Speaker 1: Alz Media.
Speaker 2: Hey, everybody, Robert Evans here and I wanted to let
Speaker 2: you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode
Speaker 2: of the week that just happened is here in one
Speaker 2: convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to
Speaker 2: listen to in a long stretch if you want. If
Speaker 2: you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
Speaker 2: there's going to be nothing new here for you, but
Speaker 2: you can make your own decisions.
Speaker 3: The past few weeks, my social media feeds have been
Speaker 3: more apocalyptic than usual, Oddly enough, not due to the
Speaker 3: escalating war with Ron, the shell shocked economy, or oil prices,
Speaker 3: but because of a wave of posts and news articles
Speaker 3: proclaiming impending doom for trans people in the United States.
Speaker 3: Attacks on trans writes are obviously not new and have
Speaker 3: steadily risen the past ten years, but this recent collection
Speaker 3: of worrying claims are especially grim or out right genocidel.
Speaker 3: Justice month, I've seen viral posts citing online articles saying
Speaker 3: that ICE is going to round up and quote unquote
Speaker 3: disappear trans people, that the FDA is making a quote
Speaker 3: unquote registry of trans women, and that an adult trans
Speaker 3: healthcare ban is imminent. Welcome to It Could Happen Here?
Speaker 3: A show about things falling apart. I'm Garrison Davis. For
Speaker 3: this episode, I'd like to emphasize the could in it
Speaker 3: could happen here.
Speaker 4: It's not.
Speaker 3: It will definitely happen here, and there's nothing you can
Speaker 3: do to stop it. These panic inducing claims and the
Speaker 3: articles they're sourced from are referring to real things or
Speaker 3: movements happening in either right wing activism or anti trans
Speaker 3: policy and legislation, but are framed in a way to
Speaker 3: maximize catastrophe rather than actually understanding what's happening at the
Speaker 3: moment and what we can do about it. To unchecked panic,
Speaker 3: clickbait reduces the process of staying informed to being in
Speaker 3: a state of constant doom and feeling hopeless against an
Speaker 3: unstoppable enemy. Or it makes someone completely check out and
Speaker 3: not believe anything they see online even if there is
Speaker 3: a real pressing threat, both of which cloud our ability
Speaker 3: to assess and respond to very real threats. For the
Speaker 3: book of this episode, I'm going to focus on an
Speaker 3: article that claims ICE is now permitted to detain anyone
Speaker 3: for quote unquote looking trans. This reporting and the online
Speaker 3: discussion around It is a microcosmatic example of how we
Speaker 3: understand both the Trump administration's attacks on trans people and
Speaker 3: how and why ICE operates as an agency. This story
Speaker 3: can be traced to a sub stack post with the
Speaker 3: headline trump administration opens the door for ICE to target
Speaker 3: anyone suspected of being trans. The sub headline continues by
Speaker 3: reading quote, under a new rule, the State Department will
Speaker 3: be able to revoke trans people's visas over quote unquote misrepresentation.
Speaker 3: It'll give ICE grounds to suspect all trans people of
Speaker 3: being in the US illegally unquote. The information contained in
Speaker 3: this headline is the furthest many people will engage with
Speaker 3: the content of this article. Combining that headline with preconceived
Speaker 3: notions about how ICE functions under the second Trump administration
Speaker 3: makes us a very frightening claim. So what evidence does
Speaker 3: the subset article include to support this claim? Earlier this month,
Speaker 3: the State Department updated its policy for the Diversity Immigrant
Speaker 3: Visa program, also known as the Green Card Lottery. The
Speaker 3: new rules require that applicants upload a scan of their
Speaker 3: foreign passports, biographic and signature page to cut down on
Speaker 3: fraudulent diversity visa program entries. The policy update also changed
Speaker 3: the gender entry to sex on application forms policy will update.
Speaker 3: The State Department wrote, the marker reflected in the sex
Speaker 3: field on any visa application, including the entry form, should
Speaker 3: match the applicants' biological sex at birth, even if that
Speaker 3: differs from the sex listed on the applicants foreign passport
Speaker 3: or other identifying documentation.
Speaker 4: Quote.
Speaker 3: The substack article claims this could force a quote mismatch
Speaker 3: between trans people's applications and their passports, something it can
Speaker 3: then use to declare their applications fraudulent and disqualify them
Speaker 3: entirely on quote. The first half of that sentence is true.
Speaker 3: A mismatch may occur between the gender listed on foreign
Speaker 3: documents and the sex the US government wants you to
Speaker 3: list on a visa application, but it is simply not
Speaker 3: the case that this mismatch will inevitably result in an
Speaker 3: application being deemed fraudulent and then denied the kind of
Speaker 3: fraud this rule change is trying to combat by requiring
Speaker 3: a passport scan is not unique to trans people, according
Speaker 3: to Melita Picasso, staff attorney for the ACLUS LGBTQ and
Speaker 3: HIV Rights Project. Picasso said in an email that the
Speaker 3: new rule quote seems to more directly target fraudulent activities
Speaker 3: involving third parties basically entering the lottery on behalf of
Speaker 3: individuals without their knowledge and consent, and then extorting them
Speaker 3: for large amounts of money if they are selected.
Speaker 4: Unquote.
Speaker 3: The stipulation requiring an applicant to list their biological sex
Speaker 3: at birth on forms has actually already been State Department
Speaker 3: policy for both immigrant and non immigrant visa applications for
Speaker 3: over a year, effectively since Trump's executive order mandating the
Speaker 3: those government officially recognized two biological sexes which are determined
Speaker 3: at birth, and that quote government issued identity documents, including visas,
Speaker 3: and all forms that require an individuals sex, shall accurately
Speaker 3: reflect an individual's immutable biological classification as either mail or email.
Speaker 5: Quote.
Speaker 3: There's just no basis for the claim that a mismatch
Speaker 3: between the gender listed on a foreign document and the
Speaker 3: sex marked on application forms will itself quote unquote disqualify
Speaker 3: someone from receiving a visa. ACLU staff attorney Melita Picasso
Speaker 3: told me that the new policy itself recognizes this could
Speaker 3: cause discrepancies, and that she doesn't see a quote new
Speaker 3: or heightened risk of being accused of fraud or wilful
Speaker 3: misrepresentation if a transgender person follows the instructions by listing
Speaker 3: their sex assigned at birth on the application, even if
Speaker 3: they also file a per certificate that has been updated
Speaker 3: to reflect their gender identity.
Speaker 1: Quote.
Speaker 3: The State Department has been aware for a while that
Speaker 3: this kind of policy will create these kinds of mismatches.
Speaker 3: A February twenty twenty five State Department memo reads, quote,
Speaker 3: there may be instances when a consular officer becomes aware
Speaker 3: that the sex listed on the foreign passport may not
Speaker 3: be the applicants sex as defined in the executive order.
Speaker 3: In such cases, the adjudicator should confirm the applicant sex
Speaker 3: as defined in the executive order, indicate that sex on
Speaker 3: the visa, and add a case note documenting any discrepancy
Speaker 3: between the passport and the visa to prevent issues at
Speaker 3: the port of entry unquote. Later, in April of twenty
Speaker 3: twenty five, the United States Citizenship Immigration Services officially updated
Speaker 3: their policy on requiring quote unquote biological sex on immigration applications.
Speaker 3: The policy also states that quote USCIS does not deny
Speaker 3: any immigration benefits solely based on a failure to properly
Speaker 3: indicate that benefit requesters sex unquote. Acale U staff attorney
Speaker 3: Milita Picasso told me that USCIS officials have quote unquote
Speaker 3: a lot of discretion and that the policy says that
Speaker 3: failure to list biological sex quote will cause delays in
Speaker 3: processing the application while USCIS tries to verify your sex
Speaker 3: assigned at birth unquote. Now, the State Department has said
Speaker 3: there are grounds to deny these applications for trans people
Speaker 3: if they make a quote willful affirmative material act of
Speaker 3: misrepresentation by misrepresenting their quote unquote biological sex at birth
Speaker 3: in application forms or to a consular officer to gain
Speaker 3: entry to the United States under false pretenses. Legally qualifying
Speaker 3: as willful mess representation is a relatively high bar, and
Speaker 3: this language was specifically written with the intent to restrict
Speaker 3: trans athletes from entering the country to play sports. The
Speaker 3: sort of misrepresentation the State Department is talking about is
Speaker 3: if a trans woman quote unquote misrepresents her birth sex
Speaker 3: to procure a visa or admission into the United States
Speaker 3: for the purpose of competing in a women's sports competition.
Speaker 3: This same sports relo, dated February twenty fourth, twenty twenty five,
Speaker 3: also states quote, if there is a discrepancy either in
Speaker 3: the applicants documents or in electronic constantly records, or if
Speaker 3: other evidence casts reasonable doubt on the applicant sex, you
Speaker 3: should refuse the case under two two one G and
Speaker 3: request additional evidence to demonstrate sex at birth.
Speaker 4: Quote.
Speaker 3: Section two two one G of the Immigration and Nationality
Speaker 3: Act is a temporary visa refusal pending further documents or
Speaker 3: information provided by the applicant. For an athlete visa, the
Speaker 3: bar is very high and the burden is on the
Speaker 3: applicant to prove they have the special un rare qualities
Speaker 3: required to be eligible for a visa. But the substat
Speaker 3: article doesn't just claim that being trans could disqualify you
Speaker 3: from receiving a visa. The article escalates its claims, stating
Speaker 3: that trans people who already have a valid visa could
Speaker 3: have it revoked and be deported for misrepresenting their sex
Speaker 3: in the past, citing US law that if if an
Speaker 3: alien is found to have obtained a visa quote by
Speaker 3: fraud or wilfully misrepresenting a material fact, they are ineligible
Speaker 3: to be in the United States. The article also refers
Speaker 3: to a section of the Foreign Affairs manual, which includes
Speaker 3: providing quote a fake birth certificate in support of an
Speaker 3: immigrant visa application as misrepresenting a material fact unquote. The
Speaker 3: article goes on to assert that the Trump administration could
Speaker 3: refuse to recognize trans people's amended birth certificates from foreign
Speaker 3: countries and essentially consider them quote unquote fake, thus making
Speaker 3: their visa eligible to be revoked by quote unquote misrepresenting
Speaker 3: a material fact. The author of the substack links to
Speaker 3: another one of her own articles on a new policy
Speaker 3: regarding the issuing of US passports with sex markers reflecting
Speaker 3: biological sex at birth. The passport policy instructs the state
Speaker 3: parmer employees to check birth certificates for signs of being amended,
Speaker 3: and if they are amended, request more documents that list
Speaker 3: sex at the time of birth, such as medical records,
Speaker 3: hospital records, or early school records. ACLA staff attorney Picasto
Speaker 3: says that this does not mean entire amended birth certificates
Speaker 3: or quote unquote fake for the purposes of establishing fraud
Speaker 3: or willful misrepresentation, which is again a high bar, and
Speaker 3: that Trump administration has never argued this as such.
Speaker 4: Quote.
Speaker 3: I think it's dangerous to even suggest that illegally obtained
Speaker 3: and valid birth certificate could be viewed as quote unquote
Speaker 3: fake without a much clearer statement from the federal government
Speaker 3: to that effect. Picasto advised in Trump's recent travel bands,
Speaker 3: they have specifically mentioned the availability of fabricated birth certificates
Speaker 3: in certain countries. And this whole claim about trans people's
Speaker 3: visas being revoked because of applications of misrepresentation is contradicted
Speaker 3: by the State Department, which said last year quote currently
Speaker 3: valid US visas issue du prior to the effective date
Speaker 3: of this guidance bearing a sex that differs from the
Speaker 3: visl holders sex as defined in Executive Order will remain
Speaker 3: valid through its expiration date. The visa holder does not
Speaker 3: need to apply for a new visa with an amended
Speaker 3: sex marker until the current visa expires. So the first
Speaker 3: half of this article covers what I argue are gross
Speaker 3: misrepresentations of State Department visa policy. The second half of
Speaker 3: the article speculates on how this misrepresentation could be enforced
Speaker 3: by ICE in it Supreme Court ruling last year, just
Speaker 3: as Kavanaugh wrote that ICE could detain people based on
Speaker 3: a combination of factors such as working a certain kind
Speaker 3: of job, ethnicity, and speaking Spanish or talking with an accent.
Speaker 3: Kavanaugh said that ICE can detain someone for questioning quote
Speaker 3: if they have a reasonable suspicion based on specific articulable facts,
Speaker 3: that the person being questioned is an alien illegally in
Speaker 3: the United States. The author of this substacked article argued
Speaker 3: that Kavanaugh's concurrence quote unquote effectively permitted ICE to use
Speaker 3: the fact that someone looks trans as the quote specific
Speaker 3: articulable fact, allowing its officers to question, harassed, detain, and
Speaker 3: even deport both citizens and non citizens as long as
Speaker 3: it has a reason to claim that being trans makes
Speaker 3: a person more likely to be in the US illegally unquote,
Speaker 3: with this substacker adding that because of State Department policy
Speaker 3: requiring applicants to list biological sex at birth on forms quote,
Speaker 3: ICE now have the enforcement rationale to assert that trans
Speaker 3: people are more likely than says people to have misrepresented
Speaker 3: themselves during the visa process and therefore are more likely
Speaker 3: to have entered the country unlawfully unquote. This assertion from
Speaker 3: this substacker rests on the idea that looking trans makes
Speaker 3: someone more likely to be in the US illegally. This
Speaker 3: idea is not supported by any immigration policy memo or
Speaker 3: guideline that also assumes that the justification for a Kavanaugh
Speaker 3: stop is the same as the legal process of removal,
Speaker 3: which it is not. This idea was invented by the
Speaker 3: author of this article, It's not based on any enforcement
Speaker 3: directive from ICE, and misrepresents what the State Department means
Speaker 3: by intentionally misrepresenting biological sex in the visa application process.
Speaker 3: Discrepancies in gender markers across government documents is not itself
Speaker 3: grounds for detention or deportation. In fact, it's federal policy
Speaker 3: to create such discrepancies. Furthermore, dealing with potential discrepancies between
Speaker 3: gender markers on foreign documents and the Trump Admin's insistence
Speaker 3: on only using biological sex at birth on federal documents
Speaker 3: is handled by State Department consular officers and USCIS employees,
Speaker 3: not ICE Enforcement and Removal operations officers who work under
Speaker 3: an entire different agency. But the main thing that makes
Speaker 3: me believe that ICE will not suddenly start targeting people
Speaker 3: for being trans is that this State department policy requiring
Speaker 3: sex at birth on visa applications isn't actually new. It's
Speaker 3: existed in some form since February twenty twenty five for
Speaker 3: both immigrant and non immigrant visas. The only recent change
Speaker 3: is that the Green card lottery rules have been updated
Speaker 3: to use this same language. Quote. Nothing about this new
Speaker 3: rule makes it more or less likely that ICE will
Speaker 3: be free to scrutinize trans people's documents and detain those
Speaker 3: whose documents show any inconsistencies unquote, affirmed a CLUS staff
Speaker 3: attorney Melita Picasso put plainly, state department restrictions on stating
Speaker 3: assigned sex at birth on Green card or visa applications
Speaker 3: does not give ICE any new justification to roam around
Speaker 3: disappearing random people who quote unquote to look trans. But
Speaker 3: it could make border crossings more risky for non citizens,
Speaker 3: and visa applications harder to navigate and subject to delays.
Speaker 3: This policy from the State Department is bad, but turning
Speaker 3: that into saying that ICE is now going to round
Speaker 3: up trans people and vcode them doesn't understand how this
Speaker 3: will actually affect immigrant trans people or trans people currently
Speaker 3: in federal custody.
Speaker 1: Side note.
Speaker 3: Vcoding refers to this systematic enabling of sexual abuse towards
Speaker 3: incarcerated transfomen to please mail prisoners. Near the end of
Speaker 3: the substack article, the author suggests that transpeople in Kansas
Speaker 3: could be at extra risk of getting detained by ICE
Speaker 3: because of a new law invalidating driver's license and birth
Speaker 3: certificates with amended gender markers, possibly leaving some US citizens
Speaker 3: temporarily unable to prove citizenship with a valid birth certificate.
Speaker 3: This new law is certainly dangerous, and any attempt to
Speaker 3: strip a people's legal ID is very worrying and carries
Speaker 3: potential for abuse. In the case of Kansas, already having
Speaker 3: a passport would be really ideal. Otherwise, a hospital birth
Speaker 3: certificate or early school records can theoretically be used to
Speaker 3: help prove citizenship, and it is worth saying that a
Speaker 3: citizen temporarily losing documentation does not put them at the
Speaker 3: same level of marginalized risk as an undocumented immigrant. The
Speaker 3: new Kansas law does direct the Office of Idle Statistics
Speaker 3: to quote reissue birth certificates when necessary to correct this
Speaker 3: sex identification unquote. Similarly, DMVs were instructed to reissue a
Speaker 3: quote unquote corrected license once the invalidated one was turned in.
Speaker 3: We'll be right back after these messages. Welcome back, who
Speaker 3: it could happen here. The unsubstantiated claims made in that
Speaker 3: substack article went viral across multiple social media platforms like TikTok,
Speaker 3: Blue Sky, and Twitter, bolstering further speculation. Social media posts
Speaker 3: further extrapolated the potential harm facing trans people by ICE
Speaker 3: agents beyond the claims made in the article by saying
Speaker 3: that ICE will now deport or disappear trans citizens. Anyone
Speaker 3: who tried to push back on the legitimacy of those
Speaker 3: claims were labeled dangerous or fence for trying to quote
Speaker 3: unquote downplay the threat posed by ICE. Assertions of new
Speaker 3: pressing danger in this back and forth discourse largely took
Speaker 3: three forms. One saying that because ICE is already doing
Speaker 3: X bad thing, that means they could also start doing
Speaker 3: this new bad thing. Two people asserting that ICE is
Speaker 3: in fact actually already doing this, and three arguments based
Speaker 3: on distrust of the government and ICE's general lack of legality.
Speaker 3: Much of the discussion emerged from the genuine belief that
Speaker 3: ICE has been granted new power or has been quote
Speaker 3: unquote authorized to detain someone for looking trans, that Trump
Speaker 3: has quote unquote opened the door for ICE to start
Speaker 3: profiling trans people, that, like the Streame Court's ruling last year,
Speaker 3: profiling has been essentially greenlit for trans people, or that
Speaker 3: checking the consistency of gender markers has been added to
Speaker 3: ICE's quote unquote jurisdiction. And to be one hundred percent clear,
Speaker 3: there's not been any new ICE memo or policy related
Speaker 3: to transpeople, gender markers, or documentation being in their jurisdiction.
Speaker 3: State department policy on requiring biological sex on applications has
Speaker 3: existed for over a year. The real danger posed by
Speaker 3: this policy is that more trans immigrants could have their
Speaker 3: visas delayed or, in extreme cases, denied. People may need
Speaker 3: help navigating this increasingly confusing application process. Still, people have
Speaker 3: tried to assert that ICE's intentional targeting and profiling of
Speaker 3: people for being trans was quote unquote already happening. In
Speaker 3: the past year, ICE has detained transpeople. It's hard to
Speaker 3: get exact numbers on this because ICE stopped collecting detention
Speaker 3: data for trans people last year to comply with Trump's
Speaker 3: anti trans executive orders, though we do know of attempts
Speaker 3: to deport transpeople from news reporting. Last August, ICE detained
Speaker 3: a transwoman who over stated a visa by six years,
Speaker 3: and in November, a transwoman who lost her lawful permanent
Speaker 3: residence status in twenty twenty three after pleading guilty to
Speaker 3: a felony was quote unquote inadvertently deported to Mexico despite
Speaker 3: a court order specifically barring her from being sent to Mexico.
Speaker 3: We have no evidence that these women were targeted for
Speaker 3: removal on the basis of being trans, but what happened
Speaker 3: to them is still horrific. As of now, there has
Speaker 3: been no reporting on people being targeted for detention based
Speaker 3: on looking trans, because the government has not actually argued
Speaker 3: that being trans itself qualifies as reasonable suspicion of illegal presence.
Speaker 3: When I voiced skepticism about the claims sourced from this
Speaker 3: substack article, people responded to me saying that even if
Speaker 3: this has yet to happen, one could argue that ICE
Speaker 3: still could expand their operations to include profiling and targeting
Speaker 3: trans people for detention, since they're already profiling and rounding
Speaker 3: up quote unquote random brown people. After all, this podcast
Speaker 3: is called it could Happen here, and ICE has detained
Speaker 3: both citizens and legal immigrants and sent them to quote
Speaker 3: unquote camps. Though this show is called it could happen here.
Speaker 3: That doesn't mean we should spread unsubstantiated doom spiraling, disconnected
Speaker 3: from the material reality of real policies, advancing a fascist project.
Speaker 3: The Trump administration has been very clear and open about
Speaker 3: targeting groups of people flooding through our southern border. That
Speaker 3: is who ICE is designed to target, and they have
Speaker 3: policy directing them to do so and new permission from
Speaker 3: the Supreme Court. It is true that ICE has temporarily
Speaker 3: detained US citizens when looking for people they suspect our
Speaker 3: undocumented immigrants. This has been for two reasons. US citizens
Speaker 3: accused of interfering with ICE activity while protesting, or because
Speaker 3: ICE suspects US citizens may be undocumented based on factors
Speaker 3: like skin tone, occupation, or speaking a foreign language, usually Spanish.
Speaker 3: This second group of people then must demonstrate proof of
Speaker 3: citizenship or if they are immigrants, they're legal status. The
Speaker 3: period they're detained is supposed to be relatively short, usually
Speaker 3: a few hours, though in extreme cases that's stretched into
Speaker 3: multiple days. When I posted about this online, someone sent
Speaker 3: me a Wikipedia article claiming it proved that ICE has
Speaker 3: deported one hundred and seventy US citizens during Trump's second term.
Speaker 3: The article actually said one hundred and seventy citizens have
Speaker 3: been detained since Trump took office. Again, there have been
Speaker 3: a few reported instances of US born citizens being deported.
Speaker 3: These are citizen children who are deported with immigrant parents
Speaker 3: to avoid child separation, though many many children do end
Speaker 3: up being separated from their parents when their parents are deported.
Speaker 3: The last argument that people fall back on is simply
Speaker 3: that ICE is a completely lawless agency and it can
Speaker 3: do whatever it wants, including going after trans people. After all,
Speaker 3: ICE has murdered US citizens on camera in broad daylight,
Speaker 3: but it's important to remember that happened for a reason.
Speaker 3: Those weren't random acts. ICE and CBP murdered people protesting
Speaker 3: ICE rates targeting their immigrant neighbors. Federal agents killed people
Speaker 3: because the protesting was an inconvenience and there was use
Speaker 3: of force policy and training directing them to do so.
Speaker 3: For decades, CBP agents have killed people at the border
Speaker 3: and gotten away with it. The Trump administration may not
Speaker 3: care about the law, but this analysis is not based
Speaker 3: on any assumptions about legality. It's based on the administration's
Speaker 3: own stated goals, which they've been very open about, and
Speaker 3: the policies and practices currently in effect, none of which
Speaker 3: relate to ICE targeting people for quote unquote looking trans.
Speaker 3: From what we know, the Kavanaugh stops framework have never
Speaker 3: been used to target trans people for being trans as
Speaker 3: the reasonable suspicion of being illegally in the country, and
Speaker 3: there's been no changing guidelines saying that being trans can
Speaker 3: be the basis for said stops. Asserting otherwise is simply false.
Speaker 3: Insisting that because of State Department application policy, ICE will
Speaker 3: now randomly arrest transpeople is conflating two very different things.
Speaker 3: This isn't about the potential legality of ICE targeting transpeople.
Speaker 3: I'm simply saying there is no such directive instructing ICE
Speaker 3: to do that. Asserting that the Trump administration is completely
Speaker 3: one hundred percent unbounded by law also ignores the fact
Speaker 3: that federal and immigration courts are still in active terrain
Speaker 3: of battle. While the administration has repeatedly ignored courts and
Speaker 3: judges orders. People have also been successfully released from ICE
Speaker 3: custody by filing habeas corpus petitions. It's not that I
Speaker 3: believe in the personal integrity of ICE agents, far from it.
Speaker 3: But this concept of ICE as this vague fascist desk
Speaker 3: squad that will go after any group the Trump administration hates.
Speaker 3: Turns ICE into this abstract idea rather than a single
Speaker 3: material agency with concrete motivations and limits that leaves a
Speaker 3: wake of destruction in the course of achieving their purpose.
Speaker 3: ICE does raids where there's high concentrations of immigrant workers.
Speaker 3: The targeting isn't actually random. ICE is going after undocumented
Speaker 3: immigrant workers, sometimes using skin and language as a rough
Speaker 3: proxy to do document checks. To assert the inevitability of
Speaker 3: ICE going after trans people, people invoke comparisons to the Nazis,
Speaker 3: and as rhetorically useful as it is to equate ICE
Speaker 3: to a modern version of the Gestapo. This is not
Speaker 3: Germany in the nineteen thirties. ICE is a contemporary version,
Speaker 3: but the current world is different. The chronically online doomer
Speaker 3: may retort, but once ICE is done with immigrants, then
Speaker 3: they will go after trans people. After all, what's the
Speaker 3: purpose of increasing ICE is staffing and funding or building
Speaker 3: a network of tension camps across the country, if not
Speaker 3: to use them against the undesirables. There's about fifteen million
Speaker 3: undocumented immigrants in the United States and about three million
Speaker 3: trans people. That's five times as many undocumented immigrants than
Speaker 3: trans people. Last year, ICE reached a record high number
Speaker 3: of deportations, over six hundred thousand. This number still leaves
Speaker 3: millions and millions of undocumented immigrants. ICE will never be
Speaker 3: quote unquote done with immigrants. This logic again reduces ICE
Speaker 3: to this vague, abstract evil and fails to consider the
Speaker 3: purpose of ICE and why it currently operates as it does.
Speaker 3: So what motivates ICE? Do Individual ICE agents share the
Speaker 3: same motivations as the agency itself or the people directing it.
Speaker 3: Individual agents certainly could be motivated by racism, political ideology,
Speaker 3: a paycheck, or a combination thereof, but the motivating forts
Speaker 3: across the entire agency cannot solely be based on ethnicity itself,
Speaker 3: or else you wouldn't see as many Hispanic ICE and
Speaker 3: CBP agents. People tend to think of hate as a
Speaker 3: vague causal force itself, rather than it being the result
Speaker 3: of complex societal factors shaped by material forces like the economy, jobs,
Speaker 3: in security, and housing shortages. These material forces are often
Speaker 3: expressed as racial or ethnic prejudice, but the underlying motivation
Speaker 3: of ICE as an agency and by extension, DHS, still
Speaker 3: rests on material forces, not racial hatred as an abstract ideal.
Speaker 3: Rank and file employees could have entirely different motivations compared
Speaker 3: to some of those at the top of the agency
Speaker 3: or the agency as a whole, and people in charge
Speaker 3: of the agency may themselves even be confused as to
Speaker 3: the material motivations that underline the existence of immigration enforcement agencies.
Speaker 3: But this lack of alignment is a weakness in the
Speaker 3: agency and DHS more broadly, as demonstrated by the fallout
Speaker 3: of Operation Metro Surge in Minneapolis, which left ICE and
Speaker 3: DHS in a compromised state. So why does ICE exist?
Speaker 3: What material role does it fulfill? It seeks to stabilize
Speaker 3: the social order by targeting surplus populations, and what's the
Speaker 3: most efficient way to do that by going after the
Speaker 3: most marginalized populations with the least amount of legal and
Speaker 3: economic protections, which are undocumented immigrants. This operation maybe sold
Speaker 3: to the public, and indeed it's enforcers by marketing it
Speaker 3: in the language of race and crime categories, which are
Speaker 3: often equated, But underneath that, it's still an attempt to
Speaker 3: solve problems caused by material economic forces. In reality, this
Speaker 3: material motivation establishes a certain direction of impact, as well
Speaker 3: as material limits like budget, personnel, and balancing between public
Speaker 3: approval and public opposition. So with that in mind, does
Speaker 3: it make sense to claim that Immigration and Customs Enforcement
Speaker 3: is going to conduct the targeted mass detention of trans
Speaker 3: people as a class?
Speaker 4: Signs point to know.
Speaker 3: It's not that I disagree with the idea that trans
Speaker 3: people are under threat from the government, but they're under
Speaker 3: a different threat than that of undocumented immigrants or people
Speaker 3: detained by ICE based on profiling. Obviously, trans immigrants have
Speaker 3: an overlapping threat vector. As such, migrant support should remain
Speaker 3: focused on things like ICE Watch, rapid response networks, and
Speaker 3: providing immigrants legal resources, including to trans immigrants who madeed
Speaker 3: assistance navigating the visa process, and working to get people
Speaker 3: out of ICE detention. The latter is especially important considering
Speaker 3: Trump's executive order forcing transwomen in federal custody to be
Speaker 3: detained with men and Trump administration's plan to end federal
Speaker 3: prison rape protections for trans people. But most people engaged
Speaker 3: in this discourse genuinely don't understand how state department policy
Speaker 3: on visa applications will actually affect trans immigrants and what
Speaker 3: we can then do to support trans immigrants, But this
Speaker 3: whole discourse takes the focus away from the people most
Speaker 3: at risk of ICE, which are still undocumented immigrant workers.
Speaker 3: Lilith in Seattle with a one hundred and fifty thousand
Speaker 3: dollars a year tech job is not at high risk
Speaker 3: of being detained by ICE. Believing otherwise prohibits people who
Speaker 3: are actually safe and secure from using their wealth and
Speaker 3: status to support others who do not have the same
Speaker 3: safety provided by wealth or status, whether they're transgender and
Speaker 3: immigrant or both. Misleading articles in the larger panic driven
Speaker 3: information economy encourages people with financial or legal security to
Speaker 3: be scared into paralysis because they believe that any amount
Speaker 3: of opposition to the government will result in being disappeared
Speaker 3: to a concentration camp. This justifies a retreat from the
Speaker 3: world by framing it as safety, allowing one to focus
Speaker 3: on maximizing their own power and wealth to achieve security.
Speaker 3: Retreating solely into the rule of the victim achieves a
Speaker 3: sort of emotional catharsis, but this also alienates you from
Speaker 3: the world and ends up doing propaganda for the enemy.
Speaker 3: In this discourse, there's a tendency to make the enemy
Speaker 3: out to be an unstoppable monster, which further justifies in
Speaker 3: action because it doesn't allow you to understand the limits
Speaker 3: of the enemy, whether logistical or ideological, and resigns us
Speaker 3: to power before an omnipotent all powerful evil. ICE operations
Speaker 3: are an expensive, unpopular, destabilizing thing. We must keep an
Speaker 3: eye on the fragility of power, as that informs us
Speaker 3: on how to fight it. When removed from action in
Speaker 3: the real world, people have no way to confront truth.
Speaker 3: It is a frightening time to be transgender. On top
Speaker 3: of what feels like never ending attacks on healthcare and
Speaker 3: our ability to exist in public life. You now see
Speaker 3: news stories about a US state invalidating people's IDs, at
Speaker 3: the same time as viral social media posts claim ICE
Speaker 3: has been given new authority to detain transpeople and deport
Speaker 3: immigrants for having the wrong gender marker. Various attacks on
Speaker 3: trans rites separated through time, could be viewed as a coherent,
Speaker 3: centralized strategy towards a singular, horrific end, but they also
Speaker 3: may be in fact disparate, often petty attempts at cruelty,
Speaker 3: intending to demoralize transpeople and make translife prohibitively difficult. The
Speaker 3: way Red states and the Trump admin are trying to
Speaker 3: eliminate transgenderism, as Michael Knowles would say, is to simply
Speaker 3: make it incredibly difficult to socially and medically transition, like
Speaker 3: by not recognizing gender on government documents, be excluded from
Speaker 3: public bathrooms, and continuing efforts to restrict healthcare. Will do
Speaker 3: one more break and return for a final segment. The
Speaker 3: state of catastrophic fear I've been talking about is maintained
Speaker 3: by a near constant wave of articles with panic inducing headlines,
Speaker 3: which fuel social media posts that further escalate and abstract
Speaker 3: claims maiden headlines to a Nazi Germany esque level of
Speaker 3: potential danger facing trans people. One such impending danger circulating
Speaker 3: online this month is the claim that the FDA is
Speaker 3: making a registry of trans women and moving to crimin
Speaker 3: diy estrogen. This claim originated from an article in a
Speaker 3: trans news outlet published March twelfth, reporting that anti trans
Speaker 3: lobbying groups sent a petition to the FDA to create
Speaker 3: a registry of transwomen who take estrogen and restrict the
Speaker 3: use of feminizing HRT, which if implemented, could quote fast
Speaker 3: track a pathway to criminalizing estrogen use. Importantly, this citizens
Speaker 3: petition is not US law or proposed government legislation, nor
Speaker 3: is it FDA policy or regulation. It was written by
Speaker 3: an anti transactivist coalition and sent to the FDA over
Speaker 3: three months ago in December of twenty twenty five. The
Speaker 3: petition requests quote unquote immediate action by establishing a new
Speaker 3: docket for the public to officially comment on the safety
Speaker 3: and effectiveness of estrogen in gender transitions, and to schedule
Speaker 3: a public hearing on the subject. That is mainly what
Speaker 3: the petition is for, though it doesn't make further recommendations
Speaker 3: following the conclusion of a public hearing. These recommendations include
Speaker 3: adding a warning label to estrogen, conducting a safety review,
Speaker 3: having clinicians report adverse effects to the FDA, and requiring
Speaker 3: the drug manufacturers quote establish a patient registry as a
Speaker 3: part of a risk evaluation and mitigation study to capture
Speaker 3: real world safety data unquote, and that is the registry
Speaker 3: mentioned in this panic headline. This article, or more accurately
Speaker 3: distorted versions of its claims, went viral across trans Twitter,
Speaker 3: with tens of thousands of likes and hundreds of thousands
Speaker 3: of quote unquote views, but the article received strong pushback
Speaker 3: on Blue Sky for being quote unquote sensationalist and inflammatory.
Speaker 3: The outlet that originally published the story later updated the article,
Speaker 3: clarifying that the FDA receives hundreds of petitions a year,
Speaker 3: and even if implemented, they can take years to go
Speaker 3: into effect. Twenty thirteen, only six point six percent of
Speaker 3: FDA citizen petitions were approved and resulted in new regulation.
Speaker 3: A study from twenty sixteen found that, on average, quote,
Speaker 3: these petitions require two point eighty five years for a
Speaker 3: final agency decision, and many decisions remain pending ten to
Speaker 3: thirteen years after their initial submission unquote. This FDA petition
Speaker 3: story was not the only article this month theorizing about
Speaker 3: a trans registry or adult HRT restrictions. In mid March,
Speaker 3: multiple LGBTQ news outlets reported that Republican lawmakers in Tennessee
Speaker 3: advanced a bill that would quote unquote create a public
Speaker 3: list of trans residents in the state. The bill in
Speaker 3: question mandates insurance companies also covered d transition, and would
Speaker 3: require that care providers submit statistics on gender affirming care
Speaker 3: to the Tennessee Department of Health, which must quote not
Speaker 3: contain individually identify information defined in HIPPA unquote. The Tennessee
Speaker 3: Department of Health would then use that information to make
Speaker 3: a publicly available statistics report. But online accounts are spreading
Speaker 3: this story as if Tennessee is making a quote unquote
Speaker 3: sex offender style public registry with the names and locations
Speaker 3: of all trans people in this state. A bill like
Speaker 3: this could potentially be used for harm, and it may
Speaker 3: face court challenges for possibly violating parts of HIPPA by
Speaker 3: collecting data on county of residents and procedure dates. But
Speaker 3: the reporting on the bill and the viral reaction online
Speaker 3: make it out to be something completely different. There's no
Speaker 3: reason to believe this bill would create a publicly accessible
Speaker 3: registry or list identifying trans people by name in this state.
Speaker 3: The bill has not yet passed the state Senate, and
Speaker 3: it may not in its current form. Right now, it's
Speaker 3: unclear what exact form the collected data will take with
Speaker 3: in a statistics report and what level of anonymizing data
Speaker 3: aggregation will be employed. This is something to keep an
Speaker 3: eye on if the bill does pass and the state
Speaker 3: Department of Health drafts guidelines for the mandatory statistics reporting,
Speaker 3: But the way it's being reported is incredibly misleading. Interestingly,
Speaker 3: the source for this public list claim is the same
Speaker 3: substec outlet that created the false story about ICE now
Speaker 3: being able to detain people for looking trans. Also earlier
Speaker 3: this month, multiple LGBTQ news outlets reported that the Fourth
Speaker 3: Circuit Court approved state bans on gender affirming healthcare for adults.
Speaker 3: On March tenth, a Republican appointed three judge panel of
Speaker 3: the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that states can
Speaker 3: prohibit gender affirming surgery from being covered by Medicaid. The
Speaker 3: ruling affirmed ban on Medicaid coverage for quote sex change
Speaker 3: surgeries in West Virginia, with the panel arguing it doesn't
Speaker 3: discriminate against trans people because it applies to specific procedures,
Speaker 3: not specific individuals. This is certainly bad news for trans
Speaker 3: people in West Virginia on Medicaid, but reporting that this
Speaker 3: decision could soon result in trans people losing healthcare in
Speaker 3: other states or nationally is misleading and removes key context.
Speaker 3: This is not a total ban on these procedures. It's
Speaker 3: a ban on state Medicaid coverage of these surgical procedures.
Speaker 3: The ruling is not a ban on other forms of
Speaker 3: gender affirming healthcare. Like HRT, nor does it threaten the
Speaker 3: hospital's ability to receive Medicare and Medicaid funds for providing
Speaker 3: gender affirming healthcare, like the Trump administration has threatened so
Speaker 3: far unsuccessfully. Still people postulated on how this ruling could
Speaker 3: be laying the legal groundwork to eliminate adult transgender healthcare,
Speaker 3: but trans journalist to David Forbes noted that this ruling
Speaker 3: will likely be appealed to wider Fourth Circuit, which has
Speaker 3: recently ruled in the opposite direction of this three panel ruling.
Speaker 3: What paniced assertions of an impending total ban on trans
Speaker 3: healthcare tends to overlook is that going from a state
Speaker 3: ban on Medicaid coverage for surgery straight to an all
Speaker 3: ages ban on gender affirming healthcare skips a lot of steps,
Speaker 3: and those steps are crucially important. The panic, clickbait induced
Speaker 3: doomer mindset treats every horrific potentiality as an inevitable eventuality.
Speaker 3: This undermines our ability to accurately assess risk and effectively
Speaker 3: dedicate resources to oppose what are pressing threats. So what
Speaker 3: purpose does this sort of posting serve and why are
Speaker 3: people so primed to believe it? These panic driven claims
Speaker 3: rest on the very real fact that trans people are
Speaker 3: facing present danger. Oftentimes, people boosting these panic stories are
Speaker 3: genuinely trying to help inform their own community of potential harm.
Speaker 3: In the case of that ICE story, it was based
Speaker 3: on the assumption that there was a legitimate recent rule
Speaker 3: change enabling iceo target people under suspicion of being trans.
Speaker 3: It makes sense that people would want to raise the
Speaker 3: alarm about ICE gaining new powers. But acel U staff
Speaker 3: attorney Melita Picasso cautioned, quote, we are supporting our community
Speaker 3: by trying to warn people, but these warnings need to
Speaker 3: be clear and accurate, otherwise we end up inadvertently contributing
Speaker 3: to the chaos and fear unquote. Other times, these panic
Speaker 3: stories are spread with the hope of scaring allies into
Speaker 3: caring about the ongoing attacks on trans people. Perhaps this
Speaker 3: is successful in some cases, I don't know. But as
Speaker 3: a side effect, this strategy deals significant damage to the
Speaker 3: people it's trying to protect. Forecasting doom twenty four to
Speaker 3: seven can drive people into hopeless despair and push them
Speaker 3: away way from strategies to fight against the current attacks
Speaker 3: on trans rights. Panic driven agit prop could also contribute
Speaker 3: to a girl who Cried Wolf scenario where allies start
Speaker 3: to discount concerns about certain attacks on transrights due to
Speaker 3: previous unsubstantiated viral claims. Though many people spreading these claims
Speaker 3: may have genuinely good intentions, the people creating these claims
Speaker 3: may develop certain material incentives. Traditional mainstream journalism has failed
Speaker 3: to question the massive government overreach into the lives of transpeople,
Speaker 3: and in some cases helped manufacture consent for the stripping
Speaker 3: away of trans rights. This state of affairs has made
Speaker 3: trans people lose faith in the big outlets, leading to
Speaker 3: small upstart outlets filling in the information gaps in trans
Speaker 3: news coverage, but without any institutional backing. Independent news sites
Speaker 3: and sub stack style blogs have to build an audience
Speaker 3: to generate traction and stay operating. It turns out thousands
Speaker 3: of people constantly freaking out creates high social media engagement,
Speaker 3: and this creates a loop where trans panic fearmongering boosts
Speaker 3: social media engagement, which further encourages more irresponsible clickbait framing.
Speaker 3: Those who are successful may slowly develop a new class position,
Speaker 3: which then needs to be maintained. Financial incentives may even
Speaker 3: pressure journalists who have done good work in the past
Speaker 3: to fall back on panic driven engagement bait to attract
Speaker 3: new traffic. This isn't exclusive to trans outlets either. Following
Speaker 3: the assassination of Charlie kirk Ken, Klippenstein reported on his
Speaker 3: substack that the FBI was about to quote designate transgender
Speaker 3: people as violent extremists. His report contained no new, verifiable information.
Speaker 3: The core evidence was an unnamed quote unquote senior official
Speaker 3: who told the Clippenstein he quote unquote feels like trans
Speaker 3: people could be labeled nihilist via extremists. Clippenstein has previously
Speaker 3: misunderstood the nihilist violent extremism label. The term actually predates
Speaker 3: the second Trump administration and refers to groups like seven
Speaker 3: sixty four Child's extortion rings and communities like the school
Speaker 3: shooter fandom TCC. Hours before Clippenstein's report was published, the
Speaker 3: Heritage Foundation and the Oversight Project publicly released a petition
Speaker 3: calling for a new classification of extremism called trans ideology
Speaker 3: inspired violent extremism, to categorize attacks they believed are motivated
Speaker 3: by transgender ideology. The petition memo denied that all trans
Speaker 3: people and their allies would be designated domestic terrorists. Under
Speaker 3: this label, only those who quote, encourage, promote, condone, take
Speaker 3: or insight unlawful violent action or threats based on this
Speaker 3: ideology unquote. The Heritage petition also runs contrary to Clippenstein's
Speaker 3: report by advocating against the use of the nihilist violent
Speaker 3: extremism label to describe transgender motivated violence. A Heritage petition
Speaker 3: to establish a new category of extremism is different from
Speaker 3: an unnamed official who feels like trans people as a
Speaker 3: whole could be labeled as nihilist violent extremists, and it's
Speaker 3: important to understand that distinction. That was last September. It's
Speaker 3: now half a year later, and neither of these things
Speaker 3: has come to fruition. The closest we got was in
Speaker 3: late September, following Trump's Antifa Terrorism executive Order with the
Speaker 3: National Security Presidential Memorandum Number seven, which listed quote extremism
Speaker 3: on migration, race, and gender as common recurrent motivations and
Speaker 3: indica of violent and terroristic activities under the umbrella of
Speaker 3: self described anti fascism unquote, among many other threads animating
Speaker 3: violent conduct. Regardless of that, people online interpreted both Clippenstein's
Speaker 3: report and the Heritage petition as meaning the FBI classified
Speaker 3: the entire class of trans people as domestic terrorists. Social
Speaker 3: media both amplifies and distorts already misleading claims, turning news
Speaker 3: into a massive game of telephone, and the siloing of
Speaker 3: certain users and platforms makes countering this misinformation incredibly difficult.
Speaker 3: The social media economy carries certain incentives for the producers
Speaker 3: of panic bait that could be attention, status, and money,
Speaker 3: but the consumers of panic also stand to gain something
Speaker 3: catharsis justification for their actions or lack thereof, as well
Speaker 3: as attention from fellow consumers. These clickbait panic pieces explode
Speaker 3: around trans Twitter, which is still quite active, consisting of
Speaker 3: sex workers, gamers, TTT style posters, and zoomers who think
Speaker 3: Blue Sky is crunch and liberal. Some of these panic stories,
Speaker 3: like the FDA A registry, don't do very well on
Speaker 3: Blue Sky because that's where a lot of trans journalists
Speaker 3: who do actual journalism are, but those journalists are not
Speaker 3: active on Twitter and TikTok, making it harder to counter
Speaker 3: our misinformation on those platforms. Countering trans paniclick bait also
Speaker 3: suffers from algorithmic suppression because it doesn't get people as
Speaker 3: riled up. A wave of emotionally charged doom posting is
Speaker 3: boosted much farther than a calm and calculated rebuttal. The
Speaker 3: biggest TikTok about ICE detaining people under suspicion of being
Speaker 3: trans has one point two million views. The biggest TikTok
Speaker 3: fact checking this claim has two hundred and ninety thousand views.
Speaker 3: So much of social media politics is emotional manipulation based
Speaker 3: on anger, fear, or catharsis. Posting about perceived danger is
Speaker 3: essentially viewed as a form of activism, and if someone
Speaker 3: casts a doubt on what's seen as an existential threat,
Speaker 3: that person becomes emotionally equated with the enemy. Panic produces helplessness,
Speaker 3: but helplessness can actually be cathartic for the individual. It's
Speaker 3: not helpful for people currently in the most danger. So
Speaker 3: then what is there to do in terms of the
Speaker 3: trans panic information economy. Don't be afraid to openly question
Speaker 3: the legitimacy of certain reporting due to fear of backlash
Speaker 3: from the community. If it's good reporting, it should be
Speaker 3: able to stand up to scrutiny. So when you see
Speaker 3: a new story that triggers an emotional response. Stop a
Speaker 3: moment before clicking share and find out where this claim
Speaker 3: is coming from. A reliable journalistic outlet, an independent publication.
Speaker 3: What other reporting has this publication done? Has it been accurate?
Speaker 3: Who is the reporter? Are you familiar with their reporting?
Speaker 3: What else have they reported on? Is it speculative? Are
Speaker 3: there logical jumps without supporting evidence? Again, I'm not trying
Speaker 3: to minimize the danger coming from a tax on trans people.
Speaker 3: Quite the contrary, the right is continuing to take away
Speaker 3: trans rights and these threats should be treated seriously. But
Speaker 3: when trying to counter these real attacks, one must be
Speaker 3: cautious about looking so far ahead into this speculative future
Speaker 3: that it takes the focus away from the clear and
Speaker 3: present harms. This isn't about trusting the government, It's about
Speaker 3: understanding the world in order to change it. See you
Speaker 3: on the other side. You can find a text version
Speaker 3: of this episode on the Shatterzone substack, with hyper links
Speaker 3: available for many of the terms or reporting referenced.
Speaker 1: Hi everyone, and welcome to the show. It's me James,
Speaker 1: and I'm very lucky to be joined by Marianne today.
Speaker 1: He's an outspoken member of the Venezuelan diaspora, writer, photographer,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna talk today and at about our shared
Speaker 1: frustration with the left in this country talking about Venezuelan people,
Speaker 1: but not to Venezuelan people. So thanks for.
Speaker 6: Joining me tonight, Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is something that we've been trying to put
Speaker 1: together for a while, and I'm really glad that we're
Speaker 1: finally doing it. So I guess if I can just
Speaker 1: frame this discussion, We've spoken about this extensively, so like
Speaker 1: I'm sure we won't need much much prompting. I do
Speaker 1: not understand how people arrive at a position of identifying
Speaker 1: as being leftists if they don't love and care about
Speaker 1: other people, And if you love and care about other people,
Speaker 1: then you should listen to them. And I am appalled
Speaker 1: at the discourse about Venezuela which is happening without Venezuelan
Speaker 1: voices for the most part, where people will talk to
Speaker 1: Venezuelan's at all in the US press. It's far too
Speaker 1: often people in the diaspora who are talking to the
Speaker 1: right wing of media and highlighting what are sometimes recent
Speaker 1: objections to Madulas, sometimes which are completely insane. But it's
Speaker 1: a complete failing of us on the left to not
Speaker 1: talk to people from Venezuela. Maybe you could just share
Speaker 1: with us, like how it's been since January. To see
Speaker 1: it offered it as a binary right. You can either
Speaker 1: exist on the Maduro and people can live in poverty
Speaker 1: and suffer, or you can watch your country get bombed
Speaker 1: and choose like mcm like and none of this is happening.
Speaker 1: Was asking you what you would like, Can you like
Speaker 1: share how that's been.
Speaker 6: Oh my god, it's been. It's been a wild ride.
Speaker 7: I mean, there's a lot of different emotions going on,
Speaker 7: which is one of the things that I think a
Speaker 7: lot of people don't understand that are not Venezuelan. But yeah,
Speaker 7: just a lot of emotions. I mean I remember when
Speaker 7: it first happened. I immediately messaged my family back home,
Speaker 7: So my brother, my mom, my, my grandparents. My family
Speaker 7: is from Karaka, so they were all right. They were
Speaker 7: just saying, you know, it's calm where where we are,
Speaker 7: it's fine. But yeah, the immediate thing was concerned. Then
Speaker 7: obviously I couldn't sleep that night because of everything that
Speaker 7: was going on. I live in Europe, so by that
Speaker 7: time it was like, I don't know, it was like
Speaker 7: five in the morning or something eight in the morning.
Speaker 7: I don't remember it was. It's all just a blur
Speaker 7: to me now, but I remember I was just like
Speaker 7: on my phone seeing the updates like every minute, trying
Speaker 7: to contact my friends who did live in Karakas, and
Speaker 7: they were just saying, yeah, like we hear bombs. We
Speaker 7: don't know what's going on. And then eventually, like some
Speaker 7: people started saying that they bomb liked some strategic military
Speaker 7: basis or like in Paracio Mira Flores, which is the
Speaker 7: presidential house, and so everyone was like all over the place,
Speaker 7: and then we got all this information that they took
Speaker 7: Maduro whatever.
Speaker 6: And then at that point it was just like Okay, concern, worry.
Speaker 7: Confusion, and then joy because not because the place was
Speaker 7: bombed by Americans, but because this guy was like taken
Speaker 7: away who he deserves.
Speaker 6: Worse than prison, to be honest.
Speaker 7: But then concern again because what are the Americans gonna
Speaker 7: do now? So it was just a lot of different
Speaker 7: things going on, Like I think a lot of people,
Speaker 7: including myself, were just like paralyzed by all these different emotions,
Speaker 7: like joy because again, this guy who has done horrible
Speaker 7: things to the Venezuelan people is now paying for his
Speaker 7: crime somewhere, but at the same time fear because of
Speaker 7: what is going to happen next.
Speaker 6: I mean, we're not dumb, we know what the US
Speaker 6: is capable of.
Speaker 7: So it was a little bit of both of those
Speaker 7: feelings after we knew what had happened. And ever since
Speaker 7: then it has been just a struggle because of course
Speaker 7: there's a lot of misinformation going out there. It's been
Speaker 7: frustrating because I see many of my people's voices being
Speaker 7: silenced by people on the left. And then also you
Speaker 7: have a lot of people on the right like appropriating
Speaker 7: our narrative to like push their own pro American propaganda whatever.
Speaker 7: So it's kind of just like everyone's trying to like
Speaker 7: appropriate or steal their own narrative and suffering for their
Speaker 7: own gain, and the left and the right are doing
Speaker 7: both like equally. Yeah, So it has been kind of
Speaker 7: frustrating because I mean every time I even just try
Speaker 7: to leave a comment on Instagram or say something, I'm
Speaker 7: called a fascist like Trump supporters, Cia Masade agent whatever.
Speaker 7: And you know, it's frustrating to see so many people
Speaker 7: because most of the people I follow are like leftists, right,
Speaker 7: But I've unfollowed like seventy percent of the people I
Speaker 7: used to follow because they started posting like Promaduro stuff
Speaker 7: and talking about how he was so great whatever.
Speaker 6: And you know, it has been very.
Speaker 7: Defeating to feel like we don't have anywhere to go
Speaker 7: to nobody supporting us, because again, one side just wants
Speaker 7: to rob us from our resources and steal a narrative
Speaker 7: to like push their own agenda. But then the other
Speaker 7: side is like completely denying or calling us like all
Speaker 7: these horrible things to also steal our narrative. Right, So
Speaker 7: it has been really frustrating and scary and isolating. Yeah,
Speaker 7: it has been a lot, to the point where I think,
Speaker 7: I mean, do I even have a place in the
Speaker 7: world of nobody wants to hear my voice? So it
Speaker 7: has been very difficult, right yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 6: Very disheartening.
Speaker 7: But then yeah, like if that's why I told you about.
Speaker 6: The baseball thing recently, it was.
Speaker 7: Kind of like the positive thing, like a because one
Speaker 7: of the good things about that game is that people
Speaker 7: were finally like getting to know us and how we're
Speaker 7: actually good people, and that was kind of like a
Speaker 7: pick me up after how horrible life has been since
Speaker 7: January third, So yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, like people obviously like undervalue sport. I think
Speaker 1: they do. I wrote a book about sport and anti fascism,
Speaker 1: so I'm kind of predisposed to this disposition. But like,
Speaker 1: these moments of joy are really important, and like the
Speaker 1: God knows, the world tries to rob us of joy
Speaker 1: at the moment, so that we should embrace them and
Speaker 1: enjoy them and not feel like we had We are
Speaker 1: like obliged to be sad because of all the sadness
Speaker 1: in our worlds. Yeah, I think something you said that
Speaker 1: like struck home with me. Are two things I guess
Speaker 1: let's address the first one. It is fundamentally a colonial
Speaker 1: impulse to steal someone's narrative and assume that they're incapable
Speaker 1: of speaking for themselves, so you must speak for them,
Speaker 1: right Like. That is something that I have seen, not
Speaker 1: just now, but for years about Venezuela, right Like, it
Speaker 1: must have been really frustrating to see this kind of
Speaker 1: campiss tendency to literally steal like the voice of Venezuelan
Speaker 1: people to speak on their behalf.
Speaker 7: Yeah, that's nothing new though, I mean I remember when
Speaker 7: I was in college it was kind of the same.
Speaker 7: Like there were I think it was like twenty seventeen.
Speaker 7: There were some protests and people were saying all sorts
Speaker 7: of things, and I remember losing a lot of my
Speaker 7: friends in college because of that, because I was saying, like,
Speaker 7: you know, it's more complicated than that, like you know,
Speaker 7: actually people do dislike this person for this, this and
Speaker 7: this reason. And yeah, I remember losing a lot of
Speaker 7: friends because of that. Maybe not a mental breakdown, because
Speaker 7: it was just like a right.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 7: I remember even at one point I went to like
Speaker 7: a cafe. It was one of these like calfes where
Speaker 7: people right on the walls and it said like fuck Venezuelan,
Speaker 7: and I was just like, what a fucking dystopia am
Speaker 7: I living in? And I also used to work at
Speaker 7: a front desk and this guy somehow found out that
Speaker 7: I was Venezuelan and he started saying like, oh, Madulu's
Speaker 7: the best, like whatever, and my boss had to come
Speaker 7: in and like take the guy away because he was
Speaker 7: just being really like rowdy.
Speaker 6: Right, So yeah, it's calm.
Speaker 7: Yeah, in fact, us like when we introduce ourselves, like
Speaker 7: we don't say that we're Venezuelan and immediately just because
Speaker 7: it can be dangerous at times.
Speaker 1: So yeah, especially now we have this combination of like
Speaker 1: we we've discussed this, but like on the on the right,
Speaker 1: venez will and people are all perceived to be fucking
Speaker 1: members of trend Ragua now and then yeah, it's that
Speaker 1: or you line up behind the regime. And even when
Speaker 1: those two things like are not as distinct as people
Speaker 1: you know sometimes in their imagination see them, or that
Speaker 1: they're also not as joint as other people in their
Speaker 1: imagination see them. Yeah, it doesn't give you a place
Speaker 1: to express your identity, right, you just have to fit
Speaker 1: into someone else's box. Yeah, something else you said really
Speaker 1: struck me, Like there seems to be and again it's
Speaker 1: like it's not distinct from the colonial impulse, right, I
Speaker 1: think about the uplift civilized and Christianized, or the white
Speaker 1: man's burden or these like notions of people who were
Speaker 1: subject to colonial violence being lesser than or incapable of,
Speaker 1: and like, what are the things I see? It is
Speaker 1: like the idea that Venezuelan people are not aware of
Speaker 1: United States imperialism. I lived with Chilean's in Caracas in
Speaker 1: like the first decade of this century, right, Like people
Speaker 1: were very extremely fucking aware, Like I live with people
Speaker 1: who have been tortured because of because of United States imperialism.
Speaker 1: They've played me to have our records and then told
Speaker 1: me how they chopped his hands off, right, Like, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're a person on the left. You have an understanding
Speaker 1: of the world and world politics, and you've studied and traveled,
Speaker 1: But like, there is a cultural understanding of this right
Speaker 1: which does not require one to attend university. Can you
Speaker 1: explain how people because people are weighing on the one hand,
Speaker 1: we have this malorda regime which is killing people, which
Speaker 1: has imprisoning people, and which is acting as a fundamental
Speaker 1: constrain on our autonomy. And on the other hand, we
Speaker 1: have the Americans dropping bombs and we know what the
Speaker 1: Americans have done, Yeah to this part of the world.
Speaker 1: If you could just talk on that little bit, explain
Speaker 1: how people live with that balance.
Speaker 6: I think it's a combination of multiple things.
Speaker 7: So first, I mean, for many years, the government horribly
Speaker 7: mismanaged the country and then blamed the US for everything
Speaker 7: that went wrong. I mean, there were moments in which
Speaker 7: we knew and had proof that these problems were coming
Speaker 7: directly from the regime's actions, and yet so many times
Speaker 7: they simply lied about it and said that it was
Speaker 7: the US's fault, to the point where many of us were,
Speaker 7: you know, simply desensitized to the idea of US intervention.
Speaker 7: It's a case of the boy who cried a wolf,
Speaker 7: but in this case, it was the dictator who cried intervention.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 7: Second of all, I mean, for many years now, every
Speaker 7: cent made from our country's resources have gone everywhere except
Speaker 7: to the people. Our resources have been going to other
Speaker 7: country let's say Russia and China, just to name a couple,
Speaker 7: and yet we, the Venezuelan people, have not seen a
Speaker 7: single cent of that. So at this point, we're used
Speaker 7: to being exploited and we're used to being cheated. So
Speaker 7: when people in the US say, hey, the US only
Speaker 7: wants to steal your oil, or hey, like they're going
Speaker 7: to exploit your country, it's ignoring the fact that we
Speaker 7: have already been living through that very same thing for decades,
Speaker 7: and many believe that our material reality won't be affected
Speaker 7: just because now it's someone else stealing out resources. If anything,
Speaker 7: people are willing to see if these new guys, aka
Speaker 7: the US, might do things differently now, whether that's right
Speaker 7: or not, what it really speaks to I think is
Speaker 7: I guess my final point, which is that people are desperate.
Speaker 7: Every time a leftist says, oh, your life is about
Speaker 7: to get so much worse or so bad or whatever,
Speaker 7: they say that without knowing how bad things have already gotten.
Speaker 7: I mean, I remember going to school during like the
Speaker 7: worst parts of the famine and seeing like a skeletal
Speaker 7: dead body lying on the street. Like that's an image
Speaker 7: I still have nightmares with. And I mean for a time,
Speaker 7: I remember someone I knew dying or being killed every
Speaker 7: single week.
Speaker 6: The abuse and the torture we've endured at the hands
Speaker 6: of this regime.
Speaker 7: I mean, anyone can google, like what's going on in
Speaker 7: places like Ellinikoire or La Pumba or any of the
Speaker 7: other torture centers in the country. I mean, people experience
Speaker 7: mock in real executions, getting electrocuted like by their genitals, rape,
Speaker 7: being forced to eat feces, and a whole list of
Speaker 7: medieval sounding torture methods. And you know, people are truly
Speaker 7: desperate for a change, any change. And the fact is
Speaker 7: that the global campus left ors me and my friends
Speaker 7: have begun calling them the imperial Left, has done nothing
Speaker 7: for us they've given us no sustainable solution, and if anything,
Speaker 7: have completely sided with our pressors. So you know, if
Speaker 7: Trump and says I recognize this regime is bad and
Speaker 7: I'm going to do something about it, people are going
Speaker 7: to take that. And this is what is so frustrating
Speaker 7: to me is that many of these leftists will go
Speaker 7: ahead and then criticize Venezuelans for siding with their enemies.
Speaker 7: But what they don't see is that they have sided
Speaker 7: with ours, and at the end, all that does is
Speaker 7: make life even harder for us. We've gone so desperate
Speaker 7: that we've run directly into the hands of vultures because
Speaker 7: they're the only hands that we've been given. I personally
Speaker 7: don't love what the US is doing to our country,
Speaker 7: but I mean I understand why many Venezuelans have reacted
Speaker 7: the way that they have, and this is how I
Speaker 7: can best explain it to those who don't understand it.
Speaker 6: It's sad.
Speaker 7: I know, it's very sad, and it's hard for people
Speaker 7: who haven't lived through this to wrap their heads around
Speaker 7: this level of despair. But it's the simple truth, and
Speaker 7: it's a hard truth that I think many leftists need
Speaker 7: to hear and understand. And I say that as someone
Speaker 7: who is also saddened by this, because I want to
Speaker 7: see a more left leaning future, especially for my country.
Speaker 7: But I don't think it can happen if people don't
Speaker 7: start accepting realities like these.
Speaker 1: The other thing that gets collapsed a lot, I think,
Speaker 1: is a Venezuelan opposition, right. Like it is always amusing
Speaker 1: to see, Like I myself, I'm not a communist, right
Speaker 1: I'm not a state communist anyway. And I've seen like
Speaker 1: the Venezuelan Communist Party and the Communist youth of Venezuela,
Speaker 1: Like they'll put out a thing being like, we support opposition,
Speaker 1: and then you'll see people being like, oh, no, we're communists,
Speaker 1: but like like American communists who don't speak Spanish, Yeah,
Speaker 1: like I engaged with them. It's it's very funny to
Speaker 1: see that, like in their mind all opposition in Venezuela
Speaker 1: is of the right wing, like MTM, yeah, tendency right, Like,
Speaker 1: there are many very valid reasons where people on the
Speaker 1: left will be opposed to what's happening. Does it feel
Speaker 1: particularly isolating to be of the left and at the
Speaker 1: same time have this constant assumption that to be in
Speaker 1: an opposition you have to be of the right.
Speaker 7: It feels isolating when it comes to dealing with non Venezuelans,
Speaker 7: But when it comes dealing with Venezuelans, not really. I
Speaker 7: mean pretty much all of my friends, I mean as
Speaker 7: a queer artist, like most of my friends are also
Speaker 7: like pretty left leaning. Yeah, you have different kinds of
Speaker 7: people on the left, right, But but yeah, like when
Speaker 7: it comes to my Venezuelan friends, it is not isolating
Speaker 7: at all because precisely we already know what's going on.
Speaker 7: You know, we know that the that the opposition isn't
Speaker 7: just like.
Speaker 6: A right wing saying yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 7: It doesn't feel isolating because we know the political diversity
Speaker 7: that exists, right, Yeah, and so you just kind of
Speaker 7: have to find your tribe and it exists.
Speaker 6: Again, we're a.
Speaker 7: Country where people have all different sorts of opinions, and
Speaker 7: so you know, between my Venezuela and friends, it seems
Speaker 7: pretty what's the opposite of isolating.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like inclusive, I guess.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 7: When it's dealing with my non Venezuelan friends, that's when
Speaker 7: it gets isolating because there's just not an understanding, Like
Speaker 7: they just don't seem to understand. No matter how much
Speaker 7: I try to break it down to them or how
Speaker 7: much I try to explain to them. I have been
Speaker 7: successful and many of my good friends who are like leftists,
Speaker 7: most of them are anarchists. But when I do try
Speaker 7: to explain it to them, they do seem to understand
Speaker 7: because they know who I am and they know that
Speaker 7: I'm not like, you know, bullshitting them.
Speaker 6: But yeah, but again that doesn't mean.
Speaker 7: Like I told you earlier, I have lost many, many friends,
Speaker 7: and you know, have had to unfollow many people like
Speaker 7: I don't feel welcome in all, like leftists or even
Speaker 7: queer spaces sometimes because of what I think, which is,
Speaker 7: you know, a free Venezuela isn't just free from imperialism
Speaker 7: but also free from dictatorship.
Speaker 6: It's free from both.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, right, I shouldn't be controversial.
Speaker 7: But that is something that most of my Venezuelan friends like,
Speaker 7: they completely agree because it's similar to me. But my
Speaker 7: non Venezuelan friends or ex friends, as I should say,
Speaker 7: they just don't understand that at all.
Speaker 1: So it's always interesting. Like you know, I spent a
Speaker 1: good deal of time with Venezuelan people coming to the
Speaker 1: United States, so have recently arrived in the United States,
Speaker 1: and it's funny to see how people represent their operation
Speaker 1: to Maduro, like because at first I'll be like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's guys an American, so they're like, oh, it'd be great.
Speaker 1: The Americans came to liberate ats and like, you know,
Speaker 1: what a wonderful country. And then like, once people begin
Speaker 1: to feel comfortable and safe with you and you talk more,
Speaker 1: everybody knows we don't have it all figure out either.
Speaker 1: Everybody knows the history right like, and then people, yes,
Speaker 1: of course have a wide and varied range of things
Speaker 1: that they would love to see in Venezuela, but they
Speaker 1: are united behind seeing an end to dictatorship yeah and
Speaker 1: stay violent.
Speaker 5: Yeah no.
Speaker 7: And I think that's honestly kind of like a beautiful
Speaker 7: thing where, you know, in spite of our differences, because
Speaker 7: I may have differences with other people who may be
Speaker 7: moderates or right wing or whatever, but we've all united
Speaker 7: against this like bigger evil. And I think that's something
Speaker 7: that I wish actually the US could learn about, right
Speaker 7: putting their differences aside to actually like tackle that bigger evil.
Speaker 7: I think that's something that US should learn about us.
Speaker 7: How we've been able to do that. How you know,
Speaker 7: we can all say, you know, we may not agree
Speaker 7: on on how certain things are done, but we all
Speaker 7: agree on what needs to be done, which is you know,
Speaker 7: like getting rid of this regime, right, So yeah, I
Speaker 7: mean it's it's actually pretty pretty cool. And although it's
Speaker 7: not always easy because again, like you have, like in
Speaker 7: any country, we have all sorts of different opinions going on,
Speaker 7: it is really nice to see everyone united for one
Speaker 7: thing and one reason and that's really the important thing.
Speaker 7: So so you know, I wish other countries could maybe
Speaker 7: learn a little bit about that too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, left in this country could learn a lot from
Speaker 1: the way that, like a vast variety of left organizations
Speaker 1: in Venezuela have managed to unite with organizations that are
Speaker 1: more centrist, so straight up on the right, Yeah, to
Speaker 1: achieve at least one goal, with the understanding that they
Speaker 1: still retain disagreements that are pro found.
Speaker 6: Other things exactly.
Speaker 1: That's something we can learn a lot from. And like,
Speaker 1: I'm always kind of in awe of the capacity for
Speaker 1: solidarity that I see, especially from Venezuelan people, like and
Speaker 1: I think it comes from in part, like decades of
Speaker 1: dictatorship and earn of hardship more generally, right, But like
Speaker 1: the continuous resolve that I've seen to get through it
Speaker 1: together rather than for each person to get their own
Speaker 1: and sort of leave the rest behind. Yeah, it's remarkable, genuinely,
Speaker 1: like seeing again, like a lot of my experience, I
Speaker 1: have not been in Karrakas for probably fifteen years, maybe longer.
Speaker 1: It's seeing people in the diaspora and migrants, but like
Speaker 1: people who have grown so used to the state ironically
Speaker 1: failing to provide the basic necessities of life that they've
Speaker 1: got used to just obtaining them and from each other. Like,
Speaker 1: even if those people are not anarchists, they are probably
Speaker 1: doing more mutual aid than people who spend a lot
Speaker 1: of their time being anarchists on the internet. Yeah, Like
Speaker 1: that's a beautiful thing that we should be in aura
Speaker 1: of rather than invalidating. It's so many people on the
Speaker 1: left e.
Speaker 7: And I think that's something that really starts with our
Speaker 7: own crisis, because I remember at the height of the famine, right,
Speaker 7: I mean I'm speaking maybe like twenty thirteen fourteen around time,
Speaker 7: because by twenty seventeen, when there was like another big
Speaker 7: like famine going on, I was not in Venezuela actually,
Speaker 7: but I remember when that was happening, like it was
Speaker 7: very common, Like, hey, so in my backyard we had
Speaker 7: plant takes and our neighbor had avocado, so you we
Speaker 7: would like exchange things somebody needed anything, like if somebody's
Speaker 7: grandmother needed like this medication that can only be found
Speaker 7: in like this one place in Karakas, like. But then
Speaker 7: I didn't have gas, but maybe like my cousin had
Speaker 7: gas so that we could drive to Karakas like. So
Speaker 7: that's kind of how it worked back there, Like we
Speaker 7: had that solidarity towards each other, and I think obviously
Speaker 7: if we go abroad, we're going to continue showing that
Speaker 7: same Yeah, I like that same attitude because it's just
Speaker 7: like part of who we are.
Speaker 1: I guess, yeah, it just seems to be very much
Speaker 1: like part of the character of community. It's even like
Speaker 1: when I was there, you know, a decade before that,
Speaker 1: quite a decade maybe sometime before that. It's funny, I
Speaker 1: went to this place where they're having like a revolution
Speaker 1: which was extremely grounded in state power, and came out
Speaker 1: realizing that the state is not the vehicle for human
Speaker 1: liberation and the other people are just I just find this,
Speaker 1: this impulse on the left to invalidate and and like
Speaker 1: therefore refuse to learn from Venezuelan people so frustrating. It's
Speaker 1: like a mile phrase. But like what can people do?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 1: Like, We're in a situation now where we have like
Speaker 1: Maduro without Maduda rail, but we have Delsa doing like
Speaker 1: tweeting how much he likes Donald Trump all the time.
Speaker 1: We are the worst of all possible outcomes. Really, right,
Speaker 1: we still have this apparatus for repression. But at the
Speaker 1: same time, the US is basically engaged in a colonial
Speaker 1: relationship of extraction of resources and anything else it wants
Speaker 1: from Venezuela. Like, how can people better be in solidarity
Speaker 1: instead of like trying to force you all into one
Speaker 1: box or another box. Yeah, if we assume most of
Speaker 1: our audiences in Europe or the United States, right, and they, yeah,
Speaker 1: there haven't been big Like we're in solidarity with the
Speaker 1: Venezuelan anarchists or even the Venezuelan socialist or communists who
Speaker 1: are opposed to Maduro to DELTI Now.
Speaker 7: For non Venezuelans, I think the key thing is to
Speaker 7: speak about this from a complete perspective. The whole perspective,
Speaker 7: because what's the issue. And I can tell you personally.
Speaker 7: Sometimes I see, I don't know, like anti imperialists, you know,
Speaker 7: US get out of ven Azula protests, and I would
Speaker 7: love to join because I want the US out of
Speaker 7: my country.
Speaker 6: But then I see them with pro Maduro.
Speaker 7: Signs or just like free Maduro or you know, talking
Speaker 7: positively about the regime, and then I'm like, ugh, actually,
Speaker 7: I'm not going to participate in that. So you know,
Speaker 7: you're actively excluding Venezuelan voices by doing these kinds of
Speaker 7: unilateral thing. And what do I mean by unilateral? So
Speaker 7: I understand that many let's say Western non Venezuelans are
Speaker 7: speaking and looking at things from their own perspective, which
Speaker 7: is Trump is a bad guy.
Speaker 6: He's not going to do anything positive.
Speaker 7: We know the history of the US, and so they
Speaker 7: are from their own perspective. They see what they're bad
Speaker 7: guy is doing, right right from the Venezuelan perspective, we
Speaker 7: also see what our bad guy is doing. Like we're
Speaker 7: speaking up about this particular bad guy more than what
Speaker 7: we are about.
Speaker 6: Trump, the other bad guy.
Speaker 7: It's kind of like we have two different perspectives here
Speaker 7: and both are looking at their own right, And so
Speaker 7: the issue here is that those two perspectives are not combined, right.
Speaker 7: So I would say the first thing you need to
Speaker 7: understand is that you know, I understand why you're looking
Speaker 7: at things from your own perspective, but you also have
Speaker 7: to include Venezuelan perspectives in your activism in order for
Speaker 7: them to actually be productive towards the Venezuelan people, right,
Speaker 7: Because when you say, you know Fremaduro and you know
Speaker 7: us get out of Venezuela, you're still not addressing the
Speaker 7: necessities of the Venezuelan people, right, which is we need
Speaker 7: to get out of the regime. Sure, like one of
Speaker 7: those necessities is the US getting the fuck out of there,
Speaker 7: but you're not addressing the main issue.
Speaker 6: That has plagued us for the past thirty years.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 7: So when you're not doing that, and that's a dangerous
Speaker 7: thing about you know, conversations like that of Venezuela or
Speaker 7: Cuba or even Iran as well. When you speak about
Speaker 7: things from one specific perspective, when you omit one side,
Speaker 7: you're making it seem like the other side is better,
Speaker 7: when it should be abundantly clear that both the US
Speaker 7: and Maduda need to be out in order for Venezuela
Speaker 7: to actually be free. Right, So I think it's key,
Speaker 7: it is very necessary that when we have these like
Speaker 7: free Venezuela protests, it's not just about the US, but
Speaker 7: it's also protesting the Madula regime, right because otherwise what
Speaker 7: you're going to do is you're going to exclude many
Speaker 7: people who also want the US to back off from
Speaker 7: your own protests.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 6: And if you know it's it gets even.
Speaker 7: Worse because I've seen Venezuelan activists actually getting you know,
Speaker 7: pushed out of conversations on Venezuela because they're talking about
Speaker 7: you know what I'm telling you right now, right, so
Speaker 7: they're talking about what the regime has done and maybe
Speaker 7: focusing on the regime well, also mentioning that the US
Speaker 7: should like, you know, they know US history, but they're
Speaker 7: focusing on the Venezuelan perspective because it's a Venezuelan that's
Speaker 7: what you want to bring into the conversation, right, Like
Speaker 7: non Venezuelans can go ahead and out of that you know,
Speaker 7: anti peerless part of the conversation or you know, perspective
Speaker 7: to the conversation. But they do need to make space
Speaker 7: for the Venezuelans who also need to speak out of
Speaker 7: the regime, right, So it needs to be a combination
Speaker 7: of both, and in your advocacy you have to include
Speaker 7: both at the same time always because again, if you
Speaker 7: don't speak about one, then you're sort of like portraying
Speaker 7: the other one is like the good side, right, And
Speaker 7: what that does is that continues to isolate Venezuelan's I mean,
Speaker 7: including myself, Like I said, I can't even go to
Speaker 7: free and as well protest because I'm never going to be,
Speaker 7: you know, next to somebody chanting free ma duro.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 7: So that's like the key thing that the leftist, like
Speaker 7: non Venezuelan leftists need to understand.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think a lot about how people on the
Speaker 1: left for some reason, and this is particularly odd with
Speaker 1: the fact that we have lived through a genocide in
Speaker 1: Gaza for two and a half years, the people seem
Speaker 1: to only be able to understand solidarity with states and
Speaker 1: not with people. And we have the Palestinians right, a
Speaker 1: stateless nation. People seem to understand that there to an
Speaker 1: extent right, albeit that for many people like Palatinians, statehood
Speaker 1: is a solution to the problem. It just seems to
Speaker 1: be such a condemnation of the organizing or much of
Speaker 1: the left that people cannot and this is my general
Speaker 1: frustration with the world, well one of them. They can't
Speaker 1: think outside of the state model. They cannot conceive of
Speaker 1: an alternative that does not already exist. Yeah, even though
Speaker 1: there are movements outside of the state right, like a
Speaker 1: Kurdish struggling in the north Easyria for example, it's one,
Speaker 1: but like I don't know, like we should be able
Speaker 1: to dream of a better world or a beautiful life,
Speaker 1: and it seems like so many people have forgotten that
Speaker 1: that's what being on the left is about. And they
Speaker 1: identify as revolutionaries, but they're extremely reactionary in their politics
Speaker 1: and their goals. Like, yeah, it must be so strange
Speaker 1: to come from. I don't know how old you were.
Speaker 1: When do you remember like very early Chevismo.
Speaker 6: I remember parts of it is like a memory.
Speaker 7: So I was born in ninety seven, So okay, early
Speaker 7: Chevismo was like a fever dream.
Speaker 6: I remember, you know, during like the.
Speaker 7: And all that, and yeah, I would like go outside
Speaker 7: of like my apartment and it's like like go to
Speaker 7: my window, Like we used to live in a building
Speaker 7: and we would like take out pots in like cast
Speaker 7: roles and start basing and everyone, and then that was
Speaker 7: like my favorite part of the day because I, as
Speaker 7: a kid, didn't really understand that it was a protest,
Speaker 7: but I loved banging on things.
Speaker 6: So I remember that. I remember like my.
Speaker 7: Parents not being able to find certain things that maybe
Speaker 7: in the past they could find. I remember like at
Speaker 7: some points, like not being able to go to school
Speaker 7: because like there was something happening. It's like you're reallyving
Speaker 7: his own thing. But I remember thinking, I hope there's
Speaker 7: another cool so that I don't have to go to
Speaker 7: school tomorrow. Yeah, that's kind of like what I remember
Speaker 7: of early Chevismore. I also remember as well, sort of
Speaker 7: seeing the division, and that to me is like the biggest,
Speaker 7: most impactful memory, right, the division that existed so on
Speaker 7: my family. I remember, just for context, like part of
Speaker 7: my family, half of my family is like middle class
Speaker 7: and the other half of my family was working class,
Speaker 7: like you know, brown working class from the coasts, right,
Speaker 7: so shout out to Okuma. So you know, it was
Speaker 7: like different realities, different necessities, And I remember both sides
Speaker 7: of the family arguing a lot, Like there was a
Speaker 7: lot of division, very similar to what's going on in
Speaker 7: the US right now in terms of division, right, yeah,
Speaker 7: where there were like heated arguments, people did not speak
Speaker 7: to each other, people hated each other because of you know,
Speaker 7: like part of my family was Cha Vista, the other
Speaker 7: part was opposition or whatever.
Speaker 5: It was.
Speaker 7: That was one of the biggest things that I remember,
Speaker 7: was like half of my family hating the other half
Speaker 7: of my family because they had different backgrounds and different
Speaker 7: political stances. So so yeah, that was a big thing,
Speaker 7: as well as the fanaticism right existed, especially yeh list
Speaker 7: does I mean remember my grandmother had like a poster
Speaker 7: of Chavis and like like a figurines and she dyed
Speaker 7: her hair red because she supported the regime whatever. So
Speaker 7: so that's one of the things I remember the most,
Speaker 7: is my family, both sides like hating each other because
Speaker 7: of it is And it's something that I'm seeing in
Speaker 7: the US right now a lot, and I think it's
Speaker 7: operating in a very similar fashion.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it does seem to be. And like, did your
Speaker 1: family reconcile at some point, Oh, do you still have
Speaker 1: people who are like die hard?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 7: So, for example, my grandmother that I told you about, Yeah,
Speaker 7: she says that she's still Chavista but she's not Malis.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've had this done too.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 7: It's just like, you know, she supports like what the
Speaker 7: revolution initially meant, but like she doesn't support Maduro, right yeah.
Speaker 7: Or for example, like her husband, my grandfather, he's just like,
Speaker 7: you know, this revolution was all bullshit. We thought that
Speaker 7: this was going to be good, but they ended up
Speaker 7: being absolute traders, like you know, they ended up not
Speaker 7: doing what they promised to do, right, So it was
Speaker 7: all just disappointment. And the other side of my family
Speaker 7: is just like chill, I don't know, like.
Speaker 6: They were just never chevy stuff.
Speaker 7: So that's kind of you are like strong environmentalists, so
Speaker 7: that's why they kind of hated Chavis because they were
Speaker 7: also doing some crazy shit in the Amazons. So it's
Speaker 7: kind of like they do all get along much better, right,
Speaker 7: So that's good, Yeah, I guess because like once I
Speaker 7: realized that actually this guy was not that good, right,
Speaker 7: But that particular side of my family that was Chevistad
Speaker 7: that's how they think right now. Or it's like either
Speaker 7: it was disappointment or that perspective of you know, I
Speaker 7: support Chavis but not Maduo.
Speaker 1: I've heard that from a lot of people, right, like
Speaker 1: what Javis wanted to make Venezuela better for us, and
Speaker 1: like if we just look at the shit he said, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I want people to have enough to eat, I want
Speaker 1: them to have education, I want them to be able
Speaker 1: to go to the hospital. I want them to have
Speaker 1: safe houses. Like I want all those things too. They
Speaker 1: didn't get those things. But like I've heard a lot
Speaker 1: of people say that, like, oh, yeah, we wanted it too,
Speaker 1: so we supported it, but it wasn't We didn't get that.
Speaker 1: We got prisons and cops exactly. And like that stance
Speaker 1: seems to be entirely absent in any discussion of Venezuela,
Speaker 1: which is it's so common, like you just don't hear
Speaker 1: the like it's not like a left critique from other
Speaker 1: left stances. It's a left critique from the same place
Speaker 1: that chav Is more claimed to come from. And it's
Speaker 1: completely absent in our discourse. And like I can't, well,
Speaker 1: it's because we don't talk to people from Venezuela. But yeah, yes,
Speaker 1: it's extremely frustrating, and I think like there's a lot
Speaker 1: that the United States can learn because we're already seeing
Speaker 1: large numbers of people being like, oh, yeah, I've voted
Speaker 1: for Trump one, two, three times, and now something has
Speaker 1: alienated them, right, whether it's mass deportations, whether it's a
Speaker 1: war with a run, whether it's the economy being shit,
Speaker 1: whatever it is, Like, we need to learn how to
Speaker 1: allow people to change their minds or like to get better,
Speaker 1: like the vendants, where in opposition wouldn't be what it
Speaker 1: was if they said anybody who supported chabb As at
Speaker 1: any point can fuck off, we don't want you, right, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it wouldn't work, It wouldn't function. And I think
Speaker 1: if we would listen to people, there's so much that
Speaker 1: we could learn from that, but we seem so locked
Speaker 1: in on talking down to them instead.
Speaker 7: That yeah, I mean exactly, That's what I mean by
Speaker 7: like it reminds me of that like division. You know,
Speaker 7: it's almost like rap, right, Like people are foaming at
Speaker 7: the mouth. That's kind of like the level of division
Speaker 7: that I remember growing up. And to be honest, a
Speaker 7: lot of what's going on in the US is eerily
Speaker 7: similar to what I grew up seeing. I think both
Speaker 7: Trump and Chavas are very similar kinds of people. And
Speaker 7: you know, I used to live in the US. Now
Speaker 7: I live in Europe, but that's one of the reasons
Speaker 7: I decided to leave, because I saw many similarities to
Speaker 7: what happened in my country, and I decided to just
Speaker 7: Skidadle as soon as like, because I sort of knew
Speaker 7: where it was all going.
Speaker 6: But I knew where it was all.
Speaker 7: Going because of what I already lived through. There was
Speaker 7: actually one more thing that I'm thinking about it that
Speaker 7: it didn't get a chance.
Speaker 6: But you mentioned Palestine. I think it's really.
Speaker 7: Interesting because the school that I went to, actually, Venezuela
Speaker 7: has really big population of Middle Eastern people, among them Palestinians.
Speaker 7: There was a Palestine club in my hometown and I
Speaker 7: remember during was it like twenty twelve, twenty fourteen, Again
Speaker 7: this was years ago, but twenty twelve maybe twenty fourteen,
Speaker 7: At some point there were protests la Huadimbus if you
Speaker 7: know them, during Lazwuardimbas. There were protests for Venezuela whatever.
Speaker 6: And I remember that I had.
Speaker 7: Many Palestinian, like Palestinian Venezuelan classmates, and they were protesting both, right,
Speaker 7: So they had Palestinian flags and they had Venezuelan flags,
Speaker 7: and they were protesting for both peoples. So you know,
Speaker 7: that's like an example whenever people say like try to divide,
Speaker 7: and you know sayy like oh, like the Maludu is
Speaker 7: like pro Palestine whatever. I think of my friends in
Speaker 7: school where they were like, no, actually, we're Palestinian Venezuelans
Speaker 7: and we don't like what's going on in either place.
Speaker 7: So because we do have a very big Middle Eastern population, again,
Speaker 7: many Palestinians, many Lebanese people who are not unaware of
Speaker 7: what has been going on in the Middle East, right,
Speaker 7: So that's also something to be added to the conversation,
Speaker 7: is you know when we talk about these things like
Speaker 7: they're not isolated, and precisely because we're not isolated, that's
Speaker 7: why we should, like you said, like be more in
Speaker 7: support of the people rather.
Speaker 6: Than the states.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 7: I wanted to bring up like that little bit of
Speaker 7: like that little memory that I had because I just
Speaker 7: remember the image of it, of my friends doing that.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's very similar in a sense, I guess to, like,
Speaker 1: I think a lot about how the Assad regime used
Speaker 1: Palestinian people, right, like it would constantly talk about fucking
Speaker 1: solidarity with Palestine, and it had all these tanks and
Speaker 1: all these guns and all these planes and bombs, and
Speaker 1: it turned them all on its certain people. Niah. It
Speaker 1: didn't use its state power to liberate Palestine, it would
Speaker 1: have been destroyed by the idea of the data, I imagine,
Speaker 1: but it used it to stake powered to kill its
Speaker 1: own people. Yeah, it is so frustrating that we saw
Speaker 1: that happen and the world still allows people to tokenize
Speaker 1: the Palestinian people right and to use them as a
Speaker 1: shield definitely against the oppression of their own people. I
Speaker 1: think a lot of people will be thinking or listening
Speaker 1: and being like, well, I haven't really heard from Venezuelan voices,
Speaker 1: or I mean they might not know any people from Venezuela.
Speaker 1: Where can people do more to listen if they want
Speaker 1: to as they approach this issue in so much as
Speaker 1: people are still approaching it because half the US media's
Speaker 1: forgotten about Venezuela already.
Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah, there's a lot going on, for sure.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but.
Speaker 7: I want to say, like, this might be a little
Speaker 7: bit annoying, but learn Spanish, right, if you're going to
Speaker 7: ask it for a specific group of people, at least
Speaker 7: learn the language you know so that you actually know
Speaker 7: what people talking about. Right, not everybody speaks English. Not
Speaker 7: everybody's gonna speak your language. So if you're actually gonna
Speaker 7: take advocacy for Venezuelas seriously, then you should learn the
Speaker 7: language straight up so that you it's easier for you
Speaker 7: to get into these conversations. See what local activists are saying,
Speaker 7: see what the news are saying, like see even what
Speaker 7: our leaders are saying.
Speaker 6: Right. So I think that's one of the first things.
Speaker 6: I think. Another thing, I mean, there are.
Speaker 7: Some like English language Instagram accounts who are like posting things, yeah,
Speaker 7: but I think the biggest thing is to be for
Speaker 7: the people.
Speaker 6: And what do I mean by that?
Speaker 7: Everyone wants to claim that they are for the people,
Speaker 7: but very few people.
Speaker 6: Actually are for the people, right.
Speaker 7: So what happens is they might hear like, I don't know,
Speaker 7: a Venezuela in person saying, oh thank you USA for
Speaker 7: taking out maluro do whatever you want want whatever. They
Speaker 7: might hear like the typical magrasolanos, you know, and you
Speaker 7: might hear all of these perspectives that are really coming
Speaker 7: from not a place of them being fascist or whatever,
Speaker 7: but coming from a trauma. So I think that if
Speaker 7: you want to inform yourself. You need to develop the
Speaker 7: ability to think critically about what's going on and be
Speaker 7: able to understand who are these people and why do
Speaker 7: they have this perspective? Right, So they have this perspective
Speaker 7: not because they were slave owners back in Venezuela, not
Speaker 7: because they're white, some of them are not white. It's
Speaker 7: not because they are like pro fascism or they necessarily
Speaker 7: love the US, right, but it's coming from a place
Speaker 7: of trauma.
Speaker 6: And why do they have that trauma?
Speaker 7: Well, they have that trauma because all of the abuses
Speaker 7: that were committed, like to the Venezuelan people, were on
Speaker 7: behalf of this quote unquote socialism, right, So yeah, they
Speaker 7: were committed in the name of of the left whatever.
Speaker 7: So that's why all of a sudden they claim to
Speaker 7: be very right wing, although if you speak to them,
Speaker 7: you might ask them, well, what do you want to
Speaker 7: see in your country and you're like, well, this doesn't
Speaker 7: sound very pro capitalism to me. But I guess the
Speaker 7: ability to understand these people instead of calling them like
Speaker 7: CIA agents, fascists, like they're stupid, they're idiots, don't listen
Speaker 7: to them. The diasporas just full of like massad agents whatever,
Speaker 7: you want to call them, right, like I've seen every
Speaker 7: athol in the book, like any excuse in the book, like.
Speaker 6: To not listen to these people.
Speaker 7: Yeah, but I think this is to listen to these
Speaker 7: people and try to understand and again think critically. Okay, well,
Speaker 7: I understand that maybe what they are saying is not
Speaker 7: necessarily great, because I also understand that the US has
Speaker 7: done this, this and this, and that they are coming
Speaker 7: from a place of trauma that perhaps they do know
Speaker 7: what the US is history. But again, they're just desperate.
Speaker 7: But let's get to the bottom of this. What is
Speaker 7: their root con the crisis in Venezuela. Right, So why
Speaker 7: do they have all these like crazy ideas?
Speaker 6: Why are they so crazy?
Speaker 7: So because of everything that they've endured in Venezuela. So
Speaker 7: don't try to focus on like the shallow part of
Speaker 7: it all, like try to go to the deeper end
Speaker 7: and that way you will truly understand what is going on.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 7: Not to ignore these people or just like dismiss them
Speaker 7: as a B or C or like a CIA fascist whatever.
Speaker 6: They're not fascists.
Speaker 7: They're just people who are traumatized, and it's really important
Speaker 7: for you to understand their trauma in order to address
Speaker 7: the issues that actually concern them and to actually have
Speaker 7: communication with these people and include them in your advocacy,
Speaker 7: and who knows, maybe you'll be able to convert some
Speaker 7: to your side to right, which I think that's been
Speaker 7: one of the most critical mistakes that many people on
Speaker 7: the left have made, is that, you know, we have
Speaker 7: all these Venezuelans who again claim to be right wing.
Speaker 7: And to a second, why say they claim to be
Speaker 7: but they claim to be right wing, And again it's
Speaker 7: not just because of the mad Madula and Chavist regime.
Speaker 7: It's not just because all of the abuses committed to
Speaker 7: them were in the name of socialism, but it is
Speaker 7: also because the international left has reacted so negatively towards
Speaker 7: our cause that you know, many Venezuelans decided to say, hey,
Speaker 7: you know what, I'm right wing or I'm moderate, or
Speaker 7: you know what, I love the US now because all
Speaker 7: the people who are anti West are pro the regime
Speaker 7: that is killing my people, right right, So what's that
Speaker 7: What that is doing is like actually pushing these people
Speaker 7: even further when you call you know, these like.
Speaker 6: Magaslos, because.
Speaker 7: When you call them like Ashist or whatever, or Cia,
Speaker 7: you're just pushing them even further, and at the end
Speaker 7: that sucks like for us because then we're going to
Speaker 7: be the ones We're going to be politically confused, and
Speaker 7: god knows that's going to lead us to some crazy places.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 7: So I think the first thing is actually having empathy
Speaker 7: towards people and using your ability to think critically and
Speaker 7: hearing people out who maybe you were told not to
Speaker 7: listen to and thinking, Okay, well, I don't agree with
Speaker 7: what you're saying on the surface, but I understand what
Speaker 7: your roote concern is. Therefore, I think we should talk
Speaker 7: about this and I can understand that in order to
Speaker 7: inform myself what is truly happening to these people that
Speaker 7: are making them believe these crazy things like Trump has
Speaker 7: fave us, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's like really important to remember that
Speaker 1: you might come across from Venezuela and who might be
Speaker 1: advocating for oh, someone from Iran or someone from one
Speaker 1: of these other places you might be like advocating for intervention. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and like it's ever really important not to be like, Okay,
Speaker 1: this person goes in the mag of box for me,
Speaker 1: because like there are Venezuelan people who are going to
Speaker 1: go in that box, right, But like, we have a
Speaker 1: good deal of people who like they're obviously not going
Speaker 1: to be opposed to migration in they themselves some migrants exactly.
Speaker 1: That doesn't always apply. There's the famous video of the
Speaker 1: Turkish guy complaining about migrants as he enters the United States.
Speaker 6: Like, oh, yeah, I mean, of course, I guess you're
Speaker 6: trying to.
Speaker 1: Say, yeah, yeah, Like there are people whose views on
Speaker 1: like the world and the way it should be might
Speaker 1: not be that different from yours, and like we only
Speaker 1: find out by engaging with each other in good faith
Speaker 1: and like as people, not as tropes. Yeah, which I
Speaker 1: think is in a huge part of the problem. I
Speaker 1: do think the language barrier is an issue. So many
Speaker 1: people on the left want to talk about places but
Speaker 1: not talk to the people and can't. Yeah, and then
Speaker 1: we only see a small subset of discourse translated into English.
Speaker 7: I mean that's kind of what I mean by like,
Speaker 7: you know, everyone wants to be for the people, but
Speaker 7: very few people actually are because being for the people
Speaker 7: takes a lot of effort, because you need to learn languages,
Speaker 7: you need to visit places, you need to talk to
Speaker 7: people who you might on the surface disagree with you
Speaker 7: might have to think about what they tell you in
Speaker 7: order to come to a conclusion yourself about what's actually
Speaker 7: going on and how you can actually support these people
Speaker 7: while not compromising your own beliefs and your own knowledge
Speaker 7: and experiences. Right, So that takes much work. So that's
Speaker 7: what I meant by that, Like very few, yeah, for
Speaker 7: the people in that sense where they engage and actually
Speaker 7: go and try to talk to us. And I think
Speaker 7: that's the best way of being informed of any issue,
Speaker 7: is just talking to the people.
Speaker 6: But it takes a lot of work. It takes a
Speaker 6: lot of work.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, But that's what solidarity is like, it's
Speaker 1: putting in the work to take care of each other exactly.
Speaker 1: It's been a failure of the non campus left that
Speaker 1: we have not done more. We have not reached out
Speaker 1: to more people in Venezuela, that we've not used our platforms,
Speaker 1: so we've not shared their voices, that we haven't done
Speaker 1: more to push back on this idea that like the
Speaker 1: only options to Venezuela are neoliberal neo imperialism, or maybe
Speaker 1: neoliberal so is what we do anymore, but American imperialism
Speaker 1: or like this anti imperialism of idiots? Is there anything
Speaker 1: you'd like to plug? Do you like people to find
Speaker 1: you on the internet or some other stuff you'd like
Speaker 1: to direct people to. Maybe they can call you a
Speaker 1: mossad or cia or whatever.
Speaker 6: Yeah, you can find me on my Instagram account.
Speaker 7: It's E dot M dot A r I n Okay,
Speaker 7: so just like my name deconstructing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 7: can send it to you later.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 7: Trying to think of like what else to say, but
Speaker 7: I mean, yeah, like going back a little bit, I
Speaker 7: just wanted to clarify this because I brought up a
Speaker 7: few times. But what I was saying, you know, like
Speaker 7: looking at is Maga solanos and what I mean by
Speaker 7: like their quote unquote right or not actually right wing,
Speaker 7: like if you speak to them. And there's a really
Speaker 7: good video that the Sky made but it's in Spanish
Speaker 7: talking about this. But what I mean is many people
Speaker 7: who are magasolanos. You ask them what do you want
Speaker 7: to see in Venezuela, And what they want is affordable housing,
Speaker 7: affordable healthcare, clean water, proper environmental policies. They don't want
Speaker 7: any more abuses committed to the indigenous communities, particular those
Speaker 7: in the Araco Minerooco. So you ask these people what
Speaker 7: they want, and this is what they want, right, So
Speaker 7: when they just say that they're right wing, they say
Speaker 7: that they're right wing simply because they are traumatized from,
Speaker 7: you know, this apparently socialist regime which was anything but
Speaker 7: and people on the left sort of, you know, just
Speaker 7: supporting that regime and isolating them and treating them like
Speaker 7: absolute crap. So they're traumatized by both of those things,
Speaker 7: and that's why they claim to be in this position.
Speaker 7: But if you actually talk to them, that is not
Speaker 7: the case. Keep that in mind, because it's funny to
Speaker 7: me when many people say, oh, you guys just believe propaganda.
Speaker 7: That's why you're pro Trump, and that's why your right wing,
Speaker 7: because you consumed the CIA propaganda. You guys are blinded
Speaker 7: by propaganda, when in reality.
Speaker 6: What that doing is that is taking away.
Speaker 7: The accountability that many on the left should maybe you know,
Speaker 7: maybe think about, because it hasn't just been CIA propaganda, like,
Speaker 7: it's also just leftists acting like assholes, Like that's something
Speaker 7: that has also pushed many Venezuelans away from the left.
Speaker 7: It's not just the CIA spreading propaganda it's also that
Speaker 7: the Left has acted horribly with Venezuelans, and that has
Speaker 7: also pushed people away. And I think if we're able
Speaker 7: to solve that issue, If I think if the Left
Speaker 7: is able to see Venezuelans as human beings and to
Speaker 7: have a different approach, such as you know, with you
Speaker 7: know what we've talked about earlier, I think we're going
Speaker 7: to be able to have a better conversation and have
Speaker 7: a better relationship between these two communities and actually get
Speaker 7: somewhere productive.
Speaker 6: But I just wanted to bring that up because I am.
Speaker 7: So tired of seeing people saying it's all CIA propaganda
Speaker 7: and not really thinking, well, actually, we have also done
Speaker 7: some pretty bad things and that's why these people kind
Speaker 7: of have taken a dislike to us. So yeah, I
Speaker 7: think I think that's pretty much it. Like, in conclusion,
Speaker 7: just here hear us out. We're human, and we're not
Speaker 7: the perfect victims. We're not a monolith. We were human. Yes,
Speaker 7: so we should be spoken to as humans and thought
Speaker 7: about as humans, not as some chess piece in this
Speaker 7: political game. Just include us into the conversation, I think
Speaker 7: is the most important thing anyone listening to this should
Speaker 7: take away.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's a really good place. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much for sharing some of that time with us.
Speaker 7: No, thank you so much for giving me the space
Speaker 7: to talk. I mean, it's very necessary, as you might imagine,
Speaker 7: for our voices to be heard and be put out there.
Speaker 7: Because I'm lucky enough to be multi lingual, I try
Speaker 7: to do my best and speak in other languages so
Speaker 7: other people understand what's going on in our minds and
Speaker 7: in our communities. So I am very grateful that you're
Speaker 7: able to have me here and to actually listen. It's
Speaker 7: not something many people do, so I really do valuate great.
Speaker 1: Thank you, great.
Speaker 3: Hello, and welcome back to it could happen here.
Speaker 8: I'm your occasional host, Molly Conger, and I'm joined today
Speaker 8: by a very special Michael Edison Hayden.
Speaker 3: Hi, how's it going, Thanks for being here.
Speaker 8: You may know Mike from his work as an investigative
Speaker 8: journalist and an expert on far right extremism. He currently
Speaker 8: co hosts Posting Through It, a weekly news podcast with
Speaker 8: fellow veteran of the far right beat, Jared Holt. But
Speaker 8: today we're talking about his new book, Strange People on
Speaker 8: the Hill, How Extremism tore apart a small American town.
Speaker 8: It comes out April seventh, twenty twenty six, but you
Speaker 8: can go ahead and pre order it now anywhere you
Speaker 8: buy books, and make sure you ask for it at
Speaker 8: your local library and your local independent bookstore.
Speaker 3: Mike, thanks so much for coming on. I'm excited to
Speaker 3: talk about this.
Speaker 5: Thank you. I appreciate it. Yeah.
Speaker 8: I was worried that I wasn't gonna have time to
Speaker 8: read the whole book. I mean, you talk about this
Speaker 8: a lot in the book, right, the stresses of covering
Speaker 8: this beat. But I sat down to read it and
Speaker 8: I read it in one sitting. It is very compelling. Wow,
Speaker 8: But it's not the book I thought it was, you know.
Speaker 8: So when your publicists sent this to me, I thought, oh, phenomenal.
Speaker 8: This is a book about Peter Brimlow and the racism
Speaker 8: Castle in West Virginia. I would love to read a
Speaker 8: book about Peter Brimlow and the races in Castle.
Speaker 3: And it's not really is it?
Speaker 8: Like the Brimlows are the strange people on the hill
Speaker 8: and they sort of stay on the hill.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 8: You have a couple of encounters with them in the book,
Speaker 8: But for the most part, it's a book about the town.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, it's about the town. And I'm glad that
Speaker 5: you mentioned that. I really didn't want to write a
Speaker 5: book that was about these villains that have been, you know,
Speaker 5: populating our culture for the last ten plus years that
Speaker 5: just seem to get unlimited traction on social media. There's
Speaker 5: nothing wrong with talking about them, and there's nothing certainly
Speaker 5: reporting on them, because I did my share of that,
Speaker 5: you know, day in and day out when I was
Speaker 5: with SBLC, for instance. I think that all that is important,
Speaker 5: and there's different ways to do it and do it effectively.
Speaker 5: But I think for a book, I wanted to focus
Speaker 5: more on what these people and this culture that is
Speaker 5: surrounding them is doing to every people.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 8: I was just I was so startled by what it
Speaker 8: wasn't and then so engrossed by what it was. But
Speaker 8: just quickly for the listeners, tell us what the book
Speaker 8: is not about. Tell us who Peter Brimlow is and
Speaker 8: v dare and how they ended up with a castle.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well it's not totally without him. I mean we
Speaker 5: do get a bit of information about it. Yeah, we
Speaker 5: meet him. Peter kind of came up as a financial reporter.
Speaker 5: That's the short way of understanding, you know, how he
Speaker 5: became America's most influential white nationalist. That's what SPOC labeled him,
Speaker 5: which has covered obviously in the book. And he became
Speaker 5: obsessed with immigration, and in particular heart Seller, which brought
Speaker 5: in tons of people from the developing world. My mother
Speaker 5: came to the country in sixty eight, for example, that
Speaker 5: was like a you know, three years after Heartseller, and
Speaker 5: I wouldn't have been born if not married a white guy,
Speaker 5: and etcetera, etcetera. She came from Egypt. So he became
Speaker 5: obsessed with this and kind of in the way that
Speaker 5: I know, you know a lot about these the way
Speaker 5: some of these minds work, Molly, but in the way
Speaker 5: that some people get obsessed with environmentalism, and then they
Speaker 5: kind of expand that concern to sort of say, well,
Speaker 5: there's too many people, right, there's too many people. There's
Speaker 5: too many people. Well there's too many brown people. That's
Speaker 5: what's destroying the environment. And then they become you know,
Speaker 5: sort of white nationalists minded or anti grand immigrant minded.
Speaker 5: In Briml's case, I really think it was like a
Speaker 5: financial thing, just like this is putting all these different
Speaker 5: strains and whatever, and then it became the financial became
Speaker 5: less of a concern, and the actual anti immigrant thing
Speaker 5: became bigger and bigger for him. In nineteen ninety five,
Speaker 5: he publishes Alienation, which is a book that was actually
Speaker 5: praised by people like David Frum, you know, the very
Speaker 5: same guy who's high hatting about Trump every day. It
Speaker 5: was considered socially acceptable, and then over time I think
Speaker 5: people realize that the book had a very racist undercurrent,
Speaker 5: and it became beloved by Nazis, white nationalists, etc.
Speaker 8: I think if people like David Frum had been honest
Speaker 8: with themselves, it was there all along.
Speaker 3: It was not a subtle undercurrent.
Speaker 5: Fun A side about David From which is that I
Speaker 5: did put it in the investigation into Stephen Miller's private emails.
Speaker 5: Miller shared posts by From on more than one occasion
Speaker 5: about like sort of anti Islam posts, which I think
Speaker 5: is interesting.
Speaker 8: And I think what these people disagree most about is
Speaker 8: how loud you're supposed to say the quiet part.
Speaker 5: Yeah, No, I really do think that that's true. So,
Speaker 5: you know, when Peter became more of a contentious figure,
Speaker 5: he founded Videir, which is a nonprofit that lasted for
Speaker 5: about quarter century.
Speaker 3: Recently died recently double that's.
Speaker 5: Covered in the book. It dies over the course of
Speaker 5: the narrative, and it was hugely influential, usually influential and
Speaker 5: changing the GOP. And at the time when W. Bush
Speaker 5: was president, Brimlow was railing against the GOP to change,
Speaker 5: to move in this nativist direction, and eventually they listen
Speaker 5: to him.
Speaker 8: And so the book sort of starts with, you know,
Speaker 8: twenty nineteen, right, and Peter and his wife, Lydia Brimlow
Speaker 8: have purchased this gigantic castle in the small town of
Speaker 8: Berkeley Springs, West Virginia.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 8: I guess it's not shake It's a medium sized castle.
Speaker 8: I don't know what the scale for castles is. And
Speaker 8: so you become interested in their purchase of this castle,
Speaker 8: and you go to this town and you meet the
Speaker 8: people of Berkeley Springs, the people who are indifferent to
Speaker 8: their presence, the people who are organizing against their presence.
Speaker 8: And it's this really sort of engrossing story of just
Speaker 8: small town drama, this interpersonal drama of these like small
Speaker 8: business owners.
Speaker 3: And the castle is.
Speaker 8: Always there in the background, right, the strange people are
Speaker 8: up on the hill. But it's a story about this
Speaker 8: small town struggle.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think we should just talk about the castle
Speaker 5: real quick, because it's beautiful, and I think that's a
Speaker 5: key thing. I hope when you read it you were like, oh,
Speaker 5: I want to go to Berkeley Springs now, which is
Speaker 5: I've had more than one person who read the book.
Speaker 3: Tell me that I'm going to wait till they leave.
Speaker 5: I've also heard that too, But you know, I know
Speaker 5: the people who are there who despise the Brimlows and
Speaker 5: their ideology, and I wanted to make sure that they
Speaker 5: didn't feel let down by the book, that they felt
Speaker 5: like at least honored to a degree because I really
Speaker 5: want them to be able to recover their business. Their
Speaker 5: business have suffered since Brimlows took over. But just a
Speaker 5: quick thing on this castle. It is absolutely beautiful. It
Speaker 5: should be like a national park or something. It has
Speaker 5: that feel. It was built in eighteen eighty by a
Speaker 5: guy named Samuel Taylor Suit who made it for a
Speaker 5: very very young young girl. I think she's like seventeen
Speaker 5: or something like that.
Speaker 3: It's fitting that Brimlow bought it for his much younger wife.
Speaker 5: Yes, that's true. Yeah, there's a lot of like spiritual
Speaker 5: kind of woo woo stuff in Berkeley Springs, and there's
Speaker 5: a lot of you know, superstition, and a lot of
Speaker 5: people really think that they are carrying on like some
Speaker 5: sort of ghost like thing would carry over from this relationship.
Speaker 5: But he made the castle for her, and he died
Speaker 5: and she took over and went bankrupt, and there was
Speaker 5: also allegedly a murder or something like that took place there.
Speaker 5: And then there's like this kind of turnover from people
Speaker 5: one generation of the next trying to keep the castle going.
Speaker 5: It's always more expensive than it's worth. It's beautiful, it
Speaker 5: overlooks the entire town. The town is tiny, gorgeous, looks
Speaker 5: like a great place to go on vacation. And if
Speaker 5: you imagine, like for Berkeley Springs, the Empire State Building,
Speaker 5: Statue of Liberty Times Square rolled into one, that's what
Speaker 5: the castle is. It's so tiny, and this is the
Speaker 5: main landmark. This is the thing that everybody goes to
Speaker 5: and they go hiking around there and all this stuff.
Speaker 5: So this is a tourist town that attracts a lot
Speaker 5: of LGBQ people from places like Washington, d C. Baltimore,
Speaker 5: a lot of liberals and all of a sudden you
Speaker 5: have this again SPOC labeled white nationalist, anti immigrant, nativist,
Speaker 5: whatever you want to call them. Couple buys this castle, right,
Speaker 5: they decide to buy it. And the way they found
Speaker 5: it is because Lydia Brimlow, who is thirty seven years
Speaker 5: younger than Peter herself and started with him and when
Speaker 5: she was twenty or something like that and he was
Speaker 5: nearly sixty.
Speaker 3: Right, she was an intern at the Heritage Foundation when
Speaker 3: they met.
Speaker 5: Intriguing, Yeah, Heritage and it's interesting, weird in any case,
Speaker 5: she finds it on Zillow. And you remember this period
Speaker 5: very well, I know, But in twenty eighteen or so,
Speaker 5: it became very very difficult for these folks to stage events, right.
Speaker 8: For you know, for unknown reasons, not because they kept
Speaker 8: killing people.
Speaker 5: I don't want to like derail this podcast by bringing
Speaker 5: up Jason Kessler, but Jason Kessler, who we both know
Speaker 5: very well well, who is who secured the permit for
Speaker 5: the Unite the Right event, who has been at different
Speaker 5: times obsessed with both of us, I think were like
Speaker 5: in his top in his top ap all list, Jason
Speaker 5: you know, was readily associated with VIDIA because of his
Speaker 5: contributions to the site and people knew that, and that
Speaker 5: may put even more pressure because the're like, well, this
Speaker 5: Charlottesville guy, right, they unite the right guy is Assai.
Speaker 5: So VIDIA couldn't stage any events. They were very worried
Speaker 5: about counter demonstrators. I think that the counter demonstrators from
Speaker 5: that first Maga era really put the fear of God
Speaker 5: into some of these people. They didn't they were they
Speaker 5: were scared shitless of anti racist, anti fascists, and all
Speaker 5: of a sudden, you got a castle on Zilo a
Speaker 5: million point four and it's got stone walls all over it,
Speaker 5: and hey, we can hold our conferences here. And so
Speaker 5: that's how they got it. They ended up getting it
Speaker 5: for that reason And what happens to the town afterwards is,
Speaker 5: I think is a minor tragedy in our culture that
Speaker 5: hasn't been paid attention to enough.
Speaker 8: Yeah, it is this sort of microcosm of what happened
Speaker 8: to America, right, Like, we don't all have a racism
Speaker 8: castle in our town, but sort of the way this
Speaker 8: castle bears down on this little town kind of mirrors
Speaker 8: the way the influx of these extreme right wing ideas
Speaker 8: into the GOP, into the administration that governs all of
Speaker 8: us kind of is bearing down on us.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's very smart. I think that's true. I think
Speaker 5: that is one of the reasons that the story spoke
Speaker 5: to me so much that I wanted to pursue it
Speaker 5: for so long. Is it really felt like what everybody
Speaker 5: was going through in the town and readers will learn this.
Speaker 5: Imagine business owners who are catering to many liberals there
Speaker 5: and stuck in Morgan County, which is seventy five percent
Speaker 5: Trump and ninety percent white, and they're panicking because they
Speaker 5: need to keep people going in. The press goes a
Speaker 5: long way in Berkeley Springs, so it's a little place.
Speaker 5: They don't know how to push back. Someone buys private property.
Speaker 5: What can you do? But they start to organize and
Speaker 5: try to figure out a way to urge Brimlow to
Speaker 5: leave or to make it so difficult for him that
Speaker 5: he leaves. And yes, it is absolutely a symbolism for
Speaker 5: what everybody's going through. And there are people all over
Speaker 5: the country in places red states where you might find
Speaker 5: people who you wouldn't expect kind of protesting against TESLA
Speaker 5: or something like that. And it could be kind of corny,
Speaker 5: these type of people who like corny online and easily ignored.
Speaker 5: They're all over the country feeling that exact dread that
Speaker 5: you're talking about, where something very like above them is
Speaker 5: bearing down and pushing values that don't align with theirs.
Speaker 8: Right, it's such a specific story about Berkeley Springs, but
Speaker 8: at the same time, this could be almost any talent.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 8: I'm sure you followed the story of what happened in Enid,
Speaker 8: Oklahoma when the identity of europe a guy got on
Speaker 8: their city council and it was this very local, small
Speaker 8: town struggle with these very specific local personalities butting heads.
Speaker 8: But the story's playing out in small towns all over
Speaker 8: America because everyone has, you know, if not a racism castle,
Speaker 8: everyone has a local racist who's making life hard for everyone.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean they're sending right now, to use claviculars
Speaker 5: phrase the Yeah, I mean think about North Idaho, for example.
Speaker 5: I don't get a story for them, for about from
Speaker 5: other Jones, and you know they they have a long
Speaker 5: history with white supremacy, and it's certainly dead red far
Speaker 5: right part of the country. But you have like anti
Speaker 5: Semites like Dave Riley, it's right, Rebecca Hargraves and those
Speaker 5: people encroaching on their everyday politics. Right, they're trying to
Speaker 5: change the politics. They're trying to integrate themselves, you know,
Speaker 5: coming from outside basically to take over, right.
Speaker 8: I mean it's the same thing, is what happened in
Speaker 8: West Virginia, is that these white supremacists are moving to
Speaker 8: these places because they have a perception about what it
Speaker 8: will be like when they get there, that oh, everyone
Speaker 8: who's will agree with me because they're mostly white.
Speaker 3: That's why Dave Riley moved Idaho.
Speaker 5: Yeah, when Peter Brimlow first moved to the Castle, he
Speaker 5: would repeatedly I think he would do it when people
Speaker 5: reach out for comment and be like, you know, Morgan
Speaker 5: County is seventy five percent voted for Trump. It's ninety
Speaker 5: percent white. It's you who have the problem, not us.
Speaker 5: And if you're looking for a more optimistic thing here,
Speaker 5: I've gotten good reviews for the reviews that I've gotten,
Speaker 5: but they keep using like disturbing, like this is so scary.
Speaker 5: Like I think for us it's not as much because
Speaker 5: we've been living in it for in a more intimate way. Right.
Speaker 3: I found it encouraging, Yes, because because you met these people.
Speaker 8: Who were doing their best in this, like bizarre, fucked
Speaker 8: up situation, like they didn't ask for a weird old
Speaker 8: British Nazi to buy.
Speaker 5: The castle exactly.
Speaker 3: They're doing their best, and I think that's beautiful.
Speaker 5: I think I think if you try to tune out
Speaker 5: the reality that we're all going through right now and
Speaker 5: just focus on, you know, your own private world old
Speaker 5: it can be scary because you're letting in Peter Brimlow
Speaker 5: and your chair head while you read the book and
Speaker 5: you're you're you're seeing neighbors kind of turning on one another,
Speaker 5: and you're seeing me go through a mental health crisis
Speaker 5: to the book. I mean, there's these are things that
Speaker 5: for for a normy that maybe a little bit you know,
Speaker 5: you may like the book, but you may be final
Speaker 5: little disturbing. But for people like us who have kind
Speaker 5: of really been through stuff in this and seeing it
Speaker 5: up close on a regular basis, Look, what I like
Speaker 5: about the book is it's it's rare to like say,
Speaker 5: I'm going to praise some white people here, but like
Speaker 5: it's white people saying that they don't want to be
Speaker 5: represented by these values, right, And I think that for me,
Speaker 5: as somebody who comes on outsider, I like, look, so
Speaker 5: normal in New York. I'm just I'm just swarthy, but
Speaker 5: they are there there. I look like Osama bin Laden
Speaker 5: and uh.
Speaker 8: Environment, I don't think you pass as white as you
Speaker 8: do in New York.
Speaker 5: It's very different. Yeah, And I say, like, you know,
Speaker 5: you see them, I mean they they have a choice
Speaker 5: to just kind of say like, actually, yeah, we're you know,
Speaker 5: Peter Brimlow is standing up for my rights. He's standing
Speaker 5: up for me. He's speaking for me. But a lot
Speaker 5: of people are not saying a.
Speaker 8: Guy who thinks a twenty eight hundred dollars political donation
Speaker 8: is a small amount, that's not the average West Virginian's
Speaker 8: idea of a small amount.
Speaker 5: Yes, that is a good thing to pull out. Yes,
Speaker 5: you know. The other thing is the people who ultimately
Speaker 5: in the book tend to defend Brimlow or align with him,
Speaker 5: because basically the town is becomes completely divided, maybe irrevocably,
Speaker 5: so hopefully they'll come together one day. And it's still
Speaker 5: I think the tensions are still quite bad. Yeah, it's
Speaker 5: still happening. Even though Fidier dies at the end, the
Speaker 5: Brimo still live there. The people who do it are
Speaker 5: not like, yes, we believe full throated in the Great
Speaker 5: Replacement conspiracy theory. We think that the Great Replacement that like,
Speaker 5: you know that thinking about more extreme things that Brimlow
Speaker 5: has said.
Speaker 8: No, they're just people who see a nice white man
Speaker 8: and his nice white wife and they were nice to me.
Speaker 8: And I don't understand why you're making life so hard.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, Vidier has published apology about mass shooters' intentions.
Speaker 8: Basically right, But so many of these these brimloa defenders
Speaker 8: are just they're not saying what he said is okay,
Speaker 8: or I believe what he said. They're saying he was
Speaker 8: nice to me. Why are you making such a big
Speaker 8: deal out of this?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I will clarify that. But they haven't said, yes,
Speaker 5: mass shootings are good. They have condemned that, but they've
Speaker 5: also said that like this writing makes sense, right, and
Speaker 5: they're like when during the Tops Supermarket shooting in Buffalo
Speaker 5: in twenty twenty two, that's something I highlight in the book,
Speaker 5: Vder publishes something that's like actually, like, look look how
Speaker 5: the Great Replacement has changed Buffalo. That was their response
Speaker 5: to ten black people getting shot.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 8: So Peter Bridle is very litigious, so we do have
Speaker 8: to be very specific here in say, Peter Bremlow did
Speaker 8: not say it is good that Peyton Dendron shot up
Speaker 8: that supermarket. What he did say is if the Great
Speaker 8: Replacement weren't happening.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, I mean it's look, and I think that
Speaker 5: going back to the people in the town, I don't
Speaker 5: think that they at every point be like that is good,
Speaker 5: that what he's saying here is good, the Great Replacements,
Speaker 5: I'm fully on board with it. What they buy into
Speaker 5: is this profound friend enemy distinction that now hovers over
Speaker 5: our entire country, right where it's just sort of people
Speaker 5: who are friends of Maga and Trump are on one side,
Speaker 5: and then anybody who's at is my enemy.
Speaker 3: And these more extreme talking points are sort of creeping
Speaker 3: into that space and they're not stopping it.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 5: Of course it's two sided. Of course, there's like that
Speaker 5: that comes from the liberal left or wherever you want
Speaker 5: to whatever you want to call it. But I think
Speaker 5: in the case of the Bremlas, it's not the specifics.
Speaker 5: I remember asking one guy in the book whose name
Speaker 5: is Charlie Currier, and he owns a you know, a
Speaker 5: sort of a craft's shop at the corner of Berkeley
Speaker 5: Springs Park, and it's right next to another main character
Speaker 5: of the book, Trey Johansson, who is you know, kind
Speaker 5: of almost the most important person. And I asked Charlie.
Speaker 5: I was like, you know, so you met the Brimlows,
Speaker 5: you hung out with them. What was that like for
Speaker 5: Christmas and stuff like that? And I was like, well,
Speaker 5: how do you feel about the great replacement stuff? How
Speaker 5: do you feel about like the stuff he writes? And
Speaker 5: what he said was he's a writer. He's a writer
Speaker 5: like you. He's a journalist just like you. He's the
Speaker 5: same as you. There's no difference. And he was very defensive.
Speaker 5: Yis you know, I think that framing is very useful
Speaker 5: for understanding why we can't seem to snap out of
Speaker 5: this current condition that we're in. When you're inside that bubble,
Speaker 5: that's the logic that works. It's like, this is the
Speaker 5: guy on our side. You know, we're defending the guy
Speaker 5: on our side. Right, that's a psychosis that kind of
Speaker 5: overshadows the entire narrative.
Speaker 8: Right, So this story in this town plays out against
Speaker 8: the backdrop of the wider world. Right, So you know,
Speaker 8: your first visit to Berkeley Springs was right as COVID
Speaker 8: is starting, right, it's the last time you left your
Speaker 8: New York apartment before lockdown.
Speaker 3: You're in Berkeley Springs.
Speaker 8: And as the story progresses, we see the twenty twenty uprising,
Speaker 8: and there's like a little BLM rally in this tiny town.
Speaker 8: And then there's j six, and there's October seventh. There's
Speaker 8: the twenty twenty four presidential campaign, and these big events
Speaker 8: in the world, and then there's these smaller events in
Speaker 8: the town, but interwoven with this sort of personal memoir,
Speaker 8: right that the world is in turmoil and so is
Speaker 8: your life. Yeah, and all these threads sort of weaved together.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's true regarding the events in the world and
Speaker 5: in the town. I'm glad you brought that up. One
Speaker 5: thing I wanted to do with the book that I
Speaker 5: don't see done enough is just to understand that, like
Speaker 5: everything that we see, all these like viral trends and
Speaker 5: all this stuff filters down into everyday life. And I
Speaker 5: think when news is breaking or trends are happening, we
Speaker 5: only look at the news and the trends like that,
Speaker 5: and we rarely look at the impacts on our neighborhood.
Speaker 5: Whereas you know, if you do a movie that's said
Speaker 5: in the eighties, you will see like the event a
Speaker 5: little bit more about like at the kitchen table, what
Speaker 5: the family is going through as something happens nationally, right
Speaker 5: or so and so's it's almost like we need time
Speaker 5: to process. But this has a very clear time period,
Speaker 5: which is the period right before COVID to the twenty
Speaker 5: twenty four election, and it's enough in the past now
Speaker 5: that I think we can look at how these things
Speaker 5: affected regular people in this in this town, because every
Speaker 5: time you're seeing viral videos about black Lives matter, that's
Speaker 5: impacting the way people act there. So you may get
Speaker 5: a like five white people go stand on a street
Speaker 5: corner there with some signs after George Floyd's death, and
Speaker 5: that's like a huge deal in that town because it's
Speaker 5: like people are shocked by it or they want to
Speaker 5: they want to they want to harass those people after that.
Speaker 5: So that was one factor. And as yeah, and as
Speaker 5: for as for myself, it also overlaps like probably the
Speaker 5: darkest time in my life. And that's not totally unrelated
Speaker 5: to Berkeley Springs in the sense that, like, you know,
Speaker 5: stuff at SPLC was like really really bad at the
Speaker 5: beginning of the book. Then they're not there in the
Speaker 5: second half, and my mental health was was just not
Speaker 5: in a great place. I had spent, as you know,
Speaker 5: a lot of time with these guys, and I know
Speaker 5: you personally have dealt with a lot of threats and really,
Speaker 5: I mean as a woman, I mean you're dealing with
Speaker 5: I imagine it's even scarier because.
Speaker 3: It's grosser anyway, is yeah, that's grosser for sure.
Speaker 5: And I mean you're dealing with I mean, I can't
Speaker 5: even imagine the mentality of someone of the who are
Speaker 5: messaging you and what their their private lives are like.
Speaker 5: So yeah, so yeah, I mean I had gone through
Speaker 5: it for a while on my end. One example that is,
Speaker 5: in twenty twenty one, I took my son to the
Speaker 5: batting cage and afterwards we went to seven eleven and
Speaker 5: I got a call from a number in North Carolina
Speaker 5: and then it was an FBI agent and he's like, hey,
Speaker 5: I just want to you know, as a courtesy, you
Speaker 5: want to let you know that we have somebody who's
Speaker 5: like talking about assassinating you, and you know, do you
Speaker 5: have any questions?
Speaker 3: Is that?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 5: I was like I do, but like my eight year
Speaker 5: old is like slurping on a you know, a cherry
Speaker 5: slurpee in the back seat.
Speaker 8: That duty to warn thing is kind of a double
Speaker 8: edged sword, right, because they do have this legal obligation
Speaker 8: to inform you that there's a credible threat on your life,
Speaker 8: but like they're not going to give you enough information
Speaker 8: to make you feel empowered by knowing this information.
Speaker 3: So it's like maybe I would rather just not know.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 8: Oh, it was like, literally, if there's something I can
Speaker 8: do to mitigate this, can I just not know?
Speaker 5: Yeah? It was hard. It was hard. That is I
Speaker 5: think one of the things that the normy person would
Speaker 5: find deeply disturbing in the book. But like, yeah, I
Speaker 5: was dealing with that stuff all the time. I would
Speaker 5: get like, you know, I'd get people sending me photos
Speaker 5: of Alan Berg's shooting in the driveway. I don't know
Speaker 5: if you're familiar with that, but like he was the
Speaker 5: talk radio host who was killed by the numbers of the.
Speaker 3: Order, killed by David Lane.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and I would get that all the time. I
Speaker 5: must spent like months of just getting that from like
Speaker 5: random numbers and all this stuff.
Speaker 8: Sometimes, like a group of guys will get very into
Speaker 8: a particular image, and I can imagine the kind of
Speaker 8: guy that is very into the image of Alan Berg's corpse.
Speaker 3: And it's not a nice guy.
Speaker 5: I mean, it's it's taboo. It has like a pornographic
Speaker 5: quality to it.
Speaker 8: But it harkens to a very specific era of the movement,
Speaker 8: like I can imagine there's a particular man who gravitates
Speaker 8: towards that specifically.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and I mean, like I remember getting threatened by Bowers,
Speaker 5: the guy who shot up like because I was on
Speaker 5: GAB all the time, as you know, to a fault,
Speaker 5: I think, but like you know, I got a lot
Speaker 5: of stories out of it and sources. But yeah, because
Speaker 5: I was always dealing with those guys, and I was
Speaker 5: always posting on air and you know, trying to stir
Speaker 5: things up and see what it could shake loose for
Speaker 5: a story. And yeah, Bowers was just some kind of
Speaker 5: idle thing. And so when the Tree of Life shooting happened,
Speaker 5: when he went out and said, you know, screw your optics,
Speaker 5: I'm going in right right, yeah, and I was like,
Speaker 5: I know this guy, that one dingo he So this
Speaker 5: was this was very traumatic for me. I've been holding
Speaker 5: pretty firm on this. I had a lot of manic
Speaker 5: tendencies in the sense of like I could just work constantly,
Speaker 5: and you just work around the clock, work late at night,
Speaker 5: constantly doing investigative reporting. And I was on a mission
Speaker 5: because I was so angry about what had happened. You know,
Speaker 5: you're the right, That's what that really triggered me. I
Speaker 5: had before then, I had been really open to pursuing
Speaker 5: at as a crime reporter or on climate change. These
Speaker 5: were the kind of things that were like I had
Speaker 5: written features of previously. But it was it was after
Speaker 5: you night the ride, I got folks, and I really
Speaker 5: was like, I'm going to put all my abilities into
Speaker 5: trying to create trouble for these guys, and you did.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I did.
Speaker 5: And then when they pushed back, I guess I wasn't
Speaker 5: mentally prepared for how scary it could be, and it
Speaker 5: was lots of stuff. Then I went through a separation
Speaker 5: with my wife, which is fine, we're great friends, you know,
Speaker 5: but that was like another factor. And then also the
Speaker 5: SBLC thing, which we can talk about, but the main
Speaker 5: thing is that I reached a breaking point. I was
Speaker 5: I was happened to be in Berkeley Springs with some
Speaker 5: of the sources from the book when I had to
Speaker 5: go home and go to a syche ward and I
Speaker 5: went for three weeks and I got diagnosed with bipolar there,
Speaker 5: which was a very useful diagnosis.
Speaker 8: It makes it makes a big difference because especially it's bipolar.
Speaker 8: If you're just taking an eight depressants, like you're gonna
Speaker 8: be up shit creek.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, well, the anti sup press is really screwed
Speaker 5: up my stomach and also made me like even more
Speaker 5: manic and stuff like that.
Speaker 8: But the book is is a very frank, very very honest,
Speaker 8: very personal and maybe this is why people found the
Speaker 8: book to be, you know, disturbing, because it is a
Speaker 8: very frank discussion of what it means to be the
Speaker 8: person who is for so many years in the thick
Speaker 8: of it, you know, not doing sort of objective detached reporting,
Speaker 8: but getting in there and mixing it up with these
Speaker 8: guys like really, you know, skin in the game, committed
Speaker 8: to the cause, doing investigative journalism in these spaces, and
Speaker 8: I mean, I think we both are guilty of this.
Speaker 8: Over the years on this beat, there is this tendency
Speaker 8: to sort of you know, exchange war stories like oh,
Speaker 8: you know, I got this terrible threat.
Speaker 3: I got this terrible threat.
Speaker 8: You laugh it off, and it's like, you know, it's
Speaker 8: this sort of fact of life that you brush off,
Speaker 8: and you know, everyone says, oh, you're so brave, I
Speaker 8: could never do that, and you say, oh, it's not
Speaker 8: a big deal.
Speaker 3: I deal with it all the time.
Speaker 5: Yeah, they say that for sure.
Speaker 8: But then you go home and it is a big deal.
Speaker 8: And people are not is honest about that as they
Speaker 8: could be. I mean, in part because admitting that it
Speaker 8: hurts you makes them double down. If they know they
Speaker 8: got you, they're going to keep digging in that spot.
Speaker 8: But like we don't talk enough about the fact that
Speaker 8: this destroys us. Yeah, for sure, it's a very honest.
Speaker 8: Look at what happens when you bought him out on that.
Speaker 5: And it's so much worse than just threats. I mean,
Speaker 5: you're constantly concerned that somebody is going to use law
Speaker 5: fair against you and try to.
Speaker 3: Hurt your family and you have children.
Speaker 5: Yeah, of course, you know, and I am extremely anal
Speaker 5: about legal stuff, Like I'm just like hyper like I
Speaker 5: don't you know, I don't play games I like And
Speaker 5: so that's just an example. It's like we published when
Speaker 5: I was with s BOC. We published the identity of
Speaker 5: Matt Gebert, who is the state department official. I remember
Speaker 5: that guy.
Speaker 3: I was actually going to bring him up.
Speaker 8: I was going to bring up Matt Gibert in terms
Speaker 8: of the number of guys who've moved to West Virginia
Speaker 8: because they think it's only white.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we'll get there in a second. But I just say,
Speaker 5: like before I published that story, even though I'd been
Speaker 5: through a million lawyers and like every I mean, we
Speaker 5: just went through everything and stuff like that. I bought
Speaker 5: a pack of cigarettes, which I never do, you know,
Speaker 5: I don't want to get into my stomach thing too deeply.
Speaker 5: But it was not working. It was not working it
Speaker 5: all that day. It was August seventh, twenty nineteen, and
Speaker 5: I was like, literally I was I was clammy. I
Speaker 5: was sweating. I had never seen his face. He kept
Speaker 5: all of his pictures offline. But I had the goods.
Speaker 5: I knew I had everything. But yet at the same
Speaker 5: this is one doubt. It's like, what if it's not
Speaker 5: him because I don't have the face match forget threats.
Speaker 5: That level of stress of just you know, it's just
Speaker 5: like I checked everything, right, I like you think think
Speaker 5: about the you're trying to leave the house for a
Speaker 5: long trip or something like that, and it's like you
Speaker 5: know that thought, Oh yeah, like did I leave the
Speaker 5: gas stove on when I was you know, when I
Speaker 5: was boiling something for my kids or whatever? Like that's
Speaker 5: the way it feels, right. It's like a sort of
Speaker 5: you like you memorize the entire investigative feature and you're
Speaker 5: like going through it and there's like, oh, oh, you
Speaker 5: know that was that right? Did I check that? And
Speaker 5: I'm like, yes, I did.
Speaker 3: Oh, I know, I know that.
Speaker 8: I know that feeling exacty drives my husband crazy when
Speaker 8: I say things like I'd rather get shot than be
Speaker 8: wrong in public.
Speaker 5: Yeah, no, it's true, it's true. Like I don't I
Speaker 5: don't want to. Yeah, you don't want to be wrong.
Speaker 5: And also you don't want to give these people a
Speaker 5: chance for anything. And you mentioned Brimlow is very litigious.
Speaker 3: Not usually very successfully.
Speaker 5: No, no ease. But that doesn't matter, No, it doesn't matter. Yeah,
Speaker 5: but it's stressful to report on him because of that
Speaker 5: because he just he will use it as a tactic
Speaker 5: and stuff like that. And I gave I also gave
Speaker 5: the Brimlos I should point out many, many opportunities to
Speaker 5: talk to me and more detail about everything, and they
Speaker 5: didn't want to.
Speaker 8: But you do speak to him several times in the book, Yeah,
Speaker 8: I do, I do much to his displeasure.
Speaker 5: Well, I was just to say like, yeah, I mean
Speaker 5: all that really led up to me going to the
Speaker 5: psych word and that and the SBOC thing, which is
Speaker 5: basically my relationship with SBLC is like I was probably
Speaker 5: the most well known person there apology because I've had
Speaker 5: a social media presence and I was doing a lot
Speaker 5: of spokespersonal work, So I was like on TV a
Speaker 5: bunch and stuff like that.
Speaker 8: So whenever someone's at the organization, they're going to take
Speaker 8: it out on you.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And really, for a good part of the early
Speaker 5: years there after Heidi left, we didn't even have a
Speaker 5: director of the intelligence project, so you know, I would
Speaker 5: just get thrown into a lot of TV radio stuff
Speaker 5: like that. And you know, they treated me great. I
Speaker 5: mean they had got my pay raise multiple times and
Speaker 5: promoted and stuff like that, and I kept breaking investigative stories.
Speaker 5: And then when we started to have problems where were
Speaker 5: they started to limit our ability to publish stories. They
Speaker 5: really became very risk averse.
Speaker 8: Which is so contrary to my image of what this
Speaker 8: institution is for. Yeah, both like functionally and morally. Yeah,
Speaker 8: as a senior investigative reporter at the Southern Poverty Los Center,
Speaker 8: you didn't have mental health coverage. You couldn't see a
Speaker 8: real therapist. Yeah, that's horrific. That's a human rights abuse
Speaker 8: to make you look at gabble. They had not get
Speaker 8: you with therapists.
Speaker 5: They were giving us like the app stuff, which is
Speaker 5: not going to cut it.
Speaker 3: You need like a five hundred dollars an hour.
Speaker 5: Yeah, New York analyst was a psychiatrist, you know in
Speaker 5: some okay, like you know, somebody good.
Speaker 3: But they should be covering that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, no they were not. And there's just a whole
Speaker 5: bunch of stuff. There were a bunch of safety issues,
Speaker 5: no doubt, anna case, my dear colleagues, still my colleague,
Speaker 5: even though I'm not there anymore. You know, she went
Speaker 5: to go callver Ameron and Tennessee and like a bunch
Speaker 5: of proud boys like basically chased her down.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 5: There was no security plan. There was a woman named
Speaker 5: Susan Cork was the Intelligence project director at that time,
Speaker 5: and she was just you know, how to lunch. She
Speaker 5: just didn't do anything. As far as I could tell.
Speaker 8: Things like what happened to Hannah, Like stuff like that
Speaker 8: happens to me. I expect that I'm out there by myself.
Speaker 8: I have no plan.
Speaker 3: It's just me. I have no plan.
Speaker 8: It was so startling to me to hear that, like
Speaker 8: Hannah is out there operating without a net too.
Speaker 3: There was no plan for her safety.
Speaker 5: Yeah, there was nothing. And so one of the first
Speaker 5: things I did was I helped Shepherd a grievance about this,
Speaker 5: and it was effective because I think that got Cork
Speaker 5: put on like a performance of improvement plan. And then
Speaker 5: after that everything changed at work. I went from betting
Speaker 5: the favored person to being repeatedly at target of what
Speaker 5: did you do? Why did you do this? Like it
Speaker 5: was really, I mean to add on the already stressful
Speaker 5: situation that I was in. It was just like your
Speaker 5: tone in a meeting. And then there was the thing
Speaker 5: about that was there was like a verbal warning or
Speaker 5: something that was they actually bothered to write out, which
Speaker 5: was quite stupid. If you're doing a verbal warning, you
Speaker 5: shouldn't put it in print. And sure enough we found
Speaker 5: in there that like all the dialogue that was in
Speaker 5: there was completely fabricated and made.
Speaker 3: Up, and so for the listener.
Speaker 8: So discussed in the book a little bit is the
Speaker 8: fact that at the Southern Poverty Lossenter was engaging in
Speaker 8: union investing. Yes, that's right, so you know you were
Speaker 8: dealing with retaliation for union activity in the workplace.
Speaker 5: Retaliation for union activity. It was really bad. It happened
Speaker 5: a second time after that when I was covering the
Speaker 5: trial Doug Mackie character we can save for another day,
Speaker 5: for another day, and it was really bad, and the
Speaker 5: stress was really getting to me, and I had a
Speaker 5: panic attack which I've never had before while I was
Speaker 5: in the shower. And I told them about that, And
Speaker 5: Susan Cork and the person above her, his name is
Speaker 5: and Beeson. I told him about that. And then they
Speaker 5: responded by turning around and disciplining me again, almost like
Speaker 5: to say, like we've got them on the ropes now,
Speaker 5: let's really like make them quit.
Speaker 3: Say eighty a violation.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And every time we do this, we'd summon the
Speaker 5: union and we'd make it as hairy for them as
Speaker 5: possible to do what they're doing. But there's limits to
Speaker 5: what you can do. Really, when they want to try
Speaker 5: to do these sort of things. They pushed it as
Speaker 5: far as they wanted to go, which is after the
Speaker 5: summer of twenty twenty three there was a Hamas attack
Speaker 5: on Israel, and you know, I have Arabs in my family.
Speaker 5: I have my on my mother's side, including Palestinians. You know,
Speaker 5: I was distraught about this whole situation. It was adding
Speaker 5: another thing on top of it, and watching the retaliation,
Speaker 5: which became a genocide very quickly, did not improve my mood. Obviously.
Speaker 5: It was very stressful to see that stuff. And Hannah
Speaker 5: invited me to sign a thing about you know, it
Speaker 5: was just sort of like asking writers to sign on
Speaker 5: Israel's and apartheid state, you know, calling for a ceasefire.
Speaker 3: Writers for the seasfire. Yeah, I remember, and.
Speaker 5: Free Beacon familiar with that wonderful politician.
Speaker 8: It still comes up in the first few pages of
Speaker 8: your Google results.
Speaker 5: Thank you for noting. Yeah, I know, but this the.
Speaker 3: Book should push it back.
Speaker 5: The book Free Beacon like came out with this thing
Speaker 5: and it was like SPLC spokesperson, you know, blames Israel
Speaker 5: for Hamas violence or something.
Speaker 8: Like that, and just that the audacity to accuse you
Speaker 8: of anti Semitism for signing this letter, you know, supporting
Speaker 8: a ceasefire. I've read that letter. It's it's it's not
Speaker 8: an anti Semitic letter. It's is calling it what it
Speaker 8: is and just asking for a cea spire, right, and
Speaker 8: you have spent a decade writing about anti Semitic violence.
Speaker 5: Well, there's there's tons of there's there's tons of anti
Speaker 5: Zionist Jews on there. I mean, there's probably more than
Speaker 5: anything else. But you know, when this, when this came out,
Speaker 5: I was really pissed. Obviously it had a racist undertone.
Speaker 5: I mean, Hannah was mentioned, but it was mostly about me.
Speaker 5: And then there instead of a picture of me, they
Speaker 5: used they used like one of those pictures of Moss
Speaker 5: looking like Cobra from G I. Joe and with like
Speaker 5: a rocket launcher and.
Speaker 8: Right, implying that you, as as a man of Arab descent,
Speaker 8: are an anti Semitic terrorist.
Speaker 3: Yeah, basically, and and good faith stuff.
Speaker 5: Adding to I would say, this is also complex because
Speaker 5: you know, my family basically fled because of threats from
Speaker 5: Islamic terrorism, right, so this is even more like, you know,
Speaker 5: to align me with that necessarily is not my not ideal,
Speaker 5: even though I'm in like, you know, I'm sure I
Speaker 5: have a very more more nuanced idea of what hellas
Speaker 5: is than that author. The point is, it's just, I mean,
Speaker 5: it's just basically to do that and then rather than
Speaker 5: SBOC like cares so much about social justice and racism.
Speaker 8: Rather than seize the opportunity to differentiate themselves from the
Speaker 8: psychosis that the ADL has descended into, as you know,
Speaker 8: because those two organizations sort of exist in the same space,
Speaker 8: they're often used in the same sentence, and the ADL
Speaker 8: has really lost a lot of credibility in the last
Speaker 8: few years.
Speaker 5: I don't think they have any credibility because of those.
Speaker 8: So instead of differentiating themselves from that, they chose to
Speaker 8: discipline you.
Speaker 5: Yeah, they did. And it was that was when I,
Speaker 5: like I said, mental health was like all the factors
Speaker 5: that we've just discussed mentioned And then I was happened
Speaker 5: to be in Berkeley Springs when I reached a point
Speaker 5: where I was like, you know, I was suicidal and
Speaker 5: trigger warning for people. I apologize, but that's the truth,
Speaker 5: and came back and had to spend the sort of
Speaker 5: Christmas break period there where I lost you know, they
Speaker 5: ultimately terminated me. It was a Title seven violation in
Speaker 5: terms of discrimination to what happened effort. And then when
Speaker 5: people found out what happened, the union started to write
Speaker 5: things to you know, to management. There was all this
Speaker 5: internal dialogue happening while I was in a psych word
Speaker 5: with like no access to anything, and almost everybody in
Speaker 5: my line of managers was pushed out and given buyouts
Speaker 5: allegedly Quirk this woman and Beeson and now the CEO is.
Speaker 3: They exposed themselves to some serious liability there.
Speaker 5: Yeah, they got off easy in many ways. Yeah, they
Speaker 5: disposed of me, but I threatened suit with a lawyer,
Speaker 5: wonderful lawyer who she was great Jewish woman from New
Speaker 5: York and as tough as nails. And yeah, I mean
Speaker 5: I got a good settlement out of it, which is,
Speaker 5: you know, I would have preferred just to be able
Speaker 5: to just continue doing my job.
Speaker 3: Though it's heartbreaking to remember that.
Speaker 8: You know, even these progressive nonprofits that are fighting for
Speaker 8: what we believe, they're using you up and spitting you
Speaker 8: out to Yeah, oh sure they're doing union busting. They're
Speaker 8: firing you for having a mental crisis. They're opposed to
Speaker 8: you exercising your free speech off the clock, the kinds
Speaker 8: of things you just you don't want to see from
Speaker 8: an organization like the SPLC.
Speaker 5: Yeah, they had to retract my termination and assign into
Speaker 5: a layoff. And then you know, I had to retract
Speaker 5: labor claims I had made, which would have gone nowhere
Speaker 5: as soon as the Trump administration took over. Anyway, that's heartbreaking,
Speaker 5: which I saw coming in twenty twenty four to a degree.
Speaker 5: So yeah, like that happened. And then bringing it back
Speaker 5: to Berkeley Springs, I was told not to go anywhere,
Speaker 5: but I needed to keep working on the book. So
Speaker 5: it was like a week after I got out of
Speaker 5: the hospital, I came back down there, and then the
Speaker 5: folks who I had been working with since twenty twenty
Speaker 5: when the Brimlas first arrived, they kind of took me
Speaker 5: in and nursed me back to health. So that's why
Speaker 5: it's I feel like unified in the narrative, and we're
Speaker 5: able to explore what happened to me psychologically, and what
Speaker 5: happened is and them psychologically as this other stuff is happening.
Speaker 8: See, I guess I understand why some of the reviewers
Speaker 8: call it disturbing, but that sort of full circle that
Speaker 8: sort of personal closure.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 8: Obviously things weren't ideal, right, you lost your job, but
Speaker 8: I don't know, things came full circle and the people
Speaker 8: that you went there to write about took care of you,
Speaker 8: and you, I don't know, you all.
Speaker 3: Continue along your way as the world falls apart.
Speaker 5: I don't think that they come all cross as like
Speaker 5: perfect either. I mean, like that's what I'm really hopeful for. No.
Speaker 3: I mean they're all complicated people.
Speaker 5: You know. I wanted to avoid like the sort of
Speaker 5: wishy washy utopian like I'm an ally you know, and
Speaker 5: it's like, yeah, actually the people who are allies have
Speaker 5: all kinds of issue that marital problems. Maybe some of
Speaker 5: them are like behave badly in one thing or whatever,
Speaker 5: all people trying to live. It's really a question of
Speaker 5: what this particular ideology that has been foisted upon us
Speaker 5: very rapidly by the likes of Steve Bannon and Brimlow
Speaker 5: and others. Right, it was a collective push to take
Speaker 5: the existing right wing mom star and set it in
Speaker 5: this direction. What this is doing to us.
Speaker 8: It's a very intimate look at what that is like
Speaker 8: for individual people. You know, we were all experiencing having
Speaker 8: right wing violence foisted upon us from above. But this
Speaker 8: is I don't know, there were these like small moments
Speaker 8: of like physical intimacy, like when you're you're at the
Speaker 8: castle for the party and you know you and Peter
Speaker 8: Brimlow are exchanging like this lighthearted moment, and you reach
Speaker 8: out and you put your hand on his shoulder. Instinctively,
Speaker 8: when you're sharing laughter with someone, you put out, you
Speaker 8: put your hand on his shoulder and like, you know,
Speaker 8: recoiled immediately and didn't know why you had done that.
Speaker 8: But this like tiny moment of physical intimacy that you
Speaker 8: know this was a person, or the transgender mushroom farmer
Speaker 8: Lisa Marie who sought out Lydia Brimlow at church and
Speaker 8: shook her hand during the Right of Peace, Like I
Speaker 8: would have loved to have seen that.
Speaker 5: She's so cool, by the way, you should have her
Speaker 5: on She's awesome, she sounds amazing.
Speaker 3: I would love to meet Lisa Marie.
Speaker 5: Well, I'll tell you about her in a second. But yeah,
Speaker 5: I mean, yeah, I mean Brimlo is behaving in a
Speaker 5: very I mean he has like an infuncular kind of
Speaker 5: vibe like in person when he's not angry with you.
Speaker 5: And I'm sure that for people who know him in
Speaker 5: a friendly way in the movement that he's he's fun.
Speaker 3: You know, he likes to drink room temperature Vanka.
Speaker 5: He is always just talking like this, so he sounds
Speaker 5: like he's always had her for your drinks. Probably he
Speaker 5: has that British way of just some kind of dry
Speaker 5: remark about things going to pot. Like, you know, I'm
Speaker 5: sure it's fun for people who know him, and you know,
Speaker 5: you're in that space and any kind of party thing
Speaker 5: or whatever you can let go for a second. And
Speaker 5: for a second I felt not that, like I felt like, oh,
Speaker 5: this is my friend or any It is more than I'm.
Speaker 8: Just talking exactly. You know, people really bristle it that
Speaker 8: you know, you're humanizing him. Well, yeah, because he's human.
Speaker 8: Humanizing doesn't mean excusing or you know, coming to appreciate
Speaker 8: it anyway.
Speaker 3: It just means like he's human.
Speaker 8: So for most of the book, the strange people on
Speaker 8: the hill are removed on the hill, but when you
Speaker 8: encounter them, there is this very human intimacy to these encounters.
Speaker 5: And not only that, everybody has a rough go in
Speaker 5: this book, including that getting.
Speaker 3: Raked over the coals by Letitia James.
Speaker 5: Well, over the course of this that there if you
Speaker 5: follow their their arc and their arcs throughout the book,
Speaker 5: but one particular arc, it starts with them really thinking
Speaker 5: they've got it, like this is like this like high
Speaker 5: point of Vider's existence. They have a castle. They have
Speaker 5: a home base that they can use in perpetuity after
Speaker 5: Brimla leaves, the movement can flourish and grow. This is
Speaker 5: like this is it. They got a castle.
Speaker 8: I mean, it would be the perfect place for white
Speaker 8: nationalists meet up. They haven't really used it that way
Speaker 8: that much, like every now and again, but like this,
Speaker 8: this is.
Speaker 5: The best situation they've ever had, Like they're great. And
Speaker 5: they've also just coming off of getting a whole bunch
Speaker 5: of dark money donations from two people we don't know
Speaker 5: who they are, but it's like, you know, four point
Speaker 5: five mil in like one year through donors Trust, and
Speaker 5: they're writing really high. And then by the end from
Speaker 5: the Letitia James investigation, it had not turned into a
Speaker 5: lawsuit yet by that point, under the pressure of that
Speaker 5: and just under the pressure of just everybody around them,
Speaker 5: you know, not wanting them to be there, they decided
Speaker 5: to dial down VideA altogether, and it still exists in
Speaker 5: the sense of like the Twitter accounts still exists, and
Speaker 5: Brimo is still writing on substack. Some of it is
Speaker 5: a legal thing to try to, you know, get them
Speaker 5: out of the way of Letitia James. But you know
Speaker 5: they're really broken down. I mean, the videos that they
Speaker 5: published about their closing, I mean, it's just a laundry
Speaker 5: list of things that add up to a defeat. I
Speaker 5: don't think they would disagree with that that they felt
Speaker 5: defeated by the end. And the people who were in
Speaker 5: the town, who are so nice and sweet and wonderful
Speaker 5: and all this, they're laughing as you would right as
Speaker 5: everyone talked about like when Trump dies and everybody's like, oh,
Speaker 5: I'm going to do this when Trump dies and all
Speaker 5: that stuff. Right, it's just liberation from that thing. But
Speaker 5: ultimately it's a really like if you just look at
Speaker 5: the Brimlows, it is, you know, it is a brutal
Speaker 5: fall by the end of the book.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I mean ten years ago they were poised to
Speaker 8: be on top of the world and their ideas remain ascendant,
Speaker 8: but he himself has really fallen. Now he just has
Speaker 8: the flooded basement of his little racism castle.
Speaker 5: Well, there's no there's no solidarity on their side. I just,
Speaker 5: oh god, that's what I saying.
Speaker 3: Oh, that's one thing they will never happen.
Speaker 4: I mean, you get.
Speaker 5: Somebody who annoys me, who is a sort of anti fascist,
Speaker 5: anti racist, who like annoys the shit out of me,
Speaker 5: but they they wind up like, you know, being targeted
Speaker 5: by somebody. I'm like, okay, well.
Speaker 3: You're not going to gloat about their downfall.
Speaker 5: But not only that, but it's like now it's time
Speaker 5: to like, you know, support them. You know, that's the
Speaker 5: way I feel.
Speaker 8: And they just don't do that. They don't do that
Speaker 8: for each other. They hate each other.
Speaker 5: They're always malignant narcissists because it's always about cloying to
Speaker 5: the top, right, it's always trying to get power over
Speaker 5: other people.
Speaker 8: I mean, everybody wants to be the crab at the
Speaker 8: top of the bucket, but you're still crabbing a goddamn bucket.
Speaker 5: There's two strains of maga. I know, mega is a
Speaker 5: very broad term, and like one of them is really
Speaker 5: this kind of grift focused, kind of cryptoweb three aligned aspect.
Speaker 5: We're just AI and this and like a small number
Speaker 5: of people, like fifteen percent will go hoard a bunch
Speaker 5: of like fake coins or whatever things polymarket, like odds
Speaker 5: or whatever. They're all hoarding information to kind of beat
Speaker 5: people in polymarket. And then the suckers they you know whatever,
Speaker 5: the o the rest of it, the bigger percentage of
Speaker 5: seventy five percent followers, they're taking their money and that's MAGA.
Speaker 5: That's a big part of bag. And then the other
Speaker 5: part is less concerned with money, although money is a
Speaker 5: part of it. Is just ascending and pushing down from
Speaker 5: a power power space, right, Like you just like to
Speaker 5: be in a place where they can have power over
Speaker 5: other people, and usually other people being designated by not
Speaker 5: looking like them or not behaving like them, or not
Speaker 5: having the same kind of boyfriend's girlfriends whatever than them.
Speaker 8: It's like, I mean, I couldn't be happier that Peter
Speaker 8: Brimlow is going to end his career on the bottom
Speaker 8: of the heap he was trying to climb.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you know, yeah, and they'll be the I guarantee you,
Speaker 5: they'll be more of an effort from us to define
Speaker 5: his legacy than from them, because they don't care.
Speaker 3: They don't care, No they they will, they'll use you
Speaker 3: up and forget you.
Speaker 5: Yeah, they don't care. We will. We will spend more
Speaker 5: time on him than so we. I mean, we're talking
Speaker 5: about him right now. We have I have a host
Speaker 5: of podcast where we talk about these guys all the time, right,
Speaker 5: so it's a gro always bringing up new guys. I
Speaker 5: think we're doing a We're doing a full BIOEP on
Speaker 5: Steven Miller soon. You know, they don't do that. They
Speaker 5: don't care, They're not like, here's the reason Steven's great.
Speaker 8: Like no, I mean, Jason Kessel disappeared from the internet
Speaker 8: a year ago and they don't talk about him anymore.
Speaker 3: Oh, it's like he never existed.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, but you know what, I hope he
Speaker 5: stays off that, you know what I mean. I try
Speaker 5: to find some forgiveness in my heart. You know, maybe
Speaker 5: it's the Catholic upbringing, whatever, but I try to find
Speaker 5: some even though he literally who knows what he did
Speaker 5: that was related to threats I received because he wrote
Speaker 5: stuff about me.
Speaker 8: I mean, I think that that series he put on
Speaker 8: vdare that included information about you and your family certainly
Speaker 8: didn't help.
Speaker 5: Yeah, for sure. But you know, if he stays offline
Speaker 5: and he stays like this, Like I hope that he's
Speaker 5: getting some help.
Speaker 8: That's all anyone ever asked. I mean, that's all I
Speaker 8: was ever asking for from these guys. I'm not even
Speaker 8: holding out hope that you change your heart.
Speaker 3: I just want you to stop doing stuff.
Speaker 8: About it, yes, I mean, just stop trying to make
Speaker 8: everything worse.
Speaker 5: Yes, yeah. Really, Like I mean, but if he's out
Speaker 5: there and he's like, I'm just gonna, like, you know,
Speaker 5: keep it quiet. And I have a hard time imagining
Speaker 5: that guy like any kind of change of heart. But
Speaker 5: it would be great if he just stayed, just stayed
Speaker 5: at everything and just lived his life. And you know, privately,
Speaker 5: I would I would feel some tiny crumb of respect for.
Speaker 8: That God willing, God willing, and maybe, uh maybe Peter
Speaker 8: Brimlo will log off forever eventually too.
Speaker 5: Well, yeah, I mean based upon the age that that's yeah.
Speaker 8: Well he's gonna he's going to do it, permanent log
Speaker 8: off eventually, permanent.
Speaker 5: Log off eventually. I've heard all kinds of gossip about
Speaker 5: from people in Berkeley Springs that Lydia really doesn't want
Speaker 5: to be associated with the white nationalist movement and really
Speaker 5: doesn't want us to be associated with the movement in general,
Speaker 5: just if you want to give it another term that
Speaker 5: they might use, like dissid and write or whatever. She's
Speaker 5: I think, I don't know this for a fact that
Speaker 5: she would never tell me directly. Think about Lydia Bremlo.
Speaker 5: You're twenty years old. It's very rich. White husband comes
Speaker 5: by his old for you. He's like fifty seven, and
Speaker 5: he's recently lost his wife Brimola lost his first wife
Speaker 5: to cancer. And you're in the kind of heritage seeing
Speaker 5: your kind of conservative yourself and.
Speaker 3: This guy conservative.
Speaker 1: This is this is.
Speaker 5: Happening around a time in which alien nation is still
Speaker 5: kind of acceptable.
Speaker 3: I mean, at least in the heritage front set.
Speaker 5: Sure, yeah, on the right it was kind of acceptable.
Speaker 5: But even you know, even if it's acceptable, the worst
Speaker 5: you could say about it. He's kind of a bad boy,
Speaker 5: like a bad you know, he's got right so it's
Speaker 5: sort of like, ooh, edgy, he's like an edgy bad boy,
Speaker 5: and you kind of get indoctrinated into the movement that way,
Speaker 5: and you're in a marriage like I don't know, Like
Speaker 5: when I was like twenty something, I don't know, I
Speaker 5: didn't know what the hell was going on. So you're
Speaker 5: in this marriage with this dude, and you have kids now,
Speaker 5: and you've seen the other side of it, the hell
Speaker 5: of it up close all the time, people shutting down
Speaker 5: the website. People there were hackers. There's all kinds of
Speaker 5: things that they're dealing with constantly. Everyone is telling you,
Speaker 5: everyone other than people in the movement are finding ways.
Speaker 5: Whenever they get a chance to speak to you, they're
Speaker 5: telling you, you know, go fuck yourself. We hate this, right,
Speaker 5: we hate you. We don't like this stuff.
Speaker 3: It's got to be discouraging.
Speaker 5: I mean for years and then now all of a sudden,
Speaker 5: you're turning forty and you've got kids and you're looking
Speaker 5: at this. I mean, I personally would want to like
Speaker 5: just get as far away from it as possible. I mean,
Speaker 5: it just seems like it's just a depressing just you know.
Speaker 8: Yeah, like I said, that's all I want for these
Speaker 8: people is that they stop doing harm in the world.
Speaker 8: And you know, if they have a change of heart,
Speaker 8: that's wonderful. Don't tell us about it. Yeah, just just
Speaker 8: log off, Just go be normal, Go get a real job,
Speaker 8: stop being a Nazi. Just just go just go be
Speaker 8: a guy in the world.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I would really like that. I think they're kind
Speaker 5: of entering now a sort of post Nazi phase.
Speaker 8: I mean, because they don't they don't have to be
Speaker 8: edgy anymore. They're the mainstream Republican politics.
Speaker 5: Now you can be just you can just be a
Speaker 5: gracist Nazi at all the time. And that's why it's
Speaker 5: starting to mutate into like these like whole looks maxing
Speaker 5: and like you know, which is like in cell but
Speaker 5: like we're not insuls anymore, we hammer our face whatever,
Speaker 5: you know. I just think that they're now so they
Speaker 5: think they're such part of the culture, and it would
Speaker 5: be it'll be very interesting for me to see if
Speaker 5: there is a huge change after this, if we see
Speaker 5: sort of the Trump regime kind of fall, have a
Speaker 5: really hard fall, and some of this really starts to
Speaker 5: break up. What will happen and when people like look
Speaker 5: back at some of the stuff that's happening over the
Speaker 5: past like a few years, even as there's been this
Speaker 5: tremendous explosion. If you look at the time from when
Speaker 5: the book ended, which is again on the election day,
Speaker 5: the day after the election, I'm twenty twenty four, I mean.
Speaker 3: What a moment to end things.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but if you look at that from there to now,
Speaker 5: you see like that was almost like an endpoint before
Speaker 5: this new culture that we're in now, where you have
Speaker 5: the shootings in Minneapolis and it's just the outright violence,
Speaker 5: the blown up boats, all this stuff. I'm very curious
Speaker 5: to see our culture, if our culture can heal a
Speaker 5: little bit, how this stuff will be viewed. Yeah.
Speaker 8: I mean, it is, like you said, it ends before
Speaker 8: the story is over. But I think, you know, as
Speaker 8: a portrait of that four year period in that town,
Speaker 8: I mean, it's fascinating. It is I think applicable to
Speaker 8: the world outside of Berkeley Springs, but it is a
Speaker 8: very intimate look at what it means for a weird,
Speaker 8: old racist blogger to move into the castle that looms
Speaker 8: above your coffee shop. Absolutely, I don't want to keep
Speaker 8: you forever, but I just want to remind the listener
Speaker 8: Strange People on the Hill, how extremism tore a part
Speaker 8: of small American town by Michael Edison Hayden comes out April.
Speaker 3: Seventh, Yeah, April seventh, April seventh.
Speaker 8: You can pre order it now wherever books are sold,
Speaker 8: or you could just go to a bookstore on April
Speaker 8: seventh and pick a copy up. I'm going to go
Speaker 8: ahead and contact my local anarchist bookstore to make sure
Speaker 8: they have an order in for it, and I recommend
Speaker 8: you do the.
Speaker 5: Same anarchist bookstore.
Speaker 3: Better don't buy it on Amazon. I mean you can,
Speaker 3: but don't.
Speaker 8: Yeah, and tell your local library that you want them
Speaker 8: to buy a copy, because that matters too, and that
Speaker 8: gets this book into more people's hands, because not everybody
Speaker 8: can afford to buy a book. So yeah, requested at
Speaker 8: your local independent bookstore and your library if you can.
Speaker 5: Yeah. I heard from friends that like at random places
Speaker 5: in Illinois and whatever that they can find the book
Speaker 5: at their local library. They we'll be able to get it.
Speaker 5: So that's great. Please ask for it and yeah, and
Speaker 5: enjoy it. I think it'll have. My hope is it
Speaker 5: has long tail. There's some word of mouth about the era.
Speaker 5: So something to read, something to read not just now,
Speaker 5: but also in the future. Yeah.
Speaker 8: It is a fascinating picture of a particular moment in
Speaker 8: time that has broader lessons I think.
Speaker 3: But my thanks so much for coming on. Where can
Speaker 3: people find you online?
Speaker 5: Thank you? You're even cooler in person.
Speaker 3: I just don't thank you.
Speaker 5: Where can find me online? I'm in Blue Sky? What
Speaker 5: the hell is? What's I hate? The Blue Sky handles?
Speaker 5: That was the one thing that you know, people complain
Speaker 5: about Blue Sky and it's like for me, it's like,
Speaker 5: what do you even want? Dude, Like, you know, all
Speaker 5: this stuff is so bad, right, like, what do you
Speaker 5: even want? It's Michael E. Hayden dot b s K
Speaker 5: Y dot social s O C I A L. I'm
Speaker 5: still technically on Twitter at Michael E. Hayden, where I've
Speaker 5: always been. You know, when I was writing the book
Speaker 5: and I was recovering from the mental health thing, I
Speaker 5: wasn't online at all for all twenty twenty four and
Speaker 5: so my nice that greatered my my ex engagement. In
Speaker 5: any case, I don't like being on there too much
Speaker 5: just for anything other than research.
Speaker 3: And people can find you every week on posting through
Speaker 3: Jared Hall.
Speaker 5: Oh that's true. Yeah, just you know, just do that.
Speaker 5: You can listen to us talk about all kinds of things.
Speaker 5: We're talking about cospital, We're talking about the ai fruits
Speaker 5: that we keep finding on our on our feeds now,
Speaker 5: all kinds of topics.
Speaker 3: Fruits.
Speaker 8: Oh, Mike, thank you so much and again by the book.
Speaker 8: You're gonna love it.
Speaker 5: Thanks Molly, thanks so much.
Speaker 1: By book.
Speaker 2: Hey everybody, Robert Evans here and this is it could
Speaker 2: happen Here a podcast about well what's happening. And on
Speaker 2: March thirtieth, twenty twenty six, which is the day that
Speaker 2: I started sitting down to write the episode that you're
Speaker 2: listening to right now, Reuter's published an article announcing the
Speaker 2: arrival of another twenty five hundred United States Marines in
Speaker 2: the Middle East as the Trump administration quote considers options
Speaker 2: for Iran operations. As you all know, Operation Epic Fury.
Speaker 2: It's not that I call it, but its name was
Speaker 2: launched a little over a month ago, with the administration
Speaker 2: insists and expected duration of four to six weeks, and
Speaker 2: we're coming up to the end of that timeline. Trump
Speaker 2: announced the day I record this March thirty first, that
Speaker 2: he's expecting combat operations to end in two weeks or less.
Speaker 2: So we'll see what happens tomorrow. They're supposed to be
Speaker 2: a speech by the President on Iran, so we'll know
Speaker 2: more then, But relevant reporting indicates the Trump administration is
Speaker 2: at least seriously weighing the feasibility of sending marines in
Speaker 2: to take and hold Iranian territory, namely Karg Island and
Speaker 2: potentially other islands in the Strait of Hormos, most of
Speaker 2: which are inhabited and all of which are heavily defended.
Speaker 2: If they go through with this, we might be about
Speaker 2: to watch in real time one of the most consequential
Speaker 2: disasters in military history, a modern day Gallipoli, in which
Speaker 2: hundreds or thousands of American soldiers and billions in materiel
Speaker 2: get chewed up in an unsustainable and unwinnable war of attrition.
Speaker 2: There's no real way for the average American to know
Speaker 2: what kind of stockpile our military maintains the most advanced munitions.
Speaker 2: We're talking precision guided missiles like the Tomahawk cruise missile,
Speaker 2: but also the interceptor missiles used by our various missile batteries.
Speaker 2: Estimates suggests the US has already expended about one thousand
Speaker 2: Tomahawks in a month of combat operations, which would be
Speaker 2: around a third, maybe a little less, of the total stockpile.
Speaker 2: That doesn't sound so bad until you realize that our
Speaker 2: present stockpile of Tomahawks was built up over more than
Speaker 2: a decade We're only capable of making about one hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty a year at present levels, which means our
Speaker 2: military already burned through around seven years worth of these things,
Speaker 2: maybe more, because in twenty twenty five, the US to
Speaker 2: finish budget included something like fifty six Tomahawks, even though
Speaker 2: our largely ineffectual war against the Houthis had already depleted
Speaker 2: the stockpile. This is a story that you'll hear over
Speaker 2: and over again in this episode. The US military is
Speaker 2: actually quite bad at knowing and asking for what it
Speaker 2: will need, and even worse at predicting accurately what it's
Speaker 2: going to need in the immediate future. Each Tomahawk costs
Speaker 2: them around three point six million dollars to produce, and
Speaker 2: these are the only long range offensive weapons mounted by
Speaker 2: our naval destroyers. Per a source interviewed by Military Watch magazine, quote,
Speaker 2: without intervention, the Pentagon may be left out of ammunition. Now,
Speaker 2: Tomahawks aren't the only things the US military is low on.
Speaker 2: For that same article, inventories of anti ballistic missiles and
Speaker 2: GBU fifty seven bunker buster bombs are estimated to have
Speaker 2: been almost totally spent, while being significantly more costly to replace.
Speaker 2: We just don't have granular data on the size of
Speaker 2: US interceptor missile stockpiles or supply of stuff like Patriot missiles,
Speaker 2: but we do have a pretty good understanding of how
Speaker 2: badly our regional allies have depleted their stockpiles of these
Speaker 2: defensive tools. Bahrain is estimated to have expended eighty seven
Speaker 2: percent of their Patriot missiles, the UAE and Kuwait are
Speaker 2: up to seventy five percent, and Qatar is at like
Speaker 2: forty percent. Experts estimate that Iran has gone through or
Speaker 2: lost via airstrike roughly a third of their ballistic missile stockpile.
Speaker 2: This may or may not be accurate, and if it's inaccurate,
Speaker 2: it may or may not be inaccurate in either direction.
Speaker 2: Our intel and Israel's intel is often very spotty when
Speaker 2: it comes to stuff like this. A good illustration of
Speaker 2: this would be the fact that on March twentieth, Iran
Speaker 2: fired two ICBMs at Diego Garcia, an island in the
Speaker 2: Indian Ocean that hosts a joint US UK air and
Speaker 2: naval base. Neither missile did any damage, but that wasn't
Speaker 2: really the point. The launch of these missiles was a
Speaker 2: message from the Iranian regime to the US one. Previously,
Speaker 2: Iran had limited itself to only striking targets within twelve
Speaker 2: hundred and forty miles of its own borders with ballistic missiles.
Speaker 2: Diego Garcia is roughly twenty three hundred miles away. Many
Speaker 2: US analysts had treated for years twelve hundred and forty
Speaker 2: miles as if it represented an actual hard limit on
Speaker 2: Iran's striking capability based on what their missiles could reach,
Speaker 2: as opposed to what it really was, which is a
Speaker 2: political decision made by Iranian leaders to limit the scope
Speaker 2: of conflicts. When the Trump administration launched an unprovoked series
Speaker 2: of joint strikes on Iran, killing a supreme leader in
Speaker 2: many senior officials, we violated one of the unstated agreements
Speaker 2: that had held for over decades of conflict. The president's
Speaker 2: supporters and major hawks on Iran argued that these self
Speaker 2: imposed limits were allowing Iran's leadership to support terrorism abroad
Speaker 2: with impunity. The strike on Diego Garcia proved that military
Speaker 2: analysts had been wrong about the top range of Iran's
Speaker 2: best ballistic missiles, but it also served as a statement
Speaker 2: from Iran's new leaders. You've taken the gloves off and
Speaker 2: thrown out the rule book. Now we have two. Hudson
Speaker 2: Institute's senior fellow, Khan Kosopoglu, published an analysis that made
Speaker 2: this same basic argument.
Speaker 5: Quote.
Speaker 2: A strike profile extending into the Indian Ocean demonstrates not
Speaker 2: merely extended range, but Iran's deliberate abandonment of strategic ambiguity.
Speaker 2: Iran is no longer signaling restraint. It is signaling reach,
Speaker 2: and doing so under live war fighting conditions. It also
Speaker 2: more subtly signaled something else. US planners didn't know as
Speaker 2: much as they thought they did about Iran's capabilities. This
Speaker 2: has been evident since the war began, despite Trump's claims
Speaker 2: to have totally annihilated Iran's offensive capability. On March twenty seventh,
Speaker 2: a combined missile and drone attack at Prince Sultan Air
Speaker 2: Base in Saudi Arabia injuring more than ten US soldiers,
Speaker 2: too seriously in damaging several aircraft. One of these, which
Speaker 2: we have pictures of, was an E three a wax
Speaker 2: aka the planes with those huge radar dishes on top,
Speaker 2: and at least one a Wax was destroyed. The Air
Speaker 2: Force only has sixteen of these, and only about half
Speaker 2: our mission capable at any given time. The Army also
Speaker 2: maintains a fleet of E three's. I found an article
Speaker 2: in Air and Space Forces Magazine by Chris Gordon and
Speaker 2: Stephen Lassi, who interviewed Heather Penny. She's a former F
Speaker 2: sixteen pilot and current director of the Air Force Academy's
Speaker 2: Institute for Aerospace Studies. Penny said, quote, the loss of
Speaker 2: this E three is incredibly problematic and how crucial these
Speaker 2: battle managers are to everything from airspace deconfliction, aircraft deconfliction, targeting,
Speaker 2: and providing other lethal effects that the entire force needs
Speaker 2: for the battlespace. E threes provide an irreplaceable service on
Speaker 2: the battlefield. They act as both airborne radar stations and
Speaker 2: air traffic control towers, spotting threats up to two hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty miles away, and providing crucial early warning to
Speaker 2: forces in combat about incoming threats, particularly missiles and drones, drones,
Speaker 2: really about anything else. In other words, the E three
Speaker 2: is really really useful if you're say, planning to have
Speaker 2: troops land on islands in a narrow strait surrounded by
Speaker 2: hostile forces who can shoot at you from the mainland. Now,
Speaker 2: the A wax themselves aren't technically irreplaceable, but they aren't
Speaker 2: easy to replace, especially on short notice. Each one costs
Speaker 2: between seven hundred million and a billion dollars, and we
Speaker 2: don't like, we don't like make them anymore. A wax
Speaker 2: are old. The average age of our remaining fleet is
Speaker 2: forty five per irrelevant article colin Task and Purpose magazine.
Speaker 2: Nobody makes spare parts for the E three's TF thirty
Speaker 2: three engines anymore, which takes a toll on maintenance. In
Speaker 2: twenty twenty two, General Mark Kelly, then the head of
Speaker 2: Air Combat Command, told reporters we basically have thirty one
Speaker 2: airplanes in hospice care, the most expensive care there is,
Speaker 2: and we need to get into the maternity business and
Speaker 2: out of hospices. That's a weird metaphor for a plane
Speaker 2: designed to help you fight wars, but we'll move past
Speaker 2: that and into some ads and we're back. So when
Speaker 2: we left off, I'd mentioned how in twenty twenty two,
Speaker 2: Mark Kelly, then the head of Air Combat Command, was like,
Speaker 2: we've only got about thirty one of these A wax
Speaker 2: and they're at hospice care, and we need to like
Speaker 2: make some new a wax that are modern and aren't
Speaker 2: falling apart, and have engines being produced. Unfortunately for our military,
Speaker 2: but fortunately for.
Speaker 1: Not our military.
Speaker 2: The Pentagon voted against getting into the maternity business last year.
Speaker 2: The E seven Wedgetail, which is in service currently in
Speaker 2: the Royal Australian Air Force, was meant to replace the
Speaker 2: E three's for the US Air Force, and the first
Speaker 2: of twenty six new craft were supposed to arrive from
Speaker 2: Boeing in twenty twenty seven, but the project was killed
Speaker 2: last summer. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth argued it was quote
Speaker 2: sort of late, more expensive and gold plated. Plus Pete
Speaker 2: warned it might not survive a war with China. Heg
Speaker 2: Seth's plan was to just have the military use satellites
Speaker 2: for all their airborne tracking needs, and if we had
Speaker 2: to have, you know, a plane doing some of that,
Speaker 2: we could just have Navy E two D Hawkeyes as
Speaker 2: a temporary replacement. Now, most of my listeners are not
Speaker 2: Air Force generals, and either of them I but I've
Speaker 2: read stuff guys who know that kind of thing have written,
Speaker 2: and I'll tell you this it's a bad fucking idea,
Speaker 2: or it's widely agreed by the experts to be a
Speaker 2: bad fucking idea. For one thing, the E seven, which
Speaker 2: is what we would have been replacing our E threes with,
Speaker 2: has already proven itself in combat. The AUSSI sent Theirs
Speaker 2: over to a rock during the fighting against ISIS, and
Speaker 2: per task and purpose it quote was so reliable that
Speaker 2: whenever American F twenty two fighters were in theater, the
Speaker 2: US Air Force asked the AUSSIS to support the US jets.
Speaker 2: Sixteen retired US Air Force four star generals took the
Speaker 2: unprecedented step of writing a letter to Congress and begging
Speaker 2: them to reverse Exseth's decision. They're reasoning why boils down
Speaker 2: to this, satellites aren't ready to track airborne targets, and
Speaker 2: the Hawkeye is too small for the job. Congress ultimately
Speaker 2: reversed course, but it's uncertain when, if ever new E
Speaker 2: seven's will arrive, certainly not in time for whatever the
Speaker 2: Trump administration is going to do next. In the meantime,
Speaker 2: the Air Force is down roughly ten percent or more
Speaker 2: of its functional fleet of a wax, and we don't
Speaker 2: even have boots on the ground anywhere. Now, what I
Speaker 2: think happened here, What I think is behind all of
Speaker 2: these bad decisions, and this is not something I can verify.
Speaker 2: This is opinion is that a waks aren't sexy. They're
Speaker 2: not like a cool weapon system. They don't kill people directly.
Speaker 2: They facilitate other soldiers and sailors and airmen from killing
Speaker 2: people using other weapons systems. But you can't threaten somebody
Speaker 2: with just an a whack. They're not like scary, and
Speaker 2: you can't show one blowing something up on the news
Speaker 2: because they don't do that. So I don't think it
Speaker 2: was a priority for Hegseth or anyone else in his administration,
Speaker 2: because they're all fucking twelve year olds. Previous administrations and
Speaker 2: let me be fair here, it's not like they were
Speaker 2: any more forward thinking. Had kind of looked at our
Speaker 2: aging fleet and said, eh, good enough, it's not like
Speaker 2: anyone we're fighting as a better alternative, Right, who cares.
Speaker 2: It's the same kind of story we just heard with
Speaker 2: the Tomawks. Right, what the military was already doing was
Speaker 2: good enough to scrape by in the conflicts it was
Speaker 2: already fighting, and nobody involved in starting the next conflict
Speaker 2: was interested in making sure that the military was prepared
Speaker 2: ahead of time. Now, I recognize all this talk about
Speaker 2: failures to produce war material in sufficient quantity may make
Speaker 2: it sound like I'm complaining that our air force isn't
Speaker 2: buying enough weaponry and that I'm urging us to spend
Speaker 2: more money producing arms and ammunitions, And that is not
Speaker 2: my intent. I want exactly the opposite. What I'm trying
Speaker 2: to do is to highlight how utterly unprepared our administration
Speaker 2: is for the conflict they started, and how that failure
Speaker 2: to prepare has made a major military disaster for US forces,
Speaker 2: not just foreseeable, but likely if the administration makes the
Speaker 2: decision to send in ground forces or in some other
Speaker 2: way significantly escalate the pace of our operations against Iran. Now,
Speaker 2: the mainstream media has done an okay job of reporting
Speaker 2: on the ammunition shortages that I've discussed, But what I
Speaker 2: don't think has been a hammered at home enough is
Speaker 2: that both are expenditure of advanced ammunitions and the loss
Speaker 2: of multiple aircraft due to Iranian strikes are a kind
Speaker 2: of attrition, and they are really serious kind of attrition. Now,
Speaker 2: you may be more familiar with a term attrition as
Speaker 2: it applies to human casualties in a war or battle,
Speaker 2: but to an extent, the attrition of interceptor missiles and
Speaker 2: hard to replace special purpose vehicles like a wax does
Speaker 2: a lot more to damage US war fighting capability than
Speaker 2: human losses. A good example of this came in March
Speaker 2: sixth of this year, after Ronstruck and PERCNN apparently destroyed
Speaker 2: the radar system for a THAD missile battery in Jordan.
Speaker 2: BAD stands for Terminal high Altitude Area Defense. These are
Speaker 2: our absolute best, most effective anti missile defense systems. Each
Speaker 2: battery costs more than a billion dollars, and each missile
Speaker 2: a fire costs like twelve point six million dollars. These
Speaker 2: are part of why you don't have healthcare. Now we
Speaker 2: know another series of strikes in the UAE quote hit
Speaker 2: buildings housing similar radar systems to the THAD battery in Jordan.
Speaker 2: It's unclear if these were damaged or how badly they
Speaker 2: might have been damaged, and it's going to remain unclear
Speaker 2: because the workings of these systems are extremely classified. As
Speaker 2: of twenty twenty five, the United States Z ownes and operates
Speaker 2: a grand total of eight THAD batteries, so at least
Speaker 2: one of eight is now out of commission and two
Speaker 2: more may have suffered some degree of damage A month
Speaker 2: into this conflict. That is not the kind of attrition
Speaker 2: you want to see prior to actually putting boots on
Speaker 2: the ground. Now, US military spokespeople will point out, whenever asked,
Speaker 2: that the vast majority of Iranian missiles and drones are
Speaker 2: being intercepted, and that Iran is currently firing few of
Speaker 2: these munitions than they did at the outbreak of hostilities.
Speaker 2: And what you're supposed to conclude from that is that
Speaker 2: they're running out because we are doing a better job
Speaker 2: of attritting them than they are doing of atreating us.
Speaker 2: And I can't tell you who's actually coming off worse
Speaker 2: in this fight. I certainly don't have good insight into
Speaker 2: the levels of Iran stockpiles of the weapons systems that
Speaker 2: they're using. However, there is reason to doubt that the
Speaker 2: United States is coming off the better in this conflict.
Speaker 2: Ari Cicirel is an analyst for the Jewish Institute for
Speaker 2: National Security of America or JENSA, and he told Fox
Speaker 2: News quote, overall high missile and drone interception rates have
Speaker 2: been important, but only tell part of the story. A
Speaker 2: On came into this war with a deliberate plan to
Speaker 2: dismantle the architecture that makes those strikes possible. It has
Speaker 2: struck energy infrastructure to upset markets and used cluster munitions
Speaker 2: to achieve higher hit rates. Because we simply lack good
Speaker 2: data on this stuff, I can't tell you perfectly how
Speaker 2: our rate of interceptions has changed from day one to
Speaker 2: day thirty, but there is evidence in a few different
Speaker 2: places that in late March, the rate of successful drone
Speaker 2: attacks on our regional allies like the UAE increased. In
Speaker 2: other words, more drones were getting through or being launched.
Speaker 2: But I think getting through is the more supported conclusion,
Speaker 2: and they're getting through because our defenses have gotten or
Speaker 2: the defenses of our allies have gotten less effective. The
Speaker 2: Genser report also notes that Israeli officials have stopped intercepting
Speaker 2: some cluster munition attacks in order to preserve ammunition, basically
Speaker 2: not shooting down the cluster munitions that don't look like
Speaker 2: they're going to hit anything or anyone, because they don't
Speaker 2: have the ammunition to stop everything. Now, I don't doubt
Speaker 2: that iron is also feeling somewhat pinched, and the munition department.
Speaker 2: It would be kind of weird if they weren't both
Speaker 2: due to how many they fired and how many have
Speaker 2: been destroyed via air strikes. But the question isn't are
Speaker 2: they suffering attrition too? It's are they better able to
Speaker 2: maintain the rate of attrition they're suffering than we are?
Speaker 2: And while I can't answer that question in absolute terms,
Speaker 2: I think the answer is probably yes. Iran's ballistic missiles
Speaker 2: generally cost a few hundred thousand dollars each that interceptor
Speaker 2: missiles cost, as I said, around thirteen million dollars. Shaheed
Speaker 2: drones cost like thirty thousand dollars to make and are
Speaker 2: often stopped by munitions that cost millions to make and
Speaker 2: are hard to replace. It's also worth noting that the
Speaker 2: reduction in the total number of missiles fired by Iran
Speaker 2: is not just due to the fact that they run
Speaker 2: through some of their stockpileots at least partly a strategic decision,
Speaker 2: as even Fox News admits quote. Iran has adapted its
Speaker 2: tactics accordingly, shifting from large barrages to smaller, more frequent
Speaker 2: attacks designed to maintain constant pressure. While gradually draining defensive resources.
Speaker 2: These persistent salvos, even if limited in so, force defenders
Speaker 2: to remain on high alert and continue expending interceptors, accelerating
Speaker 2: the depletion of already finite stockpiles. Now, there's an important
Speaker 2: point made towards the end of that paragraph. Persistent attacks
Speaker 2: forced defenders to remain on high alert. This is true,
Speaker 2: and it also brings us to another underdiscussed aspect of attrition,
Speaker 2: the energy and time of the soldiers our administration expects
Speaker 2: to fight this war for them, And we'll talk about
Speaker 2: that after another brace of ads.
Speaker 1: And we're back.
Speaker 2: Too often, people who want to wargame out how the
Speaker 2: US will perform in a given conflict just focus on
Speaker 2: the theoretical capabilities of the vehicles and weapons systems we own.
Speaker 2: And in its class aircraft carrier has this many planes
Speaker 2: and so it can unleash this amount of firepower on
Speaker 2: a target and this amount of time. And that's a
Speaker 2: bad way to predict combat performance because it ignores the
Speaker 2: human element. The USS Gerald R Ford a Gerald R
Speaker 2: Ford class aircraft carrier is what's commonly known as a supercarrier.
Speaker 2: It can travel for twenty five years before its nuclear
Speaker 2: reactors need refueling, and it has a complement of more
Speaker 2: than forty five hundred men and women. It is a
Speaker 2: small city at sea, and I've talked in the past
Speaker 2: about how hard these things are to actually sink. During
Speaker 2: the Ford's deployment to fight the Hoothies, there were viral
Speaker 2: rumors stoked by AIMS information that it had been seriously
Speaker 2: damaged or even destroyed by a Hoothy ballistic missile strike.
Speaker 2: Now I pointed out at the time that this was fanciful.
Speaker 2: The defense systems on a boat like this cost billions
Speaker 2: and provide excellent, proven protection against most missiles, drones, and aircraft.
Speaker 2: It's likely to encounter. The entire naval battlegroup it travels
Speaker 2: with exists to protect and enhance the carrier's capabilities, and
Speaker 2: even if it were stripped of all those things, these
Speaker 2: boats are just so damn tough to fucking sink. In
Speaker 2: two thousand and five, the US Navy conducted a live
Speaker 2: fire test to sink retired Kitty Hawk class supercarrier. Per
Speaker 2: an article in Forbes, the carrier endured nearly a month
Speaker 2: of intense weaponized testing and was finally scuttled via internal
Speaker 2: explosive charges. It should be added that the warship had
Speaker 2: been decommissioned nearly a decade earlier and was in poor
Speaker 2: material condition. There were also no damage control efforts to
Speaker 2: save the ship. In February of this year, just days
Speaker 2: before his own death, Iran's former Supreme Leader Iatola ali
Speaker 2: Hameni threatened the US carriers operating in the Persian Gulf
Speaker 2: in a post on Twitter because it's fucking twenty twenty
Speaker 2: six quote the Americans constantly say that they've sent a
Speaker 2: warship towards Iran. Of course, a warship is a dangerous
Speaker 2: piece of military hardware. However, more dangerous than that warship
Speaker 2: is the weapon that can send that warship to the bottom.
Speaker 1: Of the sea.
Speaker 2: Now kind of unclear exactly what he was talking about.
Speaker 2: Maybe it's some sort of secret weapon that the Iranians
Speaker 2: have that we don't know about, But we do know
Speaker 2: that Iranian negotiators are currently talking with the People's Republic
Speaker 2: of China about purchasing CM three H two supersonic missiles.
Speaker 2: These were developed by Chinese military planners to fly low
Speaker 2: and fast, avoiding most of the layered defenses a boat
Speaker 2: like the Ford and joys their carrier killer missiles, or
Speaker 2: at least that's the idea. Beijing also has a line
Speaker 2: of land based carrier killer missiles, because if you think
Speaker 2: you might wind up in a war with the United States,
Speaker 2: it probably booves you to think about how you would
Speaker 2: kill an aircraft carrier. Now, again, Iran doesn't have any
Speaker 2: of these weapons systems yet, at least not to our knowledge.
Speaker 2: But this war of choice by the United States didn't
Speaker 2: come as a complete surprise. The Iranian military and the
Speaker 2: Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps have been preparing to fight this
Speaker 2: war for quite some time. Those preparations have included the
Speaker 2: construction of multiple fake aircraft carriers, which their forces have
Speaker 2: sunk in a variety of wargames exercises. The most recent
Speaker 2: of these occurred in twenty twenty. The Prophet Muhammed fourteen
Speaker 2: exercise was meant to prepare for an attack on a
Speaker 2: Nimitz class carrier, and ironically, Iran made it too easy
Speaker 2: to sink, which caused it to go down while it
Speaker 2: was being towed in an inconvenient location that temporarily blocked
Speaker 2: a canal. And that should act as a warning that
Speaker 2: just as American military planners and analysts fuck up constantly,
Speaker 2: so two to their Iranian counterparts, and we shouldn't assume
Speaker 2: our guys are a bunch of hegseth looking chuckle fucks.
Speaker 2: While Iran's Pentagon equivalent is staffed entirely by hard eyed professionals.
Speaker 2: Every military has dipshit officers and has to deal with
Speaker 2: bad calls made by people with political power that function
Speaker 2: up for everyone. What you should take from this, though,
Speaker 2: is that Iran is a country with a large, comparatively
Speaker 2: well funded and prepared military. They regularly invent and sell
Speaker 2: weapons systems that are utilized around the world, and they've
Speaker 2: been obsessively planning to kill an aircraft carrier for years
Speaker 2: and now that doesn't mean they're going to sink one.
Speaker 2: In fact, I still think that's pretty close to impossible,
Speaker 2: at least with the technology we know they have. But
Speaker 2: they don't need to sink one to render it inoperable.
Speaker 2: Just hitting the top of it could be enough to
Speaker 2: do serious damage that would render it combat and capable
Speaker 2: for an extended period of time. And to back me
Speaker 2: up on that point, a few weeks ago, while it
Speaker 2: was actively engaged in combat operations against Iranian forces, a
Speaker 2: fire started on board the Jerry Ford. It began in
Speaker 2: the laundry room, or at least in an area related
Speaker 2: to the vast laundry system that a vehicle like this
Speaker 2: has kind of a little unclear exactly what happened. According
Speaker 2: to the New York Times, though the fire alone took
Speaker 2: thirty hours to put out. Now, the Navy disputes this,
Speaker 2: that the ship was burning for more than a day,
Speaker 2: but they provided no reason anyone should actually trust them.
Speaker 2: Here I found an article published in the National Interest
Speaker 2: by Peter Soussio. He writes that quote the fire caused
Speaker 2: far greater damage than was initially reported, with one sailor
Speaker 2: medically evacuated from the ship and two hundred more treated
Speaker 2: for smoke inhalation. I'm not surprised that the Navy wanted
Speaker 2: to hide the extent of the damage its biggest warship
Speaker 2: suffered due to a laundry fire. But this reinforces how
Speaker 2: unreliable the Navy is as an ongoing source in these matters.
Speaker 2: Soussio notes, quote, there remained conflicting accounts of the fire
Speaker 2: in the media, and the Pentagon seemingly attempted to downplay
Speaker 2: the severity of the fire in the immediate aftermath, leading
Speaker 2: to later confusion. What we do know is that the Ford,
Speaker 2: a small city on the sea, lost all ability to
Speaker 2: launder clothing, betting, and anything else. This caused an immediate
Speaker 2: hygiene issue aboard and a logistic nightmare for the Navy,
Speaker 2: which had to fly in clean clothing at terrific expense.
Speaker 2: Saying a supercarrier was taken out of commission by a
Speaker 2: laundry fire sounds silly, but you can't keep a town
Speaker 2: of forty five hundred people going if no one can
Speaker 2: do the laundry. The fire seems to have also done
Speaker 2: extensive damage to crew living quarters, which forced a thousand
Speaker 2: mattresses to be flown in while the crew slept. Well,
Speaker 2: wherever they were sleeping, it wasn't in their bunks. Now
Speaker 2: we don't know how the fire started again, but unconfirmed
Speaker 2: reports have blamed sabotage by members of the Gerald Ford's crew.
Speaker 2: I can't tell you if this is true were not,
Speaker 2: but if it is, it would not be the first
Speaker 2: time something like this happened. In twenty twelve, a civilian
Speaker 2: contractor started a fire aboard the USS Miami and attacked
Speaker 2: submarine because he wanted to leave work early. The fire
Speaker 2: cost four hundred million dollars in damage and led to
Speaker 2: the vessel being decommissioned. Two years later, the contractor was
Speaker 2: sentenced to seventeen years in prison. Nabal sabotage was an
Speaker 2: even bigger business during the latter stages of the war
Speaker 2: in Vietnam. In December of nineteen seventy two, Jeffrey Allison,
Speaker 2: a nineteen year old sailor from Oakland, was sentenced to
Speaker 2: five years in prison for lighting a fire aboard an
Speaker 2: aircraft carrier, the USS Forestall that same year, a sailor
Speaker 2: aboard the USS Ranger, another supercarrier, delayed its deployment to
Speaker 2: the Pacific by three months by allegedly sticking a paint
Speaker 2: scraper in the main reduction gear, which disabled an engine.
Speaker 2: Per an article in the Alameda Post, the Navy's official
Speaker 2: history of the Ranger confirms that sabotage was becoming more
Speaker 2: popular as the war in Vietnam became more unpopular. Sabotage
Speaker 2: happens every all day. A crewman serving aboard another carrier
Speaker 2: based in Alameda, the Oriskany, was quoted as saying, now
Speaker 2: these sailors, the folks sabotaging their own warships in the
Speaker 2: later stages of the Vietnam War were part of the
Speaker 2: so called SOS movement, a protest campaign launched and sustained
Speaker 2: entirely by sailors angry at being forced to participate in
Speaker 2: the war against Vietnam. The movement gained its name from
Speaker 2: an active protest in nineteen seventy one, when forty sailors
Speaker 2: stood on the flight deck of their returning aircraft carrier
Speaker 2: and spelled out SOS with their bodies again. I don't
Speaker 2: know if sabotage caused the fire on the Gerald Ford,
Speaker 2: and neither it is anyone else, but there are good
Speaker 2: reasons to believe it did. As Senator Mark Warner, vice
Speaker 2: chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in late March,
Speaker 2: the Ford and its crew have been pushed to the
Speaker 2: brink after nearly a year at sea normal deployment for
Speaker 2: sailors on before it is like six months. Come April,
Speaker 2: it will break the record for the longest post Vietnam
Speaker 2: carrier deployment two hundred and ninety four days. Crew members
Speaker 2: have been told their deployment will likely be extended to May,
Speaker 2: at which point they'll have been at sea for an
Speaker 2: entire year.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 2: I don't want to really expect anyone to pour out
Speaker 2: their sympathy for sailors on a warship that has helped
Speaker 2: to kill a minimum of fifteen hundred Iranians so far,
Speaker 2: including two hundred children. But you don't need to feel
Speaker 2: bad for all the lost birthdays and weddings and missed
Speaker 2: funerals to understand the deleterious effect that this has on morale.
Speaker 2: Fighting spirit has adjust a buzzword. When soldiers are exhausted
Speaker 2: and pissed off, they're likely to fuck things up. And
Speaker 2: I'm not just talking about grand acts of sabotage when
Speaker 2: it was still off the coast of Venezuela earlier. In
Speaker 2: this deployment, the Ford suffered massive recurrent issues with its
Speaker 2: plumbing system, which was ripped off a design used in
Speaker 2: cruise ships and works very badly. I can't exaggerate how
Speaker 2: bad the sewage systems on the Ford work. They are
Speaker 2: broken fucking constantly, and per the Alameda Post, some crew
Speaker 2: members may be intentionally exacerbating problems with defective toilets aboard
Speaker 2: the ship by flushing t shirts and other objects, as
Speaker 2: documented in an email from the ship's engineering department, obtained
Speaker 2: by ebr our sewage system is being mistreated and destroyed
Speaker 2: by sailors on a daily basis. That March twenty twenty
Speaker 2: five email stated, my whole maintenance technicians are currently working
Speaker 2: nineteen hours a day right now to keep up with
Speaker 2: the demand. It's a lot of flushed shirts. Now, what
Speaker 2: I'm building to is that there's a perfectly good chance
Speaker 2: this fire didn't even start as an act of sabotage,
Speaker 2: but because somebody fucked up, maybe because they were exhausted,
Speaker 2: maybe because they've just been running the machines too long.
Speaker 2: The laundry is always going all this thing's underway, and
Speaker 2: if it's going for months longer, the normal shit like
Speaker 2: lint is going to build up. In fact, I want
Speaker 2: to read a quote from that article in the National Interest.
Speaker 2: If the ducks haven't been cleaned out properly, it is
Speaker 2: easy for small lint particles to catch fire, potentially leading
Speaker 2: to a larger blaze, not unlike a house fire caused
Speaker 2: by lint build up. So again, this fire was certainly
Speaker 2: not enough to sink the gerald Ford. It didn't destroy it,
Speaker 2: but it did enough damage that it became combat and
Speaker 2: effective or at least you could argue that's the case.
Speaker 2: You know, obviously we replace it with a different carrier group.
Speaker 2: There's not just not a carrier now, but the ford
Speaker 2: was not originally scheduled to leave, and left as a
Speaker 2: result of the fire in order to undergo repairs. That
Speaker 2: gets it something very important, very relevant to the question
Speaker 2: of how a higher intensity war, one involving ground troops
Speaker 2: against Iran would go, because while Iran may or may
Speaker 2: not be able to sync a carrier, they certainly have
Speaker 2: the tools to potentially hit one, starting a fire or
Speaker 2: just damaging the deck badly enough to render it combat ineffective.
Speaker 2: And if these deployment cycles keep getting extended, if sailors
Speaker 2: are kept at a high operational tempo for days or
Speaker 2: weeks or months at a time, people will start fucking up.
Speaker 2: And some of those fuck ups have a chance, as
Speaker 2: we've already seen, to remove the ship from being combat capable,
Speaker 2: or to remove other ships from being combat capable.
Speaker 4: If you're talking from.
Speaker 2: Perspective US marines trying to hold onto an island surrounded
Speaker 2: by enemies, this is a really scary thing. The fact
Speaker 2: that your source of air support might not be able
Speaker 2: to function because somebody fucks up or sabotages it, there's
Speaker 2: a fire, it gets hit. You know, these boats are
Speaker 2: not sinkable, but in certain ways they're a lot more
Speaker 2: fragile than people are used to thinking of them as being.
Speaker 2: Aircraft carriers have been gods of the sea for so long.
Speaker 2: I think it really is something people ought to pay
Speaker 2: attention to. The fact that this simple laundry fire took
Speaker 2: the Jerry Ford out of the theater matters. The longer
Speaker 2: the US keeps fighting, and the longer we keep our
Speaker 2: ships deployed chasing Donald Trump's dreams, the higher the odds
Speaker 2: that something else goes wrong. Yet, whether it's just exhausted
Speaker 2: soldiers screwing up, angry sailors sabotaging things to protest an
Speaker 2: unpopular war, or a damned lucky shot, the Pentagon is
Speaker 2: continuing to roll those dice every day, and I guess
Speaker 2: we'll see what happens next. That's all I've got for
Speaker 2: you right now, everybody. Hopefully we're not invading the islands
Speaker 2: with ground troops by the time this episode comes out,
Speaker 2: but we might be.
Speaker 3: This is it could happen here. Executive Disorder, our weekly
Speaker 3: newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling world,
Speaker 3: and what it means for you. I'm Garrison Davis today
Speaker 3: and joined by Mia Wong and James Stout. This episode,
Speaker 3: we are covering the week of March twenty fifth to
Speaker 3: April first.
Speaker 1: And so we're all gonna do silly things that aren't
Speaker 1: really news. No, we're not going to do it when
Speaker 1: I love it when outlets do that.
Speaker 3: This comes out Friday. This comes out Friday, it's over.
Speaker 3: It's done.
Speaker 1: Normal Fish of April Day. For all those French people
Speaker 1: out there now.
Speaker 3: With the midterm elections rapidly approaching, I know everyone's going
Speaker 3: to get tired of election news, but there is some
Speaker 3: very impertant voting that needs to happen in these next
Speaker 3: few weeks because it could happen here. Show called Behind
Speaker 3: the Bastards and James's excellent series Migrating to America have
Speaker 3: been nominated for Webby Awards. You know the Emmys. Yeah,
Speaker 3: they're like those, except they're for the Internet. But they're
Speaker 3: just as serious.
Speaker 1: More serious.
Speaker 3: Some people are saying, the Internet's obviously is more real
Speaker 3: than television.
Speaker 4: No one watches TV anymore.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like the Emmy's people who want boom is people.
Speaker 3: Are saying, so this is This is obviously very exciting
Speaker 3: and voting lasts until April sixteenth. There will be links
Speaker 3: in the show notes to vote for the three nominations
Speaker 3: that we have here at Coolson Media. Migrating to America
Speaker 3: is nominated for the Limited Series and Specials Podcast Documentary category.
Speaker 3: Find the Bastards is the podcast features for experimental and Innovation,
Speaker 3: and it Could Happen Here is also nominated under the
Speaker 3: Limited Series category under News and Politics. It's kind of
Speaker 3: confusing to navigate the website because there's just so many categories,
Speaker 3: but those three links will be there below and we
Speaker 3: will continue to be talking about what is arguably the
Speaker 3: most important election of our lifetimes in these next few weeks.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Pokemon, go to those links and vote for us.
Speaker 3: Even if you see that you know we might be ahead,
Speaker 3: stay in line, you cannot leave. We will not let
Speaker 3: trump Land by ms now come on steal our spot
Speaker 3: as number one. So stop the steal. Do not let
Speaker 3: trump Land win. Vote it could happen here April sixteenth,
Speaker 3: up until the sixteenth mm hmm.
Speaker 1: Very often vote early, ft off, vote with your spvery
Speaker 1: man address.
Speaker 4: Look, vote vote very, really, vote often. The great slogan
Speaker 4: of my of my home state of Illinois.
Speaker 3: Everyone take this liberal direct action very seriously. Let's start
Speaker 3: with some actual news. Getting serious here. Christy Nome's husband
Speaker 3: was outed as what I'm gonna call a sissy cross
Speaker 3: dresser with an interest in quote unquote bimbofication. Gnome as
Speaker 3: governor signed a joint state letter attacking trans writes there's
Speaker 3: so much gendered angst among these conservatives, projection, etc.
Speaker 1: Et cetera.
Speaker 3: Representatives for Nome released a statement after this news dropped,
Speaker 3: quote Missnome, which is interesting. Quote Missnome is devastated. The
Speaker 3: family was blindsided by this, and they ask for privacy
Speaker 3: and prayers at this time.
Speaker 1: Yeah cool.
Speaker 4: I think I think we need to we need to
Speaker 4: expand the right to arm bears to the right to
Speaker 4: arm dogs. This is my final statement on this matter.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's not a great month for the Nomes after
Speaker 1: she joined this Shield of America's task force, which so
Speaker 1: far has existed for less than a month and already
Speaker 1: bombed the wrong country once.
Speaker 4: Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: In other important news, four hundred and thirteen thousand, seven
Speaker 3: hundred and ninety three KitKat bars were stolen in transit
Speaker 3: from Italy to Poland.
Speaker 1: Okay, when you get that statistic, is that four hundred
Speaker 1: and thirteen thousand, seven hundred and ninety three four finger
Speaker 1: bars or is that one hundred thousand and you're counting
Speaker 1: each finger separately.
Speaker 3: No, it's each packaged bar, including some of the new
Speaker 3: limited edition Formula one and Chunky bars.
Speaker 1: Oh that's been a thing in the UK for like
Speaker 1: twenty years, KitKat.
Speaker 3: This is a new version. This is a new version,
Speaker 3: according to a press release from KitKat. Okay, So if
Speaker 3: you want to argue with KitKat.
Speaker 1: I think what you're seeing is is called cool Britannia.
Speaker 1: It's a phenomenon by which British culture is slowly taken
Speaker 1: over the world.
Speaker 3: This is twelve tons of KitKat bars that were stolen.
Speaker 3: Their whereabouts are currently unknown. An on duty Secret Service
Speaker 3: agent assigned to Biden shot himself while at the Philadelphia
Speaker 3: airport last week. Look, the lines are bad, but come on,
Speaker 3: it's not that bad. This was a negligick discharge while
Speaker 3: the agent was traveling through the airport in an unmarked car.
Speaker 4: Jill Biden was not in the immediate area at the
Speaker 4: time of the shooting.
Speaker 3: Last weekend, Trump signed an executive order to start paying
Speaker 3: TSA agents. As the Senate and House failed to agree
Speaker 3: on a DHS funding bill, Congress has adjourned for two
Speaker 3: weeks as the shutdown continues to set new records for
Speaker 3: the longest in any federal agency's history. Quick update here,
Speaker 3: literally as we were recording, House Republicans caved and agreed
Speaker 3: to the Senate bill to fund DHS except for ICE
Speaker 3: and CBP, which Republicans will be trying to fund later
Speaker 3: in a reconciliation bill. But as of Wednesday afternoon, it
Speaker 3: looks like Congress has finally reached a funding package for
Speaker 3: the rest of DHS. Politico has reported that acting ICE
Speaker 3: director Todd Lyons has been hospitalized at least twice for
Speaker 3: stress related issues. Oh my god, while working to implement
Speaker 3: Trump's immigration policy.
Speaker 1: I think it's specifically like because they're shouting him for
Speaker 1: not hitting the targets.
Speaker 3: Right, because Stephen Miller has been calling lions yelling at him,
Speaker 3: quote unquote, yelling about not hitting.
Speaker 4: Certain immigration targets.
Speaker 3: Yes, and Trump has yet to endorse, still still yet
Speaker 3: to endorse anyone in the Texas run off. Between John
Speaker 3: Cornyn and Ken Paxton. Early reports indicated Trump would back
Speaker 3: corn In the incumbent, but recently Paxton has been seen
Speaker 3: meeting with Trump at Mora Lago and what have been
Speaker 3: reported as quote unquote positive meetings.
Speaker 1: A Russian oil tanker has dogged in Cuba after the
Speaker 1: United States allowed it to break the blockade on the island.
Speaker 1: As we reported last week, it's been a massive shortage
Speaker 1: of oil in Cuba. This will alleviate that slightly.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: A US marine, probably former US marine now if not
Speaker 1: very shortly to be former US marine, has been charged
Speaker 1: with federal offensive after allegedly selling millions of rounds of ammunition,
Speaker 1: including one which isn't normally available for civilian purchase, and
Speaker 1: javelins in Arizona. Javelin, yeah, yeah, just for those those
Speaker 1: who are not familiar javelin, I'm not talking about like
Speaker 1: a spear here, I'm talking about a guided anti tank missile.
Speaker 7: Oh shit.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Who was he trying to sell it to?
Speaker 1: So he selled them to two people who acted as brokers,
Speaker 1: are two unindicted co conspirators, and then they sold them
Speaker 1: to other people and an undercover agent was able to
Speaker 1: purchase some of The ammunition guy's name is Andrew paul
Speaker 1: A Marius. He was indicted by grand jury this week.
Speaker 1: He was an ammunition tech at Pendleton, but he brought
Speaker 1: them to Arizona to sell. And at this time about
Speaker 1: two million rounds are are not recovered. Great, it's not
Speaker 1: clear if they are still javelins in circulation. Basically what
Speaker 1: they don't know where the javelins are.
Speaker 3: They lost.
Speaker 1: They recovered a javelin, they don't know if they recovered all.
Speaker 4: The java So potentially there are just anti tank rockets
Speaker 4: out there.
Speaker 3: Wait a minute, Wait a minute, they're with the Kitkats.
Speaker 4: That's it's a joint operation.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's how they stop that large Kitcat truck they hit,
Speaker 1: hit the vehicle with javelt in the Yeah, it's one
Speaker 1: of those growth operations. You know, you get one javelin,
Speaker 1: you strike a KitKat vehicle, you sell the Kitcats. Now
Speaker 1: you got two javelins. You hit the mars bar vehicle. Right,
Speaker 1: this is capitalism in action.
Speaker 5: Hmm.
Speaker 1: And then let's let's return to Arizona where normal things happen.
Speaker 1: Also in Arizona, a grand jury has indicted a man
Speaker 1: for material support for a foreign terrorist organization after he
Speaker 1: allegedly sold weapons that he intended to provide to the
Speaker 1: CJND and CDs Cartel Halis gonoeve Hen Rathion and cart Lissinola,
Speaker 1: so two of the larger Mexican cartels. Right, these are
Speaker 1: two groups that were listed as ftos by the Trump
Speaker 1: administration very early on last year. Lawrence Gray, sixty five
Speaker 1: was a federal firearms licensee. He owned a shop called
Speaker 1: Grips by Larry. He sold fancy grips for nineteen elevens.
Speaker 1: He was already facing a raft of weapons charges after
Speaker 1: selling a fifty caliber barrett A semi auto belfed and
Speaker 1: of course a thirty eight Super nineteen eleven pistol to
Speaker 1: a confidential informant. The thirty eight Super nineteen eleven pistol Well,
Speaker 1: the reason I say, of course, is because any time
Speaker 1: people get busted for illegal weapons sales in the Southwest,
Speaker 1: there always seems to be a thirty eight Super nineteen
Speaker 1: eleven involved. That they're very much like a status gun
Speaker 1: in organized crime in Mexico because certain calibers are less
Speaker 1: available there, thirty eight Super is pretty most like uniquely
Speaker 1: associated with with that market. Like it always seems that
Speaker 1: that pops up in busts and he was selling fancy grips,
Speaker 1: some of which had symbology, which sometimes is used by
Speaker 1: organized crime groups in Mexico. Anyway, this is the first
Speaker 1: time I've seen a material support for terrorism charge for
Speaker 1: one of these cartels who were recently designated as ftos,
Speaker 1: so that was interesting to me. Finally, Israel has passed
Speaker 1: a law allowing the death penalty for murder that it
Speaker 1: uses a phrase quote with the intent of rejecting the
Speaker 1: existence of the state of Israel. It appears to be
Speaker 1: a binary system of punishment.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 1: It seems that the death penalty is only going to
Speaker 1: pertain to Palestinian people here. Yeah, it's worth noting that
Speaker 1: the Palestinians the West Bank tried in military courts and
Speaker 1: they face a very high conviction rate. Often people will admit,
Speaker 1: I think we can safety say that they admit under
Speaker 1: duress in conditions it would not generally be considered applicable
Speaker 1: with justice.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 1: This is I mean, this is the cinepart egal system
Speaker 1: on top of everything else. Right, Israel previously haven't had
Speaker 1: the death penalty other than for certain war crimes, which
Speaker 1: is in and of itself quite amusing. Given the stuff
Speaker 1: we will talk about later in this very episode.
Speaker 4: One of the really bleak things about this is, oh, God, Benvier,
Speaker 4: who's been who's the Minister of National Security, the unbelievably
Speaker 4: unhinged right winger who's been campaigning for this law, has
Speaker 4: been going around with a bunch of parliamentary factions wearing
Speaker 4: yellow noose pins. Yeah, this is their thing and in
Speaker 4: support of this. So it's really truly cannot be clearer
Speaker 4: what this is about.
Speaker 1: Yeah, No, that's there, like their version of the market,
Speaker 1: I guess, like their branding of their movement is this
Speaker 1: noos pin.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well it's it's. It's, it's it's it's specifically, it's
Speaker 4: the thing that they've replaced the like the ribbon they
Speaker 4: were wearing for the hostages has now just been replaced
Speaker 4: with the noose with the nows. Yeah, where Jesus Christ.
Speaker 4: There's one more little thing I'd like to mention.
Speaker 3: There was a Daily Mail article that went viral only
Speaker 3: the best news coming from the Daily Mail that carried
Speaker 3: the headline quote bullet used to kill Charlie Kirk did
Speaker 3: not match rifle allegedly used by suspect Tyler Robinson.
Speaker 4: God, so.
Speaker 3: This article is reporting on emotion filed by the defense,
Speaker 3: characterizing findings that are still yet to be fully resolved
Speaker 3: from the ATF. This does not mean that a different
Speaker 3: gun was used. What it means is that the ATF
Speaker 3: was maybe unable to positively match the bullet fragments to
Speaker 3: the gun, Which does not mean that this was a
Speaker 3: negative match. This did not come from that gun, but
Speaker 3: that the fragments could not be positively linked to the
Speaker 3: gun against his emotion filed by the defense doing what
Speaker 3: they need to do, which is legally defend this man like.
Speaker 4: That is that is their job, and that is that
Speaker 4: is what they are doing.
Speaker 3: The characterization of this motion by the Daily Mail is
Speaker 3: designed to drive clickbait, and it's being used to encourage
Speaker 3: this sort of conspiracy around the charliekirk shooting, that there
Speaker 3: was this like other currently unknown shooter possibives foreign ties.
Speaker 3: That's it's a very very popular thing right now on
Speaker 3: the internet.
Speaker 1: The Grassy Mall theory of Charlie kirkshit.
Speaker 3: Yes, that basically like a MASAD agent was hiding somewhere
Speaker 3: and Tyler Robinson is a patsy. Tyler Robinson obviously innocent
Speaker 3: until proven guilty. This is going to get settled in court.
Speaker 3: But the characterization of the early findings by the ATF
Speaker 3: through the Daily Mail was a bit misleading.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they daily fail.
Speaker 4: And also I think it's worth mentioning that like this
Speaker 4: kind of bullet matching stuff is just as a forensic science,
Speaker 4: and this is true of a lot of the sort
Speaker 4: of forensic sciences that are used in used in courts.
Speaker 4: Like I think Robert has talked on Behind the Bastard's
Speaker 4: about like a bunch of like the fire pattern stuff.
Speaker 4: This is kind of in the same category as that,
Speaker 4: in that it's not very good even to begin with.
Speaker 4: And so what we have here is a bad mischaracterization
Speaker 4: of a report of like an incomplete analysis from a
Speaker 4: not very good piece of forensic technology that's being used
Speaker 4: to do conspiracy because it makes money.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we will certainly follow this case as it actually
Speaker 3: riches trial, as there will.
Speaker 4: Be many interesting things that come out through the course
Speaker 4: of that trial.
Speaker 1: All right, So let's begin by talking about immigration with this.
Speaker 1: Brad Land more or less broke this right on his
Speaker 1: social media accounts. The United States Department of Justice, via
Speaker 1: the United States Attorneys obviously New York has admitted that
Speaker 1: it was misguided by ICE attorneys in asserting that they
Speaker 1: could detain migrants in immigration court. There was a memo
Speaker 1: right and guidance memo that they relied on. The memo
Speaker 1: they now say should have applied to other courts, but
Speaker 1: not to the Executive Office of Immigration Review. The declaration
Speaker 1: came in New York court suit filed by the ACLU
Speaker 1: on behalf of advocacy groups which had challenged at courthouse arrests.
Speaker 1: That's been happening for about a year hours I'm sure
Speaker 1: most people are aware. In the filing, the USDOJ said
Speaker 1: quote this error, however, was not caused by a lack
Speaker 1: of diligence and care by the undersigned attorneys. The undersigned
Speaker 1: was specifically informed by ICE that the twenty twenty five
Speaker 1: ICE guidance applied to immigration courthouse arrests. In addition, we
Speaker 1: discussed and obtained the approval of assigned ICE Council before
Speaker 1: filing every brief in this case and making any oral
Speaker 1: representations to the Court and the plaintiffs. We also transmitted
Speaker 1: copies of the Court's orders, transcript to the September second,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five oral argument and plaintiff's filings to ICE
Speaker 1: Council throughout its litigation. Based on our discussions with ICE today,
Speaker 1: this regrettable error appears to have occurred because of agency
Speaker 1: attorney error. Is what you've got. There is a US
Speaker 1: attorney basically saying, like, not my fault, ICE attorney's fault.
Speaker 1: Relatively unusual statement. Right, Like, obviously we've seen them attempts
Speaker 1: to kind of split the executive branch before in these
Speaker 1: legal filings. Right, we saw, we saw this happen in
Speaker 1: some of those cases in Minnesota, and then the judge
Speaker 1: rejected that.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 1: The ACLU, in a letter of response, noted the wide
Speaker 1: reaching consequences here, and it's asked for fourteen days to
Speaker 1: consider what to do next and file in motion. The
Speaker 1: memo in question. Right, this ICE guidance memo said the
Speaker 1: quote civil immigration enforcement actions in or near court houses
Speaker 1: when they have credible information that leads them to believe
Speaker 1: the targeted aliens alien brackets s IS or will be
Speaker 1: present in a specific location. It said those were permissible.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 1: DHS, however, has said that there will not be a
Speaker 1: change in their policy going forward. It's unlikely that they
Speaker 1: will stop until they are told by a court to
Speaker 1: do so. Right. So what it seems here is that
Speaker 1: the Ice attorney has for some reason reconsidered, perhaps because
Speaker 1: of this ongoing case in New York, what they had
Speaker 1: said there, and now attempted to walk back something that
Speaker 1: they have been doing for a year. This will not
Speaker 1: change the fact that people who have probably been arrested
Speaker 1: in those courthouses. I have no doubt many of them
Speaker 1: have already been deported from the United States. Right, many
Speaker 1: more of them will have suffered material damage if they
Speaker 1: have not been deported, because they will have been detained
Speaker 1: in horrific conditions. Right, We've seen more photos today from
Speaker 1: inside immigration attention. Immigrated detention has always been horrific. It
Speaker 1: continues to be horrific. We can't make those people whole
Speaker 1: again in a meaningful way. But what it means going forward,
Speaker 1: we will keep reporting on another deportation story. I want
Speaker 1: to talk about a deportation flight on Monday landed in Mianma.
Speaker 1: The flight also stopped in Thailand, and it is the
Speaker 1: fifth such deportation flight that I'm aware of. I know
Speaker 1: of two that were announced. These have not been previously reported,
Speaker 1: but in March of twenty twenty five, while at the
Speaker 1: time was a state administration council. The Banmar minitary dictatorship
Speaker 1: is going through the process of changing its clothes and
Speaker 1: pretending to be a civilian government right now, that doesn't
Speaker 1: matter for this story. In the second of March twenty
Speaker 1: twenty five, the illegitimate government of Myanmar announced that it
Speaker 1: had received two individual deporties, one on each flight. In
Speaker 1: April and May of that year, they received more. So
Speaker 1: we now believe that twenty two people had been deported
Speaker 1: up to this Monday, and more people, it appears from
Speaker 1: this flight, have been deported on Monday. The last deportation
Speaker 1: flight resulted in the deporties being detained and tortured by
Speaker 1: Miaan Mar's brutal military intelligence. The flight was a bordered
Speaker 1: jet owned by Journey Aviation and it returned via Sydney
Speaker 1: to the United States of America. The United States has
Speaker 1: been trying to counsel the temporary Protective status for Burmese
Speaker 1: people for some time, but even with a TPS, it's
Speaker 1: worth noting that people some people have been convicted of
Speaker 1: crimes and the exceptions can still be deported, The Hunter
Speaker 1: said in a press release last year. Quote the MEMMA
Speaker 1: government is cooperating with the relevant US federal entities in
Speaker 1: verifying and accepting deportees to Mianma. This and some other
Speaker 1: things a Trump administration have done. They've tried to characterize
Speaker 1: it a de facto recognition of their right to rule
Speaker 1: the country. Yeah, very clearly, the reason that they're talking
Speaker 1: about these deportations is because they're flexing that. Hey, the
Speaker 1: US government is talking to us downstream effectory ed. I
Speaker 1: think the world is largely not taking that seriously, but
Speaker 1: nonetheless they are using that, whether it's for external or
Speaker 1: internal signaling. The last time has happened according to Miama.
Speaker 1: Now the deporties were taken straight to the on Tarpi
Speaker 1: Interrogation Center, and last time it was mostly ethnically Karenne
Speaker 1: or Chin people. So these are not people. It's a
Speaker 1: majority ethnicity, right, The majority ethnicity. The ethnicity that comprises
Speaker 1: most of the armed forces is or certainly most of
Speaker 1: the high ranks of the armed forces are Bama people.
Speaker 1: If people want to listen to more about me and
Speaker 1: my Robert and I have made two very extensive series
Speaker 1: about that, we will link to. Talking of torture, here
Speaker 1: are some advertisements which are like torture for your ears.
Speaker 4: Some people actually like torture.
Speaker 1: Just to clarify Garrison, I don't think this is the
Speaker 1: kind that people like.
Speaker 3: Some people might like those ads. There is a huge
Speaker 3: industry of watching vintage advertising on YouTube, just like like
Speaker 3: edits together of like old ads.
Speaker 4: People love that stuff.
Speaker 3: Weird, weird nostalgic capitalism.
Speaker 4: Brain.
Speaker 1: It is funny to look at the old ads. When
Speaker 1: I was doing my archival research, I'd find like nineteen
Speaker 1: twenties and nineteen thirties ads and you're like, oh, what
Speaker 1: you're selling is drugs, but so.
Speaker 5: True, so true.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's like the two kinds of early eineteen hundreds
Speaker 4: ads are drugs and you should buy this because it
Speaker 4: has a swastika on it.
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, it's just like some form of racism
Speaker 1: in marketing.
Speaker 4: Well, what's favored racist in like nineteen oh five? I
Speaker 4: mean kind of yeah.
Speaker 1: And guys, it's a Buddhist simple original. Guys.
Speaker 4: It's fine.
Speaker 3: Let's return to our name's sake and discuss two executive orders.
Speaker 3: As the voting restriction bill dubbed the Save America Act,
Speaker 3: continues to stall in Congress, Trump has attempted to take
Speaker 3: matters into his own hands by signing a new executive
Speaker 3: order quote ensuring Citizenship of Verification and Integrity in federal elections.
Speaker 3: This order directs DHS, USCIS and the Social Security Administration
Speaker 3: to create a quote state citizenship list of individuals confirmed
Speaker 3: to be United States citizens who will be above the
Speaker 3: age of eighteen at the time of an upcoming federal
Speaker 3: election and who maintain a residence in the subject state.
Speaker 3: And this citizenship list will then be used to compare
Speaker 3: to state voter rules. The list will be derived from
Speaker 3: quote Federal citizenship and Naturalization records, Social Security Administration records,
Speaker 3: the DHS Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements data, and other
Speaker 3: relevant federal databases. Unquote James, do you want to talk
Speaker 3: about this idea of having like a list of citizens,
Speaker 3: because this is I think something we've we've mentioned before.
Speaker 3: How there to this point hasn't really been like a
Speaker 3: single list of US citizens.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because you can obtain United States citizenships through a
Speaker 1: number of means, right, Yeah, So these would exist in
Speaker 1: different agencies, and generally there has been like a hostility,
Speaker 1: a well founded like hostility to to this kind of
Speaker 1: overarching government like in out list, right, not least because
Speaker 1: they will screw it up monumentally.
Speaker 3: Have devastating consequences that affect not just your ability to vote, but,
Speaker 3: as we have seen through the past year of ice enforcement,
Speaker 3: your ability to remain in the United States.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and just every part of everyday life. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: not at least to add that, like one of the
Speaker 1: one of the ways you can obtain United States citizenship
Speaker 1: is through being in a enrolled tribal citizen. I don't
Speaker 1: know if that consulting tribal citizenship worlds don't.
Speaker 3: There was nothing about that in the order. I legitimately
Speaker 3: do not think the people who are pushing this understand
Speaker 3: that that's a thing. Yeah, they don't think about it. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: that's not It's not a group of people who they
Speaker 3: care about.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 3: Earlier today, during the Supreme Court oral arguments on birthright citizenship,
Speaker 3: which which Trump attended for ninety minutes and then and
Speaker 3: then left because he wasn't happy with the way it
Speaker 3: was going, Gorsich asked the Seasons Solicitor General if he
Speaker 3: thinks Native Americans are birthright citizens under their test, to
Speaker 3: which these listener general replied, I think so, and then
Speaker 3: said I'll have to think that.
Speaker 4: Through Oh my fucking god.
Speaker 3: He later indicated that they probably would. But this just
Speaker 3: shows that they aren't really like thinking about all these
Speaker 3: sorts of things. It's not necessarily like, in that case,
Speaker 3: trying to be intentionally harmful. It shows just that they're
Speaker 3: they're not even like thinking of these sorts of things
Speaker 3: that could have really really devastating effects if implemented. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: which is like an odd part of the Trump administration
Speaker 3: has like not everything bad they're doing is necessarily has
Speaker 3: every single specific implementation pathway in mind. Yeah, but when
Speaker 3: implemented is like still is still devastating to people's lives.
Speaker 4: I want to say one thing about the birth lay
Speaker 4: clazenship thing. Josh Chafitz, who's a professor of law at
Speaker 4: Georgetown Law Law on Politics, had a very good point
Speaker 4: about this, which I think is worth making, which is, like,
Speaker 4: part of what's going on here is that the trumpministration
Speaker 4: is trying to carve out like a specific thing called
Speaker 4: birth right citizenship. That's like a thing that you get
Speaker 4: if you have two immigrant parents. But birtht right citizenship
Speaker 4: is a citizenship that every single person in the US has. Yeah,
Speaker 4: it's everyone's there's No, there's no distinction. There's not like
Speaker 4: a different kind of citizenship you get if you have
Speaker 4: two immigrant parents versus if you have like parents that
Speaker 4: were like born in the US. Right, Like it's all
Speaker 4: one thing. Every single person in the United States has
Speaker 4: the same kind of citizenship. But the moment you start
Speaker 4: trying to like hack apart different people citizenship, right, you
Speaker 4: try to you try to like you know, like like
Speaker 4: make there be like classes of of how you're a
Speaker 4: citizen through like this whole birthright citizenship complaint that they're
Speaker 4: doing right, and to be like, oh, well, just these
Speaker 4: people who were like born to immigrants are birthright citizens right.
Speaker 4: That's one of the ways you start getting into these
Speaker 4: like fucking hideous issues of like okay, are people with
Speaker 4: tribal membership like you know, residencies like citizens right. It's
Speaker 4: like all of the stuff is like downstream with this
Speaker 4: effect to like cut citizenship of parts that needs to
Speaker 4: just be resisted, like from the fundamental thing of there
Speaker 4: is not a different category of people called the big
Speaker 4: birthrates citizens. That's every single person in the US.
Speaker 1: Yeah, unless they naturalized, right, Unless you're a naturalized citizen.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And what's naturalized? Yeah? Yeah, and even then you're
Speaker 4: still just a citizen.
Speaker 1: Then you become a citizen. You just go into the
Speaker 1: citizen bucket.
Speaker 4: There's one. Then you are now citizen.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and the moment you cut that apart, like it's terrible,
Speaker 4: terrible things happen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, twenty twenty four and made the episode as Robert
Speaker 1: and Sophie in which we discuss potential at tax on
Speaker 1: citizenship and potential ways of Trump, and we get into
Speaker 1: the birth right citizenship and the we get into where
Speaker 1: it comes from and the fact that this is not
Speaker 1: an issue about which there has been legal debate. You
Speaker 1: will now see articles being like the debate about birth
Speaker 1: right citizenship. That is, people pulling things out of their
Speaker 1: ass to create two sides on an issue which has
Speaker 1: been settled for quite literally decades, if not centuries. No, yeah,
Speaker 1: I will probably try and do something else on birth
Speaker 1: right citizenship. The reason I haven't done a lot is
Speaker 1: because there isn't a great deal to say. Yeah, like,
Speaker 1: birth right citizenship is a thing in the United States.
Speaker 1: It has been a thing in the United States for
Speaker 1: a very long time.
Speaker 4: It's just in the Constitution just says that.
Speaker 1: It just says that, yeah, there are some people who
Speaker 1: want to take it away, and it's specifically like we
Speaker 1: did that after we ended chattel slavery, right like for
Speaker 1: a very good reason. Yeah, and pushing back on the
Speaker 1: things we did after we ended chattel slavery is is
Speaker 1: bad actually, But yeah, I will maybe I'll do another
Speaker 1: episode because I know we've picked up a lot of
Speaker 1: new listeners since then.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 3: Trump's new executive Order on citizens a verification for elections
Speaker 3: also states, quote, the Secretary of Homeland Security shall establish
Speaker 3: procedures to allow individuals to access their individual records, as
Speaker 3: well as to update or correct them in advance of elections.
Speaker 4: Unquote.
Speaker 3: Unclear how this is going to work, if it even
Speaker 3: is gonna work. It's still not clear that this executive
Speaker 3: order will actually be implemented as written because of potential
Speaker 3: constitutional violations. But you know, this would be in an
Speaker 3: attempt to add some of the pretty big issues that
Speaker 3: we're saying about. Someone may be a citizen and not
Speaker 3: show up as a citizen in these databases for a
Speaker 3: number of reasons, whether it's because they were naturalized or
Speaker 3: even in some cases where granted citizenship through one of
Speaker 3: their parents after being in the sole legal custody of
Speaker 3: that parent who is a US citizen before this individual
Speaker 3: is eighteen. This is called the Childhood Citizenship Act of
Speaker 3: two thousand, which makes a permanent resident become a citizen
Speaker 3: if they're living with a US citizen parent and things
Speaker 3: like that. Citizenship kind of rolls over from permanent residency
Speaker 3: without ever actually having to become naturalized, and getting that
Speaker 3: added to any kind of database doesn't really happen by itself.
Speaker 3: You have to then apply for proof of citizenship like
Speaker 3: a passport or a certificate. So there's all these sorts
Speaker 3: of weird instances where someone is a citizen, but it
Speaker 3: may not show up in these sorts of records, including
Speaker 3: social security records.
Speaker 1: I should just clarify that not all tribal members are
Speaker 1: necessarily US citizens, but tribal membership document can sometimes be used,
Speaker 1: like Garrison was saying, right, as a way to prove
Speaker 1: United States citizenship. Just more than one hundred years now
Speaker 1: since the Indian Citizenship Act of nineteen twenty four, right,
Speaker 1: there may still be people alive today who were made
Speaker 1: citizens by that act, but would not have any particular
Speaker 1: documentation that's personal to them.
Speaker 3: To show that the Executive order also writes that the
Speaker 3: Attorney General will investigate and prosecute state officials, local officials, individuals,
Speaker 3: and public or private entities who issue federal ballots to
Speaker 3: individuals not eligible to vote, or aid an a bet
Speaker 3: the printing, production, shipment, or distribution of ballots to those
Speaker 3: ineligible to vote.
Speaker 1: That's what we call a chilling effect.
Speaker 3: The second half of the order takes on vote by
Speaker 3: mail by instructing the Postmaster General to initiate a proposed
Speaker 3: rule making that requires states to submit lists of voters
Speaker 3: who will be provided mail in or absencee ballots at
Speaker 3: least sixty days before an election, and that the USPS
Speaker 3: shall not transmit any ballots for anyone not on this
Speaker 3: state citizenship list. Now, all of this is intended to
Speaker 3: take effect before the midterm elections, with the DHS instructed
Speaker 3: to establish the infrastructure necessary to compile, maintain, and transmit
Speaker 3: the state citizenship list within ninety days. Though this executive
Speaker 3: order may very well be blocked by courts for being
Speaker 3: an unconstitutional breach of presidential power, the followut of this
Speaker 3: will be determined in the next few weeks as states
Speaker 3: and legal entities prepare lawsuits. Let's talk about one other
Speaker 3: executive order. On Tuesday, a federal judge ruled that a
Speaker 3: key section of the executive order quote ending taxpayer subsitization
Speaker 3: of biased media, is unconstitutional. In this order, Trump instructed
Speaker 3: all federal agencies to cut funding to PBS and NPR.
Speaker 3: The judge in this case wrote that the President can
Speaker 3: credits reporting from such outlets and fund programs that promote
Speaker 3: specific perspectives and impose limits on federal grants, but under
Speaker 3: the First Amendment, the government cannot use the power of
Speaker 3: the purse to quote, punish or suppress disfavored expression by others,
Speaker 3: writing that both the Supreme Court and the DC Circuit
Speaker 3: Court have repeatedly observed that one quote may not deny
Speaker 3: a benefit to a person on the basis that infringes
Speaker 3: his constitutionally protected freedom of speech, even if he has
Speaker 3: no entitlement to that benefit unquote. The judge rights that
Speaker 3: the executive order quote does not define or regulate the
Speaker 3: content of government speech or ensure compliance with the federal program,
Speaker 3: nor does it set neutral and germane criteria that apply
Speaker 3: to all applicants for a federal grant program. Instead, it
Speaker 3: singles out to two speakers and on the basis of
Speaker 3: their speech bars them from all federally funded programs. It
Speaker 3: does so, moreover, without regard to whether the federal funds
Speaker 3: are used to pay for the nationwide interconnection systems, which
Speaker 3: serve as the technological backbone of public radio and NIME television,
Speaker 3: to provide safety and security for journalists working in war zones,
Speaker 3: to support the Emergency Broadcast system, or to produce or
Speaker 3: distribute music, children's or other educational programming or documentaries unquote. Now,
Speaker 3: besides setting a good legal precedent, this ruling won't have
Speaker 3: much in terms of immediate effects because the Corporation for
Speaker 3: Public Broadcasting was dissolved last month after being defunded by
Speaker 3: the Republican controlled Congress. That's not being reversed, but this
Speaker 3: ruling could make it less difficult for PBS and NPR
Speaker 3: to receive money in the future, either from Congress or
Speaker 3: some federal agencies.
Speaker 4: What's that sound, Oh?
Speaker 1: No, someone desecrating the legacy of the Clash by singing
Speaker 1: there were a song with different lyrics.
Speaker 9: Rights.
Speaker 1: Seriously, though I'm still angry to.
Speaker 4: Be a fair to buy entrance music, the Clash desecrated
Speaker 4: themselves by making that song.
Speaker 1: Yeah, with the moment they released that song. Yeah, Joe
Speaker 1: Strammer cried when they played that song during Desert Storm,
Speaker 1: and if he was alive today he would be crying again.
Speaker 4: Yeah. So, okay, we actually do have tariff news, which
Speaker 4: the first tariff news in a while. But when we
Speaker 4: last spoke about the Supreme Court nullifying the Liberation Day
Speaker 4: terroriffs and a significant chunk of the tariffs that Trump
Speaker 4: had been putting into effect, we said that there wasn't
Speaker 4: a plan really to get tariff free funds out and
Speaker 4: that it really hadn't been addressed other than by dissenting
Speaker 4: Supreme Court members. We are sort of starting to see
Speaker 4: what that looks like after a series of rulings from
Speaker 4: trade courts. Right now, it is a fiasco. So the
Speaker 4: government has set up a portal through which you can
Speaker 4: get relief now after it was sort of after it
Speaker 4: was sort of forced to by the courts. The implementation
Speaker 4: of this has been delayed several times because the government
Speaker 4: didn't have time to actually get it out. A bunch
Speaker 4: of the portal is not built yet. The government is
Speaker 4: claiming that it is going to take more time to
Speaker 4: build a whole bunch of it. Yeah, I bet now
Speaker 4: This is a catastrophe because they're they're dealing with about
Speaker 4: one hundred and a bit over one hundred and sixty
Speaker 4: six billion dollars of tariff money. But they have to
Speaker 4: pay back plus interest.
Speaker 1: It's interest, that's funny.
Speaker 4: Yeah, plus interest. This is the whole thing.
Speaker 3: Right, they have to do interest on all of this,
Speaker 3: which is a nightmare.
Speaker 1: It's the interest of crewing while they bungle setting up
Speaker 1: this quest based site or whatever.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's still going every second. The interesting thing is
Speaker 4: ticking on this. So I'm going to quote here from
Speaker 4: Bloomberg Brandon Lord, executive director of the Trade Program's Directory
Speaker 4: of the Customers Agency, who are the people who are
Speaker 4: sort of running all this is also part of why
Speaker 4: it's such a disaster because there's like seventeen different agencies
Speaker 4: that are like working on this, right, So some of
Speaker 4: it's like the Trade Program Director, like at the Customs Agency,
Speaker 4: but there's also just there's different parts of the Customs
Speaker 4: and Customs and Border Patrol that's dealing with all of
Speaker 4: this stuff. Quote wrote that more than twenty six thousand
Speaker 4: importers who paid one hundred and twenty billion dollars in
Speaker 4: the challenge terrorists were registered to receive electronic refunds. So far,
Speaker 4: the government has said that payments could take up to
Speaker 4: forty five days to review. I would bet that it
Speaker 4: takes longer than that, because again, the portal hasn't been written,
Speaker 4: hasn't been like made yet. But partnerspate are still being built.
Speaker 4: I'm sure those doge guys are on. I'm sure the
Speaker 4: veriest thing up running in no time. I'm sure they
Speaker 4: vibe code their way to a perfectly functioning portal. It's
Speaker 4: gonna be so good. And and again I kind of
Speaker 4: beside how much fatastrophe this is. The government has said
Speaker 4: in court that they're portals set up for two thirds
Speaker 4: of the Mouney, Right, there's still another third that they're like, yeah,
Speaker 4: I don't know, we're working on it. Who knows when
Speaker 4: it's gonna happen. So there's just again like a third
Speaker 4: of the hundred sixty six billion dollars that they don't
Speaker 4: even plan to refund. Amazing. Now, now this is not
Speaker 4: even the messiest part of this, right. There's a very
Speaker 4: good piece in the conversation from Peter R. Krabb, who's
Speaker 4: the professor of finance and economics at Northwestern Nazarene and University,
Speaker 4: and also Alison and Graham Larson, who's assistant professor of
Speaker 4: criminal Justice at the same university, and they point out
Speaker 4: that it's not actually as simple as okay, you have
Speaker 4: a you have a item on your balance sheet that
Speaker 4: is the tariff payments for these companies because for example,
Speaker 4: you know, okay, so if you were doing like FedEx,
Speaker 4: for example, they use right, FedEx has like a number
Speaker 4: right because they just they passed the cost directly on
Speaker 4: to the consumers. However, Costco didn't do that. Costco shifted
Speaker 4: the cost around internally. So it's actually very complicated for
Speaker 4: them to figure out how much money they like be
Speaker 4: paid on these terrafts because it was spread a bunch
Speaker 4: of around a whole bunch of stuff. They also like
Speaker 4: changed the way that they were structuring deliveries and stuff internally,
Speaker 4: and there were so there are a whole bunch of
Speaker 4: different lawsuits from these companies to try to get their
Speaker 4: tariff money back because a lot of these were going
Speaker 4: on before the actual formal refund process was started. So
Speaker 4: this is like this is another rolling catastrophe. There's also
Speaker 4: consumer lawsuits of consumers people who bought shit who want
Speaker 4: refunds for the teriffs because they were forced to pay
Speaker 4: the costs of it. Now, because this is the United
Speaker 4: States of America, there's another layer of this, which is
Speaker 4: there are a whole bunch of companies where there are
Speaker 4: there are these investment firms who have come in and said, hey,
Speaker 4: we will buy the rights to your tariff money for
Speaker 4: a fraction of the money, and we will guarantee that
Speaker 4: you get this money now, and then we will pay
Speaker 4: ourselves with the tariff money that we got back. So
Speaker 4: now you have investment firms who are buying up pools
Speaker 4: of this tariff money. And I bet, from spending a
Speaker 4: bunch of time last week week in the trenches of
Speaker 4: the two thousand and eight financial collapse, Molly, I bet
Speaker 4: they're gonna start selling securities fixed off of these pools
Speaker 4: of tariff money. So this, oh my head ache. This
Speaker 4: is great.
Speaker 3: What's what I gotta say?
Speaker 4: I'm on the tariffy on? Oh, it's so good.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm just excited to receive my refund from all
Speaker 3: of the Jay fashion I ordered from Japan, which I'm
Speaker 3: sure I'll be personally receiving thanks to this.
Speaker 4: Hey, you know, here's here's the thing. Here's the thing.
Speaker 4: The one truly beautiful part of the US legal system
Speaker 4: is that you can sue someone for twenty dollars of damages.
Speaker 4: That number has never been changed. It is the one
Speaker 4: truly beautiful part of the United States of America is
Speaker 4: that you, Garrison David almost certainly could sue the government
Speaker 4: for that money. That's funny. Yeah, I'm not doing that
Speaker 4: shit too, which work.
Speaker 1: No, So the gofundmeling for garrisons comes to you, lawyer.
Speaker 4: If someone takes a forty dollars bill from you, you
Speaker 4: can go fucking see them in court. It's beautiful.
Speaker 1: Just tag Garrison at I write okaybsky dot app yeah,
Speaker 1: and they just say, Hi, I am a constitutional lawyer.
Speaker 1: I would like to represent you in court. Read the
Speaker 1: twenty dollars thank you?
Speaker 10: Yes.
Speaker 4: Oh and by the way, by the way, the one
Speaker 4: last thing I want to notice, on a somewhat serious note,
Speaker 4: is that this entire catastrophe is just for one specific
Speaker 4: set of authority that Trump was using to put tariffs
Speaker 4: into place. There are a whole bunch of other ones
Speaker 4: that he's been doing now that will also get challenged,
Speaker 4: that will have their own refund processes where we will
Speaker 4: go through this.
Speaker 3: Entire mess again with different things.
Speaker 4: So it's great, great things happening for international trade as
Speaker 4: we Yeah, increase the price of fucking oil to like
Speaker 4: two hundred dollars a barrel, and I don't know, finally
Speaker 4: get our Calvin and Hobbes eight dollar gasoline. It's great. Well,
Speaker 4: long live the cycler.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: The national price of gathleen is now at four bucks,
Speaker 1: I think.
Speaker 3: And that's why they call him the affordability President.
Speaker 4: Uh huh.
Speaker 1: Yes, anyone checks on the egg prices though, because that's
Speaker 1: how we do things now.
Speaker 3: Expensive a shit, expensive shit James, Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, not cheap.
Speaker 1: Let me divert new listeners to are a famous Chickens
Speaker 1: episode circa twenty twenty three and which we can learn
Speaker 1: more about keeping poultry at home. Talking of catastrophes, I
Speaker 1: would like to continue to talk about the war on Iran.
Speaker 1: The President truthed this week that he was prepared to
Speaker 1: attack desalination and power plants in Iran if the state
Speaker 1: did not comply with his demands. Jesus in his truth,
Speaker 1: he said, I will skip remarking on capitalization, as is
Speaker 1: our house style, because as well as these would take
Speaker 1: half an hour. The United States of America is in
Speaker 1: serious discussions with a new and more reasonable regime to
Speaker 1: end our military operations in Iran. Great progress has been made,
Speaker 1: but if for any reason a deal that's not shortly reached,
Speaker 1: which it probably will be, and if the Hormu Strait
Speaker 1: is not immediately open for business, we will conclude a
Speaker 1: lovely stay in Iran by blowing up and completely obliterating
Speaker 1: all of their electric generating plants, oil wells, and Khag Island.
Speaker 1: Probably all this is sick desalinization plants, which we have
Speaker 1: purposely not yet touched. This will be a retribution for
Speaker 1: our many soldiers and for others that Iran has butchered
Speaker 1: and killed over the old regime's forty seven year reign
Speaker 1: of terror. Thank you for your attention to this matter,
Speaker 1: President Donald J. Trump, as a reporter NBC pointed out,
Speaker 1: targeting civilian infrastructure is a war crime.
Speaker 9: Under international law, Striking civilian infrastructure like that is generally prohibited.
Speaker 9: Why is the President threatening what would amount to potentially
Speaker 9: a war crime with the US military. How do you
Speaker 9: square that with the administration repeatedly saying that the US.
Speaker 10: Does not target civilian look the President has made it
Speaker 10: quite clear to the Iranian regime at this moment in time,
Speaker 10: as evidenced by the statement that you just read, that
Speaker 10: their best move is to make a deal or else.
Speaker 10: The United States Armed Forces has capabilities beyond their wildest imagination,
Speaker 10: and the President is not afraid to use them. That's
Speaker 10: not what I said, Garrett, And you're saying the word
Speaker 10: potential for a reason, because I'm sure sure some experts
Speaker 10: are telling you that in your ear to try to
Speaker 10: ask me that question. Of course, this administration in the
Speaker 10: United States Armed Forces will always act within the confines
Speaker 10: of the law. But with respect to achieving the full
Speaker 10: objectives of Operation Epic Fury, President Trump is going to
Speaker 10: move forward unabated, and he expects the Iranian regime to
Speaker 10: make a deal with the administration.
Speaker 1: It should be noted Iran has said that it is
Speaker 1: not negotiating directly with the United States then negotiating through
Speaker 1: a third party. What is largely missing from this discussion
Speaker 1: is that Israel has been doing this stuff already. Obviously,
Speaker 1: Israel has not limited its war crimes to its bombing
Speaker 1: of Iran. Right it has been on a war crimes
Speaker 1: freeze for several years, and that is an extension of
Speaker 1: a war crime speed that he has been arguably on
Speaker 1: for several decades. Israel attack to desalinate some plant on
Speaker 1: the seventh of March, very briefly, the Israeli press attempted
Speaker 1: to report that the UAE had done this. The UAE
Speaker 1: had to issue a statement essentially saying like, we would
Speaker 1: never attack the people of Iran, while we disagree with
Speaker 1: the state of Iran, while that you've been like outwhoked
Speaker 1: by the UAE, but them saying like it's no way
Speaker 1: to attack the Iranian regime to force Iranian people to
Speaker 1: die for lack of water is a perfectly reasonable and
Speaker 1: just statement.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 1: Officially, both the IDF and the US government have denied
Speaker 1: this strike, but the combination of like several factors include
Speaker 1: duding this incredibly rapid disinformation campaign strongly point to this
Speaker 1: being an id F joint Yeah.
Speaker 4: Also who else, like what what are you too? Bobbed it?
Speaker 1: Like what are you what are you going to do career?
Speaker 5: Lately?
Speaker 1: Yeah, there have been there have been attempt to several
Speaker 1: attempts over the last month to to to suggest that
Speaker 1: like other golf states have done things when when they're
Speaker 1: politically inconvenient. This, as far as I'm concerned, very very
Speaker 1: likely to be an IDF situation. This point is something
Speaker 1: that we've talked about for more than a month now,
Speaker 1: but I just want to make it really clear that
Speaker 1: the US and Israel very clearly have very different goals
Speaker 1: in it run. I think that sometimes we see this
Speaker 1: this very puerile analysis has taken hold on the left
Speaker 1: in the United States right, which suggests that Israel is
Speaker 1: entirely driving the bus here, that they cajoled the United
Speaker 1: States into doing this war, and they're telling the United
Speaker 1: States what to do, when and where and how. I
Speaker 1: think that's a very juvenile way of understanding this. In
Speaker 1: the United States have wanted war with Iran for decades.
Speaker 1: Trump talked about it in his first term. Trump also
Speaker 1: still clearly Harbor's resentment for Obama quote unquote getting bin
Speaker 1: Laden and wants a sort of similar commander in chief win.
Speaker 1: His confidence was significantly bolstered after the Venezuela operation, and
Speaker 1: he thought he could affect a regime change here quickly
Speaker 1: and then extract tribute from a client's day, as he
Speaker 1: appears to be doing from Delca and Venezuela now. This
Speaker 1: has not worked so far in Iran. Israel, on the
Speaker 1: other hand, has continued with his own campaign, which is
Speaker 1: an extension of what we have seen it doing in Gaza,
Speaker 1: what we are seeing it doing in Lebanon, which seems
Speaker 1: to be to cripple any state in the region, any
Speaker 1: population in the region that opposed it. Right, but it
Speaker 1: genuinely seems that its goal here is to leave itself
Speaker 1: sort of the only functioning quality in the region and
Speaker 1: to destroy any other armed actor with very little concern
Speaker 1: for the loss of innocent life. The United States in
Speaker 1: the last week has lost significant aviation resources after Iranian
Speaker 1: ballistic missiles struck and air based into Saudi Arabia. They
Speaker 1: damaged at least one E three A wax aircraft and
Speaker 1: then a handful of KT one thirty five air to
Speaker 1: wear refueling aircraft. This is not in a significant loss.
Speaker 1: This is half a billion dollars of aviation wiped out
Speaker 1: in a single strike. And these are not aeroplanes that
Speaker 1: the United States has a large number of.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 1: Iran also hit aquated tanker this week, A drone seed
Speaker 1: to have hit it off the coast of Dubai. It
Speaker 1: caught fire. There was potential for an oil spill, but
Speaker 1: what I'm seeing at the time where accordingly this is
Speaker 1: has not been once so far, Yeah, exactly. I mean
Speaker 1: every war is an ecological disaster, but this one could
Speaker 1: re a particularly remarkable one. And then I just do
Speaker 1: briefly want to mention the economic impacts. Of course, it
Speaker 1: will be very hard to be living on this planet
Speaker 1: right now and not noticee economic impacts. But the Republic
Speaker 1: of the Marshall Islands has declared a state of emergency
Speaker 1: and begun fuel rationing that they're strictly limiting the use
Speaker 1: of government vehicles. I have reached out to the government
Speaker 1: to presidency. You can hear my reporting from Republic of
Speaker 1: the Martial Islands, including the interview with the then president
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty three. That's another series that we've made
Speaker 1: here on it could happen here that I'm going to
Speaker 1: see if we can get someone from the RMI on
Speaker 1: for an interview, because I think some of these small
Speaker 1: island nations right where everything has to be shipped in
Speaker 1: the cost of fuel can make things extremely difficult for
Speaker 1: people just trying to eke out an existence there in
Speaker 1: a place that the United States nuked despite never raising
Speaker 1: the word and anger against us.
Speaker 3: Finally, our last few stories this episode starting with a
Speaker 3: Tale of Two Bombing Plots American classic Truly the American
Speaker 3: tradition that just won't die. My brother and sister have
Speaker 3: been indicted after allegedly planting and improvised exposit device outside
Speaker 3: of McDill Air Force Space in Tampa, Florida, on March tenth,
Speaker 3: before fleeing to China two days later. After planting the bomb,
Speaker 3: the brother allegedly alerted officials by calling nine to one
Speaker 3: to one, but the explosive went undiscovered for nearly a week.
Speaker 4: It did not detonate.
Speaker 5: Huh.
Speaker 3: The sister was arrested after returning from China, and she's
Speaker 3: charged with evidence tampering and being an accessory after the fact.
Speaker 3: Prosecutors alleged that she helped clean and sell the car
Speaker 3: used to plant the bomb and asked chat GPT how
Speaker 3: to obtain a Chinese visa and transfer properties in her
Speaker 3: brother's name, and searched for Chinese schools for her brother
Speaker 3: to attend. Her brother is still suspected to be in China.
Speaker 4: Look, I am stunned that these people didn't accidentally blow
Speaker 4: themselves up.
Speaker 3: Well, The reason why is because it's actually very hard
Speaker 3: to build a bob.
Speaker 4: Yeah, oh yeah, I guess, I guess we'll because when
Speaker 4: you're trying to build a bomb, there's three outcomes, right,
Speaker 4: there's one you failed to build a bomb. You either
Speaker 4: succeed to build a bomb, or fail to build a
Speaker 4: bomb and it blows you up, or you successully build
Speaker 4: a bomb and cecily building a bomb is like that hard,
Speaker 4: and it's you're pretty likely to blow yourself up or
Speaker 4: fail to build a bomb. So I guess, I guess
Speaker 4: I never got to the threshold a bomb building where
Speaker 4: it would blow themselves up because they just didn't produce
Speaker 4: it viable device.
Speaker 3: In this next bombing plot, the suspect did actually construct
Speaker 3: what could be considered a bomb. Oh good Lord, that
Speaker 3: could have been used in what's being reported on as
Speaker 3: an assassination plot. Last Thursday, a New Jersey man, Alexander
Speaker 3: Heifler was arrested as a part of a plot to
Speaker 3: firebomb the home of pro Palestinian activists Ner Dean Kiswani
Speaker 3: Jesus Christ. Alexander Hiffler is a member of the JDL
Speaker 3: six one three Brotherhood, a new offshoot of the terrorist group,
Speaker 3: the Jewish Fence League, which has been active at Palestine
Speaker 3: protests in New York the past few years. This is
Speaker 3: a Zionist extremist group that has been designated in the
Speaker 3: past by the FBI as extremist group. According to the
Speaker 3: criminal complaint, Heifler was in a group video call with
Speaker 3: an undercover officer last February in which he asked about
Speaker 3: receiving training quote for how to use the instruments that
Speaker 3: were not knives, guns, or crossbows for quote unquote self defense.
Speaker 3: That's an odd, odd phrasing in the complaint, cross not okay,
Speaker 3: things that aren't those things okay, great things happening here,
Speaker 3: and Heifler later specifically mentioned that he was looking for
Speaker 3: somewhere to throw molotovs.
Speaker 4: Oh boy.
Speaker 3: The undercover sent Heifler a message via an encrypted messaging application, stating, Hey,
Speaker 3: let's talk about that in person. Don't say that on here.
Speaker 3: Heifler responded, don't use the M word. Copy that the
Speaker 3: M word, apparently being molotov. Incredible operational security happening year.
Speaker 3: The next day, the two met in person. Heifler told
Speaker 3: the undercover that molotovs were easy to make and they
Speaker 3: discussed targeting the home of pro Palestinian activist Nerden Kiswani.
Speaker 3: Heifler talked about needing to obtain fake license plates and
Speaker 3: told the undercover that he had an escape plan to
Speaker 3: flee the country. At the end of April, Mayor Zoramumdani
Speaker 3: clarified online that Heifler intended to flee to Israel. Great
Speaker 3: to quote Heifler in their criminal complaint quote, I'm thinking, like,
Speaker 3: if we wanted to go after Kiswani, we have Kiswani's address,
Speaker 3: so it's like that that would be easier if you'd
Speaker 3: be more comfortable with that. Drive down to Kiswani's home,
Speaker 3: middle of April, no IDs, no phones, in and out
Speaker 3: unquote Great. A few weeks later they met up again
Speaker 3: and drove to Kiswani's home to conduct surveillance. Hifler told
Speaker 3: the under cover that he had done tests with a
Speaker 3: molotov and a DNA kit from a pharmacy, and because
Speaker 3: his DNA showed up on the test, they should wear
Speaker 3: gloves during the attack. A real genius at work.
Speaker 5: Oh my god.
Speaker 3: The plan was to build twelve molotovs and throw several
Speaker 3: at the home and two at cars parked outside. Heifler
Speaker 3: mentioned having an address they could hide out before he
Speaker 3: would then flee to Israel. On March twenty sixth, they
Speaker 3: met at Heifler's home to start making the molotovs, and
Speaker 3: after the assembly, law enforcement searched the home and Heifler
Speaker 3: was arrested and has since been charged with unlawful possession
Speaker 3: and making of a destructive device. Great stuff. I very
Speaker 3: glad they didn't pull this off.
Speaker 4: And also, Jesus Christ, you know something like this.
Speaker 3: It is interesting that this was a joint with the FBI,
Speaker 3: that the current FBI was was doing like a sort
Speaker 3: of sting operation like this with the Jewish Defense League.
Speaker 4: Is interesting.
Speaker 3: That is that is something that I think people may
Speaker 3: not have expected. The undercover was part of the furthering
Speaker 3: of this plan in some ways.
Speaker 5: I don't know.
Speaker 3: We don't know if this guy would have done this
Speaker 3: exact attack if not planned with the undercover. But this
Speaker 3: guy was very very clearly willing and able to hurt
Speaker 3: and possibly kill this pro Palestinian activist, a very prominent
Speaker 3: one at that. Lastly, let's talk about Pink News and
Speaker 3: the Idaho bathroom bill.
Speaker 4: Oh my fucking god, yeah.
Speaker 3: So. Earlier this week, I released an episode and an
Speaker 3: accompanying article online on what I've dubbed the trans panic
Speaker 3: clickbait economy. My reporting goes through a series of misleading
Speaker 3: viral claims about the attacks on trans people from the
Speaker 3: Trump administration and Red States that have been recently flooding
Speaker 3: the zone and overwhelming the senses with an endless stream
Speaker 3: of forecast to doom. These viral claims are usually based
Speaker 3: on some irresponsible reporting designed to drive in an engagement
Speaker 3: rather than inform about the very real dangerous trans people
Speaker 3: are facing. This kind of clickbait treats every horrific potentiality
Speaker 3: as an inevitable eventuality, undermining our capacity to accurately assess
Speaker 3: risk and effectively dedicate resources to oppose pressing threats. One
Speaker 3: of the key outlets profiting from the panic clickbait economy
Speaker 3: right now has been Pink News in LGBTQ news outlet,
Speaker 3: which we learned last month is pivoting to a quote
Speaker 3: unquote reporter free newsroom.
Speaker 4: Incredible and just We're one of the most Aurelian things
Speaker 4: I've ever heard. Just holy fuck, just just on a
Speaker 4: base level of like, just oh, my reporter free newsgroup.
Speaker 3: Because of this change, one of the one of the
Speaker 3: journalists there, I've already quit, with four others possibly being
Speaker 3: laid off shortly. The sort of editorial department of pink
Speaker 3: News is now being taken over by their social media
Speaker 3: content creation wing and some of like the editorial staff,
Speaker 3: which are repackaging press releases and stealing the work of
Speaker 3: other journalists, including some other journalists who may be engaging
Speaker 3: in this sort of misleading reporting attempting to drive their
Speaker 3: own engagement. Then pink News is using that framing to
Speaker 3: drive their own engagement. That's why this sort of panic
Speaker 3: economy is a whole economy. It feeds on itself.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 3: On March thirtieth, pink News published an article that went
Speaker 3: viral online that claimed Kentucky was quote to pass a
Speaker 3: bill that would declare trans people mentally ill unquote, as
Speaker 3: well as prohibiting trans people from teaching in schools. But
Speaker 3: a report from an actual Kentucky based journalist named Olivia
Speaker 3: Croft for the outlet Queer Kentucky clarified that no such
Speaker 3: bill was going to pass. The push for a bill
Speaker 3: declaring trans people as mentally ill was by a single
Speaker 3: Republican state senator named Gex Williams Jesus Christ.
Speaker 4: So yeah, pause there.
Speaker 3: Williams and Gex could not even accomplish the first step
Speaker 3: in the legislative process, getting the Senate committee assignment for
Speaker 3: this prospective bill. Gex then tried to turn his failed
Speaker 3: bill into a floor amendment slapped onto a separate bill
Speaker 3: that was expected to pass, but such an amendment still
Speaker 3: requires a vote on approval separate from the vote to
Speaker 3: pass the bill itself. Olivia Croth reported that this amendment
Speaker 3: does not have such support from other legislators and that
Speaker 3: GEX was expected to withdraw his amendment for breaking Senate
Speaker 3: rules on piggybacking failed bills onto different bills as an amendment.
Speaker 3: And even if this amendment somehow got through, the bill
Speaker 3: would then need to be sent back to the state
Speaker 3: House for approval and would spark a huge fight that
Speaker 3: the legislature does not have time for because the legislative
Speaker 3: season is now wrapping up. So after this article from
Speaker 3: pink news was fact checked by this really good journalist
Speaker 3: doing doing important reporting in Kentucky, pink News then deleted
Speaker 3: this article and the viral posts plugging it.
Speaker 4: But any corrections to.
Speaker 3: This false story do not spread nearly as far as
Speaker 3: the initial panic inducing claim. And like that's crucial here
Speaker 3: because the night that this article went out on pink News,
Speaker 3: literally my entire feed was full of dozens and dozens
Speaker 3: and dozens people all quote tweeting this pink News story
Speaker 3: and the fact check and the fact that pink news
Speaker 3: deleted this is not going to get spread in that
Speaker 3: same way now. Misleading stories like this distract from the
Speaker 3: very real attacks Republicans are waging in red states. Yeah,
Speaker 3: one of which one of a few was on Monday,
Speaker 3: the governor of Idaho signed a new bill into law
Speaker 3: that criminalizes trans people using the bathroom that matches their gender,
Speaker 3: including bathrooms in private businesses. A first defense would be
Speaker 3: a misdemeanor with punishable by up to a year in prison.
Speaker 3: Second offense within five years would be a felony, punishable
Speaker 3: by up to five years in prison. And this would
Speaker 3: be prison housed based on quote unquote biological sex at birth,
Speaker 3: which leads to abuse of trans inmates. This is the
Speaker 3: most extreme bathroom bill that this nation has seen so far,
Speaker 3: the most restrictive affecting private businesses.
Speaker 4: And this is sort of very very intense criminal punishment. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and It's also worth noting in ways there are very
Speaker 4: ple trans people are also just criminalized at an extremely
Speaker 4: high rate, and these felony charges would count for Idaho's
Speaker 4: three strikes law, which is a fucking nightmare. This and
Speaker 4: we also got the Supreme Court ruling on Tuesday which
Speaker 4: applies a significantly stricter level of scrutiny to any like
Speaker 4: ban on conversion therapy, which is probably going to end
Speaker 4: up killing a whole bunch of conversion therapy bans across
Speaker 4: the country, which, by the way, eight to one ruling,
Speaker 4: so a bunch of liberal justices also fucking agreed with this. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I like that shit is like actually happening. And then
Speaker 4: meanwhile we have this like haddock slop bullshit that people
Speaker 4: are using to get money, and it's incredibly frustrated.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it makes it harder to actually evaluate the news
Speaker 3: as it's happening and trust certain news from certain sources,
Speaker 3: because we all know that these attacks are real, Like,
Speaker 3: there are real attacks going on that are really bad,
Speaker 3: but we do need to focus on the ones that
Speaker 3: actually are real. As opposed to a single state senator's
Speaker 3: amendment to a bill which is never going to pass,
Speaker 3: taking up all of the oxygen one night. Meanwhile, literally
Speaker 3: that same day, a bill like this Idaho bathroom bill
Speaker 3: is being signed by the governor.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, on that note, I think that does it for
Speaker 3: us here at it could happen here.
Speaker 4: Put a transgirl on your couch, I guess, especially also
Speaker 4: now trans people from Idaho who are going to be
Speaker 4: fleeing and presumably believe very large numbers and great and good.
Speaker 3: We reported the news.
Speaker 1: We reported the news.
Speaker 2: Hey, We'll be back Monday with more episodes every week
Speaker 2: from now until the heat death of the universe.
Speaker 3: It could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 3: For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Speaker 3: foolzonmedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 3: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Speaker 8: You can now find sources for It Could Happen here,
Speaker 8: listed directly in episode descriptions.
Speaker 3: Thanks for listening.