Speaker 1: Al Zone 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
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Speaker 3: Welcome to it can Happened here a podcasts about things
Speaker 3: falling apart and how to put them back together again.
Speaker 3: I am your host, Nia Wong. So a week ago
Speaker 3: we did some episodes about the election of Zora and
Speaker 3: Mom Donnie and a lot of the very funny reactions
Speaker 3: to it, and you know, on Executive Disorder, we've talked
Speaker 3: about what this sort of means for politics. But now
Speaker 3: I want to do a slightly different kind of episode,
Speaker 3: which is looking at the challenge just that Montdomney is
Speaker 3: going to face, attempting to implement his agenda, attempting to
Speaker 3: stay mayor just taking him very seriously at his word
Speaker 3: in his attempt to make the cost of living lower
Speaker 3: and make people's lives better and there are unfortunately, very
Speaker 3: significant challenges to this agenda, and those challenges are a
Speaker 3: mix of structural problems and I don't know the president
Speaker 3: of the United States, right. We're going to focus on
Speaker 3: a few of them today, and before we really start this,
Speaker 3: I think I want to start this to some extent
Speaker 3: with the conclusion. And the conclusion of this episode is
Speaker 3: not to say that these things are impossible, right, and
Speaker 3: to not say they can't be done, but it's to
Speaker 3: remind people that the way that actual politics works, electing
Speaker 3: one person does not immediately make everything better.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: You can't stop or organizing because someone has been elected.
Speaker 3: And in fact, if you actually want to see the
Speaker 3: things that you you organize to you know, happen by
Speaker 3: electing this person, do you have to organize even harder
Speaker 3: once they are in power and mobilize even more to
Speaker 3: allow the things that you fought for to actually happen.
Speaker 3: Because there are significant opposition to anything you know, getting
Speaker 3: better for anyone in this country. And that opposition is powerful,
Speaker 3: well funded, well organized, and structural. And also, as we
Speaker 3: saw with the election of Aunt Donnie in the first place,
Speaker 3: it can be defeated. So we're going to start with
Speaker 3: the bond market. Now, many of you may be asking, bio,
Speaker 3: what what does the bond market have to do with
Speaker 3: make buses free? And to do that we need to
Speaker 3: talk about funding mechanisms. So most plans in the US
Speaker 3: for sort of social democratic policy for how you implement
Speaker 3: wellfare day policies, how you policies that make people's lives better,
Speaker 3: tend to start from the federal governments and the national level, right,
Speaker 3: and there are very obvious reasons for this. Unlike the
Speaker 3: federal government, city governments don't issue their own currency, which
Speaker 3: means the modern monetary theory, things that you would normally
Speaker 3: use to fund welfare programs with at a national level
Speaker 3: don't work. The federal governments, again, has control of its
Speaker 3: own debt and money supply. City governments don't. That means
Speaker 3: the city governments, if you want to find money to
Speaker 3: do something, you have to find that from somewhere. And
Speaker 3: as wonderful as it would be if you could simply
Speaker 3: do that by just okay, we raise taxes, and the
Speaker 3: taxes go to the policy that we want to implement,
Speaker 3: that's not how the system actually works. The way the
Speaker 3: system works if you want to pay for things at
Speaker 3: a city level is the bond market. David Ibacker has
Speaker 3: a very good piece about this the Baffler that I
Speaker 3: deeply recommend people read. The main thing that's important here
Speaker 3: for our purposes is that for funding significant portions of
Speaker 3: anything that you want to do as mayor, you are
Speaker 3: legally required to go through the bond markets. And this
Speaker 3: means that the city is forced to beg for money
Speaker 3: from Wall Street investment banks and then also pay those
Speaker 3: same banks exorbitant fees and interest, and a significant amount
Speaker 3: of money has to go to, as Backer points out,
Speaker 3: a whole bunch of you know, lawyers and finance people
Speaker 3: and consultants and all of these you know, sort of
Speaker 3: mafia of finance schools who are standing in between the
Speaker 3: normal mechanism of you have money and you pay for things.
Speaker 3: And that's assuming again that you even have the money
Speaker 3: in the first place, which you quite often don't because
Speaker 3: cities are very very often cash strapped. As Backer points out,
Speaker 3: using these bond mechan to pay for programs is legally required. Now,
Speaker 3: Backer is mostly focused on the structural constraints created by
Speaker 3: servicing debt, which can consume increasing portions of a city's budget.
Speaker 3: Until you know there's nothing left. This is sort of
Speaker 3: what's happened to Detroit to a large extent. And also
Speaker 3: the bank's direct control over the payment mechanism even when
Speaker 3: the city government brings in tax money. Right, So, even
Speaker 3: if you raise taxes and you bring in money, because
Speaker 3: you have to go through the bond market, it means
Speaker 3: that a bunch of that money is going to be
Speaker 3: funneled into servicing debt and paying interest on debt. But
Speaker 3: there's also a secondary problem here, which is that in
Speaker 3: very extreme cases, and I'm not saying we are immediately
Speaker 3: facing this, but I want to put this on the
Speaker 3: table as something that if you are attempting to run
Speaker 3: a social democratic program in a city, you do need
Speaker 3: to be significantly worried about the bank's direct control over
Speaker 3: payment Meaganisms means that the banks, you know, the people
Speaker 3: who buy the bonds that you need to use to
Speaker 3: get to fund these things. So let's actually take a
Speaker 3: step back here and explain what a bond is.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 3: A bond is basically you selling a piece of paper
Speaker 3: that is debt. So you go into the market and
Speaker 3: you sell sell a bank of bond and they give
Speaker 3: you a bunch of money, Right, now, and at the
Speaker 3: exploration of the bond, you pay that money back plus interest.
Speaker 3: This is how you have to fund things, because that
Speaker 3: is what's legally required, and also because cities need a
Speaker 3: way to get extremely large amounts of money. But this
Speaker 3: also means that cities that you know, banks and investors
Speaker 3: can simply not buy your bonds if they don't like
Speaker 3: what you're trying to do, and at that point very
Speaker 3: little can be done to oppose them. The most dramatic
Speaker 3: version of this problem came to the New York City
Speaker 3: bond crisis in nineteen seventy five, where New York City
Speaker 3: had to sell a bunch of bonds. It was significantly
Speaker 3: in debt, and there's a very famous scene in I
Speaker 3: think It's I think it's a hyperdormalisation. You know, there's
Speaker 3: film of like the city government officials who were sitting
Speaker 3: in this room waiting for the banks, like people, for
Speaker 3: the banks to show up to buy the bonds, and
Speaker 3: no one shows up, so suddenly they don't have any money.
Speaker 3: And then President Ford at the time tells the city
Speaker 3: to eat shit and die and refuses to buy any
Speaker 3: of New York City's bonds, refuse to give them any money,
Speaker 3: and this leaves the city bankrupt. Right, it gets to
Speaker 3: a point where they have fired the teachers, there's no
Speaker 3: one to collect garbage because they literally don't have money
Speaker 3: to pay anyone because no one will buy their bonds.
Speaker 3: And eventually this crisis is sort of mitigated. But the
Speaker 3: problem is that, you know, the task force that was
Speaker 3: set up to mitigate this right to like, you know,
Speaker 3: get there to be people buying New York City bonds. Again,
Speaker 3: those people were able to come in and New York
Speaker 3: City had a functional welfare state, right, had a sort
Speaker 3: of many social democratic welfare state. And in order to
Speaker 3: reopen the governments and have schools and garbage collection again,
Speaker 3: in order to get that money, the city was required
Speaker 3: to dismantle it. And you know, the financial situation of
Speaker 3: New York is obviously significantly better than it was then, right,
Speaker 3: And the odds of having this kind of just full
Speaker 3: on macro scale crisis is not as high as it
Speaker 3: was then. But because of the fact that this is
Speaker 3: the legally mandated way that you have to do these payments,
Speaker 3: and because unlike the federal government, there are constraints on
Speaker 3: spending that in some ways function like needing for an
Speaker 3: exchange currency. You know, you can't just issue this money.
Speaker 3: You have to get it from somewhere, and because of
Speaker 3: someone's usually the banks, it means that you have to
Speaker 3: constantly negotiate with the banks and with capital in order
Speaker 3: to keep the city's lights on. And this is a
Speaker 3: constant threat that they have sort of, you know, hanging
Speaker 3: over the head of anyone who wants to be governor.
Speaker 3: And as Backer points out, you can even just tax
Speaker 3: your way out of the problem because payment structures for
Speaker 3: government projects work out of the bond system, so that
Speaker 3: money just goes to debt payments. And you know, one
Speaker 3: of the other things that Backer points out. And obviously
Speaker 3: the situation in Chicago is different than the situation in
Speaker 3: New York. But the Chicago teachers Union did elect a
Speaker 3: mayor who was, you know, their guy, right, The cholot
Speaker 3: teachers Union spent a significant amount of money and resources
Speaker 3: and effort getting their guy elected, and once he came
Speaker 3: into office, he basically ended up doing the same thing
Speaker 3: in their negotiations with the teachers union that the previous
Speaker 3: administrations had done. And the reason that happened, you know,
Speaker 3: and the reason that you started to see cuts to
Speaker 3: school services that we're not supposed to happen, but did anyways,
Speaker 3: was because the bond market stepped in and said this
Speaker 3: is what's necessary in order to do this, and they
Speaker 3: have that kind of power. Now, obviously Chicago was in
Speaker 3: a worse financial situation than New York is. Mom Doominie
Speaker 3: is significantly further left than Brandon Johnson is. But these
Speaker 3: are real constraints, and the such a democratic solution to
Speaker 3: this has always been to get money from the federal governments.
Speaker 3: But the federal government won't give money out to the
Speaker 3: things that is legally required to give money out to
Speaker 3: you right now, because obviously it is run by one
Speaker 3: Donald Trump, and obviously Trump in and of himself is
Speaker 3: a significant problem to doing this right. There's always a
Speaker 3: chance that Trump will see something like mean about Mom
Speaker 3: Donnie on Fox News and decide to send the National
Speaker 3: Guard to New York or something, and you know, he
Speaker 3: will probably continue immigration raids. He can, you know, just
Speaker 3: fuck with people's ability to get Medicaid payments, which is
Speaker 3: a really significant issue. There will continue to be lots
Speaker 3: of creative and terrible things that the federal government can
Speaker 3: and will due to this administration that will have to
Speaker 3: be fought and can be defeated, but will have to
Speaker 3: be organized and fought against. But for our purposes right now,
Speaker 3: the big issue here is that you can't get money
Speaker 3: out of the federal government. So okay, where are you
Speaker 3: getting money out of then? And the answer is the
Speaker 3: state government. Now do you know what else gets money
Speaker 3: out of state governments? Probably not these products and services.
Speaker 3: I don't know who knows, who knows? We are back,
Speaker 3: So okay, let's talk about the state government now again.
Speaker 3: This even with the city the size of New York,
Speaker 3: there still is always significant negotiations in order to do
Speaker 3: you thinks in the city that require the aid of
Speaker 3: the state level government. And part of the problem here
Speaker 3: is that the New York State Democratic Party is significantly
Speaker 3: responsible for the Republican's control of the House, particularly in
Speaker 3: the twenty twenty two cycle. There's a whole long story
Speaker 3: here about how a bunch of a bunch of the
Speaker 3: Democrats wanted to form this sort of moderate caucus thing,
Speaker 3: where the sort of independent caucus that would caucus with
Speaker 3: the Republicans in order to give the Republicans the ability
Speaker 3: to stop any sort of liberal or left wing thing
Speaker 3: from happening. In the state governments and handle a whole
Speaker 3: bunch of seas over to the Republicans because of it.
Speaker 3: But just you know, setting all of that aside, the
Speaker 3: place that you can get money from would be from
Speaker 3: the governor's office. Unfortunately, that significate problem. So here's Hotel's
Speaker 3: response to Mamdami's plan to make buses free. Quote, I
Speaker 3: cannot set forth a plan right now that takes money
Speaker 3: out of a system that relies on fares of the
Speaker 3: buses in the subways. But can we find a path
Speaker 3: to make it more affordable for people who need help? Yes,
Speaker 3: of course we can. So Hotel does not want to
Speaker 3: raise taxes. Any proposal that would involve raising taxes probably
Speaker 3: has to run through New York City's City Council, and
Speaker 3: thus through her. I'm going to quote this some spectrum
Speaker 3: news about Mundammy's propos to expand universal childcare. Culchel said
Speaker 3: she's also looking at expanding a universal childcare program statewide.
Speaker 3: But the total price tag is fifteen billion dollars childcare
Speaker 3: I already committed to, she said. I'm committed to this
Speaker 3: as a mom governor, I get it, but also to
Speaker 3: do it statewide's about fifteen billion dollars the entire amount
Speaker 3: of my reserves. Cultural says she prefers to phase an
Speaker 3: expansion first within certain aide groups and geographically underserved communities.
Speaker 3: So okay, what is happening here in a macro sense
Speaker 3: is that Cultural is trying to slow roll both of
Speaker 3: these things. She is outright opposed to making buses free.
Speaker 3: She wants to do weird means testing stuff to it
Speaker 3: that will make it very difficult to do and extremely
Speaker 3: annoying bureaucratic layer meant to deny people services that you
Speaker 3: have to do instead of just having them be free.
Speaker 3: The childcare thing she probably does want to do, but again,
Speaker 3: because she is not a democratic socialist, because she is
Speaker 3: a regular Democrat, she wants to do it slowly, banded
Speaker 3: through a whole bunch of phases and taking a whole
Speaker 3: bunch of time.
Speaker 6: And this is a.
Speaker 3: Pretty significant problem because you know, at every step of this,
Speaker 3: not only are you going to have to be negotiating
Speaker 3: with the banking system, you're going to have to be
Speaker 3: negotiating with the statewide Democratic Party. And the statewide Democratic
Speaker 3: Party is fairly conservative. Hotel is not as conservative, and
Speaker 3: she can be sort of dragged kicking and screaming into
Speaker 3: good policies like what happened with congestion pricing. And if
Speaker 3: something works and is really popular after you do it,
Speaker 3: she will sign on to it. But it's a significant
Speaker 3: hurdle that you.
Speaker 7: Have to deal with.
Speaker 6: I want to move from this into a kind of
Speaker 6: related problem that's a more structural constraint on Ondami's time
Speaker 6: in office, which is that he is now in charge
Speaker 6: of running a capitalist economy. When you take a position
Speaker 6: in a capitalist government, it is now your job to
Speaker 6: make the economy run, and that means maintaining economic growth.
Speaker 6: But okay, what does economic growth actually mean in a
Speaker 6: capitalist economy. It means that corporations make more money than
Speaker 6: they did the year before. And this is a structural
Speaker 6: problem for all of us because we all have interests
Speaker 6: that are diametrically opposed to corporations making more money every
Speaker 6: year because their profit comes directly from our exploitation. Right,
Speaker 6: we have fundamentally opposed interests from the corporations and the
Speaker 6: capitalists and the billionaires. But in order for there to
Speaker 6: be capitalist economic growth, those people have to keep making
Speaker 6: more money every year.
Speaker 3: And obviously, you can make arguments about how redistribution enhances
Speaker 3: economic growth by creating a larger consumer base, and that's
Speaker 3: obviously true. We're in an extremely deformed economy right now.
Speaker 3: Where as I keep saying on this show, fifty percent
Speaker 3: of all consumer spending is happening from five percent of
Speaker 3: the population, which is just a completely unsustainable way to
Speaker 3: run an economy and is also absolutely miserab for every
Speaker 3: single other person who's in that bottom ninety five percent.
Speaker 3: And you know, there are things that you can do
Speaker 3: to some extent, right but at some point you are
Speaker 3: going to have to choose between workers and capital. And
Speaker 3: if you're the mayor of New York City, your job
Speaker 3: is to make capital more money. And this is a
Speaker 3: structural constraint that every social democratic government has faced. And
Speaker 3: it's worth noting that we are not in a world
Speaker 3: that is surrounded by social democratic governments. And part of
Speaker 3: the reason why, again is that they need the economy
Speaker 3: to keep growing and that they're reliant on finance institutions
Speaker 3: to make money. And the most grim versions of this
Speaker 3: tend to happen at a sort of national scale. But
Speaker 3: if you look at morally in Jamaica in the seventies,
Speaker 3: where you have a democratic socialist who gets elected and
Speaker 3: is running Jamaica and then has to implement austerity because
Speaker 3: the country runs out of money and the IMF comes in. Right,
Speaker 3: these things can get really bleak now they don't have to,
Speaker 3: right Like, sufficiently well organized populations can force the hand
Speaker 3: of capital to do things that they don't want to do.
Speaker 3: Significantly well organized populations can you start trying to fundamentally
Speaker 3: redistribute economic power. But it's difficult, and the difficulty is
Speaker 3: magnified by the third really massive constraint, and that constraint
Speaker 3: is the police. One of the other big structural problems
Speaker 3: that comes with the running a state is that it
Speaker 3: relies on armed men to enforce the laws, and those men,
Speaker 3: especially in the United States, are at best one step
Speaker 3: removed from straight up neo Nazis. A lot of them
Speaker 3: straight up are neo Nazis. The cops are the most
Speaker 3: consistently right wing group in the entire country. They are
Speaker 3: a bunch of racist shitheads who exist to perpetuate right
Speaker 3: supremacy and protect capital, and they're also again fundamental organizational
Speaker 3: unit of the state. Right without the violence of the police,
Speaker 3: laws are just suggestions, and if you're going to run
Speaker 3: a capitalist government, if you're going to run one in
Speaker 3: the US, you have to deal with the fact that
Speaker 3: your power depends on the loyalty of a bunch of Nazis,
Speaker 3: and these people will riot if you attempt to do
Speaker 3: oversight of them. They very famously did this in nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety two. They had this whole giant riot, right, They
Speaker 3: had the thing that was supposed to be a protest
Speaker 3: rally where they all went on strike, and then the
Speaker 3: cops who were supposed to be policing the protest obviously
Speaker 3: didn't do anything because again there are also cops. And
Speaker 3: in nineteen ninety two, I did this for a really
Speaker 3: really really minor oversight tempted oversight, right, And obviously they
Speaker 3: actually didn't win that direct fight, but they were able
Speaker 3: to cause enough of a political ship storm that they
Speaker 3: were able to force the last sort of like vaguely
Speaker 3: social democratic mayor out of power and install like Rudy Giuliani,
Speaker 3: who is a weird face, melty dipshit right, who's an
Speaker 3: incredible tough on crime right winger. And obviously Mamdani has
Speaker 3: been trying to kind of trying to do his best
Speaker 3: to negotiate with the police and not to overtly threaten them,
Speaker 3: but that kind of doesn't matter because they just hate him,
Speaker 3: like they think that a Muslim socialist is just inherently
Speaker 3: an illegitimate person, and they think that anyone who is
Speaker 3: even vaguely liberal is someone who is their enemy and
Speaker 3: who is their target. And we have seen them take
Speaker 3: actions to just directly threaten mayors fairly recently. Right in
Speaker 3: twenty twenty, they kidnapped Bill de Blasio's daughter at a
Speaker 3: protest and then sort of like paraded her mugshot around
Speaker 3: and posted it everywhere and did this whole big show
Speaker 3: of how they were holding her. To say it was
Speaker 3: a thinly veiled threat is a dramatic understatement of how incredibly,
Speaker 3: incredibly blatant this threat was. Right, they kidnapped the mayor's daughter, Drea,
Speaker 3: in a protest movement, and that was Bill de Blasio,
Speaker 3: who was not some kind of like wild anti police
Speaker 3: radical right, and especially now as sort of fascism is
Speaker 3: on the march, and with the backing of the US
Speaker 3: federal government, right, the police form a very significant threat
Speaker 3: to Mandami's ability to do anything. Both on a sort
Speaker 3: of political level, they are going to be constantly you know,
Speaker 3: putting out giant press releases about how Mamdami's like turn
Speaker 3: the city into unliverable hellhole and how they can't do
Speaker 3: their jobs, ceda, et cetera. And also just in terms
Speaker 3: of just directly threatening him and trying to influence his policy,
Speaker 3: they're going to be a real problem, and his ability
Speaker 3: to prevent them from, for example, smashing in the skulls
Speaker 3: of pro Palesime protesters, even if he wants to, was
Speaker 3: going to be very limited because the police have become
Speaker 3: a kind of semi autonomous fascist force in this country.
Speaker 3: They have always been a ticking time bomb on statius democracy,
Speaker 3: and that clock is closing in on zero in this
Speaker 3: in this sort of moment of assented fascism. Now again,
Speaker 3: I want to close this by saying, these are not
Speaker 3: all the challenges that he's going to face, but Comma,
Speaker 3: none of this also means that that the things that
Speaker 3: he wants to do to make people's lives better are impossible.
Speaker 3: Every single one of these problems are problems that you
Speaker 3: can defeat by organizing. Right, you can put enough pressure
Speaker 3: on capital to prevent them from doing a kind of
Speaker 3: like capital striker or a bond struck Right, to force them
Speaker 3: they continue to fund things. Right, with enough public pressure,
Speaker 3: you can make a whole lot of things happen. You
Speaker 3: can make the police, you know, at the very least
Speaker 3: be acting on a kind of defensive front to where
Speaker 3: they're not, you know, rioting and try to run city politics,
Speaker 3: but are kind of forced by mass popular and mobilization
Speaker 3: and pressure to at the very least not be openly
Speaker 3: attacking the mayor. You can put massive political pressure on
Speaker 3: Kathy Cultel to you know, do things that are good,
Speaker 3: which which is how we got how New York got
Speaker 3: congestion pricing in the first place. Right like that, that
Speaker 3: was a result of a masses like organizational campaign that
Speaker 3: went extremely well, and hushov like tried to sabotage it
Speaker 3: because she thought it would be unpopular, and eventually it
Speaker 3: got implemented and it's really popular now and now she's
Speaker 3: really in favor of it. So these people can be
Speaker 3: pushed around, right, They are not invincible, Their victory is
Speaker 3: not inevitable. They can be defeated and they can be
Speaker 3: forced to accept that, Oh wait, hold on, the extremely
Speaker 3: sensible policies that we want that make our lives better
Speaker 3: are good, and that requires mobilization. But you know that's
Speaker 3: not impossible. We know how to organize. We've been doing
Speaker 3: it for ages, and it was you know, what had
Speaker 3: happen to make all of this possible in the first place.
Speaker 3: And so instead of demobilizing now and going, oh, our
Speaker 3: jobs are done. No no, no, no, no, our job our jobs
Speaker 3: have just begun. But you know, the better organized we
Speaker 3: are and the more we're able to push this and
Speaker 3: the more we're able to push all of these people,
Speaker 3: the better our lives will get. And this election to
Speaker 3: begin with, is a reminder that another world is possible
Speaker 3: and it can be.
Speaker 6: Better than this one.
Speaker 7: We just have to build it together.
Speaker 6: This is it could happen here. I'm Garrison Davis, joined
Speaker 6: by Robert Evans. Last week, I released an episode on
Speaker 6: the ascent of white nationalist live streamer Nick Fuentes and
Speaker 6: his Graper fans among particularly young gen Z Republicans. The
Speaker 6: episode also tracked the conservative infighting at Heritage Foundation and
Speaker 6: Ben Shapiro's Daily Wire in the aftermath of Tucker Carlson's
Speaker 6: friendly sit down interview with Nick Fuenttes. In the episode,
Speaker 6: I mentioned that I had an extra segment covering the
Speaker 6: final section of the interview. Now, most coverage of this interview,
Speaker 6: including my episode last week, focused on like the first
Speaker 6: two thirds, which ranged from like Nick Fuentes's political background,
Speaker 6: early beef with Ben Shapiro and his like Nazisque anti
Speaker 6: Semitic theories of a quote unquote organized world jewelry corrupting America,
Speaker 6: which he now lightly couches in anti Israel framing to
Speaker 6: profit off of the genocide in Palestine. But the last
Speaker 6: third of the interview changes course to discuss the mechanisms
Speaker 6: of quote unquote reality distortion which are ruining young men, drugs, alcohol,
Speaker 6: the Internet, and most importantly, pornography. After receiving a universal
Speaker 6: response demanding the release of the porn cut, I have
Speaker 6: sat down with Robert here to finally finally air what
Speaker 6: no other news platform is brave enough, brave enough to cover?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, no, what new other news platform can legally
Speaker 2: cover because they have a duty to their employees to
Speaker 2: not make them research this stuff.
Speaker 6: Yeah, or like an actual healthy HR department.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we have not. We have not finished our classes
Speaker 2: on what we're not allowed to make people do. So
Speaker 2: said now, to be fair, Garrison couldn't be stopped from
Speaker 2: researching this. There was no there was no way of
Speaker 2: stopping you from doing this.
Speaker 6: I have a sick drive.
Speaker 2: You would have started working for someone else, so we
Speaker 2: didn't let you do this.
Speaker 6: No, if Sophie, if Sophie told me I wasn't allowed
Speaker 6: to cover this, I would have quit immediately.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you'd started working for Wired or someone.
Speaker 6: So now I am very pleased to present to you
Speaker 6: probably thirty thirty minutes of Nick Fuentt as explaining to
Speaker 6: a performatively confused Tucker Carlson the concept of pornography. And
Speaker 6: I guess if we're gonna view you know, Fuenttes and
Speaker 6: the Gropers as like a serious, legitimate threat that's able
Speaker 6: to sway national political discourse, I think it's also important
Speaker 6: to cover his weird sexual politics, just as explaining the
Speaker 6: weird sexual practices of like, you know, the Proud Boys
Speaker 6: is important for understanding their whole deal as like a
Speaker 6: neo fascist streak gang. The kind of closeted gay in
Speaker 6: cel women issues of the Gropers is actually really important,
Speaker 6: especially for Nick, and let's discuss that. But thankfully we
Speaker 6: get to start off with the majority majority of this section,
Speaker 6: which is which is on pornography let's start one of
Speaker 6: the first clips.
Speaker 8: What is porn exactly? Like, describe how available is porn?
Speaker 8: What is it?
Speaker 9: My God?
Speaker 2: Because he does ask that like a man who's legitimately
Speaker 2: never heard of pornography, he does.
Speaker 6: He later says like, obviously he is familiar with the
Speaker 6: rough concept of port uh huh, but maybe not, but
Speaker 6: maybe not this sort of Internet pored obsession, to which
Speaker 6: Nick refers, let's let's skip ahead about a minute where
Speaker 6: Nick kind of closes on his explanation of Internet porn specifically.
Speaker 4: So, something that has almost never talked about is that
Speaker 4: this is a generation that's totally sexually dysfunctional. I think
Speaker 4: because of pornography, and some people are able to cope
Speaker 4: with it. Some people don't have a problem, but I
Speaker 4: think a lot of people, and maybe even a small minority,
Speaker 4: have a serious problem with that.
Speaker 7: And the problem people sexually dysfunctional.
Speaker 4: I think that it's impossible for a real woman to
Speaker 4: compete with the availability and the novelty of pornography.
Speaker 6: So that is Nick's kind of ending argument at the
Speaker 6: tail end of his definition of porn and how porn
Speaker 6: is affecting specifically American men. A little bit of his
Speaker 6: in cel status is obviously seeping through there. More of
Speaker 6: it will become increasingly evident throughout throughout this interview. But
Speaker 6: this idea of sexual dysfunction, how porn is ruining men's
Speaker 6: ability to get into relationships, is ruining the ability to
Speaker 6: get into marriages, lasting marriages. And he frames this kind
Speaker 6: of slightly as the fault of men, but also really
Speaker 6: as the fault of women. Women aren't able to compete
Speaker 6: with how much porn there is, the different categories of porn.
Speaker 6: How can one woman please a man when a man
Speaker 6: can go on to the Internet and look up, you know,
Speaker 6: fifty different niche fetishes that not one woman could. Yeah,
Speaker 6: and that's that's part of his argument at this point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's always like been the Okay, so you've
Speaker 2: just you've never had a relationship.
Speaker 6: Which Nick is open about at least Nick claims that, right. Yeah,
Speaker 6: It's unclear how true a lot of Nick's claims are
Speaker 6: about his like in cell vall cell in voluntary celibate
Speaker 6: yea type deal, but no Nick Nick does claim that,
Speaker 6: and the sort of pushback Nick will receive later on
Speaker 6: in the interview on some of these aspects is actually
Speaker 6: way stronger than any of the world jewelry, anti Semitic
Speaker 6: stuff from earlier in the interview, which Carlson was vague
Speaker 6: actually kind of like trying to shape Nick quent as
Speaker 6: his rhetoric to make him like appeal to a bigger audience,
Speaker 6: but did not really push back on to the same
Speaker 6: extent he does on a Nick's like relationship with women.
Speaker 6: But the sexual dysfunction aspect, I think is the is
Speaker 6: the ending argument for Nick here in terms of what
Speaker 6: actually makes porn bad. He extrapolates on this point in
Speaker 6: this next section which I'll play Now.
Speaker 4: Porn is you could have one hundred different women in
Speaker 4: one sitting doing anything that whatever niche or idiosyncratic thing
Speaker 4: a person might be into, it's there. And so I
Speaker 4: think that novelty, combined with that availability, it makes it
Speaker 4: so that you know, when you think about courting a woman,
Speaker 4: juice isn't worth the squeeze. And so there's like also
Speaker 4: a problem of like a rectile dysfunction, people that can't
Speaker 4: enjoy regular sex because it does not compare to the
Speaker 4: intensity the novelty and the availability of porn. It's hyper stimulation,
Speaker 4: and so I think that's sabotaging a lot of normal
Speaker 4: sexual relationships.
Speaker 8: It seems like it's making a lot of people gay too. Yeah,
Speaker 8: and trance. You think that's true one hundred percent?
Speaker 7: What is that?
Speaker 2: Oh my god?
Speaker 6: What is that? I don't even know where to start there.
Speaker 2: I mean, like it's it's what these people have always believed,
Speaker 2: right that, Like, that's the There's got to be an explanation.
Speaker 6: Some kind of cause why people like.
Speaker 2: Things that that they're not allowed to admit to liking
Speaker 2: in public. And it's got to be the fault of pornography, right,
Speaker 2: or libraries whatever.
Speaker 6: Every time Tucker interjects the beauty of his of his
Speaker 6: little like befunneled interjections, what is that? Is that real?
Speaker 6: Is that true?
Speaker 2: Huh?
Speaker 6: It's it's fantastic, But yeah, no, I mean Nick kind
Speaker 6: of blames the rise in homosexuality and transsexuality on this
Speaker 6: like novelty of pornography and this sexual desensitization like once
Speaker 6: regular poor and it doesn't do it for people. They
Speaker 6: get pushed to more and more extreme categories, of which
Speaker 6: transport is somehow particularly effective at like influencing and uh,
Speaker 6: you know, manipulating human behavior. Right, This is like the
Speaker 6: sissy hypno theory that porn can like make somebody trans Yeah,
Speaker 6: very goofy stuff, specifically for Nick, considering his curious catboy
Speaker 6: background and his alleged leak viewership of trans porn, which
Speaker 6: we might we might discuss later. I want to play it,
Speaker 6: play another clip kind of on this note, a shorter one.
Speaker 4: I think that if you are somebody that uses pornography
Speaker 4: multiple times per day, which many people do.
Speaker 8: Actually, oh, absolutely, what's a lot of jerking off. That's
Speaker 8: a huge problem. Yeah, that's a lot of cherking off.
Speaker 6: Former Fox News anchor Tucker car Off. Yeah, that's a
Speaker 6: lot of jerk it off. I so badly. I just
Speaker 6: wanted to cut some of these clips out of like
Speaker 6: out of contact, just put them in my other episode.
Speaker 2: Tucker only comes once a year, and he can only
Speaker 2: come by wrapping his dick in side of two frozen
Speaker 2: Swanson's meals. He's got to kind of use like you
Speaker 2: know how it's got like there's little divots on the
Speaker 2: back end. He's got to use that to cushion his penis.
Speaker 2: It's the only way he can come.
Speaker 6: It's a fairly edipal thing with his you know, family business.
Speaker 6: This this sort of like psychosexual drive. Wow, the Swans
Speaker 6: and of it all. Of course, that makes sense for Yeah,
Speaker 6: that makes sense for Tucker h But no, and Dick
Speaker 6: says that porn like operates kind of like drug tolerance levels,
Speaker 6: which like, over time, after repetitive use, in order to
Speaker 6: get high, the user must seek out stronger drugs or
Speaker 6: dangerously intense doses, of which he views transport. Is this
Speaker 6: like dangerous dose? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, because I do love like the the through line
Speaker 2: with these people that like both this is like a
Speaker 2: sickening degeneracy and also is so appealing that people absolutely
Speaker 2: cannot help themselves to it, like it affects them like heroin.
Speaker 2: It's it's it's so inherently attractive.
Speaker 6: I mean some of that might be their actual proclivities
Speaker 6: kind of yes, I think, kind of peeking out from
Speaker 6: under the surface there. Yeah, all of these guys love
Speaker 6: watching Transport, all of these like anti trans people, whether
Speaker 6: it's Alex Jones or like Nick Fuentes, Like obviously they
Speaker 6: have they have an interest in that, and that's what
Speaker 6: kind of drives them of their obsession.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which is it's just weird, Like I don't know
Speaker 2: anyone who talks about any pornography that way, Like you know,
Speaker 2: every everyone's got whatever it is they're into, like something
Speaker 2: that they'll be particularly interested in, but no one describes
Speaker 2: as like it's just this kind of thing. No one
Speaker 2: can resist it obviously, this.
Speaker 6: Sort of like powerful obsessive nature in which these types
Speaker 6: of right wing freaks like refer to it as they.
Speaker 2: Like actual perverts will say stuff like no, no, no,
Speaker 2: I've been shoving things inside my p hole for the
Speaker 2: last twenty seven years, and now I can get up
Speaker 2: to something the width of a mag light and I
Speaker 2: know that's crazy, Like, I know no one else does that.
Speaker 2: That's just a me fing. Oh, someone needs to explain
Speaker 2: sounding to Tucker Carlson is what I'm what I'm saying,
Speaker 2: like I if I if he interviews me, I'm gonna
Speaker 2: walk him through sounding. I'm gonna use together a PowerPoint
Speaker 2: with photos.
Speaker 6: He's obviously he's obviously uh open and open to this
Speaker 6: line of discussion. Are we allowed to have ads on
Speaker 6: this episode?
Speaker 2: Yeah, probably not, but let's throw to him anyway.
Speaker 6: All right, we are we are back. Nick Fuentes is
Speaker 6: gonna continue continue to describe pornography towards a slightly confused
Speaker 6: Tucker Carlson. Now now Nick is able to really speak
Speaker 6: from a sense of authority as someone who claims to
Speaker 6: have never had sex, He's able to really speak with
Speaker 6: authority on this topic, which I will, I will, I'll
Speaker 6: play this next clip.
Speaker 4: And there's something too about what a when you look
Speaker 4: at it? When you because people don't realize that it
Speaker 4: is a fundamentally different experience. People don't realize being involved
Speaker 4: in intercourse versus watching other people have intercourse.
Speaker 7: And I think that actually does something to you. Tell me,
Speaker 7: what do you mean?
Speaker 6: Sorry, I'm just stop there for a sec. People don't
Speaker 6: realize this amazing observation from alleged virsion in cell Nick Fuentes.
Speaker 6: He's trying to make this point about like body depersonalization
Speaker 6: or like disassociation when watching ports like this, like out
Speaker 6: of body experience because you start associating yourself with people
Speaker 6: on screen. That's eventually what he starts talking about, right,
Speaker 6: And but he couches this in saying that, like, people
Speaker 6: don't realize that this is what this is, you know,
Speaker 6: different from actual sex, which is really funny because Nick
Speaker 6: is proudly proclaims that he's never had sex before, so
Speaker 6: he is in no position to argue this point.
Speaker 2: No, Yeah, that's the other thing. How would you know
Speaker 2: that it's inherently better than sex.
Speaker 6: Like because he's never had I think that he has
Speaker 6: to assume that because that's the only information he has.
Speaker 6: But I love I love his his framing of this
Speaker 6: is like new novel information that no one else has
Speaker 6: access to, that no one realizes that watching port is
Speaker 6: different from having sex. Yeah, Tucker's response is just phenomenal
Speaker 6: at the end of this, because Tucker's like trying trying
Speaker 6: to coax more and more shit out of him. It's
Speaker 6: really the only time where he's kind of being a
Speaker 6: sly interviewer is at this ending porn section. It's not
Speaker 6: the it's not the are you a Fed? Section, it's
Speaker 6: not the Daily Wires stuff, it's not the anti Semitism stuff.
Speaker 6: It's it's specifically the porn section. But to explain this
Speaker 6: like out of body theory that Nick that Nick has here,
Speaker 6: unfortunately Nick gets into trying to explain the Blanchardian theory
Speaker 6: of trend sexuality towards towards Tucker Carlson, of which I
Speaker 6: will only play a certain segment of because we don't
Speaker 6: need to hear that whole thing. But there is a
Speaker 6: section of this next clip that which we'll get into
Speaker 6: that as well as take you on kind of a
Speaker 6: beautiful journey showcasing Tucker's objection to pornography.
Speaker 4: I think that you know, for example, I think Steve
Speaker 4: Sailor has written about this that there's multiple kinds of transsexuals,
Speaker 4: and he says a one kind of transsexual is somebody
Speaker 4: that likes the idea of seeing themselves as a woman's
Speaker 4: auto ginophilia. Yes, And I think that you know, one
Speaker 4: of the theories for that is you you watch a
Speaker 4: man having sex with a woman that isn't you so much,
Speaker 4: you kind of achieve an identity with the woman in
Speaker 4: like a worstick way. You almost identify with the woman.
Speaker 4: And so there's weird things that happen when you're watching
Speaker 4: that and having such strong emotional and sexual experiences.
Speaker 6: Interesting.
Speaker 8: Nick, that's interesting, Nick, I've always been I've sensed for
Speaker 8: a long time having had a lot of young male
Speaker 8: employees mentioned porn as a problem. I mean, the big
Speaker 8: porn companies give visibility to foreign intel services on the back,
Speaker 8: so that means people know what you're looking at. There's
Speaker 8: likely video and audio of you watching.
Speaker 6: Okay, all right, there's so much I love that Tucker's made.
Speaker 6: Objection to photography isn't the stuff that Nick's talking about
Speaker 6: at all, but the idea that it poses a security
Speaker 6: risk because of foreign intel services.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that they're they're recording everyone masturbating.
Speaker 6: To blackmail every single person on the planet. And he
Speaker 6: couches us and saying that he's quote not a huge
Speaker 6: expert on the topic. Yeah, which is really good. But
Speaker 6: to go back a little bit, the level of projection
Speaker 6: Nick is doing here with this identifying as a woman
Speaker 6: in the in the poor thing is simply phenomenal. I mean,
Speaker 6: especially considering the whole you know, catboys scandal, which I
Speaker 6: covered on the show like years ago as when I
Speaker 6: was like a baby, as well as Nick's like alleged
Speaker 6: trans porn league, which I guess I'll explain to here briefly.
Speaker 6: This was in twenty twenty two. Nick allegedly was operating
Speaker 6: a socc puppet Twitter account when he was banned on Twitter.
Speaker 6: This this account shared a clip scrolling through Nick Fuentes
Speaker 6: like analytics, like video analytics, like search of analytics, showing
Speaker 6: his popularity and when scrolling through these various tabs, A
Speaker 6: little section of a tab that that didn't did not
Speaker 6: get into full view, but you get you saw the
Speaker 6: bottom of it, which looked a lot like a very
Speaker 6: specific trans femboy porn video on porn hub. People found
Speaker 6: the video, and after they found the video, you know this,
Speaker 6: This this post with these analytics was like taken down
Speaker 6: and this account was believed to be operated by Nick Fuentez.
Speaker 6: Now Nick claims that he obviously was not behind this account,
Speaker 6: that this was some like a groper fan who was
Speaker 6: trying to set him up for scandal by operating an
Speaker 6: account that appeared to be Nick's account on Twitter but
Speaker 6: actually wasn't. I Robert, I will show you a little
Speaker 6: bit of this analytics video. We don't need to see
Speaker 6: the whole thing, but it's like this, okay, so various
Speaker 6: various tabs. Look look at all these tabs. This various Like.
Speaker 2: When does Jake Lloyd explore.
Speaker 6: What comparing his popularity towards other other like commentators.
Speaker 2: He was comparing his popularity to fucking Jake Lloyd from
Speaker 2: the Face and Menace from the Phantom Menace, So you
Speaker 2: should be beating him, Nick.
Speaker 6: But like web traffic analytics Joe Ken to Google trends
Speaker 6: and then let's see if I can find it right
Speaker 6: right here at the top. Yeah, right here at the top,
Speaker 6: was scrolling through the tabs on the iPhone Safari is
Speaker 6: a little a little peorn tab right Yeah. So this
Speaker 6: this turned into a little, a little mini thing with
Speaker 6: people thinking that they secretly stumbled across the Nick's porn
Speaker 6: porn watching habits, of which it would be no surprise, yeah,
Speaker 6: that he'd be watching transfendboy porn, especially again considering that
Speaker 6: he operated a catboy discord channel on his server. But
Speaker 6: he has staunchly denied this, as you know, as a
Speaker 6: based Catholic in cell obviously. So, both Tucker and Nick
Speaker 6: believe that porn is a big factor affecting the decline
Speaker 6: of actual sex and marriage among gen z, and it's
Speaker 6: not just a male problem. Nick argues that it has
Speaker 6: become a quote unquote so destigmatized for women to participate
Speaker 6: in porn as well, of which she's mostly referring to
Speaker 6: only fans. Here's a clip of them discussing only fans.
Speaker 4: And it is completely casual, you know, because you could
Speaker 4: say that maybe ten years ago, even at the heyday
Speaker 4: of Internet porn. To be in porn, you got to
Speaker 4: be a porn star. Like that's your life and that's
Speaker 4: your career, and that's who you are. And it's very shameful.
Speaker 4: With only fans, It's like it's like having a TikTok.
Speaker 4: It's like, here's my link tree, here's my Instagram account,
Speaker 4: here's my Facebook account, here's my YouTube, and here's my
Speaker 4: only fans.
Speaker 7: Why would any of this be legal?
Speaker 4: I think that, Well, there's, like you indicated, maybe there's
Speaker 4: an intelligence benefit to that. Yeah, maybe there's a political
Speaker 4: benefit to that. I think that why wouldn't you arrest
Speaker 4: the people who run something like that? They should be
Speaker 4: if you had a Christian government, or how about the
Speaker 4: government and cares about its people? I mean, is Iran
Speaker 4: a bigger threat or his only fans? Iron's not turning
Speaker 4: my daughters to prostitution that I'm aware of?
Speaker 6: Right, Oh my god? Is Iron a bigger threat? Or
Speaker 6: is only fans?
Speaker 2: Yes? Yes, that's the real geopolitical question.
Speaker 6: The wisest minds. No, what a what a beautiful mind
Speaker 6: that is? Yeah, yeah, like even be able to think
Speaker 6: of the sentence. Is a run a bigger threat than
Speaker 6: only fans?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 6: Like I could never even get myself to a point
Speaker 6: where I conjured that thought in my own head.
Speaker 2: We have to ban pornography because it's the iran of masturbation.
Speaker 6: It's frankly beautiful in order to get their minds so
Speaker 6: so degraded to even have this thought. It's so alien.
Speaker 6: Man Later, Tucker pushes kind of on this point about
Speaker 6: the need to arrest people who run only fans, while
Speaker 6: Nick kind of quietly remarks that it's really the women
Speaker 6: or the quote unquote body assets who should be arrested.
Speaker 6: But Tucker is pretty firm on no, it's really like
Speaker 6: the facilitators, people hosting the website or are enabling this.
Speaker 6: But you know, Nick and Nick would be totally fine
Speaker 6: if women on the platform also get arrested. Man Ah. Again,
Speaker 6: the insistence that the a primary objection or like a
Speaker 6: causal a causal aspect of why is this allowed it's
Speaker 6: for like intelligence gathering services, is simply beautiful. Do you
Speaker 6: know what else is beautiful?
Speaker 2: Robert? The sponsors of this podcast.
Speaker 6: They are for putting up with this.
Speaker 9: Yeah, all right, we're back.
Speaker 6: Before this final segment, we will we will transcend the
Speaker 6: discussion of porn and just talk more about some of
Speaker 6: Nick's opinions on on like women, oh good, and other
Speaker 6: factors beyond porn for why you know, marriage isn't happening?
Speaker 6: Why why aren't people getting married as much anymore? You know,
Speaker 6: of which both Tucker and Nick think porn is a factor.
Speaker 6: But there's other factors contributing to this crisis, which Nick
Speaker 6: and Tucker will will elucidate. Let's uh, let's hear him out.
Speaker 8: So what are the other factors that prevent I'm sorry
Speaker 8: I called you gay, by the way, but I'm always sure.
Speaker 8: I think I'm just too old or something. I'm like, what,
Speaker 8: why is anyone married? You tell me why isn't Why
Speaker 8: an't people married? Well, I mean, honestly, it's the women,
Speaker 8: all right.
Speaker 6: Oh okay, we solve that problem. Uh yeah, that's it.
Speaker 6: I think that does it for us, that it could
Speaker 6: happen here. They got to the bottom of that pretty quickly. Sorry,
Speaker 6: I called you gay, by the way. So no. Now
Speaker 6: it's time for the wise in selsationic fuintest to bestow
Speaker 6: his wisdom pertaining to relationships and marriage, and in his eyes,
Speaker 6: the main problem seems to be that not just women,
Speaker 6: but specifically that women are too liberal. Yeah, really breaking
Speaker 6: new ground there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, sure, that's that's it. That's the problem because then
Speaker 2: they don't like all of the Nick flintest fans.
Speaker 4: The men are extremely conservative increasingly the women are extremely liberal.
Speaker 7: What are they liberal on? What issues?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 7: What does that mean liberal?
Speaker 10: Oh?
Speaker 7: On on out?
Speaker 4: They're very feminist, like actually extremely femine.
Speaker 7: I don't believe that, do they? I think they do
Speaker 7: really absolutely.
Speaker 8: I don't believe that gender roles are a construct, that
Speaker 8: none of this is inborn, Like you'd have to be
Speaker 8: an idiot to think that.
Speaker 7: They like the idea of it.
Speaker 6: Tucker's delivery. I want to study it more.
Speaker 2: I feel like they sketched some of this out before
Speaker 2: they did this, because I feel like they're both leading
Speaker 2: each other to get out statements that they want to say.
Speaker 6: No, yeah, it's so crafted here, like they're back and forth.
Speaker 6: Exchange is so is so crafted. Every every inflection they have,
Speaker 6: they're like giving each other these key points to the
Speaker 6: extrap laid on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's the stuff that's willful, like the claims that well,
Speaker 2: young men are conservative, which is based on like a
Speaker 2: shift towards Trump that's partly reversed over the last year
Speaker 2: or so, but that was not the vast majority of
Speaker 2: gen Z people, right, Like it's it's yeah, young people
Speaker 2: are willing to like try out different things and swing
Speaker 2: back and forth. But like, it's not, it's not the
Speaker 2: way he's framing it, right, because that's that's the most
Speaker 2: convenient narrative for the right, that like all of the
Speaker 2: young men are pulling towards the right, and so the
Speaker 2: problem is that women are more progressive, right, Yeah.
Speaker 6: Therefore it has to be liberal women. Yeah, right, No,
Speaker 6: it's it's a very it's a very convenient excuse to
Speaker 6: explain actually a complex set of economic problems which are
Speaker 6: preventing people from feeling comfortable enough to actually start a
Speaker 6: family and you know, safe enough economically speaking. Nick goes
Speaker 6: on to complain about, you know, women lying about wanting equality,
Speaker 6: wanting to work, when really all they want is a
Speaker 6: quote unquote tough chad quote. The whole political system is
Speaker 6: based around women never being accountable for any of their
Speaker 6: choices unquote. This is namely abortion and no false divorce,
Speaker 6: which Nick spends a while talking about how that is
Speaker 6: but a significant contributing factor towards ruining this country. How
Speaker 6: women can enter marriages and leave for whatever reason they want,
Speaker 6: taking half of them money, taking half the stuff, etc. Etc.
Speaker 6: There's another factor that Nick claims is contributing to this problem.
Speaker 6: They have a.
Speaker 4: Very high estimation of themselves. I think people call it
Speaker 4: hope flation. Their yes, their sense of their own looks
Speaker 4: and sexual value is very inflated.
Speaker 6: I just had to put the hope flation clip in there.
Speaker 2: The hope flation, Yes, Tucker Carlson saying, hope flation. It's
Speaker 2: truly a moment for us.
Speaker 9: All.
Speaker 6: Yeah. Again, I really want to just displice some of
Speaker 6: these soundbits into my other episode at random points. Now, again,
Speaker 6: Tucker actually pushes back in some of like the in
Speaker 6: between sections here, and I'll play some of that pushback later,
Speaker 6: but you know, way more than the rest of the interview.
Speaker 6: So specifically, here Tucker is actually pushing back on Nick's
Speaker 6: kind of resigned blame directed towards women and the quote
Speaker 6: unquote legal incentive structures that he says are contributing to this.
Speaker 6: And Tucker responds by saying, even if some of these
Speaker 6: complaints are true, as believers in the natural patriarchy, isn't
Speaker 6: it men's role to take responsibility lead by example and
Speaker 6: to fix this behavior in women through marriage.
Speaker 4: But I would say that because I hear this all
Speaker 4: the time. People say, well, the men need to step
Speaker 4: up and be better and lead the women Easier said
Speaker 4: than done.
Speaker 7: You know, I agree with that.
Speaker 4: They're at war with the system, and not even just
Speaker 4: the system, but also society.
Speaker 6: So this is this is the full like joker pilled
Speaker 6: and sale stuff, is that in order to have an
Speaker 6: actual relationship with women, men have to enter into combat
Speaker 6: against quote unquote society. Right like this, it is larger.
Speaker 6: It's larger thing that's influencing women and is making them,
Speaker 6: you know, depraved and liberal. And Nick argues that even
Speaker 6: if you find like a nice, trad Christian girl, they're
Speaker 6: gonna be on TikTok, they're gonna be on Instagram, and
Speaker 6: they're gonna be quote unquote talking to other women and
Speaker 6: through osmosis, they're gonna get influenced by this liberal culture
Speaker 6: and say, ten, fifteen, twenty years down the line, people
Speaker 6: will change and they may not be so Christian and
Speaker 6: trad twenty years into your marriage because of society.
Speaker 2: Huh yeah, I mean, I guess that's the argument I
Speaker 2: expected from him.
Speaker 6: He'll extracolate some of his reasoning here.
Speaker 4: And I think that women as kind of the ultimate conformists,
Speaker 4: the ultimate enforcers of like social norms. I think eventually
Speaker 4: the pressure from society kind of gets to them, and
Speaker 4: a lot of them will go into.
Speaker 8: It depends what kind of husbands they have. I mean,
Speaker 8: if there's real leadership at home. I don't know a
Speaker 8: single happily married woman who's liberal, not one. I know
Speaker 8: a lot of married women.
Speaker 6: Here's some of the pushback that Tucker is doing now.
Speaker 6: But yeah, man, this idea of you know, that women
Speaker 6: as the ultimate conformists is the enforcers of social norms, right,
Speaker 6: This is like kind of like the long House type stuff.
Speaker 6: And Tucker's rebuke of that is that in an actual
Speaker 6: you know, marriage with a conservative man, a strong and
Speaker 6: so it of man, all that behavior will get changed
Speaker 6: because people will fall into like their natural biological patriarchal roles.
Speaker 6: But Nick still doesn't buy it. Like he is he is,
Speaker 6: he is an insul at heart. Here's no way that
Speaker 6: that Tucker's kind of push back gonna it's gonna turn
Speaker 6: him on this. Like Nick just hates women entirely. This
Speaker 6: whole motivation is that due to some sort of like
Speaker 6: fascist homo erotic like aspect maybe, but it's it's probably
Speaker 6: even more complicated than that. I mean, part of the
Speaker 6: fascist fenboy thing is people who actually aren't even gay
Speaker 6: but just hate women so much that they end up
Speaker 6: being gay because that's like the only mode of connection
Speaker 6: they can even or like physical connection. They can even
Speaker 6: like muster themselves to to like do, which I explained
Speaker 6: in that episode from you know a few years ago
Speaker 6: when I was a baby. But yeah, this is definitely
Speaker 6: some stuff at play here, and I mean Nick will
Speaker 6: always just find new things to complain about in regards
Speaker 6: to this sort of stuff, like the quote unquote epidemic
Speaker 6: of simps.
Speaker 8: So like maybe the job is to make you girl
Speaker 8: happy in like all this nonsense ends.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 4: I think that that could be a bottomless pit too,
Speaker 4: because my critique I have of the men is, and
Speaker 4: you're right about this, they enable this behavior.
Speaker 7: Well, that's for sure, it's epidemic of simps.
Speaker 4: Who and especially with Christians, I've noticed this epic of.
Speaker 2: Six Yeah, that's that's something else.
Speaker 6: Marriage has this bottomless pit.
Speaker 2: I also love the idea that Tucker's like, well, why
Speaker 2: are men just making women happy. And you know the
Speaker 2: answer there for Tucker is that people like you are
Speaker 2: not capable of making other people happy. But Nick can't
Speaker 2: even consider that because the idea of women being happy
Speaker 2: is deeply offensive to him.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 6: No, I mean Nick says that simp culture, or more specifically,
Speaker 6: a backlash to simp culture, is why people like Andrew
Speaker 6: Tate have gotten so popular despite being a quote unquote
Speaker 6: Muslim polchemist, because Tate is quote putting a women in
Speaker 6: their place, as opposed to Christian men who are tone
Speaker 6: policing each other and are worshiping women and worshiping their wives,
Speaker 6: which Tucker pushes back on a bit by saying that
Speaker 6: the New Testament commands men to love their wives and
Speaker 6: that wives respect their husbands. We got only two more
Speaker 6: at clips left, but I think they are very revealing,
Speaker 6: all right, as much else needs to be revealed here.
Speaker 8: I do think I've just noticed this that men who
Speaker 8: stay unmarried for too long become like kind of fragile.
Speaker 8: There's something about the give and take. There's something about
Speaker 8: living with In fact, I think it's the key to life.
Speaker 8: Someone you don't fully understand that broadens you, that keeps
Speaker 8: you always thinking that makes you wiser, more patient, more thoughtful,
Speaker 8: more self aware, and more flexible.
Speaker 7: And those are all good qualities.
Speaker 8: And the absence of that, like in with sexuality, or
Speaker 8: like men who are single too long, they get very rigid.
Speaker 7: Have you ever noticed this?
Speaker 6: Have you ever noticed this?
Speaker 8: I like things the way I like them, and they
Speaker 8: just get like no, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you don't
Speaker 8: want that.
Speaker 2: Really, because that's who you are. Nick.
Speaker 4: I would say that when when you say you don't
Speaker 4: fully understand women. To me, I feel like women are
Speaker 4: very simple in terms of lived with one. No, I
Speaker 4: haven't lived with them, but I meant.
Speaker 6: Oh, man, women are really simple. Have you ever lived
Speaker 6: with one? No?
Speaker 2: It's really funny up until the assuming all gay people
Speaker 2: are the same bit. Tucker's making a good point, which
Speaker 2: is that like part of what's healthy about relationships is
Speaker 2: like living with someone who's not like you, right, just
Speaker 2: like that makes us better people.
Speaker 6: And he's very clearly trying to like like push Nick's
Speaker 6: buttons here, Yeah, because he knows, he knows, he knows,
Speaker 6: because Nick's getting called out because yeah, he's this angry,
Speaker 6: unmarried guy. He's this like ye little unhinged freak.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Oh and Yeah, he's like getting he's absolutely getting called
Speaker 6: out here. And it's funny that this is the thing
Speaker 6: out of the of the entire interview that that that
Speaker 6: Tucker really tries to harp on. It's it's this married thing,
Speaker 6: Like he really wants Nick to get married. That's kind
Speaker 6: of the main thing he's really pushing for by the
Speaker 6: end of this interview.
Speaker 2: Yeah, bro, that's gonna happen.
Speaker 6: Have you ever lived with one? Well no, no, of
Speaker 6: course not. It's wild. I mean, well, later Nick tries
Speaker 6: to argue that, you know, it's it's really the men
Speaker 6: who are complicated because men have a quote deep connection
Speaker 6: to math and space unquote.
Speaker 2: Sure, yeah, man, I love my deep connection to math
Speaker 2: and space.
Speaker 6: Yeah, Robert's so good at math and space.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really my strong suits math and space.
Speaker 6: Anyone that knows you, I would.
Speaker 2: Say, every man I know is good at math and space.
Speaker 6: Versus you know, women just operate on primal base inurse. Yes,
Speaker 6: Nicks quote, men are masters of the universe. Women are
Speaker 6: the universe, which I think is a quote from someone else.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, god, yeah, you're a real master of
Speaker 2: the universe. Nick.
Speaker 6: This will be the final clip where Tucker will offer
Speaker 6: a little bit more pushback towards Nick on some of
Speaker 6: his views about women in marriage. You've got a pretty
Speaker 6: clear look into into Nick's interiority here as well.
Speaker 8: So but anyway, but whatever, the point of men want
Speaker 8: to talk past each other constantly, they don't always know
Speaker 8: what the other one is saying, and that frustration actually
Speaker 8: gives way to like great beauty over time. I would say,
Speaker 8: I don't know.
Speaker 4: I personally find women very frustrated when they are not expressing, and.
Speaker 7: I just view that as any of it.
Speaker 6: I see.
Speaker 4: The way I look at is like when you look
Speaker 4: at your favorite TV shows, right, Sopranos Breaking Bad, It's
Speaker 4: like the wife is the villain because it's like the
Speaker 4: main character, if the wife could just get out of
Speaker 4: the way, would be running the shell. And that's kind
Speaker 4: of how I feel. Like iron Rand I agree with
Speaker 4: her about this. She said that the wife's role is
Speaker 4: like hero worship. The guy is the hero. The guy
Speaker 4: is supposed to be the entrepreneur, the conqueror or whatever,
Speaker 4: and the woman is really supposed to support the man's
Speaker 4: goals and be in his world.
Speaker 8: And I van that's the well, last thing successful men
Speaker 8: need is more power worship more, a hero worship more.
Speaker 7: You're so great?
Speaker 8: Well, you get that at work, you don't want that
Speaker 8: at home. You become an unbearable absolute pray to destroys
Speaker 8: every successful man, which is hubrisk, Like you mistake yourself
Speaker 8: for God. You need someone who's not interested in what
Speaker 8: you do at all, only interested in you. And that's
Speaker 8: how you become balanced and wise. That's how you know
Speaker 8: your own limits.
Speaker 2: That's shockingly good advice from Tucker Carlson.
Speaker 6: Like this, This is so beautiful. This is so beautiful
Speaker 6: to me. When Tucker Carlson is the voice of reason,
Speaker 6: it's it's really really scary weak. Yeah, but no, so
Speaker 6: clearly is next like a closet and gay in cell
Speaker 6: showing here? Well, like, well, Tucker pains pains to explain
Speaker 6: to Nick why people actually get into relationships. Yeah, and
Speaker 6: Nick just can't do it. He starts talking about the
Speaker 6: Sopranos and fucking breaking bad. That's like the only framework
Speaker 6: in which you could understand this because he's never had
Speaker 6: a real relationship. The wife is the villain, I agree
Speaker 6: with ein Rand. Yeah, famously well adjusted in the relationship department.
Speaker 6: Iin Rand, the wife's role is hero for chef, and
Speaker 6: Tucker's like, oh my god, no, that that's horrible.
Speaker 2: Oh no, that's that's what ruins people, that destroys people.
Speaker 6: It's fascinating. No, yeah, this is a this is a
Speaker 6: truly fascinating exchange. And it's really telling that this is
Speaker 6: the thing that Tucker pushes back on not anti semitism,
Speaker 6: but she like kind of tepidly offered Nick advice on
Speaker 6: how to change his rhetoric to be more appealing, but
Speaker 6: did not push back on the substance of it, because
Speaker 6: Tucker is actually just as anti Semitic as Nick is. Yeah,
Speaker 6: but no, this is this is the thing that he
Speaker 6: that he decided to do. And yeah, like my initial
Speaker 6: feeling after watching this whole two hour and eighteen minute
Speaker 6: stream is like this whole stream or this whole episode
Speaker 6: felt like Tucker was kind of trying to be some
Speaker 6: sort of mentor figured to Neck or saw that Nick
Speaker 6: might be the future in some way, like might be
Speaker 6: whether whether it's the future of the party or future
Speaker 6: of like you know, this sort of like commentating class
Speaker 6: or style, and it kind of wanted to offer a
Speaker 6: little bit of a guiding light towards someone who I
Speaker 6: think Tucker does see, as you know, having some obvious
Speaker 6: issues and saying some nasty things and wanting to kind
Speaker 6: of write that course in a way or provide Nick
Speaker 6: a bit of a fresh start to restate some of
Speaker 6: his views on the biggest right wing platform online, which
Speaker 6: is which is Tucker's show. Right now, I guess that's
Speaker 6: kind of that's kind of all I have on this
Speaker 6: women in poor section. I guess the last thing before
Speaker 6: we close, there is this question right with people in
Speaker 6: the GOP who are scared about Nick's Nick's influence at
Speaker 6: least in the commentating classroom among like interns, but specifically
Speaker 6: scared of it one because of the you know, anti
Speaker 6: Israel stuff, but also if that's going to hurt them electorally. Right,
Speaker 6: A lot of people couch this and saying, well, you know,
Speaker 6: these views aren't popular with the electorate. Republicans are never
Speaker 6: going to win elections if this Graper thing takes over,
Speaker 6: and that leaves us, you know, people who are against
Speaker 6: against you know, the rise of fascism and authoritarianism in
Speaker 6: kind of a weird spot because I don't think we
Speaker 6: can really do anything to encourage like the graperification of
Speaker 6: the GOP like an accelerationist fashion. But we can kind
Speaker 6: of let it happen. We can choose to just let
Speaker 6: it happen, or we can choose to kind of stop
Speaker 6: it in like the twenty seventeen Antifa, you know, framework
Speaker 6: of like trying to prevent this stuffrom spreading because it
Speaker 6: will always lead to bad things. And yeah, after doing
Speaker 6: all this research last week and really continuing into this
Speaker 6: week too, I mean Trump just gave a statement in
Speaker 6: support of Talker and saying that he should get the
Speaker 6: word out about Nick Fuentes, I've continued to be looking
Speaker 6: at this stuff and can we even stop it though?
Speaker 6: At this point? Right, like how much of the Antifa
Speaker 6: project like even succeeded considering where we are now politically right,
Speaker 6: But no, there certainly is this like internal debate in
Speaker 6: terms of letting this stuff happen versus trying to actively
Speaker 6: oppose this like Graper takeover of the GOP.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I don't think there's realistically anything that
Speaker 2: we can do to influence how popular Nick Fuintes is
Speaker 2: on the right. Like if you just start screaming about
Speaker 2: how bad and dangerous he is, that's going to convince
Speaker 2: a lot of people Oh, well, the left hates him.
Speaker 2: That must mean you know he's our guy.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Likewise, I don't know. I don't think it's our place.
Speaker 2: I think it's our place to make sure people know
Speaker 2: what Nick actually stands for. That if there's some sort
Speaker 2: of like whitewashing of his character that they attempt to
Speaker 2: do in order to make this more electorally viable, that
Speaker 2: people are aware of, like how how unhinged this guy is?
Speaker 2: I don't think. I don't think the kind of shit
Speaker 2: Nick is saying here will will do well when exposed
Speaker 2: to the body politic as a whole, because it's nuts.
Speaker 2: But that said, like, I don't think you can. You're
Speaker 2: going to scold your way out of this.
Speaker 6: No, no, And I guess part of the education is
Speaker 6: making sure people have a more full understanding of Nick
Speaker 6: Quinn has his views on women and his uh yeah,
Speaker 6: and his little conversation on pornography. I think that actually
Speaker 6: is important because all of these guys are weird, little
Speaker 6: in selfreaks.
Speaker 2: Yes, and people don't like how weird they are when
Speaker 2: they're confronted with it. No, right, Mostly what they're concerned
Speaker 2: about is whether or not there are jobs, and shit
Speaker 2: is more or less expensive. They don't want some weirdo
Speaker 2: telling them that living with women will make them weaker.
Speaker 6: Even Tucker doesn't like that. Yeah, well I think that
Speaker 6: does it for us today at it could happen here. Great.
Speaker 6: I hope this episode is something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I hope it's something too.
Speaker 6: Good Night, goodbye, welcome to take it happen here a
Speaker 6: podcast telling you to rage against the dying of the light.
Speaker 6: I am your host, Bia long and many episodes ago,
Speaker 6: significantly more tearfully. I talked about how, you know, watching
Speaker 6: the trans voices in media get fired and disappear felt
Speaker 6: like watching the stars disappear in the sky. And today
Speaker 6: I am here to say, do not go gently into
Speaker 6: that good night fuck him, rage against the dying of
Speaker 6: the lights and with me to age she gets the
Speaker 6: diying of the light and talk about some absolute bullshit.
Speaker 3: Is Alma a Vie who is a former staffer at
Speaker 3: bonapp Petite, and we will be getting into why that's
Speaker 3: now technically former and the VP of the New Skuild
Speaker 3: of New York.
Speaker 6: Alma, welcome to the show.
Speaker 11: Amy, lovely to be here.
Speaker 6: I wish it was under better circumstances. I feel like
Speaker 6: everyone I talked to I go, I wish you under
Speaker 6: better circumstances, but you know.
Speaker 11: Yeah, circumstances across the border kind of trash right now.
Speaker 6: Yeah, they're they're really bad. The circumstances they do be
Speaker 6: they do, they do be shit.
Speaker 3: So these specifically bad circumstances are one. Conde Nast has
Speaker 3: just obliterated teen Vogue, which had been one of the
Speaker 3: few actually very good progressive outlets, also one of the
Speaker 3: few outlets that would publish trans people regularly, and it's
Speaker 3: just gone now. And Alma and three of her coullies
Speaker 3: were fired for very productive union activity, being like, hey,
Speaker 3: what the fuck?
Speaker 6: And we kind of de terms of that. I can
Speaker 6: say this because it's not my ass of.
Speaker 3: The line, but yeah, do you want to talk a
Speaker 3: bit about what happened?
Speaker 11: Yeah, totally. I mean to give the company it's caveat. Technically,
Speaker 11: teen Vogue still exists. It has just been moved under
Speaker 11: the broader organization of Vogue. They've now said that it's
Speaker 11: coverage areas will include professional development as well as well.
Speaker 11: There are a couple of other things that they highlighted,
Speaker 11: but certainly the things that they did not highlight include, say,
Speaker 11: you know, scathing coverage of the Trump administration, or coverage
Speaker 11: of trans youth and trans healthcare bands for teenagers, coverage
Speaker 11: of like young celebrities of color, and so on. But yeah, anyway,
Speaker 11: I guess to just go back to the start of
Speaker 11: the timeline. Last Monday, we at the News Guild and
Speaker 11: you know, at the Conde Nast Union, which is the
Speaker 11: union that represents basically every worker or every journalist and
Speaker 11: video maker at Conde Nast except for those in the
Speaker 11: New Yorker. They are in like a separate bargaining unit
Speaker 11: that we see as like you know, linked sibling units
Speaker 11: at the linked sibling unions. We do most of our
Speaker 11: organize together and our contracts are nearly identical. But anyway,
Speaker 11: we were yeah, I know, right, union siblings. It's adorable. Yeah,
Speaker 11: we try to stay close. But anyway, we got word
Speaker 11: last Monday that about two thirds of the staff of
Speaker 11: teen Vogue were being laid off, including a friend of
Speaker 11: mine and I think former guests on your show, actually
Speaker 11: Lex mcmahamon, who was the politics editor at teen Vogue,
Speaker 11: as well as a few.
Speaker 6: Of their culture editors.
Speaker 11: Basically like if they were covering I mean, being a
Speaker 11: little glib here but like if they were covering say
Speaker 11: like trans writes, trans youth, like progressive culture in nearly
Speaker 11: any way shape or form. YEP, they were either laid
Speaker 11: off or the remaining workers were folded into the larger
Speaker 11: organization of Vogue, and I think they're still figuring out
Speaker 11: exactly where they fit into that organization and what like
Speaker 11: youth coverage looks like going forward. So that happened last Monday,
Speaker 11: which was obviously a massive loss. I sat in on
Speaker 11: a lot of the like the winegarden meetings going over
Speaker 11: the exit packages for those employees, a lot of like
Speaker 11: really sad and cheerful meetings that day.
Speaker 3: We should point out this is being recorded on Monday,
Speaker 3: the tenth. Last Monday's is Monday, November third. Not sure
Speaker 3: when this is gonna come out yet, just to make
Speaker 3: it come link clear here. Yes, absolutely, November third. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that was Monday, November third. Yeah, thank you for the correction.
Speaker 3: And then two days later at the company we got
Speaker 3: a notification that there was another round of layoffs, this
Speaker 3: one hitting I believe folks on the video teams and
Speaker 3: then people on the like copy in fact checking section
Speaker 3: of the company as well.
Speaker 11: This was super disruptive. Usually, you know, at a company
Speaker 11: like Conde Nast, well, the union doesn't have like explicit
Speaker 11: protections for this, and in fact, like the company has
Speaker 11: the right to perform layoffs if they need to for
Speaker 11: business reasons. Usually when a round of layoffs goes through,
Speaker 11: there's like a period of peace that comes after that.
Speaker 11: You know, like there will be you know, a reduction
Speaker 11: enforce will figure out, Okay, how are we going to
Speaker 11: keep doing our jobs now that we have fewer staffers,
Speaker 11: And then if the company needs to reduce the staff again,
Speaker 11: that will happen like a few months, maybe a year
Speaker 11: in the future. Two rounds of layoffs in the same
Speaker 11: week had people really really scared and really stressed out,
Speaker 11: because I mean, for one, there's like just the sense
Speaker 11: of like, oh God, a lot of my coworkers are gone,
Speaker 11: how am I going to be able to keep doing
Speaker 11: my job? We lost at my magazine, bon Apetite. We
Speaker 11: lost our social media director, the person who was basically
Speaker 11: running our social accounts. We'd gotten notification from the company
Speaker 11: that editors were going to be doing their own posting
Speaker 11: from then on, which is just not how things have
Speaker 11: ever worked before, not really a thing that they're like
Speaker 11: You know, my colleagues are brilliant, and many of them
Speaker 11: are brilliant like users of social media, but like not
Speaker 11: really a part of our jobs historically. So we're all
Speaker 11: pretty confused how we were supposed to, you know, actually
Speaker 11: keep running our magazine. Most of our magazines are already
Speaker 11: running on pretty reduced staffs in the first place. Yeah,
Speaker 11: so anyway between that and the kind of obvious political
Speaker 11: connection that one could draw, or at least like that,
Speaker 11: a lot of our members were afraid of, you know,
Speaker 11: ten Vogue being this like pretty famously radical or at
Speaker 11: the very it's like pretty famously progressive publication doing some
Speaker 11: like really really hard hitting journalism. There's a really clear
Speaker 11: line you can draw between like all of the Colbert
Speaker 11: and Jimmy Kibble, but also like the CBS stuff with
Speaker 11: Barry Weiss, like this kind of broader right wing shift
Speaker 11: in media. You can draw, i think a direct line
Speaker 11: between all of that and like the shuttering or near
Speaker 11: shuttering of teen Vogue. So we did a thing that
Speaker 11: we basically always do when we're facing an issue like this,
Speaker 11: whether it's a big reduction in force or just some
Speaker 11: decision from the upper levels of the management that have
Speaker 11: all of the workers being like, wait, what, what the
Speaker 11: fuck did you just do? We had a rally in
Speaker 11: the cafeteria to go over some of the questions that
Speaker 11: we all have for management. We created a list of
Speaker 11: questions that we wanted to ask and then, and I
Speaker 11: cannot stress how like routine this is for us as
Speaker 11: a union. We went from the cafeteria, which is on
Speaker 11: the thirty fifth floor of the World Trade Center, down
Speaker 11: to the executive floor, which is directly below it on
Speaker 11: the thirty fourth floor of the World Trade Center, and
Speaker 11: we walked over to the executive offices and said, we
Speaker 11: have some questions for Stan Duncan, who is the head
Speaker 11: of the people team at CONDE, and asked basically one
Speaker 11: of the people in charge of either making these decisions
Speaker 11: of you know, staffing in reduction, and then of enforcing
Speaker 11: those decisions as well. We went down to speak with
Speaker 11: Stan Duncan, asked him some of our questions to other
Speaker 11: HR employees came out in medicine the hallway. We said
Speaker 11: we'd like to speak to Stan. We were happy to
Speaker 11: ask them our questions, but they said they wouldn't be
Speaker 11: particularly good at answering them or they might not have
Speaker 11: good answers for us. But Stan, they said, was in
Speaker 11: a meeting at the time. It just so happened that
Speaker 11: either Stan's meeting ended right then, or maybe he heard
Speaker 11: people talking in the hallway and decided to come check
Speaker 11: it out, or maybe there wasn't a meeting, but for
Speaker 11: whatever reason, Stan happened to come out into the hallway
Speaker 11: at that time, and so we started trying to ask
Speaker 11: him our questions. Some of those questions included, like, was
Speaker 11: the closing of teen Vogue inherently political? But also how
Speaker 11: are we going to be able to do our jobs
Speaker 11: going forward? How are we supposed to keep running these
Speaker 11: magazines if you're going to keep cutting our jobs? And
Speaker 11: then also how are we supposed to keep doing our
Speaker 11: jobs if we are constantly living in fear of losing them?
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 11: Stan does not answer any of these questions, of course, yeah, no, naturally,
Speaker 11: he tells us we're not allowed to congregate in the hallway.
Speaker 11: This is not true, of course, we what, well, yeah,
Speaker 11: we I mean, One, this is our workplace. We I
Speaker 11: think are allowed to have conversations in the hallway of
Speaker 11: our workplace. Two, I mean, if he was saying that
Speaker 11: we weren't allowed to say, take part in union activities
Speaker 11: in the workplace. We have a right under Section seven
Speaker 11: of the NLRA that says we can do that. We
Speaker 11: also have like contract provisions that say the company will
Speaker 11: not infringe upon our right to organize and demonstrate in
Speaker 11: the workplace. So that just wasn't true. And in fact,
Speaker 11: the union, before everything else happened, already filed a grievance
Speaker 11: about denying our Section seven rights to organize in the workplace.
Speaker 2: God.
Speaker 11: Yeah, So anyway, Stan tries to get us to go
Speaker 11: back to our desks. He walks across the floor, tells
Speaker 11: us to follow him. We follow him and keep asking questions.
Speaker 11: He says that we have to go back I can
Speaker 11: do our jobs. We say, we will happily do our
Speaker 11: jobs if you could just answer our questions. He tells
Speaker 11: us that we have to go back to our workplaces.
Speaker 11: We remind him this is our workplace, and anyway, we
Speaker 11: end up asking him those questions. We follow him back
Speaker 11: and forth along the hallway. He goes back into his office,
Speaker 11: closes the door. We all go back to our desks
Speaker 11: for the rest of the day. I finish up my
Speaker 11: work and I go home and then I get notification
Speaker 11: from the News Guild at seven that the company has
Speaker 11: notified them that they are terminating me and three of
Speaker 11: my colleagues. Jesus Christ, no severance, no ongoing insurance coverage.
Speaker 11: My insurance expires at the end of the month. No notice,
Speaker 11: no investigation, effective immediately. So as of last Wednesday, I
Speaker 11: am no longer an employee of Conde and Asked. I'd
Speaker 11: been working there for five years. I helped start the
Speaker 11: Conde and Ask union. In the time since I joined there,
Speaker 11: I was one of the most tenured members of my magazine. Actually,
Speaker 11: people don't generally stick around there for a long time,
Speaker 11: but at twenty seven years old, I was a long hauler.
Speaker 11: And yeah, in the time since then, our union has
Speaker 11: filed a second degreevance. There was the first one over
Speaker 11: telling us we couldn't congregate. There's now a second one
Speaker 11: over the retaliatory firings of me and my three colleagues.
Speaker 11: The company has since put five other people I believe
Speaker 11: on an unpaid leave in an attempt to discipline more
Speaker 11: people who took part in the demonstration. It's kind of
Speaker 11: hard to see rhyme or reason in the people that
Speaker 11: they decided to discipline. So I was speaking quite a
Speaker 11: bit during the demonstration, as was one of the other
Speaker 11: people who was terminated. One person asked one question that
Speaker 11: was a Jake Lahud at Wired. He asked a question
Speaker 11: towards the beginning, which was, what is your definition of
Speaker 11: congregate when they told us we can't congregate in the
Speaker 11: whole way? Which I think is a perfectly valid question.
Speaker 11: And then one person who was terminated actually as far
Speaker 11: as I know, didn't speak at all during the demonstration.
Speaker 11: He was, however, the vice president of the New Yorker Union,
Speaker 11: the vice chair of the New York UNI, and you know,
Speaker 11: an organizer that the company was like very well aware of.
Speaker 11: And then as for the people who were placed on
Speaker 11: disciplinary leaves, I mean, I believe some of them actually
Speaker 11: spoke significantly more than some of the people who were
Speaker 11: terminated during the demonstration, but were certainly, like historically at
Speaker 11: the very least, less visible and less vocal union organizers.
Speaker 11: So the trend that we're seeing is that the people
Speaker 11: who spoke up were either people who had been historically
Speaker 11: very active in the union, or in Jake's case, somebody
Speaker 11: who was doing really really impressive coverage of the Trump
Speaker 11: administration and like really really hard hitting journalism against like
Speaker 11: Doge and like the general efforts of the right right
Speaker 11: now to you know, I mean, listeners of this podcast
Speaker 11: know everything that's going on there.
Speaker 9: Yep.
Speaker 3: I'm going to say this, and I'm going to adopt
Speaker 3: preferred language of these professionals, which is to say that
Speaker 3: and this is the preferred language of management. Is that
Speaker 3: some people are called this both a return of resegregation
Speaker 3: and an obvious anti union political perch because it is
Speaker 3: a bunch of trans people and a bunch of them
Speaker 3: white people who have been eliminated from teen vogue. You know,
Speaker 3: this is something that you were talking about earlier, about
Speaker 3: drawing the connection between this and CBS. I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 3: what did Barry Weis do when she got into CBS?
Speaker 3: She fired like every non white person who worked there, right,
Speaker 3: because their avert political plan is resegregation. And you know,
Speaker 3: in order to do resegregation, you fire all of the
Speaker 3: people who are non white, you get rid of any
Speaker 3: trans people, and you get women. Admittedly, at CBS, it's
Speaker 3: not like they had like a giant like like you know.
Speaker 6: It wasn't like like I had of trans politics in
Speaker 6: the first place. I mean, they had some like you are.
Speaker 6: There's people there who are like cool.
Speaker 3: But like it wasn't like, you know, it wasn't like
Speaker 3: teen Vogue, which genuinely had way more trans coverage than
Speaker 3: like any other outlet.
Speaker 11: No, totally, Like I.
Speaker 6: Can I emphasize enough, like the extent to which this
Speaker 6: is the most normal union activity in the entire world,
Speaker 6: into which this is the most protected category in the
Speaker 6: entire world, and you know.
Speaker 3: Obviously a bunch of the bosses and a bunch of
Speaker 3: like the corporations that are doing this shit like don't
Speaker 3: think the NLRA should exist, and like is like a
Speaker 3: legally valeled thing, but it's still enforced right now, and
Speaker 3: so while mostly but like for this, yeah, still in force,
Speaker 3: so there doesn't unbelievably hideous the illegal retaliatory firings that
Speaker 3: are illegal in like so many different ways. It's baffling,
Speaker 3: Like it's like you need like a second law degree
Speaker 3: to fight every single law they just broke.
Speaker 11: Totally. I mean, the thing that I would point out
Speaker 11: too is, like, like you said, this is an extremely
Speaker 11: common type of union action, Like across the entire labor
Speaker 11: everyone does. Everyone marches on the boss. We also specifically
Speaker 11: like as a union we've marched on the boss like
Speaker 11: tons of different times. Yeah, we've marched on Stan multiple
Speaker 11: times in the past. There was one demonstration where we
Speaker 11: all marched on stand during contract bargaining actually last year,
Speaker 11: where we had significantly more people and I will say
Speaker 11: being much more confrontational. I remember like a large crowd
Speaker 11: booing him in front of like the entire executive floor,
Speaker 11: and I would say, and I would say, like two
Speaker 11: to three times as many people present watching in a
Speaker 11: much more like loud and activated and energetic forum. But
Speaker 11: we've had marches on other executives, We've had marches on
Speaker 11: editors in chief in the past. And I mean one
Speaker 11: of the reasons that like when I got the news
Speaker 11: that I was being terminated, I like basically went into shock.
Speaker 11: This felt extremely tame compared to past union actions that
Speaker 11: we've done. Yeah, and also, no one has ever been
Speaker 11: disciplined for par taking part in any action like this
Speaker 11: in the past, like, let alone terminated. Like as far
Speaker 11: as I know, no one's ever been called into a
Speaker 11: meeting and said like, you shouldn't have done that, and
Speaker 11: we're keeping an eye on you. So this is like
Speaker 11: a massive escalation on the company side in terms of retaliation.
Speaker 11: And I mean that's also what we've heard kind of
Speaker 11: across the board at the News Guild. You know, I've
Speaker 11: been in close conversations with our president and with other
Speaker 11: like organizers at the Guild who have said, and this is,
Speaker 11: you know, our local union that organizes a bunch of
Speaker 11: different applications in New York City and kind of in
Speaker 11: the surrounding area. This is one of the most egregious
Speaker 11: examples of retaliation that just about anybody I've talked who
Speaker 11: has seen in our union's history. And there's like pretty
Speaker 11: I think valid concern that like if a company like
Speaker 11: Conde Nast is able to get away with this, like
Speaker 11: other companies within our union are going to like follow
Speaker 11: suit and like take this as their queue, which is
Speaker 11: both scary but also has been energizing for a lot
Speaker 11: of people. We've seen, like a lot of folks really
Speaker 11: excited to like show up and join our fight and
Speaker 11: get involved in any way that they can.
Speaker 2: Hell yeah.
Speaker 11: The other thing that I would point out, based on
Speaker 11: what you were saying, is so Kanye Nast has a
Speaker 11: queer publication them dot Us, which I think is one
Speaker 11: of the all time URLs for a queer publication you
Speaker 11: possibly have very funny so between them and teen Vogue,
Speaker 11: you had a lot of the company's like trans staffers.
Speaker 11: They kind of function as like sister publications. They like
Speaker 11: sit next to each other, they work closely together outside
Speaker 11: of them. As far as I know, I was the
Speaker 11: only trans woman implied on editorial Conde Nast, and I
Speaker 11: am certainly the only trans woman in our union, including
Speaker 11: at them. Actually, all of the transoman employees there, to
Speaker 11: my understanding, are not part of the unit. They are
Speaker 11: in management positions, which, yeah, your representation, but also means
Speaker 11: that like I was obviously in this very lonely position,
Speaker 11: but also this very like visible and like clearly very
Speaker 11: vulnerable position where it's like incredibly easy to single somebody
Speaker 11: like me out. I would also say, during our contract fight,
Speaker 11: we had a lot of back and forth between like
Speaker 11: me and company management about their coverage under the healthcare plan.
Speaker 11: Namely they excluded facial feminization surgery, which meant that, like,
Speaker 11: if you were an employee of Conde Nast and you
Speaker 11: wanted facial feminization surgery, you were either out of luck
Speaker 11: or had to find a way to raise about fifty
Speaker 11: thousand dollars based on a lot of estimates that I've seen.
Speaker 3: If you're really lucky and good and you're going to
Speaker 3: go to Thailand, you can maybe get it for thirty K.
Speaker 11: Yeah right, no exactly which.
Speaker 3: Ammitically the timeline stuff is cool, but totally, I mean,
Speaker 3: it's like a.
Speaker 6: It's a lot of fucking money, like.
Speaker 11: Totally so much shit, even more if you want to
Speaker 11: recover in your own home and your own bed.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 11: Actually, and we weren't able to resolve that in the
Speaker 11: contract I got f FS this year, and to do it,
Speaker 11: I had to go on like a New York State
Speaker 11: marketplace plan. Oh no, Jesus Christ, I had both plans
Speaker 11: active at the same time. But I have to get
Speaker 11: like secondary insurance that cost seven hundred dollars a month
Speaker 11: in order to get out of best covered.
Speaker 7: God.
Speaker 11: Yeah, and that still ended up being significantly cheaper. Ye yep, yeah,
Speaker 11: I mean and frankly, like Conde nasked never covered it. Yeah,
Speaker 11: who did cover it was like lots of my union
Speaker 11: colleagues who jumped in and like created to go fundme
Speaker 11: for me and like helped car raise like all of
Speaker 11: the money that I needed to get surgery, and very
Speaker 11: very thankful for that. But anyway, point being like, the
Speaker 11: company does not exactly have the best track record when
Speaker 11: it comes to and like I feel very qualified to
Speaker 11: say this as like the trans woman in the Conde
Speaker 11: Nast union, the company does not exactly have the best
Speaker 11: track record in terms of like how they have treated
Speaker 11: us and me specifically around trans issues.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 5: So being like again kind.
Speaker 11: Of singled out in this way and then being hit
Speaker 11: with like this significant a piece of retaliation, it just
Speaker 11: feels really telling and also, I mean really disappointing. Frankly,
Speaker 11: like I've I've been at Conde for or I keep
Speaker 11: using the present tense. I'd been at Conde for five years,
Speaker 11: and you know, I liked my job. I was really
Speaker 11: good at my job. I hope that they will reverse
Speaker 11: course and turn this around, but anyway, it's disappointing. It's
Speaker 11: disappointing that like that that doesn't really seem to mean
Speaker 11: anything when the rubber hits the road.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 6: I think there's two ways you can look at it.
Speaker 3: One is it's like, oh, yeah, of course, of course
Speaker 3: the one trans woman in this bargaining. Yet it was
Speaker 3: like the VP of the union because like, yeah, transforms
Speaker 3: do be organizing.
Speaker 6: Do we do do this?
Speaker 11: And that the truth.
Speaker 3: But then the second thing you were talking about this like, yeah,
Speaker 3: the magazines are already understaffed and they're just destroying them,
Speaker 3: you know. And this is something that I can say,
Speaker 3: which is like, this is something we saw from Jeff Bezos,
Speaker 3: right when when Jeff Bezos sort of like took control
Speaker 3: of the Washington Post and then gradually sort of purged
Speaker 3: their staff, and like, you know, has this whole thing
Speaker 3: now about how, oh h, we're supposed to be pro
Speaker 3: free market and pro individual liberties, which does not include
Speaker 3: trans writes. You know, if you look at what happened
Speaker 3: to the Washington Post's subscriber account, it's like nothing, It's
Speaker 3: like the paper is dying. It's effectively just like it's
Speaker 3: not like an actual functional, like profit making thing anymore.
Speaker 3: Like it's just it's just the sort of propaganda vanity
Speaker 3: outlet of a billionaire. And that's you know, that's probably
Speaker 3: what's going to happen to CBS, is that it's going
Speaker 3: to just get sort of annihilize, stripped down, because these
Speaker 3: people don't want a functioning media. They don't give a
Speaker 3: shit if these things actually work, because what they're trying
Speaker 3: to do right now is accumulate raw, accumulate just raw
Speaker 3: power and attempt to do raw sort of narrative and
Speaker 3: media control in order to stay in power. And it's
Speaker 3: not working because everyone still hates them, even though they
Speaker 3: bought all the newspapers. Everyone is like, these people suck
Speaker 3: like but this is that we run into with unions
Speaker 3: off all the time, which is like, yeah, there are
Speaker 3: a lot of bosses who would rather their own company
Speaker 3: be non functional, you know, their workers have any voice
Speaker 3: in it. And especially now in this political moment in
Speaker 3: which oh, hey, look the fascists are trying to seize
Speaker 3: control of the media, that becomes increasingly more and more
Speaker 3: an option of just fuck it, We'll just like get
Speaker 3: handouts from like the tech fascists forever, and in exchange
Speaker 3: of that, will publish whatever propaganda garbage they want to
Speaker 3: spit out.
Speaker 11: Yeah, I mean, I would also say, like, I'm not
Speaker 11: sure get about across the entire company. Although I believe
Speaker 11: it was one of the better traffic stories that Conde
Speaker 11: Nast all year, but one of the most certainly one
Speaker 11: of the most like trafficked teen Vogue stories in this
Speaker 11: past year, was like out of their politics section. It
Speaker 11: was the Vivian Wilson Elon Musk's transdaughter cover story, really
Speaker 11: really good, an amazing piece of journalism and also a
Speaker 11: like super viral, and I'm sure made a ton of
Speaker 11: money for the company. Yeah, and so one would think,
Speaker 11: you know, looking at like the trends of the past,
Speaker 11: that if that was going to inform anything, like the
Speaker 11: company would actually say, like more politics coverage, like more
Speaker 11: progressive coverage out of teen Vogue.
Speaker 3: Well, and like I remember, I don't have the exact
Speaker 3: numbers on me because I'm a hack and of fraud.
Speaker 3: But if it wasn't a hack and a fraud, I
Speaker 3: would have the exact numbers from the coverage of like
Speaker 3: the increase in both revenue generation and in like readership
Speaker 3: that teen Vogue underwent once they started doing politic stuff
Speaker 3: on at the first show administration, And now you're getting
Speaker 3: rid of that for what are clearly business reasons and
Speaker 3: are clearly, very very clearly not related to the fact
Speaker 3: that there is a bunch of a bunch of political
Speaker 3: pressure from a bunch of fascists to run the government.
Speaker 11: Now, Yeah, I mean, obviously we don't have like perfect
Speaker 11: insight into like what's going on behind closed doors at
Speaker 11: Conde NASS, But I can't say that.
Speaker 6: We had a diversity.
Speaker 11: Committee meeting with our joint union management diversity committee a
Speaker 11: week before all of this went down, and they told
Speaker 11: us that they were you know, paraphrasing here, but management
Speaker 11: said that they are actively trying to avoid the attention
Speaker 11: and the eyre of the Trump administration, which at the
Speaker 11: time definitely raised some eyebrows and I think led to
Speaker 11: the big response last week of like, m hm, oh,
Speaker 11: I actively avoid the attention of the Trump administration. You
Speaker 11: meant just like get rid of the parts of the
Speaker 11: company that are like, yeah, hostile towards it, and I
Speaker 11: mean kind of too like the good business of progressive coverage.
Speaker 11: I've covered a lot of beats in my time of
Speaker 11: bon Epetite, but there was a period where I was
Speaker 11: covering like the Starbucks Workers United fight pretty closely, a
Speaker 11: lot of articles about that in my back pocket. Those
Speaker 11: generally did really well. Actually, one of the first times
Speaker 11: I faced like big right wing backlash online was covering
Speaker 11: the like Dylan mulvaney bud Light protests, which I used
Speaker 11: as an opportunity to write about the the Corse Light
Speaker 11: boycotts of like the West Coast queer worker movement and
Speaker 11: like kind of the birth of the gay labor movement.
Speaker 11: One of my best trafficked of all time stories I
Speaker 11: wrote about the like why the watermelon symbol became like
Speaker 11: such a big kind of like rally and cry and
Speaker 11: like Palestine and organizing over the past few years. Again
Speaker 11: massive traffic winner for the company. But every time, you know,
Speaker 11: we get into these meetings with management or every time
Speaker 11: we like hear about the direction that the company is
Speaker 11: shifting or coverage is shifting, it always seems away from
Speaker 11: those kind of hot button issues that like there's clearly
Speaker 11: an appetite for stories about and instead towards well whatever
Speaker 11: it's towards you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you know, and you can look at this
Speaker 3: like there's been a whole bunch of h There was
Speaker 3: a story recently about doctor Oz like pivoting his whole
Speaker 3: thing into doing like a right wing like media grift, and.
Speaker 6: Nobody's watching it. Like the the average episode of vicot
Speaker 6: appen here absolutely annihilates like just like like orders of
Speaker 6: magnitude better than like no, I think it was doctor Phil,
Speaker 6: Yeah it was doctor Phil. Who does that look there
Speaker 6: they're like the same guy, like wow, that's that's slightly
Speaker 6: unfair to doctor oz. Well, yeah, doctor Philip did this
Speaker 6: like did the right wing pivot, and like nobody's listening
Speaker 6: to the show. It's like no one.
Speaker 3: This is like one of the most famous people in
Speaker 3: the United States is getting annihilated by like Mia and
Speaker 3: the trendy crew like.
Speaker 6: You could happen here, Like.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, you know, and yeah, like there is this
Speaker 3: like massive demand for this stuff as like people increasing
Speaker 3: me realize that, oh yeah, wait, hold on, we're getting
Speaker 3: every single person like in the country is like almost
Speaker 3: individually getting screwed over by the Trump administration. He's like
Speaker 3: individually micro targeting every single part of his base and
Speaker 3: pissing them off. Like there was a whole farmer soy
Speaker 3: thing right, and like he's like, I guess tend this
Speaker 3: negotiates to weybean sales now. But like you know, you
Speaker 3: can look at.
Speaker 6: Like so he was fighting this whole war with his
Speaker 6: entire farming base and then he immediately turned around from
Speaker 6: there and went to fight the cattle ranchers. It's like
Speaker 6: there's so much appetite for any critique of this because
Speaker 6: it's so obviously just like malignant and narcissistically violent, and
Speaker 6: all of these companies that are like you know, like
Speaker 6: like this has always been the problem with the free
Speaker 6: press is that like the US does not have a
Speaker 6: free press. The US is a capitalist press, and so
Speaker 6: you know, you can just buy them or apply enough
Speaker 6: political pressure and they will fall in line.
Speaker 11: And that's like what they're doing here. So what you're
Speaker 11: saying is we need a left wing Joe Rogam.
Speaker 6: I'm going to become the joker.
Speaker 2: Now, of course.
Speaker 11: I mean I'll also say, like I became an organizer
Speaker 11: in the News Guild for a lot of reasons, right,
Speaker 11: Like on UPTU was my first job out of college,
Speaker 11: and I was really involved covering the dining workers organizing
Speaker 11: at my undergrad school. So that was like definitely my
Speaker 11: introduction there. But at the same time, like when I
Speaker 11: got into the workplace, I kind of realized that media
Speaker 11: unions are maybe one of the only things that will
Speaker 11: keep the media at least as currently exists, alive until
Speaker 11: we can come up with like some other model that
Speaker 11: is like more sustainable, because I mean, like I look
Speaker 11: at a company like Conde Nast and you have this
Speaker 11: like very well compensated very like large cast of managers
Speaker 11: and middle managers yep. And then you have this like
Speaker 11: massive body of people actually producing the magazines, actually making
Speaker 11: like doing the work of the journalism and the culture
Speaker 11: reporting and the video making and so on and so on.
Speaker 11: And you know, one of those groups is constantly subject
Speaker 11: to layoffs. One of those groups is constantly being made
Speaker 11: to say work over time and maybe being told not
Speaker 11: to build for as much over time as they're being
Speaker 11: made to work. And one of those groups is being
Speaker 11: extremely well compensated and has seemingly incredible job security.
Speaker 6: Yeah, Like all all of the resources are being sucked
Speaker 6: out by a combination of like these venture capitals dipshes
Speaker 6: at the top, and then all of these fucking like
Speaker 6: middle mirrors, management bureaucrats like who do nothing right.
Speaker 11: And the thing that slows that down is like workers
Speaker 11: having a say in the media, you know, like the
Speaker 11: people who actually can produce the work, like being able
Speaker 11: to say and these are the circumstances under which the
Speaker 11: work is going to be produced. I mean, I think
Speaker 11: it's no surprise that, like if you look at a
Speaker 11: publication like hell Gate or like Defector or like after
Speaker 11: Math and four or four, and all of these like
Speaker 11: worker co ops that are popping up kind of across
Speaker 11: the media ecosystem, like their worker owns and they have
Speaker 11: this very kind of flat like payment structure where everybody
Speaker 11: is making around the same amount, like everybody has a
Speaker 11: say in the way that the workplace functions, and like
Speaker 11: these appear at least to me to be some of
Speaker 11: the most like stable media like organizations that are out
Speaker 11: there right now. And all that tells me is that
Speaker 11: like workplace democracy, I mean in like the truest sense
Speaker 11: of the word, you know, like workplace democracy as it
Speaker 11: is earned by like worker organizations, union's work or co ops,
Speaker 11: whatever they might be, is the thing that's going to
Speaker 11: keep the media afloat. Like that is the model that
Speaker 11: is like sustainable in the long run. So I think
Speaker 11: that's one of the reasons that having like a strong
Speaker 11: and active Conde Nasty union, though management probably wouldn't agree
Speaker 11: at least explicitly, is like one of the things that
Speaker 11: can keep Conde Nast alive for as long as possible.
Speaker 11: Like you know, again they would probably loath to admit this,
Speaker 11: but like an organization like the Conde Nasty Union can
Speaker 11: only exist as long as an organization like Conde Nast exists,
Speaker 11: their fates are kind of tied to one another.
Speaker 3: Well, okay, this is we're doing the incredibly esoteric via
Speaker 3: via union theory.
Speaker 6: There's two versions of looking at this one.
Speaker 3: Okay, this is the person where Yeah, the Kande Nast
Speaker 3: union is structurally dependent on the existence of Conde n
Speaker 3: asked and this means that the power of the union
Speaker 3: is based on its ability to bring.
Speaker 6: People back to work. However, comp there is a second
Speaker 6: one you could theoretically have. You could theoretically have the
Speaker 6: Conde Nass union without condiated ast.
Speaker 3: We have CNT in it, we've taken it over, we're
Speaker 3: running it now. We are just now the union. And
Speaker 3: you know, and the thing the thing I will say
Speaker 3: about that, and this is always this has always been
Speaker 3: the advantage of co ops is that, like you are
Speaker 3: immediately from the ground up, you're going to have a
Speaker 3: kind of efficiency advantage because there is not an entire
Speaker 3: middle layer, like because obviously, like there are like producers
Speaker 3: who do a bunch of work, like my boss Sophie.
Speaker 6: Like, if if we didn't have Sophie, none of this
Speaker 6: would work, right. Yeah, there's also a bunch of other
Speaker 6: people who have the same title who do nothing, and
Speaker 6: that's not even sue. If they did nothing, it would
Speaker 6: be better. They interfere with everything constantly and get paying.
Speaker 6: They shortenary large amount of money to make everything work worse.
Speaker 3: And you don't have to have that entire like bureaucratic layer,
Speaker 3: like the layer of middle management. And this has always
Speaker 3: been a massive just efficiency advantage that you have when
Speaker 3: workers running their own shit, is that you don't have
Speaker 3: to have those people and the coordination that needs to
Speaker 3: be done.
Speaker 6: Okay, you have people doing the coordination.
Speaker 3: You don't have fifteen layers of dipshits whose job it
Speaker 3: is to run.
Speaker 6: Around making your job harder.
Speaker 3: This this has been me talking about the organizational advantages
Speaker 3: of anarchy.
Speaker 6: It's great. I'm sorry, No.
Speaker 11: You're fine. I mean what I will say is, like,
Speaker 11: it's an interesting thing about Conde Nast and like a
Speaker 11: lot of I think these media conglomerates, it's like, you know,
Speaker 11: other than like when I am a member of the
Speaker 11: Conde Nasty union, and like I don't really interact with
Speaker 11: people who work elsewhere at Conde Nasket, Like, yeah, I
Speaker 11: interact with the people at my magazine and like the
Speaker 11: people at Bon Appetite and I like generally get along great.
Speaker 11: I have a really really awesome relationship with my manager.
Speaker 11: I have a lot of admiration for him and what
Speaker 11: he does. I think he's like the same way that
Speaker 11: you talk about Sophie. I think he's like really great
Speaker 11: at his job. I like have a good relationship with
Speaker 11: our editor in chief. I have a lot of respect
Speaker 11: for her as well. We have a really really solid
Speaker 11: system going where we are like able to make this
Speaker 11: food magazine every month, and able to keep this website online,
Speaker 11: and able to make content that we're all like, you know,
Speaker 11: recipes and stories that we're all really really proud of.
Speaker 11: And then at the same time, we were kind of
Speaker 11: subject to this like kind of bigger whatever media machine
Speaker 11: that's like kind of moving around ahead or above us,
Speaker 11: and also moving around like again with just like so
Speaker 11: little transparency. Like yeah, going back to the action on
Speaker 11: Wednesday the fifth, we have tried to have meetings with Stan,
Speaker 11: Like the executive that we talked to in the hallway,
Speaker 11: the executive that we marched on. We have tried to
Speaker 11: have meetings with him so many times, in so many
Speaker 11: different ways. We have emailed him questions, not gotten responses.
Speaker 11: We have invited him to like town halls, not gotten responses,
Speaker 11: We invited him to meet with our diversity committee and
Speaker 11: labor relations got mad at us for se seeing him
Speaker 11: on the email.
Speaker 6: God.
Speaker 11: Historically, like that kind of level of the company has
Speaker 11: been extremely averse to interacting with its workers to like
Speaker 11: answering basic questions. Which is why, like when you look
Speaker 11: at you know, there's a video out there of the interaction,
Speaker 11: Like this is why we have to march on our
Speaker 11: bosses like this, because there's literally no other way to
Speaker 11: get a single answer out of them because they kind
Speaker 11: of I mean, they exist on this other floor of
Speaker 11: the company altogether. So I don't know, it's very frustrating.
Speaker 11: It's frustrating to like kind of exist in this dual
Speaker 11: system of like, well, we have a magazine that we
Speaker 11: are operating like very effectively on our own, and yet
Speaker 11: there's this entire thing above it that is making these
Speaker 11: decisions about how it ought to function and like what
Speaker 11: it ought to be doing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you don't know what it does because totally
Speaker 3: they're not there, Like they have.
Speaker 6: Absolutely no idea how your production actually functions.
Speaker 11: I would be surprised if the man who fired me
Speaker 11: knew what my job was.
Speaker 6: Yeah, no, absolutely not. All the old critiques of like
Speaker 6: the Soviet system were like, oh, there's just this out
Speaker 6: of touch bureaucraft three hundred miles away making production decisions,
Speaker 6: blah blah blah blah blah.
Speaker 3: It's like, oh, yeah, no, that's actually just like how
Speaker 3: your job works. Is some suit in like another building
Speaker 3: is like, oh, your jobs are all replaceable. Oh you
Speaker 3: can you can do this with like twenty percent less staff.
Speaker 3: Oh I don't even know what you do, but we're
Speaker 3: firing you because we hate you specifically, Like it's just
Speaker 3: terrible way for the world to run.
Speaker 11: Yeah, totally. And I mean we have like these models
Speaker 11: of like what successful workplaces can look like, you know,
Speaker 11: like places with militant unions that like actually work, like
Speaker 11: actually give workers to say and what their conditions should
Speaker 11: be and what their conditions are, places that have gotten
Speaker 11: rid of the boss altogether, and like you know, again
Speaker 11: those worker co ops that I listed, Like, there are
Speaker 11: these functional models of what the future of media can
Speaker 11: look like. And this is the thing that I say
Speaker 11: all the time. It's like the reason that I'm excited
Speaker 11: about being a member of the News Guild. The reason
Speaker 11: I got involved in organizing in the first place is, like,
Speaker 11: I think there is a future of media, Like I
Speaker 11: think there is a way that like, you know, people
Speaker 11: like you and people like me, like people who write
Speaker 11: and tell stories and like are interested in like talking
Speaker 11: to people and getting their stories out there. I think
Speaker 11: there are sustainable ways that we can do that. And
Speaker 11: I think the people who know how to do like
Speaker 11: the sustainable future of this thing are the people who
Speaker 11: are making the product in the first place. Yeah, Like
Speaker 11: we are the ones with vision, Like we are the
Speaker 11: ones who know how to make something that can continue
Speaker 11: to exist sustainably, something that can like even under the
Speaker 11: capitalist like framework, like something that can make money, something
Speaker 11: that can be profitable. A lot of the great journalists
Speaker 11: I know are like actually very interested in and very
Speaker 11: very good at making work that like generates quite a
Speaker 11: bit of revenue. And I don't think that's a particularly
Speaker 11: bad thing. Like they know how to do this in
Speaker 11: a way that is sustainable, in a way that like
Speaker 11: keeps readers excited and engaged in like willing to like
Speaker 11: pitch in their own ways. The problem is that the
Speaker 11: people who seem to have that know how the people
Speaker 11: who make the thing and the people who know how
Speaker 11: to keep making the thing and the people who are
Speaker 11: making the decisions like aren't the same people.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 11: And the way that you fix that divide, like is
Speaker 11: by demanding a seat at the table, is by demanding
Speaker 11: the people who like are making those decisions actually do
Speaker 11: listen to you, and then demanding that they actually follow
Speaker 11: through on the obligation or the things that they say
Speaker 11: they're going to do. One of the really frustrating things
Speaker 11: about my termination is like they're saying that I was
Speaker 11: like too aggressive eve and was harassing the chief people officer. Again,
Speaker 11: there's a video I think is extremely exonerating.
Speaker 6: Also, oh wow, the trends woman's being too aggressive?
Speaker 3: Wow, I know how crazy.
Speaker 6: One day they're going to develop a second joke. Wow
Speaker 6: any day.
Speaker 11: Now, No, I know. Actually, one thing, some like Chud
Speaker 11: on the internet who was like trying to make fun
Speaker 11: of me, said I was wearing a wig. I would
Speaker 11: like to stay for the record, I don't wear a wig.
Speaker 11: This is my hair. I grew it myself. It took
Speaker 11: a while, thank you. I agree. Although one of my
Speaker 11: friends told me that I have her fangs. The other day,
Speaker 11: which I really actually it was the day that I
Speaker 11: got fired, come to think of it, before they knew
Speaker 11: to be fair. But no, I know, sorry, what was
Speaker 11: I saying before that?
Speaker 3: I The last time I got owned that hard was
Speaker 3: my bob hold me a talking head?
Speaker 6: So you know, it happens some Sometimes you get absolutely obliterated.
Speaker 2: But I love that band, nice good band.
Speaker 11: But if the company like actually believed that I was,
Speaker 11: you know, being too aggressive or like committing, I think
Speaker 11: the words that they use are like grossness conduct, Like
Speaker 11: I know, we have just caused protections in our contract
Speaker 11: that include like an explicit procedure that you're supposed to
Speaker 11: go through for gross miss conduct, Like if the company
Speaker 11: was following the contract, if they like felt the obligation
Speaker 11: to do so, what should have happened is they shouldn't
Speaker 11: have let me finished the rest of my workday. Instead,
Speaker 11: I should have been escorted out of the building by security.
Speaker 11: I should have been placed on a leave. There should
Speaker 11: have been an investigation with like time for me and
Speaker 11: the union to comment, and then a decision should have
Speaker 11: came out. And the entire time that should have been happening,
Speaker 11: I should have been paid and like if that sounds greedy, Okay,
Speaker 11: the company agreed to it, like they didn't have to
Speaker 11: sign the contract, but they did. But this is another
Speaker 11: like concerning trend that we're seeing right now with like
Speaker 11: you know, the gutted NLRB and like the kind of yeah,
Speaker 11: you know, shirking of like responsibilities from companies is like
Speaker 11: companies are like straight up gas lighting workers not things
Speaker 11: that are in the contracts that they agreed to. They
Speaker 11: are like pointing to the contract and saying that it
Speaker 11: says things that it doesn't say, or that it doesn't
Speaker 11: say things that are like right there for you and
Speaker 11: clearing English stripe before your eyes. Actually, another time that
Speaker 11: we tried to talk to Stan this year was so
Speaker 11: we were based out of New York. Predominantly we have
Speaker 11: remote workers across the country. Although we were told just
Speaker 11: about everybody at the company to start coming into the
Speaker 11: New York offices four days a week. There's a section
Speaker 11: of our contract that says that under a declared state
Speaker 11: of emergency, workers can stay home. Well, this summer in
Speaker 11: New York, listeners may remember, we had a really massive,
Speaker 11: like terrible heat wave, like temperatures up in the one
Speaker 11: hundreds every day, like going into the subway stations, and
Speaker 11: that week, I remember feeling like I was baking during
Speaker 11: the declared state of emergency, which again the contract says
Speaker 11: workers do not have to come into the office. The
Speaker 11: company said, we don't care, you have to come into
Speaker 11: the office. Paraphrasing those aren't they are exact words that
Speaker 11: they're not too far off. And again we said, okay,
Speaker 11: but the contract says under a declared state of emergency,
Speaker 11: we don't have to come into the office, And they
Speaker 11: said you have to come into the office four days
Speaker 11: a week, no exceptions. And it is maddening.
Speaker 6: I mean, yeah, that's life threatening, Like oh.
Speaker 11: I mean yeah, absolutely, And I will say, like, you know,
Speaker 11: I've been at the company five years. That makes me
Speaker 11: a bit of a long hauler, Like we have people
Speaker 11: who have been at the company for like fifteen twenty years.
Speaker 11: Like there are people who are like near retirement age
Speaker 11: who standing on a subway platform. Again it's New York City.
Speaker 11: People aren't really in air conditioned cars driving to work.
Speaker 11: Like there are people for whom, like at all ages,
Speaker 11: standing on a subway platform in that kind of heat
Speaker 11: is a really life threatening and like really dangerous thing
Speaker 11: to demand people do, yeah, which is like one of
Speaker 11: the things that we were thinking about when we like
Speaker 11: fought for that contract language, and like one of the
Speaker 11: things that we were thinking about when we were like
Speaker 11: nearly ready, like in fact that we were ready to
Speaker 11: go on strike and like disrupt the met gala in
Speaker 11: May of twenty twenty four. Like that is one of
Speaker 11: the things that we were thinking about when we drafted that,
Speaker 11: and one of the things we were really excited that
Speaker 11: the company agreed to give us when we want our contract,
Speaker 11: and so for them to immediately just say, oh, just kidding, well,
Speaker 11: oh well now if we file agreevance, it might take
Speaker 11: like months directify. Well just kidding, those rights that we
Speaker 11: gave you, they don't exist anymore. Sorry. And again it's
Speaker 11: like clear, easy to understand language that they are somehow
Speaker 11: willing to just say like the contract doesn't say what
Speaker 11: it says.
Speaker 3: It's It's interesting because I mean, you know, there's like,
Speaker 3: on the one hand, like companies have always like not
Speaker 3: followed contracts, and it's always been like, Okay, if you
Speaker 3: want your contract to do what it says it does,
Speaker 3: you have to force them to do it. But on
Speaker 3: the other hand, like the thing that it reminds me
Speaker 3: of is like one of things happened with the TRUP administration.
Speaker 3: Whenever we're talking about them pissing off their bases, there's
Speaker 3: been a bunch of unions that they've just you knulaterally
Speaker 3: been this is said, this is national security. We don't
Speaker 3: recognize your contract anymore. So for example, like the the
Speaker 3: funny version of is they do this at a prison
Speaker 3: guard union, which is hilarious.
Speaker 6: It's like, yeah, I don't know you guys. You guys
Speaker 6: chat in your own bed.
Speaker 3: Now you have to lie in it, like I don't
Speaker 3: know what to tell you, but like yeah, but like
Speaker 3: you know, the national government has been doing this to
Speaker 3: a bunch of unions.
Speaker 6: They've just been going, I know that we don't have
Speaker 6: to follow this contract. Any work is national.
Speaker 3: Security, and that's the future that all of these people
Speaker 3: want and that they're like, you know, this is part
Speaker 3: of what they're fighting for.
Speaker 6: This is part of that fight.
Speaker 3: Is that they want to fight where contract union contracts
Speaker 3: don't exist and they could just do whatever they want
Speaker 3: to anyone.
Speaker 11: I mean, there's also like a clear line you can
Speaker 11: draw from say like like the Reagan era and the
Speaker 11: like air traffic controller union strike break and then like
Speaker 11: the way that from like the federal government unions, and
Speaker 11: like the way that the federal government treats its unions.
Speaker 11: That like basically the rest of the American labor movement
Speaker 11: and rather the management side responses to the American labor
Speaker 11: movement generally flow.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, is there anything else that you want to
Speaker 6: make sure that people know?
Speaker 11: Well, I mean, in the coming days and weeks, the
Speaker 11: union is planning a lot to fight back against the company.
Speaker 11: Oh yeah, that said, one of the things that we
Speaker 11: know most about media organizations generally is that they are
Speaker 11: very concerned about public pressure and they are very concerned
Speaker 11: about public image. This is like ap are obsessed industry
Speaker 11: for better and for worse. So we are hoping that
Speaker 11: like readers and you know, fans and followers will keep
Speaker 11: the pressure up against Conde Nast to show like employers
Speaker 11: like them that like, we will not stand for this.
Speaker 11: We have an Action Network petition up right now that
Speaker 11: we are going to keep collecting signatures for that we
Speaker 11: hope to deliver to management soon depending on onence it
Speaker 11: comes out. I mean, we'll be collecting signatures regardless. And
Speaker 11: that is also one of the best ways signing on
Speaker 11: to that will get you updates for other ways that
Speaker 11: you can you know, support us from the outside. But otherwise,
Speaker 11: I mean, we've got a lot of fighting to do,
Speaker 11: We've got a lot of organizing to do. I certainly
Speaker 11: don't think my days at Conde Nast are over. I
Speaker 11: expect that, like however long it takes for the law
Speaker 11: of shakeout, like I hope to be reinstated, as do
Speaker 11: the other like three terminated employees. I also am certain
Speaker 11: that like we will be able to win justice for
Speaker 11: ourselves and the other people who were like illegally retaliatorially
Speaker 11: disciplined following the action. And I also think that this
Speaker 11: is nowhere near the last action that Conde Nast upper
Speaker 11: management should expect. If anything like this is just showing
Speaker 11: us that if we want our contract to be enforced,
Speaker 11: if we want the rights that they said that they
Speaker 11: would give us, we are going to have to keep
Speaker 11: holding them to account, and we are going to have
Speaker 11: to keep fighting for them.
Speaker 6: Trying to figure out whether or not I can get
Speaker 6: away with saying you have sown the wind and now
Speaker 6: the whirlwind.
Speaker 10: Oh God, you have sown the bond appetite, and now
Speaker 10: you will get the I can't finish that.
Speaker 6: You've sewed the butt appetite. Now you'll get teen votes too.
Speaker 11: You have sown the bond, and now you'll get the appetite.
Speaker 11: That doesn't mean anything, that's not anything.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 3: Look, it's a struggling time for the whole industry. Yeah,
Speaker 3: And if people want to find you, do you want
Speaker 3: to be found?
Speaker 9: A and B.
Speaker 6: If people want to find you, where can they find
Speaker 6: your work?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 11: Totally. I plan to keep writing and doing journalism for
Speaker 11: the however long I can allowed to keep doing that.
Speaker 11: So I'm on basically every website as at Goodbye Alma,
Speaker 11: including the Evil Ones sadly. I also I co edit
Speaker 11: a literary magazine with my friend Joyce that's called Picnic Magazine.
Speaker 11: It's very cool. It's all work by trans contributors. We
Speaker 11: are predominantly a print first publication. You can find us
Speaker 11: at Picnic mag on Instagram. We're also on Blue Sky.
Speaker 11: I should have prepared our at but I'm sure I
Speaker 11: can send that to you afterwards.
Speaker 6: Yeah, well we'll put it in that, we'll put it
Speaker 6: in the station and yeah.
Speaker 11: We are available in a few bookstores in big cities
Speaker 11: across the country. We also have a you can download
Speaker 11: our pdf and a pay what you want kind of way.
Speaker 11: We have a second issue coming soon. Although it turns
Speaker 11: out making a magazine with just two trans women it's
Speaker 11: really difficult. So yeah, check that out. It's all fiction, criticism,
Speaker 11: and poetry by trans contributors. And yeah, follow me at
Speaker 11: Goodbye Alma Online.
Speaker 8: Yeah yeah.
Speaker 3: And if you want actual news that's fit to print,
Speaker 3: you're going to have to fight for it, Amanda, that's
Speaker 3: us there.
Speaker 12: Hello everyone.
Speaker 1: My name is Dana al Kurd and this is it
Speaker 1: could happen here. I'm a professor and researcher of Arab
Speaker 1: and Pastadian politics and a senior non resident Fellow at
Speaker 1: the Arab Center Washington. Today we're joined by Shaddin Sekai,
Speaker 1: a professor of history at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Speaker 1: Her book Men of Capital, Scarcity and Economy in Mandate
Speaker 1: Palestine explores economy, territory, the home, the body, and she's
Speaker 1: also editor in chief of the Journal of Palestine Studies. Today,
Speaker 1: I wanted to invite Shadin on to discuss the importance
Speaker 1: of Palestinian knowledge production and Palestinian spaces for writing, researching, analyzing, etc.
Speaker 1: So yeah, Shdan, thank you so much for coming.
Speaker 12: On, Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: So let's maybe start with a very basic question, what
Speaker 1: is the Journal of Palestine Studies? Could you give us
Speaker 1: kind of an overview?
Speaker 12: Sure? So, the Journal of Palestine Studies is the flagship
Speaker 12: journal of Palestinian studies in the English language. It was
Speaker 12: established in nineteen seventy one, so that makes it fifty
Speaker 12: four years old. First it was part of the then
Speaker 12: Bay Route based and still Bay Route based Institute for
Speaker 12: Palestine Studies and Kuwait University, which sponsored what was understood
Speaker 12: at the time as an international forum to discuss all
Speaker 12: aspects of the Palestine question and the Arab Zionist conflict.
Speaker 12: And really the people who established it were looking for
Speaker 12: shaping a space that could discuss these matters freely. And
Speaker 12: the story of the founders is a really interesting one
Speaker 12: because they were people like Hisham Cherobi, Walidlidi, Brandoshani Fuatzauf,
Speaker 12: and Konstantine Zrich, who actually was the person who coined
Speaker 12: the way that we name the nekba in his book
Speaker 12: Man and Nekba that he wrote in nineteen forty eight,
Speaker 12: in which he coined this term the catastrophe to think
Speaker 12: about nineteen forty eight, which would you know be our
Speaker 12: ongoing condition. And I think the way to think about
Speaker 12: these people in there, in the way that they began
Speaker 12: their journal is to think about them as really confronting
Speaker 12: a landscape of erasure, denial, and urgency and occupying this
Speaker 12: kind of steady, incessant pain of the original inception of
Speaker 12: the Nekba when you know, think about it in nineteen
Speaker 12: seventy one, it was not that long before a decade
Speaker 12: and a half, yeah, right, And I think what's important
Speaker 12: about you know, in the last couple of years, people
Speaker 12: have been kind of making demands about Palestinian studies as
Speaker 12: part of you know, some of the student movements and
Speaker 12: the staff and faculty movements, and I think it's really
Speaker 12: important for people to know that this comes from a
Speaker 12: much longer tradition of the production of knowledge as a
Speaker 12: real insistence on existence.
Speaker 1: Absolutely Palestinians have been producing knowledge about their state of affairs,
Speaker 1: you know, just like today academics and gaza are producing knowledge, right,
Speaker 1: And I'm always like struck by how just ahead of
Speaker 1: its time, you know, the general Palistine studies is like
Speaker 1: a lot of our understanding of the conflict that are
Speaker 1: now finally starting to seep into the mainstream were first
Speaker 1: discussed in these pages. Some of the research findings about
Speaker 1: the history were first articulated in these pages. And so
Speaker 1: that kind of knowledge production is just it is a
Speaker 1: form of resistance to erasure.
Speaker 12: Absolutely and just you know, some of those would be
Speaker 12: for example, Plandalit, which was the you know, the plan
Speaker 12: which would lead to the destruction of four hundred and
Speaker 12: fifty to five hundred and thirty seven Palestinian villages. And
Speaker 12: this plan would come to be recognized through the work
Speaker 12: of Benny Morris as a Israeli historian who had access
Speaker 12: to Israeli documents, but it's actually was Walid Realidi who
Speaker 12: had been evidencing and showing the empirical foundations of Plan Dalit,
Speaker 12: and it was in the Journal of Palestine Studies that
Speaker 12: he publish those findings. In that case, I think that again,
Speaker 12: for people who are really engaging the movement for free
Speaker 12: Palestine and free Palestinians, we really have to be approaching
Speaker 12: the political economy of who gets to speak and whose
Speaker 12: knowledge production is uplifted as legitimate and worthy. And I
Speaker 12: think you see a lot of this kind of centering
Speaker 12: of Israeli voices, and I think we really have to
Speaker 12: in this moment. It's urgent to center Palestinian knowledge production.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's just so many ways that we witness this
Speaker 1: all the time that it's not something worthy of discussion
Speaker 1: unless it Israeli a voice says it, and there's an
Speaker 1: inherent suspicion about the Palestinian scholar, the Palestinian analyst, the
Speaker 1: Palestinian knowledge producer of some kind. Now, of course, the
Speaker 1: last two years have been upheaval, the genocide and Gauza,
Speaker 1: a tragedy that we honestly we haven't really absorbed and
Speaker 1: possibly can't. And we've seen in the last two years
Speaker 1: a concerted effort to erase Palestinians further from the American Academy,
Speaker 1: but from also like scholarship generally speaking. But before I
Speaker 1: get into that, I wondered if you could kind of
Speaker 1: give your impression of what did doing Palestenian studies look
Speaker 1: like before October seventh? How was it easy? Was it acceptable?
Speaker 1: I mean, I know the answers, but I'd like you
Speaker 1: to say.
Speaker 12: Though, so, I think one of the things that's been
Speaker 12: interesting to observe, and I would date this as happening
Speaker 12: around COVID when our colleagues and various disciplines started confronting
Speaker 12: the reality of their archives closing. So I'm a historian,
Speaker 12: so I speak from that place. You know, people who
Speaker 12: study Europe, people who study the United States, kind of
Speaker 12: confronting the reality that they might not access archives that
Speaker 12: they are accustomed accessing, and in a similar way, facing
Speaker 12: the kind of targeting and surveillance, the bipartisan targeting and
Speaker 12: surveillance of academic knowledge production, and trying to explain to
Speaker 12: people this is what we've existed under all along.
Speaker 6: Now.
Speaker 12: I think there are similarities across communities of knowledge production.
Speaker 12: So I think people who work in black studies, who
Speaker 12: work in indigenous studies, who work in queer studies, gender
Speaker 12: and sexuality have also been under the dress of surveillance
Speaker 12: and targeting. I think for those of us who have
Speaker 12: been doing Palestinian studies, what does it mean, especially if
Speaker 12: you're a Palestinian doing it, but whoever you are, It
Speaker 12: means you have to show up ten times more ready
Speaker 12: than anybody else. It means you have to conduct yourself
Speaker 12: as if you are always being recorded, right. It means
Speaker 12: that every single word that you say you should be
Speaker 12: able to stand up for in a court of law,
Speaker 12: and all of those kinds of restrictions. Actually, you know,
Speaker 12: you give us lemons. We're going to make lemonade because
Speaker 12: those restrictions have imposed on us a kind of rigor.
Speaker 12: That is the least that we can do. It also means,
Speaker 12: I mean, I think for a lot of us, yourself included, right.
Speaker 12: I was just somebody was interviewing me yesterday about, oh,
Speaker 12: have you faced harassment or censorship or something? And I think,
Speaker 12: at least in my case, I'm I'm constantly, you know,
Speaker 12: experiencing these things and just kind of swallowing it, do
Speaker 12: you know what I mean, just getting along with the
Speaker 12: business of the every day.
Speaker 6: So, you know, there was.
Speaker 12: This moment back in twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen where, for
Speaker 12: whatever reason, every couple of months, one of the bots
Speaker 12: of one of these surveillance websites would start highlighting me
Speaker 12: and insulting me on Twitter, you know, liable calling me names,
Speaker 12: going after how I look like really vulgar, misgendering me,
Speaker 12: that kind of thing. And I'd come out of my lecture,
Speaker 12: you know, and you know, I teach big classes, and
Speaker 12: I'd come out of a big, you know, two hundred
Speaker 12: and fifty percent lecture, which requires so much focus and
Speaker 12: energy and being present and you know that adrenaline. And
Speaker 12: I'd look at my phone and I'd have fifty notifications
Speaker 12: and it would just be one insult after another. And
Speaker 12: that's just.
Speaker 1: Part of the job.
Speaker 12: Yeah, And that's just how it's been, right, like, you know,
Speaker 12: from the beginning, at least of my graduate career, and
Speaker 12: I started grad school. You know, September eleven happened when
Speaker 12: I was in grad school, and I was in New
Speaker 12: York when it happened. And you know, we've been under surveillance,
Speaker 12: we've been named, we've been watched as part of what
Speaker 12: we do, as you said, And in fact, I got
Speaker 12: my masters at the Center for Contemporary Studies and they
Speaker 12: wrote a book back in the eighties about the surveillance
Speaker 12: and I think it's called They Dare to Speak, well, right, right, yeah,
Speaker 12: these early accounts of the concerted attempt to silence us.
Speaker 12: And so what I like to remind people is at
Speaker 12: this moment, you know, you said, oh, they're trying to
Speaker 12: erase Palestinian scholarship. I mean, at least they're trying to
Speaker 12: erase the voices who are putting forward a critical take
Speaker 12: on Israeli sellar colonialism and genocide. And I think what
Speaker 12: I like to remind people is that there is way
Speaker 12: more of us now than there's ever been before.
Speaker 1: Yeah, good point.
Speaker 12: Ten years ago, people like you and me wouldn't have
Speaker 12: jobs in the academy. It may be in a couple
Speaker 12: of years we won't have jobs, but I don't know,
Speaker 12: Like I'm not I don't want to sit on our
Speaker 12: laurels and think, oh, okay, we arrived. In any case,
Speaker 12: the whole concept of arrival and career arrival at this
Speaker 12: moment has completely changed for me. I don't know how
Speaker 12: it is for you, But the effect of the genocide
Speaker 12: has made it so that the bankruptcy of the institutions
Speaker 12: we work for, the rapid ways in which they're engaging
Speaker 12: with obedience and authoritarianism. Yep. Yeah, it's like what we've
Speaker 12: worked for our whole careers. It's like, well, I don't
Speaker 12: think this makes sense actually, do you know?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 12: So I would say it's been like that all along.
Speaker 12: People even sitting to you things like oh there, what
Speaker 12: do you mean you study Palestine?
Speaker 6: You know, like what is that?
Speaker 12: Yeah?
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, I mean, I'm in a different discipline,
Speaker 1: but certainly it was. I remember as a student hungry
Speaker 1: for information. I mean, it was rare to find something
Speaker 1: about the Middle East to be taught, let alone Palestine.
Speaker 1: The level to which they delegitimized Arab and Palestinian sources
Speaker 1: or questions of importance to Palestinians and Arabs normatively speaking,
Speaker 1: politically speaking, also theoretically speaking, I mean, I mean, I
Speaker 1: can tell you so many stories, Like every person who's
Speaker 1: ever wanted to study Palestine, especially as you said, if
Speaker 1: you are Palestinian, is discouraged from it and is told
Speaker 1: not to, is told this doesn't fit, is told. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm in political science. The theories don't account for Palestine.
Speaker 1: It's just outside of space and time and theory, and
Speaker 1: you can't account for it, you can't discuss it. And
Speaker 1: the harassment, the harassment campaigns all of us have been facing,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it takes such a mental and emotional toll,
Speaker 1: and yet we produce, and yet we get tenure, and
Speaker 1: yet we teach our classes, and we're excellent in our teaching,
Speaker 1: and our students love us and want to learn. But
Speaker 1: you know, as you said, like it really has exposed
Speaker 1: the degree to which these universities because they have been
Speaker 1: well one like we are in America, but also because
Speaker 1: they have been so divorced from their actual missions. Like
Speaker 1: how meaningless the space this has now become. But that's
Speaker 1: like on the harassment and like kind of these kinds
Speaker 1: of obstacle side. I also think like people don't recognize
Speaker 1: like the resources that are needed to teach and study
Speaker 1: and research Palestine that other people in the academy, other
Speaker 1: knowledge producers get very easily. And it's there is so
Speaker 1: little for people who study Palestine, and of course that
Speaker 1: impacts what kind of academics are able to do this
Speaker 1: and how many people we even missing from this discussion, right,
Speaker 1: I agree with you that has been the condition before
Speaker 1: October seventh. I think now after October seventh, that after
Speaker 1: they have attempted to use Palestine as kind of a
Speaker 1: cudgel to attack the higher education generally, like now people
Speaker 1: are recognizing it maybe more, but that has always definitely
Speaker 1: been the case.
Speaker 6: Oh.
Speaker 1: Also, I just wanted to remind listeners and bring it up,
Speaker 1: Like I remember Barry Weiss who is now the head
Speaker 1: of CBS. I mean she made her claim to fame
Speaker 1: attacking Arab and Palestinian professors in Colombia as an undergrad,
Speaker 1: and that's seen us totally valid.
Speaker 12: Yeah, no, I mean I think, you know, Palestine has cugel.
Speaker 12: And also, you know, I've been saying this for a while,
Speaker 12: Palestine is paradigm, right. You know, if you look at
Speaker 12: the memdenuine, I think it reveals also kind of what
Speaker 12: Palestine also stands for, which is the way that both
Speaker 12: the Democratic and the Republican Party have really no link
Speaker 12: to the popular realities on the ground, right, and that
Speaker 12: in effect, you know, part of the Trump base was
Speaker 12: really responding to this disparity, right, this lack of investment
Speaker 12: and in the political system. And I think, you know
Speaker 12: that for me was the I don't have hope in
Speaker 12: electoral politics. And you know, I don't want to be
Speaker 12: cynical or anything, but I think what the memdnni wind
Speaker 12: shows us is that people are disgruntled and they're sick
Speaker 12: of the kind of extractive billionaire class doing what they
Speaker 12: want to do at the expense of the rest of us.
Speaker 12: And I think the media is really complicit in all
Speaker 12: of this, absolutely complicit in the genocide. It's been absolutely
Speaker 12: complicit since the you know, war on Iraq, since the
Speaker 12: Second War on Iraq, in rendering news as entertainment, you know,
Speaker 12: And and it's like you could see the freak out
Speaker 12: that people had, the media had about mem Denny across
Speaker 12: the board. It wasn't just the Fox News.
Speaker 1: No New York Times, everybody.
Speaker 12: Yeah, and all of the you know television media too.
Speaker 12: So it's just I think it's I think there's also
Speaker 12: a link to higher education in that way, because I
Speaker 12: think there has been an investment in making people stupid.
Speaker 1: Right, Yes, that's what I was going to say. Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: I mean that's exactly what I was going to say.
Speaker 1: Is the Palestinian issue and Palestine studies and research and
Speaker 1: knowledge production, the fact that there exists the few Palestinians
Speaker 1: in higher education has been used to attack higher education.
Speaker 1: But it's not really about Palestine. I mean, it is
Speaker 1: a little bit about palasaide. Of course these people are
Speaker 1: anti Palstinian, but it's about preventing social mobility. So you're saying, like,
Speaker 1: there's all this disgruntlement in the public space. Our students
Speaker 1: are disgruntled. They want to learn, They've been promised something
Speaker 1: with this college education, and you know, even the slight
Speaker 1: bit of social mobility that has existed as a result
Speaker 1: of higher education is too much for the Trump administration. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's too much for this right wing. So Palestine is
Speaker 1: a class issue, absolutely.
Speaker 12: No, it absolutely is. You know, are as are all
Speaker 12: of the kind of struggles we stand on solidarity with.
Speaker 12: You know, it's like, really it is intersectional. And we
Speaker 12: didn't need Trump to teach us that. But that's the
Speaker 12: lesson that keeps being delivered time and again. And one
Speaker 12: of the things that's really struck me, and this has
Speaker 12: been the case for the last ten years, eleven years,
Speaker 12: long before Trump, and I think one of the challenges
Speaker 12: we face today is not to overdetermine the Trump administration
Speaker 12: as the site of all of the catastrophes that we're
Speaker 12: in today. And one of the things I've noted for
Speaker 12: the last fourteen years is I don't have to teach
Speaker 12: students that history isn't about things always getting better. That's
Speaker 12: not a lesson. They need to know. They understand that
Speaker 12: teleology and the fallacy of advancement is a lie. They
Speaker 12: understand that because they live it, as you say, you know,
Speaker 12: they're in debt, especially those of us who teach at
Speaker 12: public universities. You know, most of our students are indebted.
Speaker 12: A lot of them have two or three jobs. They're
Speaker 12: housing insecure, their food insecure. They don't have a clear
Speaker 12: vision of the future.
Speaker 1: And if they protest side, they're labeled antisemitic. Yeah, their
Speaker 1: university's cracked down on them, they're docsed. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: so outrageous.
Speaker 12: Obviously, I don't need to tell you their identification with
Speaker 12: Palestine is also about their own experiences with repression, of course,
Speaker 12: So I think that's the that really is the momentum
Speaker 12: you know that we're witnessing. Is is that kind of identification? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Absolutely. I think it's important for listeners to know some
Speaker 1: of the contours of what has happened after October seventh,
Speaker 1: And like you said, it's not a Trump thing, it
Speaker 1: started under Biden. About how Palestine has been used in
Speaker 1: the academy, I mean, as I said earlier, I have
Speaker 1: done an episode on this, so I will link that.
Speaker 1: But also you know, there is now evidence and data
Speaker 1: around how this issue has been weaponized. So the AAUP,
Speaker 1: the American Association of University Professors, alongside the Middle Ease
Speaker 1: Studies Association, just put out a report on this exact
Speaker 1: question about how titles six investigations, so investigations of alleged
Speaker 1: discrimination specifically about anti semitism and nothing else. First of all,
Speaker 1: there's been a huge uptick in them and have been
Speaker 1: used to target these universities. Vast majority of these cases
Speaker 1: has to do with faculty extra mural speech, so like
Speaker 1: these faculty members having an opinion about genocide outside the classroom.
Speaker 1: I mean, honestly, I always remember I think Edward Side said,
Speaker 1: like being a Palestinian academy is like being an outlaw.
Speaker 1: That's like how it feels. That's how it feels.
Speaker 12: Yeah, it's fugitive labor for sure. Yeah, definitely, And I
Speaker 12: think one of the findings has been also, I don't
Speaker 12: know if it's ninety five percent of the cases have
Speaker 12: been shown to be be fraudulent. Yeah, it'd be totally fraudulent.
Speaker 12: So yeah, it's a real policing of speech. It's a
Speaker 12: real kind of weaponization of the charge of anti semitism,
Speaker 12: And honestly, sort of one of the things I think
Speaker 12: that really happens too, is that students don't get the
Speaker 12: tools to actually recognize and understand actually existing anti semitism,
Speaker 12: right as it is being rehearsed in like these show
Speaker 12: trials that we saw in Congress, and these in the
Speaker 12: rhetoric of many of the people affiliated with the administration,
Speaker 12: in the kinds of alliances that even the Israeli state
Speaker 12: right has made with various right wing anti Semitic states.
Speaker 12: So it's like, I think one of the things that
Speaker 12: it's kind of like watching a train wreck, just hitting
Speaker 12: one train after another and just being like, what is
Speaker 12: this absurdity? You know, I myself was accused of being
Speaker 12: anti semi for having a history of anti Semitism. So
Speaker 12: what surprises me is the way that people are allowing
Speaker 12: and facilitating this to happen, you know, and the way
Speaker 12: that they're not able to recognize how high the stakes
Speaker 12: are what it means to be a Palestinian in this moment.
Speaker 12: You know, when you've been sitting watching for two years
Speaker 12: your people being shredded and you're facing the reality of
Speaker 12: what the stakes are in this moment, which is the
Speaker 12: annihilation of Palestine and the annihilation of Palestinians, your threshold
Speaker 12: for a shock becomes very high. And so I mean,
Speaker 12: I'm sure it's the same for you. I don't know
Speaker 12: if like what. It's like a constant trauma response. You know, absolutely, yeah,
Speaker 12: they're My emotional reactions are shut down, and I'm in
Speaker 12: a state of being in the present. Okay, we got
Speaker 12: through today, Hopefully we'll get through tomorrow. I don't I
Speaker 12: kind of am prepared for the worst at all times.
Speaker 12: And you know, it's a condition of vigilance that I
Speaker 12: think people when they continue to feed this kind of
Speaker 12: right wing agenda of making people stupid and eroding even
Speaker 12: the possibility of higher education, it's the kind of condition
Speaker 12: that will be much more general, you know. Yeah, and
Speaker 12: all these ice rates at the same time. You know,
Speaker 12: it's I just saw I haven't been able to listen
Speaker 12: to it. But a scholar who powerfully is talking about
Speaker 12: the Mexico Palestine border and the and the links between
Speaker 12: ice and the idea and the and the ways to
Speaker 12: think about these two things together.
Speaker 1: And please share that with me. I haven't seen it.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, as you said, when we take away
Speaker 1: Palestine from the Academy, when we use Palestine to attack
Speaker 1: the academy. As imperfect as the Academy is, it is
Speaker 1: this larger attempt to take away people's analytical tools and
Speaker 1: frameworks to understanding their reality, to understanding how their reality
Speaker 1: intersects with these other things, because they don't want you
Speaker 1: to be able to solve it. They don't want you
Speaker 1: to be able to mobilize. And then of course there's this,
Speaker 1: as I said, this class dimension of wanting to keep
Speaker 1: people in their place. There are too many black and
Speaker 1: brown people in the academy. Now we can't have that
Speaker 1: kind of social mobility. I just want to emphasize for
Speaker 1: the listeners why it's so important for Palestine to be
Speaker 1: researched and studied and things like that is self evident.
Speaker 1: I don't need to explain it. But why is it
Speaker 1: so important that Palestinians are the ones who do that?
Speaker 1: I mean, again, it feels self evident, but I'll say
Speaker 1: it like, Palestinians have agency, and they are full human beings,
Speaker 1: and they know best what questions are relevant, and they
Speaker 1: have a unique perspective on the issue of Palestine as
Speaker 1: well as other issues. And so not only are you
Speaker 1: engaging in the rature of Palestinians when you don't amplify
Speaker 1: that kind of knowledge production, but you are making scholarship poorer.
Speaker 1: You are limiting what you know about this issue. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so what do you think, you know, kind of broadly speaking, students, scholars, sympathizers,
Speaker 1: what do you think they should do in this moment.
Speaker 12: I want to just go back to the point about
Speaker 12: why is it important to have to sure Palestinian voices,
Speaker 12: Because when we say that, we're not doing it in
Speaker 12: an identitarian way, right of course, Yeah, anybody who wants
Speaker 12: to study Palestine should study Palestine. In doing so, you
Speaker 12: should be centering the lessons that Palestinians have offered us
Speaker 12: first and foremost in this moment, the Palestinians of the
Speaker 12: Gaza strip and in my own practice at the Journal
Speaker 12: of philos Steine Studies. What I've tried to do in
Speaker 12: each of the editor's notes is really lift up all
Speaker 12: of the testimonies that we've received from Palestinians in Gaza,
Speaker 12: written and social media and all of these, but also
Speaker 12: lift up the international voices of Palestinians like yourself and
Speaker 12: many many people who are writing and giving us tools
Speaker 12: to understand and analyze. And the reason that's important is
Speaker 12: because the main problem that we face, I believe, is
Speaker 12: the way that certain people are more susceptible to being
Speaker 12: excluded from the category of the human. Once you exclude
Speaker 12: people from the category of the human, it's much easier
Speaker 12: to kill them and make them expendable. And I think
Speaker 12: our work really in centering Palestinian voices rejects that logic, right,
Speaker 12: rejects the logic of are we human or not? Are
Speaker 12: we going to evidence our humanity or not? You know,
Speaker 12: we tell our stories, and I think that telling of
Speaker 12: the story changes the angle of vision. If you're looking
Speaker 12: at what's happening in the Gaza strip from the perspective
Speaker 12: of people who are living it, you will see different
Speaker 12: things then if you're looking at it from you know,
Speaker 12: a drone or you know, a geopolitical lens. So that's
Speaker 12: one thing.
Speaker 6: I think.
Speaker 12: Another thing that's really important is you know, I mean
Speaker 12: Mahma Dwish said this actually in an interview in journal
Speaker 12: Pasteine Studies. He said, you know, the Palestinians are talked
Speaker 12: about because they're facing Israeli Jews, because the Jewish question.
Speaker 1: Is the question of Europe. Oh that's right, yeah.
Speaker 12: And I find that one of the things that continues
Speaker 12: to be an issue until now is that what scholars
Speaker 12: and thinkers and analysts are judicating is the question of
Speaker 12: Europe and the question of the sustainability of European values
Speaker 12: and European notions and all of these things. And I'm
Speaker 12: not interested in that. I want to center the question
Speaker 12: of Palestine and what kind of other tools that might
Speaker 12: offer us. So, I think, in a way link to
Speaker 12: what the earlier conversation about a political economy of value
Speaker 12: of scholars, right, there's a kind of also here a
Speaker 12: political economy of concepts. And I believe that we have
Speaker 12: to really provincialize Europe. We have to provincialize Europe as
Speaker 12: the means and the ends of all things. It is
Speaker 12: not generalizable. No, just ask different questions and look at
Speaker 12: it from a different perspective in terms of what do
Speaker 12: I think students and scholars and all of us should do.
Speaker 12: Is it's going to sound strange, but first and foremost study, read, learn,
Speaker 12: Those are the critical tools that you gain that will
Speaker 12: allow you to defend yourself in a world that is intent.
Speaker 1: On making you stupid.
Speaker 12: We all have to reject that. I think there it's
Speaker 12: a moment where there's a temptation to slide into sensationalism
Speaker 12: or to slide into circulating, especially on social media and
Speaker 12: that whole economy. Right, So I think we have to
Speaker 12: be vigilant. I think we have to be rigorous, and
Speaker 12: I think we have to study. And I think more
Speaker 12: than anything else, the lesson I keep coming back to
Speaker 12: is we have to take care of each other in
Speaker 12: the communities that we build.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's exactly right. I think you begin arming yourself
Speaker 1: with the tools to understand this moment and think of
Speaker 1: ways to defend yourself in your community. And you can't
Speaker 1: do it that without being grounded in this knowledge that came
Speaker 1: before you. So listeners, please crack open a Journal of
Speaker 1: Palestine Studies, and of course I'll link to all of
Speaker 1: this in the in the show notes. Siday and I
Speaker 1: could talk to you for hours. Thank you so much
Speaker 1: for your time. This has been really interesting.
Speaker 12: Thank you so much for having me and for all
Speaker 12: the work that you do.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, listeners. I'm going to also put
Speaker 1: in the show notes a fundraising campaign for the Journal
Speaker 1: of filesTime Studies. So if you can, you have the capacity,
Speaker 1: it's a sure fire away to help resist these dynamics.
Speaker 1: All right, thanks so much, Take care.
Speaker 6: This is it could happen here. Executive Disorder our weekly
Speaker 6: newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling
Speaker 6: world and what this means for you. I'm Garrison Davis
Speaker 6: today am joined by Mia Wong, James Stout, and Robert Evans.
Speaker 6: This episode recovering the week of November thirteenth to November nineteenth.
Speaker 6: The biggest news I think of this whole week. Jd
Speaker 6: Vance has been sentenced to two years in prison for
Speaker 6: threatening Donald Trump and jd Vance. This is, of course
Speaker 6: James Donald Vance Junior different jd Vance, a sixty seven
Speaker 6: year old man from Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Speaker 2: Second. Jd Vance has hit the Discourse.
Speaker 6: Who's also named Donald, which is phenomenal, amazing, It's amazing.
Speaker 6: Who plead a guilty to three criminal accounts based on
Speaker 6: the social media posts about killing the President, the Vice President,
Speaker 6: Elon Musk and Trump Junior.
Speaker 5: Jeez yeah, don a good cod Garrison.
Speaker 13: I would quibble that that is the biggest story this
Speaker 13: week because this is the week of cause that Nicki
Speaker 13: Minaj addressed the United Nation.
Speaker 2: This is a week where years happened.
Speaker 5: Ye Nicki Minaj.
Speaker 13: If readers are familiar with her, it will doubtless be
Speaker 13: because of her contributions to Discourse on her cousin's friends testicles.
Speaker 13: But this time she's back and she is talking about
Speaker 13: the person's baby.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's what we do here.
Speaker 13: She's talking about the persecution of Christians in Nigeria. Just
Speaker 13: for listener to another way. Nicki Minaj is from Trinidad.
Speaker 2: Yeah not.
Speaker 13: Don't worry if any particular expertise or insight she has
Speaker 13: on a topic.
Speaker 5: But yeah, she she did that this week.
Speaker 6: Yep, at the United Nations.
Speaker 2: How did do we know? How she decided that this
Speaker 2: was a problem she needed to get involved.
Speaker 13: She reposted a truth that Donald Trump had made great
Speaker 13: and I've had a great start. I believe they reached
Speaker 13: out on the basis of that. There's some tremendous like
Speaker 13: statements calling her the greatest female recording artist in history. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 13: which sets us up nicely for a Nicki Minaj Dolly
Speaker 13: part in beef.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I think I joined on the side of Dolly Potton
Speaker 5: in that one.
Speaker 2: It would be hard not to, yep.
Speaker 13: So yeah, I guess she She reposted a thing about
Speaker 13: a truth that led to him reaching out, and she
Speaker 13: volunteered her time to address the United Nations. Organizations set
Speaker 13: up after Wood what to to try and prevent genocides.
Speaker 5: Yeah, outstanding.
Speaker 6: The truth is so beautiful. Yes, speaking of the truth
Speaker 6: and the truth coming to light, we're talking about Jeffrey
Speaker 6: Epstein again, I guess.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The ongoing revelations based on j He's this guy's
Speaker 2: post depth career has really been one for the books.
Speaker 6: Yeah, he really really rivals Michael Jackson in more than
Speaker 6: one way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, or Tupac, I would I would say Tupac.
Speaker 9: No.
Speaker 2: There it was when when fucking John McAfee died, there
Speaker 2: were all these people being like, oh, he's got you know,
Speaker 2: because his McAfee had lied and said, I've got like
Speaker 2: an insurance folder that'll come out in the event of
Speaker 2: my death that'll, you know, reveal a bunch of top
Speaker 2: level secrets. And John McAfee didn't know shit.
Speaker 9: He was.
Speaker 2: He was a crazy old drug addict who killed his
Speaker 2: nephew and then fled to South America or Central America anyway, whatever,
Speaker 2: one of the America's one of the part He fled
Speaker 2: to a different America than the one that he came
Speaker 2: from anyway. But that's actually happening with Jeffrey Epstein. We
Speaker 2: actually now have a lot of dirt on a lot
Speaker 2: of people. Larry Summers just left the board of Open
Speaker 2: AI because he was revealed as a rampant misogynist and
Speaker 2: friend of a pedophile sex trafficker. Not a good look.
Speaker 6: He's also announced that, after finishing his current class at Harvard,
Speaker 6: he will be resigning from Harvard University.
Speaker 2: What a loss for Harvard. I don't know how they're
Speaker 2: gonna run.
Speaker 6: Well, it's the biggest los since President Gay. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Look, Harvard, if you need someone to teach his class,
Speaker 2: I'll do it. I don't know what his class is.
Speaker 2: I don't actually know what Larry does, what his expertise is,
Speaker 2: but I feel like I could do a better job.
Speaker 6: Yeah, bring me in.
Speaker 5: We do know a little bit about what Larry does
Speaker 5: in that is the problem.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Yeah, the sex crimes right after recording Executive Disorder last week.
Speaker 6: Not the most important, but certainly the oddest. Email was
Speaker 6: uncovered as a part of that big document's release. This
Speaker 6: is an exchange from twenty eighteen between Mark Epstein and
Speaker 6: Jeffrey Epstein to brothers. Let's start with Mark, how are
Speaker 6: you doing? A while back? You mentioned that you were
Speaker 6: pre diabetic. Has anything changed with that? What is your
Speaker 6: boy Donald up to now? Jeffrey replies, all good, Bannon
Speaker 6: with me. Mark replies, ask him if Putin has the
Speaker 6: photos of Trump blowing Bubba. You know, yeah, I'm going
Speaker 6: to continue the exchange, yeah, because, Jeffrey replies, and I
Speaker 6: thought I had terrists. Mark replies, you and your boy
Speaker 6: Donnie can make a remake of the movie Get Hard
Speaker 6: sent via tin Can and a string.
Speaker 2: Oh god.
Speaker 6: Jeffrey replied, you mean Donnie T And Mark replied, I'd
Speaker 6: rather be in Donnie D's shoes. That's the exchange.
Speaker 2: Also, what Epstein said was was sires, which is a
Speaker 2: Yiddish word that means like problems, like I got I
Speaker 2: got problems, I got shit, I'm a I'm all fucked up,
Speaker 2: which he was. He was not wrong about that.
Speaker 6: Look, Yeah, so Bubba. Many people have speculated that this
Speaker 6: could be a reference to former President Bill Clinton, whose
Speaker 6: nickname was Bubba, and whose name is Bubba in some
Speaker 6: of these other emails, or is referred to as pub
Speaker 6: in some of his other emails, which.
Speaker 2: Is something that I've seen surprise a lot of people.
Speaker 2: If you grew up in the nineties, you were aware
Speaker 2: that his nickname was Bubba, but he has not been
Speaker 2: called Bubba in a very long time when he like
Speaker 2: lost all that weight and went vegan and like it
Speaker 2: kind of stopped seeming like as much of a Bubba
Speaker 2: as he did when he was the president. The Saturday
Speaker 2: Night Live made fun of in that great McDonald's sketch.
Speaker 2: But yeah, anyway, continue gare.
Speaker 6: I mean, and I don't know how abut what else
Speaker 6: there is to say here? You know, photos have been
Speaker 6: recirculating bub Trump, Yes.
Speaker 5: Bubba Gump shrimp, Well, the real.
Speaker 2: Bubba, please stand up.
Speaker 6: Photos have been recirculating of Trump, I would say, groping
Speaker 6: Bill Clinton's penis. Yeah, yep, yep.
Speaker 2: There's more there than you'd expect, right, yes, yeah, but.
Speaker 6: Bubba has referred to a few people, Yeah, including other
Speaker 6: people like in Epstein's circle, like a golfer and models. Yeah,
Speaker 6: but Bubba was also the name of Gleainne Maxwell's horse. Oh.
Speaker 2: I'm just not hearing this, and that's I'm sorry. And
Speaker 2: here's the thing. I see the appeal to believing that
Speaker 2: this is the answer. I simply don't believe Donald Trump
Speaker 2: ever had that kind of throat game. I'm sorry, I
Speaker 2: just don't. I just don't accept that this is.
Speaker 6: By far the funniest possibility that he did like a
Speaker 6: joke photo shoot where he pretended.
Speaker 2: I can see him doing that.
Speaker 6: This is really understandable. This is like, this is really doable.
Speaker 2: Haven't we all been there?
Speaker 13: So that is.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and you know, take this however you will, Like
Speaker 6: Mark Epstein, has denied that the bubba referred to the
Speaker 6: email is a reference to Bill Clinton, while also admitting
Speaker 6: in this same like interview to News Nation and a
Speaker 6: statement that like, you know, Jeffrey certainly did have dirt
Speaker 6: on the president and thought that he was the only
Speaker 6: one that could sink both candidates career in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 6: both both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.
Speaker 2: Pretty good chance that's true.
Speaker 6: Actually yeah, but he he for what it worth is
Speaker 6: saying it's not a reference to Clinton. Who who knows
Speaker 6: that there's a real sort of you know, if if
Speaker 6: you if you want to do the sort of pop
Speaker 6: Marxist line is there's a real sort of historical unity
Speaker 6: of the ruling class moment. When you read these emails
Speaker 6: and the people in them, it's like it's Bill Clinton.
Speaker 6: It's Bill Clinton's like the people around Bill Clinton it's
Speaker 6: Ken Starr. And you know, you go back and you
Speaker 6: look at like you look at like the actual like
Speaker 6: impiachment of Bill Clinton, right, and you realize that every
Speaker 6: single one of these people are all friends with Jeffrey
Speaker 6: Epstein and are just kind of hanging out like yeah
Speaker 6: on like on the pedophile and.
Speaker 14: It's just, yeah, it's something that you couldn't It's like
Speaker 14: the most the most sort of on the nose, like
Speaker 14: I like completely didactic, I'm pounding your head with a hammer,
Speaker 14: like Marxist thing from nineteen sixty where they go, yeah,
Speaker 14: all of the presidents are hanging out on pedophile Island
Speaker 14: like consecretly conspiring behind your back, and they're taking photos
Speaker 14: of them like grabbing each other's dicks like you wouldn't believe.
Speaker 6: But it's like no, no, no, no, this is just this
Speaker 6: is just the historical unity of the ruling class is
Speaker 6: literally they're all friends with this pedophile.
Speaker 2: Well, it's just these are all wealthy, powerful people and
Speaker 2: the only people that they socialize with is each other.
Speaker 2: You know. The New York Times came up with an
Speaker 2: out with an article this week that was like the
Speaker 2: Epstein emails or an insight into an old New York
Speaker 2: long departed or since.
Speaker 13: Yeah, that was an incredible headline, and yeah, I mean
Speaker 13: it was.
Speaker 2: This was like the transition between all of these people
Speaker 2: writing each other letters and all of these people just
Speaker 2: bitching publicly on the internet, openly and losing their minds.
Speaker 2: Like the awkward interstittle period was them all emailing each
Speaker 2: other from their iPads. Right, So, to that extent, the
Speaker 2: New York Times article is right. Not the main takeaway
Speaker 2: from the Jeffrey Epstein emails, I would say, probably not
Speaker 2: worth an article in the Times, but it's not wrong technically.
Speaker 13: Yeah, yeah, it's a fascinating thing to choose to go.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that poor horse.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a little bit. It's a little bit like
Speaker 2: a journalist showing up in Berlin in late nineteen forty
Speaker 2: five and like going through like papers in the ruins
Speaker 2: of the Reichstag and being like, wow, this really reveals
Speaker 2: a lost to Berlin. Like, I mean, yeah, that's really
Speaker 2: the point.
Speaker 6: Any other comments on on Bubba.
Speaker 5: Did anyone ask guys his brother about the Hortz.
Speaker 6: I don't believe Mark has been asked about the horse.
Speaker 2: Mark is in a not that I have a ton
Speaker 2: of sympathy for this guy, but just recognizing things objectively,
Speaker 2: he's in a tough position because his brother is an
Speaker 2: was an incredibly famous he'shit a file sex trafficker, and
Speaker 2: he is desperately trying not to get disappeared by the regime.
Speaker 2: Or he also knows what'll come after the regime, so
Speaker 2: he doesn't want to set himself in a self up
Speaker 2: in a way where he gets in trouble from that either, right,
Speaker 2: Like it's a legitimately complicated situation he finds himself in
Speaker 2: that his brother just kind of laughed for him. And again,
Speaker 2: I don't have a lot of sympathy for the man,
Speaker 2: but I can recognize it because he also said at
Speaker 2: the same time, he was like this definitely was not him,
Speaker 2: referring to Donald Trump giving a blowjob to Bill Clinton.
Speaker 2: He did also say that he believed that the Republicans
Speaker 2: were removing the names of Republicans from the Epstein files
Speaker 2: before release. Right, So he's he has been like hedging
Speaker 2: his bets because again he's in a lot of danger.
Speaker 6: H in trouble.
Speaker 2: This man, this man is in trouble.
Speaker 13: Yeah, yeah, I would not be granted infused I was him,
Speaker 13: I would be I wouldn't say shit, yeah, like literally
Speaker 13: under the ground.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would I would, for one thing, not be
Speaker 2: in a country that extradited. Would I would never set
Speaker 2: foot in a country with extradition treaties to the Western
Speaker 2: world Again.
Speaker 13: Yeah, the next strike in Venezuela will be Mark Epstein.
Speaker 2: I would be living in Tehran right now.
Speaker 6: Like, let's talk about Marjorie Trader Green.
Speaker 2: Sure, why not? Yeah, so Marjorie Taylor Green is part
Speaker 2: of the resistance.
Speaker 6: Now hashtag welcome to the Resistance.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 5: It's very like and Or.
Speaker 2: Sure, it's like that point in and Or where the
Speaker 2: person who did nothing but help Emperor Palpatine suddenly at
Speaker 2: the last minute was like, you know what, this guy
Speaker 2: want a step too far from me, you know?
Speaker 6: Or Ah, Actually I hate you too much that I
Speaker 6: think that's the I think that's the reality.
Speaker 13: I wasn't sure if there was an analog for anti
Speaker 13: Semitism in the Star Warcks universe. That I wasn't Well,
Speaker 13: you probably don't want to, you know what, I've asked
Speaker 13: the wrong people.
Speaker 6: Right now, you have three hours, James.
Speaker 2: In the early two thousands, George Lucas invented some names
Speaker 2: that are themselves hate crimes. Just be remembering the names
Speaker 2: is a hate Crime, James, do.
Speaker 6: You want to read about the troyd Arians.
Speaker 13: No, No, I'm as far as I get into into
Speaker 13: Star Wars Big Tree discourse is Jia jar Binks and
Speaker 13: after that I leave.
Speaker 6: Well from the same movie. But no. So, Yeah, Marjorie
Speaker 6: has been more combative against some of the you know,
Speaker 6: Trump cultist mega right on a few issues. One she's
Speaker 6: extended her already evidenced anti Semitism all a Jewish space
Speaker 6: lasers towards foreign policy in this like America First Nick
Speaker 6: Fuentzi way of being critical of Israel. You see seeds
Speaker 6: of this because like Martin Taylor Green like attended the
Speaker 6: Nick Fuontes America First conferences like four years ago, Like
Speaker 6: this is this side of it not a surprising turn
Speaker 6: for her. Her finally flipping on Trump in terms of
Speaker 6: the pedophile stuff may be a little bit surprising because
Speaker 6: she was the original like QAnon candidate. Yeah, and q
Speaker 6: Andon's built on this, like trying to justify in some
Speaker 6: ways Trump's proximity to Epstein by building this grand narrative.
Speaker 2: And she made a statement recently that she's no longer
Speaker 2: all in on the q stuff right like she had
Speaker 2: she is. This is a pivot for her, but it's
Speaker 2: a pivot that's pretty consistent with you know, her anti
Speaker 2: sense and it makes sense.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it makes sense with with the Israel
Speaker 6: foreign policy stuff. It also makes sense in terms of
Speaker 6: Trump's made a lot more statements directly addressing this Epstein stuff,
Speaker 6: which kind of does call into question some of like
Speaker 6: the Q narratives, which for someone like Marjorie might actually
Speaker 6: get her to kind of ref on some of like
Speaker 6: this Trump cultish status that she's had for a while.
Speaker 6: This has frustrated Trump, and you know, Trump's also been
Speaker 6: frushtyed with other members like Lauren Bobert and other like
Speaker 6: congress people who were pledging to vote in support of
Speaker 6: the release of the Epstein files. And this pressure was
Speaker 6: building a lot last week during this like twenty thousand
Speaker 6: document release and all this new news coverage and as
Speaker 6: these as more and more Republicans bean to deflect from
Speaker 6: Trump over the release of the Epstein files. Trump himself
Speaker 6: flipped his rhetoric over this past weekend, still calling the
Speaker 6: debate over the files a Democrat hoax, but truthing that
Speaker 6: the files should be released because we quote unquote have
Speaker 6: nothing to hide, and he called on Republicans to vote
Speaker 6: in favor of the bill to release the Epstein files,
Speaker 6: which they did on Tuesday in a four hundred and
Speaker 6: twenty seven to one vote, with Representative Clay Higgins, the
Speaker 6: republic In from Louisiana, the only Congressman to vote no.
Speaker 6: Hours later, Chuck Schumer unanimously passed the measure through the Senate.
Speaker 6: Mike Johnson had previously expected the Senate to amend the
Speaker 6: bill to quote make sure we don't do permanent damage
Speaker 6: to the political system unquote, and after its passage through
Speaker 6: the Senate, Johnson seemed quite worried that it went through
Speaker 6: the upper chambers in its current form. And I want
Speaker 6: to play this clip here because it's kind of shocking
Speaker 6: to hear him, hear him freak out.
Speaker 3: And before we say this, you owe it to yourself
Speaker 3: as a person to go actually look at this clip
Speaker 3: and watch his face.
Speaker 6: It is amazing.
Speaker 5: Sorry, I haven't seen this.
Speaker 6: I'm excited it'll be in the sources below.
Speaker 15: Any reaction to r foon you seeing the bill without
Speaker 15: adding amendments.
Speaker 2: Or changing it, I am.
Speaker 5: I'm deeply disappointed in this outcome.
Speaker 2: I think I'm told I've been at the State dinner.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I was just told that Chuck Schumer
Speaker 2: rushed it to the floor and put it out there preemptively.
Speaker 6: It needed amendments.
Speaker 2: I just spoke to President about that, and we'll see
Speaker 2: what happened.
Speaker 5: So is he do you think he may beat on it?
Speaker 7: You say you spoke, I'm not saying that.
Speaker 12: Is he supportive of it in its current form?
Speaker 13: We both have concerned about it, so we'll see.
Speaker 6: As I was staying there with the Crown friends with
Speaker 6: in Paul, are you frustrating the majority leader?
Speaker 2: Are you up with the majority leader?
Speaker 6: Cool?
Speaker 2: Nice?
Speaker 6: What a what a normal? What a normal interaction? That
Speaker 6: is also also worth doing.
Speaker 3: The very end of that video, he says I was
Speaker 3: eating with the Crown Prince because he is again walking
Speaker 3: out of a state dinner with one Mohammad bin Selmond
Speaker 3: the the yeah, I don't even list of war crimes here,
Speaker 3: the Sudanese child soldier, exterminator, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 6: But no, It's safe to say that both Johnson and
Speaker 6: President Trump have concerns about the state of the bill,
Speaker 6: and Johnson samed a little bit wishy washy on if
Speaker 6: the President would even sign this or veto this. Now,
Speaker 6: it's not all bad for the president. I oh, I'd
Speaker 6: like to seal Donnie J wiggle his way out of
Speaker 6: this jam. This bill that has passed does allow Attorney
Speaker 6: General and Bondy to withhold or redact portions of the
Speaker 6: files that could jeopardize active federal investigations and personally determine
Speaker 6: if information in the files should remain classified to protect
Speaker 6: national security. The last weekend, Trump ordered BONDI to launch
Speaker 6: investigations looking into connection between Epstein and prominent Democratic politicians
Speaker 6: and donors. Here's clip from a Wednesday, November nineteenth press conference.
Speaker 16: Attorney General, do you mean that you will provide all
Speaker 16: the files by thirty days?
Speaker 17: We will follow the law. The law both chambers last evening.
Speaker 17: It has not yet been signed, but we will continue
Speaker 17: to follow the law again while protecting victims but also
Speaker 17: providing maximum transparency.
Speaker 16: That Maternity General the DLJ statement earlier this year saying
Speaker 16: that the files would not release mention the fact that
Speaker 16: the review of the documents and the evidence did not
Speaker 16: suggest that any additional investigation of third parties was warranted.
Speaker 16: What changed since then that you launched this investigation?
Speaker 17: Information that has come for information, there's information that new information,
Speaker 17: additional information, and again we will continue to follow the
Speaker 17: law to investigate any leads. If there are any victims,
Speaker 17: we encourage all victims to come forward, and we will
Speaker 17: continue to provide maximum transparency under the law.
Speaker 6: Very normal, very normal response.
Speaker 2: Uh huh, Yeah, that's that doesn't sound sketchy.
Speaker 3: I have never, at any point in the last eight years,
Speaker 3: twelve years, however long we've been in this hellscap been
Speaker 3: a been a piss tape believer. This looking at these
Speaker 3: people's faces is the closest I've ever been to being like, no,
Speaker 3: maybe that shit's real, and maybe it's in there, because
Speaker 3: there's clearly something in there that they are just they're
Speaker 3: just going through it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's is wild.
Speaker 6: Yeah, some of these guys seem to seem a little
Speaker 6: bit concerned.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I wonder why, surely there's no.
Speaker 6: I mean, imagine the workload ahead of them. They have
Speaker 6: to redact so much. Yeah, if you get so many
Speaker 6: of those markers, imagine how tired their risks are going
Speaker 6: to be.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 2: It's like that feeling when you come back from a
Speaker 2: reporting trip and you're like, shit, now I have to
Speaker 2: do the job.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, yes, I'm familiar with that feeling.
Speaker 6: Do you know what we have to do right now?
Speaker 6: And as pivot to ads.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, let's go ahead and do that and we're back.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 6: I would like to take some time to discuss probably
Speaker 6: the second most important news story of the whole week,
Speaker 6: can do it Sure? Which is totally not a hail
Speaker 6: Mary distraction to get away from the Epstein stuff. This
Speaker 6: is totally legitimate and totally newsworthy. On Monday, November seventeenth,
Speaker 6: a piece in the prestigious outlet The New York Post
Speaker 6: opinion section provided earth shattering relevations revelations care that's the
Speaker 6: word about the attempted Trump assassination, claiming to have discovered
Speaker 6: evidence that Thomas Crooks, the shooter, had two possible accounts
Speaker 6: on Devian Art, which, yeah, this really is the biggest story,
Speaker 6: which the Post New York Post describes as quote one
Speaker 6: of the biggest online hubs for furry art and the
Speaker 6: furry community. A furry is someone who has an interest
Speaker 6: in hormorphized animal characters, often as a sexual fetish unquote
Speaker 6: every time. Later reporting in The New York Post claimed
Speaker 6: that one of these accounts had only shared a single
Speaker 6: post quote a repost of a towering, muscular female bodybuilder
Speaker 6: and a slight man in his underwear unquote and quote
Speaker 6: multiple searches for muscular women and female bodybuilders found on
Speaker 6: Crook's supposed YouTube search history.
Speaker 2: He's a real pervert, then excellent, Yes, beautiful quote.
Speaker 6: Oh it's not it's oh, Robert, that's that's not even
Speaker 6: the worst part. The furry stuff obviously problematic considering our
Speaker 6: past few furry mass shooters. Is maybe a trend here,
Speaker 6: we should look into this. But possibly the most danning
Speaker 6: piece of information in the New York Post reporting is
Speaker 6: that Crooks quote described himself with the pronouns they them
Speaker 6: on the platform deb and Art, which is one of
Speaker 6: the biggest hubs for furry art and the furry community.
Speaker 6: This became the big thing among the right. Another trans shooter,
Speaker 6: the Trump the Trump assassin was trans the whole time,
Speaker 6: and we didn't even know the FBI covered up the
Speaker 6: trans connection. Here it's all coming together more more red
Speaker 6: string on the board. The trans the trans shooter narrative
Speaker 6: is growing more and more evident by the day. Right, this,
Speaker 6: this is the way that this was framed across all
Speaker 6: of these all these commentators, who's the president right now?
Speaker 6: What is this supposed to work?
Speaker 13: At the time they investigated it, Biden would have been
Speaker 13: president right or they began their investigation.
Speaker 6: The New York Post did reach out to the current
Speaker 6: FBI for comment. They did not receive a response. State
Speaker 6: The New York Posts reporting like in these in these
Speaker 6: opinion pieces, and I think later an article they did
Speaker 6: did did later include references to quote, violently anti Semitic
Speaker 6: comments and racist remarks about Hispanic immigrants m that Semmens
Speaker 6: Crooks also made, including YouTube comments from twenty nineteen quote,
Speaker 6: this is going to be blatantly racist, but I hope
Speaker 6: Trump has these people a squad murdered.
Speaker 2: Oh great.
Speaker 6: I always believed being patriotic was lighting up a bunch
Speaker 6: of socialist Jews like the ones that booed Trump and
Speaker 6: blasting their useless brains out with an ar. I hope
Speaker 6: a quick, painful death to all the deplorable immigrants and
Speaker 6: anti Trump congresswomen unquote. Obviously, the right wing commentators are
Speaker 6: not talking about this sort of stuff. They're not talking
Speaker 6: about Crook's actual politics or political shifts during the pandemic
Speaker 6: where he started getting kind of more Trump critical but
Speaker 6: still from a conservative perspective. Instead, the story is now
Speaker 6: to quote libs of TikTok, Charlie Kirk, killer furry fetish,
Speaker 6: Trump shooter, furry fetish, Idaho firefighter killer furry fetish. What's
Speaker 6: going on? Right wing podcaster and disgraced BuzzFeed journalist Benny
Speaker 6: Johnson quote it has now been confirmed that attempted Trump
Speaker 6: assass and Thomas Crooks used they them pronouns, had a
Speaker 6: deep interest in furries and was exploring gender identity. Add
Speaker 6: it to the list. This list is then a list
Speaker 6: of both real and many not real quote unquote trans
Speaker 6: mass shooters. Another account in d C. Draino, who was
Speaker 6: part of the White House photo op team during the
Speaker 6: initial fake release of the fake Epstein files, not that
Speaker 6: the files were fake, but like this fake media presentation
Speaker 6: around releasing the already released and actually even more redacted
Speaker 6: versions of already public files. DC Drena was one of
Speaker 6: these guys who was like pray it around as like
Speaker 6: a prop holding up these binders of files. He posted.
Speaker 6: Quote it is now confirmed the deep state tried to
Speaker 6: cover up that Thomas Crooks was a transgender extremist to
Speaker 6: use the then pronouns and then shot President Trump. We
Speaker 6: need a massive crackdown against violent trans extremism. This sort
Speaker 6: of stuff is losing steam. This sort of stuff is
Speaker 6: not spreading around the way that it has been previously.
Speaker 6: It's very clear that this is a blatant distraction away
Speaker 6: from unflattering stories about Trump in terms of the economy
Speaker 6: and specifically Epstein and all of this. Uh. You know,
Speaker 6: you might be wondering why maybe no other outlets of
Speaker 6: picking the stuff up, and that could be due to
Speaker 6: the dubious nature of the New York Posts sourcing on
Speaker 6: these claims, but also the fact that devian Art automatically
Speaker 6: lists a user's pronouns as they them as the default setting.
Speaker 6: If pronouns are not specified, this is the setting that
Speaker 6: everyone you have to actively try to change it. There
Speaker 6: is no indication Thomas Crooks specifically set pronouns to bay them.
Speaker 6: He is not a transgender extremist. He, like many gen
Speaker 6: Z people, is aware of furry art online. This is
Speaker 6: very common. This is a very common thing. But the
Speaker 6: post had a few other things they tried to try
Speaker 6: to wrap this story around to give it some credibility,
Speaker 6: including this post from the Devian Art alleged to belong
Speaker 6: to Thomas Crooks, which is a picture of someone shooting
Speaker 6: someone else in the head, which your post calls another
Speaker 6: artwork appear to feature a shooting against a backdrop of
Speaker 6: the trans flag colors. This is not the trans flag
Speaker 6: nor the trans flag colors. This is a blue and
Speaker 6: purple background. What purple is not in the transflag colors.
Speaker 6: You can maybe argue this is maybe, but this is
Speaker 6: not a trans flag. This is not an LGBTQ pride flag.
Speaker 6: This isn't even the bisexual flag, which does use these
Speaker 6: same colors. This is just like a sky blue and
Speaker 6: a magenta purple backdrop, which they are trying to frame
Speaker 6: as further evidence of Thomas Krook's transgender ties. But what
Speaker 6: is kind of interesting is as a part of the
Speaker 6: social media accounts alleged to be linked to Crooks that
Speaker 6: have appeared in new reporting from both The New York
Speaker 6: Post and Tucker Carlson's own news outlet. But as a
Speaker 6: part of this reporting on Crook's possible online background included
Speaker 6: a collection of search results or like search history from
Speaker 6: April of twenty nineteen to May of twenty twenty, which
Speaker 6: lines up with stuff that me and Robert have been
Speaker 6: talking about for a while, in that this guy seemed
Speaker 6: to have the ideology or non ideology of a school shooter.
Speaker 6: This is the actual through line across this act of violinces.
Speaker 6: Researches include quote crazy chemical reactions, deadliest mass shootings in
Speaker 6: the world, people attacking pride parades, cars running over protesters,
Speaker 6: getting away with racism, best places for a mass shooting,
Speaker 6: Pulse night club, Pulse night club, police body camera, mass shooting,
Speaker 6: El Paso mass shooting, Trump's civil war, Trump church shooting video,
Speaker 6: guns versus protesters, Orlando shooting reaction. Why I'm missing handgun?
Speaker 6: Firing an air fifteen as fast as possible, fertilizer bomb,
Speaker 6: How do you use a tourniqueit? How to make napalm,
Speaker 6: maltov cocktail? How to make maltov cocktail? Mixing ghasoline with styrofoam,
Speaker 6: mass shooting Canada, Oklahoma bombing sniper in Dallas shooting.
Speaker 8: Man.
Speaker 2: Yeah, who's doing real trouble hitting with his pistol.
Speaker 5: Huh and his rifle.
Speaker 2: It turns out probably choking up too much on the trigger,
Speaker 2: I'd guess.
Speaker 13: Yeah, many such cases, Yeah, yeah, but that's that's a
Speaker 13: pretty clear theme that you've established there.
Speaker 5: Garrison.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, yeah, like you see this in some way
Speaker 6: being like a not necessarily an actual precursor, but in
Speaker 6: the same vein that some of these like TCC people
Speaker 6: later would you know, start developing these past few years.
Speaker 6: It's just obsession with doing violence, this subception with mass killings,
Speaker 6: with bombings, and some of it takes the form of
Speaker 6: like you know, what looks like political violence, like the
Speaker 6: Oklahoma City bombing, but a lot of it is is
Speaker 6: very nihilistic. That's all I have on the explosive reporting
Speaker 6: from the New York Post.
Speaker 2: Great.
Speaker 5: Great.
Speaker 6: I don't know how to segue from that list of
Speaker 6: Google searches to tariff talk. But you know what I've
Speaker 6: been searching for is this music.
Speaker 7: Loppy jazz bomb.
Speaker 11: Locking jazz bot Sary lacking, locking jazz bomb, locking jazz bob.
Speaker 6: So this this is actually a very This has been
Speaker 6: a very very light week on tariff news. It is
Speaker 6: almost entirely composed of people arguing about whether you're going
Speaker 6: to get the tariff check, which no, you're not. You're
Speaker 6: not going to get a check from the government with
Speaker 6: teriff money. It's just not happening.
Speaker 3: So I thought, I thought I'd take a second to
Speaker 3: pull out and look at some of the macro stuff
Speaker 3: that's happening in the economy and look at why it
Speaker 3: feels like a recession even though there isn't one. And
Speaker 3: the answer is that you and me, and everyone in
Speaker 3: this room and probably most of the people's syste keep
Speaker 3: listening to this podcast, are effectively in a recession. And
Speaker 3: the reason I can say this is that there's there's
Speaker 3: pretty good numbers from the Harvard economist Jason Furman, who
Speaker 3: points out that if you if you look at so okay,
Speaker 3: so recession is is three consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth, right,
Speaker 3: and this is not like a perfect economic indicator, but
Speaker 3: you know, Jason Furrin points out, ninety two percent of
Speaker 3: GDP growth in the first half of this year is
Speaker 3: in a category that's called information processing equipment and software.
Speaker 3: And so, okay, what is that? That is all data
Speaker 3: center it's all data center construction. It is ninety two
Speaker 3: percent of all our GP growth.
Speaker 2: Well, the good news is that, for example, Oracle didn't
Speaker 2: just make a big deal with open Ai to provide
Speaker 2: them with computing resources, and after making this three hundred
Speaker 2: billion dollar deal, has dropped three hundred and fifteen billion
Speaker 2: dollars in valuation. That didn't happen obviously, Like these are
Speaker 2: things are good in an AI world. There's not a
Speaker 2: bunch of people pulling their money out of Nvidia as
Speaker 2: fast as they can.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, we're getting to that.
Speaker 3: Yeah one of them again, Peter Deal pulling his money
Speaker 3: out right now, getting all.
Speaker 6: Of his shit out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, get your shipped out, fucking my Michael Burry is
Speaker 2: now shorting the as here.
Speaker 3: I will say this, the Michael Berry short thing is
Speaker 3: literally the only thing that I've ran into that actually
Speaker 3: makes me be like that. Like Michael Burry versus the
Speaker 3: AI industry is like really truly is the great duel
Speaker 3: of the stoppable force and the movable object. Yeah, like
Speaker 3: that's we're not dealing with like world rending titans here,
Speaker 3: but you know, but we are.
Speaker 2: We are going to get a sequel to the Big
Speaker 2: Short that's going to really struggle to be entertaining. Because
Speaker 2: with the Big Short, what was fun was these guys
Speaker 2: realizing how fucked this like system based on like really
Speaker 2: bad like tranches of debt and how badly it was
Speaker 2: going to fuck the economy. And with AI it's just
Speaker 2: going to be like literally everyone in the world except
Speaker 2: for the people in media and politics, being like this
Speaker 2: seems like a fucking grift. This seems bad, and them
Speaker 2: all being like no, no, no, bro, trust me, no,
Speaker 2: no no, and then it all goes to shit.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I'm gonna do a full episode about this to
Speaker 6: some point that there's a really good interview on a
Speaker 6: Bloomberg podcast called Odd Thoughts with its kind of Paul
Speaker 6: Katrowski who points out that well a, he has a
Speaker 6: great line but calling this like the super bubble basically
Speaker 6: where it's it's every single kind of speculative bubble rolled
Speaker 6: into one because all these data centers are being financed
Speaker 6: with like the with the equivalent of mortgage backed securities.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, these are these are subprime loans for tech companies, right, Like,
Speaker 2: that's that's what's financing all of this.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and then these buildings. Right. It's also it's also
Speaker 6: a real estate bubble because all of these data centers
Speaker 6: are taking a ridiculus amount of real estate. There's a
Speaker 6: tech bubble, and the.
Speaker 3: Single thing that and again we're going to do a
Speaker 3: longer episode about this later, the single thing that's the
Speaker 3: most unhinged to me about this. And it's you know,
Speaker 3: even even excluding the fact that you know, all of
Speaker 3: these processors that they're using in these data centers burned
Speaker 3: out after about a year and a half because they're
Speaker 3: just running them constantly. Is that if you look at
Speaker 3: like the housing collapse in two thousand and eight, right,
Speaker 3: and you look at what was underlying all of those
Speaker 3: bad assets. There were houses there right at the end
Speaker 3: of the day, all of these banks can go in
Speaker 3: and they can take your house, and that's really bad obviously,
Speaker 3: But what is the underlying assets for all of these
Speaker 3: tranches of all these tranches of debt. The underlying asset
Speaker 3: that you're supposed to be taking, you know, that's supposed
Speaker 3: to be the collateral is compute power.
Speaker 5: Yeah no, no, it seems fun.
Speaker 13: Because people can live in the computer and we all
Speaker 13: need to live in a computer paler, so it's fine.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Look, the the bad news is things are going to
Speaker 2: be really bad for a lot of people. Oh yeah,
Speaker 2: and they already are probably most people that end they're
Speaker 2: going to get worse. The good news is once we
Speaker 2: get past you know, if if this is the way
Speaker 2: the dot com bubble went right, once we get past
Speaker 2: this crash that's brought on by you know, a mix
Speaker 2: of greed and insanity and ignorance and lies, then we
Speaker 2: can finally get to the Internet changing society in only
Speaker 2: positive ways, which is what happened after the dot com bubble.
Speaker 2: You know, we got Facebook, we got Google, we got Twitter,
Speaker 2: we got Instagram, we got all of these great apps
Speaker 2: that have made our lives nothing better but better, you know.
Speaker 2: So I'm looking forward.
Speaker 13: I'm gonna forget Getter wouldn't be ferries if it wasn't
Speaker 13: with the.
Speaker 2: Dvn RT exactly, How would we know who was without
Speaker 2: that and what their pronouns may have been.
Speaker 3: Well, I do want to make a serious note about
Speaker 3: this because I've seen a lot of people who compare
Speaker 3: this to the dot com bubble, and this is so
Speaker 3: much worse because the dot com bubble and you look
Speaker 3: at the telecom bubble afterwards, right, there were actual assets there, right,
Speaker 3: you know, like the only way people talk about this
Speaker 3: is like.
Speaker 2: There was pets dot com, but there was real stuff too.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, and you know what a telecom bubble goes under, Right,
Speaker 6: there's still a whole bunch of like fiber optic networks
Speaker 6: that they've set up that you could get you know, people,
Speaker 6: people with a bunch of money afterwards can come scrape
Speaker 6: up and there's there's a material basis something here these
Speaker 6: data centers, there's.
Speaker 2: They're not practical if the because and this is what
Speaker 2: the reason, because our colleague at Zetron had a big
Speaker 2: scoop last week that's getting a shitload of attention right
Speaker 2: now for good reason, which is that inference cost has
Speaker 2: been raising consistently for open Ai, which is increasing their
Speaker 2: like it's fucking their margins and it's increasing their losses,
Speaker 2: which is why they keep losing more money each quarter.
Speaker 2: And the idea behind why people thought open ai could
Speaker 2: be a good business is that these inference costs, which
Speaker 2: is basically how the cost that it takes to keep
Speaker 2: making the models better, right, that that was going to
Speaker 2: decline once they hit a certain level that like you're
Speaker 2: not going to need to it. It's super expensive to
Speaker 2: get the models to a point where they're good. But
Speaker 2: once they're good, then they get to be really cheap.
Speaker 2: And that's not really true based on the data that
Speaker 2: we have, and they were lying about it kind of,
Speaker 2: you know, they were not in a way that was
Speaker 2: legally actionable. They're not a publicly traded company that were
Speaker 2: not required to release this to the public. It does
Speaker 2: seem like they were honest with their investors, like Microsoft, right,
Speaker 2: they were lying to us, right to regular people, in
Speaker 2: order to pretend this was a business that had a
Speaker 2: lot better of a shot of being successful in the
Speaker 2: way it needs to be. The problem with AI as
Speaker 2: a money thing is not that there's no profit in this.
Speaker 2: It's not that there's no use for any of these tools.
Speaker 2: There are many uses, and there are many potential businesses.
Speaker 2: It's that none of them equal trillion dollars, which is
Speaker 2: what the minimum that they need to be profitable, right,
Speaker 2: And these data centers are all based on the bet
Speaker 2: that no, no, actually, this is a multi trillion dollar
Speaker 2: industry and we need this much compute, right.
Speaker 3: And this is this is the greatest misallocation of capital
Speaker 3: in human history. There has never been anything like this.
Speaker 3: There has never been crazy this much of the capital
Speaker 3: on Earth poured into.
Speaker 6: Nothing because there's there's not there's not even physical assets left, right.
Speaker 6: The physical assets are burned out graphics.
Speaker 2: Cards because a lot of these data centers aren't built
Speaker 2: and they don't last, right, that we're going to do Like, yes,
Speaker 2: they have a building, they have a building you can
Speaker 2: run power to, but the graphics cards don't last.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you know, and at the end of this,
Speaker 3: right it's you. You have a bunch of buildings that
Speaker 3: don't do anything attached to like extremely expensive diesel generators.
Speaker 3: And I am praying. The one thing that makes me
Speaker 3: be like, I hope this goes down quickly is that
Speaker 3: I am praying that this bubble goes down before they
Speaker 3: actually start trying to build nuclear like really truly get
Speaker 3: off the ground building a buch of nuclear reactors, because
Speaker 3: can you imagine these guys who created a computer that
Speaker 3: can't win at chess trying to build nuclear reactors.
Speaker 2: I think we should let them do it.
Speaker 6: I agree, fuck it?
Speaker 2: Why not? Why not?
Speaker 6: Long for stalker?
Speaker 2: No, I mean it's one of the this is like,
Speaker 2: the point that is meaningful here is that after the
Speaker 2: dot com bubble, you were able to have a massive
Speaker 2: boom that created a bunch of wealth. It created wealth
Speaker 2: doing things that were often super bad for society, But
Speaker 2: it created a shitload of wealth because real infrastructure had
Speaker 2: been put in place that actually enabled the whole country
Speaker 2: to get connected it enabled the birth of like the
Speaker 2: mobile computing revolution and whatnot, because a lot of groundwork
Speaker 2: had been laid that was really meaningful, even though a
Speaker 2: number of the businesses involved in it didn't work out.
Speaker 2: And that's really not what we're seeing because it's hard
Speaker 2: to imagine assuming there's not a multi trillion dollar need
Speaker 2: for AI, assuming everyone isn't going to do everything for
Speaker 2: the rest of their lives through AI agents and do
Speaker 2: all of their thinking through chat GPT. Unless that's the
Speaker 2: reality we'rein, these are not good investments. And the only
Speaker 2: thing I can compare it to in terms of what
Speaker 2: you were saying to me about this being like the
Speaker 2: worst allocation of capital in history, because I've been reading
Speaker 2: a lot about like the nuclear arms race, and it
Speaker 2: was one of those things where you go from we've
Speaker 2: dropped tens of thousands of bombs over the course of
Speaker 2: five years to if we were to accidentally launch these
Speaker 2: ten missiles, it would be more explosive power than has
Speaker 2: ever been detonated in the entire history of human war
Speaker 2: added together up to the present moment. Right, Like that
Speaker 2: that is the because of and part of this was
Speaker 2: enabled by the actual like internet boom. Right the one
Speaker 2: that brought about Web two point zero in the social
Speaker 2: media era, right, like, all of that wealth and all
Speaker 2: of the money that poured into these vcs who'd gotten
Speaker 2: on board companies like Facebook that had to be created
Speaker 2: to allow something this irrational, because twenty years ago, if
Speaker 2: the technology had been there, there wouldn't have been the
Speaker 2: money to enable this kind of insanity.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, and I think the last thing, I mean, I guess,
Speaker 3: I guess there's two more things that I want to
Speaker 3: say about this. One is is that you know, this
Speaker 3: is also part of the cyclical economic crisis that we've
Speaker 3: been looking as since the seventies, which is that one
Speaker 3: of the ways you get these bubbles is that there
Speaker 3: are suddenly these unbelievably massive trillion dollar pool like trillions
Speaker 3: of dollars of pools of capital that you're trying to
Speaker 3: find something to invest in, right, you have to reproduce it.
Speaker 3: And this is one of the things that causes, for example,
Speaker 3: the Third World debt crisis in the seventies, is all
Speaker 3: of this capital flows into all of these there will
Speaker 3: debt things it eventually. This is one of the things
Speaker 3: that powers first the Japanese giant housing bubble that they
Speaker 3: did that caused the Asian market collapse in early nineties
Speaker 3: and then cost two thousand and eight is that there's
Speaker 3: all of these pools of capital they have to turn
Speaker 3: into more capital, and they can't do it. And when
Speaker 3: they can't do it, you get two thousand and eight, right,
Speaker 3: And they've been able to sort of hang on for
Speaker 3: about a decade, a decade and a half ish roughly,
Speaker 3: because there was so much money coming in from this
Speaker 3: from this tech sector. But everyone outside of the tech
Speaker 3: sector it sucks. It's bad. So this is part of
Speaker 3: the reason why everything feels unhinged right now, right Like, Okay,
Speaker 3: there's obviously kind of a problem with trying to track
Speaker 3: employment data just by seeing news of firings, because companies
Speaker 3: just do firings because it makes their stocks go up
Speaker 3: because it makes investors think they're being more efficient, which
Speaker 3: is nonsense, but it's why it feels like this is
Speaker 3: why you feel broke. And everyone is like talking about
Speaker 3: how the economy is growing, and it's like, well, yeah,
Speaker 3: this really small sector of tech has accumulated an unfathomable
Speaker 3: amount of wealth and they are getting very, very rich
Speaker 3: and everyone else is fucked, you know, And when this
Speaker 3: bubble colass, when these people take all of the money
Speaker 3: they got out of Tech and have thrown it into
Speaker 3: the metaverse and AI. When that blows up, it is
Speaker 3: going to be cataclysmic, and we're getting closer to it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, the only one of them that will be
Speaker 2: left is Gab Newell sitting on his yes, finally releasing
Speaker 2: Half Life three.
Speaker 6: He could probably appoint himself dictator for life after that light.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he'll be the only one with money left.
Speaker 6: Else.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all of the money and gave Newle's pockets. We
Speaker 2: only ask that esteem we've had, We've we've had it
Speaker 2: replaced the military.
Speaker 6: Now, this is a basically the plot of yu Gi.
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, you think I'm joking, I'm actually no.
Speaker 2: I I never paid attention to the u G.
Speaker 14: Yeah.
Speaker 6: The plot of Yugo was the card game becomes so
Speaker 6: profitable that the guy who runs the card game company
Speaker 6: fights a battle with all the entire Builty industrial complex
Speaker 6: and defeats them because he's making more money than they are.
Speaker 2: So okay, yeah, I guess I think that's that That
Speaker 2: sounds better than what we're doing.
Speaker 6: Yeah yeah, yeah, okay.
Speaker 13: We can't get his fine with that mentoring tulip mania. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 13: share the perfect historical comparison. Right, No one, you can
Speaker 13: eat a tulip bowl if you have to think they're poisonous.
Speaker 2: I don't think you can eat a tuli bowl.
Speaker 6: I shouldn't say that, but they're more edible than a
Speaker 6: graphics card. MIA is telling every listener to go out
Speaker 6: and find a tula bowl, then eat it. Putting this
Speaker 6: on my tombstone.
Speaker 13: More iliph and a graphics card, do it side by side.
Speaker 5: Don't do this, don't do that.
Speaker 13: If you have eulip, you can tag near on blue Sky.
Speaker 13: I write, okay, send her a picture of your face
Speaker 13: post tulip. If you've eaten one that, don't eat one
Speaker 13: on our account.
Speaker 9: Uh.
Speaker 5: Talking of other things not to do? Yeah, all right,
Speaker 5: fuck it. HiT's an ad for tulips. All right, we're back.
Speaker 13: And I am going to talk about a number of things.
Speaker 13: I guess the first thing I should talk about is
Speaker 13: the the sanctions and fto's designation for various leftist groups
Speaker 13: in Europe. There are four entities that the State Department
Speaker 13: has announced they've already been sanctioned, and I believe they'll
Speaker 13: be added to the FTO list either saiday or tomorrow
Speaker 13: as we're recording this, so it'll be on the Foreign
Speaker 13: Terrorist Organization list by the time you hear this on Friday.
Speaker 13: The four entities are called Anti for aust aka Hammerbund
Speaker 13: hammer Gang, the informal Anarchist Federation that's an Italian group.
Speaker 13: They use the initials f A I. Also they use
Speaker 13: fr I that is not the same as the FAI
Speaker 13: that you're familiar with from the Spanish Civil Wars.
Speaker 2: That's your thing.
Speaker 5: And then two Greek groups called Armed Proletarian Justice and
Speaker 5: Revolutionary Class Self Defense.
Speaker 2: Notes on the names, guys, I guess I shouldn't, but
Speaker 2: I have notes on the names.
Speaker 13: Yeah, yeah, well, I mean yeah, but the European leftist
Speaker 13: groups it's going to.
Speaker 2: Be yeah, yeah, of course it's going to be as
Speaker 2: many syllables as they can possibly have.
Speaker 13: Yeah, yeah, it is a alphabet soup. So a couple
Speaker 13: of notable things here. The US doesn't seem to have
Speaker 13: coordinated with the states where these entities exist. For example,
Speaker 13: the German government and they prosecuted people who they've accused
Speaker 13: of being members of Anti for oust recently, I think
Speaker 13: it was in September, and they claimed that the threat
Speaker 13: of violence for them has quote decreased significantly, which is
Speaker 13: contradicting the claim that these are these are violent groups.
Speaker 13: The State Department, when it talks about anti for Oz,
Speaker 13: talked about a series of attacks in February twenty twenty three.
Speaker 13: What's missing from the analysis of February twenty twenty three
Speaker 13: is what was happening in February twenty twenty three. It
Speaker 13: was an event in Hungary which existed to honor Nazis.
Speaker 13: I don't mean Nazis like people who have a right
Speaker 13: wing political ideology. I mean like members of the NSDAP
Speaker 13: in Germany who fought in World War Two at the
Speaker 13: time when they were doing the Holocaust. The rally included
Speaker 13: several groups which were already sanctioned by US allies, including
Speaker 13: Blood and Honor Combat eighteen. Jesus, I'm not going to
Speaker 13: go into an in depth history of either of those groups.
Speaker 13: They're neo Nazi groups, right. That eighteen is Adolf Hitler
Speaker 13: one eight. These are the people who are, as far
Speaker 13: as I'm aware, the victims of that February twenty twenty
Speaker 13: three violence right. Notably, though Antifa oust was sanctioned by
Speaker 13: Hungry earlier. This year right Hungary under Auburn fast moving
Speaker 13: towards an extremely right wing I didn't think what political
Speaker 13: scientists like to call it an illiberal democracy.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 6: This sucks to hear. I mean, with this news, I
Speaker 6: feel like we might need to pull out of Victor
Speaker 6: Orburn presents Hungary for comedy the upcoming Cool Zone headlined
Speaker 6: comedy festival.
Speaker 13: Yeah, so many of our famous comedian friends have been
Speaker 13: planning to join us.
Speaker 2: We are doing that show in Riad though.
Speaker 6: That's the lot.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's still what yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 13: The other groups aren't explicitly anti fascist, right.
Speaker 6: Because this is getting framed support of Trumps like anti
Speaker 6: antifa crackdown. Yeah, I'm trying to find foreign terrorist organizations
Speaker 6: linked to antifa, But these other three groups are not
Speaker 6: explicitly like Antifa in name or scope.
Speaker 13: It seems no exactly, right, So most of them are
Speaker 13: anarchist groups. Right, and just to like delve very briefly
Speaker 13: in two lines into things that have literally written a
Speaker 13: book about anti fascism is a left unity position derived
Speaker 13: from the common term position that it adopted its Congress
Speaker 13: in nineteen thirty five. These groups do not call themselves
Speaker 13: anti fascist, right. There is a distinction between anarchism and
Speaker 13: anti fascism, which can be seen very acutely in the
Speaker 13: May nineteen thirty seven events of the Spanish Civil War.
Speaker 13: But these groups have neither claimed anti fascism, nor, as
Speaker 13: far as I'm aware, have any of them killed anyone.
Speaker 13: I believe believe that the antifa ost people being prosecuted.
Speaker 13: One of them is being prosecuted for attempted murder. In
Speaker 13: other cases they have been responsible for explosions or attempted bombings. Normally,
Speaker 13: to be designated in FDO, they would have to be
Speaker 13: a threat to either US people or the United States
Speaker 13: as an entity. Right there doesn't appear to be any
Speaker 13: evidence that these groups have any ties to anyone in
Speaker 13: the United States or present any immediate danger to the
Speaker 13: United States. I don't quite know where they got these
Speaker 13: particular groups from.
Speaker 6: It's so weird. It's a completely baffling list of groups,
Speaker 6: like even looking at like Greek anarchist groups.
Speaker 2: I mean, my guess is that someone in the Trump
Speaker 2: administration has a friend in or Bond's administration and ask
Speaker 2: them are some antifas we can go after that? You guys,
Speaker 2: like you know Europe, Yeah.
Speaker 6: The Greek anarchist groups specifically, are are some of the
Speaker 6: more interesting inclusions here. They're not the Greek anarchist groups
Speaker 6: you would expect them to be going after.
Speaker 7: It's very weird.
Speaker 13: Yeah, Like, they're not groups I was familiar with, like Miley,
Speaker 13: you know, I don't speak Greek, I don't I don't
Speaker 13: read Greek.
Speaker 8: I don't know.
Speaker 5: I don't pay that much attention to that part of
Speaker 5: the world.
Speaker 13: But like, there are other groups which are more notorious. Like,
Speaker 13: it's very odd that they've come up with the anti
Speaker 13: for OUST one. I agree, Garrison. I think the lineage
Speaker 13: is more obvious that the other three. Yeah, I'm not
Speaker 13: entirely clear on how they got to those of any
Speaker 13: you know, contact us if you have ideas. The other
Speaker 13: terrorist designation that happened this week, which is breaking as
Speaker 13: we record on Wednesday, the nineteenth of November, is that
Speaker 13: Greg Abbott has declared care this Center for American Islamic
Speaker 13: Relations and the Muslim Brotherhood as foreign terrorist organizations. Jesus yeah,
Speaker 13: Jesus Christ. Texas doesn't appear to have an FT list
Speaker 13: as far as I can tell. What this seems to
Speaker 13: be is a designation under SB seventeen, which parts passed
Speaker 13: earlier this year, which relates to property law. It would
Speaker 13: stop the Muslim Brotherhood or Care as a national five
Speaker 13: oh one C three renting or buying property in Texas.
Speaker 13: I'm not sure the Muslim Brotherhood intended to rent or
Speaker 13: buy property in Texas. Most of SB seventeen deals with
Speaker 13: with like nationals and entities linked to like China, Russia,
Speaker 13: and North Korea. It's trying to not have them by
Speaker 13: large chunks of Texas. But it also does have this
Speaker 13: this mechanism in it. So just Muslim Brotherhood is the
Speaker 13: sunniest limits organization. It has participated in violence, but not
Speaker 13: for some time. It has its origines in Egypt. It
Speaker 13: does a lot of like social programming Care most people
Speaker 13: will be familiar with.
Speaker 5: Right Care has already issued a.
Speaker 13: Response letter, and in their letter they said, quote, your
Speaker 13: proclamation has no basis in law or fact. You do
Speaker 13: not have the authority to you later any Americans or
Speaker 13: American institutions terrorist groups, nor is there any basis to
Speaker 13: level this smear against the organization. It's probably worth noting
Speaker 13: that there was a dog investigation into epic, not that epic,
Speaker 13: the one you're thinking of, probably, but this is the
Speaker 13: El Paso Islamic Center. That investigation was closed, right, but
Speaker 13: this is not the first time that they have attempted
Speaker 13: to u It's just very clearly in Islamophobia out of Texas, right, Like,
Speaker 13: that is what this is.
Speaker 6: There's also just an ancient sort of Obama era conspiracy
Speaker 6: where all of these people were all convinced that the
Speaker 6: Obama was part of the Muslim Brotherhood and that there
Speaker 6: was this whole network of Muslim Brotherhood operatives that were
Speaker 6: like running the country and really sort of if you
Speaker 6: squint hard enough, it was like, well, there's a bunch
Speaker 6: of people from the UAE who are kind of involved
Speaker 6: in some stuff, but this is like one of their
Speaker 6: they're kind of fusing this old school like old old
Speaker 6: schools a homophobic stuff with their like kind of very
Speaker 6: specific current contemporary targets by you guys sort of running
Speaker 6: these two together. Yeah, me, it's right.
Speaker 13: Like I think Ted Cruz has has tried to get
Speaker 13: the Muslim Brotherhood on the FTO list like several times. Yeah,
Speaker 13: there's this old like from like the golden age of
Speaker 13: right wing conspiracies, right, like the Bohemian Grove era. That's
Speaker 13: this idea that yeah, they're on like, it's like a
Speaker 13: fifty or one hundred year plan to bring the US
Speaker 13: under sharia lore and like, yeah, it's it's it's it's
Speaker 13: boomer stuff. Yes, combined with now trying to explicit eating
Speaker 13: them to Hamas, Right, So yeah, that that is great.
Speaker 6: That that's not great.
Speaker 5: I would not agree, James.
Speaker 6: I think that's not great. I'll be brave enough to
Speaker 6: say it.
Speaker 13: You know, it is a it's an assault on the
Speaker 13: First Amendment. Like, the the stuff.
Speaker 6: The inclusion of CARE is is like is absolutely outrageous.
Speaker 13: Care is a very respectability for like a civil rights
Speaker 13: like liberal civil rights.
Speaker 2: The least threatening organization in the world.
Speaker 13: Yeah, Like, and they have advocated for an end to
Speaker 13: the genocide of people in Palestine, which is a perfectly
Speaker 13: reasonable and legal thing to advocate for. They have not
Speaker 13: expressed support for political violence. Care is like as as
Speaker 13: protected by the First Amendment as things can be in
Speaker 13: this country. This is bonkers. So yeah, I guess CARE
Speaker 13: is already presumably preparing a call case.
Speaker 6: In other Texas news, a three panel judge in Texas
Speaker 6: just struck down Texas's newly drawn congressional map in federal court,
Speaker 6: with Trump appointed Judge Jeffrey Brown finding that quote, substantial
Speaker 6: evidence shows that Texas racially gerrymandered the twenty twenty five
Speaker 6: map unquote. The judge has required Texas use its previous
Speaker 6: twenty twenty one map for the upcoming midterm elections. What's
Speaker 6: really what's really funny here is that before the elections
Speaker 6: in November, where the California redistricting measure was up for vote,
Speaker 6: Newsom specifically removed language in that measure that framed the
Speaker 6: California redistricting as a triggering event, as in, if the
Speaker 6: Texas one passes, then the California one can go into effect.
Speaker 6: You've specifically removed this.
Speaker 5: Yeah, the trigger language was from MA.
Speaker 6: Which means that California now doesn't wipeout five Republican seats
Speaker 6: and Texas probably won't be able to do anything about it.
Speaker 13: That's still a challenge. The California gopire also trying to challenge.
Speaker 6: Yes, and this Texas case is set to be heard
Speaker 6: before the Supreme Court. There's a few other redistricting measures,
Speaker 6: I think in Louisiana and in North Carolina. A few
Speaker 6: other states are trying to do this. But there is
Speaker 6: a possible future in which Texas is not allowed to
Speaker 6: racially jerrymander and California is able to go forward with
Speaker 6: their redistricting because it may not have been specifically violating
Speaker 6: this like a racial gerrymandering aspect that Judge Jeffrey Brown
Speaker 6: found was affecting the Texas maps intentionally.
Speaker 13: The GOP claim is that California is quote favoring Hispanic voters.
Speaker 6: That's going good.
Speaker 13: It's gonna be a harder landing to stick, right, given
Speaker 13: that there are Latino people in every square mile of
Speaker 13: California like it. Yeah, it's going to be a rougher
Speaker 13: one for them.
Speaker 6: And specifically, the stuff that Judge Brown found is like
Speaker 6: in the way that these districts were redrawn, it was
Speaker 6: to totally exclude non white voters and some of these
Speaker 6: districts all right.
Speaker 5: One for the train fans in the audience.
Speaker 13: A section of railway that connects Warsaw to Lublin in
Speaker 13: southeastern Poland, which then connects onto Ukraine was destroyed by
Speaker 13: an explosion earlier this week. Overhead cables further down the
Speaker 13: track were also damaged. This comes as drone incursions into
Speaker 13: European space continue. Donald Tusk, the Police Prime Minister, called
Speaker 13: the ax sabotage, and it seems extremely likely that he
Speaker 13: is correct about that.
Speaker 14: Right.
Speaker 5: I guess we haven't explicitly covered this on ed.
Speaker 13: Very much, but there have been dozens of documented Russian
Speaker 13: operations in Europe since see the expanded invasion of Ukraine
Speaker 13: that began in twenty twenty one. What's concerning to me
Speaker 13: about this is that Europe is responding to some of
Speaker 13: these by accusing Russia of trying to quote destabilized polities
Speaker 13: by sending migrants there. It's likely true that Russia is
Speaker 13: messing with migration flows. It is demonstrably true in some cases.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 13: Responding to this by hardening borders, deploying troops to borders
Speaker 13: is not the solution to that problem. Europe's Iron border
Speaker 13: kills more people than any other border, and hardening that
Speaker 13: border is only going to kill more people. Like, if
Speaker 13: you want to be the shining city on a hill, right,
Speaker 13: if you want to be, I think that title is
Speaker 13: maybe up for grabs. If you want to be the
Speaker 13: place that stands out as like a safe place for democracy,
Speaker 13: you don't do that by killing migrants. And so Europe's
Speaker 13: response to this is extremely disappointing, Right, and I wanted
Speaker 13: to highlight that because I don't see that in the coverage. Yes,
Speaker 13: Russia escalating it's meddling in Europe is extremely concerning. But
Speaker 13: if we accept that Russia is a totalitarian state or
Speaker 13: going in that direction, then we should also therefore accept
Speaker 13: that people are going to want to leave that in
Speaker 13: many other states where they cannot have autonomy, where they
Speaker 13: cannot live healthy and full lives, and we should welcome them.
Speaker 13: Talking of people leaving places where they cannot have autonomy
Speaker 13: and have full and happy lives, let's talk about immigration
Speaker 13: in the United States. Very quickly, Border Patrol and Gregory
Speaker 13: Bovino have moved their internal enforcement I of Sauron to Charlotte,
Speaker 13: North Carolina. Seems in large part due to to some
Speaker 13: racists on x dot com demining that they do so
Speaker 13: I shouldn't say in large part, I guess in some
Speaker 13: part there has been video already showing Bovino participating in
Speaker 13: detentions at a home depot car park.
Speaker 5: I've said two.
Speaker 13: Words there, which of coursed one of my colleagues a
Speaker 13: smirky giggle at me stand by both of them. So yeah,
Speaker 13: it is in part right due to x dot com
Speaker 13: the Everything website being a haven for racism. But I
Speaker 13: think it's also worth noting in twenty eighteen, Democratic sheriffs
Speaker 13: in five North Carolina counties ran on the platform of
Speaker 13: not cooperating with ICE. All of these I believe were
Speaker 13: black sheriffs, and ICE pushed back hard right, including with
Speaker 13: a billboard campaign. Last year, the North Carolina Republican state
Speaker 13: Legislature over rode a veto to pass HB ten, which
Speaker 13: required agencies to cooperate with ICE and honor their detainers.
Speaker 13: A detainer is basically when ICE is like, hey, you've arrested.
Speaker 13: We want you to hold them for a bit longer
Speaker 13: so we can come pick them up for ICE reasons.
Speaker 13: Since then, Meckelberg County Sheriff McFadden has claimed that ICE
Speaker 13: has failed to collect people on detainers one hundred and
Speaker 13: sixty three times, So this will be. They normally have
Speaker 13: a forty eight hour detainer, right, they more than forty
Speaker 13: eight extra hours I should come get When they are
Speaker 13: held on the detainer, it is still the state that
Speaker 13: is responsible for them. It is a state that is
Speaker 13: paying for the cost of incarcerating that person. It is
Speaker 13: the state that is still incarcerating that person. Right. This
Speaker 13: has led, I guess, to Republicans claiming the McFadden is
Speaker 13: ignoring his obligation under HB ten. Mcfahnen says, isn't he
Speaker 13: is holding them for the duration of detainer, but then
Speaker 13: releasing them when no one comes to get them.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 13: This has led to like CIS right, it's Center for
Speaker 13: Immigration Studies, and SBOC has designated it as a hate group.
Speaker 13: CIS has listed Charlotte and Mecklenburg County on its map
Speaker 13: of quote unquote sanctuary jurisdic There's a link to the
Speaker 13: map if you want to look at They actually cite
Speaker 13: the twenty eighteen policy and don't even mention HB ten.
Speaker 13: So it's unclear to me if they haven't updated this
Speaker 13: map or if they just believe that nothing has changed
Speaker 13: because they believe that HB ten is being ignored. I
Speaker 13: think that might be a lot of the reason why
Speaker 13: we're seeing this now. Then, finally, I want to talk
Speaker 13: about something local. Southern California, in Temecula, north of San Diego,
Speaker 13: seventeen year old boy was pulled over at gunpoint by
Speaker 13: a man who was known to locals as an ice agent.
Speaker 13: The man does not appear to have been in his
Speaker 13: professional capacity at this time. Neighbors were able to de
Speaker 13: escalate the situation and get Gerardo Rodriguez, the man in question,
Speaker 13: to stop pointing his gun at the teen. LA Tucker
Speaker 13: got video of this.
Speaker 5: It is wild.
Speaker 13: The guys just in the middle of the road with
Speaker 13: a handgun pointing out at a truck that's driving down
Speaker 13: the street. Rodriguez accuses the young man, he's seventeen years old,
Speaker 13: and we're going to say his name right as a child,
Speaker 13: of speeding in the neighborhood, not generally something that warrants
Speaker 13: drawing a firearm. Rodriguez was detained by the Riverside County
Speaker 13: Sheriff's Office. I believe he's bonded out now that this
Speaker 13: is an interesting development. Right elsewhere, like in Santa Ana,
Speaker 13: an agent pulled a gun on a community watch member.
Speaker 13: Fullerton police on the scene did not detain the person.
Speaker 13: They also refused to assist, right, they just kind of
Speaker 13: were present. But this is one of the few cases
Speaker 13: I'm aware of an ICE agent. There was someone else
Speaker 13: arrested in l A who I believe died. I believe
Speaker 13: that was a Border Patrol agent that first unfortunately passed
Speaker 13: away of an overdose. But this is one of the
Speaker 13: first instances I've seen of this, right, like a kind
Speaker 13: of a state federal a direct confrontation where this guy
Speaker 13: appears to have been pseudo claiming that he was acting
Speaker 13: under his authority as an ice agent.
Speaker 5: That's not entirely clear to me.
Speaker 13: The young man's parents that rushed a scene with the
Speaker 13: young man's passport, but by that point neighbors who had
Speaker 13: already been able to de escalate them. So yeah, I'm
Speaker 13: going to keep an eye on this because I think
Speaker 13: it's interesting. All Right, This week we have a fundraiser
Speaker 13: from Borderlands Relief Collective. I know they're helping a lot
Speaker 13: of people who need a lot of help right now,
Speaker 13: some folks whose roofs are really struggling to keep up
Speaker 13: with the recent rainstorms we've had in southern California.
Speaker 5: They have an Amazon wish list. The url is too
Speaker 5: long for.
Speaker 13: Me to read out to you, so we will include
Speaker 13: it in the show notes. If you'd like to help,
Speaker 13: you can look on that and buy something for someone.
Speaker 5: Thank you.
Speaker 2: All right, well, folks, this has been the news. Goodbye.
Speaker 6: We reported the news.
Speaker 2: We reported the news. Hey, We'll be back Monday with
Speaker 2: more episodes every week from now until the heat death
Speaker 2: of the Universe.
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