Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, Robert Evans here and I wanted to let
Speaker 1: you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode
Speaker 1: of the week that just happened is here in one
Speaker 1: convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to
Speaker 1: listen to in a long stretch if you want. If
Speaker 1: you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
Speaker 1: there's gotta be nothing new here for you, but you
Speaker 1: can make your own decisions.
Speaker 2: Chris crisodis ipsis christode is welcome to it could happen here,
Speaker 2: a podcast where the only person who actually took Latin
Speaker 2: in high school isn't here leading me to do this
Speaker 2: Latin bit. I'm your host, Mia Wong, and with me
Speaker 2: is Garrison. Hello.
Speaker 3: Hello, I'm not gonna try to speak Latin because if
Speaker 3: I did, it'd be some like weird like esoteric incantation
Speaker 3: and then it would open up a whole other canet worms.
Speaker 2: So you know, this is this is this is the
Speaker 2: most the most well known Latin. That's probably not the
Speaker 2: most well known Latin is probably some bullshit from like
Speaker 2: Latin mass or something. But one of the more well
Speaker 2: known Latins, which is who watches the Watchmen Roughly it's
Speaker 2: not the test. The popular translation is who watches the watchmen?
Speaker 2: And by that I mean we are asking the question
Speaker 2: who ensures that the American Supreme Court does not just
Speaker 2: sort of collapse into a ball of pure corruption.
Speaker 3: And the answer was nobody. So true, I always trust
Speaker 3: in the Supreme Court.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's great.
Speaker 3: I learned.
Speaker 2: I learned that we pay these people two hundred and
Speaker 2: eighty five thousand dollars a year, Like we pay them
Speaker 2: two hundred eighty five thousand dollars to like take our
Speaker 2: rights away.
Speaker 3: This is just insane. Well, why why do we do this?
Speaker 3: It's uh, well, I mean this is a very clear
Speaker 3: reason why we do this. Actually that maintains the semblance
Speaker 3: of order and civility. Yes, however, coma deeply fractured however, Comma, this.
Speaker 2: Is coming apart because these stupid assholes can't even maintain
Speaker 2: the veneer of not being like the most corrupt people
Speaker 2: in the history of mankind. So we're coming off of
Speaker 2: like two, I mean not it. There wasn't really a
Speaker 2: potential for this, this this session of the Court to
Speaker 2: be as bad as like last year's one where they
Speaker 2: killed row, but they killed affirmative action and they also
Speaker 2: did this really really.
Speaker 1: Just sort of.
Speaker 3: Really weird ruling on queer stuff and the business's right
Speaker 3: to discriminate and choose the business's rights to choose how
Speaker 3: to use their creative expression, which has resulted in a
Speaker 3: bunch of really funny things. I saw this morning. Actually,
Speaker 3: there was this hair salon who was refer to serve
Speaker 3: LGBTQ clients, which now all of like all of like
Speaker 3: the suppliers for the hair salon are no longer sending
Speaker 3: orders to the hair saloon because they're also allowed to
Speaker 3: discriminate from this hair salod because of the same ruleing.
Speaker 3: So it's creating all these really complicated like supply chain
Speaker 3: things with businesses choosing to be really homophobic and queerophobic
Speaker 3: and then like type of like a supplier is just
Speaker 3: not then just not giving these businesses the supplies they
Speaker 3: need to operate their business, which is pretty funny.
Speaker 2: It's really amazing too. So the other thing about this
Speaker 2: is like this is the actual ruling where like any
Speaker 2: pretense that this is like a functional court was just
Speaker 2: sort of thrown out the window because Okay, so one
Speaker 2: of the one of the like the fundamental principles of
Speaker 2: and this is like one of the fundamental principles of
Speaker 2: the common law legal system, right of the legal system
Speaker 2: that not only the US is based off of, but
Speaker 2: like you know, I mean, like like literally, we're talking
Speaker 2: like like hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of
Speaker 2: years of history that pre date the American system arguably
Speaker 2: can trace us back to the Roman system. One of
Speaker 2: the things that's fundamentally based on is that you cannot
Speaker 2: try a case on a hypothetical. Something has to something
Speaker 2: has to actually happen for you to have a case,
Speaker 2: And this case has just thrown that shit out the window.
Speaker 3: So what this case was is there's this.
Speaker 2: Woman who supposedly is a wedding wedding website designer, and
Speaker 2: we'll get back to that in a second, because oh boy,
Speaker 2: uh just straight up lied to the court and claimed
Speaker 2: that a guy had requested her make a wedding website
Speaker 2: for a gay wedding. And this never happens, right, this
Speaker 2: like did not happen. The journalist like tracked down the
Speaker 2: guy who she said had like requested a website, and
Speaker 2: that guy is a straight b had already been married,
Speaker 2: and she is a web designer.
Speaker 3: The whole the whole story is was just a fake.
Speaker 2: I think I think like that's that's that's the part
Speaker 2: of the story that I think got the most pressed.
Speaker 2: But the part of the story that thinks like funnier
Speaker 2: is that she's not actually a wedding website designer. This
Speaker 2: entire case, she set up this entire site. What appears
Speaker 2: to have happened, She's not wedding website designer now, right.
Speaker 2: What appears to have happened is that she and like
Speaker 2: this sort of like one of the one of the
Speaker 2: sort of right wing like legal networks got together and
Speaker 2: cobbled together this business like specifically so they could get
Speaker 2: this ruling.
Speaker 3: So which which which seems like that should be a
Speaker 3: like illegal It's this sounds it sounds like legal Fraudust
Speaker 3: should be on trial.
Speaker 2: For perjury right now. Her lawyers should also be like
Speaker 2: her lawyers and her lied under oath multiple times to
Speaker 2: multiple different courts. Like yes, what we're seeing here, right
Speaker 2: is the sort of like thin legal veneer of it
Speaker 2: has always been sort of over the Supreme Court that's
Speaker 2: supposed to make it seem legitimate.
Speaker 1: It's just sort of like unraveling.
Speaker 2: And at the same time, so if if you if
Speaker 2: you if you think that makes the Supreme Court like
Speaker 2: like look illegitimate.
Speaker 3: Wait do we get to the corruption.
Speaker 2: This is the real reason we're doing this episode because
Speaker 2: oh my God, Jesus Christ, this is I oh God.
Speaker 2: Then you know the thing I really learned from this
Speaker 2: is I didn't understand how rich Supreme Court.
Speaker 3: Justices are, like Clarence Thomas.
Speaker 2: And in all of the pieces about Clarence Thomas, right,
Speaker 2: it starts with like he is like the poorest of
Speaker 2: Supreme Court justices and his family makes eight hundred thousand
Speaker 2: dollars a year.
Speaker 3: It's like that seems like a lot of money. What
Speaker 3: are you even talking about?
Speaker 2: Like, So, in terms of the sort of corruption stuff
Speaker 2: that's been happening, there's been a bunch of uh, there's
Speaker 2: a bunch of research down by Republica into a bunch
Speaker 2: of just like incredibly shady and corrupt things that a
Speaker 2: bunch of Supreme Court justices are doing. So we're gonna
Speaker 2: start with bastard's podlum, Clarence Thomas. So one of Thomas's
Speaker 2: close friends is this real estate mogul named Harlan Crowe,
Speaker 2: and he Harlan Crowe sucks ass. He and Harlan Crowe sounds.
Speaker 3: Like what you would name like some like weird, like
Speaker 3: rich villain and like a pulpy seventies like mystery novel.
Speaker 2: I I don't did you see when what like when
Speaker 2: people figured out who this guy was and it went
Speaker 2: around on Twitter. No oh, I'm so excited for you. Okay,
Speaker 2: this this is gonna be great. So okay, So, so
Speaker 2: Harley Crowe is he's one of the country's largest landlords.
Speaker 3: He has like he's a.
Speaker 2: Portfolio of twenty nine billion dollars of assets. He he
Speaker 2: owns property used like all over the US. He also okay,
Speaker 2: so he has a giant mansion, right, and in his
Speaker 2: giant mansion is a bunch of Nazi memorabilia, including an
Speaker 2: autographed copy of this this guy.
Speaker 3: Yes, okay, now that now that you mentioned the Nazi
Speaker 3: now so, so he he has the.
Speaker 2: Things that like stereotypically you would assume that like a
Speaker 2: like a Nazi para familiar guy has, right, Like he
Speaker 2: has like he has that sign, an autogap copy of
Speaker 2: my com He has like a bunch of pictures that
Speaker 2: were drawn by a bunch of like actual paintings that
Speaker 2: were drawn by Hitler. But he also has weird ship
Speaker 2: like something I've never seen before. Like he has like
Speaker 2: this these sets of like napkins that just have swastikas
Speaker 2: on them because they were like official Nazi napkins.
Speaker 3: I feel like we probably shouldn't, like we can even
Speaker 3: keep one copy of these, and like the Holocaust Museum
Speaker 3: and the rest of this stuff should be like burned, right,
Speaker 3: like we shouldn't. Yeah, we shouldn't really have them to
Speaker 3: this tough line around.
Speaker 2: You know, Like Okay, so I'm gonna circle back to
Speaker 2: this because I think there's one there's another piece of
Speaker 2: context that we need to get you. He also has
Speaker 2: this thing called this he has he is this thing
Speaker 2: he calls the Garden of Evil, which is this like
Speaker 2: garden of statues of the garden he calls evil. Yes,
Speaker 2: And it's a it's a statue guarded behind his house
Speaker 2: that has like a bunch of like statues of dictators.
Speaker 2: They're like almost all communists. He really hates Tito for
Speaker 2: some reason.
Speaker 1: I don't know why.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, she's a billionaire, obviously, Like this is
Speaker 2: why he hates Tito. But I funny thing is, it's
Speaker 2: like almost all it's like almost entirely communist, Like there's
Speaker 2: no like Mussolini or anything.
Speaker 3: It's like it's all communists.
Speaker 2: There's no Mussolini. What No, No, there's like there's there's
Speaker 2: a host name Ubarick, and then there's one of what
Speaker 2: what's the guy's name? I don't remember his name, princess
Speaker 2: the guy who shot our Streek Ferdinand, which is weird
Speaker 2: because that guy was not he wasn't he wasn't evil. No, well,
Speaker 2: that's I will not. I refuse to take a position
Speaker 2: on that. I'm like, that's not my position. My position,
Speaker 2: like he's a dictator. Oh yeah, that's like on the
Speaker 2: level of like evil on a dictator level, Like he's
Speaker 2: not He's no mau he's no Hitler, Like come on,
Speaker 2: like he also like again, he is not a dictator.
Speaker 2: He was just some fucking random guy like the guy
Speaker 2: you kill our streak furnite Like okay, baffling stuff, but
Speaker 2: but okay, the important thing about this.
Speaker 3: Well, okay, first of who would be your first five
Speaker 3: statues in your own garden of evil garden?
Speaker 2: Oh okay, this is this is gonna be very biased
Speaker 2: because I'm ranking this by people I have personal grudges against.
Speaker 4: Okay, Well, so if you're doing personal grudges the entire
Speaker 4: year air to one U C C. I, Uh, what
Speaker 4: the fuck is his name?
Speaker 3: Paul Volker?
Speaker 2: Who else do I have? Who else do I have
Speaker 2: a personal grudge against? Who's a dictator? Mohammed ben somebon
Speaker 2: because he bought my fucking StarCraft league?
Speaker 3: What the fuck are you talking about on that one day? Okay, well,
Speaker 3: well we'll put what we'll put. We'll put MAUT number five. Fair, fair, Okay, now.
Speaker 2: Okay, So the reason the reason I bring up the
Speaker 2: the the the the Garden of Evil, right is that. Okay,
Speaker 2: so he has like a thing where he puts all
Speaker 2: the stuff from the evil dictators, but then all of
Speaker 2: the notazi stuff is just like randomly strewed about his house.
Speaker 3: Like his living quarters.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like like they'll just don't be paintings by like
Speaker 2: actually he has like bush painting seals hill paintings would
Speaker 2: be like bush, they'll be like like a renoir and
Speaker 2: then they'll just be a Hitler painting.
Speaker 3: It's like he's this guy.
Speaker 2: All of his friends would because this guy has like
Speaker 2: a bunch of like right, because he's one of the
Speaker 2: guys all would be like this man is not a Nazi,
Speaker 2: and I'm like, I he hasn't he has. I don't know, man, Like,
Speaker 2: there are not many non Nazi reasons why you would
Speaker 2: have like multiple of Hitler's paintings hanging on your wall
Speaker 2: and also the signed autograph copy of.
Speaker 3: I just want to remind myself that there's evil in
Speaker 3: the world, you know. Okay, Okay, this gets me pissed off.
Speaker 5: So my my.
Speaker 2: One of my grandpa's I took took a took a
Speaker 2: Nazi sword off a dead officer and like brought it
Speaker 2: home from the war and it should be like and
Speaker 2: we like still have Ituse what the fuck are you
Speaker 2: supposed to do with that? Right? So like that that's
Speaker 2: like we we have one of those, right, But like
Speaker 2: we didn't take an autographed copy of my cough. We
Speaker 2: fucking killed a Nazi officer and took it from him.
Speaker 2: Like if we're gonna do this, you have to do
Speaker 2: it correctly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 2: But this guy, this guy, okay, oh, so she gets
Speaker 2: really really he's like unfathomably mad that people wear shake
Speaker 2: of our shirts.
Speaker 3: Like she's mean, me too, mad me too of our shirt.
Speaker 2: I'm usually not most almost circling back around on it
Speaker 2: just because it makes this guy so mad. Like this
Speaker 2: guy in particular appears to be worse most of the
Speaker 2: take of our shirts I've seen are sold by disgraced
Speaker 2: white disgrace the right wing commentator Stephen Crowder. So, oh god,
Speaker 2: what the na we we we we've we've truly entered
Speaker 2: hell world now, Uh okay, So why why why am
Speaker 2: I talking about Harlan Crow partially because he's really.
Speaker 3: Funny, doesn't it doesn't he like give a lot of
Speaker 3: money to like certain people.
Speaker 2: So okay, we're we're Yeah. So she he's one of
Speaker 2: the people who runs a really really extensive network of
Speaker 2: sort of like this like right wing like think tank
Speaker 2: dark money network that you know, buys judges, like pays
Speaker 2: for people's legal careers. And he's also very close friends
Speaker 2: with Clarence Thomas. And so I'm gonna just run through
Speaker 2: all of the ship that he's like all of these
Speaker 2: just like incredible corruption that he's doing. So okay, so
Speaker 2: I'm gonna start with like this is like this is
Speaker 2: like like the level one corruption, which is so Crow
Speaker 2: bought Clarence Thomas's mom's house and then did quote tens
Speaker 2: of thousands of dollars of improvements to the home, and
Speaker 2: he seems to have bought the house for like significantly
Speaker 2: above market rate. And so this is this is a
Speaker 2: this is I'm gonna, I'm gonna we're gonna do it.
Speaker 2: We're gonna do a corruption anatomy here because this is
Speaker 2: a classic Chicago, uh corruption scam. So there there's like
Speaker 2: there's like six revenue streams in this. Right, you have
Speaker 2: the money from the sale, which goes to like you
Speaker 2: know that that that that's that's like that's your level
Speaker 2: one bribe, right is you're selling, you're selling, you know,
Speaker 2: you're you're selling your house to someone at above market value.
Speaker 2: The level two bribe is, uh, you're not. You're now
Speaker 2: throwing in the renovations because his mom is still living
Speaker 2: in this house.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: Oh so this is like it's like actual bribery.
Speaker 2: Huh oh yeah, yeah, this is and again this is
Speaker 2: like the mild stuff. So that that level level two
Speaker 2: is you get that, you know, Okay, so now now
Speaker 2: you have the contractors, and the contractors allow you to
Speaker 2: throw in more money into the bribe because you're now
Speaker 2: you're now doing all this renovation work like for free.
Speaker 3: The level three of the bribes is that.
Speaker 2: Okay, so now now once you once you have a
Speaker 2: renovation contract, you now have a contract that pays out
Speaker 2: money and you can and use that to like reward
Speaker 2: your political allies. And so this is this is this
Speaker 2: is a classic like absolutely classic like Chicago like payoff scheme.
Speaker 2: Now the other thing that's so so Harlan was contacted
Speaker 2: about this and she claims that he's buying this house
Speaker 2: because he wants to preserve it for posterity because Clarence
Speaker 2: Thomas lived there, m sure, which, like she is very weird.
Speaker 2: She did give one hundred thousand dollars to Harvard to
Speaker 2: buy a portrait of like to get them to hang
Speaker 2: up a portrait of Clarence Thomas, so you know he
Speaker 2: is a deeply weird guy. But this, uh, this.
Speaker 3: Reeks of.
Speaker 2: Of oh boy, now yes, yes, WELLBLIC like ProPublica points
Speaker 2: out also that they they bought two random vacant lots
Speaker 2: in the area from Thomas for like unclear reasons. And
Speaker 2: you now you can also you can also ask why
Speaker 2: does Supreme Court Justice like own a bunch of random
Speaker 2: vacant lots? And the answer to this question is that
Speaker 2: these people are part of the real warsoisi they are
Speaker 2: like they they they are like as alien to us
Speaker 2: lstate scamming, right, this is like yeah, like basically yeah,
Speaker 2: like they're they're they're they're they're doing stuff, like they
Speaker 2: do stuff with their money that like makes them like
Speaker 2: like they they are like as dissimilar to us as
Speaker 2: like we are from like a fucking Neanderthal. Like these people,
Speaker 2: like the way they think about money, the way they
Speaker 2: like just like the way they act in the world,
Speaker 2: the way they relate to other people, like the fact
Speaker 2: that they're just buying random fucking lots like across the
Speaker 2: street from their parents' house, like why who knows? And
Speaker 2: and Okay, so the thing that's very important about this
Speaker 2: right is if you you know, okay, everyone in the
Speaker 2: government right from like starting from every core that is
Speaker 2: below the Supreme Court down to like a fucking astronomer
Speaker 2: who works for a national lab If you receive a
Speaker 2: like a large gift over five hundred dollars, you have
Speaker 2: to report it to the government, and there's like an
Speaker 2: ethics process you have to go through.
Speaker 3: And this the standard.
Speaker 2: And again, this is the standard that holds from like
Speaker 2: like the fucking President of the United States down to
Speaker 2: again like a random astronomer. They are not allowed to
Speaker 2: have to do anything that has quote even the appearance
Speaker 2: of impropriety. Now do you want to do you want
Speaker 2: to know who these standards don't apply to just the
Speaker 2: Supreme Course, yep, does not apply to them. They had
Speaker 2: There's only one thing they have to do, right and
Speaker 2: aga again this amazing Like so again everyone else has
Speaker 2: actual enforceable ethics standards the Supreme Court has. You have
Speaker 2: to report it. It doesn't have to go through an
Speaker 2: axcess commission. You just have to report it.
Speaker 3: And yeah, do you do you?
Speaker 2: I'll give you three guesses as to how much of
Speaker 2: any of the ship that I just talked about that
Speaker 2: clear as Thomas reported.
Speaker 5: Probably none of a nope, absolutely not zero, zero of it,
Speaker 5: like you over one hundred thousand, probably like one hundred
Speaker 5: and fifty thousand dollars of bullshit, no reporting at all.
Speaker 3: I'm sure the cops are gonna go arrest him for all.
Speaker 2: These crimes, right, yeah, yeah, right at any day now.
Speaker 3: Uh huh yeah, yeah, it's gonna be busting down his
Speaker 3: door now that we've cracked this one wide open.
Speaker 2: A Okay, do you do you know who else is?
Speaker 2: And I am not joking legitimately is bound by significantly
Speaker 2: stricter i ethic ethics regulations than the Supreme Court. It's
Speaker 2: the plugging these products and services. I SEC advertising guidelines
Speaker 2: that we have to follow.
Speaker 5: I am a podcaster every few months and guidelines of
Speaker 5: the Supreme every few months.
Speaker 3: We have to take like a like a ten minute
Speaker 3: training that just basically just plugs into our brains and
Speaker 3: uh it downloads all of these like terms and conditions
Speaker 3: that we then just robotically need to enforce. So yeah,
Speaker 3: do you know who else com it's fraud? Were legally
Speaker 3: not let I say that these products and services Oo
Speaker 3: it's okay, Well I'm gonna have to do another one
Speaker 3: of those FCC trainings after this. Well, well.
Speaker 2: Crime crime is just legal now like this this is
Speaker 2: what I'm getting at on this free court stuff. So
Speaker 2: all right, I started with this housing scam because A
Speaker 2: It's like, okay, this is this is like this is
Speaker 2: like a classic level scam. Bbe this is because this
Speaker 2: is like absolute brush league shit compared to like everything
Speaker 2: else that's about to happen.
Speaker 3: Here are you telling me this is? This is this
Speaker 3: is gonna get worse.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, so all right, I'm just gonna I'm just
Speaker 2: gonna start reading this from pro publica because I don't
Speaker 2: I cannot think of a funnier way to just do this.
Speaker 2: In late June twenty nineteen, right after the US Supreme
Speaker 2: Court released its final opinion of the term, just as
Speaker 2: Clarence Thomas bored in a lar private jet headed to Indonesia.
Speaker 2: He and his wife were going on a vacation nine
Speaker 2: days of island hopping in a volcanic archipelago on a
Speaker 2: super yacht staff by a coterie of attendance and a
Speaker 2: private chef. If Thomas had chartered the plane in the
Speaker 2: one hundred and sixty two foot yachts himself, the total
Speaker 2: cost of the trip could have exceeded five hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 2: Fortunately for him, that wasn't necessary. He was on vacation
Speaker 2: with real estate mogul and Republican mega donor Harlan Klohe,
Speaker 2: who owned the jet and the yacht too.
Speaker 3: Ah, I see this just sounds like a friendly vacation, right.
Speaker 3: I need to read.
Speaker 2: Another another like really just genuinely from one of the
Speaker 2: most brutal polls I've ever seen anyone do is later
Speaker 2: on this Republic article quote. In Thomas's public appearances over
Speaker 2: the years, he has presented himself as an everyman with
Speaker 2: modest tastes. I don't have a problem with going to Europe,
Speaker 2: but I prefer the United States, and I prefer seeing
Speaker 2: the regular parts of the United States, Thomas said in
Speaker 2: a recent interview for a documentary about his life, which
Speaker 2: Crow helped finance. I prefer the RV parks. I prefer
Speaker 2: the Walmart parking lots to the beaches and things like that.
Speaker 2: There's something normal about.
Speaker 3: It, doubt doubt.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: I don't think he's gonna be getting a charteredy oats
Speaker 3: all the Walmart parking lots. Honestly, I don't really see
Speaker 3: that one happening five hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 2: And the thing about this, it seems like he does
Speaker 2: something like this every fucking year, Like because I wish I.
Speaker 3: Could take I wish I could take a Supreme Court
Speaker 3: justice out to the open waters of the sea about
Speaker 3: once a year. You know, wouldn't that be fun for
Speaker 3: everybody involved?
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, here's the thing. We're gonna have to
Speaker 2: pull our money into rent the submarine.
Speaker 3: That's true, that's true.
Speaker 2: But we look, we will persevere, we will achieve submarine.
Speaker 2: There's no laws on the ocean International waters.
Speaker 3: Baby is legal.
Speaker 2: Ass As are regrettably off doing actual journalism. Colleague James
Speaker 2: constantly reminds us it is legal for him to fight
Speaker 2: the seal.
Speaker 3: International waters, just as legal as me disparaging all of
Speaker 3: our advertisers.
Speaker 2: So all right, you know, okay, So like obviously what
Speaker 2: is happening, Like Harlan Crowe, like this is a level
Speaker 2: of like bribery where it's like the wheels kind of
Speaker 2: fall off of the word bribery because like, how do
Speaker 2: you even I don't know, I don't even I don't
Speaker 2: have a way to adequately.
Speaker 1: Describe what this is.
Speaker 2: What I'm going to do instead is to remind everyone
Speaker 2: that Thomas was one of the justices who decided Citizens
Speaker 2: United in the twenty ten case that made it legal
Speaker 2: to bribe politicians through campaign donations and allowed corporations to
Speaker 2: directly involve themselves in legal campaigns, League leading like directly
Speaker 2: to the hellhole we now I'll live in now once again,
Speaker 2: Thomas was required to report this as a gift to
Speaker 2: the government, and he simply did not. And you know,
Speaker 2: this is one of those things where okay, so like
Speaker 2: if a normal person does this right in the governments,
Speaker 2: you would take them to court. But we've now returned
Speaker 2: to our problem of who watches the watchers because it's
Speaker 2: Supreme Court, right, they've established themselves as a dictatorial ruling
Speaker 2: council based on a power grab. And you know, I'm
Speaker 2: gonna do my the Supreme Court rant I do every time.
Speaker 2: But the Supreme Court does not have the power of
Speaker 2: judicial review. They do not have the power to strike
Speaker 2: down laws. They don't have it. They fucking get vened
Speaker 2: it out of whole cloth in eighteen o two. It
Speaker 2: doesn't exist, it's not it's never been real. You can
Speaker 2: just fucking ignore them. But in the meantime, while everyone
Speaker 2: believes it it's real, they get to do this bullshit.
Speaker 2: And you know, so, yeah, so that that Indonesia trip
Speaker 2: is like the big one that we know of. He
Speaker 2: took another one to like Moscow and another. But the
Speaker 2: other thing that that see he seems to have been
Speaker 2: doing a lot is basically like he like just uses
Speaker 2: Harlan Crowe's private jet as like his own jet republica
Speaker 2: calculated that like one just like one flight that he
Speaker 2: took in twenty sixteen would have cost seventy thousand dollars,
Speaker 2: which is more than I make in a fucking year.
Speaker 3: Yeah, why why why did that cost so much?
Speaker 2: It's really expensive to to to lease those kind of
Speaker 2: like that specific kind of private jet.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, okay, if it's for a whole private jet,
Speaker 3: that makes sense. Yeah, I say, likely wouldn't least a
Speaker 3: whole private jet. But I'm just built different, well I did.
Speaker 2: Clarence Thomas has built even more different because instead of
Speaker 2: leasing it, he just has a friend who has the
Speaker 2: jet who just lets him take this Like like one
Speaker 2: of the Republicans doings, they were just tracking the jet
Speaker 2: and they they they could match the jet showing up
Speaker 2: to the airport where Clarence Thomas was gonna be, and
Speaker 2: then and the jet would mysteriously then appear in a
Speaker 2: location where Clarence Thomas appeared, and it was like hmm,
Speaker 2: and and this whole thing we should specifically know. So okay,
Speaker 2: the reason the Supreme Court has to do any of
Speaker 2: this at all is that the stream is that like
Speaker 2: someone finally had a good idea right after Watergate that
Speaker 2: was like we should actually make everyone in the government
Speaker 2: disclose their gifts and this and this law actually like
Speaker 2: included the Streame Court, although I feel like it won't
Speaker 2: in like two years when they strike that law down
Speaker 2: or some shit. But you know, but again, like one
Speaker 2: of the things that like specifically in this law is
Speaker 2: if you take a private jet, you have to report it.
Speaker 2: And Thomas has been just like jetting out in this
Speaker 2: fucking jet for like a like many like at least
Speaker 2: like at least seven years that we know of, and
Speaker 2: has never reported it.
Speaker 3: So let's let's I'm sure the FBI is going to
Speaker 3: be busting down his doors any day now.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, And again, like, let let less you unless
Speaker 2: you think we've reached the end of the Clara's Thomas
Speaker 2: corruption crow. Also like, okay, so you know how Claire's
Speaker 2: Thomas's wife is like a qan On person and tried
Speaker 2: to overstow the government. Yes, so she has like a
Speaker 2: she has like a like a it's like a basically
Speaker 2: bullshit like political lobbying group. But it's like so it's
Speaker 2: a lobbying group, but like the actual thing that it
Speaker 2: does is reverse lobbying, which is you can go to
Speaker 2: the lobbying group and use it for like to get
Speaker 2: access to Clarence Thomas, and that group funded. God, I
Speaker 2: didn't write down the number of mount like that group
Speaker 2: got like two hundred thousand dollars that again, his wife
Speaker 2: works for got like two hundred thousand dollars from crow.
Speaker 3: There was another story that which which just now, I'm
Speaker 3: no a lawyer. These are not actual. These these are
Speaker 3: these claims have no basis. This is just an uneducated opinion.
Speaker 3: But to me, if I saw this in a movie,
Speaker 3: I would call this money laundering.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, well, like, oh god, okay, so what literally,
Speaker 2: just let me just go to the next one, because
Speaker 2: there's fucking more.
Speaker 3: There's more. There's like so.
Speaker 2: All right, Clarence Thomas has like a grandnephew that he
Speaker 2: like adopted as his son. Basically like he like went
Speaker 2: to the family of this kid. It was like, I
Speaker 2: can give this kid everything in the world, so you
Speaker 2: should like give him to me. I'm sure this is
Speaker 2: all above board. I I don't know.
Speaker 3: This is uh what about this man has proved to
Speaker 3: you that he's untrustworthy? What do you mean?
Speaker 2: Okay to me? Fair Claras Thomas makes the argument that
Speaker 2: like He did this because, like he was abandoned by
Speaker 2: his father as a kid and was raised by his grandfather.
Speaker 2: So he was like, Okay, I'm gonna raise this kid
Speaker 2: like I'm gonna steal his better life.
Speaker 3: His parents need to have a grid to. I don't know.
Speaker 2: I you you you can you can read into that
Speaker 2: the level of sketchiness that you want to. The part
Speaker 2: that I'm gonna I want to talk about is that
Speaker 2: this kid. Okay, so a thing, a thing that I
Speaker 2: didn't understand until I got to like college, is that, like, Okay,
Speaker 2: so like I knew intellectually that private schools existed, I
Speaker 2: did not understand that private schools there are like like
Speaker 2: there's like because I was used to like like Christian
Speaker 2: private schools, right, yeah, yeah, I did not, Like I
Speaker 2: didn't like get how rich people could be, and I
Speaker 2: didn't understand that that they were. Like I I like,
Speaker 2: walk in there and there's like nine kids who all
Speaker 2: speak Latin and every single one of them went to
Speaker 2: a private school that was like fifty at least fifty
Speaker 2: like somewhere between fifteen and one hundred thousand dollars a quarter. Yeah,
Speaker 2: is like what the fuck? What the shit so Clarace
Speaker 2: Thomas isn't so his the schools he's going to aren't
Speaker 2: quite that expensive, but the kid, the ones he sends this,
Speaker 2: this kid to, So for two years, the estimate is
Speaker 2: that it was one hundred and fifty thousand dollars per year.
Speaker 2: That was for two years, so seventy five thousand dollars
Speaker 2: a year, which again more than I make it a year.
Speaker 3: That's reasonable, that's fine, that's fine.
Speaker 2: That is more. That is more than like that is
Speaker 2: more expensive than my fucking college. That is more expensive.
Speaker 6: Like I like that.
Speaker 3: It is. It is a ludicrous amoss money. And guess
Speaker 3: who paid that. I'm guessing Harlan Krumb. This is why
Speaker 3: I don't. It's gonna just gonna pick it, just gonna pick,
Speaker 3: like a random name off the top of my head.
Speaker 3: This Hitler's number one fan, hard and crouded.
Speaker 2: It's so amazing because like again, all of these people
Speaker 2: have this, Like every single like conservative, like every conservative journalist,
Speaker 2: like every conservative judge and every conservative politician are.
Speaker 3: They all have one of these guys? Yeah, well it's
Speaker 3: this guy. This is the guy and so and every
Speaker 3: so like everything like the Koch Brothers fund a whole
Speaker 3: bunch of like content creators. Like but yeah, every almost
Speaker 3: every big like right wing dude has one of these guys,
Speaker 3: which is totally unfair because the entire left has to
Speaker 3: share one of these guys. We only get one, and
Speaker 3: he has to fund everything on the left. Meanwhile, the
Speaker 3: right has like has like a dime a dozen of these,
Speaker 3: you know, like like well.
Speaker 2: Legitimately, like like this was actually legitimately the thing that
Speaker 2: caused Soros to get into politics. You looked at us
Speaker 2: and he was like, what the fuck is going on?
Speaker 2: Like this is insane?
Speaker 3: Like why what? What do you mean?
Speaker 2: Like the American Enterprise Institute just like creates Supreme Court justice.
Speaker 2: It's like what and you know, but like so, but
Speaker 2: the funniest part about this is again, whenever any of
Speaker 2: these pieces come out, like every single conservative like pundits
Speaker 2: like in Unison and like like all of their fucking newspapers,
Speaker 2: all of their magazines, they're all funded by these people,
Speaker 2: so they all like published like identical things going like
Speaker 2: how dare you criticize like the noble friendship of hard
Speaker 2: of this billionaire and the Supreme Court justice or just pals.
Speaker 2: They're just extending hospitality like you would to any other
Speaker 2: friend by taking them on a half a million dollar
Speaker 2: cruise around on your yacht. It's it's it's it's like
Speaker 2: incredible stuff. All right, we should do we should we
Speaker 2: should do one more ads because you know who's These
Speaker 2: are advertisements that we are being paid to promote.
Speaker 3: These are not our personal opinions, these are these are ads.
Speaker 2: There.
Speaker 3: I followed the SEC guidelines. Here's the fucking ads, and
Speaker 3: we're back, totally totally not gonna get in trouble for
Speaker 3: that one.
Speaker 2: Let let lest you think, and I kind of emphasize
Speaker 2: this enough. This is something that was like when these
Speaker 2: stories first started coming out, the way it was framed
Speaker 2: was like like Clarence Thomas is like a uniquely corrupt
Speaker 2: Supreme Court justice. And then people did literally any digging,
Speaker 2: and it turns out that Clarence Thomas is not a
Speaker 2: uniquely corrupt Supreme Court like all of the like Supreme
Speaker 2: Court legal justice like experts were like, this is like
Speaker 2: a unique situation the history of the court. And then
Speaker 2: like like literally two months later, so Samuel Alito, who
Speaker 2: is another Supreme Court justice, I in and this isn't.
Speaker 2: This is in two thousand and seven, appears on a
Speaker 2: a two hundred thousand dollars fishing trip in Alaska with
Speaker 2: a billionaire hedge fund manager, Paul Singer, who is Singer
Speaker 2: is like one of the most like Okay, as much
Speaker 2: as I don't like Carlan Crowe, like, Singer is like
Speaker 2: one of the most evil people who's ever lived.
Speaker 3: Do you know who Singer is? No, but I'm sure
Speaker 3: this opinion is is singers same opinion as all of
Speaker 3: our advertisers.
Speaker 2: Probably our advertisers probably don't like him. It would not
Speaker 2: surprise me. So Singer is just like incredibly unbelievably relentlessly
Speaker 2: aggressive like hedge fund guy, and his thing is he
Speaker 2: like goes into companies and like like makes really embarrassing
Speaker 2: like slideshows about their CEOs and then like deposes them
Speaker 2: and then takes them over and the trip's then for
Speaker 2: assets and sells them all. So that's like the one
Speaker 2: that's like one thing that he does. The other thing
Speaker 2: that he's cool, Well yeah, I mean it sucks because
Speaker 2: like every single person who would work, they lose their drop.
Speaker 2: But this that's the less bad thing that he does, right,
Speaker 2: Like like this this is what I'm talking like, this
Speaker 2: is like legitimate one of the worst people in the world,
Speaker 2: like for like any norm like Mitt Romney, right, like
Speaker 2: that was the worst shit that he ever did. Was
Speaker 2: was like just destroying a bunch of people's lives by
Speaker 2: like annihilating these companies. For Singer, that's like that's like
Speaker 2: the fuck, that's the bullshit stuff like that. That's like
Speaker 2: that's the fucking brush league shit. Singer's actual game is
Speaker 2: so one of the things that happens over the course
Speaker 2: of the seventies and eighties is you get a bunch
Speaker 2: of uh I've talked about this at length of my
Speaker 2: Neylberalist and episodes, But you get a bunch of these
Speaker 2: economies that basically like across the global South that just implode.
Speaker 2: And they implode because there's this combination of like commodity
Speaker 2: prices drop and then they have all these adjustable rate
Speaker 2: like loans that they're taken out and when Paul Volker
Speaker 2: hot like hikes interest rates, all of these like loans
Speaker 2: suddenly have like twenty percent interest, And so you have
Speaker 2: all these economies all over the world that just fucking
Speaker 2: are imploding because they suddenly have this like unbelievable that
Speaker 2: they can't pay off, and so over the course of
Speaker 2: the nineties, this kind of like anti IMF revolts starts
Speaker 2: and I have the International Monetary Fund are the people
Speaker 2: who you're borrowing money from who also destroy your economy
Speaker 2: to like you know, like pay the IMF back the money.
Speaker 2: By the time you get into like the two thousands,
Speaker 2: it's gotten less bad. Well, I guess bad again, tails Nate.
Speaker 2: But there had been this process of debt restructuring where
Speaker 2: these countries were allowed to like only pay like a
Speaker 2: small percentage of the debt because they just literally couldn't
Speaker 2: pay it because their economies have been destroyed. Or and
Speaker 2: this is another very common thing. You get a country
Speaker 2: where like a bunch of loans were taken out by
Speaker 2: like a dictator and he would just like buy planes
Speaker 2: with them and then he get deposed. But you know,
Speaker 2: the IMF and like the World Bank was still hold
Speaker 2: them liable for the loans. And it's like, well, okay,
Speaker 2: like that's like the money's gone right, Like it's in
Speaker 2: like a bunch of gold bars. This guy like drove
Speaker 2: across the border when he like fled.
Speaker 3: Singer.
Speaker 2: Singer is like the last guy who really goes in
Speaker 2: for like to buy this debt and the result is this, So,
Speaker 2: for example, like he buys a bunch of the debt
Speaker 2: of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the result
Speaker 2: of this is that he turns like the entire Congoese
Speaker 2: economy into this debt servicing machine. We're like just like
Speaker 2: every like there's they're like they're they're there's they're stripping
Speaker 2: the copper wires out of the buildings in order to
Speaker 2: like fucking pay for oh metaphorically, so metaphorically they are
Speaker 2: stripping the copper wires to pay this debt off. Uh,
Speaker 2: not metaphorically, they are taking food from the mouths of babies,
Speaker 2: because the way this stuff is paid for is they
Speaker 2: cut a bunch of government assistance programs and they're like,
Speaker 2: you know, they don't build fucking hospitals, they don't staff hospitals,
Speaker 2: and so like a lot, Like he has killed a
Speaker 2: lot of people, and his his most famous version of
Speaker 2: this was this battle that he waged against Argentina. So
Speaker 2: in in two thousand and one, there is this massive
Speaker 2: like basically like the last twentieth century, like the last
Speaker 2: twentieth century, communist revolution happens in Argentina in two thousand
Speaker 2: and one, and they lose, but it's they they lose
Speaker 2: like pretty it like only pretty narrowly doesn't work. Like
Speaker 2: there is a there is a timeline that is not
Speaker 2: that different from this one, where like like a bunch
Speaker 2: of anarchists basically have taking control of Argentina, and the
Speaker 2: result of this is that Argentina defaults on its debt,
Speaker 2: and you know, they default in this debt, so they
Speaker 2: enter this restructuring program, and all of the rest of
Speaker 2: the like people who are like holding this debt are like, okay, well,
Speaker 2: in order to let the Argentina economy recover and get
Speaker 2: like some of this money back, we'll just like let
Speaker 2: like okay, well, we'll like write off most of our debt.
Speaker 2: But Singer like looks at this and is like, oh shit,
Speaker 2: I'm just gonna buy all this debt that I know
Speaker 2: is junk and can't be repaid, and then I'm gonna
Speaker 2: go to the courts in the US and like just
Speaker 2: force Argentina to repay it. Now he sees not how
Speaker 2: debt is supposed to work.
Speaker 7: Right.
Speaker 2: The thing about debt, right, the thing about like lending
Speaker 2: someone money or you know, this is what essentially what
Speaker 2: buying someone's debt is right. The thing about that, right
Speaker 2: is if the person can't pay you back you're supposed to,
Speaker 2: you were out of the money, right like that. That's
Speaker 2: that's that's you know, this is this is the theoretical
Speaker 2: economic justification for why you can charge interest because there's risk.
Speaker 2: But what Singer figured out is that you could just
Speaker 2: use the US court system and you know, the threat
Speaker 2: of the the the implicit and explicit threat of the
Speaker 2: US military to just like force people to pay you
Speaker 2: whether they have money or not.
Speaker 3: And so and this is what so, this is what
Speaker 3: he does.
Speaker 2: He's he's like the one he's the one creditor because
Speaker 2: he buys like an enormous amount of this debt, and
Speaker 2: he's the one creditor who refuses to negotiate. And so
Speaker 2: he like starts running around the US trying to like
Speaker 2: steal Argentinian assets, like he tries to have like Argentina's
Speaker 2: central bank reserves seized. There's other like it's the most
Speaker 2: famous incidence, he tries to steal an Argentinian worship in
Speaker 2: order to pay down the debt. There's another one where
Speaker 2: like he tries to like he tries to steal Argentina's
Speaker 2: entire pension fund. And this causes this like series of
Speaker 2: like lawsuits that sort of like run their way through
Speaker 2: the courts, and in twenty fourteen, one of these cases
Speaker 2: finally makes it to this review court. And this is
Speaker 2: where Singers two hundred thousand dollars Alaskan fishing trip pays
Speaker 2: off because Samuel Alito rules that Argentina has to play
Speaker 2: Singer two point four billion dollars and eventually they do so.
Speaker 2: Alito like like he's also he also has another guy
Speaker 2: who just like pays for his vacations. Who's the uh
Speaker 2: I don't know if I want to say incredibly named
Speaker 2: or disturbingly named, but this guy's name is Robin Arkley
Speaker 2: the second wait, Robin Robin Arkley the second second God, Okay, yeah,
Speaker 2: and he's a also like a genuinely terrible person, like
Speaker 2: these are these are all like you read Hitchhickers. Have
Speaker 2: you read Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy? No? Okay, So
Speaker 2: my favorite bit from that is there's a bit where
Speaker 2: like the encyclopedia from the Foundation series, like from the future,
Speaker 2: like falls down and it falls open onto a page
Speaker 2: and someone had just made a joke about how these
Speaker 2: people are gonna be the first against the wall when
Speaker 2: the revolution comes. And the Encyclopedia for the Future drops
Speaker 2: down and they open it and it says that these
Speaker 2: two people were first against the wall when the revolution came.
Speaker 2: And that's like all of these people, these are like
Speaker 2: the worst people in the fucking world or like in
Speaker 2: the US.
Speaker 3: So this guy.
Speaker 2: Arcley makes his fortune like buying distressed mortgages and then
Speaker 2: for closing on people's houses and flipping them, so he
Speaker 2: is seems like a valuable contributor to the ecail, like
Speaker 2: I you know, I mean this is like this is
Speaker 2: literally like literally one of the old like crime think
Speaker 2: jokes was when the bank seizes your house, the GDP
Speaker 2: GDP goes up. Like that's literally this guy, this, this
Speaker 2: is the guy who makes the GDP go up by
Speaker 2: seizing it by stealing your house. And so this guy
Speaker 2: takes Alito on a bunch of trips. So when when
Speaker 2: Republica like reaches out to Aledo about this, he gets
Speaker 2: so mad that she the Wall Street Journal editorial board
Speaker 2: allows him to publish a like an op ed that
Speaker 2: is just him yelling about how this article that hasn't
Speaker 2: come out yet is fake. And one of the specific
Speaker 2: things that he's really mad about is part of this
Speaker 2: article is talking about how the wine at this met
Speaker 2: at this like lodge that he's staying at that's being
Speaker 2: paid for by by the fucking mortgage slipper. Guy has
Speaker 2: a thousand dollars a bottle wine and Claire's time was
Speaker 2: just like, no, the wine is not was not a
Speaker 2: thousand dollars a bottle. You can check the website. And
Speaker 2: then Republica was like, well, yeah, but that's because the lodge,
Speaker 2: like the quality of the lodge was downgraded after Alito
Speaker 2: had like one of the like just just just a
Speaker 2: truly incredible meltdown that he was just allowed to have
Speaker 2: in the op ed section of the Wall Street Journal
Speaker 2: in like in response, not even in response like before
Speaker 2: this article came out. And the other thing that we
Speaker 2: learned from this is that also apparently former Justice Antonin
Speaker 2: Scalia also was taking trips from this guy. So this
Speaker 2: is just like every conservative like justice in the last
Speaker 2: like twenty years has just been doing this. They've just
Speaker 2: been getting like flown around the world on fancy vacations
Speaker 2: by their billionaire friends. Well, I don't actually know if
Speaker 2: I actually might merely be a millionaire. I'm not tired sure,
Speaker 2: but he may might be a billionaire.
Speaker 8: I don't know.
Speaker 3: The other two definitely are wait millionaire a billionaire because
Speaker 3: those are two very difficult.
Speaker 2: Okay, I I let me let me, let me let
Speaker 2: me google. Is this is this guy a billionaire?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Arkley doesn't seem to be a billionaire. He seems to
Speaker 2: merely be Well, no, I've seen in other places that
Speaker 2: he is a billionaire.
Speaker 8: I don't know.
Speaker 2: There's some dispute actually the guy there's like dispute over
Speaker 2: what's his net worth? Oh, we don't know. It's unclear.
Speaker 2: What does there's there's dispute over.
Speaker 3: It dispute disputed net worth?
Speaker 2: Yeah, unclear. The other two guys definitely billionaires. This guy
Speaker 2: may be a billionaire unclear.
Speaker 3: But like literally like all of.
Speaker 2: These literally all these estices I have just been like
Speaker 2: taking just like and again, any other thing I forgot
Speaker 2: to mention that I should have mentioned. Is it like
Speaker 2: all of these people have had cases appear before the
Speaker 2: Streame court.
Speaker 1: Hmm, curiously.
Speaker 2: And then this is another amazing thing. This is the
Speaker 2: thing that came up like really prominently when there was
Speaker 2: a case that you know, there was a case about
Speaker 2: the attempt to like overthrow the government in twenty twenty
Speaker 2: or in twenty one that like well in twenty twenty
Speaker 2: and twenty twenty one that Thomas like objectively should have
Speaker 2: re queued himself from because his wife tried to throw
Speaker 2: the government and he just didn't. And this and this
Speaker 2: is a this is a really important thing, which is
Speaker 2: that Supreme Court justices it's like your fucking daughter like
Speaker 2: could be one of the plaintiffs in a case and
Speaker 2: you don't have to recuse yourself. Is recruising yourself is
Speaker 2: completely voluntary, m which is not how this works for
Speaker 2: fucking anything else. Right, But again, the Supreme Court is
Speaker 2: not like it's not actually a court. It's just like
Speaker 2: a fucking it's just this like weird dictatorial tribunal that
Speaker 2: is subject to like absolutely no authority whatsoever. And Okay,
Speaker 2: So it also turns out that there's like there's like
Speaker 2: yet another layer of fuckery with this, which is that
Speaker 2: universities u Supreme Court used Supreme Court justices to solicit
Speaker 2: donations by like so so they'll they'll have like a
Speaker 2: don invite a justice to like give a talk at
Speaker 2: the university and they'll pay them a bunch of money
Speaker 2: and then they'll they'll have them like go to a
Speaker 2: dinner and then they'll advertise to all their donors like, hey,
Speaker 2: if you give us a bunch of money, you can
Speaker 2: go to this dinner with Supreme Court justice. And so
Speaker 2: a bunch of like like a bunch of people who
Speaker 2: have cases in front of the Supreme Court like use
Speaker 2: this to go get access to a bunch of Spreme
Speaker 2: Court justices. So it's great, this is this is really fun.
Speaker 2: Oh did I did I do the Venmo thing? No,
Speaker 2: I've got the Venmo thing. Okay, Okay, here's the Venmo thing.
Speaker 2: So two days after I started, like like two days ago,
Speaker 2: like from the time of writing this will be like
Speaker 2: like this will actually be like almost exactly. Wow, It'll
Speaker 2: be like almost a week from when when this comes out.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 2: There was another thing of this that came out, which
Speaker 2: is that a bunch of lawyers had just been sending
Speaker 2: money on Venmo to one of Claren's Thomas's aids. And
Speaker 2: these okay, like the the these these are like these
Speaker 2: are not just people who have like active cases. These
Speaker 2: are like like one of the guys who venmoed Thomas's
Speaker 2: aid is the guy who won the affirmative action case.
Speaker 3: And another one of the one.
Speaker 2: Of the other lawyers you've met him is the guy
Speaker 2: who I don't know if you remember this, like like
Speaker 2: in like the last like term of the court, there
Speaker 2: was a case where the Supreme Court like fucked the
Speaker 2: EPA's ability to regulate greenhouse gases.
Speaker 3: So that lawyer also paid.
Speaker 2: A bunch of money on Venmo Clarence Thomas's aid. So
Speaker 2: this is this is the level though of corruption that
Speaker 2: we're working at, right, which is like people sending public
Speaker 2: Venmo transactions to the aids of Supreme Court justices who's
Speaker 2: about who are about to hear their cases.
Speaker 8: Uh, that's so good.
Speaker 1: Now there isn't this is.
Speaker 2: Happening that the right has built like just an extensive
Speaker 2: and incredibly excessive network to seize control of the judiciary. Uh,
Speaker 2: liberals have produced no such network because they're fucking hacks
Speaker 2: and this and this is not It's not just the
Speaker 2: sort of like there's only one like liberal billionaire, Like, no,
Speaker 2: there are liberal billionaires. The actual real problem with a
Speaker 2: liberal attempt to like take control of the judiciary is
Speaker 2: that like liberal like liberal lawyers are hacks instead of
Speaker 2: actually like trying to hold on to like judicial positions, right,
Speaker 2: and you know, to have to like move their way
Speaker 2: up through like circuit courts in order to like like
Speaker 2: seize control of like large, like increasingly large portions of
Speaker 2: of the court system, which is all the Republicans did. Uh.
Speaker 2: The Democratic lawyers, they'll they'll get like like they they
Speaker 2: do the even lazier corruption, which is like they'll just
Speaker 2: they'll be a judge for like three years and then
Speaker 2: they'll just leave the private practice because they're all just
Speaker 2: fucking greedy shits. And you know the result of this
Speaker 2: is that all these like fucking liberal lawyers, Uh, you know,
Speaker 2: they go into private practice and make a quick buck
Speaker 2: and they leave us to fucking burn to death in
Speaker 2: this smolder and keep while they spend their vacations in Bali.
Speaker 2: And you know, and and again, the only the only
Speaker 2: thing that like could conceivably slow down the Supreme Court
Speaker 2: is the fact that like technically speaking, so it's never
Speaker 2: actually gone through, it is possible for like Congress to
Speaker 2: impeach the Supreme Court justice. But the Democrats don't want
Speaker 2: to do that because because then the right, we'll be
Speaker 2: able to impeach all of the liberals justice.
Speaker 3: No, it's worse than that.
Speaker 2: There the actual Biden's actual state of reason for why
Speaker 2: he didn't want to do it is because it would
Speaker 2: undermine the legitimacy of the court. And you know, and
Speaker 2: the result of this is that, like for all their
Speaker 2: they're fucking screaming about lawlessness and rising crime rates, the
Speaker 2: fucking biggest criminals in the entire goddamn country are just
Speaker 2: literally sitting in their stupid ass robes taking the biggest
Speaker 2: bribes in the history of the fucking republic. And the
Speaker 2: Democrats are just like, wow, if we do anything, it'll
Speaker 2: undermine the faith in our institutions. So I gad, fuck them.
Speaker 2: But also like, we don't fucking need these people like
Speaker 2: you could, Like you could, you can fit all of
Speaker 2: these people in one submarine and we could just be
Speaker 2: fucking dumb with it.
Speaker 3: And then if we get a whole bunch of news
Speaker 3: supreper court this is picked by Joe Biden, and they
Speaker 3: would save America. So that's why we need to vote
Speaker 3: for Joe Biden twenty twenty four. Save America.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, this is than submarine. This is the submarine plot.
Speaker 2: It'll go great.
Speaker 3: We have to mandated submarine vacations for all Supreme courteous
Speaker 3: The submarine.
Speaker 2: Is now the only vehicle you're allowed to travel on.
Speaker 3: Justice taxpayer funded titanic explorations for all Supreme Court justices.
Speaker 2: We're already giving them two hundred and eighty five thousand
Speaker 2: dollars a year. It's not actually that it wouldn't We
Speaker 2: would save money if we just both salary. My position
Speaker 2: on this is clear. This is this is a this
Speaker 2: is a fiscally conservative position.
Speaker 3: Mostudget can be interpreted as fiscally conservative. It's cheaper to
Speaker 3: put all the people in houses than do what we're
Speaker 3: doing now. Anyway, Well, I'm glad we could learn about
Speaker 3: how the Supreme Court is good and.
Speaker 2: Just well, you know, the second thing you can learn
Speaker 2: is if if you some if you one day somehow
Speaker 2: are like a semi minor Chicago politician, you now know how.
Speaker 2: You now know how to launder money.
Speaker 3: Which which does sound exciting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you never know, you never know.
Speaker 3: Well, thank you for this insightful look at at at
Speaker 3: at at nineteen seventies mystery villain Harlan Crowe, who has
Speaker 3: a mansion full of Hitler paintings. This feels like it's
Speaker 3: like the it's it's like the location of like a
Speaker 3: like of like of like an Agatha Christie like book
Speaker 3: or something. Let's all investigate the murder of Harlan Crowe. Spoilers.
Speaker 3: It was Supreme Court. It was a Supreme Court justice.
Speaker 7: Hello, and welcome to It could happened here. I'm Andrew
Speaker 7: of Diiti Channel andrewism.
Speaker 3: And Hi, this is this is Garrison. I've not been
Speaker 3: on an Andrew episode in a while.
Speaker 7: Yeah, spin a minute, Spin a minute, and it's been
Speaker 7: a meme at this point that Atra or New Zealand
Speaker 7: is forgotten, you know, from maps, both physical and mental.
Speaker 7: But those islands contain a rich history of activism that
Speaker 7: deserves this spotlight.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 7: Much of what I've discovered has been sounds the academic
Speaker 7: efforts of Tayahu and I hope saying the name correctly,
Speaker 7: but their research found formed the foundation of my exploration
Speaker 7: of just some of the twentieth century history behind contemporary
Speaker 7: Maori struggles for auto and me on the islands. The
Speaker 7: story of Mari oppression begins not long after the arrival
Speaker 7: of European settlers in the late eighteenth century. The Treaty
Speaker 7: of Waitangi, signed in eighteen forty between the British Crown
Speaker 7: and Mari chiefs, was meant to protect Maori rights and
Speaker 7: ensure a peaceful co existence. However, as a bilingual text,
Speaker 7: it kind of sucked at being bilingual because some of
Speaker 7: the words in the English treaty did not translate directly
Speaker 7: into the written Maori language of the time, and to
Speaker 7: the Mari text is not an exact translation of the
Speaker 7: English text, particuarly in relation to the meaning of having
Speaker 7: and seden sovereignty. In other words, the full implications of
Speaker 7: what they were signing was not fully understood. The concept
Speaker 7: of private land ownership as the British understood it clashed
Speaker 7: with Maori communal land practices, which led to a significant
Speaker 7: land loss for Maria communities. The New Zealand government implemented
Speaker 7: policies and laws that systematically favored European settlers, and throughout
Speaker 7: the latter half of the nineteenth century, Mari lost control
Speaker 7: of much of the land they had owned, sometimes through
Speaker 7: legitimate sale, but often by way of unfaired land deals,
Speaker 7: settlers occupying land that had not been sold, or through
Speaker 7: outright confiscation in the aftermath of the New Zealand Wars
Speaker 7: and New Zealand Wars, where they also as the Land
Speaker 7: Wars or Mari Wars, were a series of conflicts that
Speaker 7: took place in Auti Aura between the indigenous married people
Speaker 7: and the British government and its colonial forces. These wars
Speaker 7: banned from the early eighteen forties to the late eighteen seventies,
Speaker 7: and the underlying cause was that very stroubled for land
Speaker 7: and resources as European settlers were arriving in increasing numbers
Speaker 7: and more and more dispute ceteris and over land ownership
Speaker 7: and the interpretation of the Treaty of Watangi. The wars
Speaker 7: were fought on multiple fronts involving different married tribes and regions.
Speaker 7: Conflicts included the Northern War, the Tehrank, the Taranaki Wars,
Speaker 7: the Wakaito War, and the Tauranga Campaign, and these were
Speaker 7: also characterized by a combination of gorilla warfare, fortifications, and
Speaker 7: conventional military tactics.
Speaker 8: The results, as with pretty much.
Speaker 7: All wars, was the disruption of well in this case
Speaker 7: specifically traditional Mari social structures and economic systems, and the
Speaker 7: results and hardship for those Mari communities and so as
Speaker 7: the nineteen and twentieth century progressed, Mari oppression also manifest
Speaker 7: in the suppression of cultural practices and languages by the government.
Speaker 7: As a government aimed to assimilate Mari into European culture,
Speaker 7: because of course, to them, European culture is considered superior.
Speaker 7: Married children were often forced into English speaking schools where
Speaker 7: their own language and customs were discouraged, and that also
Speaker 7: led to decline the use in transmission of the Mari
Speaker 7: language and the loss of cultural identity for many Maria individuals.
Speaker 7: This I think can be characterized as a cultural genocide. Moreover,
Speaker 7: discriminatory pract justices were prevalent in various areas and putting
Speaker 7: an employment, in housing, and in political representation, married people
Speaker 7: faced significant barriers and discrimination when seeking employment or housing opportunities.
Speaker 7: They were also underrepresented in political institutions, which limits to
Speaker 7: their ability to advocate for the rights and influence decision
Speaker 7: making processes. Now, the seeds of contemporary married activism were
Speaker 7: sowing in the sixties and seventies. Struggles were taking place
Speaker 7: basically from the point of first contact, but Mari activism
Speaker 7: as we understand it.
Speaker 8: Today really launched with a new fervor.
Speaker 7: In the sixties and seventies. The late sixties and early
Speaker 7: seventies really marked a turbulent period globally because there was
Speaker 7: an upsurgent class conflicts and social activism. You know, they
Speaker 7: are the independence movements and decolonization movements happening all over
Speaker 7: the world. It's a time when people all over were
Speaker 7: taking a stand against injustice and fighting for their rights.
Speaker 8: And this wave of political and social movements.
Speaker 7: As soon as the New Left had a profound impact
Speaker 7: on the Islands as well in New Zealand as in elsewhere,
Speaker 7: student activism was really taken shape across the world. Students
Speaker 7: who were protesting against the Vietnam War in the US,
Speaker 7: they were advocating for black liberation, and then they were
Speaker 7: all social movements gave momentum, like the women's liberation movement,
Speaker 7: the anti racism movement, the environmentalism movements, and the game
Speaker 7: that's been rights movements. They were all sparking around the
Speaker 7: same time. So the New Left and autai rower was
Speaker 7: shaped by these international developments. The late nineteen sixties when
Speaker 7: it's a surge in student activism and the emergencyverior social
Speaker 7: movements again environmentalism, women's liberation, anti racism, et cetera. And
Speaker 7: so Mari protest groups were really picking up on those movements,
Speaker 7: and those movements would shape the mindsets and the actions
Speaker 7: of Mari protest groups during that period. They were taking
Speaker 7: the analysis and the understanding of racism and inequalities faced
Speaker 7: by MARI in a broader context, and so they will
Speaker 7: aligning themselves with class struggle as well and were to
Speaker 7: progressify due to the left at large. So this point
Speaker 7: in time, the Maori struggle, it was characterized as largely leftist.
Speaker 7: That is something that will change later on as the
Speaker 7: movements become more heterogeneous, but for now it's been mostly leftist.
Speaker 7: Even though there were some part protest groups that were
Speaker 7: less left oriented and more just you know, national liberation
Speaker 7: and focused, they still saw themselves as part of.
Speaker 8: This broader left movement.
Speaker 7: Okay, they were still actively working to incorporate these radical
Speaker 7: intellectual traditions, particularly Marxism and feminism, into the Maori struggle.
Speaker 7: In the late nineteen sixties, there was this very strong
Speaker 7: collaboration taking place between Pakeha or European New Zealanders and
Speaker 7: Pakeha antiraist groups and the emergent Maori protest movements. One
Speaker 7: significant event that really brought them together was the exclusion
Speaker 7: of Mari rugby players from the nineteen sixty All Black
Speaker 7: Tour of South Africa by the New Zealand Rugby Football Association,
Speaker 7: and that decision, of course sparked widespread opposition because at
Speaker 7: the time South Africa was very much involved in the
Speaker 7: part TI and this decision to exclude Mari rugby players
Speaker 7: from the team and from that particular tour led to
Speaker 7: many protests under this banner of no Maori, No Tour,
Speaker 7: which focused on only in the exclusion of the Maori,
Speaker 7: but also on the morality of engagion with the country
Speaker 7: practicing apartheid. More collaboration would take place in the form
Speaker 7: of the formation of the Halt All Racist Tours Group
Speaker 7: also its Heart in nineteen sixty nine, which is an
Speaker 7: umbrella organization that united a couple different voices and groups,
Speaker 7: both Maori and Pakeha in the opposition to reduce their
Speaker 7: discriminatory sports tours and they ARESO involved organizations like ker
Speaker 7: which included young Mari political.
Speaker 8: Activists among its members, alongside.
Speaker 7: Pakeha political activists in organizing these panel discussions to address
Speaker 7: the position of Mari in New Zealand society.
Speaker 8: And then this is going on. This also the growth
Speaker 8: in the influence of individuals like.
Speaker 7: Gahria te Awaikotuku and John Abatiri began shedding more and
Speaker 7: more light and the barriers that prevented married women specifically
Speaker 7: from fully participated and contributed to Maori society. They were
Speaker 7: out here criticizing the patriarchal nature to show Mari leadership,
Speaker 7: an adivacation for the speaking rights of Mari women tran
Speaker 7: inspiration from the broader, non Mari specific women's liberation movement
Speaker 7: as well.
Speaker 3: So these were like other with these other movements that
Speaker 3: were happening in New Zealand that were kind of working
Speaker 3: together or this just like part of like a broader
Speaker 3: trend of these movements in the sixties.
Speaker 7: Yes, so they were starting to collaborate. At this point
Speaker 7: in time, both Pakeha and Mari poltical organizations were being
Speaker 7: to form connections and spark discussions other Pakia organizations obviously
Speaker 7: being of the leftist variety, and the Maori organizations being
Speaker 7: primarily leftist, apparently aligned themselves with the leftists causes and
Speaker 7: poisical ideologies.
Speaker 3: But from like a more like indigenous perspective and standpoint
Speaker 3: and like goals, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 8: Definactly all right, got it.
Speaker 7: One particular organization, which was forming in the mid nineteen
Speaker 7: seventies was created by Maori women within the Mario activist
Speaker 7: organization Tamatoa, who had embraced a feminist perspective to analyze
Speaker 7: the oppression faced by Mario and particularly and this awareness
Speaker 7: was fueled by their experiences of frustration and anger with
Speaker 7: the Mari land rights movement, because these women are here
Speaker 7: and they're struggling or Mari rights as a whole, but
Speaker 7: then also they're facing issues as women, both in the
Speaker 7: organization and in broader society. So they're fighting to presume
Speaker 7: the politics and culture and language of Mari society while
Speaker 7: also seeking liberation from the oppression that they would face
Speaker 7: in that Maria society. So it's a struggle for both
Speaker 7: preservation and also reformation of Maori society, or rather liberation,
Speaker 7: preservation and reformation. There was also an increase in strike
Speaker 7: activity and general class struggle happening during the late nineteen sixties,
Speaker 7: which had a significant impact in the political education of
Speaker 7: many Mari workers who were fighting for better wages and
Speaker 7: improved working conditions. Trade unions were playing a crucial role
Speaker 7: in providing organizational base for MARI protest groups, as demonstrated
Speaker 7: by the emergence of groups like Tehokioi and the Mari
Speaker 7: Organization on Human Rights or MWHR, both located in Wellington
Speaker 7: and both strongly connected to trade unions. The secretary in
Speaker 7: fact of the MWHR, Tamapuata, was actively involved in the
Speaker 7: Wellington Drivers Union and the New Zealand Communist Party. These
Speaker 7: organizations were advocating for an alliance between MARI and progressive elopments.
Speaker 7: In the working class I view, the fundamental contradiction society
Speaker 7: is being between labor and capital, between workers and bosses
Speaker 7: or landowners, and racism was seen as a consequence of
Speaker 7: class inequality, and the majority of Maori being working class
Speaker 7: were considered an impressed segment.
Speaker 8: Of the working class.
Speaker 7: Both te Pokeioi and m WHR promoted the idea of
Speaker 7: a unified struggle across racial lines, focusing one class B
Speaker 7: strategies as the most effective means of addressing racism and
Speaker 7: reducing MARI inequality. If you pick an up hints of
Speaker 7: class reductionism.
Speaker 3: YEP I was I was actually gonna mention that.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 7: Yeah, there are some hints of that in this particular approach,
Speaker 7: and you'll see the consequences of that as we progress
Speaker 7: a bit further through the history.
Speaker 3: Like, could you, I mean, could you briefly explain class
Speaker 3: reductionism in case someone is like listening and is unaware
Speaker 3: of that concept.
Speaker 8: Sure. So, class reductionism is basically the.
Speaker 7: Idea that the exportation of label and the exportation of
Speaker 7: the working class by the capitalist class is the fundamental,
Speaker 7: you know, form of oppression within society, and it trumps
Speaker 7: all other social divisions, all of the phones of oppressions
Speaker 7: such as racism or sexism.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Like when you mentioned like they're viewing like racism
Speaker 3: as like a consequence of capitalism, right, That puts racism
Speaker 3: like after capitalism. But racism has existed way before capitalism
Speaker 3: and is manyway one of is it is one of
Speaker 3: the main drivers of capitalism. It's not merely a consequence.
Speaker 3: It's actually like a motivating factor.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and particularly their position that focusing on class based
Speaker 7: strategies will be the most effective means of addressing racism. Yeah,
Speaker 7: what I can see from a particular angle considering that
Speaker 7: the majority of Mari will work in class at the time,
Speaker 7: saying that the best way to alleviate their condition were
Speaker 7: to focus on things we do to impact their class position.
Speaker 7: That may be true, but then at the same time
Speaker 7: you also to consider that the racism embedded within you see,
Speaker 7: the society, you're not going to go away just as
Speaker 7: a result of the end to that class based depression.
Speaker 7: To be fair to the MWHR, they will also playing
Speaker 7: an active role in reaison awareness about racism specifically you know,
Speaker 7: in housing, in sports and employment, and in violation generally
Speaker 7: of marrit political rights. They also had a very strong
Speaker 7: stance on issues related to the Treaty of Waitangi, you know,
Speaker 7: the alienation of Mari from the land and the depletion
Speaker 7: of resources and the inability of Maori to access those resources.
Speaker 7: Their stance, interestingly enough, was really on sort of reclaiming
Speaker 7: the Treaty of Waitangi as a potential foundation for harmonious
Speaker 7: and bicultural country with the conditions that past injustices were
Speaker 7: addressed and rectified. However, like I alluded to earlier, there
Speaker 7: would be a shift as the movements would progress. The
Speaker 7: inspirational monum behind the te ho Kioi and MHR had
Speaker 7: begun to weigne, particularly during the lea to mid nineteen seventies,
Speaker 7: and eventually in nineteen seventy five, the m WHR would
Speaker 7: merge with Matekite as part of the Land Rights movement,
Speaker 7: which marked the end of their separate existence and also
Speaker 7: led to the rise of Brown Power. So if brown
Speaker 7: power sounds like black power, that's because it's copy and
Speaker 7: black power. Similar to the ideologies of black power advocated
Speaker 7: by folks like Kwamiture and Charles B. Hammat, Brown power
Speaker 7: centered on the complete rejection of the racist institutions and
Speaker 7: values of New Zealand society, and the belief that the
Speaker 7: group solidarity was essential effective collective action and negotiation. The
Speaker 7: proponents of brown power urged Maori people to unite to
Speaker 7: recognize their shared history and the faster sent of.
Speaker 8: Solidarity and community.
Speaker 7: Significant emphasis was placed on the goal of Marie's self determination,
Speaker 7: which of all, the ability for Maria to define their
Speaker 7: own objectives and to establish their own distinct organizations and institutions.
Speaker 7: So this is like at this point, brown power, much
Speaker 7: like black power, is the opposite of just assimilation or
Speaker 7: adjustment or cohabitation with existing structures. It is a movement
Speaker 7: that desired complete autonomy from those systems, from those structures,
Speaker 7: an assertion of the freedom of married people to exist
Speaker 7: and not have their existence in pots to port. The
Speaker 7: organization Tamatoa initially drew inspiration from the revolutionary faction of
Speaker 7: the Black pap movement in the US. However, as the
Speaker 7: group evolved, different interests and objectives had emerged, which led
Speaker 7: to a division within the movement. On the one side,
Speaker 7: they were the conservative, university educated members such as Sid
Speaker 7: and Hannah Jackson, Peter Reikis, and Donabtiri. And on the
Speaker 7: other side they were the more militant proponents of black
Speaker 7: or brown power like John Ohio, Paul Kottara and Tednia. Eventually, unfortunately,
Speaker 7: the more conservative members of Tamatoa really took center stage
Speaker 7: in the movement. Their strategies diverged from the militants in
Speaker 7: that they sort changed through alliance with more liberal elements
Speaker 7: within the Ruins. They believed that by implementing appropriate legal measures,
Speaker 7: MARI could achieve prosperity. They were really advocating for like
Speaker 7: wealtha and self help programs for our development, and in fact,
Speaker 7: there was even some belief among them that New Zealand
Speaker 7: capitalism coupled with the parliamentary political system could be rid
Speaker 7: of racism, that you could extract racism from capitalism and
Speaker 7: then everything would be hunky doory.
Speaker 3: Interesting. Yeah, which is like this perspective, which is like
Speaker 3: the opposite of like the class productionism that we mentioned previously.
Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah, yeah, And I mean this perspective is exactly
Speaker 7: the kind of thing that you see manifest again and
Speaker 7: again within political movements so across the world. Really the
Speaker 7: interests of middle class, university educated individuals who are more
Speaker 7: focused on their own individual advancement within the existing system
Speaker 7: than an actual thorough critique of the structure and history
Speaker 7: of that system.
Speaker 8: And so when you have when you're fueled by those.
Speaker 7: Individual interests and you're focused on how you can advance
Speaker 7: through that system in business or in politics, whatever the
Speaker 7: case may be, it's very easy to just you know,
Speaker 7: be like, oh, well, how not you guys are talking
Speaker 7: about And I'm sure, but once we get the racism
Speaker 7: out of the way, you know, we can all succeed,
Speaker 7: wink wink.
Speaker 8: But of course that is a rather my opic approach.
Speaker 7: And so as a result of the centrality of those individuals,
Speaker 7: and that particular perspective in the movement, the meaning of
Speaker 7: Brown power as a slogan kind of got watered down.
Speaker 7: It became more ambiguous and potentially associated with either mari
Speaker 7: capitalism or evolutionary activity. Arguably, the same thing could be
Speaker 7: said for Black power. A lot of people, a lot
Speaker 7: of advocates of black power ended up going in the
Speaker 7: direction of black capitalism, talented tenth black business, black wealth,
Speaker 7: that kind of thing. And well, we've seen consequences to that.
Speaker 7: I mean, they are more black billionaires and millionaires than
Speaker 7: they ever have been in human history. But that doesn't
Speaker 7: mean racism has been dealt with. Putting aside the capitalist
Speaker 7: oriented advocates of Brown Powell on the revolutionary side, a
Speaker 7: new group would emerged to challenge the system. And this
Speaker 7: group and you're going to you know, going to pick
Speaker 7: up on a little bit of a theme here in
Speaker 7: terms of inspiration. This group was called the Polynesian Panthers.
Speaker 7: Interesting establishing. Yeah, they were established in June of nineteen
Speaker 7: seventy one, and they had a membership primarily composed of
Speaker 7: Pacific Islanders such as simmer Ones, Tongueuns, and New Ones,
Speaker 7: and they drew obviously explicitly inspiration from the Black Panther
Speaker 7: Party in the United States.
Speaker 8: Just a heads up in Maori, well in New Zealand,
Speaker 8: the Mari.
Speaker 7: And the Paqua, the Pakea. The Europeans are the two
Speaker 7: primary groups right, but in New Zealand they are also
Speaker 7: minorities of other Pacific islanders Samoans and Tonguuns and New
Speaker 7: Ones and people from the other smaller islands within Polynesia,
Speaker 7: within the you know area, from those various islands in
Speaker 7: Oceania and the Pacific Ocean, and.
Speaker 8: A lot of them.
Speaker 7: Had arrived as immigrants during the nineteen sixties economic boom
Speaker 7: that had taken place in New Zealand. The founders of
Speaker 7: the Polynesian Panther Party were actually high school students.
Speaker 8: They weren't universittudents, they weren't adults.
Speaker 7: They were mostly from working class first generation families's and
Speaker 7: their parents were actually encouraged by the New Zealand government
Speaker 7: to migrate as cheap labor during that economic boom. But
Speaker 7: of course, as these things go again once even like
Speaker 7: looking at this history and for any significant length of time,
Speaker 7: you see certain patterns emerge. So governments are going to
Speaker 7: invite you're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, migrants come, We'll take
Speaker 7: advantage of your label. And then the second last of
Speaker 7: down to migrants are to blame for everything. So as
Speaker 7: the production boom was subsiding in the mid nineteen seventies
Speaker 7: and living conditions were deteriorating, racism and police harassment against
Speaker 7: Pacific Islanders became even more prevalent. And by the Pacific
Speaker 7: Islanders does technically refer to Mari as well, and the
Speaker 7: Polynesian Panther party position is that Mari our Pacific Islanders
Speaker 7: are into the part of the Polynesian Panthers, but speaking
Speaker 7: specifically about the migrant Pacific Islanders and they experiencing they're
Speaker 7: doing three, you know, just like the Maori. They're dealing
Speaker 7: with low wages and poor living conditions and the government,
Speaker 7: you know, being migrants, they're an even more precurious position
Speaker 7: because government had taken a more aggressive stance towards over stayers,
Speaker 7: people who overstayed on their work visas, which put these
Speaker 7: first generation New Zealanders at risk of deportation to countries
Speaker 7: that they had never visited, had never known, you know,
Speaker 7: being forced into these precarious circumstances. A lot of young
Speaker 7: Pacific Islanders were living in unsafe neighborhoods and a lot
Speaker 7: of them felt compelled to join gangs or to stay
Speaker 7: hidden at home for survival, and so the Polynation Panthers
Speaker 7: really emerged as an alternative option, seeking to provide a
Speaker 7: more positive path for young people in Pacific Islander communities.
Speaker 7: The Polynesian Panthers were particularly influenced by huy Newton's policy
Speaker 7: of Black Unity, and also echoed his distinction between revolutionary
Speaker 7: and cultural nationalism when debating the conservative members of Nagatamatoo.
Speaker 7: The Panthers identified their root cause of Pacific calendar oppression
Speaker 7: within the exploitative social relations of the capitalist system, and
Speaker 7: so they advocated for a liberation strategy that involved completely
Speaker 7: overthrowing the capitalist system and the social relations and enabled
Speaker 7: its existence. And so in practice this meant that the
Speaker 7: Panthers expressed solidarity with other liberation struggles, oppressed groups and activists,
Speaker 7: and ultimately aimed for a global revolution.
Speaker 8: They worked to.
Speaker 7: Empower the Pomation community and improve their quality of life.
Speaker 7: They organized strikes and factories with the poor working conditions.
Speaker 7: They protested outside substandard housing through the Tenant's Aid Brigade,
Speaker 7: They established homework centers to help address educational struggles, and
Speaker 7: they focused on the reason awareness of right and entitlements
Speaker 7: among Pacific Island of families who were often unaware of.
Speaker 8: Their legal protections.
Speaker 7: The fact a lot of the Panthers focus was on
Speaker 7: assistant individuals who were caught up in legal issues. They
Speaker 7: distributed pamphlets that informed people of their rights, they provided
Speaker 7: legal aid for court representation, and they organized buses for
Speaker 7: families to visit their loved ones in prison. Fund the
Speaker 7: Panthers support and advocacy in them the gratitude of prisoners,
Speaker 7: who often contributed a portion of their mega earnings to
Speaker 7: the movement. As they shed light on the daily struggles
Speaker 7: faced by Maori and also other Pacific Islanders, ranging from
Speaker 7: land claims, discrimination, police violence. The Panthers actively worked to
Speaker 7: unite Maori and Pacific Islanders in a pan ethnic coalition,
Speaker 7: which contrasted with the viewpoint in Nigard Tamato because they
Speaker 7: were prioritizing Mari unity above everything else. It almost reminds
Speaker 7: me of the the way that sometimes in the US
Speaker 7: context there were some organizations, or rather there are some
Speaker 7: to me SI of organizations that are attempting now in
Speaker 7: the present day, to emphasize African American unity above and
Speaker 7: before any other form of Pan Afghanism, more Black unity,
Speaker 7: so an insiduous seeds, to attempt to distance African Americans
Speaker 7: from the rest of the BLASBA and to ferment divisions
Speaker 7: between African Americans and African immigrants or Caribbean immigrants. So
Speaker 7: again the tactics the strategy is the it feels like
Speaker 7: a canon event at this point that there will always
Speaker 7: be These individuals or groups were trying to find ways
Speaker 7: to chop up and to divide troops that should be
Speaker 7: united and have a lot to gain from being united
Speaker 7: in a common struggle. The Panthers, along with any other
Speaker 7: Pacific Island youth, were actively working to support MARI causes,
Speaker 7: including the nineteen seventy five Landmarch and the Bastion Point occupation.
Speaker 7: They became one more depth at political lobbying, which became
Speaker 7: apparent during the Dawn Rates in nineteen seventies and the
Speaker 7: Spring Bok Tour of nineteen eighty one. T Ness was
Speaker 7: jailed for his actions during the tour but essentially released
Speaker 7: out charge and will Lahya, along with jne Harawira and others.
Speaker 7: One trial for two years, only getting off the charge
Speaker 7: after and you know they'll come your parents here. Bishop
Speaker 7: Desmond tou Tou, well known South African activist, flew in
Speaker 7: to be a character witness for their trial, and I
Speaker 7: think I'm going to put a pin on it. There
Speaker 7: covered the seeds of contemporary Maria activism, the trade union movement,
Speaker 7: Brown Power, and the Polynesian Panthers. And in the next
Speaker 7: episode we'll talk more about the development of the land
Speaker 7: rights movement and the weaknesses of the Mari struggle in
Speaker 7: the post nineteen eighties context. That's the penal for me.
Speaker 7: I'm Andrew could follow me a youtubet at andrew'sm and
Speaker 7: supporting patron of commns slash Saint Drew. This has been it,
Speaker 7: hey everyone, and welcome back to it could happen here.
Speaker 7: In my last part, I spoke a bit about the
Speaker 7: historical context of.
Speaker 8: The Mari struggle New Zealand or aut AA.
Speaker 7: Spoke about these seeds of contemporary Mari activism, the involvement
Speaker 7: of Mari in the trade union movements and the development
Speaker 7: of Mari women's movements, as well as the development of
Speaker 7: the Brown Power slogan and the split between the movements
Speaker 7: more radical and more conservative coalitions, with the former eventually
Speaker 7: going on to as inspired by the Black Panther parts
Speaker 7: in the US, formed the Polynesian Panthers. For those on
Speaker 7: where this as it could happen here, I am Andrew
Speaker 7: of the channel Andrism, and I'm joined.
Speaker 3: By Garrison is also on this zoom call as we discuss.
Speaker 8: The Maori land rights movement now.
Speaker 7: The struggle against Mario oppression racism led to a division
Speaker 7: within the movement regarding whether the existing political structures could
Speaker 7: bring about a real change or for complete overthrow of
Speaker 7: the system was necessary. The failure to address land alienation
Speaker 7: through official channels created a sense of pessimism about the
Speaker 7: government's commitments to Mari rights. The Mari land rights movement
Speaker 7: emerged from nineteen seventy five to nineteen seventy eight, bringing
Speaker 7: together diverse range of activists the sort of alliances with
Speaker 7: workers both Mari and Paquale, viewing them as natural allies
Speaker 7: in the fight against oppression. The common enemy was seen
Speaker 7: as the racist and capitalist state. The occupation of Bastion
Speaker 7: Point and subsequent viction from Bastian Point intensified the direct
Speaker 7: conflict that the movements were happened with the state. It
Speaker 7: garnered their public support and also the involvement from the
Speaker 7: Paquea left. The Auckland Trades Council placed a quote unquote
Speaker 7: green band on the area which went refusing to allow
Speaker 7: work to commence on the planned subdivision, and a north
Speaker 7: shore contractor even donated six trucks, including two Bitjumin tankers
Speaker 7: to help with a planned blockade. The occupation at Bassian
Speaker 7: Point was followed by arrests at the Ragland golf Course,
Speaker 7: and many of those arrested were representatives of various activist groups.
Speaker 7: The land rights movement and the struggle against Racism radicalized
Speaker 7: a group of Mari women who were already part of
Speaker 7: Nagatamatoa to go on to form the Capital B Capital
Speaker 7: W Capital Black Women's Movement. In the early nineteen eighties,
Speaker 7: the Waitangi Action Committee married People's Liberation Movement to our
Speaker 7: Ta and the Black Women's Movement emerged as prominent Mari
Speaker 7: political activist groups, primarily based in Auckland, New Zealand. They
Speaker 7: continued the protest tradition of Nagata Matoa with annual protests
Speaker 7: to the Watangi Day celebrations, and they even came up
Speaker 7: with the idea to call it the Cheaty of White
Speaker 7: Tangi instead of the Treaty of White Tanki very clearfl
Speaker 7: and they also called for a boycott of the celebrations.
Speaker 7: Not initially, Marie activists had collaborated with certain Pakeha anti
Speaker 7: racist groups, but that association was weakened after divisions emerged
Speaker 7: during the anti Springbok tour protests in nineteen eighty one, which,
Speaker 7: as you may remember from the previous episode, was a
Speaker 7: protest against the national rugby team's participation in a tour
Speaker 7: that included apartheid South Africa. The perception was that Alisa
Speaker 7: mang Luri that many Pakeha had failed to recognize the
Speaker 7: connection between aparthide in South Africa and colonialism and racism
Speaker 7: in New Zealand, and so the bonds between those two
Speaker 7: movements would beginning to weaken. Add On top of that
Speaker 7: a prolonged economic crisis that was taking place in New
Speaker 7: Zealand during the nineteen seventies nineteen eighties as a result
Speaker 7: of course of the inherent tendencies of capitalism. The government
Speaker 7: had to grapple with the crisis of political legitimacy and
Speaker 7: of economic management, and that of course fueled further.
Speaker 8: Ethnic and gender equalities, further social unrest.
Speaker 7: And worstening economic conditions and increases in unemployment.
Speaker 8: The upsoar should take place.
Speaker 7: During our time in Mari protest really highlighted the marginalized
Speaker 7: position that Mario were dealing with. In New Zealand, society
Speaker 7: and studies ended up confirming their disproportionately poor educational outcomes,
Speaker 7: high unemployment rates, low incomes health issues, high imprisonment rates,
Speaker 7: low rates of home ownership, and dependence on the state.
Speaker 7: While some ARIA activists that sought strategies to challenge the
Speaker 7: system and addressees inequalities, others ended up pursuing struggles that
Speaker 7: posed little threat to the state and fail to address
Speaker 7: the courses of economic and social crisis inherent to capitalism
Speaker 7: and the initial focus of Marie culture nationalism was on
Speaker 7: secure and Marie studies and language programs in the educational system. However,
Speaker 7: the move on eventually shifted its emphasis towards this rediscovering
Speaker 7: Maori history and culture more broadly, and along the way,
Speaker 7: there was less emphasis on putting together a robust political
Speaker 7: movement and robust strategies for broader social change, and while
Speaker 7: Failiar movements had a very clear focus on left wing politics.
Speaker 7: It's also around this time that we see a shift
Speaker 7: towards a broader range of politics, including right wing. One
Speaker 7: of the most important books in the Maria Actress movement
Speaker 7: at the time was Donna our Seria's Maori Sovereignty, published
Speaker 7: in nineteen eighty four, and that book was really less
Speaker 7: of a critique of right wing racist politics and more
Speaker 7: of a critique of left social movements, which, according to Auritiri,
Speaker 7: was committed to a status coo characterized by white supremacy
Speaker 7: and Marie subordination. And she was calling everybody else she
Speaker 7: was called Pakeha activists, whether they be feminist, trade unionists,
Speaker 7: socialists or otherwise. She called them all out as ben
Speaker 7: committed to the status quo of white supremacy and Marie'sbbord nation.
Speaker 7: Around this time there was also a growing sense that
Speaker 7: pake has society was intrinsically based in competition, exploitation and
Speaker 7: material success, as opposed to Maori society and Maori values,
Speaker 7: which culturally was more communal, more collaborative, and more focused
Speaker 7: on the wellness of the whole. And so the solution
Speaker 7: was seen as really emphasizing cultural consciousness, but the emphasis
Speaker 7: and cultural consciousness Aluin often led Mary away from political
Speaker 7: activism and towards purely cultural writer list pursuits. In nineteen
Speaker 7: eighty four, the Fourth Labor Government was elected and it
Speaker 7: sort of addressed the rise in Mari protests by enhancing
Speaker 7: the status of Mari culture specifically and incorporating Mari representation
Speaker 7: and practices within state institution shots. This approach is known
Speaker 7: as by culturalism, and it extended the jurisdiction of the
Speaker 7: White Tanki Tribunal and incorporated Maori personnel and cultural symbolism
Speaker 7: into government institutions.
Speaker 8: For those who made a missed up.
Speaker 7: The White Tanky Tribunal was basically institutions set up to
Speaker 7: deal with specific cases of violations of the White Tangi Treaty,
Speaker 7: and so by extending jurisdiction with White Tanki Tribunal by
Speaker 7: incorporating more Maori into positions of government and of power,
Speaker 7: this gave this illusion of a partnership and ended up
Speaker 7: satisfying some of the mariad for self determination. But at
Speaker 7: the same time and again echoes to other movements around
Speaker 7: the world. You see that the government seeds a certain
Speaker 7: ground but it does so so it doesn't lose other fights.
Speaker 7: It pretends to lose certain battles so that it can
Speaker 7: win the war right because in conceding to more reformist
Speaker 7: demands of the movement, it allowed them to marginalize and
Speaker 7: to disempower the movements more radical demands, and it allowed
Speaker 7: them to put forward this pr face of doing a
Speaker 7: good thing for the Maria community while not actually challenging
Speaker 7: the underlying social relations of racist and capitalist society. Basically,
Speaker 7: the state's adoption of ethnic rhetoric and corporation of Mari
Speaker 7: elites into state institutions save to appease a decent portion
Speaker 7: of Mari protests while maintaining the status scope. Now, after
Speaker 7: the Labor government had introduced the Treaty of waitang Gi
Speaker 7: Amendment Act, which expanded the powers of the White Tangi
Speaker 7: Tribunal in nineteen eighty five, the White Tangi Tribunal actually
Speaker 7: had very little power when it came to enforcing its recommendations.
Speaker 7: So it would hear out these cases of land theft,
Speaker 7: It would hear out, you know, these Maori individuals or
Speaker 7: groups would invested a lot of time and energy and
Speaker 7: resources into their land claim cases. The tribunal would find
Speaker 7: them correct. It's like, oh, yeah, they did steal from you.
Speaker 7: You probably should get that land back. But the only
Speaker 7: thing is we can really help you. The tribunal, which
Speaker 7: was set up to help with these cases, didn't actually
Speaker 7: have the power to enforce its recommendations, to actually enforce
Speaker 7: the settlements. It came to it was toothless to really
Speaker 7: end up being a waste of energy. And at the
Speaker 7: same time, the Labor government was doing some economic restructuring
Speaker 7: and to reduce government expenditure and implement an economic plan
Speaker 7: to restore profitability, which included like deregulation, privatization, dismountling with
Speaker 7: the welfare state. Again echoes this is newliberalism one o
Speaker 7: one Thatcher regan all of u because the claims that
Speaker 7: were made to the wait Tangia Tribunal and the recommendations
Speaker 7: made by the tribunal posed obstacles to that sale of
Speaker 7: state owned enterprises and that further restruction the economy towards
Speaker 7: more new liberal ends. There was a growing scent within
Speaker 7: the government that this was quote unquote special treatment for
Speaker 7: Mari and the political costs associated with the tribunal was
Speaker 7: just causing too much headache for the government. And so
Speaker 7: by nineteen eighty nine, just four years after they introduced
Speaker 7: that act, under the immense pressure of you know, these
Speaker 7: smart people getting in the way of their ability to
Speaker 7: new liberalize, the Labor government ended up downplaying the significance
Speaker 7: of a treaty policy. And while that's going on, the
Speaker 7: government has co opting key individuals in the Mari protest
Speaker 7: movement through various negotiations and consultations. More and more of
Speaker 7: this quote unquote Mari elite was being brought into the
Speaker 7: fold of the state. Came in privileged positions and wealth,
Speaker 7: and so they became insulated from the grassroots Marie struggle.
Speaker 7: The following government, not the Labor government, but the national
Speaker 7: government also sort to restore profitable investment in the New
Speaker 7: Zealand economy and to address some of the uncertainty created
Speaker 7: by the treaty claims, and so they went to the
Speaker 7: Mari elite, did their little negotiations and they decided to
Speaker 7: settle certain claims to the fisheries around New Zealand. That
Speaker 7: became known as the Sea Lord's Deal, which caused a
Speaker 7: lot of headache and anger and divisions in the Mari
Speaker 7: community because of the lack of transparency and democracy in
Speaker 7: these negotiations. The it was made between the New Zealand
Speaker 7: government and a group of Mari corporate entities known as
Speaker 7: the Sea Loord Group in nineteen ninety two, and under
Speaker 7: this agreement, the Sea Lord Group, which was said to
Speaker 7: represent Mari interests, acquired a fifty percent steak in Sea Loord,
Speaker 7: which is a major seafood company New Zealand. The other
Speaker 7: fifty percent remained with the Japanese fishing company Nisui, And
Speaker 7: so the deal was seeing as a resolution like, yeah,
Speaker 7: we put ourselves in the back. The Maori were making
Speaker 7: these claims over fishery resources. So we met up with
Speaker 7: to Marie businessmen and gave them a fifty percent steak
Speaker 7: in Sea Lord.
Speaker 8: Problem is solved right now.
Speaker 7: You know they will get some commercial benefits from the
Speaker 7: fishing industry, but no more than fifty percent.
Speaker 8: Though, of course, as a result, a lot.
Speaker 7: Of Maori were arguing that no, this is not adeically
Speaker 7: address ur crevances. The settlement is not sufficient. And on
Speaker 7: top of that, why are you're going to make an
Speaker 7: these backrooms deals and not consult in the community as
Speaker 7: a whole. The positions or the opinions of one does
Speaker 7: that represent all of us? And it's actually kind of
Speaker 7: similar to what was happening during the initial stages of
Speaker 7: the land theft that was taking place during New Zealand's colonization,
Speaker 7: because when I mentioned in the first part that some
Speaker 7: of the land were so legitimately, what I mean by
Speaker 7: that is certain Mari individuals saw an opportunity to profit
Speaker 7: by screwing over everybody else in their community. So they
Speaker 7: would claim, oh, yeah, this is my land, completely disregarding
Speaker 7: the fact that this is coming on land that it
Speaker 7: has been for generations. This is my land, So I
Speaker 7: will sell it to you. You give me the money,
Speaker 7: and so I, you know, profit and a real sort
Speaker 7: of suck. So as kind of seeing that mirrored in
Speaker 7: this nineties context, and then at this time with the
Speaker 7: divisions in the community over the decisions made by these
Speaker 7: Mari elites, they were even further divisions trained by some
Speaker 7: negotiations that were all taking place for the government's one
Speaker 7: billion dollar fiscal Envelope, which is an attempt to evoke
Speaker 7: a full and final settlement of all remaining treaty of
Speaker 7: Oitangi claims. Basically the government was saying here here have
Speaker 7: some money, get out of the way, shut up bas
Speaker 7: it so called reparations right, and so there was another
Speaker 7: upsurge of Mari protests and you know, more of people
Speaker 7: were frustrated and there was traited desperation because there was
Speaker 7: really a lack of options for resolve and the crievances
Speaker 7: that they were dealing with. Some of the protests were
Speaker 7: continuing the struggle with the land right to move onto
Speaker 7: the nineteen seventies, but others were challenging the decision making power.
Speaker 8: Of the EV bodies.
Speaker 7: EV bodies, by the way, are the largest representative bodies
Speaker 7: of Mari in Altai Aura. They're like mega tribes, and
Speaker 7: so there was an increasing frustration among Samrii of you know,
Speaker 7: these representative bodies inability to accurately represent them. And another
Speaker 7: key component of this division was the fact that the
Speaker 7: more middle class elements or middle class professional elements of
Speaker 7: the Maori population were enjoying an expansion opportunities and were
Speaker 7: growing in wealth and prestige, but they were leaving behind
Speaker 7: the working class Maori population, which was still struggling in
Speaker 7: the same way they had been for decades. The policies
Speaker 7: of both the Labor government and the national government disproportionately
Speaker 7: impacted working class Mari communities, and the movement there was
Speaker 7: supposed to represent them had lost sight of them and
Speaker 7: their interests. There was a lack of intermovement solidarity, of
Speaker 7: pushing for fundamental social change instead of these individual changes,
Speaker 7: and there was a sense of crumblence internal cohesion. Some
Speaker 7: marioctivists such as te Ahu who, like I said in
Speaker 7: My Free Spot, I drew primarily from their work when
Speaker 7: researching this particular history, and they were very critical of
Speaker 7: that historical period and particularly of the personalization of the
Speaker 7: conflict for liberation. And so their position was that by
Speaker 7: focusing on individual relationships and prejudices, rather than challenging the
Speaker 7: systemic structures perpetuating opression, it left the struggle to be
Speaker 7: fought on this individual level, while the larger system was
Speaker 7: left unaddressed. And particularly because you know, in the eighties
Speaker 7: there was a shift away from class struggle as a
Speaker 7: central component of the Maori struggle. Middle class and wealthy
Speaker 7: Mari interests were dominating the conversation and their interests were
Speaker 7: exclusively in cultural nationalism, with no real room for working
Speaker 7: class struggle. For class struggle in any form and then
Speaker 7: part of that whole strategy and that will focus on
Speaker 7: exclusively cultural nationalism would attempt to throw everybody under this one.
Speaker 7: Under this broad brush, right, the wealthy new liberal Mari
Speaker 7: politicians would be in the same vein as the impoverished
Speaker 7: and unemployed working class Mari despite their clear differences and
Speaker 7: access to economic and political power. And so this notion
Speaker 7: of Maria as a homogeneous group with identical experiences and
Speaker 7: political aspirations, disregarding the diversity within Marie society and the
Speaker 7: conflicting political strategies within Marie communities, would really weaken the
Speaker 7: cohesion of the struggle as a whole. And I don't
Speaker 7: know how else to say this except there needs to
Speaker 7: be a recognition of racial struggle, gender struggle with class struggle,
Speaker 7: of struggles for ability and disability justice, like inter sexuality, intersectionality.
Speaker 7: It's really so simple. Cultural nationalism has its place, but
Speaker 7: it's very insufficient and very easily cooptible. That's why the
Speaker 7: New African anarchist Ashanti Austan says that we must go
Speaker 7: beyond nationalism, even.
Speaker 8: If we don't go without it.
Speaker 7: That's why I've made a whole video on the subject
Speaker 7: of nationalism or more specifically national liberation for oppressed groups.
Speaker 7: You see, it's a tool that oppressed people can use
Speaker 7: in their struggle, but it's not enough, and focusing too
Speaker 7: much on it leaves a lot of exploitable gaps in
Speaker 7: one's analysis. It's again, it's a tool, not an end
Speaker 7: in itself. It does little to change material realities. Tea
Speaker 7: who in their piece had said that while and I'm
Speaker 7: quoting here, while culture and identity remain absolutely essential to
Speaker 7: Mari social wellbion, it does not automatically follow that cultural
Speaker 7: identity alone should provide the organizational basis for the fight
Speaker 7: against racism and Marie disadvantage. Because identities are blurred and multiple,
Speaker 7: any fight against Mario oppression must be based upon building
Speaker 7: the strongest possible liberation movement by uniting different oppressed groups
Speaker 7: into a common struggle. This is essential because true liberation
Speaker 7: for Mari will not occur without a fundamental transformation of
Speaker 7: capitless society and the creation of a classless society in
Speaker 7: which there is real women's liberation, gay and lesbian liberation,
Speaker 7: and freedom from racism endquote. Historical evidence has shown that
Speaker 7: the political movements based solely on the identity of the
Speaker 7: participants could be very diverse. Let's just say on the
Speaker 7: spectrum there are reactionary and their revolutionary segments of pretty
Speaker 7: much every national liberation movement, from Black Power to Free Palestine.
Speaker 7: Because when the focus is on cultural or national liberation,
Speaker 7: there is a lot of room to adopt a variety
Speaker 7: of approaches and a variety of political aims. I so
Speaker 7: it's a lot of room for middle class interests to
Speaker 7: dominate as they have a lot more time and resources
Speaker 7: to contribute and take over the rhetoric and the messaging
Speaker 7: of the causes. Another example that we see in the
Speaker 7: feminist movement, which in a lot of ways diverge from
Speaker 7: the struggle of working class women towards the more niche
Speaker 7: interests of you know, the girl bosses who we're facing
Speaker 7: genuine hills in their climate, the corporate ladder.
Speaker 8: But in focusing on those instances.
Speaker 7: There was a loss of the needs of working class
Speaker 7: women and the precurious position that when as a whole
Speaker 7: are still in mari. Political activism has always been diverse.
Speaker 7: You know, there's a wide range of strategies, campaigns and participants.
Speaker 7: There's not a unified movement, but there's a heterogenous force,
Speaker 7: with both radical and conservative elements, each pursuing different methods
Speaker 7: to achieve the objectives. There's no unanimous agreement on the
Speaker 7: vision of Tino Rangatira tanga, which is the Marii term
Speaker 7: for Mari self determination. Tino Rangatira tangle can be associated
Speaker 7: with Mari capitalism, electoral power, cultural nationalism, or revolutionary activity.
Speaker 7: In the past, some artists had believe that fundamental transformation
Speaker 7: the system was necessary for liberation, and so they rejective reformism.
Speaker 7: But the landscape has changed.
Speaker 9: Well.
Speaker 7: Some still advocate for constitutional changes, elector apolitics to address
Speaker 7: systemic issues. Some influential travel executives and corporate warriors are
Speaker 7: even going as fast to argue that Mari can only
Speaker 7: achieve true self determination and liberation through unrestricted free market capitalism.
Speaker 7: The objectives that Tino Rangatira tangle promoted by different groups
Speaker 7: are contradictory because there is no homogeneity in the Mari struggle.
Speaker 7: But I hope that the takeaway here has been clear,
Speaker 7: and that is the need for a clear intersectional approach
Speaker 7: to revolution in our struggle against racist, sexist, capitalist, et
Speaker 7: cetera society. The Mari movement is still ongoing. And though
Speaker 7: the focus of these two parts has been pmarily on
Speaker 7: the current rather has been primarily on the struggle of
Speaker 7: the sixties, seventies, eighties, and early nineties.
Speaker 8: Mari liberation has not been found.
Speaker 7: Tino Ranga, t your tanga has not been achieved and
Speaker 7: there's still a long way to go.
Speaker 8: That's it for me again.
Speaker 7: I'm Andrew from the TUE channel Anturism. You can find
Speaker 7: me there and you could support on patre dot com
Speaker 7: slash saying true this has been it could happen here?
Speaker 1: Welcome back to It could Happen Here? A podcast about
Speaker 1: things falling apart and about what we like to call
Speaker 1: the crumbleson here. And the key aspect of the crumbles
Speaker 1: is the ongoing resurgence of fascist political parties and politicians
Speaker 1: in the United States and elsewhere. And today we're going
Speaker 1: to be talking about about one of said fascists, a
Speaker 1: fella you might have heard of named Ron DeSantis. I'm
Speaker 1: putting Ron, Yeah, Pudding Ron old dasanct demonious. Now, Garrison,
Speaker 1: you've got a banger of an episode written out here.
Speaker 1: I'm looking at your script right now. It's beautiful. Right
Speaker 1: before we get into it, I do want to give
Speaker 1: an update on a past subject if it could happen
Speaker 1: here Lord Miles Rutledge for those of you who may
Speaker 1: not have caught that episode. Lord Miles is a British
Speaker 1: Man who went to Afghanistan to hang out and got
Speaker 1: caught up in the Taliban's you know, victory in that war,
Speaker 1: and then turned himself into a danger travel influencer, visiting
Speaker 1: in dangerous place, going to war zones, going to Ukraine
Speaker 1: and like making it about him. He went back to
Speaker 1: Afghanistan because it really was better for his social media
Speaker 1: following than any of the other places he went, bragged
Speaker 1: about breaking laws, including faking his visa, and then got
Speaker 1: arrested and has been radio silent for about the last
Speaker 1: five months now. A lot of people have wondered is
Speaker 1: Lord Miles dead that he liked die in custody in
Speaker 1: the Taliban are trying to keep it a secret, but
Speaker 1: worry no longer. Friends today his account posted this is
Speaker 1: a friend of Lord Miles to give an update. Four
Speaker 1: months in Taliban custody. He's treated very well, has several servants,
Speaker 1: loads of movies on his laptop, goes on picnics and
Speaker 1: has tea with the Taliban cabinet government. He still loves Afghanistan.
Speaker 1: And then there's a photo of him giving the thumbs up.
Speaker 1: Dou't so he's not dead, guys. He's in a nice
Speaker 1: Taliban farm upstate. Gets he gets to run all he wants,
Speaker 1: you know, wide open fields. He's super happy. It's really funny.
Speaker 1: One of his All of these people are so fucking brained, poised,
Speaker 1: brain poisoned, but like a big part of Miles, he
Speaker 1: was like trying to also be kind of a right
Speaker 1: wing influencer. He was doing this like anti woke. The
Speaker 1: Taliban is awesome and like actually kind of good guys
Speaker 1: because they they don't like believe in the woke agenda.
Speaker 1: And one of his friends, after this message got posted,
Speaker 1: like messaged his account be like, hey, Taliban, if you're
Speaker 1: the guys that have like captured him, we really want
Speaker 1: him back. I'll pay a ransom. I'm like, I know
Speaker 1: this is probably just a misunderstanding because you guys are
Speaker 1: on our side on the anti woke war.
Speaker 3: Sure, yeah, I'm sure Taliban cares about the woke culture
Speaker 3: war facing America.
Speaker 1: That's what they're that's what's they're all about. That shit.
Speaker 1: Good work guys.
Speaker 3: I'm sure they tuned in to shot out of the
Speaker 3: every night Oh.
Speaker 1: So funny, so funny. Anyway, that dude Debt is dead
Speaker 1: as hell. Look, I'm not saying that to gloat. I'm
Speaker 1: just saying that that motherfucker is dead as hell. I
Speaker 1: don't care what a prick he's dead.
Speaker 6: Many, many people have died in Afghanistan and it's been
Speaker 6: a tragedy, this one less.
Speaker 1: So anyway, Garrison, please continue.
Speaker 3: All right, So we're gonna return to this podcast being
Speaker 3: your number one source for slightly homo erotic fascist memes
Speaker 3: once again.
Speaker 1: That was how we pitched it to iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3: Explaining the erotic fascist themes.
Speaker 1: A lot of people talking about fascists these days, but
Speaker 1: none of them are homo erotic.
Speaker 3: So on the on the last day of Pride Month,
Speaker 3: Desantas's campaign shared a ad that's been described as bizarre
Speaker 3: and mystifying, where he pedals a whole bunch of pretty
Speaker 3: pretty extreme like homophobia. He attacks Trump for for for
Speaker 3: previous statements that Trump has made regarding LGBTQ rights, and
Speaker 3: then the video kind of transitions and we see basically
Speaker 3: a version of what we're gonna call fash wave, and
Speaker 3: I'm gonna explain all of these terms here in this episode,
Speaker 3: but we're seeing kind of a resurgence of a political
Speaker 3: meme style that was popular years ago. It's kind of
Speaker 3: laid dormant the past year or so for reasons that
Speaker 3: we will very soon discuss. But a whole bunch of
Speaker 3: both conservatives and liberals are kind of not really sure
Speaker 3: how to take this ad shared by the Desanta's campaign
Speaker 3: and are ill equipped to understand what the fuck.
Speaker 2: Is going on.
Speaker 3: But luckily I am equipped because I spent my teen
Speaker 3: years in telegram chats watching this meme style develop.
Speaker 1: So proud of you, buddy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thanks in the telegram trenches once again.
Speaker 1: All right, So.
Speaker 3: The first image of Dysantis, when it flashes to this
Speaker 3: other kind of weird more like oar editing style, has
Speaker 3: him with like these uh these blue or red like
Speaker 3: glowing eyes. And this is gonna be something that is
Speaker 3: going to be a recurring trend that we're gonna be
Speaker 3: talking about in this episode, these like these like glowing
Speaker 3: laser eye type things. So we're gonna start with this
Speaker 3: because this is actually one of the one of the
Speaker 3: most common traits of fash wave, and we've seen this
Speaker 3: be adopted by multiple politicians in the past, and most
Speaker 3: people probably like don't know what the fuck this is,
Speaker 3: like is this like a Superman thing? Like what what
Speaker 3: the fuck is this? So laser eye memes started in
Speaker 3: the early twenty tens, originally referencing video games like Mass
Speaker 3: Effect two and other like sci fi and superhero media
Speaker 3: people like Superman or anyone with like laser eyes. Is
Speaker 3: also like a a like a cultural touchstone for this
Speaker 3: sort of thing. The laser eyes usually represent like a
Speaker 3: figure growing in power, So when when someone has laser
Speaker 3: eyes and a meme, it's like they are they are
Speaker 3: They're gaining power, the gaining security. The The original caption
Speaker 3: for the early laser eye memes was assuming direct Control,
Speaker 3: which was also just a video game reference. So again
Speaker 3: I would have someone with like glowing glowing laser eyes
Speaker 3: and text that says like assuming control or assuming direct control.
Speaker 3: So this was this was popping off in like the
Speaker 3: early twenty tens, Around the same time, synth wave and
Speaker 3: vapor wave were gaining traction as both like nostalgic musical
Speaker 3: microgenres and a mimetic visual style featuring neon glitchy kind
Speaker 3: of eighties retrocomputer aesthetics mixed with traditional Greco Roman sculpture
Speaker 3: for a variety of reasons which we'll touch on, but
Speaker 3: vapor wave had influences from video games, cyberpunk anime, and
Speaker 3: it was it was relatively popular as a microgenre in
Speaker 3: like the twenty teens, and throughout the twenty teens, both
Speaker 3: the laser eye memes were steadily growing in popularity on
Speaker 3: places like Reddit and four chun alongside the rise of
Speaker 3: a vapor wave and its kind of surrealist, nostalgia laden
Speaker 3: aesthetics focused on highlighting the comfort and unfulfilled promises of
Speaker 3: the Internet of yester year, and this like nostalgic surrealist
Speaker 3: aesthetic was prime bait for easy co option into the
Speaker 3: reactionary meme variant dubbed fash wave, which soon became kind
Speaker 3: of the de facto esthetic of the then burgeoning alt right.
Speaker 3: Glowing laser eyes on various fascistic political figures became a
Speaker 3: staple of fash wave during the rise of the alt
Speaker 3: right around twenty sixteen to twenty eighteen. I actually kind
Speaker 3: of like vapor wave. I think it's maybe a bit
Speaker 3: overplayed now and It certainly is frustrating how much it
Speaker 3: was kind of taken over by reactionaries, because actual vapor
Speaker 3: wave is almost actually like anti capitalistic in a few ways.
Speaker 3: It's kind of it's kind of criticizing the disposableness of
Speaker 3: like modern consumerist culture using like forgotten eighties technology and
Speaker 3: like software that kind of stuff. So I'm looking at
Speaker 3: two of my little vapor wave images here in the script,
Speaker 3: and it does some of some of the little like
Speaker 3: ways that the images are broken up makes it look
Speaker 3: kind of like like old Internet pop up ads back
Speaker 3: when they had like clearly defined borders and x'es and
Speaker 3: weren't just like overtaking your entire screen and you had
Speaker 3: no way to close them. But you know what does
Speaker 3: kind of overtake your entire viewing experience via an ad.
Speaker 3: It's it's podcast advertising because it's going to go straight
Speaker 3: into your ears, and there's no way to x out.
Speaker 3: You have to you have to suffer through the ad
Speaker 3: unless you unless you figured out that you can press
Speaker 3: a button that makes you go forward thirty seconds. Anyway, anyway,
Speaker 3: here is here is our beloved, our beloved sponsors who
Speaker 3: fund such vital research that I that I'm doing for
Speaker 3: this episode anyway, the rise of the alt right to
Speaker 3: this is kind of where where fash wave is both
Speaker 3: like getting the name fash wave and also you know,
Speaker 3: it's becoming a larger problem because there's more Nazis wing around.
Speaker 3: So after the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville,
Speaker 3: the Altright went through a sort of split between the
Speaker 3: more Trumpian adherents, who made up large parts of the
Speaker 3: then dubbed all to Light, a term we don't really
Speaker 3: use it very much anymore, and then this kind of
Speaker 3: other section which had more of the accelerationist neo Nazis
Speaker 3: who were starting to congregate on the messaging app Telegram.
Speaker 3: And then we have groups kind of like the Proud
Speaker 3: Boys that are like in between. They're kind of Trumpian,
Speaker 3: they're also also like more fascy, but they're not like
Speaker 3: really full skull mask. Usually some would adopt that esthetic
Speaker 3: later on, but that's kind of due to this cultic
Speaker 3: milieu that's starting to develop on Telegram. So a fash
Speaker 3: wave largely followed the self proclaimed fascists, so it too
Speaker 3: became the central visual style of the of the burgeoning
Speaker 3: network of militant accelerationist telegram channels, which would eventually be
Speaker 3: dubbed terror Gram Terror as in terrorist. And this was
Speaker 3: combining with a whole bunch of weird factors around twenty
Speaker 3: eighteen twenty nineteen, including the Boogloo Boys, which Robert has
Speaker 3: written about at length before It's and it was also
Speaker 3: influenced by the Iron March forums and like the skull
Speaker 3: Mask network with groups like Adam Waffen and the Bass,
Speaker 3: they were all the.
Speaker 1: Iron March forms are like the Boomers of Nazi Internet people,
Speaker 1: not quite the Boomers, maybe the gen X.
Speaker 3: The jed X, Yeah, very very much, the X.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the forum generation. There's a generation of people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: before social media is it's Nazi something awful, right, It's
Speaker 1: We're not quite into the chans yet.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And after Iron March kind of collapsed, a whole
Speaker 3: bunch of these weird accelerationists, we're starting to all congregate
Speaker 3: on telegram. And this is where we see kind of
Speaker 3: fash wave develop into a much more overt apocalyptic and
Speaker 3: a dooomer focus. The the hontology inspired and nostalgic reflections
Speaker 3: on the false promises of techno capitalism that were already
Speaker 3: present in vaporwave were ripe ground for the addition of
Speaker 3: like return to tradition style reactionary fascism.
Speaker 1: Do you explain porntology if people are familiar.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Uh, Hontology is a I mean it started as
Speaker 3: a term which then developed into a musical genre. But
Speaker 3: it's it's similar to vapor wave. It's about kind of
Speaker 3: looking back on the unfulfilled promises of the past that
Speaker 3: we were like promised as a culture that then never
Speaker 3: came to place. But these promises still kind of follow us.
Speaker 3: They kind of like haunt us. If hontology is a
Speaker 3: big reason why liminal spaces got popular because of early
Speaker 3: nineties and uh and two thousands, like aesthetics of like
Speaker 3: big office buildings that are now left empty.
Speaker 1: Office buildings, like schools, like particularly like the you know,
Speaker 1: like the doors to a school or whatever. You get
Speaker 1: a lot of like photos of that. Yeah, so stuff
Speaker 1: that makes people feel a longing for a past that
Speaker 1: was never really real.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and like like a longing for like this sense
Speaker 3: of home and the sense of like a safe home
Speaker 3: which you maybe that you never actually really had.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because she hated being in school, you just have forgot. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you've kind of athologized it.
Speaker 6: Like per she calls it post memory, when you re
Speaker 6: remember things based on you know, your sort of coat standpoint.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So the the sort of doom er acelerationism of this
Speaker 3: of this kind of variant of fashwave or this like
Speaker 3: evolution of fash wave was was also accompanied by by
Speaker 3: groups like the Bogle of Boys who are starting to
Speaker 3: make their memes in this in this style as well.
Speaker 3: I have I have a few examples of fashwave here
Speaker 3: showing to to Robert and James Sun and rads were
Speaker 3: pretty were pretty popular. It's like the the sun wheel
Speaker 3: version of the swastika essentially, but a lot of these
Speaker 3: are like remember tradition embrace your race with like Nazi
Speaker 3: figures in like this monochrome style over over like scan
Speaker 3: lines like you would see on like a like an
Speaker 3: old like arcade video game that has like that has
Speaker 3: like a horizon, but you know, all like neon colors
Speaker 3: kind of kind of like glitchy type stuff. There's there's
Speaker 3: one Trump one here from like twenty eighteen where he
Speaker 3: has glowing yellow eyes, also in the fashwave style. So
Speaker 3: this was kind of the aesthetic around around twenty nineteen
Speaker 3: here and like fashwave was definitely still common on imageboards
Speaker 3: like four chan, eight chan, and eight kun, but the
Speaker 3: ever pressened kind of hitler particles and poor web design
Speaker 3: on those sites drove away most of the mega conservatives
Speaker 3: who might try to stumble on to four chan or
Speaker 3: to eight chan to like watch q and on stuff.
Speaker 3: It was just it was just the site was too
Speaker 3: hostile to them and then circled Like twenty twenty, among
Speaker 3: waves of Twitter and Facebook suspensions, Trump supporters and high
Speaker 3: profile far right figures started congregating on other platforms. A
Speaker 3: few Twitter clones popped off, like Parlor and eventually Trump's
Speaker 3: Own Truth Social but a number of mega conservatives also
Speaker 3: ended up on Telegram, in part due to telegrams largely
Speaker 3: off approach to moderation. So around this twenty twenty and
Speaker 3: like just post twenty twenty time period is when Telegram
Speaker 3: began functioning as the far right's very own cultic milieu,
Speaker 3: a sort of like shared online space where various memes, ideologies,
Speaker 3: conspiracy theories, and propaganda could all intermingle with each other
Speaker 3: and spread. Now, part of this is how Telegram operates
Speaker 3: as a platform. I'm going to quote from an article
Speaker 3: about Telegram and the cultic milieu from logically quote. Telegram
Speaker 3: offers features that straddle the line in between social media
Speaker 3: and messaging app. Users can create channels which function as
Speaker 3: one way message channels that allow someone to send a
Speaker 3: feed of messages available to all of their subscribers. Public
Speaker 3: channels and group chats are searchable by name, allowing anyone
Speaker 3: to subscribe to a public channel or join a public group.
Speaker 3: Channels and groups are uniquely connected on Telegram. When a
Speaker 3: message is forwarded from a public channel into another channel
Speaker 3: or group, it links back to the origin group, creating
Speaker 3: a chain in between different channels and groups. Another common
Speaker 3: feature is for users to advertise for channels and groups
Speaker 3: in other channels and groups, with some users creating directories
Speaker 3: of these channels and these big group chats that have
Speaker 3: extremist content unquote. So this kind of interconnected nature that
Speaker 3: allows this chain link of being able to award a message,
Speaker 3: Like you have a Telegram channel with like three thousand
Speaker 3: people in it and you post fash raight memes. You
Speaker 3: can make some fash rave memes in the style of
Speaker 3: like Trump, and then you can forward this message to
Speaker 3: a Trump channel that has forty five thousand members in it.
Speaker 3: They see this meme, they might like it, they click
Speaker 3: the meme, it sends them back into your three thousand
Speaker 3: person channel. So now they're going to getting exposed to
Speaker 3: all of the other weird shit you have going on.
Speaker 3: So it became a really easy way to kind of
Speaker 3: make a rabbit hole and like a pipeline for people
Speaker 3: to get exposed to new aesthetics, new ideologies, and especially
Speaker 3: conspiracy theories. I think we should have an ad break
Speaker 3: now and we will return to talk about the the
Speaker 3: increased Trumpian focus on fash wave that happened as a
Speaker 3: result of this kind of telegram cross proliferation.
Speaker 1: That's right, everybody, We're going to break for ads from
Speaker 1: our sponsors, who also sponsor Lord Myles Rutledge. So you know,
Speaker 1: let's hear it up for these ads from the Taliban. Ah,
Speaker 1: we're back. And I don't know about you guys, but
Speaker 1: Taliban's making a lot of sense these days to me.
Speaker 2: Good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I like their war on wokeness.
Speaker 3: Yeah, speaking speaking speaking of a war on wokeness.
Speaker 1: Leads us right back to oleron well, meatball ron.
Speaker 3: So to understand what the fuck is going on in
Speaker 3: that Rhonda Santis video. This is probably one of the
Speaker 3: most important, important little tidbits of knowledge that some people
Speaker 3: may be overlooking. Is this brief fever dream known as
Speaker 3: Dark Mega. Oh god, yeah, good to us.
Speaker 1: No, I know, I'm just glad. Yeah, I'm glad. This
Speaker 1: one didn't work out the way they'd hope.
Speaker 3: No, it did not work out, so the opposite of
Speaker 3: the way they hoped. Yeah. So, because of this kind
Speaker 3: of Telegram cross proliferation, the far rights memetic aesthetic went
Speaker 3: through a sort of coagulation after twenty twenty, which eventually
Speaker 3: resulted in the upsetting, albeit short lived Dark Mega, also
Speaker 3: known as Ultra Mega, both of which are horrible names.
Speaker 6: Yeah yeah, yeah, I remember Ultra Mega being big and
Speaker 6: like people putting their Twitter handles along with like the eagle.
Speaker 8: And a flag.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 6: So.
Speaker 3: The Dark Mega trend started around a year after the
Speaker 3: January sixth capital attack and steadily grew in popularity for
Speaker 3: the next few months during the lead up to the
Speaker 3: twenty twenty two midterm elections. After two years of right
Speaker 3: wing influencers and politicians operating in Telegram's cultic milieu, the
Speaker 3: influence of militant acceleration is propaganda is immediately apparent in
Speaker 3: this new stylistic iteration, which is basically downstream from fash wave.
Speaker 3: Dark Mega promoted a form of dystopian inspired overt authoritarianism
Speaker 3: with the assumed direct control laser eyes front and center,
Speaker 3: and for emphasizing militaristic domestic connotations. Dimlylit images were usually
Speaker 3: edited in red or blue monochrome. Dramatic images of Trump
Speaker 3: are fairly prominent, as is the presence of weapons and
Speaker 3: the occasional Nazi symbol. I have two examples of fashwave
Speaker 3: here for for for the UH for the gallery. James,
Speaker 3: what do you what do you.
Speaker 2: Think of this.
Speaker 1: Of these?
Speaker 3: Of these two pictures.
Speaker 6: First of all, they look like somebody used like a
Speaker 6: MS paint, Like it's kind of that. That's the tear
Speaker 6: of work when none of these are well edited. No,
Speaker 6: they're not horror, Yeah it is.
Speaker 1: It is one of them, the one on the left.
Speaker 1: He looks like it's like like the eighth movie in
Speaker 1: like a Jason or Freddy type series right where it's
Speaker 1: like straight to DVD, Like they're moving that shit right
Speaker 1: into the red box. And they just paid a guy
Speaker 1: forty five dollars to mock up a cover.
Speaker 3: Like he is it is it is it is. It
Speaker 3: is a to B and direct to digital make I do.
Speaker 6: He's like it looks like it's like like being developed
Speaker 6: in a dock room. It's like red and black.
Speaker 1: It's like all red and black. His eyes are glowing blue.
Speaker 3: He's a skit.
Speaker 1: It appears to be like a long a springfield long
Speaker 1: rifle or something like that. I couldn't tell you the
Speaker 1: exact type, but that does I am now thinking about, Like, so,
Speaker 1: if you've ever loaded black powder, you tend to like
Speaker 1: have you know, like a wrapped you know, cartridge that's
Speaker 1: got the ball and the powder and you rip it
Speaker 1: in half in your mouth and you pour the powder
Speaker 1: and then you like expect the anyway, Trump is such
Speaker 1: a germophobe. I just desperately want to see him try
Speaker 1: to like manage a black powder rifle. I would, I
Speaker 1: would really deeply enjoy that. It's as good as a
Speaker 1: Tucker Carlson shooting. They like the sec fire rifle was
Speaker 1: a very funny moment. Yeah, the guys who pretend to
Speaker 1: light guns so.
Speaker 3: And then the the other more horror inspired one has
Speaker 3: has texted the bottom that says it's time to just
Speaker 3: kill them with again with triumph and red lacer eyes.
Speaker 7: I was.
Speaker 3: I was upset to find out that the original person,
Speaker 3: like the original like Nazi who coined the term dark Mega,
Speaker 3: which which which kind of started this trend. Uh followed
Speaker 3: me on Twitter, which wasn't wasn't great? Oh no, oh no,
Speaker 3: yeah yeah, so that was that was a fun thing
Speaker 3: I discovered over the course of researching this episode. So
Speaker 3: one pro Trump and neo Nazi described dark Mega as such,
Speaker 3: quote dark Mega is the aesthetic demand that Trump embrace
Speaker 3: a harder and more focused approach in the role only
Speaker 3: he can fill. He was too kind hearted, too forgiving
Speaker 3: Dark Mega demands he learned from his mistakes. Another dark
Speaker 3: Mega propelled it just described uh described the intentionality behind
Speaker 3: the movement of being quote if you want to win,
Speaker 3: if you don't want to repeat the past, you have
Speaker 3: to get mean. You have to almost embrace the villain
Speaker 3: role that they're bringing you with. So that's fun. But uh,
Speaker 3: but like dark Mega's ambitions were to be more than
Speaker 3: just a meme, but instead kind of be the first
Speaker 3: real attempt at a coherent post at right aesthetic that
Speaker 3: was being pushed by mainstream political actors Uh. And included
Speaker 3: in this push was kind of a pressuring back toward
Speaker 3: militant posturing after the failed pseudo coup on January sixth,
Speaker 3: because in those first few months after JA six, everyone
Speaker 3: was like, oh, you know, we probably shouldn't be doing
Speaker 3: super overt like violent propaganda if we're if we're like
Speaker 3: on the right. And then over over time, and I
Speaker 3: think Dark Mega was part of this, was the right
Speaker 3: realizing that maybe they should just keep going and like
Speaker 3: go back to that much more kind of like Milton
Speaker 3: posturing that they were doing beforehand. I have, I've I
Speaker 3: have a few other a few other dark Dark Mega
Speaker 3: images here one with Trump and a skull mask and
Speaker 3: UH and pit vipers holding a Bible in front of
Speaker 3: a pit vipers.
Speaker 1: Pit Vipers are a type of like ski sunglasses that
Speaker 1: have a very distinctive look. There's nothing wrong with them.
Speaker 1: The company is actually anti Nazi.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Never people post their pit vipers pictures. They will like
Speaker 1: donate the price of that pair of pit vipers to
Speaker 1: you know, the ad L or something. But they've become
Speaker 1: a signifier for Nazis for reasons that we probably don't
Speaker 1: need to explain it.
Speaker 3: No, but you can read an article by me and
Speaker 3: Robert and Bellingcatter about white boys.
Speaker 2: Want you really need that right now if you really
Speaker 2: want to hear more about pit vipers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we can explain this ship at length.
Speaker 3: Row and then and then I have these two other
Speaker 3: images of Trump in front of these American flags, and
Speaker 3: one of them's edited in a glitchy style with him
Speaker 3: holding a It looks like some type like machine gun
Speaker 3: or something. Tommy, Yeah, it might be.
Speaker 1: It can't really tast too small to see. No, No,
Speaker 1: that's got to be some sort of like either ar
Speaker 1: nine millimeter carbine with a suppressor on. It is what
Speaker 1: it looks like to me.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I think it's generic. He's
Speaker 6: gonna yeah, it's kind of Wolfenstein style almost that one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, all of these guys are obsessed with Wolfenstein. Yes,
Speaker 3: oh yeah, very good, James, you figured it out.
Speaker 1: There's a longer conversation to be had because Wolfenstein the
Speaker 1: most recent game, not a pro Nazi game, anti Nazi,
Speaker 1: but because you know, it's it's a game where like
Speaker 1: the Nazis won the war and you're like fighting the YadA, YadA, YadA,
Speaker 1: because they're trying to do like future Nazi troopers, and
Speaker 1: it's like a video game where you want to make
Speaker 1: the bad guys look cool, same thing as like making
Speaker 1: the demons look cool and doom and.
Speaker 3: That you know, very very selectively edited clips of Wolfenstein
Speaker 3: cut scenes and music appears in fashwave propaganda fairly often.
Speaker 3: The Pierce in schizowave propaganda, which is kind of another
Speaker 3: downstream iteration of vash wave, which I am not going
Speaker 3: to cover on this episode. And I guess the one
Speaker 3: other meme style we have here is red and dark
Speaker 3: blue monochrome with Trump with these blue laser eyes. And
Speaker 3: this is kind of the this is like the main
Speaker 3: dark mega aesthetic here is this one that's just like
Speaker 3: red with with with with like a dark dark blue
Speaker 3: as like the accent and then these little laser eye things.
Speaker 3: So dark megas had the goal of serving as both
Speaker 3: a rebrand and an attempt to reunify the various disparate
Speaker 3: factions of the online right into using attention grabbing authoritarian
Speaker 3: propaganda to push Trump and his supporters even further into
Speaker 3: the extreme while holding on the legitimacy that is lacking
Speaker 3: in the contemporary sketchiness of like the Proud Boy groups
Speaker 3: or like Patriot Front, which especially after J six, the
Speaker 3: Proud Boys legitimacy took a big hit, and all of
Speaker 3: these fucking Dark Mega guys think that Patriot Front's like
Speaker 3: a fed op. So it's it's it's it's it's a
Speaker 3: it's a way to kind of like push a new
Speaker 3: version of the alt right that still relies on the
Speaker 3: legitimacy of Trump. To quote the Institute for Strategic Dialogue quote,
Speaker 3: the secondary aim of Dark Mega is to launder more
Speaker 3: extreme narratives and aesthetics into the mainstream Trumpist movement, an
Speaker 3: attempt to introduce mainstream conservatives to more extreme parts of
Speaker 3: the right through melding Trump memes with these different aesthetics. So,
Speaker 3: like we kind of mentioned before, the previous attempt at
Speaker 3: this was the White Boy Summer trend from twenty twenty one,
Speaker 3: which I and Robert have already wrote about before. And
Speaker 3: White Boy Summer was influenced by very similar kind of
Speaker 3: fash wave telegram asthetics, but it was really successful in
Speaker 3: leaking through to one or two Republican politicians, namely Paul Gosar.
Speaker 1: Paul Gosar, you can look him up if you want
Speaker 1: He's one of the Republicans who had a degree of
Speaker 1: mainstream legitimacy and was also super tight with like just
Speaker 1: straight up we want to set off Bomb's place as Nazis. Yeah.
Speaker 3: But Dark Mega, on the other hand, was picked up
Speaker 3: by a large handful of conservative politicians as well as
Speaker 3: like the usual suspects made up of right wing influencers
Speaker 3: and content creators. Among the Dark Mega proponents were Republican
Speaker 3: candidates like Tim Swain, a former strategist now Blazed TV
Speaker 3: employee Logan Hall, Andrew McCarthy, far right propagandist Jack Sobiek
Speaker 3: now former Congressman Madison Cawthorne, and former White House lawyer
Speaker 3: Andrew Closter, and was even boosted by the father of accelerationism,
Speaker 3: Nick Land, was a brief Dark Mega proponent himself. Famously,
Speaker 3: Marjorie Taylor Green joined in on the action in May
Speaker 3: of twenty twenty two under the hashtag ultra Mega, but
Speaker 3: with the same like red monochrome images with the big
Speaker 3: glowing eyes. Probably the most upsetting bit of Dark Mega
Speaker 3: lore was a post that Madison Cawthorne wrote on Instagram.
Speaker 3: He had this post full of like here's the list
Speaker 3: of America First Conservatives. Look how small the list actually
Speaker 3: is the people who are truly America First. And attached
Speaker 3: to this little image of this list, he wrote an
Speaker 3: extremely unhinged Dark Mega post. This was also in May
Speaker 3: of twenty twenty two. Quote the time for genteel politics
Speaker 3: as usual has come to an end. It's time for
Speaker 3: the rise of the new Right. It's time for Dark
Speaker 3: Mega to truly take command. We have an enemy to defeat,
Speaker 3: but we will will never be able to defeat them
Speaker 3: until we defeat the cowardly and weak members of our
Speaker 3: own party. Their days are numbered. We are coming unquote.
Speaker 3: So this rhetoric did not secure Vess and cawthorne continued
Speaker 3: employment in the House of Representatives.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it turns out most people in national politics are
Speaker 1: not entirely telegram brained. They cannot just had their skulls
Speaker 1: melted by that shit.
Speaker 3: So yeah to quote, so yeah to quote. An analysis
Speaker 3: from the Global Network on Extremism and Technology quote, Dark
Speaker 3: Mega is an embodiment of the revenge president burst from
Speaker 3: the far rights urge to reclaim what they crave and
Speaker 3: have lost power. Proponents seek to punish their political enemies
Speaker 3: without attending to political correctness. Dark Mega is an appeal
Speaker 3: to accept the tr true desires of the most dissident
Speaker 3: Trump supporters and mainstream their feelings through the medium of memes,
Speaker 3: which played a crucial role in twenty sixteen election. So
Speaker 3: dark Mega peaked as an online search topic back in
Speaker 3: May of twenty twenty two, and it may have reached
Speaker 3: like peak popularity in actual like spread of memes as
Speaker 3: early as March of twenty twenty two. I think I
Speaker 3: think it peaked in May because there was a few
Speaker 3: news articles about it, so more kind of normies were
Speaker 3: like googling what it was. But it act the actual
Speaker 3: peak was only in March of twenty twenty two. It
Speaker 3: only lasted like three months. You can you can still
Speaker 3: find some dark Mega bubbling under the surface, but only
Speaker 3: by like random Nazis and like that doesn't that doesn't
Speaker 3: that that's not signifying any kind of like political movement.
Speaker 3: And the reason why dark Mega kind of stopped being
Speaker 3: effective in between between March and May of twenty twenty
Speaker 3: two is that there was there was there was something
Speaker 3: that happened that summer uh and and that spring that
Speaker 3: effectively killed dark Mega while also dealing a pretty big
Speaker 3: body blow to fast Wave in general, and we will
Speaker 3: learn more about about Brandon's special secret operation in part two.
Speaker 3: That's right, this is going to be a surprise two
Speaker 3: parter because because I wrote get too many words.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, because this took an hour and a half
Speaker 1: to record of dense, dense information. So now now it's
Speaker 1: two days. You guys get to enjoy this for two days.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I hope you guys have a wonderful Christmas as well.
Speaker 3: Let's go Brandon.
Speaker 8: Let's go Brandon.
Speaker 3: I agree, let's uh, let's talk about let's go Brandon.
Speaker 3: The iintained the only good thing Biden has done so far.
Speaker 1: It's pretty funny. It's very funny. So this is like
Speaker 1: also the sort of attitude that is actually necessary to
Speaker 1: like win the culture war side of these things. It's
Speaker 1: not like defending yourself. And it's not when they do
Speaker 1: something like put out this meme, like being like, oh
Speaker 1: my god, this is so dangerous and like semi responsible,
Speaker 1: no funk with him right back, you know, like boh,
Speaker 1: put some glowing eyes on Joe Biden and make it
Speaker 1: looks like he plans to shoot somebody. You know, it's funny.
Speaker 3: So let's talk about the rise of Dark Brandon.
Speaker 1: And also the other thing that they're kind of deterning
Speaker 1: and reposting with here is like taking the uh what
Speaker 1: is it, taking the fucking Brandon memes and let's go
Speaker 1: Brandon and going uh being like all right, yeah, fuck it,
Speaker 1: call him Brandon. Doesn't hurt us, like, yeah, we'll be branded.
Speaker 6: But Biden did that himself when someone asked him about it,
Speaker 6: he didn't know what it meant, and he was like, yeah.
Speaker 1: Let's go Brandon.
Speaker 3: I actually I actually already had that clip inserted of
Speaker 3: above this conversation James, good job, good job, We're on
Speaker 3: the same page.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which is disturbing given the content.
Speaker 3: So Dark Brandon combines two different pro Trump memes while
Speaker 3: trying to subvert them both pretty successfully. I would say,
Speaker 3: I'm assuming everyone listening to this is familiar with the
Speaker 3: fuck Joe Biden, let's go Brandon kind of evolution, So
Speaker 3: I'm just gonna skip right past that because the other
Speaker 3: half of Dark Brandon, I think is a little bit
Speaker 3: more interesting. So Dark Brandon began with chronically online leftists
Speaker 3: doing a satirical riff on Dark Mega, replacing the figure
Speaker 3: of Trump with an alter ego of Biden and having
Speaker 3: this like mirror universe president appear as some kind of
Speaker 3: like neoliberal socialist demagogue, because when you replace the fascist
Speaker 3: figure with some largely ineffectual liberal given like militaristic and
Speaker 3: socialist or anti fascist catchphrases, but like otherwise leave the
Speaker 3: rest of the authoritarian, ascetic stylings of fascism, the result
Speaker 3: is pretty funny because it's Joe Biden.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So again, I think I've read a lot of stuff
Speaker 3: on this, and there's like a two two to like
Speaker 3: academic reports on on Dark Brandon.
Speaker 10: Uh.
Speaker 3: Some people believe that Dark Brandon started as like a
Speaker 3: right wing meme. They are they are mistaken. They are
Speaker 3: misreading irony poisoned leftists as being like like alt right memesters.
Speaker 3: Common common mistake, but also yeah.
Speaker 1: You would because she you wouldn't want to be stuck
Speaker 1: in a car with any of them right now.
Speaker 3: But Dark Brandon evolved into satirically imagining what if Joe
Speaker 3: Biden aiden was actually the militant communist dictator many on
Speaker 3: the right made him out to be, with all of
Speaker 3: the authoritarian impulses of Dark Mega turned on its head
Speaker 3: and ironically targeted against Trumpian conservatives, Dark Brandon can be
Speaker 3: seen hunting down a Trump voters for execution, or sitting
Speaker 3: on a throne of air fifteen's with yellow laser eyes,
Speaker 3: gonna I'm gonna play. I'm gonna play one video for
Speaker 3: us to watch here.
Speaker 1: Voted for president.
Speaker 3: There's no way out you Joe Biden's America.
Speaker 1: He's putting on a skullman.
Speaker 3: Tie me to a missile and fire me into the suburbs.
Speaker 1: I'm ready, genuinely quite amazing.
Speaker 3: It's pretty funny. It's pretty funny stuff. I do like
Speaker 3: the way that like Dark Brandon ed its work is
Speaker 3: there's there's there's this one smile that Biden does that
Speaker 3: looks very like evil and mischievous that if you edit it,
Speaker 3: if you like edit in after you says something ridiculous,
Speaker 3: it's pretty funny. So here we have a meme about
Speaker 3: Joe Biden publicly executing Patriot Front members after they got
Speaker 3: arrested in Idaho. And probably my favorite Dark branded meme
Speaker 3: is a picture of Biden with sunglasses and a list
Speaker 3: of names. Has shinzo albe neutralized, gas prices neutralized, COVID
Speaker 3: nineteen neutralized, Antifa fully armed? Roe v Wade too coming soon,
Speaker 3: Global Homo coming soon, Communism coming soon, which is pretty funny.
Speaker 1: It's good.
Speaker 3: So one of the reasons that Dark Brandon was able
Speaker 3: to flourish where Dark Mega stagnated is that the Biden
Speaker 3: verse is both based on and never lost its sense
Speaker 3: of irony, imagining the feeble, bumbling Biden as some like
Speaker 3: hard lined, ruthlessly effective tyrant is in it is like
Speaker 3: in innately humorous premise from like from the very beginning.
Speaker 3: The ironic nature also made a Dark Brandon all but
Speaker 3: impervious from attack by conservative commentators on the right, because like,
Speaker 3: how can you attack this vibe like it's it's so
Speaker 3: ironic and absurd that like there's no way to be like,
Speaker 3: look how dangerous the dark brighton memes, eyes glo, what
Speaker 3: like come.
Speaker 2: On, come on?
Speaker 3: Guess. So Dark Brandon grew in popularity as Biden's Inflation
Speaker 3: Reduction Act also known as the IRA Past Last Summer
Speaker 3: and memes out of that too, and it also it
Speaker 3: also kind of spread Afternows broke that an American drone
Speaker 3: strike killed the then leader of al Qaeda on July
Speaker 3: thirty first, twenty twenty two. Sound this time period is
Speaker 3: when Dark Brandon broke containment. So Dark Brandon kind of
Speaker 3: started in March of twenty twenty two, and by early
Speaker 3: August it has now left the irony poisoned leftist like
Speaker 3: Twitter sphere and has now broken out and is freely
Speaker 3: swimming around the liberal populace. So come August, Dark Brandon
Speaker 3: no longer belonged to leftist ship posters. Liberals started to
Speaker 3: catch on and make Dark Brandon memes of their own,
Speaker 3: albeit much more cringey boomer versions, And although most of
Speaker 3: these liberals probably didn't really know what was quite being satirized,
Speaker 3: that didn't stop them from trying to emulate this cooler,
Speaker 3: more edgy version of Biden with glowing eyes. So here
Speaker 3: I have two liberal memes here, with someone reacting to
Speaker 3: the news that there was no civilian casualties in the
Speaker 3: drone strike at Kilty al Kainda leader having Biden shooting
Speaker 3: laser eyes down from orbit, and then also him eating
Speaker 3: ice cream in front of an explosion, which is horrible,
Speaker 3: like a not very good meme, but the fact that
Speaker 3: there was bad, like very very bad, low quality dark
Speaker 3: branded memes is actually very important for later.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, yes, no, it's good that this happened.
Speaker 11: Yes, the Internet has taken notice, and now there's a
Speaker 11: new meme out there known as dark Brandon, which shows
Speaker 11: a badass Biden with super villain laser beam eye malls.
Speaker 3: The liberalization of dark Brandon was met with sadness from
Speaker 3: the original memesters that pioneered the overtly ironic dictatorial Brandon
Speaker 3: who commanded battalions of Antifa. The ongoing liberal co option
Speaker 3: of dark Brandon was thought to signal the death of
Speaker 3: the meme, although a completely unintended positive side effect of
Speaker 3: this recuperation seems to be taking hold. We'll have more
Speaker 3: that later. I have I have a four other pretty
Speaker 3: bad dark Brandon memes.
Speaker 1: Here go on with corn ROAs is fully fully sent me.
Speaker 3: It's not good. There's there's two of these are like
Speaker 3: photoshop movie posters with Biden's face extremely poorly photoshopps on Tomeo's.
Speaker 1: Ship photoshops again this is MS paint.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then a poster for the Dark Brandon rises
Speaker 3: with the tagline that the malarchy will end. Not not
Speaker 3: very good memes. So it wasn't just overly online democrats
Speaker 3: on social media who were spreading these dark branded memes.
Speaker 3: Soon enough, White House staff joined in to celebrate the
Speaker 3: passing of the kind of Neutered Inflation Reduction Act. On
Speaker 3: August seventh, the White House Digital Director shared a high
Speaker 3: contrast photo of Biden grinning with red laser eyes pointed
Speaker 3: towards the camera that quickly went viral. Senator Chris Murphy
Speaker 3: of Connecticut posted a dark branded meme which was a
Speaker 3: drawing with yellow glowing eyes later that same day, and
Speaker 3: the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee posted the same
Speaker 3: picture as well, and the Deputy White House Press Secretary
Speaker 3: Andrew Bates posted a whole ass dark branded meme, writing
Speaker 3: dark Brandon is crushing it with a horribly cringing photo
Speaker 3: abided with red laser eyes and a white text that reads,
Speaker 3: your malarkey has been going on for long enough.
Speaker 1: Kiddo, Like, oh my god, oh my god. Now you
Speaker 1: know what, Garrison, we were just celebrating this, but I
Speaker 1: think I am now a fascist.
Speaker 3: It's done it. The White House Staff Secretary joined in
Speaker 3: by responding to a tweet saying laser's shooting out of
Speaker 3: Joe Biden's eyes is an official statement of administration policy
Speaker 3: by saying that is indeed an official physician what anyway?
Speaker 1: So God damn it.
Speaker 3: Many people, myself included, suspected that Dark Branded would suffer
Speaker 3: through kind of a regular meme cycle and die off
Speaker 3: pretty soon once it hit this like peak popularity, But
Speaker 3: somehow Brandon showed a surprising amount of resiliency, partially due
Speaker 3: to liberals being a few months behind and they're being
Speaker 3: really nothing else for liberals to meme about, because this
Speaker 3: was like one of the this time in Biden's presidency
Speaker 3: was the first time the Democrats actually felt like they
Speaker 3: had something to celebrate, and having this kind of overly
Speaker 3: outrageous kind of joking meme was like the first bit
Speaker 3: of like agit prop that liberals have like done since
Speaker 3: Trump went out of office, and it's also like the
Speaker 3: first effective edgeprop they've ever done period.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: Dark Brandon showed one other surprising trait very soon, the
Speaker 3: ability to influence actual Joe Biden. On September first, Biden
Speaker 3: gave a prime time bombastic speech addressed to the nation
Speaker 3: and spoke about the threats to American democracy from extremist
Speaker 3: mega forces. Joe Biden stood outside of Independence Haul in Philadelphia,
Speaker 3: lit with high contrast red lights and uniformed marines on
Speaker 3: either side. Far right politicians and influencers reacted with shakunhorror,
Speaker 3: calling the speech demagogic, outrageous, and divisive, while liberals and
Speaker 3: even some leftists praised the speech for accurately addressing the
Speaker 3: threat posed by far right actors in this country. But
Speaker 3: both of those on the right end left definitely noticed
Speaker 3: the frank brandonness of the entire thing, especially with this
Speaker 3: being less than a month after the White House's own
Speaker 3: Brandon posting. The red lights, the background marines, and the
Speaker 3: impassioned and oddly well delivered appeal to fight for the
Speaker 3: soul of the country from the Trumpian mega extremist political
Speaker 3: faction set on dismantling democracy played very well. The whole
Speaker 3: thing felt very Dark brandon Esque, and the takeaway many
Speaker 3: people had is that they had somehow memed Dark Brandon
Speaker 3: into existence. Do you know who else you don't want
Speaker 3: to fuck with? It's the products and services that support
Speaker 3: this vital, academic level research into Dark Brandon. Truly truly
Speaker 3: unparalleled work on the part of myself. You're welcome, here's
Speaker 3: fucking ads. All right, we are back. Let's talk even
Speaker 3: more about Dark Brandon. I cannot believe I wrote three
Speaker 3: thousand over three thousand words on this all right, So,
Speaker 3: like many natural predators, Dark Brandon went through a period
Speaker 3: of hibernation, laying dormant through most of the winter, that is,
Speaker 3: until a huge resurgence in April of this year. This
Speaker 3: past April, Biden launched his new twenty twenty four re
Speaker 3: election campaign website, which not only featured a Dark Brandon
Speaker 3: error four oh four page reading your Lost Jack, Let's
Speaker 3: get you back on the rails, which is kind of
Speaker 3: funny but not really funny because it's doing the whole
Speaker 3: like Biden and track reference And it's kind of funny
Speaker 3: because it's like a four oh four page, So it's
Speaker 3: like it's Dark Brandon telling you to get back to
Speaker 3: the regular website because you're now on like the the
Speaker 3: part of the website that doesn't exist, because like Dark
Speaker 3: Brandon doesn't exist. It's not I'm overthinking this. I'm doing
Speaker 3: way too high concept. It's like Beaudry art analysis of this.
Speaker 3: This joke is not that good. But beyond the Dark
Speaker 3: Brandon error four oh four page, there is also official
Speaker 3: Dark Brandon merchandise. Biden's Dark Line features dark blue monochrome
Speaker 3: images of Biden or Brandon staring forward with red laser
Speaker 3: eyes and a mischievous grin. The design comes on baseball hats,
Speaker 3: t shirts, mugs, stickers, and tote bags. Product descriptions are
Speaker 3: as follows. Best worn while vanquishing malarkey. Protect yourself from
Speaker 3: malarkey and the sun with this dark cap, dark Brandon,
Speaker 3: dark Rose, dark dark Brandon, dark roast tea drinkers, Welcome,
Speaker 3: and and finally, the worst one malarkey is tot's over
Speaker 3: after we re elect President Biden.
Speaker 1: This is the This is like the Internet equivalent or
Speaker 1: the me I don't know what the I feel the
Speaker 1: same way I feel in like old Yeller when you're like,
Speaker 1: well the dog's got rabies, you got to shoot it,
Speaker 1: Like there's no other ethical way.
Speaker 6: To deal with This is like, but it's it hurts.
Speaker 6: It's like when someone's dad turns up to the skate park.
Speaker 6: This is what's happening here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you've got to shoot them otherwise they'll give everyone rabies. Right,
Speaker 1: that's what you meant, James, Yeah, Yeah, it's time for
Speaker 1: their life to end.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 3: This is also likely fascinating because like the fact that
Speaker 3: that Biden Joe Biden made assume direct control role, laser
Speaker 3: eye Dark merch before Trump did is wild and now
Speaker 3: Trump won't really ever be able to like capitalize on
Speaker 3: this sort of thing because Biden just beat him to
Speaker 3: the punch on this and and like in a way
Speaker 3: that's like not actually promoting fascism, which effectively, this, this
Speaker 3: whole thing effectively neutralized Trump's ability to cash in on
Speaker 3: Dark Mega and the fashwave aesthetic, which is just a
Speaker 3: pretty shocking and like amazing trajectory for fash wave.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 3: The latest appearance of Dark The latest appearance of Dark
Speaker 3: Brandon was during the White House Correspondence dinner this past April,
Speaker 3: when Biden handed off the podium to comedian Roy Wood Junior.
Speaker 1: Roy the partum is yours.
Speaker 6: I'm gonna be fine with your jokes, but I'm not
Speaker 6: sure about Dark Brandon.
Speaker 1: The limbs were so happy to have a meme, a meme.
Speaker 1: They got one, they got one, and they were just
Speaker 1: it's one of those things again, like like a little
Speaker 1: kid having to shoot his dog. I just I couldn't.
Speaker 1: You can't take it away from them. They were just
Speaker 1: so happy.
Speaker 3: I have I do have three. I selected the only
Speaker 3: three Dark branded memes I like. Here for the very end,
Speaker 3: one is just Biden in a beard and an eye patch.
Speaker 3: It says it's over. Jack one has Biden with a
Speaker 3: like a very like horrifyingly edited smile with laser eyes
Speaker 3: malarkey detected and it looks.
Speaker 1: Like the monster in a fucking like I don't I
Speaker 1: don't know exactly what from, but like demon teeth, like
Speaker 1: nightmare teeth.
Speaker 3: The leftists are so much better at making these memes
Speaker 3: than anyone else. And my favorite is this is a
Speaker 3: satirical rift on the this post has been fact checked
Speaker 3: by real American patriots. Trump Beam instead having an image
Speaker 3: of Dark Branded with laser eyes and saying this post
Speaker 3: was fact checked by real Dark branded acolytes. So this
Speaker 3: is like fun and good, right like this, this is fine,
Speaker 3: But there's actually a surprisingly like positive result from this
Speaker 3: whole Dark branden sega, because even as far back as
Speaker 3: August of twenty twenty two, myself, some research colleagues, and
Speaker 3: other journalists that I have like no connection to all
Speaker 3: started to kind of observe the same thing. The liberal
Speaker 3: recuperation of the fashwave style via Dark Brandon seemed to
Speaker 3: seriously damage fash Wave's legibility in right wing circles. The
Speaker 3: normy use of dark Brandon had already appeared to have
Speaker 3: ceased all of the dark megaposting because there was this
Speaker 3: influx of like Minion's Facebook Tier Brandon memes, which offered
Speaker 3: very strong levels of vicarious cringe that provided a social
Speaker 3: disincentive for anyone wanting to post laser eye dark Mega
Speaker 3: memes due to their fear of being associated, even just
Speaker 3: aethically associated with the liberal boomer Biden memes, which which
Speaker 3: now like represented this cringe and dead style. The widespread
Speaker 3: nature of Brandon laser eyes also seemed to seriously dampen
Speaker 3: the Patrick batemanification of characters like Homelander from The Boys,
Speaker 3: who was at the time becoming one of the far
Speaker 3: right's favorite memeable characters. Yeah, there are few things that
Speaker 3: these online nazi weirdos fear more than their special toys
Speaker 3: being played with by normies, because almost immediately they're like
Speaker 3: esoteric plaything loses all appeal once the normies like start
Speaker 3: using it.
Speaker 1: Like it's a signifier that you're part of the club,
Speaker 1: and if yeah, fucking the DNC is posting these memes,
Speaker 1: you're not part of the club anymore. Nope, Like, there's
Speaker 1: no it's not a club you want to be in.
Speaker 1: I guess yeah.
Speaker 3: So I still maintain that one of the best things
Speaker 3: Biden has done since taking office is utterly destroying fashwave
Speaker 3: by complete accident. I postulated this back in twenty twenty two,
Speaker 3: and it still pretty much holds true now. And it's
Speaker 3: not just my opinion either. Others have noticed that Brandon's
Speaker 3: disturbance in the far right to meme ecosystem has really
Speaker 3: taken effect. I'm going to quote Ali brielind in Mother
Speaker 3: Jones quote. The fashwave athetic has already seen its best
Speaker 3: days and wasn't as pervasive on the far right Internet
Speaker 3: as it used to be. But by associating himself with
Speaker 3: a meme style that had partially descended from it, Biden
Speaker 3: and his earnest staff and followers have probably made it
Speaker 3: impossible for neo nazi edge lords to make fashwave posts
Speaker 3: for at least a bit. By enlisting fascist meme offshoots,
Speaker 3: the administration unlocked a code. Earnest Democrats like Biden may
Speaker 3: have a hard time being cool on the Internet, but
Speaker 3: they can kill hip stuff that bad people like that
Speaker 3: is extremely powerful. They made fashwave a bit cringe. Do
Speaker 3: you know what else is a bit Crene Robert that
Speaker 3: breaks Garrison, the fact that we have to have advertising
Speaker 3: on my on my fash wave Biden Dark Dark Gear
Speaker 3: Brandon episode.
Speaker 1: Garrison, the only, the only purpose of studying or learning
Speaker 1: anything is to provide space for advertisements. That's not why
Speaker 1: we do at all.
Speaker 9: No more.
Speaker 3: Actually, do you know if you subscribe to the new
Speaker 3: Apple Premium, you can have no more molarki because there
Speaker 3: won't be any ads. So there you go. All right,
Speaker 3: we are back and we are finally finally going to
Speaker 3: talk about ron Ron DeSantis and and his his kind
Speaker 3: of fash wave misfire. So this happened about a year
Speaker 3: after Dark Brandon had taken control, so there was at
Speaker 3: least a like a good a good year's worth of
Speaker 3: buffer where fash wave was unacceptable and just not really
Speaker 3: even attempted because of how cringe it is at this point.
Speaker 3: But that did not stop the Dysantis war Room Twitter
Speaker 3: account from trying to do it. And then we will
Speaker 3: see what the right's reaction to this was. So, like
Speaker 3: I said at the beginning of the beginning of this episode,
Speaker 3: on the last day of Pride Month, DeSantis's campaign shared
Speaker 3: a video on their Dasanta's war Room account attacking Trump
Speaker 3: for previously held positions seemingly in support of LGBTQ people
Speaker 3: and statements that he said about like allowing transgender women
Speaker 3: to compete in his Miss Universe pageants and allowing Caitlin
Speaker 3: Jenner to use the bathroom of her choice in Trump Tower.
Speaker 3: This video opens with footage of Trump at the twenty
Speaker 3: sixteen RNC saying that he would quote do everything in
Speaker 3: my power to protect our LGBTQ citizens unquote. Now, this
Speaker 3: is pretty gross that the video opens this way because
Speaker 3: very importantly, this was just a month after the Pulse
Speaker 3: nightclub attack in DeSantis's home state of Florida, which killed
Speaker 3: forty nine people. That's why Trump was saying this is
Speaker 3: because there was just a massive massacre in the state
Speaker 3: of Florida. And the fact that Dysantis is opening up
Speaker 3: this Trump like homophobic attack ad by including this little
Speaker 3: bit is pretty is pretty gross. So this video then
Speaker 3: kind of transitions fifteen seconds in, accompanied by a dark
Speaker 3: synthetic beat, to a black and white image of Dysantis
Speaker 3: standing in front of an American flag with red glowing
Speaker 3: eyes shooting out little laser lightning things before a wave
Speaker 3: of pulsating images of Spartans and the Muscular Chad and
Speaker 3: clips of American Psycho, the Wolf of Wall Street and
Speaker 3: Peaky Blinders. Overlaid on top of these flashing images are
Speaker 3: headlines and short clips about Dysantis's extreme anti LGBTQ policies
Speaker 3: that he enacted in Florida. I cannot think of anything
Speaker 3: more plurifying.
Speaker 8: It really has shut down the track, just.
Speaker 6: Produced some of the harshest, most draconian laws that literally
Speaker 6: threatened trans existence.
Speaker 3: Congratulations, Vision accomplished, you win, all right.
Speaker 1: So first off, Garrison, it had been so long since
Speaker 1: I looked at a bit shoot video so weeks. So
Speaker 1: first off, fuck you for that.
Speaker 3: I had to watch a lot of bit chute videos
Speaker 3: for this episode.
Speaker 1: I yeah, I know. Yeah. So that's I mean, absolutely
Speaker 1: impenetrable for like anyone who is not out of their mind, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: like it is it's this Yeah, sorry, James.
Speaker 6: It feels like his fourteen year old nephew who goes
Speaker 6: by like Groyperchad fourteen eighty eight unfortune.
Speaker 1: I'll describe what's happening as like, you know, first you
Speaker 1: get obviously the beginning, which I think is clear just
Speaker 1: from the audio, these clips of like Trump saying stuff
Speaker 1: that's not it's pro gay, you know, from back in
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen. And then it switches to like footage of
Speaker 1: like news articles about DeSantis, you know, doing horrible things
Speaker 1: to queer people in Florida, and like clips of pete
Speaker 1: leftists reacting to how bad it is, and like clips
Speaker 1: of Ron de Santis like walking around or you know,
Speaker 1: art of him photoshopped with like sunglasses.
Speaker 3: Or sunglasses super muscular American Psycho stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, clips of American Psycho clips from like like I
Speaker 1: think it was actually from the movie Troy, Yes it is, yeah,
Speaker 1: just to like make him look yeah, it's yes, it's
Speaker 1: just sad. It's just sad.
Speaker 3: For example, So what one little snippet of is is
Speaker 3: uh one of these little one of these little like
Speaker 3: headlines is intercut between a chat meme and a clip
Speaker 3: from American Psycho, and it shows dysantas in wearing sunglasses
Speaker 3: walking around with the headline Dysantas signs the most extreme
Speaker 3: slate of anti trans laws and modern history with this
Speaker 3: like pulsating music. So yeah, the whole, the whole second
Speaker 3: half of the video is just like that. The video
Speaker 3: seems to receive an almost universally negative reaction.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's so bad. It's famously dog shit like, just
Speaker 1: instant failure, upsetting both Trump supporters and gay Republicans and
Speaker 1: confusing those who are actually sympathetic to dissantish because due to.
Speaker 3: The bizarre imagery in the video, I'm going to read
Speaker 3: some of the comments under the DISSANTUS war Room post.
Speaker 3: Nick Adams Alpha male replied, why is the campaign sharing
Speaker 3: a video comparing him to Patrick Bateman? Isn't Bateman a
Speaker 3: serial killer?
Speaker 6: I think I'm sure that the whole Nick Adams thing
Speaker 6: is an extended bit, like it.
Speaker 1: Is literally impossible to tell.
Speaker 6: Jesse Well, yeah, masculinity is an extended Matthew Weaver says
Speaker 6: it is disgusting that this ad is linked, apparently to
Speaker 6: the Dasanta's campaign.
Speaker 3: It makes me question my support for Dysantis.
Speaker 1: You love to see it.
Speaker 3: A George Santosa staffer said, quote, this ad makes the
Speaker 3: meatball look a gay.
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 1: Now I don't wanna sorry. I think it's I think
Speaker 1: it's here.
Speaker 3: I think that's pretty funny.
Speaker 1: But if you if you ever type out the sentence
Speaker 1: this ad makes the meatball look gay. You can't, you
Speaker 1: can't be in America anymore. You have to go somewhere else.
Speaker 1: Like that's banishment, right, like they used to do in
Speaker 1: the old times, Like here's a backpack, off, you go off,
Speaker 1: you go can't, You're not allowed here anymore.
Speaker 3: Lisa Loves Liberty replied what An American First commentator with
Speaker 3: over one hundred and fifty thousand followers, asked, what's the
Speaker 3: message that the Dysantis team wants people to take away
Speaker 3: from this ad that associates Ron with flawed criminal individuals?
Speaker 3: Is it that Rad is a bootlegging, psycho killer who
Speaker 3: commits financial crimes and has an achilles heel? Because that's
Speaker 3: what it's saying.
Speaker 1: God, that's so funny.
Speaker 3: And finally, far right activist, former congressional staffer and aspiring
Speaker 3: conspiracy theory documentary film producer Daniel Bostik said, quote, this
Speaker 3: is the gayest ad in the history of political advertising.
Speaker 6: So that was that was.
Speaker 3: Roughly the response is to to to Dessentdi's posting this ad.
Speaker 1: All of this is extremely fun. I'm having a good time.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: The the the only the only figure that I that
Speaker 3: I found who was in support of this like ad,
Speaker 3: like like the like. The only like slightly even slightly
Speaker 3: noble person who seems to enjoy this ad thought it
Speaker 3: was a good choice was Ian Miles Chong. Everyone else
Speaker 3: on the right this was a horrible decision.
Speaker 1: Again, if you're not as if you're not a terminally
Speaker 1: online leftist like us, if you're one of like the
Speaker 1: nice sweet liberals who who liked the Joe Brandon memes
Speaker 1: the dark branded memes. Ian Miles Chong is a Malaysian
Speaker 1: senior citizen who has become a far right youth influencer
Speaker 1: through a series of decisions that like you don't you
Speaker 1: don't need this to be explained, but he's one of
Speaker 1: the people that Elon Musk cares about the most in
Speaker 1: this world.
Speaker 6: You could google a picture of Ian Mileschung and understand
Speaker 6: everything you need to from that picture.
Speaker 2: I think.
Speaker 3: Uh So, Fox News called the Dissentist Campaign's use of
Speaker 3: the ad mystifying and an unforced error. Now I've also
Speaker 3: gonna do that's so good. I'm also I also gonna
Speaker 3: play a short clip from Miami, a Florida's local CBS affiliate.
Speaker 9: By the way, the video that you're just about to
Speaker 9: see has over twenty four million views.
Speaker 12: I will do everything in my house to protect our
Speaker 12: lg TGQ citizens.
Speaker 9: The video then suddenly veers in a different direction, accompanied
Speaker 9: by dark images, loud music, mixed images of Governor with shirtless,
Speaker 9: muscular men, including actor Brad Pitt, A prominent group that
Speaker 9: represents LGBTQ conservatives also when on Twitter criticizing the video,
Speaker 9: saying Florida Governor can't tell the difference between common sense
Speaker 9: gaze and the radical left. Gaze labeled the scentist positions
Speaker 9: as dangerous and politically stupid.
Speaker 3: So I think that clip's also just a good reminder
Speaker 3: of the level of specialized political analysis that you're getting
Speaker 3: by listening to this show versus what you get on
Speaker 3: local news. This local news could never explain this, this campaign.
Speaker 1: At no if you if you were to hand this
Speaker 1: over to a team at MSNBC, they would die, they
Speaker 1: would be.
Speaker 3: That's the next cliff I have. The next cliff I
Speaker 3: have is them handing this over to MSNBC.
Speaker 1: This is one of my favorite days at work we've had.
Speaker 3: First of all, the DeSantis campaign sent out a tweet
Speaker 3: later that night saying, quote opposing the federal recognition of
Speaker 3: Pride Month isn't homophobic. We wouldn't support a month to
Speaker 3: celebrate straight people for sexual orientation. It's unnecessary, divisive and pandering.
Speaker 3: It's very very cool. So here is here is here's
Speaker 3: the cliff of of MSNBC reacting to this ad. It's it's, it's,
Speaker 3: it's gonna be. It's gonna be, It's gonna be. It's
Speaker 3: gonna be pretty good.
Speaker 13: Meanwhile, Governor DeSantis is defending a controversial and frankly bizarre
Speaker 13: campaign video that attacks for President Donald Trump's views on
Speaker 13: l g b t Q rights. Donnie Deutsch a man, extraordinary?
Speaker 3: What am I?
Speaker 1: What am I looking at?
Speaker 3: The extraordinaire is is stuffed? Okay, I be doing this
Speaker 3: for a long while.
Speaker 1: What what am I doing here?
Speaker 12: And the answer is, well, first of all, he's DeSantis
Speaker 12: is flailing and he's trying to continually move to the
Speaker 12: right of Trump.
Speaker 8: But this lgbt Q thing is just do you think
Speaker 8: this is moving voters?
Speaker 1: Are you?
Speaker 3: And to pay Trump as a patron of this group?
Speaker 11: Is you know?
Speaker 12: As an ad guy, There's one thing I learned over
Speaker 12: yours is people aren't stupid. Okay, you just and I
Speaker 12: don't know the voter that's going to see that and go,
Speaker 12: you know what, Trump, I'm going you're my guy.
Speaker 2: And it's just DeSantis is such a dark, dark, dark character.
Speaker 12: I've talked a lot about on the show, how at
Speaker 12: the end of the day a candidate Trump, even though
Speaker 12: you know, we eviscerate him, and there is a likability
Speaker 12: if you're a Trump.
Speaker 8: Guy about him.
Speaker 12: He's entertaining, He's a loungeacked.
Speaker 8: This guy is just the dark, the prince darkness.
Speaker 12: And that is one of the darkest, most bizarre, twisted,
Speaker 12: deviant ads I've ever seen.
Speaker 13: Well, he was defending it yesterday. Bipartisan backlash to the video,
Speaker 13: by the way, many people calling it homophobic, Governor DeSantis
Speaker 13: standing by the ad, calling it fair game.
Speaker 10: I think, you know, identifying Donald Trump as really being
Speaker 10: a pioneer in injecting gender ideology into the mainstream, where
Speaker 10: he was having men compete against women in his beauty pageants,
Speaker 10: I think that's totally fair game because he's now campaigning
Speaker 10: saying the opposite that he doesn't think that you should
Speaker 10: have men competing in women's things like athletics. And so
Speaker 10: we've been very clear on it that we believe in
Speaker 10: protecting the rights of our girls and the rights of
Speaker 10: women athletes to be able to participate paid with fairness
Speaker 10: and with integrity.
Speaker 13: In response to those remarks, Trump campaign spokesperson said, quote,
Speaker 13: a desperate dysanctus campaign with a flailing candidate is in
Speaker 13: its last throes of Relevancy's first off.
Speaker 1: Such bad analysis of that video, Yeah, I mean, if
Speaker 1: they're completely out of the death yeah. No, No, The
Speaker 1: point is not that he is so dark and evil.
Speaker 1: The point is that this is incompetent and impenetrable. You
Speaker 1: could just say that it's okay, Yeah, it's my job
Speaker 1: to understand this ship and I don't. Yeah, so.
Speaker 3: The beyond beyond, beyond descendis being the prince of darkness,
Speaker 3: as we've only established.
Speaker 1: Yeah, why try to make him sound cool. I know
Speaker 1: this is what he's doing.
Speaker 3: This is the thing, this is the thing they don't understand, right.
Speaker 3: This is why this is why Dark braindon happened by
Speaker 3: complete accident like it was. It was so effective because
Speaker 3: there was no way for liberals to concoct us themselves.
Speaker 3: They were there. They were only copying the stylings of
Speaker 3: of of like ironic leftists so yeah, everyone is just
Speaker 3: baffled by this sad saying like there's absolutely no way
Speaker 3: of understanding what's going on here. There's there's absolutely no
Speaker 3: like larger trends that that like maybe at play, but
Speaker 3: obviously we we've kind of offered some insight into what's
Speaker 3: been going on here. And in the end, DeSantis's attempt
Speaker 3: at fash wave has been rejected by conservative America either
Speaker 3: through it's just sheer like esoteric strangeness and also the
Speaker 3: kind of the the whittling away at at at Fashwave's
Speaker 3: power that the dark branded meme has been doing for
Speaker 3: so long. There's just nothing first of all appealing about this,
Speaker 3: which makes all that remains just incredibly just like just
Speaker 3: like off putting.
Speaker 6: So like.
Speaker 3: What we have here from DeSantis, like in the actual video,
Speaker 3: but besides the obvious like homophobia is a sort of
Speaker 3: like meme soup, combining some elements of like fash wave
Speaker 3: and some like dark Mega imagery with other imagery from
Speaker 3: from right wing meme tropes that have also gotten popular
Speaker 3: the past few years, like Patrick Bateman, who's who's kind
Speaker 3: of more popular in like the Schizzo wave subgenre just
Speaker 3: still heavily tied to fash wave. It kind of like
Speaker 3: it glorifies the setics of mental illness to push you
Speaker 3: towards doing like extremist violence.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then they should say the the aesthetics of
Speaker 1: like how a specific subculture depicts mental illness?
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, yeah, And there's there's a bunch of other
Speaker 3: like pop culture sigma figures in this video. There's images
Speaker 3: of the real life Chad mistaken in news coverage as
Speaker 3: a generic body builder, but this is actually like a
Speaker 3: very specific online meme that's like not like it's not
Speaker 3: a niche. And there's there's also like a very specific
Speaker 3: uh dysantist Chad Wojack in this video. So and in
Speaker 3: the end, like this had temp kind of reviving a
Speaker 3: soft fash wave style or you know, kind of dark
Speaker 3: mega style for an attack ad by the Dissanda's campaign
Speaker 3: was basically wholesale rejected by conservative Americans and with with
Speaker 3: no with no other politicians co signing this. The only
Speaker 3: other mean notable figure who applauded this was Ian Miles Chung.
Speaker 3: No no, no one else of note thought this was
Speaker 3: a good idea. Most dissenttas of supporters were off putted.
Speaker 3: The only people who really like liked this were like
Speaker 3: chronically online fascist zoomers who are either not old enough
Speaker 3: to vote or just barely old enough to vote.
Speaker 1: Yeah they are teenage Nick Flintz fans.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like because like they're the only ones who are
Speaker 3: like well understand what's going on. So it like becomes
Speaker 3: a cohesive message because if the average viewer isn't turned
Speaker 3: off by like the intense homophobia or the anti Trump angle,
Speaker 3: the alienating editing style and online references and other and
Speaker 3: other kind of of bizarre attributes like the the the music,
Speaker 3: the flashing images, it either left most ordinary viewers confused
Speaker 3: or just like turned off. And so in the end,
Speaker 3: like I think there is there is a recurring trend here,
Speaker 3: and that like dark Mega didn't help the Republicans win
Speaker 3: the mid terms. Like that that was that was a
Speaker 3: pretty pretty big defeat for them. All of all of
Speaker 3: the work they were doing beforehand to like to like
Speaker 3: start getting people like wiled up, get making making like
Speaker 3: attention grabbing authoritarian memes, all of like the critical rice
Speaker 3: theory stuff. None of that panned out in the actual elections,
Speaker 3: and whatever DeSantis is doing sure doesn't seem to be
Speaker 3: helping him beat Trump. The only person who who is
Speaker 3: who is winning right at this is Dark Brandon. Dark
Speaker 3: Brandon strikes again. He is the one that it actually
Speaker 3: has made, has made sure that DeSantis cannot use this playbook.
Speaker 3: Dark Brandon is is sitting on a gargoyle over top
Speaker 3: of whatever city in Florida de Santis lives. Dark Brandon
Speaker 3: is our watchful protector. He is he is, he is
Speaker 3: our silent guardian.
Speaker 1: Garrison was just talking about this image of Dark Brandon
Speaker 1: sitting on a throne above. I'm gonna say, Miami, they
Speaker 1: lifted up their shirt to show their new Dark Brandon
Speaker 1: chest tattoo, and wow, that must have been what was that?
Speaker 1: Twelve hours in the chair? Gear big? What big?
Speaker 2: It was?
Speaker 3: Well, the first day was thirteen hours, the second he
Speaker 3: was twelve hours. So good, thirteen twelve at the end.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's good. That's good, very big. Well, you run
Speaker 1: out of batteryo or the eyes are always going to glow?
Speaker 3: No, Actually, those are fluorescents, So I have to stand
Speaker 3: in the sun for for like ten minutes to charge
Speaker 3: them up and it lasts about.
Speaker 1: Like five hours.
Speaker 6: Magic Haijake love that. Yeah, I have a conspiracy theory here.
Speaker 6: I believe that Ronda Santi's fourteen year old nephew, Groy
Speaker 6: Bitchad fourteen eighty eight, was extreme me online so online
Speaker 6: that his parents took away his phone and he just
Speaker 6: lost all contact with the internet circa like early twenty
Speaker 6: twenty two, and then run to Santa's asked him to
Speaker 6: make an advert, and this is what happened.
Speaker 1: So the advert.
Speaker 3: So I tried tracking down who made this advert. I
Speaker 3: messaged someone who I suspect of making it, who ignored
Speaker 3: my message. To be fair, I messaged them on my
Speaker 3: Julius Vola sock puppet on Telegram, and they still ignored
Speaker 3: my message. So I I there. The video was not
Speaker 3: created by the DeSantis team himself. It was it was
Speaker 3: it was. It was embedded in their war room Twitter feed.
Speaker 3: It was tracked back to this at a one time
Speaker 3: pro Trump account called Proud Elephant, who has a corresponding
Speaker 3: Telegram channel. So this guy Proud Elephant is, from what
Speaker 3: I can tell, the origin point of this video. I
Speaker 3: can't seem to find it in any earlier places. I've
Speaker 3: tried to getting into contact with him to figure out
Speaker 3: what his intentions were for, like if he made the
Speaker 3: video or if he found it from somewhere. But this
Speaker 3: is why I said, I clarified that the DeSantis team
Speaker 3: shared this video on their official campaign account. They did
Speaker 3: not make it themselves, which is also pretty funny because
Speaker 3: they didn't spend any money on this thing, and it
Speaker 3: still like was a massive shot in the face. Like
Speaker 3: it's just like huge, huge blowback. They didn't need to
Speaker 3: like embed this video made by like whatever weirdo loner
Speaker 3: who has like final cut pro on his computer, Like
Speaker 3: there's there's really there's really no reason, like they have
Speaker 3: an actual ad team and for some reason they did
Speaker 3: this instead.
Speaker 13: Now.
Speaker 3: Also as a part of this research, I joined as
Speaker 3: many Dysantis Telegram channels as I could. I scrolled through
Speaker 3: months of posting. I scrolled through all like all three
Speaker 3: of the official Dysantis campaign Twitter accounts. Nothing else in
Speaker 3: their propaganda quite compares to this video. It is such
Speaker 3: a weird outlier that makes me really wonder, like who
Speaker 3: who both who who was operating the the DeSantis war
Speaker 3: room to Twitter account that like hit publish on this
Speaker 3: tweet with this with this video embedded, and like what
Speaker 3: their relation is to the rest of like the Dysantis
Speaker 3: like media strategy because it's just it's just it is.
Speaker 3: It is utterly, utterly baffling.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think some of it can come back
Speaker 1: to In twenty sixteen, kind of about a month so,
Speaker 1: I think before the election, the Trump campaign came out
Speaker 1: with this really weird, very four Chan inspired, sort of
Speaker 1: like ad video for the campaign that like a lot
Speaker 1: of Democrats, you know, made fun of, but it was
Speaker 1: a pretty effective ad. And I you know, I wrote
Speaker 1: about this some at the time, and I talked with
Speaker 1: the guy who'd been doing attack ats and stuff and
Speaker 1: was like, I don't know, I think this is a
Speaker 1: pretty successful ad because it it feels authentic in a
Speaker 1: way that pull up ads don't. And my guess is
Speaker 1: that when this got presented to them, people at the
Speaker 1: DeSantis campaign were like, well, this could be that for us, right,
Speaker 1: this could be us leaning into something that's it's new,
Speaker 1: but it's like real and it's representative of how kids,
Speaker 1: young people are talking these days, and that will build
Speaker 1: the kind of excitement and the kind of like conversation
Speaker 1: around our campaign that can help take us to the
Speaker 1: next level. And I think the thing that they missed
Speaker 1: there was that Trump in sort of, you know, signposting
Speaker 1: to that online alt right was adopting and kind of
Speaker 1: making his own a real movement that was representative of
Speaker 1: some things that were appealing to a lot of people.
Speaker 1: And this is not right, Like there's been no ground
Speaker 1: swell of people who are into this like these weird
Speaker 1: Like the only ground swell of a lot of normies
Speaker 1: getting into fash wave has been dark branded, Like normy
Speaker 1: Republicans did not adopt like this kind of shit in
Speaker 1: en Mass And I think it was a mistake, Like
Speaker 1: it was a it was a it was a mistake
Speaker 1: to think that like I don't know, like random like
Speaker 1: goop heads were going to see their candidate compared to
Speaker 1: a serial killer from a famously off putting movie and
Speaker 1: be like this.
Speaker 3: Is a good call for us. This this is my guy. Yeah,
Speaker 3: Like no, like not not everyone is like a seventeen
Speaker 3: year old suicidal alt right teenager, Like that's actually not
Speaker 3: their prime base if you want to win an election.
Speaker 1: There aren't many of you kids, Like they don't want
Speaker 1: teenagers voting at all.
Speaker 3: Which is it's also really weird that DeSantis has been
Speaker 3: given multiple opportunities to to pull back the ad saying
Speaker 3: it was it was a mistake.
Speaker 2: It was not.
Speaker 3: It was not officially made by our campaign. It shouldn't
Speaker 3: have been shared. But every time they've been given this opportunity,
Speaker 3: they doubled down on the Yeah.
Speaker 1: That's his whole thing though, like never admit fault, always
Speaker 1: pushing forward.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yes that is. That is like a staple of fascism.
Speaker 3: But like yeah, yeah, man, well.
Speaker 1: Anyway, that's good stabbing stuff. I'm well, Garrison, this has
Speaker 1: made my week.
Speaker 3: This has been a time to be alive. This has
Speaker 3: been far too much of my week has been putting
Speaker 3: together these like three thousand, four thousand words.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm glad. I'm glad everyone was able to come
Speaker 3: away from this as as enlightened as as God.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I have.
Speaker 1: I have entered a state of nosis. Thank you, thank
Speaker 1: you for.
Speaker 3: This.
Speaker 1: I've achieved enlightenment.
Speaker 13: All right.
Speaker 3: Well, long lived dark Brandom.
Speaker 1: Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week
Speaker 1: from now until the heat death of the universe.
Speaker 3: It could happen here the production of cool Zone Media.
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Speaker 5: coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio, app,
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Speaker 3: Thanks for listening.