of care
Speaker 12: to patients in extremely common situations such as incomplete miscarriage
Speaker 12: and you know, pregnancy loss, whether you know self induced
Speaker 12: or just like miscarriage is super common and nobody talks
Speaker 12: about it.
Speaker 7: It's more common than we an Ectopic pregnancy is so
Speaker 7: much more common than people realize. Like there are so
Speaker 7: many things that your body can do to betray you
Speaker 7: that you need a doctors help with just ordinary pregnancy.
Speaker 7: And then after the baby is born, then your lustrous
Speaker 7: hair all falls out.
Speaker 12: Yeah, like ordinary pregnancy is so fraught with like weird
Speaker 12: body horror. Like but anyway, that's besides the point.
Speaker 13: Whatever.
Speaker 12: The point is someone presents with abdominal pain in the
Speaker 12: er and it turns out to be an ectopic pregnancy,
Speaker 12: and like you can't do standard of care like dilation
Speaker 12: and cure tash procedures without checking with the hospital lawyer.
Speaker 12: Like that is a really bad position for a care
Speaker 12: provider to be in. So when you have these fundamentally
Speaker 12: unscientific laws, right, that are produced by people who don't
Speaker 12: know anything about pregnancy and are like very intentionally ambiguous
Speaker 12: so that cautious institutions will sort of interpret them at
Speaker 12: maximally interpret them.
Speaker 7: Like the life of the mother, How dead does she
Speaker 7: have to be? First?
Speaker 12: Yeah, she has to be almost dead, right, and then
Speaker 12: sometimes she winds up dying because almost dead is tough
Speaker 12: to judge, Like, it just winds up this grotesque sort
Speaker 12: of farce of medicine. And they're you directly, like, residents
Speaker 12: don't want to train, doctors don't want to practice in
Speaker 12: these places.
Speaker 7: And so you know, right, so this ends up killing
Speaker 7: more people than just the ones hemorrhaging in the parking lot.
Speaker 7: There are people who have completely unrelated problems who are
Speaker 7: now unable to access unrelated kinds of care because the
Speaker 7: doctors just aren't there.
Speaker 12: Yeah, Or people who have ordinary wanted pregnancies who can't
Speaker 12: access neonatal care, who have to drive hours and hours
Speaker 12: and hours to like get checkups. Like you know, I mean,
Speaker 12: human reproduction is like a pretty major part of like life,
Speaker 12: and a lot of people are doing it. Yeah, Like
Speaker 12: it's sort of how you know, it's just people do
Speaker 12: it all the time and not being able to access
Speaker 12: medical care around like the entire spectrum of like reproduction
Speaker 12: is pretty catastrophic. But yeah, it also impacts all the
Speaker 12: people not engaging in reproduction at this moment in time,
Speaker 12: like doctors who are just like, fuck this, I'm not
Speaker 12: wearing out a dar in Tennessee, you know, because I
Speaker 12: want to be able to treat patients.
Speaker 7: Without a lawyer in the room. Yeah, exactly, I.
Speaker 12: Mean, and then there are doctors who are bigots and
Speaker 12: doctors who are happily on board with abortion bands, But like,
Speaker 12: do you want that to be the.
Speaker 13: Only doctor in your county? I don't think so, you know.
Speaker 12: It's just it's a really grim situation. And I just like,
Speaker 12: I'm such an absolutist about bodily autonomy. It's like, if
Speaker 12: you don't own your body, you are not a full citizen, period,
Speaker 12: end of story. Like if a major organ in your
Speaker 12: body is treated as a controlled substance, like, you are
Speaker 12: not a full and equal citizen with rights, which I
Speaker 12: would like to be.
Speaker 7: I aspire to it. Yeah, so I want to ask
Speaker 7: you one more question about your book, and I will
Speaker 7: let you go. I told you that I wouldn't keep
Speaker 7: you very long, and I lied.
Speaker 12: But it's like, it's just because I like talking to you.
Speaker 12: So it's I think I've done the majority of the topics.
Speaker 13: You can't.
Speaker 12: You can't be like, oh, it's about your book, which
Speaker 12: you should buy listeners, preorder it now wherever you buy
Speaker 12: a books. And if you like the dulcet tones of
Speaker 12: my voice, which are I shouldn't have you to narrate
Speaker 12: in my audience books, you brush that passage.
Speaker 7: I'm a professional talker now, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 12: Well I narrated the audio book and then was like,
Speaker 12: why did I write such complicated sentences?
Speaker 13: Afterwards?
Speaker 7: So now that I read my own writing like on
Speaker 7: a regular basis out loud, which is new for me, right,
Speaker 7: So you know, I have my podcast and I'm writing
Speaker 7: my little scripts and then then I'm reading into a
Speaker 7: little microphone. Now that I struggle with that. I noticed
Speaker 7: while I was reading your book that oh, I wouldn't
Speaker 7: be able to read this out loud. Where would I breathe?
Speaker 7: I know it was because I write like that too,
Speaker 7: and it's something I'm like really grappling with right now.
Speaker 12: She's like call me ten clubs. I'm like, oh fuck,
Speaker 12: this sentence is this paragraph. This sentence is a paragraph.
Speaker 7: Stop it like I really really lost, really lost momentum
Speaker 7: that one.
Speaker 12: Yeah, I know, but like I managed to get through it.
Speaker 12: And if you if you enjoy the dulcae sounds of
Speaker 12: my voice, you can hear it for like, I don't know,
Speaker 12: eight hours or whatever. I assume you're being like, listen
Speaker 12: to my voice.
Speaker 7: But you know, invite me into your mind.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 12: But I do think it's nice as an author to
Speaker 12: read your audiobook because I can like get mad and like,
Speaker 12: you know, emphasize stuff that I think is important. And
Speaker 12: also I'm a theater kid, like, like, I don't have
Speaker 12: many opportunities to perform, and it is a performance and
Speaker 12: it's it's fun.
Speaker 7: But yeah, and that comes out at the same time
Speaker 7: as the physical book.
Speaker 12: Yes, it comes out audio ebook, physical book with a
Speaker 12: cool snake on it.
Speaker 7: Oh yeah, Oh, I guess this is an audio medium.
Speaker 7: The listener can't see that I'm showing the cool cover.
Speaker 12: Yeah, it's got a cool snake, a red and black
Speaker 12: snake on the cover. I've named him Rocco that he
Speaker 12: has a cross for a tongue. If you're looking for
Speaker 12: a book to give to the metal head.
Speaker 13: In your life.
Speaker 7: Oh yeah, it's pretty metal.
Speaker 12: Heads, atheists, degenerates. Everyone is gonna love this book.
Speaker 7: It's perfect for everyone.
Speaker 12: And if you're light on cash flow, want it for
Speaker 12: supporting India authors is ask your library to stock it
Speaker 12: or your local bookstore because library orders are really important
Speaker 12: and you can just like put in a request in
Speaker 12: your library system and that is super helpful.
Speaker 7: Hell yeah, everybody go to your library's website right now
Speaker 7: and request that they purchase a copy of Wild Faith
Speaker 7: by Talia Lavin. Yeah, tallywhere else can people find you online?
Speaker 13: So I have a newsletter. It's on button down.
Speaker 12: I left some stack because they were like, we're never
Speaker 12: going to censor Nazis, but we will sensor porn. And
Speaker 12: I was like, I don't like your priorities, so I
Speaker 12: left for button down. So it's buttondown dot com. Slash
Speaker 12: the Sword in the Sandwich or if you just google,
Speaker 12: the Sword in the Sandwich comes up. Most Tuesdays I
Speaker 12: write about like the horrific state of politics, et cetera,
Speaker 12: And then Fridays I write an essay about a different
Speaker 12: sandwich on Wikipedia's list of notable sandwiches. And so far
Speaker 12: I'm I've written one hundred and eleven sandwiches.
Speaker 7: The sandwich content alone is worth the price of admission.
Speaker 7: You need to find out about these sandwiches.
Speaker 12: I mean it just and I get really deep into
Speaker 12: like the history and the provenance and like like ah,
Speaker 12: the shifting of people's led to this sandwich. But so
Speaker 12: I get really deep into it. And then you can
Speaker 12: also find me on Blue Sky, where I most of
Speaker 12: the time now because Twitter is just like robots and
Speaker 12: Nazis and Nazi robots, where I'm at swords Jew. I'm
Speaker 12: still on vishy Twitter as Moby Dick Energy. And you know,
Speaker 12: if you want to say hi or invite me to
Speaker 12: speak at your synagogue or bookstore, I'm at tellyol Even
Speaker 12: writes at gmail dot com. Or church if you're like cool.
Speaker 7: Yeah, if it's like a cool church, Yeah, you show
Speaker 7: up and they pass you a snake.
Speaker 13: Yeah, exactly. Oh god, I didn't tune up speaking at
Speaker 13: times for this book.
Speaker 7: Well, Tally, thank you so much for coming on today again.
Speaker 7: The book is Wild Faith by Talia Lavin, and you
Speaker 7: can pre order it now wherever books are sold, and
Speaker 7: you should request it from your library.
Speaker 12: Yeah, well, stand Civic services, and I'm a huge fan
Speaker 12: of public libraries and also of Molly Coungar.
Speaker 13: So thanks for having me on and take care.
Speaker 1: Bye bye.
Speaker 7: Hey.
Speaker 2: We'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from
Speaker 2: now until the heat death of the Universe.
Speaker 7: It Could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
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Speaker 13: Thanks for listening.