Speaker 1: Ah boy, welcome to it could happen here a podcast
Speaker 1: about things falling apart and sometimes stuff that's less depressing
Speaker 1: than that. This is gonna be a mix of both
Speaker 1: of those things. I'm Robert Evans. My co hosts for
Speaker 1: today are James Stout and Mia Wong. How are we both?
Speaker 1: How are we all? How's everybody? How's everybody feeling?
Speaker 2: I'm anticipating eagerly the topic of today's episode, So I'm
Speaker 2: excited like a kid Christmas.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So, James, that answers my question for you. But Mia,
Speaker 1: have you ever heard of Lord Miles Rutledge.
Speaker 4: I have seen him on Twitter and I cannot express
Speaker 4: how excited I.
Speaker 5: Am for this.
Speaker 1: So we are talking about a real piece of shit today.
Speaker 1: This is kind of relevant to our I try to
Speaker 1: always justify, you know, our purview is broadly speaking, collapse,
Speaker 1: you know what we call the crumbles, and Miles Rutledge
Speaker 1: is a perfect example of the kind of grifters and
Speaker 1: conmen who sort of sort of seep in at the
Speaker 1: edges of war and disaster and calamity and have for forever.
Speaker 1: You know, they're in behind the bastards. We've done a
Speaker 1: couple episodes on, like different white people who tried at
Speaker 1: various points to like conquer Latin American nations, and like
Speaker 1: the seventeen and eighteen hundreds, just kind of during these
Speaker 1: periods of there would be a bunch of rebellions going on,
Speaker 1: and so like some group of mercenaries would be like,
Speaker 1: I bet we can like steal Nicaragua, right, let's Goways
Speaker 1: wear the shot. You know, you get these kind of
Speaker 1: like these kind of people, and Lord Myles Rutledge is
Speaker 1: sort of the lower body count end of that, but
Speaker 1: in some ways a lot more frustrating because at least, look,
Speaker 1: there's there's something respectable about trying to violently conquer another
Speaker 1: country and then getting yourself. There's at least like a
Speaker 1: degree of honesty there. This guy, Miles Rutledge is like
Speaker 1: purely but like doing war tourism in order to like
Speaker 1: pump his his TikTok and his Instagram and his YouTube.
Speaker 1: And I find that worse than like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: those guys who tried to overthrow Venezuela and got captured
Speaker 1: by fishermen, so they were great, yeah, and then laid
Speaker 1: in their own piss on camera. Beautiful story, perfect.
Speaker 5: Story, took a be begun with them.
Speaker 1: Such a good story, and this one has a similar
Speaker 1: this story, thankfully, Miles the story has has a is
Speaker 1: an ending almost that satisfying. So Miles Rutledge was born
Speaker 1: on James. Actually, I'm gonna I'm gonna bring you in
Speaker 1: for a second. How do I spell this last name
Speaker 1: r O U T l E d g E.
Speaker 2: He's British age Routledge on believe if it's the same
Speaker 2: as the academic publisher which which is spelled the same,
Speaker 2: and then it's Routledge. And look, I don't give a
Speaker 2: fuck about I Skyfields, so let's just say, how have
Speaker 2: we won?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Okay, So Miles Routledge was born on September fourteenth,
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety nine, probably somewhere near Birmingham. Uh, I don't
Speaker 1: think we have like like it's just kind of based
Speaker 1: on shit, he said. But yeah, I don't see why
Speaker 1: he'd probably he'd lie about that. I don't think people
Speaker 1: brag about coming from Birmingham.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Wow, it's wonder like. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So unfortunately, thanks to generations of medical advancements, he survived
Speaker 1: to adulthood. Because he does strike me as the kind
Speaker 1: of person who wouldn't have done that in like the
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds. He got into the University of I'm gonna
Speaker 1: need your help here again, James Lowborough, Luffborough, Luffbrough. Unbelievable.
Speaker 4: That sounds like an incredibly obscure World War two German
Speaker 4: aerial division or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's like the every bro each
Speaker 1: section of the LUFTWAFFA. So he gets into the University
Speaker 1: of luft Bro as a fucking physics student, or so
Speaker 1: he says, And sometime within the last two years he
Speaker 1: got an internship at an investment banking firm.
Speaker 5: So a kind of guy.
Speaker 1: He's laser targeted on a career as a giant piece
Speaker 1: of shit. But I haven't found much in my casual
Speaker 1: research about his financial situation or how much money he
Speaker 1: was born into. But I think he was, like I'm
Speaker 1: gonna guess his parents were at least comfortable, because as
Speaker 1: a young man still in college, he had the funds
Speaker 1: to travel pretty extensively, starting in twenty nineteen when he
Speaker 1: visited the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. Now, this is one of
Speaker 1: the most popular destinations in the world for what is
Speaker 1: called dark tourism, and this is largely this is people
Speaker 1: who live kind of boring lives otherwise traveling to places
Speaker 1: that sound scary in order to impress people on like
Speaker 1: TikTok or whatever. Now I just said that, but like,
Speaker 1: I don't think there's anything wrong. Now there's like a
Speaker 1: lot of problems with getting to Chernobyle because of the war,
Speaker 1: but like prior to the expand innovation, I don't think
Speaker 1: there's anything wrong with wanting to like see Chernobyle. Mike
Speaker 1: thinking on like the ethics of going somewhere dangerous or
Speaker 1: whatever is like, are you increasing the odds of like
Speaker 1: causing a problem that diverts medical resources or other resources
Speaker 1: in a way that like harms people who have no
Speaker 1: choice in being there? Right, and visiting Chernobyl whatever, You're
Speaker 1: not really putting anyone at risk, So that's fine. But
Speaker 1: in May of twenty twenty one, though, Miles Rutledge made
Speaker 1: the decision to plan a trip to somewhere that was
Speaker 1: distinctly not fine to visit as a tourist, Afghanistan. Now
Speaker 1: he decided to head over there during kind of the
Speaker 1: end stages of the war. Although if you guys can
Speaker 1: remember back that far, the collapse of the Afghan government
Speaker 1: that the United States had backed happened more rapidly than
Speaker 1: most people had predicted, so it was kind of like
Speaker 1: less clear. I think when he booked his trip that
Speaker 1: thinks we're going to fall apart quite that quickly.
Speaker 5: Yeah, humor to feel the same way about that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, So yeah, it's one of those things where,
Speaker 1: like Miles, you know, his plan to go there was
Speaker 1: again not as like he's not heading there as a journalist.
Speaker 1: There's not like a story he wants to tell. He's
Speaker 1: not traveling there for kind of a practical purpose, Like
Speaker 1: he really does frame this as just he wanted to
Speaker 1: go on vacation, and he wanted to go on vacation
Speaker 1: specifically for what I think is probably like the dumbest
Speaker 1: reason I've ever heard of anyone choosing of a vacation location,
Speaker 1: especially choosing fucking Afghanistan as a vacation location. I'm going
Speaker 1: to play a clip from one of his YouTube videos.
Speaker 5: Now, why am I in Afghanistan? Well, that's a really
Speaker 5: good question.
Speaker 6: During COVID lockdowns, Afghanistan was the only country open round
Speaker 6: of vaccine mandate.
Speaker 5: So I just think I've never heard his voice before.
Speaker 5: I'm more angry.
Speaker 1: Now he gives to Afghanistan because they don't have a
Speaker 1: fucking vaccine mandate.
Speaker 5: Oh my fucking god, real warrior for freedom.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just the just the dumbest idiot. I hate him
Speaker 1: so anyway, as a result of wanting to avoid the
Speaker 1: vaccine mandate, Miles joined the long and historic line of
Speaker 1: young British men who have gone out to Afghanistan on
Speaker 1: a lark. Unfortunately, unlike many of them, Miles would survive
Speaker 1: his adventure. He does not seem to have a regular
Speaker 1: Wikipedia yet, but he does have an entry on something
Speaker 1: called everybody Wiki, which yeah, yeah, which I hadn't heard
Speaker 1: it that one before, but it's it very hilariously lists
Speaker 1: his occupation as quote, posting online during the twenty twenty
Speaker 1: one seeche of Kabul.
Speaker 3: That's great.
Speaker 5: That's that's actually Tim Kennedy. That's great.
Speaker 1: So for obvious reasons, he encountered difficulties.
Speaker 7: Uh.
Speaker 1: He wind wound up sleeping by the side of the
Speaker 1: road one night he was taken into Taliban custody. While
Speaker 1: he makes a big deal out of this, I actually
Speaker 1: don't think he was ever in serious danger, particularly not
Speaker 1: compared to, for example, the people fighting and dying or
Speaker 1: the civilians and said he's taken by the Taliban, who
Speaker 1: had to endure an often violent change of regime when
Speaker 1: the Taliban was taking over here. And lets you know,
Speaker 1: obviously there's the danger of like accidents on the road,
Speaker 1: which is always a significant danger in a place called
Speaker 1: like Afghanistan. There's the danger of you know, being caught
Speaker 1: up in a fight or something potentially, But the Taliban
Speaker 1: in this kind of late stage of their takeover, had
Speaker 1: no desire to harm a British citizen like Miles, or
Speaker 1: to harm like, you know, Americans who were in the country.
Speaker 1: And in fact, we're working kind of in the later
Speaker 1: stages of the US evacuation to try to make sure
Speaker 1: it happened and peacefully. Not because the Taliban are such
Speaker 1: good guys, but because like there's no geopolitical benefit to
Speaker 1: them from like a random British traveler dying. It's just
Speaker 1: gonna cause problems for them.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's just stress and the.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like they didn't have like I don't believe they
Speaker 1: were the Taliban was ever like threatened his life in
Speaker 1: any way. Miles, though, posted through it, reporting that he
Speaker 1: was stuck in a pickle and giving details of his
Speaker 1: experience to fans on four Chan and Twitch, he started
Speaker 1: using the name James. You had asked about this, he
Speaker 1: started using the name Lord Miles due to the fact
Speaker 1: that he had purchased a fifteen pound lordship certificate as a.
Speaker 8: Bit I knew it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, not that surprising. Huh.
Speaker 5: What can't say that?
Speaker 2: Sorry, no, you can You're you're You're British. It's fine, okay, Daniel, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I leave that one in. That is my conviction. I
Speaker 2: what a twat, Sorry, what an absolute prick because he's
Speaker 2: what's really fun frustra with everything about his existence is
Speaker 2: frustrating right now.
Speaker 9: So it's what's so annoying is he's playing this fucking
Speaker 9: twee parochial version of Britishness for an exclusively in American audience. Right,
Speaker 9: if you're born near fucking Birmingham, we're not all we
Speaker 9: are not all pride and prejudice people.
Speaker 2: And if you've moved to another country, you will constantly
Speaker 2: encounter people thinking you grew up in Harry Potterland. But like,
Speaker 2: we're not all turfs either, But like he's fucking doing
Speaker 2: it like and he's doing it like a naive America
Speaker 2: like there are like the Scottish Parliament has made statements
Speaker 2: about not buying these stupid Scottish titles.
Speaker 5: Yeah, here's a prayer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's very silly. He justified this by saying,
Speaker 1: because I think he buys it while he's in Afghanistan,
Speaker 1: he explained to his followers, the Taliban may see that
Speaker 1: as a reason to keep me alive some negotiating powder power,
Speaker 1: as they'll think I'm important. They don't care. They don't
Speaker 1: want any fucking Westerners dying in the country because that
Speaker 1: will fuck up their chances of, like you know, they
Speaker 1: want to get integrated to the like fucking global economy.
Speaker 1: They want to qualify for like loans and ship like
Speaker 1: they don't want to. They don't want the problems that
Speaker 1: you dying bring, like you being a lord has not
Speaker 1: going to impact this in anyway.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and they don't. I don't want like the British
Speaker 4: government deciding like, oh, ship, they killed someone, now we
Speaker 4: need to just bomb like cobble for eight months or whatever.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 2: I don't want to say in his defense because I
Speaker 2: would not like to speak in his defense, but I
Speaker 2: will say that the one person who might be conned
Speaker 2: by a lordship you bought online is Boris Johnson?
Speaker 1: Yeah, have an impact on Bojo, yah, but it is
Speaker 1: It is not defense.
Speaker 4: It's not like Bojo's gonna be sticking around for very long.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: You have to like you every every every like seven weeks,
Speaker 4: you are rolling a dice as to whether the Conservative
Speaker 4: PM is someone you can con with the lordship title.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, none of them in the last few years have
Speaker 2: been what I would call intellectual titans.
Speaker 5: That's true.
Speaker 4: But but but Hope springs a turtle, Rishi sud acts
Speaker 4: in trouble too, so they might I don't know, a
Speaker 4: brave shot.
Speaker 2: You just really go down the fast road.
Speaker 1: I really I feel sorry for you all across the pond.
Speaker 1: I can't imagine what it would be like to have
Speaker 1: your politicians be national laughing stocks. I mean, that's just
Speaker 1: gotta be that's just got to be hard. No American,
Speaker 1: we know, we'll ever know what that's like.
Speaker 4: We are ruled by the hero of Ireland.
Speaker 1: Oh I I was gonna talk about you know, my hero,
Speaker 1: the governor of Florida and his best friend, the pedophile
Speaker 1: who just committed suicide. This a different pedophile, No, this
Speaker 1: is the pedophile who like backed Santus's like early political
Speaker 1: rise and now just killed himself after he got exposed.
Speaker 4: Oh so it's Alexander.
Speaker 5: Okay, never mind, this is a different pedophile. I'm every
Speaker 5: day there's a new one. I can't it's not Mike Gates.
Speaker 5: Who's other friend who's also a pedophile.
Speaker 1: Now you know who I cannot prove at this point
Speaker 1: is a pedophile, Miles Rutledge.
Speaker 5: So let's get back to his story, please.
Speaker 1: So he also claimed during this period where he's kind
Speaker 1: of like quote unquote on the run, that the four
Speaker 1: Chan users he was posting with kept him alive by
Speaker 1: giving him updates on Taliban progress through Osent as they
Speaker 1: advanced through Kabul. That's broadly speaking not impossible. So the
Speaker 1: idea that Miles again, I don't believe he was ever
Speaker 1: threatened by the Taliban. They're again not nice people, but
Speaker 1: they're not like unhinted, they're not isis you know, they
Speaker 1: they are a government. They don't have a benefit in
Speaker 1: something bad happening to someone like him. So Miles, though,
Speaker 1: played up the idea that he was something between a tourist,
Speaker 1: a journalist, and a philanthropist. Building his trip to Afghanistan
Speaker 1: is a quote little charity thing. At the same time,
Speaker 1: as he said that he was prepared for death when
Speaker 1: he couldn't immediately secure a way out of the country.
Speaker 1: Eventually a United Nations safe house took him in and
Speaker 1: he was given a seat on one of the last
Speaker 1: planes out of the country. Now this is an actual actor. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's frustrating because like there are people in danger from
Speaker 1: the Taliban who had couldn't leave, right, Like he took
Speaker 1: one of their spaces. Somebody didn't get out who is
Speaker 1: in danger because of him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like very good friends of mine, like I spent
Speaker 2: much of that time, like I've written about Afghanistan, I've
Speaker 2: worked with translators and like good friends of mine sometimes
Speaker 2: and left Afghanistan, but many of them still have their
Speaker 2: families there, right, and every single day they have anxiety
Speaker 2: about whether their faunilies are okay, if something terrible has
Speaker 2: happened to them. Yeah, and this twat is just like
Speaker 2: sitting on a plane posting on four chaney Like that
Speaker 2: makes me properly angry.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's and that's again what I was talking about, Like,
Speaker 1: if you're going to if you're gonna go to a
Speaker 1: place that is that is beset by conflict, you know,
Speaker 1: by civil war, by violence or anything like that. Number One,
Speaker 1: you have responsibility to like have a reason to go beyond.
Speaker 1: I wonder what it's like. And you have a responsibility
Speaker 1: to not make things worse for people who don't have
Speaker 1: a choice about being there.
Speaker 5: And he did.
Speaker 1: You know, that's like fundamentally why I hate this guy
Speaker 1: is he absolutely took an opportunity to escape from I
Speaker 1: don't know, some woman's rights activist or something, you know,
Speaker 1: some somebody who was some turp or something, somebody who
Speaker 1: didn't have a choice about fucking being stuck in Afghanistan.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just some fuck you wanted a fair cracket life.
Speaker 2: And and yeah there's a prick. Yeah yeah, I mean
Speaker 2: it's yeah. And he could have stayed. I have friends
Speaker 2: who stayed through that time and covered it, like your
Speaker 2: concern is for your sources, not yourself.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah.
Speaker 4: Or he could have done the thing that his ancestors didn't,
Speaker 4: just walk across the border Pakistan like.
Speaker 5: Your ancestors did this.
Speaker 3: This is the one thing like hell.
Speaker 1: Through the Kyber Pass and then becomes Sherlock Holmes his
Speaker 1: best friend. You know, that's a proud tradition, which.
Speaker 2: I thought you were gonna go with dying man, which
Speaker 2: would have also been a very well.
Speaker 5: That's another proud tradition.
Speaker 1: Getting sniped by a jizil in the fucking uh Kaiber Pass.
Speaker 1: Absolutely so. He had a marvelous time in Afghanistan and
Speaker 1: immediately pivoted because he built up a big social media
Speaker 1: following around his posts there, pivoted to a career as
Speaker 1: a dark tourist influencer. He traveled next to an ireland,
Speaker 1: not an Ireland. He traveled next to an island in Brazil.
Speaker 1: There's this island off the coast of Brazil that like,
Speaker 1: like you're not allowed to go to because there's so
Speaker 1: many fucking snakes. Like it's just it's extremely dangerous to
Speaker 1: go there because it's covered in fucking snakes. And he
Speaker 1: like went there where armor, but he didn't actually run
Speaker 1: into any snakes because snakes don't, like you know, they're
Speaker 1: not generally aggressive, most of them. He got arrested in
Speaker 1: Kenya for as best as I can tell, being a
Speaker 1: prick nearer refugee camp, and then he traveled to Ukraine
Speaker 1: right after the expanded invasion to Ukraine to try to
Speaker 1: make the suffering of hundreds of thousands of.
Speaker 5: People about him.
Speaker 1: The highlight of that trip was he claims that he
Speaker 1: drove a woman and her kid out of the country
Speaker 1: and rescued them and also brought people snacks whatever. Miles
Speaker 1: has always been two things. He's deeply enmeshed in right
Speaker 1: wing meme culture, and he is at least superficially committed
Speaker 1: to Christian extremism. He is like kind of at least
Speaker 1: it like signals as a fundamentalist Christian. He's like, he's
Speaker 1: super fashy right, but this is not like a hidden
Speaker 1: thing within his videos and stuff. I found one write
Speaker 1: up of him on a right wing religious news website
Speaker 1: that gives you an idea of how he builds himself
Speaker 1: to his ideal audience. Miles Routledge is a self described Catholic,
Speaker 1: independent war journalist and charity on the ground. At just
Speaker 1: twenty one, he had to do Afghanistan when the Taliban
Speaker 1: seized control, and now he's in Ukraine giving refreshing updates
Speaker 1: that are peppered with humor, reality, and a little naivete.
Speaker 1: In the past, Routledge went to war torn countries and
Speaker 1: into areas no NGO or charity dared to go according
Speaker 1: to his GoFundMe Paige, so he can hand out bibles, food,
Speaker 1: medicine and money.
Speaker 2: Well, there's a special place in hell for some time
Speaker 2: giving a stopping person a bible.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And also like he never went to places other
Speaker 1: people wouldn't dare to go. I will guarantee you everywhere
Speaker 1: he went, there were already like people like the Freeburmer
Speaker 1: rangers or even medicine sands, frontiers or journalists without borders,
Speaker 1: like there were there were people there. Because he's not
Speaker 1: He's not like I've seen his videos, He's not going
Speaker 1: anywhere special.
Speaker 4: Yea, there how many people are recallable, like ten million people?
Speaker 5: Yes, these are big cities. He's before million people.
Speaker 1: Sure, playing off of kind of the provincialism of his
Speaker 1: audience and the fact that most people in the West
Speaker 1: when they hear Afghanistan or now Ukraine when they hear it,
Speaker 1: or like even like a place like Kenya which is
Speaker 1: like a massive country with major cities and all sorts
Speaker 1: of stuff like that, like oh, these places are just
Speaker 1: death traps and you don't go there, and like no
Speaker 1: man even like I would get this when I'd go
Speaker 1: to I've spent a lot, visited Arax seven or eight times,
Speaker 1: and it's like, no, man, it's like most of it's
Speaker 1: just a country. Like, yeah, there's specific things you have
Speaker 1: to keep in mind that are dangerous, but like it's
Speaker 1: just a place, like millions of people live there and
Speaker 1: don't die every day.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is ludicrous to suggest that he was in
Speaker 2: any Yeah, like you could go to all these places
Speaker 2: and stay in a five star hotel and yeah, like
Speaker 2: you're not in any danger, especially as a.
Speaker 5: Rich white British guy parading ground by.
Speaker 1: Yeah, to the extent that he's like in Ukraine and
Speaker 1: traveling near the front where there's like random missiles and shelling,
Speaker 1: Yeah there's some danger, but again it's danger that he
Speaker 1: is exposed, using himself to unnecessarily and then creating a
Speaker 1: situation whereby if he is injured, that's a bunch of
Speaker 1: morphine and antibiotics that can't go to a fucking civilian
Speaker 1: who had no choice because they were raised in Constantinifa
Speaker 1: or whatever, you know, Like, yeah, fucking yeah, he's a
Speaker 1: praise Yeah, yeah, so I mentioned a little earlier, he's
Speaker 1: definitely a fascist. And you know when I say that,
Speaker 1: sometimes people do the whole ou lefties will call anything
Speaker 1: a fascist. Don't worry, I have some receipts on this one.
Speaker 1: So shortly after his famous trip to Afghanistan, he published
Speaker 1: a book about his very brief time in the country.
Speaker 1: This book included some interesting claims, like that he was
Speaker 1: the last person to enter the country on a tourist
Speaker 1: visa before the fall of Kabul, and that his visa
Speaker 1: had required a personal statement explaining his reasons for visiting.
Speaker 1: He wrote, quote, my response was simply an a four
Speaker 1: sheet of paper with only the word fun written on it.
Speaker 1: It was accepted without quest. I was ready for my
Speaker 1: very own white boy summer. He also notes that the
Speaker 1: last right, which was at the time kind of like
Speaker 1: a meme and you know, fashy online Nazi circles, It
Speaker 1: was all over telegram.
Speaker 3: He also.
Speaker 5: Very problematic child.
Speaker 1: Yeah, although not problematic in this sense. Chet did not,
Speaker 1: I think mean for that to happen. He's just problematic
Speaker 1: in other ways. So he also notes that the last
Speaker 1: thing he did before leaving was rewatch American Psycho, which
Speaker 1: he described as a sacred male experience. I will remind
Speaker 1: you all that that is a movie directed by a woman.
Speaker 1: He also writes about the fact that he ordered a
Speaker 1: meal at the airport before leaving, but decided not to
Speaker 1: eat it because it was likely filled with soy. He
Speaker 1: goes on like a whole diatribe about how Afghanistan is
Speaker 1: probably safer for him because there's no soy in the food,
Speaker 1: just so. The weird wing memes and signaling, all of
Speaker 1: which are like he's always like a year or two
Speaker 1: out of date on his like far right signaling and
Speaker 1: stuff too, which is weird. All of it makes a
Speaker 1: little more sense when you realize that the book that
Speaker 1: he wrote about Afghanistan was published with Antelope Hill Publishing.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, yeah, James, he recognized that, didn't you. Yeah,
Speaker 5: yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: It is an explicitly fascist publisher. So on the Antelope
Speaker 1: Pill page for his stupid book, the recommended books beneath it,
Speaker 1: you know you've got the main book and is like,
Speaker 1: this is record. If you like this book, read these
Speaker 1: books are a collection of One of the books is
Speaker 1: a collection of speech speeches from Kai Murros, who is
Speaker 1: a Finnish right wing activist who was formerly a maoist
Speaker 1: but is now a white nationalist revolutionary advocate who suppose
Speaker 1: supports total racial war against asylum seekers and immigrants. He
Speaker 1: advocates for an uprising in the UK in which all
Speaker 1: university staff will be executed by debt squads.
Speaker 4: So he hasn't gone that far from the maw is.
Speaker 1: So not that far, but like, look, there's still pieces
Speaker 1: of it. So the next book that's recommended if you're
Speaker 1: interested in Miles's book is The Death Company, which is
Speaker 1: a first hand account of the Italian Arditi in World
Speaker 1: War One that was very influential among early fascists. And
Speaker 1: then there's Let Them Look West by Marty Phillips. I
Speaker 1: found a review of this book on a website called
Speaker 1: the White Art Collective, and I'm going to read a quote.
Speaker 3: From that now.
Speaker 1: So this is a Nazi reviewing this book by a Nazi, Right,
Speaker 1: good stuff. Yeah, here's him describing the book. Rob Cohen
Speaker 1: is a big city writer sent on assignment to interview
Speaker 1: James Alexander, the governor of Wyoming, a fundamentalist Christian who
Speaker 1: has revived his state with, among other things, a Christian
Speaker 1: themed public works program and Mount Calvary, an artificial mountain
Speaker 1: which villagers climb up and pass the stations of the Cross,
Speaker 1: then view a live action recreation of the Crucifixion with
Speaker 1: music by a live choir. The first few chapters until
Speaker 1: Rob meets Alexander feel like a dead pan satire of apocalypse.
Speaker 6: Now.
Speaker 1: Rob didn't want a mission, but for sins he was
Speaker 1: given one. He's a fish out of water who has
Speaker 1: to navigate and improvise his way to the goal. There's
Speaker 1: a magical realism vibe of the book despite nothing overly
Speaker 1: supernatural occurring, and maybe this is why Phillips calls it
Speaker 1: a mundane fantasy. But it's also a mundane fantasy for
Speaker 1: the simple reason that the America and Wyoming described in
Speaker 1: the book are so far beyond what is possible that
Speaker 1: suspension of disbelief is required. Even the Nazi seems like
Speaker 1: to think it's kind of a shit book, which is
Speaker 1: very funny to me. So again, if you publish your
Speaker 1: book with Antelope Pill like you are comfortable, at the
Speaker 1: very least comfortable with having your book advertised next to
Speaker 1: explicitly Nazi power fantasies.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, going to Antler Pill. You know, look,
Speaker 2: we've both published books like. Yeah, it wouldn't have occurred
Speaker 2: to me to even try.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they are the Nazi one of the Nazist publishers
Speaker 1: out there. In April of twenty twenty two, Miles attempted
Speaker 1: to re enter Afghanistan. He claimed in videos that his
Speaker 1: goal was to rest thank you a tour guide and
Speaker 1: his family who were threatened by the Taliban, but he
Speaker 1: wound up stuck in Pakistan, claiming that this guide had
Speaker 1: lied to him and claimed that the border was closed
Speaker 1: to British people.
Speaker 4: He was like, to be fair, I have no issues
Speaker 4: with this.
Speaker 1: No, that would be fine, and he gets like he
Speaker 1: starts like freaking out in the video, he's like a
Speaker 1: near tears and stuff. He claims that he'd spent fifteen
Speaker 1: thousand pounds on the trip and now he was broke,
Speaker 1: so obviously he uses that he has to beg for
Speaker 1: money from his followers, which I kind of wonder if
Speaker 1: that was just the whole point of the trip. He
Speaker 1: also pointed posted whiney status updates, claiming his life had
Speaker 1: been ruined by the failed trip. Quote this means I
Speaker 1: can't go on a date with a girl I really liked.
Speaker 1: It means I can't sponsor a joint adventure with my friend.
Speaker 1: I will go home to an empty room. I am
Speaker 1: at my end but I know, big baby.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Despite his failure, he did not give up on his
Speaker 1: dreams of stumbling through Afghanistan again. For the sake of content,
Speaker 1: he put together another trip for the start of twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three. In late February, as he geared up to go,
Speaker 1: he made some tweets to his followers that give us
Speaker 1: more unfortunate context as to the sort of person he is.
Speaker 1: From February twenty seventh, a flat mate saw my Bible
Speaker 1: and said that book is a fairy tale. So I
Speaker 1: threw my empty mug at his head, broke on the
Speaker 1: wall behind him. This isn't the first instance. And after
Speaker 1: a while you have to stop playing nis and to
Speaker 1: fend your faith.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so great is the tweet that I remember seeing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was a great one.
Speaker 1: Now people used to send me his shit so often.
Speaker 1: He's infuriating. Yeah, there's a worse one. The most infuriating
Speaker 1: tweet I found from this guy came a bit further
Speaker 1: down and it's it's a picture of him. I thinking
Speaker 1: it might be Dubai. I think it's Dubai. So he's
Speaker 1: like got his back to the skyline and he's just
Speaker 1: kind of like looking off into the distance pensively, and
Speaker 1: it says, friends say, I space out all the time.
Speaker 1: My mind is having visions of North Sentinel Island. Now,
Speaker 1: if you don't remember, the Sentinel Island is the Forbidden
Speaker 1: Island and the Andamans which is part of India, where
Speaker 1: in twenty eighteen, an idiot Christian missionary broke quarantine and
Speaker 1: endangered the lives of an entire tribe so he could
Speaker 1: satisfy his narcissistic evangelical fetish. He was thankfully shot to
Speaker 1: death by them via arrow before he could get too close,
Speaker 1: and hopefully did not spread any diseases to them. I
Speaker 1: wish mild success in reaching the island and meeting his
Speaker 1: similar fate. But if he gets anywhere close to them,
Speaker 1: there's just such a high chance that he will spread
Speaker 1: deadly disease to the people there that I hope the
Speaker 1: Indian government keeps him away, even though it would be
Speaker 1: very funny if he got shot to death by.
Speaker 5: That would be quite a laugh. Yeah, truly living out
Speaker 5: the dreams of being a British lord.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, continue a real time on our tradition getting
Speaker 1: fucking mrked by the natives on an island. So the
Speaker 1: good news is that friends of the pod, the Taliban
Speaker 1: may have taken care of you know this guy for us.
Speaker 1: Shortly after making those posts, he re entered Afghanistan and
Speaker 1: a video posted several days later he bragged about entering.
Speaker 1: While he's in Afghanistan, he brags that he made a
Speaker 1: fake visa in order to get himself into the country.
Speaker 1: So he breaks Taliban law entering the country in a
Speaker 1: fake video and then posts a video while he's in
Speaker 1: Kabul bragging about it. So, first off, genius brain, unbelievable
Speaker 1: smarts there. So this the first video that he posts
Speaker 1: back is it's titled something like Shooting Guns with the Taliban,
Speaker 1: and it's all about him just like going to Jalalabad
Speaker 1: to see what kind of guns are available. He talks
Speaker 1: a lot about how all these US guns and gear
Speaker 1: are available, but he doesn't actually really show any of it.
Speaker 1: Like most of the video he's in like this fucking
Speaker 1: I'll show you. He's in like this fucking gun bazaar
Speaker 1: and he's like really odd by this giant ar style
Speaker 1: Turkish shotgun.
Speaker 5: We've seen some of them.
Speaker 3: We have seen some of those.
Speaker 1: They're terrible weapons. They are definitely obviously the Taliban got
Speaker 1: a hold of a shitload of us. Hear nobody's questioning
Speaker 1: that these shitty Turkish shotguns are not American weaponry.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well that that's that's probably why it's in the
Speaker 4: bizarre and not like in someone's like.
Speaker 3: Or something. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the Taliban have access to a lot of American gear.
Speaker 1: He is kind of just like looking at I don't know,
Speaker 1: like a mix of like old Soviet weapons and like
Speaker 1: trash guns. So I'm gonna show you a first clip
Speaker 1: from this video here.
Speaker 6: Sometimes a little bit dangerous, so there's a lot of
Speaker 6: if you don't know who diesh is, it's basically isis
Speaker 6: now is you know, I'll number the Taliban. However, the
Speaker 6: weapons market and maybe in some areas could be quite
Speaker 6: bad at the me so I'll have to be a
Speaker 6: little bit cam If you've seen this footage ended up, Okay,
Speaker 6: I'm gonna take a moment to tell you guys about
Speaker 6: my sponsor tend What.
Speaker 3: The fuck.
Speaker 5: This is not official medium, but Jesus, that.
Speaker 1: Is one of the most jarring ad Like if you're
Speaker 1: not watching this, he's like standing in the desert and
Speaker 1: like talking. There's that brief clip of like a picture
Speaker 1: of some isis guys. But then he's like back in
Speaker 1: the desert talking and then suddenly a shot like it
Speaker 1: cuts very harshly to him in his hotel room doing
Speaker 1: like a fucking ad for an investment banking app. It's
Speaker 1: so fucking or like a stock trading app.
Speaker 5: It's so funny.
Speaker 2: And then yes, yeah, don't see uh have you got
Speaker 2: the shahata written on it?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it sure does.
Speaker 8: Oh yeah, I was gonna say people, she was, but
Speaker 8: to spare yourself, like god, yeah he's he's wearing his
Speaker 8: white headband.
Speaker 2: I can't see it anymore. But you see something you're
Speaker 2: in and Arabic on it, I guess, and doing it
Speaker 2: as much for something called tends.
Speaker 1: Yeah, something which is like, yeah, some sort of like
Speaker 1: stock trading app for I'm going to guess people to
Speaker 1: get their life savings scammed from them. Yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's my apologies Tends if I'm getting you wrong, but
Speaker 1: you're you're spider. Yeah, ah damn, it's okay. We've got
Speaker 1: enough sports betting companies to that. Well we'll be okay.
Speaker 1: Run Regu Jesus right, yeah, Runald Reagan gold coins or
Speaker 1: silver coins will take care of us. So again, one
Speaker 1: of the things that's very funny about this is the
Speaker 1: amount of time he spends flipping out over this dog
Speaker 1: shit AR style shotgun. For those of you who aren't
Speaker 1: gun people, the Turks make a number of different shotguns
Speaker 1: that kind of look like AR fifteen. They're all very
Speaker 1: impressive looking to people who don't know anything about guns,
Speaker 1: they're terrible weapons. One of the reasons they're terrible is
Speaker 1: that shotgun shells do not work well in magazines. The
Speaker 1: reason most shotguns are tube fed because like, shot shells
Speaker 1: are plastic and they have a weird shape to them,
Speaker 1: and if you stick them in a magazine like a
Speaker 1: normal bullet, they just tend to like jam and misfeed
Speaker 1: a lot. It's just not a good way for it. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's the one gun, the one actually like produced
Speaker 2: in a factory gun that I'm aware of that the
Speaker 2: folks in me and R are like, naw, fuck, it
Speaker 2: will just three, like we.
Speaker 1: Are desperate, but these are just and he like, he
Speaker 1: spends a lot of time like talking about how cheap
Speaker 1: guns are. You can get guns here cheaper than you
Speaker 1: can anywhere else, because like this AR shotgun is two
Speaker 1: hundred bucks like, man, I can get an ar shotgun
Speaker 1: for two hundred bucks in Portland, Oregon. They're terrible, nobody
Speaker 1: wants them. So he does eventually go out with what
Speaker 1: he claims is the talent ban. As far as I
Speaker 1: can tell, it's a guy who has an M sixteen
Speaker 1: that he probably paid like a hundred bucks to go
Speaker 1: shooting with.
Speaker 7: Right.
Speaker 1: Maybe the guy, like a lot of people in Afghanistan
Speaker 1: are technically the Taliban, but that doesn't mean like much, right, Like,
Speaker 1: at this point, they're the government, like you know, you
Speaker 1: get like your uncle, you know, gets you a fucking
Speaker 1: gig or something, watching a road or whatever. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know anything about this guy. He claims he's
Speaker 1: the Taliban. So I'm gonna play you a clip of
Speaker 1: him shooting this guy's M sixteen.
Speaker 6: Yeah, oh yeah, another one.
Speaker 1: No hearing protection sweeping people.
Speaker 3: Just sweeps him again, thank you.
Speaker 1: The Taliban guy is visibly nervous about him as the guy.
Speaker 5: He's not. He got that vacuum one. Yeah, he's backing away.
Speaker 3: He's just like.
Speaker 1: Shooting into the air. I love how like visibly nervous.
Speaker 1: The Taliban guy is his legs with the gun like
Speaker 1: points the barrel at that guy's legs like three different times,
Speaker 1: shoots up into the air. He's just an incompetent asshole
Speaker 1: with it.
Speaker 4: He's doing all of these like like eighties action movie poses.
Speaker 1: Yeah, touch, it's it's very stupid. He has no hearing
Speaker 1: protection and so he like hurts his ears like yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's It's just comprehensively stupid and sad. So this
Speaker 1: video was dumb. Shortly after filming it, Miles met up
Speaker 1: with two other UK citizens who were in the country,
Speaker 1: one of whom was he's described in most of the
Speaker 1: news articles I read it's just a charity medic and
Speaker 1: it's this is all a little unclear. It seems like
Speaker 1: this guy was in possession of a firearm without a
Speaker 1: proper permit. He claims that he has a permit, but
Speaker 1: that was lost or something whatever. At any rate, Miles
Speaker 1: goes missing in early March, and after several days, the
Speaker 1: Taliban announces that they've taken him and these two other
Speaker 1: British guys and also two Polish guys into custody. And
Speaker 1: it's a little unclear why, but it seems to be
Speaker 1: due to like them breaking some laws with guns. It
Speaker 1: also may have something to do with the fact that
Speaker 1: Miles broke the law entering the country. He seems to
Speaker 1: be being treated reasonably well at present, it's unclear what's
Speaker 1: going to happen to him. I hope, I mean honestly, like,
Speaker 1: of all the people who deserve to be in a
Speaker 1: Taliban prison, Miles Rutledge is the one that's amazing, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: keep that, go ahead and keep that guy Taliban, like.
Speaker 4: Solid, very excited for whoever is in the Prime Minister's
Speaker 4: chair next week to like maybe get around to start
Speaker 4: negotiating with a Tealipan.
Speaker 5: They don't. The British.
Speaker 2: The British far and off is just don't give a
Speaker 2: fuck anymore. Like I've had to contact them with when
Speaker 2: colleagues have been detained.
Speaker 5: Et cetera.
Speaker 2: Like they'll literally be like now computer says no and
Speaker 2: and just like tight funk off like so hopefully they
Speaker 2: do the same for him.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it doesn't.
Speaker 1: I haven't seen anything like the late most recent news
Speaker 1: stories about him were like more than a week ago.
Speaker 1: It looks like, uh, yeah, I'm not saying anything recently,
Speaker 1: So it doesn't look like I'm guessing we would have
Speaker 1: there'd be some coverage if he'd been freed. The Daily
Speaker 1: Mail talked to his mom, who apparently was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: he was. He was there to try to find himself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's very funny, he says. He claims at one point, like, yo,
Speaker 1: guy has been taken by the by Afghan intel diligence
Speaker 1: for taking like a thousand dollars out of Western Union
Speaker 1: suss amount, no internet, no idea when this will end.
Speaker 1: Everything is good, but please excuse my lack of communication.
Speaker 1: That was like March eighth, something like that, And he
Speaker 1: hasn't really been back on in a while, Like he's
Speaker 1: kind of been dark for quite a spell, So I
Speaker 1: don't know, maybe something terrible has happened to him, or
Speaker 1: what happened to him at which point or in which
Speaker 1: case like that would be kind of funny fuck him.
Speaker 1: Yeah that's where I am officially. Yeah, I mean he
Speaker 1: fucked around and found out. Yeah, like you keep again, man,
Speaker 1: you want to like, yeah, you keep fucking around. You
Speaker 1: like go to a place with like a famously like
Speaker 1: dangerous authoritarian government who are actively hurting people and are
Speaker 1: like I'm going to brag about breaking the law for
Speaker 1: a YouTube video. Yeah, man, maybe they'll get pissed. It's
Speaker 1: like the same shit with like, obviously the Romanian government
Speaker 1: is not the Taliban, but like it's the same kind
Speaker 1: of ship with like Andrew Tate, where you're like, I'm
Speaker 1: going to go to this other country and brag about
Speaker 1: the fact that they're not stopping me from breaking their laws.
Speaker 1: That's a pretty good way to get them to fucking
Speaker 1: problems for you.
Speaker 4: Like, anyway, my favorite Miles post. If I'm remembering this right,
Speaker 4: I'm pretty sure like two.
Speaker 7: Weeks before he like got arrested, he he he posted
Speaker 7: a tweet about how like he's safer in he's safer
Speaker 7: in Afghanistan and he is in uh that he would
Speaker 7: be in San Francisco in Brooklyn.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, he.
Speaker 1: Spent no two days, he spent forty eight hours quote
Speaker 1: unquote homeless in Brooklyn for again for content, and yeah,
Speaker 1: it is it is funny that like he is in
Speaker 1: a lot of trouble now.
Speaker 3: He tried to go to.
Speaker 5: Mission Texas as well.
Speaker 3: I don't know if he ever went, but he was
Speaker 3: going to do so I missed that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's gonna be something fucking horrific with people crossing
Speaker 2: the Rio Grande.
Speaker 5: Oh god, oh you see the look the lady.
Speaker 1: You're not gonna hear this often from me, but critical
Speaker 1: support to the Taliban, like they're they're they're really fighting
Speaker 1: the good fight for all of us by keeping this
Speaker 1: guy behind bars.
Speaker 2: I was it initially seemed like he had he had
Speaker 2: fallen into the hands of like the Islamic State Chorussan Province,
Speaker 2: and I'm gonna have to yeah, you rarely have to
Speaker 2: hand it to Islamic State, but we may have had
Speaker 2: that one occasion that.
Speaker 1: Don't give ice us a lot of credit, but that
Speaker 1: that it is, like, you know what, I'll just I'm
Speaker 1: gonna go ahead and say this on behalf of the
Speaker 1: rest of the world, Taliban, if you keep him locked up,
Speaker 1: you know, we will erase one of those big Buddha
Speaker 1: statues from like the list of Taliban crimes. We'll all
Speaker 1: agree to forget one of the Buddhas. Like feel like
Speaker 1: I'm not signing on to this.
Speaker 5: I'm so bad about the Buddhists. I just come on,
Speaker 5: we need all the Buddhists.
Speaker 3: Anyway.
Speaker 5: Fuck this guy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I hope they're feeding him all of the soy
Speaker 1: in Afghanistan, like fucking park a soy truck up to
Speaker 1: that guy's cell. Anyway, that's a story like there's these
Speaker 1: guys are like, especially in the social media. I mean
Speaker 1: they've always been a part of war and of conflict.
Speaker 1: You know, there's a degree to which like this is
Speaker 1: a not a news story, like this is actually kind
Speaker 1: of a one of the older stories in human history.
Speaker 1: Is like dudes kind of stumbling into war zones in
Speaker 1: order to write about it or otherwise like make it
Speaker 1: about them. So you know, uh, fuck these people, uh,
Speaker 1: and fuck Miles Rutledge in specific. I hope, I hope
Speaker 1: he winds up like those Venezuelan merks or not there.
Speaker 1: I mean, they weren't Vezela, they were in Venezuela who
Speaker 1: are caught on video pissing themselves and then lying in
Speaker 1: the piss. That's that's my dream for Miles Rutledge spending
Speaker 1: some time lying in piss before he sent back to
Speaker 1: the UK. Yeah, that's what I got.
Speaker 5: Nice.
Speaker 2: Hopefully they revoke his fucking citizenship like that they did
Speaker 2: to the British people.
Speaker 1: He did make a bunch of posts about how cool
Speaker 1: the Taliban were, so I don't know, like, yeah, we
Speaker 1: can dream. Look, man, you said you wanted to live there.
Speaker 3: Uh, here you go.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know. I I think he's a dick
Speaker 1: and I think this is funny. That's my official stance.
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Speaker 7: You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated
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Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.