Speaker 1: Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let
Speaker 2: you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode
Speaker 2: of the week that just happened is here in one
Speaker 2: convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to
Speaker 2: listen to in a long stretch if you want. If
Speaker 2: you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
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Speaker 2: you can make your own decisions. Oh boy, howdy, welcome
Speaker 2: back to It could happen here? A podcast about it
Speaker 2: happening here, and the it is different most episodes, but
Speaker 2: today the thing that is happening here is discussion about
Speaker 2: the growth of self immolation as a form of protest
Speaker 2: from the twentieth to the twenty first century. Obviously, we
Speaker 2: are recording this less than a week after Aaron Bushnell,
Speaker 2: a twenty five year old serviceman in the United States
Speaker 2: Air Force, let himself on fire in front of the
Speaker 2: Israeli Intimacy in Washington, d C. And you know, repeatedly
Speaker 2: stated free Palestine as he was doing it. He said
Speaker 2: more than that, obviously, he wrote, you know, I think
Speaker 2: very clearly about why he did what he was doing.
Speaker 2: This is something that you'll have heard a lot of
Speaker 2: debate about. There's a certain kind of person, particularly in
Speaker 2: the media, who feels obligated to say this is mental
Speaker 2: illness and we shouldn't discuss it as anything else. I
Speaker 2: think that's wrong for the same reasons, by the way
Speaker 2: that it's wrong to dismiss, you know, any sort of
Speaker 2: mass shooter or whatever as mentally ill not that either
Speaker 2: of those are similar in terms of the actions they're not,
Speaker 2: but that attempt to dismiss it because it's something it
Speaker 2: makes you uncomfortable to consider that somebody could do something
Speaker 2: so incomprehensible to you for a logical reason. Now, when
Speaker 2: I say a logical reason, that doesn't mean I'm arguing
Speaker 2: this is something more people should do. It doesn't mean
Speaker 2: that I'm arguing that this was the best thing that
Speaker 2: Bushnell could do. What I am saying is that, from
Speaker 2: everything that is available, this was a rational act. He
Speaker 2: understood what he hoped to accomplish with this, and he
Speaker 2: took concerted steps to ensure that he succeeded and that
Speaker 2: attention was drawn to it. His reason for doing it
Speaker 2: was clear. He took actions like to set up a
Speaker 2: will and whatnot. This seems to have been a rational
Speaker 2: and principled action, and we are I'm not really primarily
Speaker 2: going to be discussing what Bushnell did because I don't
Speaker 2: really know that there's much to say. You know, it's
Speaker 2: it's everyone here's stants that what's being done to Gaza
Speaker 2: is a genocide. I don't know that this will help.
Speaker 2: I certainly hope that somehow it does, but we're simply
Speaker 2: not at a point where we can say what the
Speaker 2: impact of this on the overall you know, situation in
Speaker 2: Gaza is going to be.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I mean I guess, like the thing we
Speaker 3: can say off the bat is like whether or not
Speaker 3: this matters is to a larger scent up to you
Speaker 3: because like, yeah, someone someone like I mean, this is
Speaker 3: the thing, right, Like.
Speaker 2: The matters in the sense that it has an impact
Speaker 2: on the Obviously, I think it matters because he was
Speaker 2: a person.
Speaker 3: Well that too, right, Yeah, but like yeah, in the
Speaker 3: in the in the in the sense of whether it
Speaker 3: accomplishes political objectives, Yes, that's up to us figuring out
Speaker 3: how we're going to run a political movement in such
Speaker 3: a way that the sennis I get stopped.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that is yeah, that's not something I have
Speaker 2: a clear answer for you on right now that I
Speaker 2: mean to think there. I think so. I think the
Speaker 2: thing we're going to try to do that I think
Speaker 2: can be helpful in this is a tempt to provide
Speaker 2: some context on what is the history of self immolation
Speaker 2: as a protest tactic, How does it tend to work
Speaker 2: in the past, and and and in the present, and
Speaker 2: in what sort of situations has it been more or
Speaker 2: less effective as a as an instrument of protest. That's
Speaker 2: what we're going to try to cover today. Obviously, this
Speaker 2: should not be seen as a totally comprehensive look at
Speaker 2: the entire history of goodcast as I'm about to come.
Speaker 2: This is this is what we can get for you
Speaker 2: in about a week, and I think I think it
Speaker 2: will help and provide a broader sense of context as
Speaker 2: to how this sort of thing has worked in other
Speaker 2: situations around the world and throughout time self and goes
Speaker 2: back very far as a protest tactic. There were Christians
Speaker 2: who were being persecuted by the Roman government in Nicodemia
Speaker 2: in three hundred AD who lit a fire in front
Speaker 2: of the emperor's palace and threw themselves into a bonfire
Speaker 2: as an active protest in Russia. I think in like
Speaker 2: the sixteen hundreds Orthodox I don't know there was an
Speaker 2: Orthodox sect. I don't really know much about them, but
Speaker 2: they they locked themselves in churches as a protest for
Speaker 2: some of the Czar's reforms and then lit those churches
Speaker 2: on fire, so like died inside the churches that they
Speaker 2: were in. So this is a kind of thing that
Speaker 2: goes back quite a while. I'm sure there are other
Speaker 2: cases in you know, ancient history that go well before that,
Speaker 2: but it's not a new thing. However, when we talk
Speaker 2: about kind of twentieth and twenty first century self immolation,
Speaker 2: the first sort of really famous case of this, and
Speaker 2: the one that gets brought up every single time people
Speaker 2: talk about self immolation as a protest tactic, was one
Speaker 2: that occurred during the Vietnam War, and it was the
Speaker 2: self immolation of a Buddhist monk named tish Quang Duk.
Speaker 2: I believe that's Thhich. I think that's how that's pronounced.
Speaker 2: I let's do it before we started recording this, But
Speaker 2: that kind of stuff slips out of my head, so
Speaker 2: I apologize if that is the case. He's an interesting guy.
Speaker 2: I think pretty pretty his early life is probably pretty
Speaker 2: common for people who become Buddhists, who became Buddhist monks
Speaker 2: and kind of Central Vietnam in this period of time.
Speaker 2: He left home when he was like seven, He became
Speaker 2: a novice at fifteen. By twenty he was a full monk.
Speaker 2: And one of the things that's happening during this period
Speaker 2: of time is the South Vietnamese government is this guy
Speaker 2: he's called a president. The president. He is a dictator.
Speaker 2: I think everything but name No Din Dim and he's
Speaker 2: a terrible guy. He's a French educated Catholic. And if
Speaker 2: you know anything about the French history and into China
Speaker 2: right like that, that does not suggest somebody whose role
Speaker 2: before Vietnam got its independence from France was particularly great.
Speaker 2: His brother No din knew what is the head of
Speaker 2: the secret police. And they are despite the fact that Vietnam,
Speaker 2: South Vietnam is a Buddhist majority country, they're passing a
Speaker 2: lot of policies that are like actively cracking down on
Speaker 2: and reducing the right of Buddhist people to worship right.
Speaker 2: And you know this is there's a lot of reasons
Speaker 2: for this, but they kind of boiled down to the
Speaker 2: fact that dim was horrible was just a fucking dog shit. Yeah,
Speaker 2: really really trash. Now I've heard it said online when
Speaker 2: people bring up this self immolation, you know, within kind
Speaker 2: of the context of what's happened recently, like this wasn't
Speaker 2: a you know, people are wrong when they say this
Speaker 2: was an active protest to the Vietnam War. It wasn't.
Speaker 2: And that is technically true because like the thing that
Speaker 2: that duke was was protesting was not US involvement in Vietnam.
Speaker 2: But he was protesting the US backed government of South Vietnam,
Speaker 2: and that government is very livant to why there was
Speaker 2: a Vietnam War. So I do kind of think it's
Speaker 2: it's not entirely accurate to be like, well, this wasn't
Speaker 2: a Vietnam War protest, I.
Speaker 4: Don't know it was.
Speaker 2: It was.
Speaker 3: It was just about the fact that like the Catholic,
Speaker 3: theocratic drug dealing fashions government, it was like murdering.
Speaker 2: It seems like you're splitting the hair there, bro. I
Speaker 2: feel like the murdering Buddhist thing might have been part
Speaker 2: of why there was so many people willing to fight
Speaker 2: the South Vietnamese government. Not a zero percent part of
Speaker 2: that equation maybe, But yeah, so these guys, these Buddhists,
Speaker 2: i mean Buddhist religious leaders in the country get increasingly
Speaker 2: angry about what's happening. There are debates i think for
Speaker 2: several years kind of within sort of the more highly
Speaker 2: ranking kind of leaders in the faith as to like
Speaker 2: what do we do about this crackdown on our rights
Speaker 2: and like should we They were talking for quite some
Speaker 2: time about having a self immolation protest, right like it
Speaker 2: was the kind of thing where there was a decent
Speaker 2: amount of like discussion earlier. And Duck is actually the
Speaker 2: one who I think suggested it initially to like other
Speaker 2: leaders in the church. And yeah, while there was like
Speaker 2: for a while they tried to push back against this,
Speaker 2: eventually the level of prosecution just became so clear that
Speaker 2: you know, they basically said, Okay, let's like you can
Speaker 2: do this. And Dook is going to be the guy
Speaker 2: who is going to like physically, you know, destroy his
Speaker 2: body in order to carry out this act of protest,
Speaker 2: As is always going to be the case when we
Speaker 2: talk about these famous self immolation cases, half of the
Speaker 2: story is the guy who does the or the individual
Speaker 2: who lights himself on fire, and half of the story
Speaker 2: is the reporter who happens to be there, and in
Speaker 2: this case it was a guy named Malcolm Brown. He is,
Speaker 2: I believe he's an American reporter. He's stationed in you know, Saygone,
Speaker 2: and he's he's, you know, doing what a lot of
Speaker 2: journalists were doing at the time. And in the springtime
Speaker 2: of nineteen sixty three, there start being like these kind
Speaker 2: of messages put out by the Buddhist Church that are
Speaker 2: sort of he describes it as hinting as some kind
Speaker 2: of spectacular protest. His guess was that it would quote
Speaker 2: most likely be a disembowlment of one of the monks
Speaker 2: or an immolation, and either way, it was something we
Speaker 2: had to pay attention to. And like a lot of journalists,
Speaker 2: he's got some sources within the church. He gets a
Speaker 2: call one day and they're like, you should show up
Speaker 2: at this pagoda at this specific time. And here is
Speaker 2: how Malcolm describes what he saw. By the time I
Speaker 2: got to the pagoda where all this was being organized,
Speaker 2: it was already under way. The monks and nuns were
Speaker 2: chanting a type of chance that's very common at funerals
Speaker 2: and so forth. At a signal from the leader They
Speaker 2: all started out into the street and headed toward the
Speaker 2: central part of Saigon on foot. When we reached there,
Speaker 2: the monks quickly formed a circle around a precise intersection
Speaker 2: of two main streets in Saigon. A car drove up,
Speaker 2: two young monks got out of it. An older monk,
Speaker 2: leaning a bit on one of the younger ones also
Speaker 2: got out. He headed right for the center of the intersection.
Speaker 2: The two young monks brought up a plastic jerry can,
Speaker 2: which proved to be gasoline. As soon as he seated himself,
Speaker 2: they poured the liquid all over him. He got out
Speaker 2: a man book lighted it and dropped it in his
Speaker 2: lap and was immediately engulfed in flames. And yeah, that's
Speaker 2: you know what happened that day. Malcolm takes a picture
Speaker 2: of He takes a bunch of pictures. You can see
Speaker 2: all of them. There's a Good Time article Malcolm Brown,
Speaker 2: the Story behind the Burning Monk, that has all of
Speaker 2: the pictures that he took, or at least like a
Speaker 2: long list of them. And they are worth seeing. They
Speaker 2: are I shouldn't have to put a trigger warning in here, right,
Speaker 2: these are photos of burning.
Speaker 3: To death like that shit sucks can say from me. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: good god, it doesn't look good. It looks really bad.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Now, obviously one of specifically one of the photos
Speaker 2: you've probably seen it where like half of the monk's
Speaker 2: face looks okay and the other half is just like
Speaker 2: wreathed in fire. This goes like the sixties equivalent of
Speaker 2: viral right. President Kennedy said of the photograph, no news
Speaker 2: picture in history has generated so much emotion around the world.
Speaker 5: Is that one?
Speaker 2: And at the time it may have been true, and
Speaker 2: it is. It is number one. It does have a
Speaker 2: role in the anti war movement because you know, this
Speaker 2: is related to a protest against the government we were backing.
Speaker 2: But this is also one of the more successful, maybe
Speaker 2: the most like directly successful cases of self immolation I've seen,
Speaker 2: because this does play a significant role in the end
Speaker 2: of Deem's presidency and his life. Right, So Duck leaves
Speaker 2: a note, like a lot of these people do. In
Speaker 2: his note, again is very clear minded. He ends it
Speaker 2: by saying, before closing my eyes and moving towards the
Speaker 2: vision of the Buddha, I respectfully plead to President no
Speaker 2: Dndem to take a mind of compassion towards the people
Speaker 2: of the nation and admit implement religious equality to maintain
Speaker 2: the strength of the homeland eternally. Yeah, when this kind
Speaker 2: of happens, as I quoted earlier, Kennedy is like shocked
Speaker 2: and furious. He yells to his National security advisor, who
Speaker 2: the fuck are these people? Like how did we not
Speaker 2: know this was going to happen? He's very angry about
Speaker 2: all this.
Speaker 3: Buddhist is like, I feel like, like, that's the kind I.
Speaker 2: Actually have trouble imagining, like JFK having a significant amount
Speaker 2: of context as to like what buddhismss.
Speaker 4: God.
Speaker 6: But maybe maybe I'm wrong.
Speaker 2: So I want to quote from this a really good
Speaker 2: medium article, the suicide that changed American policy in Vietnam
Speaker 2: by a Poorva Tadepali, And this is for a series
Speaker 2: they write called near Pot, which is an interactive classroom
Speaker 2: tool for students. And I found this a very readable
Speaker 2: and concise description of kind of what happened after Dook's
Speaker 2: self immolation quote. The publicity of the incident increased pressure
Speaker 2: on DM's government to deal with the crisis, but he
Speaker 2: did not take the incident seriously enough. His response to
Speaker 2: the death was an announcement on the radio later that
Speaker 2: day that wildly missed the point. The state of affairs
Speaker 2: was moving forward so smoothly, he said, bizarrely, when this
Speaker 2: morning acting under extremist in truth concealing propaganda, that's so
Speaker 2: doubt about the goodwill of the government. A number of
Speaker 2: people got intoxicated and caused an undeserved death that made
Speaker 2: me very sorry.
Speaker 4: Okay, I a lot of terrible statements about.
Speaker 2: It is this guy. We need to do the Bastards
Speaker 2: episode on him, because damn is like he's horrible. He
Speaker 2: causes a lot of damage to a lot of people,
Speaker 2: but he's such a fucking scrub, right yeah, like fucking
Speaker 2: Stalin would never you know, like the old Geese, very
Speaker 2: sad You think Saddam Hussein would have gotten caught up
Speaker 2: in that ship? No, not, my man.
Speaker 3: Listen, this is like this is bush ling shit, even
Speaker 3: by like fucking like East Asian dictators, Like can you sheck?
Speaker 2: Like noah, no, kay sheck wouldn't have gotten caught up
Speaker 2: in this ship.
Speaker 4: Absolutely sheck.
Speaker 3: If someone had tried to do this specifically, chink chanky
Speaker 3: sheck would have shot the guy himself.
Speaker 2: Absolutely yeah, Oh my god. So anyway this scrub he makes,
Speaker 2: he makes like a prom that they're going to do
Speaker 2: reforms and stuff. And like while he's doing this, his family,
Speaker 2: including his brother Knew, who's like the head of the
Speaker 2: Saigon Secret Police, is basically is saying like like literally says,
Speaker 2: if the Buddhists want to have another barbecue, I'll be
Speaker 2: glad to supply the gasoline. Is Christ and his wife,
Speaker 2: who's like a very merry antoinette figure, Madam Knew who
Speaker 2: is it's his brother's wife, but she's basically the first
Speaker 2: lady right of South Vietnam. She's like, let them burn,
Speaker 2: We'll clap our hands.
Speaker 4: Oh god.
Speaker 2: So it's pretty it's pretty cool. Like DM is actually
Speaker 2: kind of the smart one in the family because he's
Speaker 2: trying to like tell his sister in law and his
Speaker 2: brother in law like nah, bra Or, and his brother
Speaker 2: and his sister in law, like, you guys don't understand.
Speaker 2: We have to be a little bit careful here. This
Speaker 2: could really go badly.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: It really seems like like they haven't figured out the
Speaker 3: playbook for dealing with this yet. No, because like the
Speaker 3: successive governments, like everyone has like the same line that
Speaker 3: they say when it happens, and these people, it looks
Speaker 3: like they're really kind of scrambling here.
Speaker 2: They didn't have any They'd never been considered that something
Speaker 2: like this could happen, there would be reactions to their
Speaker 2: policies like this. There are a bunch of protests by
Speaker 2: monks and nuns of the police arrest a bunch of people.
Speaker 2: This continues to draw outrage and make the system a
Speaker 2: situation worse new the secret police guy has his his
Speaker 2: goons like ransack and destroy a bunch of Buddhist temples.
Speaker 2: Basically a lot of people, like fourteen hundred people are
Speaker 2: like rounded up and arrested. DM accuses the monks of
Speaker 2: being part of the Viet Cong, which is again like sure,
Speaker 2: such a.
Speaker 4: Yeah, okay.
Speaker 2: So one of the things that is important to understand
Speaker 2: here is that this is at a very different part
Speaker 2: stage of the Vietnam War. The US has troops in
Speaker 2: the country, but not a lot, like very few compared
Speaker 2: to how many are going to be there, and at
Speaker 2: this stage DM actually isn't happy that we have even
Speaker 2: though it's going to become very clear that like the
Speaker 2: US troops the only thing allowing this regime to stay
Speaker 2: propped up. He is like, I don't want them here.
Speaker 2: They don't even have passports, right, Like, he's he's like
Speaker 2: weirdly anti the like, And part of it is because
Speaker 2: the US is about to act here finally to take
Speaker 2: support away from his regime. So three days after his buddy,
Speaker 2: his brother in law or his brother Knu has a
Speaker 2: bunch of raids on these Buddhist temples, there's a cable
Speaker 2: sent from DC to the US ambassador in Southern Vietnam
Speaker 2: that's like, we're not backing this guy anymore. And this
Speaker 2: ends with a bunch of South Vietnamese generals who had
Speaker 2: already been planning a coup being given the go ahead
Speaker 2: from the US basically saying like, we're not Our guys
Speaker 2: are not going to take any actions to stop you
Speaker 2: from overthrowing this guy. And on November two, DM and
Speaker 2: his brother are kidnapped while trying to escape and they
Speaker 2: are killed not long after. So this is, you know,
Speaker 2: pretty successful self the militia. You have to say, right, yeah, yeah, works,
Speaker 2: seems like it works about as well as you could
Speaker 2: have hoped for that, right, like the at least I'm
Speaker 2: sure as as well as that monk hoped. Because you know,
Speaker 2: DM is not just out of power, but is fucking
Speaker 2: killed as a result of this.
Speaker 4: So ohough, the problem is the subsequent people he has
Speaker 4: put in charge.
Speaker 2: Yeah, also suck. But that's that's also part of a pattern, unfortunately,
Speaker 2: And there's like a weirdly there's like a history of
Speaker 2: self immolation leading to gme change. We're gonna talk about
Speaker 2: Tunisia at the end of the episode, and that does
Speaker 2: tend to be the story of like, yeah, we got
Speaker 2: rid of the dictator and then a guy who sucked
Speaker 2: that's as much came into power.
Speaker 4: Hey, well, the the Tai one one we're going to
Speaker 4: talk about in a second.
Speaker 2: Actually, yes, pretty well, yeah, yeah, And before we go
Speaker 2: into that, because we're gonna let you take over from
Speaker 2: hearing me, or at least for the next couple of
Speaker 2: parts of this. But first let's let our advertisers take
Speaker 2: over and we're back, all right, Mia, you are on deck.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So, I think I think people are kind of broadly aware,
Speaker 3: kind of if you know anything about self immolations, about
Speaker 3: the self emilations in Vietnam, and then also the sort
Speaker 3: of the ones in the US, like as as anti
Speaker 3: Vietnam War protests, the ones that I don't think most
Speaker 3: people here know and that I only know about, like
Speaker 3: because like my mom was born in Taiwan, right, is
Speaker 3: the Taiwanese self immalations. Yeah, so this guy's name is
Speaker 3: Jan Yong Rong. He is he's also noticed the thing
Speaker 3: most people call him is Nylon Jung for reasons that
Speaker 3: I guess will become clear when he lights himself on fire.
Speaker 3: So Nylon Jung is a very very influential Uh well, okay,
Speaker 3: I don't know very very influential is Quator, but he's
Speaker 3: like a he's a pretty famous and very influential pro
Speaker 3: independence activist in Taiwan during the KMT's occupation there, And
Speaker 3: this is something I don't like. Americans tend to not
Speaker 3: understand this very well. So okay, So the the KMT
Speaker 3: is the Chinese nationalist party. They take power in Taiwan
Speaker 3: after just invading it effectively. They when when they when
Speaker 3: they lose the civil war, the KMT is like cremating forces,
Speaker 3: and a bunch of their supporters like flee to Taiwan.
Speaker 3: And there are there are like three groups of people
Speaker 3: who the KMT like spend most of their time killing,
Speaker 3: and that is communist feminists and Taiwanese independence activists. They
Speaker 3: also hate Presbyterians for reasons that are.
Speaker 2: Hey, hey, we all hate Presbyterians, am I right?
Speaker 4: Okay to it.
Speaker 3: Look, look, I am not normally a presbyterianker. The Taiwanese
Speaker 3: Presbyterians like legitimately do good work in the sense that
Speaker 3: they are like one of the groups that's like pretty
Speaker 3: important in bringing down the KMT one party dictatorship. But okay,
Speaker 3: so Taiwan has this like really appalling like one party dictatorship.
Speaker 3: Nylon jungk is actually born I think I'm remembering, is right.
Speaker 3: He's born like during the February twenty eighth incident, which
Speaker 3: is this thing in nineteen forty seven actually where we
Speaker 3: are two days I think when this goes out will
Speaker 3: be two days after the seventy seventh anniversary of it,
Speaker 3: where there's there's a giant uprising in Taiwan because the
Speaker 3: like people in Taiwan fucking hate the KMT because they
Speaker 3: suck and they murder people, and there's this giant uprising
Speaker 3: and the KMT eventually like their military forces get reorganized
Speaker 3: and they so the initial uprising takes most of the islands,
Speaker 3: and then the KMG just come back and kill everyone.
Speaker 3: They kill about twenty thousand people in a week. It's
Speaker 3: one of the sort of like I don't know, one
Speaker 3: of the kind of like defining incidents and what becomes
Speaker 3: sort of Taiwanese national culture. It's just this like massacre
Speaker 3: and then you know, it's basically it's legal to talk
Speaker 3: about afterwards. This is this is the beginning of the
Speaker 3: sort of white terror in China, and they're gonna you know,
Speaker 3: and this is the start of the KMT kidnapping and
Speaker 3: torturing like tens of thousands of people. One of the
Speaker 3: things that happens in this this is actually so this
Speaker 3: is this was my family's experience of it, is that Okay,
Speaker 3: so there's there's this up there's the uprising, right, but
Speaker 3: one of the things that starts happening pretty quickly is
Speaker 3: these like retaliatory killings against like against Chinese nationals. And
Speaker 3: that was stuff my family was like, yeah, we like
Speaker 3: couldn't go outside because if you leave your house, like
Speaker 3: you're gonna get killed by mobs and that stuff. That
Speaker 3: stuff like sucked.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that that does sound like it sucked.
Speaker 3: No, it's not good because it's the thing because it's
Speaker 3: it's weird because it's like that uprising like broadly good,
Speaker 3: but it turns into like parts of it turned into
Speaker 3: race riots or like why it's weird, Like I don't know,
Speaker 3: it turns into these like anti Chinese national like riots
Speaker 3: and that stuff.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: So Jong is from a Chinese like like just from
Speaker 3: like a sort of like Chinese national family that like
Speaker 3: fled to Taiwan after the war, and his family is
Speaker 3: protected by other Taiwanese like like uprising people who are
Speaker 3: like no, like we're not gonna fucking just kill these
Speaker 3: random Chinese, see, but like what are you guys talking about?
Speaker 3: And that's this really formative thing for him, where when
Speaker 3: this one that caused him to grow up to become
Speaker 3: like the kind of Chinese like Taiwanese independence activist that
Speaker 3: he is. Where he's one of these people who is
Speaker 3: really big on Taiwan as like like like liberating Taiwan
Speaker 3: as a nation but having it be like a nation
Speaker 3: of ideals not a nation of blood because his you know,
Speaker 3: because he sees how badly this kind of like ultnationalist
Speaker 3: bloodline like shit can go. And so he becomes like
Speaker 3: a pretty prominent independence activist. He runs one of the
Speaker 3: anti party newspapers. Like anti canteen newspapers, and he's he's
Speaker 3: mostly doing a lot of this stuff in the eighties,
Speaker 3: where so basically like you have two consecutive like like
Speaker 3: the Shankai check and then you have like more guys
Speaker 3: from that family. By the eighties, you're like democratization is
Speaker 3: kind of like slowly moving forward because the Taiwanese ruling
Speaker 3: class losing American backing, They're losing backing overseas. But you know,
Speaker 3: even even by sort of nineteen eighty nine, which is
Speaker 3: in the period in which people are talking about like
Speaker 3: wild democratization's happening, like it's going to go forward, the
Speaker 3: country still has like they haven't had like real national elections,
Speaker 3: and they still have these really really intense what are
Speaker 3: called anti sedition laws and so one of the things
Speaker 3: that the prone dependence activists. And this is the period
Speaker 3: in which like Taiwan's like modern ruling party, the Democratic
Speaker 3: Progressive Party like comes into existence or like they're coming
Speaker 3: to existence as the anti KMT party. And this is
Speaker 3: the sort of milieu kind of in which Dylon Jung
Speaker 3: is sort of mobilizing, right, but he's also I don't know,
Speaker 3: he's like he's the kind of guy that doesn't exist anymore,
Speaker 3: which is like he's kind of like a like like
Speaker 3: liberal progressive national liberation supporter. So I actually I found
Speaker 3: a really interesting thing translated by jenhan Chan on this
Speaker 3: guy a kind of am aware of from Twitter, who
Speaker 3: translated this thing that he wrote about Palestine, where he
Speaker 3: is a pro Palestine guy. But it's interesting because he
Speaker 3: sees Palestine as like another nation that's been like subjugated
Speaker 3: in like a similar way to Taiwan has. And you know,
Speaker 3: and he's like an anti armed struggle guy, but he's
Speaker 3: also very sort of he's very committed to Taiwanese independence
Speaker 3: as a national liberation movement and specifically like the thing
Speaker 3: that you're liberating it from is the KMT, and so
Speaker 3: you know, he he gets into trouble constantly with like
Speaker 3: the KMT government. They arrest in a bunch of times,
Speaker 3: and eventually, in nineteen eighty nine, he gets charged with
Speaker 3: these by these anti suisition laws. He gets charged with
Speaker 3: insurrection for like spreading drafts of a potential to do
Speaker 3: Taiwanese constitution, and so he barricades himself in his office,
Speaker 3: refuses to show up to code. He gives this giant
Speaker 3: speech about how like you'll never take me alive, and
Speaker 3: the police kind of take him to so he's he's
Speaker 3: barricaded himself in like his newspaper offices, and he's there
Speaker 3: for like two months, and at the end of month two,
Speaker 3: a cop who is the current mayor of New Taipei
Speaker 3: City tries to burst down his door.
Speaker 2: That doesn't seem like a job that you should be
Speaker 2: able to have.
Speaker 3: No, No, this is one of these things where it's like, okay,
Speaker 3: So like the KMT, this is one of the things
Speaker 3: about sort of Tony's politics that's weird that the KMT
Speaker 3: is the modern sort of pro China promunification faction, Right,
Speaker 3: those guys suck like like they're they're not they're not
Speaker 3: the same sort of like just desk squad party they
Speaker 3: were in the sort of late in like the twentieth century.
Speaker 3: But they're also like yeah, no, it's literally they're mayor.
Speaker 3: They're mayor of New Pipei, which is okay, I'm not
Speaker 3: going to go into what the difference between Uchipei and
Speaker 3: ip Pey is here. That's that's the whole thing.
Speaker 2: I'm guessing. It's like the difference between you know, New
Speaker 2: York and Old York. Right, it's it's it's closer to
Speaker 2: the diference between New York City and New York. Okay, okay,
Speaker 2: but that makes sense. Yeah that works.
Speaker 3: Like this guy, this guy who again like was elected
Speaker 3: like two years ago, tries to kick down his door
Speaker 3: and Nylon Jung likes himself on fire. And this has
Speaker 3: a enormous impact on the sort of subsequent course of
Speaker 3: Tiwan his politics, because this is a this is a like,
Speaker 3: this is a pr disaster for the like for the
Speaker 3: ruling for like for the current government, which had been
Speaker 3: trying to sort of like do its like ah, we're
Speaker 3: doing moderate reforms, blah blah blah, we're doing you have
Speaker 3: local elections.
Speaker 4: Now we're doing democratization.
Speaker 3: And suddenly, like their cops break down this guy's door
Speaker 3: and he lights himself on fire. And you know that
Speaker 3: the cop later says like, oh, yeah, we break down
Speaker 3: the door because we were trying to save his life.
Speaker 4: It's like, no, you didn't. What the fuck are you
Speaker 4: talking about? Life?
Speaker 2: I love things that have never happened. That's my favorite
Speaker 2: kind of thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you know, so there this is one of
Speaker 3: these things that and this is actually think that that's
Speaker 3: become that's a very very common thing I protests. Like now,
Speaker 3: so Nilon Jung has he has this massive funeral I mean,
Speaker 3: this is an absolutely enormous funeral march, and the police
Speaker 3: attack it. And when the police attack it, another pro
Speaker 3: independence activist also lights himself on fire, like in front
Speaker 3: of the cops when they refuse to do it. And
Speaker 3: this that second guy is like a lot less remembered
Speaker 3: than Nlon Jung. But this becomes a massive sort of
Speaker 3: rallying cry around, like you know, for the pro dependence people,
Speaker 3: but also for the sort of broader fight for like
Speaker 3: an actual like actual free democratic elections. Like the big
Speaker 3: thing these people were protesting like specifically was free speech
Speaker 3: because the thing about the sedition laws is if you
Speaker 3: you know again, if you start passing around copies of
Speaker 3: the constitution, they try to arrest you and throw you
Speaker 3: in prison.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean nothing says sedition like the constitution of
Speaker 2: the country you're in.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and like changing it, I guess is sedition. It's
Speaker 3: like the KMT really sucked, like cannot emphasize that it off.
Speaker 3: But the sort of the results of this is that,
Speaker 3: you know, okay, like so this is one of these actions.
Speaker 3: That's kind of complicated because the the arc of Taiwanese
Speaker 3: politics was bending towards democratization in some kind of like
Speaker 3: actual electoral system, and it probably would have happened even
Speaker 3: without this, but this super charges the whole process. Within
Speaker 3: about two years, two or three years, all the position
Speaker 3: laws are appealed and within well, it takes a while
Speaker 3: before you get I think, I think it's like two thousand.
Speaker 4: I think it's like really when you can what you can.
Speaker 3: Call like the first really free like Taiwanese national election,
Speaker 3: when when there's actually like a transition of power between
Speaker 3: the KMT and the Democratic Party.
Speaker 4: Sure, but yeah, it was to a large extent very successful.
Speaker 5: Like it.
Speaker 3: No, okay, so it accomplished the goal of knocking off
Speaker 3: the KMT sort of one party state. It knocked off
Speaker 3: his edition laws. The kind of Taiwanese independence like that's
Speaker 3: very very sort of national liberation driven is kind of
Speaker 3: not the same one that exists in time one now
Speaker 3: it's a bit different. But on the other hand, like, yeah,
Speaker 3: they they did it. It was it was really it
Speaker 3: was pretty effective, and yeah, I don't know, like this
Speaker 3: is this is I of the ones that I've seen.
Speaker 3: I think this was the most clear he won. Nolan
Speaker 3: Jung's like is sort of to this day a pro
Speaker 3: dependence hero. There's there's a there's a statue of him.
Speaker 3: Uh so they they I think that I think I'm
Speaker 3: pretty surely they turned the office we let himself on
Speaker 3: fire like into a into a like into a museum,
Speaker 3: and there's there's a there's a very famous sort of
Speaker 3: like pictures of these the.
Speaker 4: Statue of his burned corpse. That's just horrowing.
Speaker 3: It's one of the symbols of the sort of Taiwanese
Speaker 3: democratic movements, and it's also it's also a sort of.
Speaker 4: It matters a lot. This is also happening in the
Speaker 4: same year as Tanneman.
Speaker 2: Like yeah, so there's that kind of like it's in
Speaker 2: the air, right yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and his his widow goes on to be a
Speaker 3: DPP politician and it's one of it's one of the
Speaker 3: things that it's it's like his memories invoked dream like.
Speaker 3: So in twenty fourteen, Taiwan had their own version of
Speaker 3: occupy that's like shittier called the Sunflower Movement. I'm sorry,
Speaker 3: this is this is where we're getting into the Mia
Speaker 3: has a bunch of political beefs with people in Taiwan
Speaker 3: where I think they're all libs, but it's yeah, like
Speaker 3: they have their own sort of they have like this
Speaker 3: this large series of street protests and this like he's
Speaker 3: one of the figures that's you know, one of like
Speaker 3: brought up in as.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's gonna be the same thing with the guy
Speaker 2: in t an Asia. We're about to talk about two
Speaker 2: where where they become even to people that they would
Speaker 2: not you know, certainly we're not like expressing similar their views,
Speaker 2: they still become this like icon that gets sided. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I I think I think the last thing
Speaker 3: too is he's the fact that the cop who kicked
Speaker 3: at it, who kicked his door down, is now the
Speaker 3: fucking mayor of New type A City is just like
Speaker 3: oh appalling stuff. Yeah, the KMG absolutely suck uh. And
Speaker 3: those are the people who want Taiwan to be reunified
Speaker 3: with China. So if that understands who you're making your
Speaker 3: bed with, if that's the kind of politics that you
Speaker 3: you want to be engaged in, Yeah, So that's that's
Speaker 3: that's that's that's the time I want self emlations. I
Speaker 3: guess kind of I don't know, not enough bad things
Speaker 3: happened to the cops who trigger this kind of stuff,
Speaker 3: which although I guess I guess the cops is Southiaknam
Speaker 3: didn't do great.
Speaker 2: No no, no, I mean ultimately right, it doesn't immediately
Speaker 2: really cause them any problem. One Secret Police a bit.
Speaker 2: Speaking of Secret Police, this podcast is sponsored entirely by
Speaker 2: the Secret Police, so you know, check that out and
Speaker 2: we're back. Yeah, we just got beaten by phone books
Speaker 2: because they don't leave any bruises by our sponsors at
Speaker 2: the Secret Police. So you know, the Secret Police like
Speaker 2: the police. But Secret Mia, did you have another one
Speaker 2: you wanted to get into before we talk about Tunisia?
Speaker 4: Do we want to do Tibet first? Or do we
Speaker 4: want to do Tuenisia first?
Speaker 2: Why don't we do Tibet?
Speaker 3: Yeah, So I think other than Tunisia, I think the
Speaker 3: most famous wave of self im relations was the ones
Speaker 3: in Tibet that started in about two thousand and nine.
Speaker 3: There is actually a guy into Better Life self on
Speaker 3: Fire in the late nineties, but that doesn't have the
Speaker 3: same kind of sort of doesn't have the same effect
Speaker 3: as the two thousand and nine ones. So one of
Speaker 3: the things that's been periodically happening. I guess over the
Speaker 3: sort of course of the history of sort of occupied
Speaker 3: Tibet is the Dalai Lama. So the Dalai Lama like flees.
Speaker 3: There's this whole giant drama nineteen fifty nine. So so okay,
Speaker 3: I guess, I guess I should go back to the beginning.
Speaker 3: So Tibet is just like straight up invaded by China.
Speaker 3: When when the after the Communists win the civil war,
Speaker 3: this causes an enormous amount of shit to happen. One
Speaker 3: of the things that the Communist Party is trying to
Speaker 3: do is they are trying to gain control of the
Speaker 3: Tibetan religious system so that they can eliminate the religious
Speaker 3: system like they can they can eliminate like the Buddhist
Speaker 3: clergy is effectively, like they can eliminate Buddist munks. They
Speaker 3: can eliminate like the religious institutions as a source of
Speaker 3: resistance to them. They're kind of foiled in this when
Speaker 3: the Dalai Lama makes this break and escapes to India.
Speaker 3: And this is one of the things that triggers eventually
Speaker 3: in the in the sixties China's war with India. But
Speaker 3: one of the things that I've been happening for a
Speaker 3: while was these kind of negotiations between the Dalai Lama
Speaker 3: and the Chinese government to try to like find a
Speaker 3: kind of resolution to like how bad things were into Bet.
Speaker 3: And in two thousand and nine, Dalai Lama goes, yeah,
Speaker 3: none of this is fucking working, like it's not nothing,
Speaker 3: Like we're not we're not getting anything. The Chinese government
Speaker 3: is not offering us any like any actual deal that
Speaker 3: we can live with. And pretty quickly this so, okay,
Speaker 3: you get this giant wave of self in relations. The
Speaker 3: first guy, this guy named Tape, he is a monk.
Speaker 3: He lights himself on fire in two thousand and nine.
Speaker 3: There's conflicting reports.
Speaker 5: Okay.
Speaker 3: So one of the problems with talking about this is
Speaker 3: that in this period, the internet is not as widespread
Speaker 3: as it is today, and there is a there is
Speaker 3: a giant like there was a Chinese like media cordon
Speaker 3: effectively on on Tibet in a very similar way to
Speaker 3: like West Papua, where they like they won't let journalists in.
Speaker 3: It is very hard to get information out. So the
Speaker 3: thing that I'm about to say is something that is
Speaker 3: reported a lot on the time by people who try
Speaker 3: who are trying to smoke the messages out. And the
Speaker 3: thing they report is that as this guy is self imlating,
Speaker 3: the Chinese police shoot him like multiple times.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, as we've as we've seen recently, that
Speaker 2: is how cops tend to look at somebody like, yeah,
Speaker 2: someone has let themselves on fire. Clearly what this situation
Speaker 2: needs is a gun.
Speaker 3: And and you know, okay, so like the Chinese police
Speaker 3: they there, I don't I don't have any evidence of
Speaker 3: them shooting people after that. They absolutely one of the
Speaker 3: things that so what happens after this is this wave
Speaker 3: of self immolations is protests across the bed. The thing
Speaker 3: that they absolutely do a lot is start beating the
Speaker 3: person who's on fire the stick, like using like riot
Speaker 3: sticks sometimes.
Speaker 4: They have these.
Speaker 3: They have riot sticks with like spikes on them, and
Speaker 3: they are absolutely beating people to death while they are
Speaker 3: burning to death. The Chinese police are like as psychology,
Speaker 3: maybe not quite as like absolutely murderous as the American police,
Speaker 3: but they are like they are beating a burning man
Speaker 3: to death.
Speaker 4: Right that is.
Speaker 2: Oh god, I will say that is that is definitely
Speaker 2: I haven't that certainly, I can't think of anything I've
Speaker 2: ever seen US police do that is more violent than
Speaker 2: beat a man to death while he's on fire. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's up there. That makes the cut.
Speaker 4: It's really bad.
Speaker 3: And this is the kind of thing that you know,
Speaker 3: I mean, this is this is the kind of thing
Speaker 3: that that sets off these self in relations in the
Speaker 3: first place, which is that to Bet has you know,
Speaker 3: like has has a colonial occupation, right it has. You know,
Speaker 3: the Chinese government has been attempting to suppress to Bet
Speaker 3: and Buddhism. There's been a massive way like systemic, massive
Speaker 3: ecological struction of the Tibetan plateau so that the Chinese
Speaker 3: government can like mine gold and shit. And in a
Speaker 3: way that's very similar to sort of like the ecological
Speaker 3: demonstation you get in places like the Amazon. There are
Speaker 3: you know, there they are intense police crack downs all
Speaker 3: the time. There's another very famous incident that's like kind
Speaker 3: of one of the things that leads to this, where
Speaker 3: in nineteen eighty nine there's there's a bunch of protests
Speaker 3: in Tibet and the cops just start shooting them. They
Speaker 3: kill a bunch of people, and so you know, and
Speaker 3: people had been like up in twent two thousand and
Speaker 3: nine people that kind of had this promise that things
Speaker 3: were going to get better because you know, you have
Speaker 3: these negotiations between the Chinese government and the Dalai Lama,
Speaker 3: and then the Dalai Lama turns around and goes, yeah, no,
Speaker 3: they're not giving us anything.
Speaker 4: Like they're giving us nothing. The Chinese states policy on
Speaker 4: Tibet is that effectively, we're going to like we're we're going,
Speaker 4: we're going we're going.
Speaker 7: To like.
Speaker 3: We're going to try to make these people Han effectively.
Speaker 3: One of the things they spend and they do this
Speaker 3: in change On too, is they spend a lot of
Speaker 3: there's a lot of resources invested in getting like settlers
Speaker 3: from other parts of China to booths bet you know,
Speaker 3: and you know, as as it's you also and change
Speaker 3: on like the like the cadre jobs are basically all
Speaker 3: like government cadre jobs are basically all Han people. And
Speaker 3: so you know, you start getting you start getting attempts
Speaker 3: a civil disobedience. There are these giant protests in two
Speaker 3: thousand and eight, like attempting to make as sort of
Speaker 3: like a giant have a giant thing happened right before
Speaker 3: the Olympics in order to get international support and those
Speaker 3: turn into riots, and those are brutally suppressed. And once
Speaker 3: that happens, people are really kind of they're running out
Speaker 3: of options for civil disobedience because you know, and this
Speaker 3: is one of one of these things about this kind
Speaker 3: of Buddhism is that it's it's very much a like
Speaker 3: they're the resistance tradition is nonviolence, right, like these people
Speaker 3: sometimes like very very rarely you get riots, but they're
Speaker 3: not like they're not going to try or arm struggle,
Speaker 3: and so what they have is non violence civil disobedience.
Speaker 3: But the problem is that if you try to do
Speaker 3: non violence will do obedience in China, what happens to
Speaker 3: you is just the cops show up and arrest you all,
Speaker 3: and then they rest your families. And this is something
Speaker 3: that happens to the people who self emilate, is that
Speaker 3: there are like one hundred and sixty of them from
Speaker 3: two thousand and nine until now. And when someone lights
Speaker 3: themself on fire, what the Chinese government does is well,
Speaker 3: a they beat the person to death while they're on fire.
Speaker 3: By they start arresting the people's family, they start arresting
Speaker 3: their friends, they start arresting people in the monasteries that
Speaker 3: they're at they start doing these purges to like stop
Speaker 3: like to remove the sort of Buddhist monks they think
Speaker 3: are going to be problems. And this fuels this kind
Speaker 3: of cyclical wave of this because on the one hand,
Speaker 3: you know, there's this incredible repression going on. On the
Speaker 3: other hand, it's not possible to like wage really like
Speaker 3: wage other kinds of mass so dis obedience campaigns. And
Speaker 3: the thing about lighting yourself on fire is that the
Speaker 3: government can't stop it, right, Like in theory, you could
Speaker 3: maybe trained police to stop people from blighting people on fire.
Speaker 3: But the thing is, the actual thing that happens when
Speaker 3: you light when someone lights themself on fire, is the
Speaker 3: cop goes and beats them. And so it becomes this
Speaker 3: sort of it becomes the sort of like the cycle
Speaker 3: of self in relations. And also, I mean the other
Speaker 3: thing that's worth mentioning too is people. There are a
Speaker 3: few other cases of Tibetan Buddhists, like outside of outside
Speaker 3: of the better you do it, there's a few people
Speaker 3: in India and you let themselves on fire, and I
Speaker 3: don't know, I think the Tibetan example is really bleak
Speaker 3: because it doesn't work, like they lose and this is
Speaker 3: one of these situations where I don't know, like I
Speaker 3: legitimately don't know how they could have won, because they
Speaker 3: were dealing with a enormous, a very very powerful state
Speaker 3: apparatus that was very invested in using all of its
Speaker 3: state capacity to trust.
Speaker 4: Them, and.
Speaker 3: It it fails and it it but like the thing
Speaker 3: that it mostly accomplishes is a bunch of is like
Speaker 3: just a generation of well, I mean some like the
Speaker 3: youngest kid who self inlights is fifteen, right, and it
Speaker 3: mostly accomplishes a bunch of these kids like themselves on
Speaker 3: fire and die and everything is worse now than it
Speaker 3: was in two thousand and nine. Yep, I think, you know.
Speaker 3: So they're very recently they're been big. They've been protesting
Speaker 3: to bed again because the CCP is trying to build
Speaker 3: a damn that's going to flood and destroy a bunch
Speaker 3: of monasteries. And I don't think anyone's let themselves on
Speaker 3: fire over it, but the police just arrested everyone, and so.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 3: It's really bleak, And I think the freeze Bat movement
Speaker 3: has become much weaker as the sort of like twenty
Speaker 3: tens went on to the point where now, I think
Speaker 3: like most America, like most of the sort of like
Speaker 3: broad American far left basically just takes the Chinese line
Speaker 3: on it, which is that like the Dalai Lama was
Speaker 3: a slave owner and the Chinese occupation was a gift.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, Like I.
Speaker 3: Want to take like two, like a couple like a
Speaker 3: minute to talk about this because like that a lot.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And it's this thing where, like, you know, it's really
Speaker 3: interesting looking at a lot of these people who are
Speaker 3: who are anti Tibet but pro Palestine, because you know,
Speaker 3: if you look at the originators et cetera colonial studies,
Speaker 3: like people like Patrick Wolfe, right, who was like the
Speaker 3: godfather of cetera colonialism studies, Tibet is one of the
Speaker 3: states that he holds up like as the paradigmatic example
Speaker 3: of of what cetera colonialism is. It's Palestine and Tibet, right,
Speaker 3: And you know, I like the thing about oh it
Speaker 3: was because they were trying to like free the Tibetan
Speaker 3: search really pisses me off because if that was the
Speaker 3: actual thing the CCP wanted to do, they could have
Speaker 3: done a thing that happened all over the fucking world
Speaker 3: in communist countries, which is they could have moved in,
Speaker 3: they could have knocked off the government, and they could
Speaker 3: have set up a communist Tibetan state.
Speaker 8: Right.
Speaker 3: This happens all over the fucking Eastern Bloc. There's precedents
Speaker 3: for it in East Asia, which you know, there's a
Speaker 3: president of Mongolia, which was also i mean a very
Speaker 3: different Buddhist society, but also in largely Buddhist society, where
Speaker 3: the Soviet Union went in, knocked off the government and
Speaker 3: set off set up an independent Mongolian state.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: And I'm not going to say things like went great
Speaker 3: form Mongolia, but the thing is, if if your actual
Speaker 3: objective is just knock off a theocratic government that you
Speaker 3: don't like, you could have done that, and they don't,
Speaker 3: they don't do it, it's pretty China.
Speaker 2: It's also worth like stating like, yeah, things maybe not
Speaker 2: like didn't work out great in the immediate term for Mongolia,
Speaker 2: but Mongolia is a state right now, is not like
Speaker 2: the worst. It's not doing as badly as like Tibet
Speaker 2: is doing, you know, like it's it's an independent country
Speaker 2: that functions more or less. Yeah, and who does better
Speaker 2: than functioning more or less?
Speaker 3: Really yeah, Like and this I don't know, and this
Speaker 3: is this is the sort of that's and that's one
Speaker 3: of the things that like Chinese nationalists tend not to
Speaker 3: really use that line. I mean, they use it a
Speaker 3: bit when when they're when they're personally like when they
Speaker 3: have to like specifically make arguments about the Dalai Lama,
Speaker 3: that's something they do. But most of the arguments that
Speaker 3: the that the actual like supporters of the Chinese government
Speaker 3: in China, the arguments they make is like, oh, well,
Speaker 3: these people are like, these people are shitty barbarians and
Speaker 3: we have to like we have to civilize them, and
Speaker 3: like our invasion was a gift to them because we're
Speaker 3: going to civilize these people. And like it's it's literally
Speaker 3: it's like identical to the ship that like the Israeli
Speaker 3: say about Palestinians. We should also very briefly mention that
Speaker 3: a lot of the surveillance technology that's used in Tibet,
Speaker 3: like our cameras, that the Chinese government sells to Palestine.
Speaker 3: So keep that shit in mind. Yeah, And I don't know,
Speaker 3: but it's it's this This is one of the really
Speaker 3: bleak examples because the thing about self immolation as of
Speaker 3: politics is that like it functions by mobile someone else, right,
Speaker 3: And in some cases that's that's you know, that's another government,
Speaker 3: in some cases that's your own government, in some cases
Speaker 3: that's the people around you. But if you're in a
Speaker 3: state where the government does not give a shit about
Speaker 3: you and they have the ability to ruthlessly repress anyone
Speaker 3: who's inspired by your actions, it just it leads to
Speaker 3: a lot of people dying. And I don't know what
Speaker 3: this sort of lesson from that is other than it's
Speaker 3: really hard for and this is this is the thing
Speaker 3: with Hong Kong too, is it's it's really hard for
Speaker 3: any one, any one part of China to try to
Speaker 3: go into revolt against the government because there's so much
Speaker 3: more of the rest of China, and if if you,
Speaker 3: if you, if you alone, are pitted against the entire
Speaker 3: mighty of Chinese state that has brought popular backing your fucked.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's really bleak.
Speaker 2: But yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't have anything positive to
Speaker 2: say there. Hey, everybody, Robert here. Our discussion ran very long,
Speaker 2: So this is going to be a two parter. You'll
Speaker 2: be hearing about Tunisia and more in the next episode,
Speaker 2: but for now, please continue listening. To our podcasts and
Speaker 2: not other podcasts, because how would you do that? Who
Speaker 2: would do that? Nobody?
Speaker 5: I like.
Speaker 2: Everyone. Robert Evans here back to introduce it could happen
Speaker 2: here Part two of my discussion with me along of
Speaker 2: the history of self immolation protests. We'll be starting with
Speaker 2: Tunisia in this one and then moving on from there,
Speaker 2: so please buckle up and listen in. But I will
Speaker 2: of us on to talking about Tunisia, which is the
Speaker 2: last place we will talk about self immolation protest.
Speaker 4: Oh, I want to end. I guess a bit. I
Speaker 4: want to end after you talk about Tunisia with one
Speaker 4: in China. That kind of worked.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, well that'll be nice. So there was a
Speaker 2: you know, Tunisia existed for most of the like twenty
Speaker 2: first century under a dictator. This state of affairs changed
Speaker 2: for unfortunately a fairly limited period of time. On December seventeenth,
Speaker 2: twenty ten, when a young man and he was twenty six,
Speaker 2: Mohammed was Zizi, went out to sell fruit. And you know,
Speaker 2: Mohammed lived in a very poor region, a very poor
Speaker 2: part of Tunisia, the city of cd Boozid. It's about
Speaker 2: one hundred miles south of Tunis, which is the capital,
Speaker 2: and like a lot of people you know, in that
Speaker 2: part of the world, it is not uncommon, particularly for
Speaker 2: young men, because unemployment is so high, for young men
Speaker 2: to kind of make their living doing a mix of
Speaker 2: odd jobs and like odd vending, right where you're just
Speaker 2: kind of like selling whatever you can get your hands
Speaker 2: on and think that you can make a profit on
Speaker 2: because there's not jobs in the traditional sense, and because
Speaker 2: political corruption was so horrific in the state at that
Speaker 2: point in time. It's one of those things where most
Speaker 2: everybody who's out there selling shit on the street is
Speaker 2: breaking the law by doing it, right, because you can't
Speaker 2: get the permit because the permit is basically a bribe
Speaker 2: and you can't afford the bribe, right, That's how a
Speaker 2: lot of this stuff works. So you know, Mohammed kind
Speaker 2: of prior to this, he had been his friends. When
Speaker 2: you read interviews people who knew him, he was always
Speaker 2: like one of these guys who was like really upbeat
Speaker 2: and funny. His nickname basically meant like funny man in town.
Speaker 2: And this had started to change, like friends noticed like
Speaker 2: a couple of years before, you know, twenty ten, when
Speaker 2: he's in hits his mid twenties and starts getting into
Speaker 2: his late twenties that he's like, it is impossible to
Speaker 2: get by as a young man. There are no jobs
Speaker 2: for us, there's no future. I don't feel at all
Speaker 2: like I have no nothing to be hopeful for. Right.
Speaker 2: I think a lot of people can understand empathized with
Speaker 2: where he was coming from. So he goes out to
Speaker 2: self fruit and this municipal inspector fight a Humdi sees him,
Speaker 2: realizes he doesn't have a permit and takes his shit right,
Speaker 2: and there are accounts that he hits him too. Basically
Speaker 2: he's like, what the fuck is wrong with you? You're not
Speaker 2: paying your god damn bribe and like smacks him around.
Speaker 2: So this is kind of the breaking point foruzz Easy.
Speaker 2: He goes to the police station because he's got like
Speaker 2: this scale that he's using to weigh out fruit and
Speaker 2: stuff that he wants to get back it had been confiscated.
Speaker 2: He like can't work without it, and they tell him like,
Speaker 2: fuck you, you're not getting shit back. So he says, like,
Speaker 2: I want to meet with the governor and like plead
Speaker 2: my case to the guy in charge, and they're like
Speaker 2: fuck you. The governor doesn't want to see you, so
Speaker 2: at about eleven thirty am, he takes his cart outside
Speaker 2: of the governor's office. He pours I think lighter fluid
Speaker 2: something flammable over his head and he lights himself on fire.
Speaker 2: His cousin gets a call. Ali was easy gets a
Speaker 2: call I guess from someone who was nearby and knew
Speaker 2: them both and was like, Mohammad just lit himself on
Speaker 2: fire in front of the governor's office, and Ali runs there,
Speaker 2: sprints over to the governor's office with his smartphone and
Speaker 2: he gets there in time to record his cousin's body
Speaker 2: being taken into an ambulance. Protests start up after this,
Speaker 2: almost immediately, people take to the street. I think it's
Speaker 2: just everyone is living under the same regime. They're living
Speaker 2: over all of these like fucking corrupt ass officials. Everyone
Speaker 2: pieces together this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's also it's worth mentioning this is also
Speaker 3: a period of massive increases food prices, Yes, which are
Speaker 3: one of the big Like if you want, if you
Speaker 3: want your protest to work, like spark plus rising food prices,
Speaker 3: great way to get it to happen.
Speaker 2: Yes, so you know the spark catches fire protests start up,
Speaker 2: and they do not calm down. Part of why they
Speaker 2: don't calm down is Ali was easy, stays out in
Speaker 2: the street. He uploads footage of his cousin's body to Facebook,
Speaker 2: and he takes footage of the protests too, and he
Speaker 2: just starts sending shit to Al Jazeera. Right, So this this,
Speaker 2: all of this footage he's taking like winds up on
Speaker 2: television that evening, and by the next day other cities
Speaker 2: in Tunisia are holding protests. And this is the kind
Speaker 2: of thing where it's like, you know, we all saw this,
Speaker 2: you know, obviously with a different cause in twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: Sometimes something happens that's so horrible that the whole country
Speaker 2: takes to the streets. And that's what happens in Tunisia.
Speaker 2: So the president at the time, basically a dictator, Zeen
Speaker 2: l Abadin bin Ali, does the normal dictator thing. He
Speaker 2: sends out and non dictators, right, we do it here too, Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 2: he sends the cops out to beat the shit out
Speaker 2: of everybody. Right, But he's also he's you talked in
Speaker 2: when we were talking about Vietnam about like the playbook,
Speaker 2: and they didn't quite have it down. Part of the
Speaker 2: playbook is down because in addition to sending the cops
Speaker 2: out to beat the shit out of people, he it's
Speaker 2: Basisi in the hospital because he lingers for a while, right,
Speaker 2: And he also has the officer, the guy who Slappedzizi arrested.
Speaker 2: You know, he's kind of desperately trying, like maybe this
Speaker 2: will call him everybody down. It does not. Waz EASi
Speaker 2: dies in the hospital a couple of days later, and
Speaker 2: the protests, which are known now as the Jasmin Revolution.
Speaker 2: It takes about a month, but they force beIN Ali
Speaker 2: to flee the country for Saudi Arabia and you know,
Speaker 2: successfully bring an end to his regime and the return
Speaker 2: of a democratic system. There are functional elections for a
Speaker 2: while in Tunisia. They gain a significant amount of like
Speaker 2: political freedom, Like there are some really significant inroads made
Speaker 2: in terms of like civil rights during this period immediately
Speaker 2: after the Jasmin Revolution, but things also don't get better,
Speaker 2: at least not enough.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 2: This is generally seen Tunisia as the start of the
Speaker 2: Arab Spring, and if you know anything about the rest
Speaker 2: the Arab Spring, this was also seen as like kind
Speaker 2: of the successful case, right, Like, shit didn't work out
Speaker 2: very well. In Syria or in Egypt, but like, yeah, Bahrain,
Speaker 2: but here they got rid of the dictator and they
Speaker 2: gained a lot of civil rights, and that's great. The
Speaker 2: problem is that the other issues, the high food prices,
Speaker 2: the fact that unemployment is at a night maarish level,
Speaker 2: the fact that corruption was a hideous problem in Tunisia.
Speaker 2: This doesn't just go away, right, because it's deeper than
Speaker 2: the dictator.
Speaker 4: The culture.
Speaker 2: Whenever you have a culture of corruption like this, which
Speaker 2: is by the way, it's not just the Middle East
Speaker 2: that has to deal with this, but if you've spent
Speaker 2: time in the Middle East, one of the things that
Speaker 2: is really depressing is how massive and absolutely different, by
Speaker 2: the way, from the kind of corruption that we have
Speaker 2: in the West it is over there, the degree to
Speaker 2: which and you start to care about this not because
Speaker 2: you're getting fucked over as a tourist, because you really
Speaker 2: don't notice it much as a tourist. It's when you
Speaker 2: make friends in that country and you talk to them about, like,
Speaker 2: how many different people are constantly taking a little bit
Speaker 2: from them, right, and often not a little bit, like
Speaker 2: the degree to which regular people suffer because every single
Speaker 2: person who is quote unquote a government official is just
Speaker 2: soliciting for bribes. Is that's so much deeper than any
Speaker 2: one guy in charge, Right, That's something you can't just
Speaker 2: revolt your way out of it. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Like one of my professors in college, I don't know
Speaker 3: if you have actually wrote about it, but he's okay,
Speaker 3: long story, but he lived in Egypt for a long
Speaker 3: time and one of the things he would talk about is,
Speaker 3: like that is the concept of like the oddly powerful bureaucrat.
Speaker 3: So like the history was like like the guy who
Speaker 3: sells you tickets at like the train station in Cairo,
Speaker 3: Like that guy, if you don't fucking pay him, he
Speaker 3: can just say no and you can't get on a train.
Speaker 3: And there's just like so many layers of like this
Speaker 3: guy who controls this specific thing and thus can fuck
Speaker 3: you over unless you like do what he tells you,
Speaker 3: which is usually give money. Unfortunately, we need to go
Speaker 3: to ads. We'll be back in a second, and we're back.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And it's part of why it's more durable is
Speaker 2: it's not like you know, I think it's South Vietnam.
Speaker 2: You know, when DM was around, you had a lot
Speaker 2: of you have all this corruption, but a lot of
Speaker 2: it is top down, it is people who are loyal
Speaker 2: to the president. Right, A lot of the corruption in
Speaker 2: places like this is bottom up in that it's not
Speaker 2: a situation where all of these men who are so
Speaker 2: loyal to the dictator have this corrupt position. I mean,
Speaker 2: that's part of it. I'm not saying that it's not,
Speaker 2: but a lot of it is that, like, well, maybe
Speaker 2: it's technically my job to stop the guy who works
Speaker 2: at the train station from denying people entry if they
Speaker 2: don't bribe him. But if I do that, then maybe
Speaker 2: he's going to make a fuss about how I'm doing
Speaker 2: the same thing for like permits to fix your roof
Speaker 2: or whatever. Right, Like, it's so much more bottom up
Speaker 2: in a lot of way. And so the reason this
Speaker 2: matters is that like, shit doesn't really get better in Tunisia, right,
Speaker 2: And now that the so while all these problems continue,
Speaker 2: corruption continues to be an issue, high food prices continue
Speaker 2: to be an issue. Unemployment continued to be an issue,
Speaker 2: particularly for young men. Another thing that's changed is that
Speaker 2: now everyone has seen what's easy does has done and like,
Speaker 2: obviously he dies horribly, but one thing that happens is
Speaker 2: like his family moves to Canada, right, like they and
Speaker 2: this is I don't think fair to his family. I
Speaker 2: haven't seen evidence they were like corrupt or whatever, but
Speaker 2: like I think because of how like because they're able
Speaker 2: to like get out of this situation, it's seen as like, well,
Speaker 2: maybe if I do this, not only will that hurt
Speaker 2: whoever whatever, corrupt motherfucker you know, I'm angry at but
Speaker 2: maybe shit will work out for my family.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 2: This is often not what actually happens, but there have
Speaker 2: been hundreds of self immolation cases in the last ten
Speaker 2: years in Tunisia. It has become you might compare it
Speaker 2: to kind of mass shootings in the United States. Not
Speaker 2: on a moral level, you're not doing nearly the same thing.
Speaker 2: You're not hurting anyone else, but in terms of the
Speaker 2: fact that it is this this really really shocking event
Speaker 2: that then becomes kind of routine because people pick up
Speaker 2: on it as like, well, this is what you do
Speaker 2: in this situation.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 2: One of the articles that I read for this was
Speaker 2: an AP News piece that interviews a guy named Hasni Kalea,
Speaker 2: who's one of the dudes, one of the many Tunisians
Speaker 2: who have attempted or succeeded in killing themselves through self
Speaker 2: e malation is an act of protest. Hasney survived, right,
Speaker 2: and he did not survive without serious injury. Right now,
Speaker 2: he has to he covers his face at all times.
Speaker 2: His left hand he's lost a bunch of fingers. His
Speaker 2: right hand has no fingers at all anymore. He is
Speaker 2: just grievously injured as a result of this. And he said,
Speaker 2: when interviewed by the AP quote, I would never describe
Speaker 2: the act of self emolation as an act of courage,
Speaker 2: because even the bravest person in the world couldn't do it.
Speaker 2: When I poured the petrol over my head, I wasn't
Speaker 2: really conscious about what I was doing. Then I saw
Speaker 2: a flash, I felt my skin start to burn, and
Speaker 2: I fell down. I woke up eight months later in
Speaker 2: the hospital. And I found that really interesting, because there's
Speaker 2: a lot of talk right now, you know, with what
Speaker 2: Aaron Bushnell did about like principle and courage or mental
Speaker 2: illness or whatever, and like to what do we credit
Speaker 2: something that is so incomprehensible to most people. And I
Speaker 2: found what Hawsny says here really interesting because what he's
Speaker 2: saying is that like you can't even call it courage.
Speaker 2: You know, it's almost like someone else is doing it.
Speaker 2: You were animated by such rage and hopelessness that it's
Speaker 2: almost like someone else is in control of your body.
Speaker 2: And I don't that doesn't sound like mental illness to
Speaker 2: me for certain. That sounds like someone that sounds like
Speaker 2: desperation of such an extent that it's mind altering. I
Speaker 2: don't know any other way to describe it than that.
Speaker 2: And I'm not saying this is what goes through everybody's
Speaker 2: head when they self immalight. But you don't get a
Speaker 2: lot of inner use with those people after the fact,
Speaker 2: right Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, like like there's some people who survive into Batan
Speaker 3: and it's like, well those guys, the Chinese government will
Speaker 3: not let anyone near them, right, Like, no, you know,
Speaker 3: and like I guess I should also I should have
Speaker 3: mentioned this about the Chinese government line on this is
Speaker 3: that it's very similar to what you see in the
Speaker 3: American presses like the well, no, you're you're seeing the
Speaker 3: terrorist stuff too here. But like the Chinese government line,
Speaker 3: and this line worked pretty well, is like these people
Speaker 3: were mentally ill, these people are terrorists or they were
Speaker 3: like misled by like the Dalai Lama who's like leading
Speaker 3: his people to the flames. Yeah, and that's been kind
Speaker 3: of the that's been kind of the playbook everywhere for this.
Speaker 3: That like the one, the one that kind of works
Speaker 3: is that one. It's it's you have to attack the
Speaker 3: moral character of the person because it's such an it's
Speaker 3: such an act of it's an inherently selfless.
Speaker 4: Selfless Yeah, so the only way to do it.
Speaker 2: You can't describe it anywhere else. They're lighting themselves on fire.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, so and so they like, you know, the
Speaker 3: it's it's it's the the Roger Stone rat fucking thing
Speaker 3: of attack and where they're strong and you know, so
Speaker 3: it's the attack on the moral character that happens. I
Speaker 3: think the thing with Tunisia too is it's like, like
Speaker 3: the political alternative to this is this like rabid anti
Speaker 3: immigrant politics.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're like we'll talk about that in a second,
Speaker 2: but yeah, it doesn't end.
Speaker 5: Well.
Speaker 2: One thing I do want to hit on is the
Speaker 2: degree to which, again this kind of does function in
Speaker 2: Tunisia as like a mametic virus. Hawsny, the guy we
Speaker 2: heard from, survives, but his brother shortly thereafter lights himself
Speaker 2: on fire in an active protest and kills himself and
Speaker 2: his mother attempts to do the same, right like three
Speaker 2: members of the family all carrying out self immolation, and
Speaker 2: it is one of those things. This is listed as
Speaker 2: like an example of the tactic succeeding, and it does
Speaker 2: in terms of it, it gets the regime out of power.
Speaker 2: But things are not better in Tunisia, especially since so
Speaker 2: you know, there is a period of time where there
Speaker 2: is at least a functioning democracy and significant gains for
Speaker 2: civil rights, but because food still doesn't get affordable, there
Speaker 2: aren't jobs.
Speaker 4: A lot.
Speaker 2: You'll find a lot of articles from around twenty twenty,
Speaker 2: especially when people are like, yeah, I guess freedom's nice,
Speaker 2: but it's not really worth much if you're starving, you know, yeah,
Speaker 2: which you know I anyway, all of this leads in
Speaker 2: part to the coming to power of the guy who
Speaker 2: is currently leading Tunisia, Kiss Sayed. And as you noted, Mia,
Speaker 2: you know this guy is a populist. He is elected
Speaker 2: with seventy two percent of the vote. He frames himself
Speaker 2: like populis tinma do is like I am. You know,
Speaker 2: I'm outside the system. I'm going to help you take
Speaker 2: on the elite that have corruptly ruled our country. And
Speaker 2: he also is very anti migrant, right Tunisia. A lot
Speaker 2: of people who migrate into Europe do so through Tunisia
Speaker 2: just for geographical reasons, and he is blaming a lot
Speaker 2: of their problems on He does like great replacement shit
Speaker 2: that all these black migrants are causing our country's problems.
Speaker 2: He inspires a wave of violence against black people in
Speaker 2: Tunisia that's pretty hideous and horrific. And he has gained
Speaker 2: a significant amount of backing from particularly the Italian government,
Speaker 2: I think also the French government, because he's cracking down
Speaker 2: on migrants, right, and those migrants come to Italy and
Speaker 2: France and that's a problem for those governments. So they're
Speaker 2: supporting this guy, who, by the way, has turned himself
Speaker 2: into a dictator. All those gains Tunisia had in the
Speaker 2: Lake of the Arab Spring he has rolled back. He
Speaker 2: has centralized power, he has more or less destroyed the
Speaker 2: judiciary is something that's independent, you know, he is if
Speaker 2: he's not a dictator, he's not only that far from it,
Speaker 2: you know. And he's being supported by these these quote
Speaker 2: unquote democratic nations because well, I mean because racism, right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: same reason they support a Gadaffi, Like, yeah, when it
Speaker 2: comes to the politicians, it's a mixture of racism, and
Speaker 2: just like well, racism wins votes, and when it comes
Speaker 2: to like why racism win votes, it's back to racism,
Speaker 2: right anyway, So those are that's Tunisia more or less.
Speaker 4: Unfortunately, we need to go to ads.
Speaker 3: We'll be back in a second, and we're back. Yeah,
Speaker 3: So well let's end on a slightly more positive note
Speaker 3: where well, so the line I was going to give
Speaker 3: was one about how like you know, I mean, this
Speaker 3: is the thing with Tunisia, right, is like you have
Speaker 3: this Tenizia has effectively structural.
Speaker 4: Unemployment rates of like thirty forty percent.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, it's and that's the thing that that's the
Speaker 3: thing that can't be solved without changing the economic system.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 3: If you you know, if you you can have your
Speaker 3: political revolution without your social revolution, you'll be right back
Speaker 3: to where you were in like ten years. The problem though,
Speaker 3: the other thing is you can have your social revolution
Speaker 3: and also end up in the same place, which is
Speaker 3: where we're going with with China. Where So one of
Speaker 3: the there's a very famous okay, I guess the place
Speaker 3: we should start with this is that one of the
Speaker 3: I've talked about this a bit on this show. One
Speaker 3: of the ways that labor works in China like structurally
Speaker 3: is that so you're a contractor, you work for contracting company.
Speaker 3: The contracting company is this like series of shell companies,
Speaker 3: and there's like a there's like there's a payday on
Speaker 3: like New Years because that's when the like the financial
Speaker 3: like the year sort of rolls over and that's when
Speaker 3: you get paid. And so these companies are designed to
Speaker 3: specifically go out of business like the day before New Year,
Speaker 3: so they don't have to pay any of the workers
Speaker 3: for the work that they've done. And this leads to
Speaker 3: a rash of protests in China, like every single year
Speaker 3: on New on like New Year's Day, there's like this
Speaker 3: massive there's there's a protests like fucking everywhere because people
Speaker 3: have been screwed. It happens a lot with construction companies,
Speaker 3: and so there's a very like one of the very
Speaker 3: common tactics you see is people like standing on top
Speaker 3: of buildings holding banners saying like we're going to jump
Speaker 3: unless you guys like pay us. And so that that's
Speaker 3: kind of the background of this which is that that's like,
Speaker 3: that's a fairly common kind of like workers protests. In
Speaker 3: twenty twenty one, there's a delivery driver in Jungsu who
Speaker 3: he so something something I didn't really talk about the
Speaker 3: ten episodes is that China's economy is increasingly becoming a
Speaker 3: gig economy. And this has been this has been happening
Speaker 3: for a while now. And so this guy is a
Speaker 3: delivery driver for Ali Baba and he's like, he's like
Speaker 3: trying to change apps, and the app garnishes his wages
Speaker 3: and steals seven hundred dollars from him, and that's an
Speaker 3: enormous amount of money.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean the app garnished his wages. As a sentence,
Speaker 2: that just makes me want to light something on fire.
Speaker 2: So I get why this would far protests.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and he like tries to get it back and
Speaker 3: they don't give it to him, and he and he
Speaker 3: lights himself on fire and this turns into so he
Speaker 3: lets self on fire and then like this this is
Speaker 3: this is in twenty twenty one. This is the same
Speaker 3: year where that Temu employee falls over dead, like like
Speaker 3: dies in her bed from overwork, and also the same
Speaker 3: year when a Temou employee jumps off of the building
Speaker 3: because of over work. And this sets off like a
Speaker 3: giant kind of shift in the way that the Chinese
Speaker 3: public is thinking about labor, because up until this one,
Speaker 3: people have been, you know, like China. It's it's not
Speaker 3: it's nowhere near as bad as Anesia, but it also
Speaker 3: has this problem of like everyone works.
Speaker 4: Harder and harder.
Speaker 3: You're working, you're working nine nine six, right, You're working
Speaker 3: nine am nine pm, six days a week, and you're like,
Speaker 3: you're working more and more and more hours and you're
Speaker 3: not getting ahead, right, You're still stuck in your shitty
Speaker 3: apartment and your app isn't paying you for the work
Speaker 3: you did. And this leads to a whole like a
Speaker 3: whole thing that sort of culminates in something I talked
Speaker 3: about a bit in the ten of episodes, which is
Speaker 3: the Chinese Supreme Court, Like the Chinese Constitution says you're
Speaker 3: not supposed to be able to work people for longer
Speaker 3: than like thirty five hours unless like special circumstances, and
Speaker 3: the Chinese Supreme Court goes like, well, obviously, you're not
Speaker 3: allowed to work people like twelve out like twelve hours
Speaker 3: a day, six days a week, and that isn't like
Speaker 3: in large part and partially it's because of the the
Speaker 3: Temu suicide and the Temu thing. But the other huge
Speaker 3: contributing factor to this, and the other huge thing contributing
Speaker 3: to Chinese society attempting to reckon kind of with their
Speaker 3: unbelievable overwork culture is is the self immolation. And it's
Speaker 3: it's it's one. It goes viral so fast that there's
Speaker 3: no way to sort of like cover it up. There's
Speaker 3: it's it's you can't the trade government can't really just
Speaker 3: press the racism button like they normally would because this
Speaker 3: isn't someone into back where this isn't someone in Chan John.
Speaker 3: They can't really do that, and so they kind of are.
Speaker 3: They're forced to make at least like some kind of
Speaker 3: change because it pisss off so many people in ways
Speaker 3: that like can't really be contained. So you know, I
Speaker 3: guess the lesson from that, if there is one, is
Speaker 3: sometimes very rarely you can back a government into a
Speaker 3: corner where the normal things that they would say about it,
Speaker 3: or like the normal like mental illness, terrorists, deluded things
Speaker 3: don't work because the raw simplicity of what they did
Speaker 3: and why just breaks through the media sphere thing.
Speaker 2: And it's again very hard to predict obviously, Like this
Speaker 2: isn't the first within the last twelve months. This isn't
Speaker 2: the first self emolation of the United States, right, and
Speaker 2: the last self emolation attacked or not attacks? Sorry I
Speaker 2: should geez, do I have a media.
Speaker 5: Brain or what?
Speaker 2: Well? The last self immolation that we had, which I
Speaker 2: believe was was over climate change.
Speaker 4: Oh there, there there was a Palestine one too.
Speaker 2: Oh there was a past So I guess we've had
Speaker 2: a couple like two in the last or three now,
Speaker 2: I guess in the last like twelve months or so,
Speaker 2: But they didn't the other ones did not really move
Speaker 2: the needle. Yeah, right, why Aaron do mean? I think
Speaker 2: I think part of it might have to do with
Speaker 2: with how to deliver brit It was and how you know,
Speaker 2: it got was very quickly picked up by local media
Speaker 2: and the national media. I don't know's that's really outside
Speaker 2: the scope of these episodes, but I hope you at
Speaker 2: least now have more of a grounding and like how
Speaker 2: this has gone other times, people have used this as
Speaker 2: a method of protest, and hopefully that's of use to
Speaker 2: you anyway, have a good day.
Speaker 1: Bye, Welcome to Dick It appen here a podcast sometimes occasion,
Speaker 1: not even that occasionally, that's about a bunch of not
Speaker 1: very functional massurveillance technology that's being deployed against all of us.
Speaker 3: I'm your host, Mia Wong, also with me as Garrison Davis. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and so today we're gonna be talking more about something
Speaker 3: we've talked about on the show like a couple of times,
Speaker 3: but that is the shot Spotter program, and there was
Speaker 3: there was recently a leak of the locations of all
Speaker 3: of shot Spotter's like gunfire sensors, and with us to
Speaker 3: talk about it are the people who got the leak
Speaker 3: and wrote the article about about where the shotspatter sensors are,
Speaker 3: and that is Drew Meirotro who's a staff writer at Wired,
Speaker 3: and Joey Scott, who's a freelance investigative journalist and photographer.
Speaker 3: And both of you two, welcome to the show.
Speaker 5: Thanks for having us, Yes, thank you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm glad to be talking to you about this. So,
Speaker 3: I guess for the people who don't remember or like
Speaker 3: have not listened to other episodes we've done about this,
Speaker 3: or have read this article, which you should go read
Speaker 3: at wired it's great. Can you describe what ShotSpotter is
Speaker 3: and what it's supposed to do versus what it actually does?
Speaker 6: Sure, Joey, you want me to take this or do
Speaker 6: you want to do it?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 5: Go ahead, sure well. Shot Spotter is.
Speaker 6: A sort of controversial gunshot detection system built by the
Speaker 6: company Sound Thinking. On the face of it, the tech
Speaker 6: is sort of straightforward. The company will basically install little
Speaker 6: sensors on street lights and traffic signs and a jurisdiction,
Speaker 6: and these sensors are sort of like algorithmically tuned to
Speaker 6: detect gunshots. So when one of these sensors here's something,
Speaker 6: it basically will send an alert to an incident review center,
Speaker 6: which will then like vet the sound make sure it
Speaker 6: was actually a gunshot before then forwarding it to dispatchers
Speaker 6: who send a cop to investigate the sound. You know,
Speaker 6: activists and academics have been basically saying for years that
Speaker 6: this tech is inaccurate and primes police basically to go
Speaker 6: to low income community communities of color expecting gunshots when
Speaker 6: likely they won't find any.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think the specifically low income communities of
Speaker 3: color thing is a big part of this because so
Speaker 3: you'll created a map of where the shot Spotter sensors
Speaker 3: are from the data you got. And I looked at
Speaker 3: Chicago one and immediately I was like, I recognized that map.
Speaker 3: That is the map of where the not white people
Speaker 3: are in the city's.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, it's it's stark. I think a lot a
Speaker 6: lot of the responses that I've seen on Twitter and
Speaker 6: you know, in my email inboxer essentially that like, look,
Speaker 6: this is just a map of where all the not
Speaker 6: white people are and whatever city that it's deployed in.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and y'all did some analysis of what you found
Speaker 4: sort of statistically about where these censors ended up and
Speaker 4: like the sort of the I guess like class and
Speaker 4: racial composition of those places. Can you talk about that
Speaker 4: a little bit?
Speaker 6: Sure, I'll take this one just because I worked on
Speaker 6: the analysis. So yeah, I mean what we found is
Speaker 6: that more than twelve million Americans live in a neighborhood
Speaker 6: with at least one shot Spotter sensor. We basically joined
Speaker 6: census data onto the locations of every single shots botter
Speaker 6: microphone and looked at the demographic composition of those neighborhoods.
Speaker 6: And you know what we found is that an aggregate.
Speaker 6: Nearly seventy percent of the people who live in a
Speaker 6: neighborhood with one set with at least one sensor identify
Speaker 6: as either black or Latine. Nearly three quarters of those
Speaker 6: neighborhoods are a majority not white, and the average household
Speaker 6: income in a neighborhood with at least one sensor is
Speaker 6: fifty thousan dollars a year. So these are low income
Speaker 6: communities of color. It's kind of hard to describe it
Speaker 6: in any other way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And you know, one of the things, and this
Speaker 3: has been a thing for so I'm in Chicago. There's
Speaker 3: been a huge series of fights over getting rid of
Speaker 3: ShotSpotter here. And one of the things you hear all
Speaker 3: the time that shot is the shots are People will go, no, well,
Speaker 3: we don't use race as a factor for yeah, but
Speaker 3: the ShotSpotter insists that they don't use race at all
Speaker 3: in indetermining where where they put these sensors. But kabba,
Speaker 3: they've still managed to somehow create this map.
Speaker 4: And I don't know.
Speaker 3: I I'm wondering what you think about like their response
Speaker 3: and whether you and I guess this is more of
Speaker 3: a subjective think, like how much do you actually believe
Speaker 3: them when they say this.
Speaker 7: Well, I think when you know, we are investigating this,
Speaker 7: we found that the police don't even know where these
Speaker 7: locations are, and so they're just given ShotSpot or data
Speaker 7: of where to put this stuff. So the police can
Speaker 7: kind of wipe their hands of like, oh, we insisted
Speaker 7: that they put it in this place or anything like that.
Speaker 7: And I think, you know, Drove can probably speak to this,
Speaker 7: but you know, the argument is this is where all
Speaker 7: the shootings are, and so that's where they are. But
Speaker 7: you know, when you investigate that, it doesn't call into
Speaker 7: effect like in other parts of the country outside of like.
Speaker 5: Chicago or something.
Speaker 7: You look at gun violence and where these alerts are,
Speaker 7: you know, they aren't just where the alerts are. And
Speaker 7: you know, Pasadena is an example. You know, shootings happen
Speaker 7: outside of where the alerts are, but they're specifically in
Speaker 7: a very specific part of Pasadena that is poor and
Speaker 7: non white.
Speaker 6: So yeah, yeah, and I think you know, when we
Speaker 6: spoke to sound Thinking, you know, I think it's important
Speaker 6: to point out here that they did not dispute or
Speaker 6: findings or the sort of authenticity of the doc. But
Speaker 6: you know, they said what you would expect that the
Speaker 6: sensor deployment is not really informed by race. And you know,
Speaker 6: the way it works, as Joey says, is that the
Speaker 6: company basically asks police department who purchased the systems for
Speaker 6: data about gun violence, which Sound Thinking says is objective.
Speaker 6: But we have no idea what that data actually looks like, right.
Speaker 6: We don't know if it's all crime data, which might
Speaker 6: be you know, a subject to enforcement bias, right if
Speaker 6: they include things like drug crimes on their drug arrests.
Speaker 6: So we just don't really know why Sound Thinking, you know,
Speaker 6: makes a recommended plan for their sensor deployment. The other
Speaker 6: thing that Sound Thinking had told me is that, you know,
Speaker 6: sometimes they'll ask for data and they'll do it this
Speaker 6: sort of data informed way, but other times cops will
Speaker 6: just say, like, look, we want the we want the
Speaker 6: deployment in this area, and that might include like a
Speaker 6: stadium or a school or places where people gather. So
Speaker 6: you know, it's kind of we don't really know why
Speaker 6: exactly Sound Thinking is deploying its centers in any given location.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and having them be deployed by cops is like,
Speaker 3: he is a spectacular way to have cop brain in
Speaker 3: terms of locations which not not not not I don't know,
Speaker 3: not an especially good way to get a statistically unbiased
Speaker 3: sampling of where you would potentially want these things. So
Speaker 3: I guess I guess the a thing we should talk
Speaker 3: about in terms of what the issues what the system
Speaker 3: is are. Okay, So ShotSpotter claims that it and this
Speaker 3: is something I've seen over and over and over again.
Speaker 3: It claims it is a ninety seven percent accuracy rate
Speaker 3: of detecting gunshots. There's just I don't believe it. None
Speaker 3: of the research I've ever seen backs that up. You
Speaker 3: talk a bit about a bit about like what it
Speaker 3: what it's actually detecting, versus what what they sort of
Speaker 3: claim it is.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I think, well, I guess the overreaching kind of
Speaker 7: theme here is we just don't know. ShotSpotter is very
Speaker 7: not transparent about their data. There have been really no
Speaker 7: peer reviewed, independent studies of the technology. So when we
Speaker 7: make when we talk about, you know, how effective it is,
Speaker 7: that that is a claim that ShotSpotter makes based off of,
Speaker 7: you know, very little information given to the public about it,
Speaker 7: you know, And that's kind of the big issue is
Speaker 7: when you start getting down into the nitty gritty of
Speaker 7: like what's actually going on. You notice that a lot
Speaker 7: of the times what they consider a gunshot, police will
Speaker 7: investigate and find out it was a firework, which if
Speaker 7: you live in you know, I use Pasadena because it's
Speaker 7: next to me. Out here in La you know, fireworks
Speaker 7: are kind of how we celebrate and it's a different
Speaker 7: kind of language out here.
Speaker 5: You know, fireworks happen all the time.
Speaker 7: So once you start getting into looking at some of
Speaker 7: the data that I have been able to get, you
Speaker 7: start seeing that, you know, maybe they claim it was
Speaker 7: a gunshot, but when police show up, they don't find
Speaker 7: any evidence of a gun crime, and sometimes they find
Speaker 7: out it was a car backfiring or construction equipment and
Speaker 7: all of that. And that just kind of shows, you know,
Speaker 7: their claim that it's effective at identifying gunshots is you know,
Speaker 7: very questionable to make that claim.
Speaker 6: Yeah, but you know, their ninety seven like the ninety
Speaker 6: seven percent figure that they cite in their marketing material
Speaker 6: is based on police reporting back to ShotSpotter that there
Speaker 6: was a mistake, right like for Shotswatter to count a
Speaker 6: the to count like a gunshot or to count of
Speaker 6: sound as an error, the police have to report it
Speaker 6: back to ShotSpotter, right, So it's almost like by default,
Speaker 6: if they hear nothing, they have one hundred percent accuracy rate.
Speaker 6: But it is say that you know they're informed of this,
Speaker 6: they you know, will adjust that rate well.
Speaker 3: And and also I mean that that that's a metric
Speaker 3: that relies on the cops telling them, like it relies
Speaker 3: on the cops taking an extra step in an investigation.
Speaker 3: And these are like, you are dealing with one of
Speaker 3: the most notoriously lazy group of people, like in the
Speaker 3: entire country, Like I have I have watched these people
Speaker 3: on duty in Chicago. They spend like eighty percent of
Speaker 3: their time standing around on their phones playing candy Crush, right,
Speaker 3: Like this this entire statistics thing requires them to do
Speaker 3: another step. It's like, like, what percentage of the time
Speaker 3: is a cop going to admit that they ran out
Speaker 3: to this thing and like drew their guns and we're
Speaker 3: doing their like whole oh there's been gunshots thing and
Speaker 3: then there's just nothing there, Like I don't know, it
Speaker 3: seems like cast a pall over even this, even even
Speaker 3: the sort of potential that their data can be right, right.
Speaker 7: I mean we all know that cops lie. Yeah, we've
Speaker 7: seen them kind of use shot spotter alerts. You know,
Speaker 7: Chicago was one of the examples where they were using
Speaker 7: it as cover to make illegal stops and you know, yeah,
Speaker 7: that sort of thing. So, you know, if there's room
Speaker 7: for that, it's hard to then take what data police
Speaker 7: are giving them in this way as accurate. And then
Speaker 7: again it goes back to, well, we don't the public
Speaker 7: doesn't get to see any of that information. Oh, we
Speaker 7: don't get to make that I guess distinction between the two,
Speaker 7: and you know, know what's best for people's communities because
Speaker 7: of that.
Speaker 3: That's one of the things about this program that is
Speaker 3: really alarming is that you have this massurveillance technology and
Speaker 3: the people in charge of it were like the people
Speaker 3: people who would be in charge of sort of like
Speaker 3: deciding whether or not you want it. It's like like
Speaker 3: both both the general public and like city mayors et cetera,
Speaker 3: et cetera, seem to have so little information about whether
Speaker 3: about what it's even doing that it's incredibly difficult to
Speaker 3: make any kind of like any kind of sort of
Speaker 3: database choice. All you have is sort of this combination
Speaker 3: of like the company going oh, yeah, well, obviously their
Speaker 3: stuff works, and then this sort of well, I mean,
Speaker 3: this is the thing that's been happening in Chicago, is
Speaker 3: this sort of like crime panic stuff they just that
Speaker 3: people just fall back on, and they combine this sort
Speaker 3: of crime panic with just the assumption that it works
Speaker 3: because that's what it says in the box, and that's
Speaker 3: a I think a really alarming combination to me.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean, I think the fact that city council
Speaker 6: members are kept in the dark about the locations of
Speaker 6: these things, as are you know, the police departments to
Speaker 6: pay for the cities to pay for it. I think
Speaker 6: it's you know, something that's really been quite interesting as
Speaker 6: after we published is that, you know, I've gotten a
Speaker 6: bunch of emails from city council members asking, you know,
Speaker 6: asking me if I can provide them data about the
Speaker 6: locations because they can't even get them from the company.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 6: So, yeah, there's a lot of transparency issues here.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and you know, this is a public this is
Speaker 7: a tool being paid with public money.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 7: Another thing we found in the data was that there
Speaker 7: are a list of sensors that are broken or out
Speaker 7: of service or anything like that. In talking to various
Speaker 7: police departments, ShotSpotter doesn't let them know when that happens,
Speaker 7: and you know.
Speaker 5: Referred us to talk as the shot spot about that.
Speaker 7: So you know, not even the functionality of like how
Speaker 7: many sensors are down are really communicated and that's a
Speaker 7: huge problem. But like again this data, as a journalist
Speaker 7: to investigate it, to request documents, I can count at
Speaker 7: least three separate cities where shot spotter intervened and said
Speaker 7: the release of the data would be a trade secret.
Speaker 7: And so therefore, yeah, so like even any data that
Speaker 7: shows transparency of like anything more detailed than just an
Speaker 7: alert that many cities have, ShotSpotter won't release because it
Speaker 7: is quote unquote a trade secret. Mind you, I have
Speaker 7: gotten documents from other cities that are more detailed, and
Speaker 7: then when I request those from other cities, shot Spotter
Speaker 7: intervenes and goes, no, that's a trade secret.
Speaker 5: So it's this kind of.
Speaker 7: Trying to hide the transparency that then adds more skepticism
Speaker 7: to the effectiveness and usefulness of the product, which the
Speaker 7: public I believe everyone would agree, deserves a right to know,
Speaker 7: especially if it's taxpayer money.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so it's a lot of money too.
Speaker 3: So speaking of a lot of money, unfortunately we have
Speaker 3: to take an ad break, so we will be back
Speaker 3: in a second.
Speaker 4: Okay, we are back.
Speaker 3: Something I wanted to talk about with the way that
Speaker 3: these sensors are used, so about actually, okay, sorry, I
Speaker 3: should have actually figured out the exact date after which
Speaker 3: the story originally came out, but maybe like four or
Speaker 3: five days after your story came out. There was a
Speaker 3: story that came out of Chicago about a sort of
Speaker 3: effectively the cover up of a case where CPD was
Speaker 3: responding to a shot spotter ping and it was just
Speaker 3: like a thirteen year old kid shooting off fireworks and
Speaker 3: the cop showed up and immediately started shooting, and like,
Speaker 3: thankfully cops can't set up a barn, so the kid
Speaker 3: didn't get shot, but like, this child had a cop
Speaker 3: shoot at him while the kid was running towards the
Speaker 3: cop going no was fireworks. Yeah, So I was wondering
Speaker 3: what kind like, you know, how many of those kinds
Speaker 3: of stories did you run into when you were sort
Speaker 3: of like doing this, running into the story, and yeah,
Speaker 3: what is the impact of that stuff sort of been?
Speaker 6: You know, I think that that example that you bring
Speaker 6: up is particularly egregious, But what happens more often, I think,
Speaker 6: are these there's sort of like less dramatic events where
Speaker 6: you know, sound thinking or shot spotter will detect two
Speaker 6: shots and deploy cops to a corner, and you know,
Speaker 6: they'll detain someone on the scene, run their name through
Speaker 6: their you know, their databases, and find that this guy
Speaker 6: has got a bench warrant, or you know, pick someone
Speaker 6: up on a misdemeanor.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 6: So, like I think, you know, while there are some
Speaker 6: really egregious examples, a thing that that I think about
Speaker 6: a lot here is that is just how much unnecessary
Speaker 6: how many unnecessary arrests are happening because of ShotSpotter, right,
Speaker 6: how many people are being picked up on bullshit essentially?
Speaker 7: Yeah, And you know that that recent case in Chicago
Speaker 7: with the kid with the firework, and you know, it
Speaker 7: wasn't too long ago that you know, Adam Toledo was shot, Yeah,
Speaker 7: a thirteen year old kid for the same reason. Cops
Speaker 7: were responding to a shot spotter alert. And the Chicago
Speaker 7: o i G and their report about it kind of
Speaker 7: highlighted one of the things, which is cops are just
Speaker 7: primed to be you know, expecting you know, gunfire, somebody
Speaker 7: shooting at them and everything. And you know, I think
Speaker 7: that's that is a danger, you know, but again to
Speaker 7: what Druv's saying is like it also leads to a
Speaker 7: lot of unnecessary stops. It opens up people to be
Speaker 7: profiled and padded down, and you know, so both options
Speaker 7: are not great, you know, when you consider the harm
Speaker 7: that this causes. It's just we all know that, Like,
Speaker 7: cops are very jumpy to begin with, So you know,
Speaker 7: they hear a firework or you know, an acorn hits
Speaker 7: their cop car or something. We all know that, Like,
Speaker 7: that's probably not what we need police to be expecting
Speaker 7: on a call. And so you're just telling people, oh,
Speaker 7: gunshots and then then they're going to run in expecting
Speaker 7: to be fired upon. And I don't think that's great
Speaker 7: for society.
Speaker 4: You were talking about that, So I don't know if
Speaker 4: there's much more to say. I think that's true. We
Speaker 4: dot acorn cop.
Speaker 9: I think the a corn incident stands on itself. I
Speaker 9: don't think it needs to even be talked about. I
Speaker 9: think it I think one sentences speaks speaks a whole
Speaker 9: book's worth of possible analysis of police behavior, and no
Speaker 9: being the notion of police rushing into every situation thinking
Speaker 9: that there's there was there was a gunshot obviously has
Speaker 9: its inherent problems.
Speaker 7: Now, Like mind you, a lot of the times, you know,
Speaker 7: and at least in in other cities, it's sixty to
Speaker 7: eighty percent of the time they don't find anything, you know,
Speaker 7: which I think is good in the sense that nobody's
Speaker 7: being harmed or stopped, but it's also bad when you
Speaker 7: consider the effectiveness and utility of the device, you know,
Speaker 7: which shot Spatter has kind of distanced themselves from, you know,
Speaker 7: this idea of preventing gun crime or lowering croun crime
Speaker 7: and more are in terms of like safety and arriving
Speaker 7: to a scene quicker to render aid and help police
Speaker 7: find shell casinges. You know, you've seen over the years
Speaker 7: the kind of switch of focus on what the technology does,
Speaker 7: and that most certainly happened around the time they changed
Speaker 7: their name to Sound Thinking, Yeah.
Speaker 6: I think you know. The other thing I wanted to
Speaker 6: mention here is that, you know, from a different leaked
Speaker 6: internal report from the State's Attorney's Office in Illinois, in
Speaker 6: Cook County, Illinois, it found that like a third of
Speaker 6: arrests stemming from a shot spotter alert actually had nothing
Speaker 6: to do with a gun In the first place. So
Speaker 6: it's not even like you know, there eighty nine percent
Speaker 6: of alerts, don't, you know, result in finding a shell casing.
Speaker 6: It's that even when there are arrests that occur from
Speaker 6: a shot spotter alert, thirty percent of them have nothing
Speaker 6: to do with a gun, right, And that just shows
Speaker 6: you sort of the criminalization of what happened of people
Speaker 6: in areas that have these microphones.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think the combination of those two things
Speaker 3: gets you to this point about Shotspatter's effectiveness, which is
Speaker 3: that like, Okay, so we've had ShotSpotter for a while
Speaker 3: in Chicago, right, Chicago police do not solve murders like
Speaker 3: it's sub it's their murder clearance rate. And you have
Speaker 3: to keep in mind that murder clearance doesn't actually mean
Speaker 3: they solved a murder. But like even that jacked up
Speaker 3: murder clearance rate I don't think has had like I
Speaker 3: think they may have had one year in my entire life,
Speaker 3: over fifty percent. And that was because murder clearance counts
Speaker 3: if two people both shoot each other and they both die,
Speaker 3: that counts as a clearance, or they find us their
Speaker 3: suspect dies in like another way. So it's it's pretty
Speaker 3: clear that it's not actually substantively contributing to Chicago Police
Speaker 3: department solving murders. Like you have a better than coin
Speaker 3: flip odds if you kill someone in Chicago that like
Speaker 3: the police aren't even gonna like really try to figure
Speaker 3: out what happened. And so yeah, I think I think
Speaker 3: it makes a lot of sense that they've been pivoting
Speaker 3: away from even like even claiming that this can do
Speaker 3: anything to solve gun violence, because it just clearly hasn't
Speaker 3: at all, and it's and instead it seems to be
Speaker 3: doing a bunch of other stuff, which is like either
Speaker 3: throwing cops around doing is like throwing cops around chasing
Speaker 3: like shadows, which either results in them arresting just random
Speaker 3: people or like having these really sort of terrifying incidents,
Speaker 3: or it just results in straight up nothing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we're gonna go to ads. We'll be back in
Speaker 4: however long capitalism dictates, So see you then we're back.
Speaker 9: And I think, like looking at the effectiveness, like two
Speaker 9: cities that have continued to deny shot spot or contracts
Speaker 9: are Atlanta and Portland, two cities that spend a lot
Speaker 9: of time thinking about how they equip their police spend
Speaker 9: a lot of time like making sure that their police
Speaker 9: are able to serve the largest amount of the community possible.
Speaker 9: And the fact that like specifically Atlanta with their massive
Speaker 9: like flock program of an integrated camera network across the
Speaker 9: whole city, like it is one of the most surveilled
Speaker 9: cities in the country, if not the most. The fact
Speaker 9: that they are turning down this equipment for not being
Speaker 9: effective enough and it being too costly is a sign
Speaker 9: for like, beyond it just being a sign, it's also
Speaker 9: like a look at what why other police departments are
Speaker 9: interested in this and like what it allows them to
Speaker 9: do and being deployed to these various communities that have
Speaker 9: the what like twenty five thousand sensors. But no, I
Speaker 9: mean like they've constantly tried to send this stuff to
Speaker 9: Atlanta and it's like and it's just it's simply not happening.
Speaker 9: And even after twenty twenty that Portland's like, no, it's
Speaker 9: it's two super super useful examples to measure how much
Speaker 9: this technology actually is going to get used for what
Speaker 9: they say it's being used for, versus just having an
Speaker 9: excuse to act like there's gunfire all across the city.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and you know, I think when we start more
Speaker 7: police departments are going to start relying more on technology, sure,
Speaker 7: largely because many departments cannot hire more cops. Now, this
Speaker 7: isn't advocating me. You know, I don't want police departments
Speaker 7: to hire more cops. You know, they've slowly defunded themselves
Speaker 7: in that way. But like you know, cities like Los
Speaker 7: Angeles are trying to grow their surveillance capabilities for that reason.
Speaker 5: They just do not have enough. They say, they do
Speaker 5: not have enough cops.
Speaker 7: And so this is where kind of the surveillance capitalism
Speaker 7: is going to really thrive, is police departments are going
Speaker 7: to get desperate and they're going to start reaching out
Speaker 7: and getting more invasive surveillance technology. And you know, I
Speaker 7: think in some cities, shot spotter is kind of they're
Speaker 7: a way of quieting the narratives about you know, the
Speaker 7: growing gun violence and everything in their communities. You know,
Speaker 7: they're like, oh, look, we've deployed this new toy to
Speaker 7: kind of help us without really solving anything, because we
Speaker 7: all know cops aren't really good at solving crime. Yeah,
Speaker 7: so it kind of gives them cover of like we're
Speaker 7: bad at our jobs. So how do we make it
Speaker 7: look like we're better. Well, let's you know, invest in
Speaker 7: some new technology, so it looks like we're trying something.
Speaker 7: But you know, at the end of the day, it's
Speaker 7: a waste of money. And then the impacts of that
Speaker 7: is harm, you know, greater than the good.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like we're spending an enormous amount of money
Speaker 3: to hurt people for no reason.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 6: And you know, I think ShotSpotter is only one of
Speaker 6: Sound Thinking's offerings, right, Like they you know, when they
Speaker 6: changed their name to sound Thinking, it's sort of like
Speaker 6: reflected this pivot in the company where now they were
Speaker 6: going to start thinking more about like resource management. Right,
Speaker 6: how do how do we convince departments that our technology
Speaker 6: is going to better help them allocate their resources? And
Speaker 6: you know, surveillance is the way to do that. We
Speaker 6: can measure where crime is, we can measure where gunshots
Speaker 6: is and where gunshots are, and we can deploy police there.
Speaker 6: And one of shot spot or recently Sound Thinking had
Speaker 6: acquired like a notorious predictive policing company called Predpole. That
Speaker 6: happens I think earlier this year. So you know, they're
Speaker 6: trying to expand their offerings here to be this kind
Speaker 6: of resource management solution for departments SEBIA.
Speaker 4: Did you have anything else you wanted to bring up here? Yeah,
Speaker 4: I guess. I guess there's one more thing. I one
Speaker 4: talk about what you said.
Speaker 3: So one of the things that I've heard from places
Speaker 3: that have gotten rid of their contracts is that shotspotters
Speaker 3: not like taking their sensors down even when cities stopped
Speaker 3: doing contracts. I was wondering what you two sort of
Speaker 3: know about that.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 7: I reached out to Dayton, Ohio, who recently got rid
Speaker 7: of their contracts, and I reached out, you know, because
Speaker 7: I was like asking departments who had it, like are
Speaker 7: you aware of the status of the sensors or do
Speaker 7: you know the locations? You know?
Speaker 5: Both knows.
Speaker 7: And then I asked Dayton, you know, well, now that
Speaker 7: the contract's over, what happens to the sensors? And they
Speaker 7: basically said, we don't know. That's shotswatter's responsibility, and their
Speaker 7: responsibility is maintenance and care and removal and installation.
Speaker 4: So who knows.
Speaker 7: Obviously somebody knows, because it's not like some person could
Speaker 7: just start climbing telephone poles and installing avalance equipment. So obviously,
Speaker 7: you know, somebody is issuing permits to install stuff and
Speaker 7: put stuff up there. But like you know, as we're
Speaker 7: finding out, city council members don't know, police departments don't know,
Speaker 7: and so who knows what happens to these devices afterwards?
Speaker 7: And then say a city like Chicago, you know, say
Speaker 7: they cancel their contracts, Well, a new mayor can come
Speaker 7: in and then just instantly turn them back on, you know,
Speaker 7: and that way, And so that's kind of the other
Speaker 7: thing we're solely starting to learn here. It's more cities
Speaker 7: start canceling their contracts or not renewing them. You know,
Speaker 7: it is what happens to the technology afterwards, and we
Speaker 7: don't know, which.
Speaker 4: Is not a great sign.
Speaker 3: Like, I mean, you know, it's not good that there's
Speaker 3: just a bunch of states surveillance technology around all the time,
Speaker 3: but it somehow feels even worse that we don't have
Speaker 3: any idea what happens to even if the state decides
Speaker 3: it doesn't want to use it. So yeah, I guess
Speaker 3: on that a somewhat disquieting note. Do you have anything else?
Speaker 3: So you wanted to make sure you get to.
Speaker 7: Oh nothing for me, No, I mean this is you know,
Speaker 7: thanks to you know, somebody brave enough to send us
Speaker 7: the info, and it's the only way this information has
Speaker 7: been able to get out.
Speaker 5: And I think.
Speaker 7: If I implore the public to really research and dig
Speaker 7: into this technology, if their cities are thinking about extending
Speaker 7: their contracts or bringing a contract in and really questioning
Speaker 7: and trying to get shot spatter on the record to
Speaker 7: answer for some of these things. And you know, we
Speaker 7: know what works and what doesn't work. And I think
Speaker 7: most cities are starting to find out that there is
Speaker 7: a better use of that amount of money to stop
Speaker 7: these sort of gun crimes, interventions and other more community
Speaker 7: based solutions rather than just dumping money into surveillance technology.
Speaker 7: And you know, you can get a lot done with
Speaker 7: an eight million dollars. Yeah, you know, it's just it's
Speaker 7: just like there's always money in the Banana Stan sort
Speaker 7: of thing, and there's like there's always money for police.
Speaker 7: So it's just like, why don't we just retransform that
Speaker 7: money into things that actually work in these communities.
Speaker 5: And you know, go behind that.
Speaker 3: So yeah, and I think, I don't know, hopefully hopefully
Speaker 3: this will encourage more cities just stop paying for this shit.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So where can people find you choose work? I mean,
Speaker 3: I know, like obviously this one's on Wired, but are
Speaker 3: online places et cetera, et cetera, social media places, plug
Speaker 3: yourself go yayh.
Speaker 6: Well, I'm I'm You can find my stuff on Wired
Speaker 6: dot com and I'm on X or Twitter or whatever
Speaker 6: you want to call it at d Marrow and on
Speaker 6: blue Sky at d Marrow d M E h r O.
Speaker 7: And you can find me on Instagram and Twitter with
Speaker 7: the user name Joey never Joe. And then my writings
Speaker 7: have been in a local press out here in La
Speaker 7: La Public Press and Knock La.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and thank you to both so much for coming on.
Speaker 5: Thanks for having us, Thank you so much, appreciate it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I'm gonna encourage everyone else to go get
Speaker 3: your city to not use this stuff because it sucks.
Speaker 3: All right, this has been this has been naked happen here.
Speaker 3: You can find us in the usual places.
Speaker 10: Goodbye, hello, and welcome to it could happen here. This
Speaker 10: is Sharene and today we are talking about you guessed it, Palestine.
Speaker 10: I'm also gonna keep talking about Palestine because there has
Speaker 10: been a genocide happening for the past five months and
Speaker 10: also seventy six years and I refuse to let it
Speaker 10: be forgotten about. But I refused to let it be
Speaker 10: something that we used to talk about, because it's happening
Speaker 10: right now and we need to talk about it. So
Speaker 10: here I am talking about it. And while being a
Speaker 10: public supporter of Palestine has never been popular in the
Speaker 10: United States, since October, we've seen a significant increase in
Speaker 10: the silencing of Palestinian and pro Palestinian voices. And this
Speaker 10: is happening both online and offline. But let's first start
Speaker 10: with the digital sphere, where the censorship of Palestinian voices
Speaker 10: and pro Palestinian content can have really dangerous consequences, especially
Speaker 10: since the vast majority of US consume our news via
Speaker 10: social media these days. Meta, for example, has a long
Speaker 10: history of systematically censoring Palestine related content. While the company
Speaker 10: has stated that it's quote whenever their intention to suppress
Speaker 10: a particular community or point of view, Access Now conducted
Speaker 10: a report where their documentation points to the opposite conclusion.
Speaker 10: The information in this episode, when it comes to Meta
Speaker 10: in particular, will be from the findings of Access Now
Speaker 10: in their report. Because I don't think the report got
Speaker 10: the attention it deserved when it was published on February nineteenth.
Speaker 10: Denying the public from both expressing and seeing content supporting
Speaker 10: Palestine is a very dangerous game that only further bolsters
Speaker 10: Israeli propaganda as well as silences any criticism against the
Speaker 10: settler colony of Israel. This is not okay and it
Speaker 10: should concern you because you have the right to know
Speaker 10: the truth. This pattern of censorship is no glitch. Soon
Speaker 10: after Israel began bombarding Gaza and blatantly committing genocide last October,
Speaker 10: Palestinians and people sharing pro Palestinian messages began to report
Speaker 10: that their content was being censored and suppressed on social
Speaker 10: media platforms, including on Facebook and Instagram. The platforms restricted
Speaker 10: and sometimes even suspended the accounts of Palestinian journalists and
Speaker 10: activists both inside and outside of Gaza, and arbitrarily deleted
Speaker 10: a considerable amount of content, including documentation of atrocities and
Speaker 10: human rights abuses committed by Israel against the Palestinian people.
Speaker 10: Examples of this online censorship show that it is rampant, systematic,
Speaker 10: and global. For instance, Human Rights Watch has documented one
Speaker 10: thousand and fifty cases of peaceful content expressing support for
Speaker 10: Palestine originating for more than sixty countries around the world
Speaker 10: being removed between October and November twenty twenty three. Meanwhile,
Speaker 10: the Palestinian Observatory for Digital Rights Violations has documented around
Speaker 10: one thousand, forty three instances of censorship between October seventh
Speaker 10: of twenty twenty three and February ninth of this year,
Speaker 10: including on Facebook and Instagram, from content removals to very
Speaker 10: blatant restrictions. The following examples illustrate the main pat patterns
Speaker 10: of censorship on Meta's platforms documented since October seventh, twenty
Speaker 10: twenty three. Our first example is Facebook's removal of content
Speaker 10: that was documenting the explosion at at Heity Arab Hospital.
Speaker 10: It removed content shared by people who were on the
Speaker 10: ground during the massacre and during the bombing. The automatic
Speaker 10: deletion of bystander content with evidentiary value, especially during times
Speaker 10: of war, not only violates people's ability to express themselves
Speaker 10: and freely access information, it also hinders current and future
Speaker 10: investigations into alleged war crimes. At atrocities perpetrated in Gaza
Speaker 10: by Israel funded by the United States. There had also
Speaker 10: been suspensions of prominent Palestinian and Palestine related accounts. Meta
Speaker 10: has banned and suspended scores of accounts that posted content
Speaker 10: about Palestine. For instance, October tenth, twenty twenty three, manda
Speaker 10: Weis reported that Instagram had twice suspended the account of
Speaker 10: les La Wara, its West Bank video correspondent. It was
Speaker 10: only after manda Weiss publicized the suspension that the platform
Speaker 10: quickly reinstated her account. Metta also suspended the account of
Speaker 10: Gaza journalists and photographer Motaz Azza, who gained more than
Speaker 10: eighteen point six million followers for reporting on the genocide
Speaker 10: in Gaza. This forced him to create a new backup
Speaker 10: account under at Mota Gaza, which acquired more than one
Speaker 10: million followers within twenty four hours. Meta later did reinstate
Speaker 10: Motaz's original account, but several of Azaza's posts showing dead
Speaker 10: or injured Palestinians were flagged by Instagram for possibly violating
Speaker 10: its policy on adult nunity and sexual activity. Under its
Speaker 10: DOI policy, which stands for dangerous Organizations and Individuals. Meta
Speaker 10: also permanently banned the Arabic and English language Facebook pages
Speaker 10: of Klutz News Network, the largest and entirely volunteer run
Speaker 10: Palestinian news outlet. Which has over ten million followers on Facebook.
Speaker 10: Other news outlets that Meta has temporarily suspended or banned
Speaker 10: include Aigle Radio Network, Breakthrough News, twenty four FM, and
Speaker 10: Palestinian Refugees Portal. In addition, Palestinian journalists Fatten, Edwin, Salehel
Speaker 10: Jafarawi and Ahmed chiheb Alden have all experienced and continue
Speaker 10: to experience content takedowns and account restrictions on Instagram and Facebook.
Speaker 10: There have also been numerous examples of restrictions on pro
Speaker 10: Palestinian users and content. Here are some examples. Meta blocked
Speaker 10: Jerusalem based activist sad Nandberk from live streaming on Instagram.
Speaker 10: It restricted Jewish American artists and author Malli Krabapple's Instagram account,
Speaker 10: and there have also been documented cases of Meta hiding
Speaker 10: Instagram comments that contain the Palestinian flag emoji for being
Speaker 10: quote potentially offensive. Many people have reported being barred from
Speaker 10: commenting on Instagram posts containing Palestine related content. One user
Speaker 10: said that a comment was blocked for over twenty four
Speaker 10: hours without explanation. People have also reported being unable to
Speaker 10: repost or reshare content related to Palestine in their Instagram stories.
Speaker 10: In addition, to the usual screening that Meta imposes on
Speaker 10: graphic or violent content, Meta imposed a quote sensitive content
Speaker 10: warning before users could reshare Palestine related posts via their
Speaker 10: Instagram stories. In some instances, attempts to reshare such content
Speaker 10: generated a blank page and a message stating that quote
Speaker 10: something went wrong. Following the Arab Hospital massacre, people reported
Speaker 10: being unable to reshare a video report that was criticizing
Speaker 10: Western media coverage of the bombing, either via their direct
Speaker 10: messages or Instagram stories. This video report was conducted by
Speaker 10: a Lebanese media outlet called Megaphone. Meta has also repeatedly
Speaker 10: discouraged users from following or sharing content from popular Palestini
Speaker 10: accounts that we're sharing updates on Gaza, in the form
Speaker 10: of prompts saying, quote are you sure you want to
Speaker 10: follow or mention this account? And warnings that certain accounts
Speaker 10: have quote repeatedly posted false information or violated metas community
Speaker 10: guidelines And perhaps the most disturbing incident and one that
Speaker 10: I will never forget and I hope you don't either.
Speaker 10: And if you haven't heard about this, buckle up. Instagram
Speaker 10: repeatedly auto translated the word Palestinian or instances of the
Speaker 10: Palestinian flag use alongside the Arabic phrase at haamdula lain,
Speaker 10: which means praise be to God on people's bios. But
Speaker 10: hamdla lah, by the way, is an extremely innocent phrase
Speaker 10: that is used by all people. Let's speak Arabic essentially,
Speaker 10: and it's said all the time. It's a very peaceful,
Speaker 10: calmly thing to say, ahamdla lah, thank you God.
Speaker 4: But guess what they.
Speaker 10: Translated this into Instagram translated the word Palestinian, the use
Speaker 10: of the Palestine flag along with adamdula la in people's
Speaker 10: bios into Palestinian terrorists are fighting for their freedom. Palestinian
Speaker 10: terrorists are fighting for their freedom? Are you fucking kidding me?
Speaker 10: When a TikTok user uncovered this disturbing pattern, Meta apologized
Speaker 10: and fixed the issue, and we all moved on. One
Speaker 10: of the most insidious ways that Palestinian and pro Palestinian
Speaker 10: voices are being censored and suppressed on Meta's platforms is
Speaker 10: via the restriction of certain accounts reach and visibility without
Speaker 10: any explanation or notification aka shadow banning. For example, following
Speaker 10: the Lebanese media outlet megaphones coverage of the air hospital attack,
Speaker 10: its Instagram account at megaphone News was hidden from search results.
Speaker 10: Evidence also suggests that on October eighth, twenty twenty three,
Speaker 10: Meta hid Instagram content that included the hashtag at uxaflood
Speaker 10: from view. Meta's censorship of Palestine voices and Palestinian related
Speaker 10: content as far from new. In recent years, however, it
Speaker 10: has become increasingly pronounced, with a well documented pattern of
Speaker 10: systematic censorship, algorithmic bias, and discriminatory content moderation emerging. During
Speaker 10: the twenty twenty one Schechtracht protests, social media content expressing
Speaker 10: support for Palestinian rights was deleted, removed, and shadow band
Speaker 10: while users who were sharing such content were suspended or
Speaker 10: prevented from commenting or live streaming, and pro Palestinian hashtags
Speaker 10: were suppressed. These were all serious problems that Meta brushed
Speaker 10: off as quote a technical issue. Let's take a little breather,
Speaker 10: and when we come back, we'll talk about silencing that
Speaker 10: is outside of the digital world, so brb.
Speaker 8: Were back.
Speaker 10: In addition to digital silencing, we have seen cases of
Speaker 10: silencing occurring offline, as Americans are being fired or facing
Speaker 10: threats for speaking out in support of Palestine. An open
Speaker 10: letter published in art Forum on October nineteenth, declared we
Speaker 10: support Palestinian liberation and call for an end to the
Speaker 10: killing and harming of all civilians. It was signed by
Speaker 10: thousands of artists, scholars, and cultural workers, including the Art
Speaker 10: World magazine's editor David Velasco. A week later, Velasco was
Speaker 10: fired from the publication that he had worked at for
Speaker 10: eighteen years, reportedly after pushback from Martin Eisenberg, a major
Speaker 10: art patron, and Ben Batham Beyond Air Wow. At least
Speaker 10: four Art Forum editors have resigned in protest against Velasko's firing,
Speaker 10: and many many more people have lost their jobs. Just
Speaker 10: a few quick examples, A Philadelphia's sportswriter was fired after
Speaker 10: tweeting quote solidarity with Palestine and criticism of a seventy
Speaker 10: six ers post that offered support to Israel after Hamas's attack.
Speaker 10: In another high profile incident, a University of California Berkeley
Speaker 10: professor was sacked as editor in chief of the scientific
Speaker 10: journal eLife after he retweeted an onion article that he said,
Speaker 10: quote calls out indifference to the lives of Palestinian civilians.
Speaker 10: A spokesperson for Palestine Legal, a civil rights group, says
Speaker 10: it has responded to more than two hundred and sixty
Speaker 10: incidents of suppression against Palestinian rights activists over two weeks
Speaker 10: of October, more than it did in all of twenty
Speaker 10: twenty two. The Council on American Islamic Relations also CARE
Speaker 10: or CR, which is a civil rights nonprofit, says it
Speaker 10: received seven hundred and seventy four complaints between October seventh
Speaker 10: and October twenty fourth, which was the largest wave of
Speaker 10: complaints that it's handled since Donald Trump announced his Muslim
Speaker 10: in twenty fifteen. This wave has targeted professional activists as
Speaker 10: well as ordinary people who have spoken in defense of Palestinians.
Speaker 10: It has reportedly also escalated into death threats, as well
Speaker 10: as assaults and visits from the FBI to Muslim individuals
Speaker 10: and mosques. In surprise to absolutely no one in the
Speaker 10: United States, the highest levels of power have long supported
Speaker 10: voices backing Israel and its military. In the words of
Speaker 10: Justin Sadowski, an attorney at CARE, the swift blowback against
Speaker 10: pro Palestinian voices builds on decades of organized efforts to
Speaker 10: quote tar Palestinian rights speech as pro terrorists or anti Semitic.
Speaker 10: The late civil rights attorney Michael Ratner called this the
Speaker 10: quote Palestine exception to free speech. In twenty fifteen, CCR
Speaker 10: and Palestine Legal published a report on the tactics used
Speaker 10: by pro Israel lobbying groups, school administrators, and public officials
Speaker 10: to shut down Palaceesinian rights activists. They included false accusations
Speaker 10: of anti Semitism or support for terrorism, as well as
Speaker 10: legal threats and criminal investigations, and they often succeeded in
Speaker 10: intimidating or deterring Palestinian solidarity activists from speaking out and again,
Speaker 10: this pattern of silencing is not new. The prominent Palestinian
Speaker 10: American scholar Rashid Khalidi recalls feeling overwhelmingly outnumbered at Columbia
Speaker 10: University in two thousand and three when pro Israel advocates
Speaker 10: protested against him and other faculty, as well as students
Speaker 10: who spoke out against Israel amid intense fighting in Gaza
Speaker 10: and the West Bank. News crews hounded him on campus,
Speaker 10: and pro Israel students even made a documentary about the controversy.
Speaker 10: Khalidi says, I think the narrative was pretty firmly in
Speaker 10: the hands of people who supported Israel, but he continued,
Speaker 10: there is a generational change taking place, with young people
Speaker 10: having an entirely different set of views. They consume different media,
Speaker 10: and I think they're more educated, more worldly, and better
Speaker 10: informed than their elders. The recent laws against the boycotting
Speaker 10: of Israel, in particular, which thirty six states have enacted,
Speaker 10: directly stifle political advocacy by making people choose between their
Speaker 10: livelihoods and their First Amendment rights. Last year, the Jewish
Speaker 10: American scholar Nathan Thral announced that he had been disinvited
Speaker 10: from speaking at the University of Arkansas for refusing to
Speaker 10: sign an anti boycott pledge that was required of public
Speaker 10: contractors by state law. Maybe after all this, you're asking yourself.
Speaker 3: So what do we do Now?
Speaker 10: We do exactly what they don't want us to do,
Speaker 10: exactly what they're afraid of us doing, exactly what they're
Speaker 10: trying to deter us from doing. Continue talking about Palestine
Speaker 10: and sharing news and images and information that exposes Israel's
Speaker 10: crime of genocide against the Palestinian people. The same way
Speaker 10: people say to vote with your dollar when it comes
Speaker 10: to boycotting certain brands and choosing where your money goes.
Speaker 10: You can decide how you want to use your social
Speaker 10: media platforms. What do you want to do with your
Speaker 10: digital presence?
Speaker 4: What do you stand for?
Speaker 10: Personally? I think the days of casually and incessantly posting
Speaker 10: about your life are behind us, or at least we're
Speaker 10: headed in that direction. We're utilizing social media in a
Speaker 10: different way now. Seeing how gen Z has utilized TikTok
Speaker 10: to share information is a great example of that. I
Speaker 10: don't think celebrity culture, unfortunately, will ever completely go away
Speaker 10: on social media, but I do think we are demanding
Speaker 10: more of our celebrities now, and I think, especially as
Speaker 10: we're seeing quote unquote trusted news sources pedal disinformation and
Speaker 10: propaganda in an irresponsible and appalling way. To put it
Speaker 10: very lightly, we are relying on each other to share
Speaker 10: real information, and in this case, our resources are coming
Speaker 10: from the people who are directly experiencing the horrors of
Speaker 10: genocide for the past five months and seventy six years,
Speaker 10: and those voices must be amplified. There are a lot
Speaker 10: of solid arguments to be made against social media as
Speaker 10: a whole when it comes to whether or not it
Speaker 10: benefits humanity, but I am seeing something shift now where
Speaker 10: we are able to utilize this tool for our betterment.
Speaker 10: If it wasn't for social media, the movement for Palestinian
Speaker 10: liberation would not be where it is today. People who
Speaker 10: were previously uninformed would never have seen the reality of
Speaker 10: the situation were it not for our ability to learn
Speaker 10: from each other outside of the limitations of mainstream news.
Speaker 10: We are learning to trust the establishment less and trust
Speaker 10: each other more. And I think we're able to use
Speaker 10: social media in this way. It's actually a net positive
Speaker 10: for us. It doesn't have to be empty in mind,
Speaker 10: theming in a way to control us or get us
Speaker 10: to spend our money to keep the capitalism machine in
Speaker 10: good working order. We can decide how we utilize our
Speaker 10: digital presence and the good that can come from it,
Speaker 10: and to be united in this way is extremely powerful
Speaker 10: and it can ignite real change, and at the very least,
Speaker 10: it can be our way of spiting the powers that
Speaker 10: be and refusing to be sheep. Existing in an age
Speaker 10: of mass surveillance is frankly very terrifying. But seeing the
Speaker 10: lengths that companies like Meta will not only go to
Speaker 10: to surveill us, but to monitor what we consume, it's
Speaker 10: extremely revealing of how weak their power actually is. It's
Speaker 10: up to us to take back that power, especially now
Speaker 10: as we are witnessing a genocide happen in real time
Speaker 10: on our silly little devices for the past five months,
Speaker 10: and having people become aware of the slower genocide and
Speaker 10: ethnic cleansing that has taken place for seventy six years.
Speaker 10: So keep talking about Palestine, both in person with your
Speaker 10: peers and family and online. I can't guarantee that you
Speaker 10: won't face pushback or repercussions, because as we know, that
Speaker 10: is a real possibility, but the community of people that
Speaker 10: you gain from learning of and speaking the truth far
Speaker 10: outweighs any individual fear, and I would rather stand for
Speaker 10: something than cower by myself or be controlled by fear.
Speaker 10: We do have the ability to change things. I have
Speaker 10: to believe that something else is possible, but it starts
Speaker 10: with taking the blinders off and making a choice about
Speaker 10: how you want to utilize the tools at your disposal,
Speaker 10: rather than be utilized yourself. And that, my friends, is
Speaker 10: our episode for today. Thank you so much for listening
Speaker 10: and repel us.
Speaker 8: Tone Hello and welcome back to it could happen here.
Speaker 8: I am once again You're a guest host Molly Conger.
Speaker 8: Today is our friend Garrison. Hello, excited to get the
Speaker 8: Robert Rundo rundown. So you already know what we are
Speaker 8: talking about today. It is a guy that you probably
Speaker 8: already know more about than you ever wanted to. It
Speaker 8: is Rob Rundo, the founder of the Nazi fight club,
Speaker 8: the Rise Above movement. You and Robert did a great
Speaker 8: two part Behind the Bastards on RAM back in twenty
Speaker 8: twenty one.
Speaker 4: Which is shockingly three years ago, which does not sound right,
Speaker 4: but I guess is the case.
Speaker 8: It's been a long three years for you, but an
Speaker 8: even stranger one for Rob.
Speaker 9: Yeah, he's been really a country hopic a lot the
Speaker 9: past few years.
Speaker 4: Huh. He's been busy.
Speaker 8: So when you recorded that episode back in January of
Speaker 8: twenty twenty one, Rundo's federal charges had been dismissed by
Speaker 8: Judge Cormack Carney in twenty nineteen. The Ninth Circuit Court
Speaker 8: of Appeals overturned that decision in March twenty twenty one,
Speaker 8: right around the time the episode came out. I think
Speaker 8: at the end of the second episode you had a PostScript,
Speaker 8: like an addendum you recorded afterwards, because before it came out,
Speaker 8: the Ninth Circuit ruling had been issued.
Speaker 4: Okay, okay, but in.
Speaker 8: An almost comical turn of events, Judge Carney has once
Speaker 8: again dismissed those charges two weeks ago.
Speaker 9: Now, so three years later, a few countries later, hopping
Speaker 9: from Serbia to the United States to probably other places
Speaker 9: around Europe.
Speaker 8: Yeah, and we're sort of back in the same position
Speaker 8: you were in when you talked about him three years ago.
Speaker 4: Times that's circle.
Speaker 8: But before we get into one of the sort of
Speaker 8: strangest legal slap fights I've ever read, let's back up
Speaker 8: for a second. Who is Rob Rundo and what was
Speaker 8: he charged with? Yeah, So, if you want a more
Speaker 8: robust look at the early days of the Rise Above movement,
Speaker 8: I do recommend going back and listening to that Behind
Speaker 8: the Bastards two parter on the Rise Above Movement. It
Speaker 8: originally aired in March twenty twenty one, So like, really
Speaker 8: scroll back in your podcast app. But we'll do a
Speaker 8: quick recap here because it's not I can't assign the
Speaker 8: listener homework. So so the Rise Above movement first emerged
Speaker 8: in early twenty seventeen, after a brief period of being
Speaker 8: called the DIY Division Both stupid Dames. I don't know
Speaker 8: which one's better, but Ram. We're just going to call
Speaker 8: them RAM. In twenty seventeen was a big year for
Speaker 8: political violence. It was it was really hot that year.
Speaker 8: The group was, on its surface, a mixed martial arts
Speaker 8: club for white men. They trained together and bonded over
Speaker 8: their shared and abhorrent political views. In their own words,
Speaker 8: they are fighting against the modern world corrupted by the
Speaker 8: destructive cultural influences of liberals, Jews, Muslims, and immigrants, you know.
Speaker 4: And gay people and gay people.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I'm just pretty much pretty much everybody.
Speaker 4: Except you know themselves.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 8: Essentially, if you were not a member of the Nazi
Speaker 8: Fight Club, you are a victim of the Nazi fight Club.
Speaker 4: That's the first rule of Nazi fights or whatever.
Speaker 8: The first rule of Nazi fight Club was not don't
Speaker 8: talk about Nazi fight Club. And I think that's they
Speaker 8: shutout it. They cannot stop talking. Like if they had
Speaker 8: just followed the first rule of fight club, they might
Speaker 8: not be in this position. But RAM quickly became a
Speaker 8: staple at rallies in southern California that year. In the
Speaker 8: spring and summer of twenty seventeen, they kept showing up
Speaker 8: and kept throwing punches In March, members assaulted journalists and
Speaker 8: counter protesters at a MAGA rally in Huntington Beach. In April,
Speaker 8: they assaulted numerous counter protesters at a rally in Berkeley.
Speaker 8: In August, RAM members attended Unite the Right in Charlottesville
Speaker 8: and assaulted counter protesters in the streets.
Speaker 4: Again.
Speaker 8: And you know they're not just going to these events
Speaker 8: and getting in fights, right, They're not just like showing
Speaker 8: up and just like it just happens. They're going to
Speaker 8: these events planning on committing these assaults and then bragging
Speaker 8: about the assaults publicly and privately. They're using these acts
Speaker 8: of violence as propaganda and recruitment tools, right like they're
Speaker 8: making little videos they're posting about it. It's not just
Speaker 8: about committing the assault. So the violence is not just
Speaker 8: about physically hurting people. It's part of the larger strategy
Speaker 8: to incite others to join them in this project. And
Speaker 8: that's I mean, you already know this. You covered that
Speaker 8: in your episode three years ago. This is for everybody else,
Speaker 8: and they're still going. Unfortunately, these these they're now often
Speaker 8: called active clubs, are more popular than what they were
Speaker 8: three years ago. They've they've become very a very big
Speaker 8: staple of white supremacist organizing across the United States and Canada,
Speaker 8: mirroring a lot of organizational styles in Eastern Europe. There's
Speaker 8: probably one in your area that you might not know about.
Speaker 8: They are active on telegram, They're actively recruiting. They recruit
Speaker 8: from high schools.
Speaker 9: Is a big increasing problem as Patriot Front becomes more
Speaker 9: and more like fed jacketed between their own Nazi ranks,
Speaker 9: we have seen more people plugging into into these active clubs.
Speaker 8: Right RAM did not go away, it's just sort of morphed.
Speaker 8: And so back in twenty seventeen they said they had
Speaker 8: a lot of members. They probably had like twenty But
Speaker 8: now these active clubs just they do genuinely have chapters
Speaker 8: all over the country. Yeah, but back in the past,
Speaker 8: right So after Unite the Right RAM members decided to
Speaker 8: lay off the rallies a little bit. You know, being
Speaker 8: seen on camera beating a woman into the pavement at
Speaker 8: a rally that ended in a hate crime murder invited
Speaker 8: some bad press and they weren't looking to get door
Speaker 8: knocks at that particular moment, So they backed off a
Speaker 8: little bit at the end of twenty seventeen, but they'd
Speaker 8: spent most of that year attending rallies and getting into
Speaker 8: physical altercations. It wasn't until over a year after Unite
Speaker 8: the Right in October of twenty eighteen, that there was
Speaker 8: any attempt to do anything about this very obvious problem.
Speaker 8: You know, the criminal complaint itself even says that some
Speaker 8: of these assaults were committed in plain view of cops
Speaker 8: who just stood there and did nothing while these guys
Speaker 8: beat the shit out of people in the streets. You know,
Speaker 8: they're in each other's dms, bragging about kicking a woman
Speaker 8: in the head while she's lying on the ground, but
Speaker 8: nobody lifted a finger to stop them. But in October
Speaker 8: of twenty eighteen, two cases were filed. One in the
Speaker 8: Western Virginia charges were filed against Ben Daley, Cole White,
Speaker 8: Thomas Gillen, and Michael Miscelis, And a few weeks later,
Speaker 8: in the Central District of California, charges were filed against
Speaker 8: Rob Rundo, Robert Bowman, Tyler Loub and Aaron Eeson. So
Speaker 8: all eight of them, four in each district. All eight
Speaker 8: of them were charged under the Federal Riot Act and
Speaker 8: conspiracy to riot. I think it was Robert who said
Speaker 8: in the original RAM episode. You know, like if at
Speaker 8: any point early on, like if at any point in
Speaker 8: those first few months of this happening there had been
Speaker 8: any kind of intervention, if anyone had been arrested in
Speaker 8: the act, maybe this could have been nipped in the
Speaker 8: butt and a lot of what happens later wouldn't have happened.
Speaker 9: Or even if they were like beaten up, like if
Speaker 9: like if a group of like Eddie fascists like beat
Speaker 9: them up, that would discidentivize them from going to future
Speaker 9: events to try to beat up other people, right, Like,
Speaker 9: violence is actually very good at doing this specific thing,
Speaker 9: and if you feel like you're gonna go somewhere to
Speaker 9: get b up, you probably don't want to go there.
Speaker 9: And even like divorced from the act at the state
Speaker 9: like that is that is a demotivating factor which has
Speaker 9: been effective against Proud Boys in Portland. Now, obviously some
Speaker 9: of these guys, especially the RAM crew, go there with
Speaker 9: the express interest of getting into fights, So that's something
Speaker 9: you should definitely consider. But yeah, like if as long
Speaker 9: as they have a bad time, it makes them not
Speaker 9: want to come to these things. But when they're able
Speaker 9: to just beat up anyone, they want to without any pushback.
Speaker 9: It's like, yeah, it becomes like a fun thing. It
Speaker 9: becomes like a large amount of incentive is gained for
Speaker 9: going to a rally, whether that's in Huntington Beach or
Speaker 9: halfway across the country.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 8: I mean they were having a great time and there
Speaker 8: was no there was no movement to stop this, And
Speaker 8: it's hard to know why it took over a year
Speaker 8: for any charges to get brought. I think you speculated
Speaker 8: in that RAM episode a few years ago that it
Speaker 8: was public pressure. After that in depth reporting came out
Speaker 8: of mainstream press, but I was going back over the timeline,
Speaker 8: and that pro public apiece came out in October twenty seventeen.
Speaker 8: That was just two months after Unite the Right and
Speaker 8: a whole year before those charges were filed. It's not
Speaker 8: really possible to know why they waited so long unless
Speaker 8: some you know, young US attorney wants to level with
Speaker 8: us about it. But I don't foresee that, probably not
Speaker 8: just you know what's going on behind the scenes. But
Speaker 8: I do have one sort of interesting anecdote. A couple
Speaker 8: months ago, I was at an event here in Charlesville.
Speaker 8: It was a panel discussion, and one of the speakers
Speaker 8: was the US Attorney for the Western District of Virginia,
Speaker 8: Chris Cavanaugh. He was speaking to a group of people
Speaker 8: about the work that he does, and he was talking
Speaker 8: about the work that he did on some of these
Speaker 8: sort of extremism cases after Unite the Right. Back in
Speaker 8: twenty eighteen, he was the assistant US attorney here. He's
Speaker 8: been promoted since then. But he worked on the James
Speaker 8: Fields case, and he worked on the Ram case. It
Speaker 8: was filed here in Virginia, and he said something really
Speaker 8: interesting that I hadn't thought about before. So right after
Speaker 8: Unite the Right in August twenty seventeen, a bunch of
Speaker 8: FBI agents were assigned to you know, check out what
Speaker 8: happened here at this mass casualty event. Right, They had
Speaker 8: the resources to investigate and try to develop cases. You know,
Speaker 8: I love my documents. I spent a lot of time
Speaker 8: in the documents, so I've actually seen you know, they
Speaker 8: got some federal search warrants. It was actually an FBI
Speaker 8: agent who dug the round that Richard Preston fired at
Speaker 8: Corey Long out of the mulch In Market Street park.
Speaker 8: You know, they got search warrants for social media for
Speaker 8: a couple of guys who ended up prosecuted locally, Alex Ramos,
Speaker 8: Richard Preston, and New Borton. So it looks like they
Speaker 8: were trying to develop hate crime cases, right, like that
Speaker 8: federal warrant they got for Richard Preston's Twitter account said
Speaker 8: that they were developing I hate crime case and they
Speaker 8: never did so, like right after Unite the Right, they're
Speaker 8: getting these warrants, they're developing these cases. But back to
Speaker 8: that event that I was at with Chris Kavanaugh, the
Speaker 8: US attorney, he said, when the Las Vegas shooting happened
Speaker 8: in October of twenty seventeen, they lost their task force.
Speaker 8: They had this huge volume of agents working trying to
Speaker 8: develop Unite the Right cases. When that shooting happened two
Speaker 8: months later, they all got reassigned. He was left with
Speaker 8: like a skeleton crew, and they just didn't have the
Speaker 8: resources to develop these cases. Like, I don't know how
Speaker 8: the FBI is managing their resources internally so badly that
Speaker 8: they can only handle one mask actualty event at a time,
Speaker 8: or why the Washington Field office was so heavily impacted
Speaker 8: by a shooting in Nevada. But that is what he said,
Speaker 8: So take that as you will. And I think that
Speaker 8: theory is at least in part supported by the fact
Speaker 8: that the federal charges against James Fields didn't get brought
Speaker 8: until June of twenty eighteen. Right, he'd been charged locally
Speaker 8: for the car attack that killed Heather Higher, but the
Speaker 8: federal charges didn't pop up until June of twenty eighteen.
Speaker 4: So I don't know.
Speaker 8: If maybe something shifted in terms of resources in their
Speaker 8: office that summer, I don't know, it's interesting to think about.
Speaker 8: But then, so back to October of twenty eighteen, right
Speaker 8: when these two different RAM cases get filed. Virginia's case
Speaker 8: was actually filed first. It was filed a few weeks
Speaker 8: before the case in California, So I don't know. I
Speaker 8: assumed they were in communication about that, but I don't
Speaker 8: have any special insight into what their federal prosecutor was doing.
Speaker 8: But it's also possible that it just takes the government
Speaker 8: a whole ass year to do anything, no matter what.
Speaker 8: Right In a recent filing in the Rondo case, the
Speaker 8: government's talking about how this investigation was developed, and it says,
Speaker 8: you're gonna shit a break Garrison. It says that the
Speaker 8: FBI investigation into RAM only started when a bartender in
Speaker 8: LA called the FBI a few weeks after Unite the
Speaker 8: Right because he overheard a patron Ben Day quote gleefully
Speaker 8: bragging about having caused havoc during the riots. Amazing, and
Speaker 8: he also quote bragged about hitting a guy and punching
Speaker 8: a girl in the face during protests in Berkeley. So
Speaker 8: that first comment was about Charlesville. He had just come
Speaker 8: home from Charlesville. He was talking about how he caused havoc.
Speaker 8: He's bragging about punching people in Berkeley, and the bartender's like, hmm,
Speaker 8: that's kind of that's suspicious, suspicious. This unnamed complainant also
Speaker 8: told the FBI that Daily and other RAM members had
Speaker 8: come to the bar often and sometimes used it for recruitment.
Speaker 8: They were recruiting the patrons at this bar, and based
Speaker 8: on what he overheard, he told the FBI that the
Speaker 8: group quote did not care about the issues regarding the
Speaker 8: statues in Charlottesville, but rather a quote enjoyed going to
Speaker 8: protests just to raise havoc, cause trouble and fight. So
Speaker 8: it wasn't until a bartender called the FBI to be like, Hey,
Speaker 8: this guy's talking about like doing a lot of gang violence.
Speaker 8: I don't know if you guys know about this, And
Speaker 8: according to that same court filing, the FBI took until
Speaker 8: January of twenty eighteen, so a few weeks after Unit
Speaker 8: the Right and maybe we're looking at September. It took
Speaker 8: them three or four more months until January of twenty
Speaker 8: eighteen to discover in the course of their investigation that
Speaker 8: RAM was based in southern California.
Speaker 4: Great work, great work, everybody, fantastic stuff. They're on it now, Garrison.
Speaker 8: And so at this point, the LA Field Office opens
Speaker 8: an investigation into members in the area. Now I kind
Speaker 8: of hope this isn't true, right, Like, I hope that
Speaker 8: this is not a correct summary of these events, because
Speaker 8: if it really took someone calling the FBI to say, like, hey,
Speaker 8: I heard a guy bragging about doing crime.
Speaker 4: That definitely no, that is definitely how this went down.
Speaker 4: Absolutely that makes so much sense.
Speaker 8: But then it took three months of investigating to figure
Speaker 8: out that the guys who recruit for their Nazi gang
Speaker 8: at a bar in LA probably live in LA.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I mean that is This is kind of
Speaker 4: how the FBI investigates white supremacist groups, but they have
Speaker 4: they're too busy investigating teenagers in black hoodies. They can't.
Speaker 4: They can't bother to spare the manpower for this. There's
Speaker 4: Antifa out there.
Speaker 8: By the time they got this tip from the bartender,
Speaker 8: that Pro Publica article was already out. Why did it
Speaker 8: take them three months to find out that the guys
Speaker 8: whose names were already in the newspaper lived in California.
Speaker 4: I don't know I trust anyone who lives in Virginia, So.
Speaker 8: It took them a few months, Right, it took some time.
Speaker 8: I hope that's not true, but it is what the
Speaker 8: government has put on the record as the truth. So anyway,
Speaker 8: that's how this case starts. Right, So, these eight members
Speaker 8: of RAM are charged for in Virginia for in California
Speaker 8: with rioting and conspiracy to riot. Just for efficiency's sake,
Speaker 8: I'll just say that the cases in Virginia are fully
Speaker 8: resolved daily Miss Elliskillen, and White all pleaded guilty. There
Speaker 8: were some later unsuccessful appeals where when they after they
Speaker 8: saw what happened in the California cases, they're like, ooh,
Speaker 8: actually us too, can we But that didn't work, and
Speaker 8: their convictions stood and that's all over.
Speaker 4: Where is daily?
Speaker 9: Now?
Speaker 4: Is he out again? There? He's out, He's out. Yeah,
Speaker 4: yeah yeah.
Speaker 8: White didn't get any additional time after his plea because
Speaker 8: he was so cooperative, and the other three all got
Speaker 8: less than three years.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, yeah, So they're out.
Speaker 8: But these California cases where Roundo is charged, they have
Speaker 8: been a mess from day one, so the charge October
Speaker 8: twenty eighteen. In twenty nineteen, Judge Cormack Carney dismissed the
Speaker 8: charges in California, saying that the Riot Act was unconstitutionally
Speaker 8: overbroad and its application violated the defendant's First Amendment rights.
Speaker 9: So true, First, I'm a defender here. That's right, travel
Speaker 9: across state lines to riot endorsed by this judge.
Speaker 8: That's free speech. Garrison like love it or leave it,
Speaker 8: go back to Canada. So the prosecutor appealed that ruling
Speaker 8: because it was hawk garbage, and the Ninth Circuit agreed.
Speaker 8: It takes a long time for things to get appealed.
Speaker 8: It's like slower than watching grass grow. So the Ninth
Speaker 8: Circuit reversed that ruling in March of twenty twenty one,
Speaker 8: reinstating the indictments. Things move really so so you know,
Speaker 8: it took two years for them to reverse it and
Speaker 8: then another year to enter the order. So it wasn't
Speaker 8: until February of twenty twenty two that the case was
Speaker 8: formally reopened, in.
Speaker 9: Which case, around this time, Rondo's trying to like hide
Speaker 9: in Eastern Europe and eventually get sent back to the
Speaker 9: United States. Curiously around the same time that Andrew Tate.
Speaker 9: Does God imagine an Andrew tape Rob Rundo fight. Oh okay,
Speaker 9: I wouldn't pay money because I don't want to support them,
Speaker 9: but I would love to watch that.
Speaker 8: Actually send them both back to Romania and let them fight.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly, exactly. So, by the time that the.
Speaker 8: California Ram defendants are re indicted on the original charges,
Speaker 8: it's January of twenty twenty three, and only three of
Speaker 8: them get reindicted because Aaron Eeson has died.
Speaker 4: So sad. It doesn't say much more than that a
Speaker 4: tragic loss of life. I don't know.
Speaker 8: I don't want to, I guess I don't want to
Speaker 8: speculate because it doesn't say on the record, and I
Speaker 8: was unable to determine. I can't find anything other than
Speaker 8: the court record. Dismissing his charges because he was dead.
Speaker 8: I can't find any record of his death. It must
Speaker 8: have just been, you know, private. But you know, you
Speaker 8: were talking about that RAM episode a couple years ago
Speaker 8: about how you know they're all about clean living and fighting.
Speaker 4: They're all straight edge, except for all of the ones
Speaker 4: who do trucks.
Speaker 8: A lot of them have really serious drug problems. And
Speaker 8: I don't know for a fact what was going on
Speaker 8: with Aaron Eesan, but I know Robert Bowman had some
Speaker 8: trouble staying out on bond due to a very severe
Speaker 8: meth addiction. Yes, yes, so I don't know what happened
Speaker 8: to Aaron Eastan, but very very pure. You gotta keep
Speaker 8: the blood line pure. So they're reindicted January twenty twenty three.
Speaker 8: And as you guys talked about back in twenty twenty one,
Speaker 8: Rondo had been living in Serbia for most of this time.
Speaker 8: He is overseas making friends, doing fight club, doing Nazi stuff,
Speaker 8: hang out.
Speaker 9: Making bad T shirts, doing bad graffiti, mostly opening up
Speaker 9: T shirt factories. It's really what he spent a lot
Speaker 9: of times.
Speaker 8: Really about the merch You have to merchandise.
Speaker 9: That's the Hey, if you took away. One thing from
Speaker 9: Revolt against the Modern World. It's that Ovola loved merch.
Speaker 9: That's the biggest through line in that work. It's you
Speaker 9: got to sell those stickers, man, You have to.
Speaker 8: It's a sort of a pointy shaped operation.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 8: The guys on the bottom have to keep selling the
Speaker 8: stickers to the guys, and you have to make new bottoms. Right,
Speaker 8: there's there's no bottom. It is a pyramid scheme. Patriot
Speaker 8: Ron is a pyramid scheme.
Speaker 9: Well, and Patriot Front and Rondo had the same sticker
Speaker 9: manufacturer for quite a while. Their websites, well, their merch
Speaker 9: websites were identical.
Speaker 8: Look, I mean, how many webmasters can these Nazi groups have.
Speaker 8: It's gotta be one guy. Yeah, they do not have
Speaker 8: a graphic designer. So anyway, so he's in Serbia. In
Speaker 8: twenty twenty one, Serbia made a big show of saying like, oh, like,
Speaker 8: he's not welcome here. He's deported to Bosnia. He was
Speaker 8: still in Serbia. I think Bell and Cat has some
Speaker 8: great articles tracking exactly where in Belgrade Rondo was hanging out.
Speaker 8: But Serbia was like, no, he's not here, we can't
Speaker 8: He's not welcome here. He's in Bosnia. Bonni was like,
Speaker 8: he's not fucking here. He was in Serbia.
Speaker 9: He kept trying to lie to He tried to like
Speaker 9: like make people think he was somewhere else, but he
Speaker 9: just couldn't stop posting. And if you ever post anything
Speaker 9: outside or really even inside you you can be found.
Speaker 9: So like, he couldn't stop posting, and every single time
Speaker 9: he'd be like, haha, the CIA asked, it's a belly cat.
Speaker 9: Think I'm here when in fact I'm actually over there,
Speaker 9: and you're like, no, you're actually right here. It's really
Speaker 9: easy to find out where you are. You posted yourself
Speaker 9: standing next to this tree. There's only one type of
Speaker 9: this tree in this area. It's obvious you're right here,
Speaker 9: and it's like you can.
Speaker 8: Post all you like. If you have terminal posting disease,
Speaker 8: you can keep posting, which is like, don't post photographs
Speaker 8: of yourself in a place.
Speaker 9: He can't He can't stop, He can't stop, won't stop.
Speaker 9: My favorite old Rundo lore is that he had this
Speaker 9: YouTube series called Tea Time with Robert Rundo that I
Speaker 9: still think about about once a week, where he would
Speaker 9: give his Nazi followers advice on how to flee the
Speaker 9: country if they have a felony while sitting at like
Speaker 9: a European cafe filming on his iPhone. It's the most
Speaker 9: it's the funniest thing I've ever seen in the sane world.
Speaker 8: Evidence like that would make a judge say, mmm, I
Speaker 8: don't think we should let you back.
Speaker 4: Out, considering you made instructions.
Speaker 8: So finally, in March of twenty twenty three, he's freshly reindicted.
Speaker 8: In January twenty twenty three. March of twenty twenty three,
Speaker 8: the Romanian police are like, we fucking found him, got him.
Speaker 8: He's here in Romania. So he's arrested in Romania and
Speaker 8: it takes a few months to sort out all the
Speaker 8: paperwork and get him extra dated back to the US
Speaker 8: in August of twenty twenty three. You know what won't
Speaker 8: get you indicted on federal felony charges that result in
Speaker 8: you being extradited from a Romanian prison.
Speaker 9: Listening to these ads as long as we declare them
Speaker 9: as My FTC training today taught me how to do so. Yes,
Speaker 9: these are all paid advertisements. We're not allowed to call
Speaker 9: them promoted content to we have to call them ads.
Speaker 8: These are advertised I believe.
Speaker 9: That was part of my training today. So to make
Speaker 9: sure I don't go to prison enjoy these paid advertisements.
Speaker 8: Well, I hope you enjoyed those paid advertiste ads.
Speaker 6: This is weird.
Speaker 9: We're only airing them because they're paying us money. These
Speaker 9: are not our sincere belief. Way, we can't say that either.
Speaker 9: There's really no way to win. There's no way to
Speaker 9: win here anyway. I'm going to the war against the
Speaker 9: ftc so so true. So that more or less gets
Speaker 9: us up to the current controversy. So we get Rundo
Speaker 9: back August twenty twenty three, and then February twenty twenty four,
Speaker 9: about ten days ago, Judge Karney dismisses the case again.
Speaker 9: So back in twenty nineteen, Karney said, no, there's no
Speaker 9: crime here. This is just protected for some m activities.
Speaker 9: You can't use the Riot Act. That's unconstitutional, right, And
Speaker 9: he dismisses the case, and the Ninth Circus says, no, no,
Speaker 9: I don't think so that's not how we're reading this.
Speaker 9: You got to take the case back, so it gets
Speaker 9: remanded back to the same judge. It goes back to
Speaker 9: Judge Karney, but of course Rundo's missing now it takes
Speaker 9: a while to get him back. And so he finally
Speaker 9: gets his defendant back from his Nazi laer in Eastern Europe,
Speaker 9: he has to come up with a new reason why
Speaker 9: not street fighting gang shouldn't be charged with a crime.
Speaker 8: Okay, So like it's obvious, he just doesn't want to
Speaker 8: fucking try this case. So he has to come up
Speaker 8: with a new reason. And honestly, I think no shade
Speaker 8: to the federal public defender, right, Rendo has a public defender.
Speaker 8: It is their job to throw everything at the wall
Speaker 8: and see what sticks. They're providing zealous defense to their clients.
Speaker 8: So they write up what I would say, in my
Speaker 8: personal opinion, was an absolute dogshit motion, and I think
Speaker 8: maybe they knew that too. I don't know, they're just
Speaker 8: doing their jobs. I think Judge Carney would have agreed
Speaker 8: with whatever they put on paper. He gets this motion
Speaker 8: and he's like, yes, for sure, dismissed again. So true,
Speaker 8: and this time it's selective prosecution that if the government
Speaker 8: wants to charge Ram with rioting, they would have had
Speaker 8: to charge Antifa too, because otherwise it's not fair.
Speaker 4: What should they do all the fucking time?
Speaker 8: It's just not fair?
Speaker 4: I mean this case does actually like showcase like selective prosecution,
Speaker 4: the fact that you wire super willing to drop charges
Speaker 4: against a white supremacists but will send and like quote
Speaker 4: unquote Antifa gay gay teenagers to prison for going to
Speaker 4: a BLM protest, Like yeah, that actually does show exactly
Speaker 4: how these cases are very selectively prosecuted.
Speaker 8: Right, Like these guys are playing on easy mode, and
Speaker 8: as soon as they draw the wrong card, it's like, well,
Speaker 8: this deck is stcked, this deck is stacked right, And
Speaker 8: so now I'm again we talked about this before a garrison.
Speaker 8: I'm not a lawyer, we know this, but I am
Speaker 8: an enthusiastic consumer of the law, and I did read
Speaker 8: a bunch of law review articles today. Okay, select prosecution
Speaker 8: sounds like the kind of thing that could work, right, Like, oh,
Speaker 8: it's not constitutional to selectively prosecute based on maybia a
Speaker 8: protected characteristic right, like if you're only prosecuting black people
Speaker 8: for a crime, Like, of course that's wrong. But here's
Speaker 8: the thing. It doesn't work. It never works. This is
Speaker 8: not an argument that is effective. I want to say,
Speaker 8: it never works. It is generally not an effective argument.
Speaker 8: Even when a layperson could look at and say, oh, yeah,
Speaker 8: that is kind of fucked up. It just doesn't work.
Speaker 8: You can't just walk into court and say, you know, well,
Speaker 8: your honor, I was speeding, but so was everybody else
Speaker 8: on the interstate. It's unconstitutional to give me a ticket
Speaker 8: unless everyone gets a ticket, right that.
Speaker 4: It's not how it works. They're picking on me.
Speaker 8: It's yeah, you can't just say, you know, other people
Speaker 8: did what I did, but I'm the only one standing here,
Speaker 8: so it's not fair.
Speaker 4: You have to there's an actual structure to this. Oh
Speaker 4: Jay got away with it. That means I should too, right.
Speaker 8: Right, We're not catching every murderer, so like I should
Speaker 8: get a freebee. Yeah, so you have to show not
Speaker 8: only that there was a particular other individual who engaged
Speaker 8: in the same conduct who was not charged, but also
Speaker 8: that quote a federal prosecutorial policy had a discriminatory effect,
Speaker 8: and it was motivated by a discriminatory purpose. So in
Speaker 8: the speeding ticket analogy, right, you'd have to say, you know,
Speaker 8: I was doing eighty in the school zone, but so
Speaker 8: were these three other particular women like John Jane, and
Speaker 8: we're all doing it too, and we all got pulled over.
Speaker 8: But the cop only gave me a ticket because he
Speaker 8: hates men or something, right Like.
Speaker 4: You would have to show that based miss andres cop right.
Speaker 8: So you'd have to show that other people did the
Speaker 8: exact same thing you did, and it was possible for
Speaker 8: them to have gotten in trouble too, Yeah, but they
Speaker 8: didn't because of a particular form of discrimination. So in
Speaker 8: order to make a valid claim of selective prosecution, Rondo's
Speaker 8: lawyers would have to say, Look, here's Joe Antifa, a
Speaker 8: real guy who exists, and here is a materially similar
Speaker 8: set of circumstances in which Joe Antifa ran an organized
Speaker 8: group that got into fights on purpose, provoked confrontations, chase
Speaker 8: people to their cars, beat women in the streets, and
Speaker 8: then use that footage to recruit people to his gang.
Speaker 8: Right Like, here's Joe Antifa bragging online about targeting members
Speaker 8: of a particular minority group for brutal gang assaults at
Speaker 8: political rallies. Here's his group actively planning and organizing to
Speaker 8: travel to different cities and other states across the country
Speaker 8: with the explicit and stated goal of provoking and attacking people.
Speaker 8: You can't just say, well, Antifa didn't get charged. You
Speaker 8: have to present an actual person who did what you did,
Speaker 8: not just some other guy who did something you don't
Speaker 8: like or somebody else who maybe did kind of a crime.
Speaker 4: You have to say, this is a.
Speaker 8: Specific person and he did what I did in a
Speaker 8: materially similar way to the same degree that I did it,
Speaker 8: and with just as much evidence to support that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And in the Ram case, there's so.
Speaker 8: Much evidence because they couldn't stop fucking posting, So they
Speaker 8: can't produce evidence that Antifa, to whatever degree that's a
Speaker 8: meaningful term here, engaged in similar behavior to what the
Speaker 8: evidence shows Ram did. Right, It's not just other people
Speaker 8: were fighting, And in this case that's kind of preposterous
Speaker 8: because the evidence does show that they specifically bragged, Like
Speaker 8: there's a text that was produced from Ben Daaley bragging
Speaker 8: about how they were first through the barricades at Berkeley.
Speaker 8: So you're acknowledging that you know there was this big
Speaker 8: riot and that you hearted it. Sure other people were
Speaker 8: fighting in the riot that you started on purpose, So
Speaker 8: no one else can be similarly situated to you, because
Speaker 8: even if they were fighting you started it, there has
Speaker 8: to be a real, actual other person who is similarly situated.
Speaker 8: That's an actual legal term that encompasses a sort of
Speaker 8: set of criteria. Is there a similar amount of evidence
Speaker 8: against this other person? Would it take a similar amount
Speaker 8: of state resources to investigate, arrest, and convict this person.
Speaker 8: We just don't have an organized militant street gang of
Speaker 8: Antifa that sold branded apparel and bragged about crimes online.
Speaker 8: There is no similarly situated, uncharged actor on the other
Speaker 8: side of this. That person doesn't exist. But it's even
Speaker 8: more than that. Even if we did have Joe Antifa,
Speaker 8: the gang leader who's bragging online about doing this kind
Speaker 8: of stuff, even if he existed, Even then, even then
Speaker 8: there is what's called prosecutorial discretion. There may be the
Speaker 8: reasons that we just aren't entitled to know about as
Speaker 8: to why a prosecutor made the decisions they did about
Speaker 8: who gets charged. For a selective prosecution argument to work,
Speaker 8: you have to show that this decision was made for
Speaker 8: a discriminatory purpose, and that's really hard to do because
Speaker 8: they're not going to tell you that right. You know,
Speaker 8: in an ideal world, selective prosecution would be an argument raised.
Speaker 8: You know about racial bias, because we do know that
Speaker 8: there is racial bias, and who is investigated arrested, charged,
Speaker 8: and convicted for crimes, like at every step along the way,
Speaker 8: there's a thumb on the scale against people of color.
Speaker 8: And even then, even when it is so obvious, even
Speaker 8: when you have, you know, a prosecutor who is a
Speaker 8: member of the fucking clan, even then these arguments don't
Speaker 8: tend to work.
Speaker 4: This should not have worked.
Speaker 8: But Judge Carney clearly just doesn't want this case prosecuted, right.
Speaker 8: I think it's it's very obvious that he just like
Speaker 8: thinks Rob Rundo is a nice boy who shouldn't have
Speaker 8: to go to jail for this is also, I think,
Speaker 8: notably about to retire. He hits he hits the minimum
Speaker 8: retirement age in May, and he is going to retire
Speaker 8: the day that he can. I think Megan Cuniff, who
Speaker 8: has a great blog, Legal Affairs, she's been covering this case.
Speaker 8: She noted in a tweet a few weeks ago that
Speaker 8: she knows that he intends to retire because he in
Speaker 8: rescheduling some hearings, said that that was the only day
Speaker 8: he could go to the retirement benefits class that he
Speaker 8: needs to go to to make sure he can retire
Speaker 8: the day he's eligible in May, so he just doesn't
Speaker 8: he just doesn't want to deal with this. Right that
Speaker 8: this was scheduled to go to trial in March and
Speaker 8: he's retiring in May. He just doesn't want to do it.
Speaker 9: What's the even the point anymore? What's even what? I
Speaker 9: just it's like, why are they even trying here? Like
Speaker 9: it just just just like kick the can down to
Speaker 9: someone else if you don't want to like deal with this.
Speaker 9: I don't know, it's turning this whole like I don't know.
Speaker 9: I've read other things from this judge how he's like
Speaker 9: he's like very much into like this big like Antifa
Speaker 9: conspiracy theory, and.
Speaker 8: He's a little bit racist, like there was an issue
Speaker 8: he's oh, I'm shocked. He was chief Judge of the
Speaker 8: Circuit briefly, but he had to step down. So he's
Speaker 8: still a judge in the Central District of California, but
Speaker 8: he's not the chief judge anymore because he made a
Speaker 8: racist comment to the Clerk of court. So he's I mean,
Speaker 8: I think there's some stuff going on with Judge Carney.
Speaker 8: So I think he knows when he made this ruling
Speaker 8: that like the Ninth Circuit's going to send it back.
Speaker 8: But that's not gonna be his problem anymore because he's
Speaker 8: out of here in May. So you heard this like
Speaker 8: absolute dog shit argument, and he was like, so true, King,
Speaker 8: this is not fair. You are free to go go ahead,
Speaker 8: and he let him out same day, Like he heard
Speaker 8: this argument. He was like, absolutely, that's the one, go
Speaker 8: on home, and he let him out that day. There
Speaker 8: was attorney made a motion for an emergency stay, saying like, okay, well,
Speaker 8: let's just let's not get ahead of ourselves. Why don't
Speaker 8: we just hang on to him till we can talk
Speaker 8: to the Ninth Circuit about this, because I don't know,
Speaker 8: and that's it's pretty normal, that would be normal for
Speaker 8: the judge to say, let's give it a day. I mean,
Speaker 8: I want him release, but we'll give it a day.
Speaker 8: We'll let you get your paperwork in order. No, he
Speaker 8: just let him out, just let him out right that day,
Speaker 8: and considering his history of fleeing the country, not the
Speaker 8: call I would have made.
Speaker 4: It is quite the choice.
Speaker 8: So the very next day, the Ninth Circuit was like,
Speaker 8: hold on, let's get him back in custody while we
Speaker 8: think about this. And it makes no sense for CARNEI
Speaker 8: to deny the emergency state, that would be really normal
Speaker 8: to stay the decision until we have a chance to
Speaker 8: sort of think this through. Right, even if he truly
Speaker 8: believed with his whole heart that there's no way that
Speaker 8: this would ever get kicked back by the Ninth Circuit,
Speaker 8: that the case would stay dismissed and Rundo would be
Speaker 8: free to go, it would not be unusual to say,
Speaker 8: you know, well, this has been pretty contentious. The defendant
Speaker 8: has fled the country multiple times, so let's just hang
Speaker 8: on to him for twenty four forty eight hours while
Speaker 8: we go through the motions of getting that emergency hearing.
Speaker 8: But that's not what happened, because Robert Roundo is the
Speaker 8: definition of a flight risk. Yes he is.
Speaker 4: Like he's the platonic ideal form of a flight risk.
Speaker 8: I've sat through a lot of bond hearings and I
Speaker 8: know we are definitely not all using the same dictionary
Speaker 8: here when it comes to what is a flight risk.
Speaker 8: But you really can't find a guy who has done
Speaker 8: more to demonstrate than he absolutely can and will flee
Speaker 8: the country to avoid going back to court. He does
Speaker 8: not want to go to court. So back in twenty eighteen,
Speaker 8: when those two prosecutions were initially filed, right, the Virginia
Speaker 8: case was filed first, So when Ben Day was arrested,
Speaker 8: the charges hadn't actually been filed yet against rob Rundo.
Speaker 8: But I guess when they came to get Ben on
Speaker 8: October second, so eighteen days before the charges were filed
Speaker 8: against rob Rundo himself, they came to get Ben in
Speaker 8: La and he's like, m time to get out of dodge, right,
Speaker 8: So I think that was the moment he was like
Speaker 8: I gotta go. You know, he knew they might be
Speaker 8: coming for him next. So first he tries going to Ukraine,
Speaker 8: which is a great place for a militant right wing
Speaker 8: extremists to go hang out with friends, right, And unfortunately
Speaker 8: for him, his flight had a layover in London. I
Speaker 8: don't know if it like didn't occur to him that
Speaker 8: maybe when they look at your passport, like maybe maybe
Speaker 8: the US government like anticipated that you would do this.
Speaker 8: But so he throw looks at us at his passport,
Speaker 8: it was like mm, the US government says, do not
Speaker 8: pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars, do not
Speaker 8: proceed to Nazi asylum, and they turn him back. Now,
Speaker 8: mind you, he's not arrested yet, right, they just won't
Speaker 8: let him go to Ukraine.
Speaker 4: Interesting, so he he doesn't. He doesn't get to London though.
Speaker 8: I think he gets to London and they were like, no,
Speaker 8: you can't, you can't go. I don't know how he
Speaker 8: got that far.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, that is that is intriguing. So back in
Speaker 4: California he walked to Mexico. Yeah, which is which is
Speaker 4: part of his tea tie with Robert Rundo advice.
Speaker 8: Right, So like he literally went on foot over the
Speaker 8: US Mexico border to avoid passport control and then he
Speaker 8: travel over land through Mexico into l Salvador, YEP, where
Speaker 8: he presumably intended to try getting on a plane. Again.
Speaker 9: You need you need to get far enough south so
Speaker 9: that when you fly you don't cross over American airspace.
Speaker 9: Other people in ram have tried this and have not
Speaker 9: gone far south enough, and their plane crosses over like
Speaker 9: the tip of US airsplace around Florida, and then they
Speaker 9: get flagged so that when they land they get they
Speaker 9: get like arrested or turned back.
Speaker 8: See that's so tricky, Like I pay funny, I'm got
Speaker 8: a plane ticket recently for vacation. I'm not fleeing the
Speaker 8: country or anything.
Speaker 4: Molly's flying everyone.
Speaker 8: I actually don't even have a passport, but when you
Speaker 8: buy a plane ticket, they do not provide for you
Speaker 8: a sort of schematic of the flight path. So I
Speaker 8: don't know how they're figuring this out. I guess they're not.
Speaker 9: If it's not a Rondo. I think typically tries to
Speaker 9: get far enough south that he just gets a direct
Speaker 9: flight to somewhere.
Speaker 4: In like the Middle East or eastern Europe.
Speaker 8: Well, I don't know if it would have worked, because
Speaker 8: when he got to l Salvador, the plane that he
Speaker 8: got on was not headed to Ukraine. It was headed
Speaker 8: back to lax in the company of some FBI agents hope.
Speaker 8: So they brought him back and he was formally arrested
Speaker 8: in the La airport when they brought him back. Very
Speaker 8: funny because in the weeks that he had spent trying
Speaker 8: to get away, the indictment against him had come back
Speaker 8: and he was also being charged. So after Judge Carney
Speaker 8: dropped the charges the first time back in twenty nineteen,
Speaker 8: Rondo got his passport back and immediately left the country again,
Speaker 8: traveling to Europe visiting other fascist fight clubs, and so
Speaker 8: you know, in this time period, the US Attorney is
Speaker 8: appealing the dismissal of the charges, like they they want
Speaker 8: to bring this case. They're, you know, they're waiting for
Speaker 8: the Ninth Circuit to hear them, but they're watching him
Speaker 8: cavorting around Eastern Europe and they're like they're filing motions saying, like,
Speaker 8: we really got to get him back, Like he's at
Speaker 8: an Nazi rally in Hungary.
Speaker 4: He's got a podcast.
Speaker 8: He's got a podcast where he's telling people how to
Speaker 8: evade capture by getting foreign passports, Like, we got to
Speaker 8: get him back.
Speaker 4: And so when the charges were.
Speaker 8: Finally reinstated by the Ninth Circuit in twenty twenty one,
Speaker 8: he'd been formally expelled from Serbia, where he'd been living,
Speaker 8: and he was eventually arrested in and extradited from Romania.
Speaker 8: And then when Judge Corney dismissed the charges again two
Speaker 8: weeks ago, and the Ninth Circuit was like, we gotta
Speaker 8: get him back. Do you know where they found him?
Speaker 8: The Mexican border? Oh curious, who could have predicted?
Speaker 9: Huh?
Speaker 8: So, like he really loves leading the country. Time is
Speaker 8: a flat circle, right, So Karnie lets him out he
Speaker 8: tries to leave the country again. Immediately the Ninth Circuit says,
Speaker 8: hold on, let's bring him back. And because this system
Speaker 8: works in just the most like insane imaginable ways, Like
Speaker 8: I guess when they wrote how this was gonna work,
Speaker 8: they just assumed everyone would act in good faith and
Speaker 8: they didn't put anything in for when that's not what happens.
Speaker 9: You know, I'm pretty sure that's in the Constitution. You
Speaker 9: have to assume good faith intentions. I believe the sixty
Speaker 9: ninth Amendment. You have to assume good faith.
Speaker 8: Everyone's going to be normal about this. We don't need
Speaker 8: to build in any contingencies here. So every time the
Speaker 8: Ninth Circuit is like, ooh, Judge Carney, that's nuts, they
Speaker 8: just have to send it back to him. They it
Speaker 8: doesn't get sent to a different judge. It's just they
Speaker 8: just keep sending it back to the guy who is
Speaker 8: bound and determined to ruin this right. So it gets
Speaker 8: sent back to Judge Carney. This case is still in
Speaker 8: front of Judge Carney. So the Ninth Circuit they put
Speaker 8: him back in and Judge Corney's like, I'm gonna le
Speaker 8: him back out, and the Ninth Circuit's like, no, you
Speaker 8: really really can't do that. You really can't do that.
Speaker 8: And he's being kind of a pissy little baby about this, right,
Speaker 8: Like the Ninth Circuit issues an order saying, like, no
Speaker 8: one can let him out but us. If he gets
Speaker 8: let out, it will because we said so no one
Speaker 8: can let him out. You can't do it. The Ninth
Speaker 8: Circuit said, so we're up here on top.
Speaker 9: This is fash as, this is tyranny, is fascis of,
Speaker 9: but the but the bad kind, the kind I don't
Speaker 9: like Robert Rundo.
Speaker 8: So Carney's on the bench and he's like, well I
Speaker 8: really want to though, and so he issues an order
Speaker 8: saying like he's released, but I'm going to stay my
Speaker 8: own order. I mean, like you know, I'm gonna enter
Speaker 8: this order saying he's released, but like it won't go
Speaker 8: into effect because technically I'm not allowed.
Speaker 9: That's such a such a door key of like pissed
Speaker 9: baby tantramoved from a judge.
Speaker 8: Like you're being a real baby, Cormac. And he says, quote,
Speaker 8: I would like to be in a position to release
Speaker 8: him right now and let him walk out the door.
Speaker 8: Well you can't, you can't. So it gets like stupid
Speaker 8: messy here, right, So the ninth Circuit put him back
Speaker 8: in and it comes back to Carney, and Carney's like, well,
Speaker 8: this arrest wasn't even legal. I should let him out
Speaker 8: because this you can't even you couldn't put him back in.
Speaker 4: You can't arrest someone without their being cause for a crime.
Speaker 8: Well, it is a little bit messy here, right. So
Speaker 8: Carney argues that Roundo's rearrest wasn't legal because he dismissed
Speaker 8: the case. So technically, when Rundo was arrested again, there
Speaker 8: was no charge against him. There is currently because the
Speaker 8: indictment was dismissed. You know, the prosecutor's appealing that that dismissal.
Speaker 8: Maybe it'll get reinstated like it did last time. But
Speaker 8: like right now, he is not charged with the crimes,
Speaker 8: which is which is.
Speaker 4: Ridiculous because there's so many other things you could charge
Speaker 4: him with, right just like find a different crime. Like
Speaker 4: there's like between all.
Speaker 9: Of his between all of his passport stuff, between all
Speaker 9: of his crossing the border, like there's there's so much
Speaker 9: other there's so many other things that you could you
Speaker 9: could decide to charge him with.
Speaker 8: Surely some FBI agent has been sort of keeping tabs
Speaker 8: on his activities and they could come up with something,
Speaker 8: but as it stands, when he was re arrested, there
Speaker 8: was no charge, right, Yeah, So the Ninth Circuit does
Speaker 8: have the authority to stay the release order. So Carney
Speaker 8: issued a release order saying let him out of jail, right,
Speaker 8: And so the prosecutor was like, we need an emergency
Speaker 8: hearing in front of the Ninth Circuit on that release order.
Speaker 8: So Carney issues the release order. The prosecutor goes to
Speaker 8: the Ninth Circuit and say, we need you to push
Speaker 8: the pause button on the implementation of this order. That's
Speaker 8: really normal. That should have been what happened. But because
Speaker 8: he was released immediately, you know, before they had a
Speaker 8: chance to get heard by the Ninth Circuit, Carney's argument,
Speaker 8: which I may maybe true here, right, is that by
Speaker 8: the time the Ninth Circuit heard the motion to stay
Speaker 8: the release order, it was moot. They can't hear argument
Speaker 8: on a motion that doesn't mean anything. You can't stay
Speaker 8: an order that's already been implemented. So once the release
Speaker 8: order was carried out and Rondo was no longer physically
Speaker 8: in custody, there was no order to stay so the
Speaker 8: Ninth Circuit had nothing to rule on, so they they
Speaker 8: rearrested him, saying like, we're staying the release order, but
Speaker 8: the order of operations there is kind of key. At
Speaker 8: the next hearing, Carney said, I must tell you from
Speaker 8: the little things I've read, I'm quite concerned. I feel
Speaker 8: mister Rundo is being unconstitutionally detained, and it's messy, and
Speaker 8: I don't know what the right answer is here, right, Like,
Speaker 8: It's not unusual for someone to stay in custody pending appeal,
Speaker 8: especially if they have repeatedly attempted and succeeded at fleeing
Speaker 8: the country. And Carney's refusal to stay the release order
Speaker 8: kind of makes you wonder if he didn't create this
Speaker 8: procedural nightmare intentionally.
Speaker 9: Sure, he kind of created this legal dilemma that now
Speaker 9: puts Rundo's incarceration in actually like a point of question.
Speaker 8: Right Like, he had to know that when the Ninth
Speaker 8: Circuit did hear this motion, they would probably reverse him.
Speaker 8: He had to know that, and he absolutely knew Rondo
Speaker 8: would flee the country before that could happen. And he's
Speaker 8: not wrong that it looks a little a little questionable
Speaker 8: to issue it arrest warrant when there is no live
Speaker 8: charge or the end result that Rundo is in custody
Speaker 8: pending some kind of further ruling from the Ninth Circuit.
Speaker 8: That's not weird, that's really normal. But everything that happened
Speaker 8: in between is a mess. I don't know what the
Speaker 8: answer to that is. I mean, I mean, as nuts
Speaker 8: as Carney is behaving like, he is probably right that
Speaker 8: you can't make a ruling on a moot motion and
Speaker 8: you can't arrest someone who's not charged with a crime,
Speaker 8: like those things are true. But I don't know what
Speaker 8: the answer is here, and I think it's his fault.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 8: So at this point, right the government is appealing Carney's
Speaker 8: dismissal of the charges, just like they did back in
Speaker 8: twenty nineteen. Remember that it took almost two years from
Speaker 8: the original dismissal to the Ninth Circuit ruling reversing and
Speaker 8: remanding the case in twenty twenty one, so this could
Speaker 8: take a while. At this point, what the government is
Speaker 8: asking for is a stay of the release order to
Speaker 8: keep him in custody while they work through this appeals process,
Speaker 8: because they are appealing the dismissal of the indictment. I
Speaker 8: don't expect a lot of movement on that this week.
Speaker 8: I think the docket shows that the appellance brief is
Speaker 8: due on the twelfth today as we're recording this as
Speaker 8: the fourth, so they'll file that brief. They may file
Speaker 8: more sort of emergency petitions for his release. I'm not
Speaker 8: sure the Ninth Circuit will do that, but is anybody's
Speaker 8: guess at this point, because it's kind of.
Speaker 4: A big mess.
Speaker 8: The only thing that is clear is that only the
Speaker 8: Ninth Circuit can let Rob Rundo out.
Speaker 4: Well what a what a?
Speaker 9: What an enticing Rundo down have the legal events of
Speaker 9: this case. Don't want to be in that position.
Speaker 8: You know, Garrison, I'm not sure that you'll ever be
Speaker 8: in this position. I I hope not, at least not
Speaker 8: in this exact one, unless you're running a secret Nazi
Speaker 8: gang that I do not know about, in which case, disavow, disavow.
Speaker 4: Okay, that's good, that's good. Yeah, sure, that's probably the
Speaker 4: right move. But so it'll take some time. I don't know. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I don't know what else there is to say.
Speaker 8: This is like sort of inciting a lot of active
Speaker 8: club activity. You were saying earlier that the you know
Speaker 8: ram doesn't exist anymore. It's morphed into these active clubs.
Speaker 8: There's these cells all over the country and they are
Speaker 8: fired up about this. So I think this has the
Speaker 8: potential to incite more political violence, or at the very.
Speaker 9: Least incite more T shirt sales, which would be just
Speaker 9: as horrified to see one of those things out in
Speaker 9: the wild already marketing free Rundo merch.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I bet. Yeah.
Speaker 8: I guess even Nazis have constitutional rights.
Speaker 4: I guess they do.
Speaker 9: Although it does feel again slightly uh insidious at the
Speaker 9: selective non enforcement of some of these things where there's many,
Speaker 9: many people who are being held, especially like in Atlanta,
Speaker 9: it's been many people being helped out bail because they've
Speaker 9: been deemed a flight risk for for a long long
Speaker 9: time for crimes.
Speaker 8: Not because they hold like a Serbian passport.
Speaker 4: No, no, just because they attended a music festival. Right.
Speaker 8: I mean, it's hard to get like super fired up
Speaker 8: about rob Rundo's constitutional rights in terms of this this
Speaker 8: sort of like procedural quagmire when it's like people are
Speaker 8: actively and intentionally violating everyone else's constitutional rights constantly.
Speaker 9: Yeah, like the only thing I'm left to think of
Speaker 9: is how this whole system of law does not seem
Speaker 9: to work very much, and especially we often point out
Speaker 9: how a whole bunch of laws get put in place
Speaker 9: that are like ostensibly framed to like combat white supremacist
Speaker 9: terrorism or whatever, and in actuality really only get used
Speaker 9: against people fighting for like the rights of black people,
Speaker 9: people fighting for getting trains people not to be murdered.
Speaker 9: Like that's that's really what all these laws get targeted against,
Speaker 9: and they face so so much more harsh punishment because
Speaker 9: we have a judge who's treating Rob Rundo like a
Speaker 9: little a little baby, who's this innocent little creature. Meanwhile,
Speaker 9: people I can get constantly locked up for completely bullshit
Speaker 9: charges in other parts of the country for engaging it
Speaker 9: like actually like pretty pretty valid acts of protest, not
Speaker 9: even related to any like alleged violence. Like there's it's
Speaker 9: it's it's quite it's quite frustrating to to to look at. Yes,
Speaker 9: there is actually a decent case of selective enforcement.
Speaker 8: Here, and it's the other way around.
Speaker 9: Yeah, it is not in fact that they're letting Antifa
Speaker 9: run wild and burn down cities. In fact, these these
Speaker 9: these Nazis get treated like little little innocent First Amendment
Speaker 9: defenders as they purposely like talk about and brag about
Speaker 9: their claims of traveling across the country to assault people
Speaker 9: and start riots.
Speaker 4: Anyway, Well, that's that's not great.
Speaker 8: Things are not good.
Speaker 4: I hope only the worst.
Speaker 9: For Rundo, regardless of whatever legal thing happens, just like
Speaker 9: in general, like I like, I I wish him bad,
Speaker 9: just like in life, you know, like I hope you
Speaker 9: like trips and falls down the stairs, you know, just
Speaker 9: like in general, like stub is toe.
Speaker 4: Really bad.
Speaker 8: This situation, Like, there are a million outcomes here that
Speaker 8: are the dumbest possible ending to this story. So I'm
Speaker 8: not holding my breath for you know, some brilliant prosecutor
Speaker 8: to save the day here. But I do hope that
Speaker 8: that Rob Rundo continues to have a bad day regardless.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, thank you for.
Speaker 4: This lovely piece of legal research, Molly.
Speaker 8: Now I have to close eighty seven tabs.
Speaker 9: That is always the joy of wrapping up one of
Speaker 9: these episodes. It's closing the ridiculous amount of tabs that
Speaker 9: are open, because at at any moment in my research process,
Speaker 9: if any of my friends looks at my computer.
Speaker 4: They are horrified by the stress that I'm putting my
Speaker 4: own ram through different ram the other than the Yeah
Speaker 4: it is computer computer ram.
Speaker 8: Not also under considerable strain at this time.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 9: Well all right, feel like that's that's as bad enough
Speaker 9: a joke to end it on as anything else where.
Speaker 9: Can people find you online?
Speaker 8: Mall Oh gosh, yeah, I am online at Socialist dog
Speaker 8: Mom on Twitter, on my newsletter on ghost the Devil's Advocates,
Speaker 8: and I don't know my dogs have an Instagram that
Speaker 8: I haven't updated lately. It's auto m buck. That's it
Speaker 8: for me, How about you, Garrison.
Speaker 9: Oh, you can find me documenting my process of slowly
Speaker 9: turning my entire apartment into the Black Lodge on Twitter
Speaker 9: at Hungry Bowtie. All right, Wow, you can actually see
Speaker 9: a little bit of it behind me. It's kind of dark,
Speaker 9: but you can see a glimmer of red curtains. Yes,
Speaker 9: spooky back there, It is quite spooky back there. Wait
Speaker 9: until I turn wait until I turn on the strobe light.
Speaker 8: All right, thank you for joining me today, Garrison.
Speaker 4: All right, thank you, Molly.
Speaker 3: Hey.
Speaker 2: We'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from
Speaker 2: until the heat death of the universe.
Speaker 4: It Could Happen Here as a production of cool Zone Media.
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