Speaker 1: Also media. Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted
Speaker 1: to let you know this is a compilation episode. So
Speaker 1: every episode of the week that just happened is here
Speaker 1: in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for
Speaker 1: you to listen to in a long stretch if you want.
Speaker 1: If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
Speaker 1: there's going to be nothing new here for you, but
Speaker 1: you can make your own decisions.
Speaker 2: Welcome to it could happen here, a show about things
Speaker 2: falling apart. We are back from our little break, and
Speaker 2: today I'm joined with Robert Evans to discuss fascism.
Speaker 1: I guess, yeah, yeah, I'm here. We're talking fascism. Listeners,
Speaker 1: excuse me. I have a Citus infection. So that's why
Speaker 1: it sound this way.
Speaker 2: Oh that's why you sound like that. Uh huh.
Speaker 3: That sucks life.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, it might not suck as much as what
Speaker 2: I had to do last week, which is watch this
Speaker 2: six part documentary about the twenty twenty five for Trump
Speaker 2: election campaign. God well, the art of the surge.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: Overall, it was actually pretty boring. They were obviously trying
Speaker 2: to edit it like a succession episode. Oh my god,
Speaker 2: really obnoxious. There is some insight into like the inner
Speaker 2: workings of the Trump team, like watching him and his
Speaker 2: team react to the Kamala Harris DNC speech and like
Speaker 2: workshop counter messaging was actually interesting, and the doc does
Speaker 2: show kind of Musk's influence steadily ramping up starting in July.
Speaker 2: The only time you see Trump advance together is after
Speaker 2: Trump's ABC debate, when JD like preps him for the
Speaker 2: Spin room. That's the only time, Wow, we see them
Speaker 2: in a act.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, that makes sense, Like I wouldn't want
Speaker 1: to be in a room with JD vans more than
Speaker 1: I had to be, although the fact that he does
Speaker 1: want to be in a room with Musk is bafflt.
Speaker 2: Yes, and actually Musk and JD get along quite well
Speaker 2: in the interactions that are seeing in the documentary, Malania,
Speaker 2: Trump never appears once, not a single time.
Speaker 1: Well, it's good to know that they've they've managed to
Speaker 1: put together a functional throuble.
Speaker 2: Ooh, don't like that. Don't like that at all? First, buddy,
Speaker 2: the ikes. My biggest takeaway from this documentary is that
Speaker 2: it just showed how much his rallies are a religious
Speaker 2: experience for his supporters like deeply, deeply religious, especially the
Speaker 2: Butler Pennsylvania rallies, where everyone talks about it like they
Speaker 2: would like like a genuine like limit experience or religious experience.
Speaker 2: Right now this episode, I actually I want to focus
Speaker 2: on the rhetoric employed at these rallies in attempts to
Speaker 2: label Trump a fascists. There's been a lot of discussion
Speaker 2: on like Trump's authoritarian and dictatorial desires and tendencies and
Speaker 2: expressions of those fears in particular were not enough to
Speaker 2: persuade the majority of voters against Trump, let alone safe
Speaker 2: and Republican support towards Harris and we on this show
Speaker 2: have not talked much about the escalation of rhetoric used
Speaker 2: by Trump and his allies this campaign cycle, with the
Speaker 2: Biden administration's horrific border policies and the enabling of Israel's
Speaker 2: genocidal actions in Gaza drawing a great deal of our
Speaker 2: attention in the past few months. But now I do
Speaker 2: want to draw attention to the ethno nationalist framing that
Speaker 2: has become all too common, especially with the Democrats just
Speaker 2: complete submission to Trump and the GOP's distinct focus on
Speaker 2: immigration as the top issue facing America. So part of
Speaker 2: what I'm gonna do here is I've outlined a few
Speaker 2: clips and some quotes I'm trying. I tried to limit
Speaker 2: the clips because I know no one wants to hear
Speaker 2: Trump and these guys talk for too long, but I
Speaker 2: will place some And Robert, you've spent a lot of
Speaker 2: your time thinking about fascism in the past few years
Speaker 2: and reading about fascism, so I'm certainly curious on your
Speaker 2: thoughts on some of these clips and quotes. As we'll
Speaker 2: kind of go through like three specific rallies, mostly great
Speaker 2: and outline what type of rhetoric they are using and
Speaker 2: what it kind of points to historically. Now, one of
Speaker 2: the reoccurring phrases at Trump rallies this cycle was that
Speaker 2: the United States has become an occupied territory. Here's Trump
Speaker 2: invoking that language at a rally in Atlanta a week
Speaker 2: before the election.
Speaker 4: But it will soon be an occupied country no longer.
Speaker 4: November fifth, twenty twenty four, will be Liberation Day in America,
Speaker 4: and during day one, I will launch the largest deportation
Speaker 4: program in American history.
Speaker 5: We're going to get these criminals out.
Speaker 4: I will rescue every city in town that has been
Speaker 4: invaded and conquered.
Speaker 5: These towns have been conquered, you know, they have been invaded.
Speaker 4: And can you imagine, just as though a foreign enemy
Speaker 4: was invading, a military was invading.
Speaker 2: Okay, I will rescue every city in town that has
Speaker 2: been invaded and.
Speaker 6: Conquered, conquered.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just as though an enemy, a foreign enemy was invading.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that's I don't even know what to
Speaker 1: say about that. It's like that's textbook fascist shit, right, Like,
Speaker 1: I mean, among other things, ramping everyone up to justify,
Speaker 1: you know, at least the potential for violence against migrants.
Speaker 1: You know, it's it's self defense, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Now, I like to focus first on the Madison
Speaker 2: Square Garden rally, certainly the Puerto Rico floating Island of garbage.
Speaker 2: Comments from the roast comedian got a lot of media attention,
Speaker 2: but what got less coverage was the much more historically
Speaker 2: worrying statements made by those within Trump's circle. Let's start
Speaker 2: with Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller.
Speaker 7: America is for Americans and Americans only.
Speaker 2: So, Robert, does that phrase remind you of any other
Speaker 2: phrases that have been used over time?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, like one people, one vulc one Reich, Right,
Speaker 1: I guess, yeah. I mean again, like I don't even
Speaker 1: know what to say at this point, right, Like we're
Speaker 1: it's so obvious. When I started in the warning people
Speaker 1: about fascism game, you had to like explain a lot
Speaker 1: of history and then sort of like walk in. Here's
Speaker 1: how you know this is a sign post. I mean,
Speaker 1: when someone doesn't eighty eight this is what it means
Speaker 1: or whatever, and we're so far past that, like.
Speaker 2: Well, and and specifically this one invokes the Germany is
Speaker 2: for the Germans, which is ya a phrase that is
Speaker 2: banned in Germany now due to its use during the
Speaker 2: Nazi era.
Speaker 6: That gives us something to look forward to now.
Speaker 2: In a rant advocating for election denial in the case
Speaker 2: of Trump losing the election, Tucker Carlson referred to Kamala
Speaker 2: Harris as a Samoan Malaysian low IQ. This is just
Speaker 2: kind of baffling old school racism. Yeah, I honestly didn't
Speaker 2: expect this type of thing to have such a resurgence
Speaker 2: the past year.
Speaker 1: More esoteric than I expected.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's frankly odd.
Speaker 8: Now.
Speaker 2: Tucker also spoke about how the elites are trying to
Speaker 2: replace the population and the culture and customs of this country,
Speaker 2: just clearly invoking the white nationalists a great replacement ideology
Speaker 2: that he kind of previously spread on his Fox show in.
Speaker 9: A country that's been taken over by a leadership class
Speaker 9: that actually despises them and their values and their history
Speaker 9: and their culture and their customs, really hates them to
Speaker 9: the point that it's trying to replace them.
Speaker 2: Very very clear stuff. And Don Junior invoked very similar rhetoric,
Speaker 2: saying that the government no longer puts Americans first and
Speaker 2: that the Democratic Party would rather quote replace Americans with
Speaker 2: people who will be reliable voters on glob Well, and again,
Speaker 2: this is types of stuff that we talked about in
Speaker 2: like twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen. It's like Laurens Southern YouTube videos.
Speaker 1: And like if there's one thing that dims are bad at,
Speaker 1: it's getting reliable voters.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yes, Like this is the type of stuff that was
Speaker 2: so that was much more niche. And then you had
Speaker 2: a few like four Chan guys start like doing a
Speaker 2: writing on Tucker's show, and now it's being used at
Speaker 2: disappoint the president's rallies.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now, when Trump finally took the stage he mirrored Tucker's
Speaker 2: Kamala Harris IQ comments, saying everyone knows she's a very
Speaker 2: low IQ individual. Like usual, he called the press the
Speaker 2: enemy of the people. Uh huh, But he went on
Speaker 2: to describe the true enemy mastermining the fall of America
Speaker 2: the quote radical left machine that has taken control of
Speaker 2: the Democratic Party.
Speaker 4: It's just this amorphous group of people.
Speaker 3: But they're smart, and they're vicious, and we.
Speaker 4: Have to defeat them. And when I say the enemy
Speaker 4: from within, the other side goes crazy, becomes a sound maho.
Speaker 5: How can he say, no.
Speaker 4: They've done very bad things to this country. They are
Speaker 4: indeed the enemy from within.
Speaker 2: And I do find it interesting the way he describes
Speaker 2: them as like a morphous Yeah, it's not like a
Speaker 2: distinct sect. It's not like a fups of people. It's
Speaker 2: this like a MorphOS almost like like a like like
Speaker 2: ethereal force that can like inhabit people.
Speaker 1: You need that because, that, among other things, allows you
Speaker 1: to refocus the lens on anyone. Yeah, right, Like you
Speaker 1: need the opportunity to keep shifting because eventually, if you're
Speaker 1: just actually focusing on a real discrete group of human beings,
Speaker 1: you get rid of those people. You throw them in
Speaker 1: prison or whatever, and then you don't have an enemy anymore,
Speaker 1: and you always need that.
Speaker 2: And do you know what we need right.
Speaker 6: Now, Robert Products and Services.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we do need to go on a quick break,
Speaker 2: and then I'm going to come back to talk about Dluth, Georgia.
Speaker 2: So not good, great, all right, we are back. I'm
Speaker 2: gonna now turn to a turning point action event on
Speaker 2: October twenty third in Dluth, Georgia, which I actually just
Speaker 2: visited for the first time. I went ice skating in Deluth, Georgia,
Speaker 2: and to kind of get a sense of what this town.
Speaker 2: It's not even really a suburb of Atlanta, it's it's
Speaker 2: so far north as I was, isis skating there.
Speaker 3: I'm pretty sure.
Speaker 2: Like a Christian cult showed up and they had all
Speaker 2: their members also ice skated, because they were all wearing
Speaker 2: like the same outfits they hold, like very specific like headscarves.
Speaker 2: A few a few of like the more like youth
Speaker 2: pastory types, had like you know, like christ As King
Speaker 2: type puddies. But it definitely wasn't like a regular church.
Speaker 2: It was. It was more of some kind of like
Speaker 2: evangelical like cultish formation based on like the uniform clothing.
Speaker 2: So that's Deluth, Georgia.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now, Charlie Kirk gave a fifteen minute speech which he
Speaker 2: closed with a spiritual appeal, saying, quote, you have a
Speaker 2: biblical obligation to engage in this election and to fight evil.
Speaker 2: The Democratic Party supports everything God hates unquote. Kirk then
Speaker 2: called this election a quote unquote spiritual battle and in
Speaker 2: and finally he said, quote, this is a Christian state.
Speaker 2: I want to see that continue. So none of this
Speaker 2: is like New Right. This is kind of at this
Speaker 2: point bog standard Christian nationalism. But this is a rally
Speaker 2: of about ten thousand people. It's not an official Trump rally.
Speaker 2: It is a turning point action rally that Trump did
Speaker 2: speak at. But I like to hone in once again
Speaker 2: on Tucker Carlson's comments. Now, he called this the first
Speaker 2: speech he's ever given at a political rally. Now, both
Speaker 2: me and you saw Tucker speak at the RNC. I
Speaker 2: guess he kind of views the R and C is
Speaker 2: a little bit different from like a standard like kind
Speaker 2: of more like a campaign rally type event. But Tucker
Speaker 2: called Trump a triumph of the human spirit, Christ, a
Speaker 2: triumph of the will. You could say, yeah, yes, like,
Speaker 2: what's another word for the human spirit?
Speaker 6: Uh huh.
Speaker 2: But now I'm gonna play Actually, this is the lunge
Speaker 2: cliff we have just because it's so fascinating and I
Speaker 2: have a lot that kind of written on this already.
Speaker 2: I'm just gonna play this clip.
Speaker 9: There has to be a point at which Dad comes home.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. Dad comes home and he's pissed.
Speaker 2: Dad is pissed.
Speaker 3: He's not vengeful.
Speaker 9: He loves his children, disobedient as they may be, he loves.
Speaker 3: Them because there's children. They live in his house.
Speaker 9: But he's very disappointed in their behavior and he's gonna
Speaker 9: have to let them know. He's gonna have to get
Speaker 9: to your room right now and think about what you did.
Speaker 9: And when Dad gets home, you know what he says.
Speaker 9: You've been a bad girl. You've been a bad little girl,
Speaker 9: and you're getting a vigorous spanking right now. And no,
Speaker 9: it's not gonna hurt me more than it hurts you.
Speaker 3: No, it's not. I'm not gonna lie.
Speaker 9: That's gonna hurt you a lot more than it hurts me.
Speaker 3: And you earned this.
Speaker 9: You're getting a vigorous spanking because you've been a bad girl.
Speaker 1: Well, that's just real sick and deranged. I mean you
Speaker 1: can tell he really gets off on spanking little girls.
Speaker 2: I mean, like beyond like Tucker is like shown depravity here.
Speaker 2: I also just find like the willingness of the audience
Speaker 2: just to eat this stuff up and like really enjoy
Speaker 2: it to like similarly be like both like fascinating and
Speaker 2: like a show of like a certain level of a depravement.
Speaker 1: Well, it's this, it's leaning into what has always been
Speaker 1: the core of like the most militant conservatism, which is
Speaker 1: the like strict Christian conservative parents rights people sure be
Speaker 1: like my children are my property, and also the right
Speaker 1: way to parents is like a dictator.
Speaker 2: I mean this is like the most like openly Freudian
Speaker 2: display of American fascism that I've ever seen before.
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, oh yeah, It's amazing, this.
Speaker 2: Idea of like a harsh father whose love is replaced
Speaker 2: with fearful authority. It's really important that like America is
Speaker 2: framed as a bad girl. There's this like feminizing of
Speaker 2: the masses. Right, America is not like a bad little boy.
Speaker 2: A bad girl is like really important. Carlson's almost invoking
Speaker 2: like an incestuous like domination. Yeah, it's it's quite sick.
Speaker 2: And like I had to actually like like look up
Speaker 2: stuff on this because I'm like, I know Freud and
Speaker 2: a few others have like written about this type of
Speaker 2: thing before, and specifically Adorno has written about this in
Speaker 2: an essay called Freudian Theory and the Pattern of Fascist
Speaker 2: Propaganda that I'd like to read just a few brief
Speaker 2: quotes from.
Speaker 1: Oh I love some Adorno, Yes, please.
Speaker 2: Quote There is either no mention of love whatsoever between members,
Speaker 2: or it's expressed only in a sublimated and indirect way
Speaker 2: through the mediation of some religious image. In the love
Speaker 2: of whom the members unite and who's all embracing love
Speaker 2: they are supposed to imitate in their attitude towards each other.
Speaker 2: It seems significant that in today's society, with its artificially
Speaker 2: integrated fascist masses, reference to love is almost completely excluded.
Speaker 2: Hitler shunned the traditional role of the loving father and
Speaker 2: replaced it entirely by the negative one of threatening authority unquote.
Speaker 2: I'm going to pivot to Freud here, specifically his essay
Speaker 2: on group behavior and how individuals regressed become part of masses.
Speaker 2: He writes about how a leader of a cult can
Speaker 2: exploit psychological shortcuts in its followers to embody this like
Speaker 2: group ideal that governs their ego as a substitution quote,
Speaker 2: the leader of the group is the dreaded primal Father.
Speaker 2: The group still wishes to be governed by unrestricted force.
Speaker 2: It has an extreme passion for authority, It has a
Speaker 2: thirst for obedience. The primal Father is the group ideal.
Speaker 2: This is like so displayed what Tucker is doing like
Speaker 2: this is just exactly what it is. I mean, it
Speaker 2: reminds me of the other quote about how people seek
Speaker 2: out salvation in subjugation. And I'll leave just one more
Speaker 2: quote from Adorno here quote. Fascist agitation is centered in
Speaker 2: the idea of the leader, no matter whether he actually
Speaker 2: leads or is only the mandatory of group interests. Because
Speaker 2: only the psychological image of the leader is apt to
Speaker 2: reanimate the idea of the all powerful and threatening primal Father.
Speaker 2: The formation of the imagery of an omnipotent and unbridled
Speaker 2: father figure, by far transcending the individual father and therefore
Speaker 2: apt to be enlargened into a group ego, is the
Speaker 2: only way to promulgate the passive masochistic attitude to whoms
Speaker 2: one's will has to be surrendered, an attitude required of
Speaker 2: the fascist follower the more his political behavior becomes irreconcilable
Speaker 2: with his own rational interests as a private person, as
Speaker 2: well as those of the group or class to which
Speaker 2: he actually belongs. The followers reawakened irrationality is therefore quite
Speaker 2: rational from the leader's point of view. It necessarily has
Speaker 2: to be a conviction which is not based on perception
Speaker 2: and reasoning, but on an erotic tie. I'm sure someone
Speaker 2: more skilled than me could write like a whole dissertation
Speaker 2: just on Tucker's speech here, because like it invokes so
Speaker 2: many of these ideas and like without trying to this
Speaker 2: is always like subconscious on their part, Like they're pulling
Speaker 2: on these things like specifically, like like the passive masochistic attitude.
Speaker 2: It's like their submission to Trump is like this deep
Speaker 2: masochistic urge.
Speaker 1: There's another thing in there that I think is important,
Speaker 1: especially because I'm hearing a lot of people talking about like, well,
Speaker 1: once Trump pushes through his tariffs or does this or
Speaker 1: does that, the horrible negative consequences of this will like
Speaker 1: absolutely destroy the GOP right. That'll finally bring them down
Speaker 1: to me let them, you know, no, And one of
Speaker 1: the things that Dorino says there is that, like the
Speaker 1: leader doesn't even need to be bro and that's an
Speaker 1: underdiscussed aspect of psychology and fascist states. One of the
Speaker 1: one of the phenomenons within Nazi Germany was, you know,
Speaker 1: there were a number of Nazi policies, Hitler's policies that
Speaker 1: had serious negative effects on people in Germany. And one
Speaker 1: of the most common phrases that you would hear from
Speaker 1: them was if only Hitler knew, right, you know, you
Speaker 1: usually deployed when like you were dealing with a government
Speaker 1: agency that was headed by just like an absolute criminal
Speaker 1: that you know, Hitler had appointed that like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: Hitler doesn't know that the Gestapo are doing this, right,
Speaker 1: you know, he would stop this, he'd put a stop
Speaker 1: to this if he knew, he wouldn't let this happen.
Speaker 6: Right, That's what That's what Trump's believers.
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's what the American people writ
Speaker 1: large may never buy into Trump the way that the
Speaker 1: Germans bought into Hitler, but Trump's supporters are certainly already there.
Speaker 2: And this is something that Tucker saw in the audience
Speaker 2: when he started on this rant, he started repeating certain
Speaker 2: phrases because it got such a good reaction from the crowd. Like,
Speaker 2: this wasn't like planned, it was. It was him reading
Speaker 2: the crowd and realizing, oh, they really like this. I'm
Speaker 2: going to keep doing it, and specifically this. This is
Speaker 2: also how he closed his speech. And I don't believe
Speaker 2: this was this was planned. I believe this is because
Speaker 2: of the reaction that the crowd had previously. I'm going
Speaker 2: to play the very end of his speech where he
Speaker 2: basically endorses like a coup. If Harris actually wins.
Speaker 9: If they do all of that, they need to lose.
Speaker 9: And at the end of all of it, when they
Speaker 9: tell you they've won, no, you can look them straight
Speaker 9: in the face and say, I'm sorry.
Speaker 3: Dad's home and he's pissed.
Speaker 6: Thank you.
Speaker 2: They love it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, of course, of course, all they have ever wanted
Speaker 1: is to be forced to be right, you know, and
Speaker 1: to the extent that reality disagrees with their beliefs, which
Speaker 1: it usually does, to be able to beat reality into place,
Speaker 1: and at least continue to trick themselves until they die, right, Like,
Speaker 1: that's all the fascists, I know, you know, the older people,
Speaker 1: many of whom raised me. That's what it really was
Speaker 1: about for them was never having to acknowledge the mistakes
Speaker 1: that they had made, the things that they had supported
Speaker 1: that didn't work out. Like it was a rage at
Speaker 1: the people who insisted on pointing out, Hey, you said
Speaker 1: this was going to happen, and the opposite happened. So
Speaker 1: that promise of like even if they win, Dad's going
Speaker 1: to come home and beat them into submission is deeply attractive.
Speaker 2: I mean, and even if it hurts your own like
Speaker 2: self interests, your only class interests, right, And it's like
Speaker 2: replacing all of the anguish you have as like an
Speaker 2: individual person and like replacing your own ego with the
Speaker 2: embodiment of this group ideal that is just someone else.
Speaker 2: Like this is why so many people have like dedicated
Speaker 2: their lives to Trump. Like you look at all these
Speaker 2: like like boomers and even some like gen X people
Speaker 2: at these Trump rallies who like Trump has like become
Speaker 2: like their personality. He's fully occupied their life. And yeah,
Speaker 2: like that's that's similar into the way that like occult
Speaker 2: leader has like how Freud wrote about it. Freud wrote
Speaker 2: all that stuff like in the nineteen twenties before before,
Speaker 2: like Hitler really rose to power, but he could like
Speaker 2: sense what was like coming in Germany. He could he
Speaker 2: could feel it. Yeah, And what I'm gonna feel right
Speaker 2: now is the products and services that support this podcast.
Speaker 6: Huzzah, all right.
Speaker 3: We are back.
Speaker 2: I like to close by talking about Aurora, Colorado.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 2: A tactic the Trump campaign consistently used this past year
Speaker 2: is to hone in on particular small communities as being
Speaker 2: taken over by immigrants who they would call like criminal migrants.
Speaker 2: The best known example of this is what happened in Springfield, Ohio,
Speaker 2: but this also happened in the Denver suburb Aurora, Colorado,
Speaker 2: after a video went viral showing men walking through an
Speaker 2: apartment complex holding firearms. A false claim then spread that
Speaker 2: a Venezuelan gang was forcibly taking over entire buildings in
Speaker 2: this city. At a Trump rally in Aurora on October eleventh,
Speaker 2: massive banners on both sides of the stage read Deport
Speaker 2: illegals now and end Migrant crime. On either side of
Speaker 2: the podium, there were large mugshots of Latino men with
Speaker 2: text that reads occupied America. Steven Miller, now Chief Advisor
Speaker 2: for Immigration Policy, takes the stage and says that the
Speaker 2: patriots gathered at this event can quote end the invasion
Speaker 2: and end the occupation by voting for Trump.
Speaker 7: Look at all these photos around me. Are these the
Speaker 7: kids you grew up with? Are these the neighbors you
Speaker 7: were raised with? Are these the neighbors that you want
Speaker 7: in your city? No, these are the criminal migrants the
Speaker 7: Kamala Harris brought into your community.
Speaker 2: Again, it's all it's all pretty brazen stuff.
Speaker 8: Yep.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean we call that brazen, but like that's
Speaker 1: just mainstream now. Yes, Like the fight to look at
Speaker 1: migrants as human beings and have any kind of sane justice,
Speaker 1: you know, for undocumented migrants in this country has has
Speaker 1: been completely botched.
Speaker 2: There's something about like the suburban neighborhood idea that is
Speaker 2: more like disturbing to me, Like like pointing to actual
Speaker 2: pictures of people being Are these the kids you grew
Speaker 2: up with?
Speaker 6: Yep?
Speaker 2: And like the fight to like preserve this nostalgic idea
Speaker 2: of like your childhood neighborhood, it's just so dark to
Speaker 2: me now. Invoking great replacement framing, Miller says that Kamala
Speaker 2: Harris was bringing these immigrants into your communities and that
Speaker 2: they are now taking over America.
Speaker 7: We don't need in this country homeless migrants, criminal migrants.
Speaker 7: We don't need migrants consuming and depleting our public resources,
Speaker 7: overwhelming our public schools, overwhelming our hospital, taking over our
Speaker 7: apartment buildings, and yes, murdering innocent Americans. You have a
Speaker 7: right to love the community you grew up in. You
Speaker 7: have a right to love your neighbors as they are.
Speaker 7: You have a right to want a country that is
Speaker 7: of by and for Americans and only Americans.
Speaker 2: Again with that, like, you have a right to love
Speaker 2: the community you grew up in. And then of course
Speaker 2: like Americans for Americans. And Miller later closed his speech
Speaker 2: by yelling, America will be reclaimed for Americans.
Speaker 6: Oh gosh, yep.
Speaker 1: I mean, look, these people suffered no consequences for what
Speaker 1: they did the last time, so they're going to keep
Speaker 1: pushing further. It's done nothing but work for them. No
Speaker 1: one has ever taught them any lesson that, like, hey,
Speaker 1: you've gone too far and now there are going to
Speaker 1: be negative consequences. That hasn't happened. So yeah, they're just
Speaker 1: going to keep getting more and more masked off. This
Speaker 1: is where they've wanted to be a miller, certainly from
Speaker 1: the beginning, and.
Speaker 2: They've used these past four years as prep work to
Speaker 2: build them to this point. And of course none of
Speaker 2: what they're saying is like real in terms of like
Speaker 2: you know, buildings being taken over the famously pro Harris
Speaker 2: liberal extremist group. The Aurora Police Department have continued to
Speaker 2: clarify that no apartment buildings have been taken over by
Speaker 2: any gangs, nor have tenants been paying gang members rent money.
Speaker 2: According to the police, none of the armed men seen
Speaker 2: in that viral video, who have all been since identified
Speaker 2: or arrested, none of them have any ties to Venezuelan
Speaker 2: gangs or organized crime. What happened was slumlords spread a
Speaker 2: false story about their apartment complex being taken over by
Speaker 2: a gang as a way to get out of doing
Speaker 2: repairs on the property, saying it was too dangerous to
Speaker 2: to the premises.
Speaker 6: Jesus.
Speaker 2: It was all like a fucking scam by slum lords
Speaker 2: so that they wouldn't have to fix their own apartment building.
Speaker 2: Denver seven found code enforcement and inspection records dating back
Speaker 2: to twenty twenty that show numerous violations prior to the
Speaker 2: influx of Venezuelan immigrants in the Denver metro area. The
Speaker 2: complex is now under new care, but a similar false
Speaker 2: tale of an apartment building in Chicago being taken over
Speaker 2: by immigrant gangs went viral in September due to the
Speaker 2: efforts of libs of TikTok and Elon Musk, with libs
Speaker 2: of TikTok saying, quote, first they did this in Aurora, Colorado,
Speaker 2: and now Chicago, which city will be next? This invasion
Speaker 2: happened on Kamala's watch unquote. The last thing I will
Speaker 2: mention here is all of the blood comments that Trump
Speaker 2: has been making the past year. In intervery last year,
Speaker 2: Trump said that immigrants are poisoning the blood of our country.
Speaker 2: It's so bad, and people are coming in with disease,
Speaker 2: people are coming in with every possible thing that you
Speaker 2: could have unquote. This clearly invoked like blood framing used
Speaker 2: by Hitler and Nazis, and like eugenics in general, and
Speaker 2: this is rhetoric that he's continuing to use for the present.
Speaker 2: In an interview last month, Trump so that immigrants are
Speaker 2: naturally murderers because quote it's in their genes. We've got
Speaker 2: a lot of bad genes in our country right now.
Speaker 1: I mean a lot of what this comes down to
Speaker 1: is that after World War Two, we really needed to
Speaker 1: execute a lot more people, you know, like you could
Speaker 1: have quashed the eugenics movement. We needed to go after
Speaker 1: a lot of people in the US. There were a
Speaker 1: lot of American fascists involved in eugenics, and after Treblinka
Speaker 1: and Auschwitz, we really just should have cleaned house, and
Speaker 1: instead we let all of these people get into think tanks.
Speaker 2: I'm going to close with a quote from The Atlantic
Speaker 2: here quote. When Trump was swaying to music at a
Speaker 2: surreal rally, he did so in front of a huge slogan,
Speaker 2: Trump was right about everything. This is the language borrow
Speaker 2: directly from Mussolini, the Italian fascist. Soon after the rally,
Speaker 2: the scholar Ruth ben Gate posted a photograph of a
Speaker 2: building in Mussolini's Italy displaying the slogan Mussolini is always right.
Speaker 6: Uh huh.
Speaker 2: And that reminded me of what you said earlier about
Speaker 2: how these people just always wanted to be right.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, that's that's the that's the core of it.
Speaker 2: And similarly, like people can surrender their own individual ego
Speaker 2: and substitute it with this image of Trump right, Trump
Speaker 2: was right about everything.
Speaker 8: Yep.
Speaker 2: Anyway, this is this is kind of what I wanted
Speaker 2: to put together, just focusing on on all of these things,
Speaker 2: because I mean, as much as you know, foreign policy
Speaker 2: in America is always kind of fucked. Domestic policy, I think,
Speaker 2: does often get changed based on who is in office,
Speaker 2: and this is what we're going to be dealing with
Speaker 2: these four years, especially with Miller taking a larger and
Speaker 2: larger role inside the White House.
Speaker 1: We sure are, So everybody buckle up.
Speaker 5: Hello and welcome to AKAP and Here I am Andrew Sage.
Speaker 5: I run andrewsm Ova on YouTube. I'm joined by the
Speaker 5: one and.
Speaker 3: Only Garrison Davis. Hello.
Speaker 5: Hello, Hello, you don't sound p secuarly festive.
Speaker 2: You know, it's a it's been a long week. This
Speaker 2: is the last workday of election week when we're recording this.
Speaker 2: I just returned from my cabin in the woods, which
Speaker 2: I which I got to kind of watch the election unfold.
Speaker 2: So now I am back in the real world, not
Speaker 2: just hiding up in the mountains of Georgia. So it
Speaker 2: feels slightly worse, but we we carry on.
Speaker 5: As you mentioned a cabin in the woods, it actually
Speaker 5: reminds me of this movie that came out to Netflix
Speaker 5: a little while ago. If you've seen it, Leave the World.
Speaker 3: Behind, Yes, I I've seen that.
Speaker 5: Yes, it's it's pretty after You're in a cabin and
Speaker 5: all this was going on.
Speaker 2: Yes, Yes, we actually talked about that movie earlier on
Speaker 2: this on this show and some conspiracy theories around it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, oh, the Obama connection.
Speaker 1: That's right, that's right.
Speaker 2: You understand, you're already receiving the messages.
Speaker 3: You already know.
Speaker 5: Exactly. But we're not focused on.
Speaker 2: The US for this episode, thank goodness.
Speaker 5: Instead, we're going to be going back into the past
Speaker 5: and the present as well, because the struggle really doesn't end,
Speaker 5: and taking a look at the struggle of the Mapuche
Speaker 5: in Chile and Argentina. I'd actually mentioned them in my
Speaker 5: exploration of Latin American anarchisms that you know, they would
Speaker 5: need their own episode. So here we are taking a
Speaker 5: look at everything that they've been up to. And it's
Speaker 5: really thanks to the work of Fello anarchists m good
Speaker 5: Hawk and John Sevreno and there that I've been able
Speaker 5: to put together this illucidation of indigenous anarchist history. So
Speaker 5: the lands that now bear the titles of Chile and
Speaker 5: Argentina have long held the Mapuche people long before borders
Speaker 5: were drawn, long before the world learned to cage the wild.
Speaker 5: The land itself is considered while mapoo, and it's deeply
Speaker 5: entwined with the identity of the Mapuche people. While poo
Speaker 5: is of course not just a geographical term, is also
Speaker 5: a spiritual one. It's a tapestry of their histories and
Speaker 5: their dreams, and also their view of the world through
Speaker 5: a lens of reciprocity, because the Uche do acknowledge their
Speaker 5: kinship with the land, the rivers, the mountains, and that
Speaker 5: worldview that they hold and have traditionally held. Rather champions
Speaker 5: balance and harmony and respect for all forms of life,
Speaker 5: which is what has been fuel in their ongoing against occupation.
Speaker 5: So in a sense, the Mapuche struggle echoes an anarchist
Speaker 5: ethos of autonomy and mutual aid. But I wouldn't cau
Speaker 5: as far as to call them anarchists, you know, I mean,
Speaker 5: they have a very specific cultural and historical and spiritual
Speaker 5: context that is distinct from anarchists. Thought. Despite these similarities
Speaker 5: and overlaps in there so s, they will be exploring
Speaker 5: the history, people, and struggles of all Mapou that have
Speaker 5: shaped the Mapuche experience now. Ancient archaeological finds from tools
Speaker 5: to pottery have suggested that the Mapuche may have settled
Speaker 5: in present day southern Chile and Argentina as far back
Speaker 5: twenty five hundred to three thousand years ago. Genetic and
Speaker 5: linguistic research connects the Mapuche lineage to other indigenous groups
Speaker 5: across the Andes, meaning that their ancestors may have migrated
Speaker 5: down the western spin of South America in waves, adapt
Speaker 5: into the rainforests, coastlines, and valleys of what's now one Mapu.
Speaker 5: Historically and currently, the Mapuch spoken Mapudungun, and the language
Speaker 5: itself carries aspects of their cultural identity, others to be expected.
Speaker 5: Mapudungun is a polysynthetic language, meaning its words can be
Speaker 5: formed by combining smaller parts to reflect complex ideas. Mapuche
Speaker 5: itself combines Mapu meaning land and Chay meaning people. Sapuch
Speaker 5: lived on the border of the Incan Empire, meaning that
Speaker 5: they were in contact with centralized state organizations and hierarchical societies.
Speaker 5: I would have chosen to differentiate themselves and the societies
Speaker 5: from these status peoples, So how do they do so exactly?
Speaker 5: The Puschi way of life would have revolved around, as
Speaker 5: I said, a deep respective for kinship, communal responsibility, and
Speaker 5: spiritual stewardship of the land. The society itself was based
Speaker 5: around the loaf or family based communal unit, each love
Speaker 5: holding shared responsibility over a specific territory, ensuring the one's
Speaker 5: personal wealth doesn't override the interest and well being of
Speaker 5: the environment in the community. The love wasn't just limited
Speaker 5: to the people of that family based community unit, it
Speaker 5: also incorporated the ecosystem. That unit, incombust and occupied nature
Speaker 5: was in a sense part of the family. Rivers, mountains, forests,
Speaker 5: and other animals were treated as living relatives with the
Speaker 5: spirit and agency that desiled respect. In the Mapuche world view,
Speaker 5: all beings and elements possess nuen, the life force, and
Speaker 5: so they have to be respected. And that police system
Speaker 5: also leads the mapootated practice a sustainable use of resources
Speaker 5: and intergenerational land care. And it also compels there as
Speaker 5: I said, resistance to colonial resource extraction, deforestation, and industrial expansion.
Speaker 5: In Mapuchev's spirituality, Juanumapu or The land of the ancestors
Speaker 5: refers to the spiritual realm connected to the physical world.
Speaker 5: They've traditionally believed that the spirits of past generations inhabit
Speaker 5: this realm, offering guidance and protection the matches or spiritual leaders,
Speaker 5: so as the bridges between these worlds. So they're supposed
Speaker 5: to do things that conduct ceremonies, heal the sick, and
Speaker 5: connect with the ancestral spirits. They've stilled as the custodians
Speaker 5: in a sense of spiritual knowledge and medicine, and that
Speaker 5: makes them an essential component in each love. The socio
Speaker 5: political structure of the Mapuche has been a confederation of
Speaker 5: love groups known as the Alaraway system, where the different
Speaker 5: loves would come together to make communal decisions and joint actions,
Speaker 5: particularly in times of conflict or threat. Each love will
Speaker 5: be represented in these confederations by alonco, who would be
Speaker 5: bringing their communities voice and perspective to regional councils without
Speaker 5: necessarily exercise and centralized authority. The decisions these councils are
Speaker 5: based on consensus traditionally and cooperation compromise, honoring the collective
Speaker 5: will as much as possible, rather than imposing will from above,
Speaker 5: and contrary to popular belief, this lack of centralization has
Speaker 5: actually made them more resilient, not more fragile. Rather than
Speaker 5: beckering and fighting and split in and splintering constantly than
Speaker 5: Pouch have historically united and together resisted multiple attempts at subjugation.
Speaker 5: So they centralized alliances have empowered them to respond flexibly
Speaker 5: and quickly to the ever changing landscape of the threats
Speaker 5: that they're facing, and this resistance can use to this day.
Speaker 5: But let me not skip ahead. The Spanish fullst made
Speaker 5: their way to Mapouche territory in the mid fifteen hundreds,
Speaker 5: initially confident that they could conquer the area with the
Speaker 5: same ease they had subdued the InCor Empire to the north.
Speaker 5: But the Mapuche were not easily intimidated. Early encounters quickly
Speaker 5: to into conflict, and the Spanish found themselves up against
Speaker 5: a serious resistance movement. From the start, the Spanish had
Speaker 5: underestimated the Impucha's ability to adapt when the conquistadors introduced
Speaker 5: horses and new weaponry. Thelpuch observed and learned quickly, incorporating
Speaker 5: captured horses and arms into their own defense strategies. Rather
Speaker 5: than a simple series of skirmishes, This struggle would become
Speaker 5: a prolonged confrontation, one of the longest and most determined
Speaker 5: resistances to colonization throughout the Americas. This was Lagira Tirauco
Speaker 5: or the Arako War, known for over one hundred years
Speaker 5: of protracted, brutal conflicts maintained by guerrilla warfare, and there
Speaker 5: would be no definitive battle or grand conclusion to this war.
Speaker 5: Thelpuch recognized that they were facing vast resources. They knew
Speaker 5: they had to find ways to level that playing field,
Speaker 5: and so, using their familiarity with the forests, rivers and
Speaker 5: mountains of Albapo, they ambushed, evaded, and outflanked Spanish troops,
Speaker 5: cut off supply lines, and employed tactics that frustrated and
Speaker 5: exhausted their laws and equipped opponents. The Lapuche were fighting
Speaker 5: on two fronts, defending their territories from physical invasion and
Speaker 5: preserving their cultural practices from Spanish influence. Those Mupuch are
Speaker 5: traditionally egalitarian. They did elect toki or war years during
Speaker 5: times of conflict. These figures were limited to their role
Speaker 5: in coordinating forces during these conflicts and had no other
Speaker 5: political power to yield above others. One of the more
Speaker 5: notable of these toki was a man named Lautaro. He
Speaker 5: was a young Mapuche who had been captured by the
Speaker 5: Spanish as a teenager and had worked for some time
Speaker 5: as a stable boy for chief conquistado and governor of Gilet,
Speaker 5: Pedro de Valgivia. While working as a stable boy, Lautaro
Speaker 5: managed to secretly observe many of the tactics the Spanish employed.
Speaker 5: He gained intimate knowledge of what made them tick in
Speaker 5: a sense, and eventually escaped captivity and brought this knowledge
Speaker 5: back to his people, transforming a Puchi resistance by effectively
Speaker 5: using captured horses and new formations to confront the Spanish
Speaker 5: on ivan ground. Lautaux was a brilliant military strategist and
Speaker 5: by all accounts, a charismatic young man that inspired his
Speaker 5: people through several major victories, including defeating a large Spanish
Speaker 5: force at the Battle of Tucapel in fifteen fifty three,
Speaker 5: which is a confrontation that killed his former master and
Speaker 5: a good bit of Spanish morale. Unfortunately, the outbreak of
Speaker 5: a typhus plague, a drought, and a famine slowed the
Speaker 5: Mapuchier advance to expel the Spanish as they had to
Speaker 5: spend some time recovering, but Lautero did try to push
Speaker 5: a band of Apoucha as far north as Santiago, Chile
Speaker 5: to liberate the country from Spanish rule. Unfortunately, before he
Speaker 5: could even turn thirty, he was killed in an ambush,
Speaker 5: and well his spirit continues to live on as a
Speaker 5: symbol of Ampuche resilience. As the war evolved, they had
Speaker 5: cycles of conflict interspersed with uneasy pieces Spanish settlements. The
Speaker 5: Mapuche frontier became isolated, vulnerable outpost subject to sudden raids,
Speaker 5: so in an attempt to hold the territory, the Spanish
Speaker 5: had to divert large amount of their resources to maintain
Speaker 5: a military presence, which was a very costly strategy that
Speaker 5: didn't end up being sustainable long term. So finally, after
Speaker 5: decades of failed attempts to subdue the Mapucha by force,
Speaker 5: the Spanish had to adopt a different approach. Resulted in
Speaker 5: a series of peace treaties which will be unheard of
Speaker 5: in the rest of Clonal Latin America. Among these was
Speaker 5: the Parliament of Killin in sixteen forty one, which established
Speaker 5: a formal boundary between Spanish controlled Chile and the autonomous
Speaker 5: Mapuche territories, granted the mapucha I legal recognition as an
Speaker 5: independent people with territorial rights. This is ritually unheard of
Speaker 5: across the rest of the Americas, and that's to tell
Speaker 5: you how powerful their resistance was at the time. The
Speaker 5: Spanish crown recognized Mapuche control over lands south of the
Speaker 5: Bbio River and agreed to regular negotiations. And although this
Speaker 5: agreement was tenuous and at times violated, it did also
Speaker 5: mark an era of semi autonomy for the Mapuche, allowing
Speaker 5: them to maintain their land, language and traditions in the
Speaker 5: face of surrounding clunal expansion. The fact that they could
Speaker 5: even secure legal recognition of their autonomy from a state
Speaker 5: power as stubborn as a Spanish in a time like
Speaker 5: the seventeenth century, it's just remarkable. But unfortunately, as you
Speaker 5: could probably predict that recognition of the autonomy would not last.
Speaker 5: In the eighteen hundreds, Chile and Argentina emerged as independent
Speaker 5: republics following Spanish clunial rule, each driven by an appetite
Speaker 5: for territorial expansion and a nationalist vision. The excluded indigenous
Speaker 5: autonomy with new ambitions to civilize and consolidate the nations.
Speaker 5: Chilean and Argentine leaders saw them Mapouche held lands as
Speaker 5: resources to be exploited. Both governments are justified their encroachment
Speaker 5: on Morepouche land under the guise of national progress. To them,
Speaker 5: these indigenous lands were free real estate to be conquered
Speaker 5: and improved, not sovereign regions held by an indigenous population.
Speaker 5: They saw way of life as a barrier as the
Speaker 5: economic development to your place with European style land holdings
Speaker 5: set the colonies and extractive industries under new management. They
Speaker 5: would not respect the sixteen forty one Parliament kill in
Speaker 5: as far as they were concerned. They didn't sign that agreement,
Speaker 5: and they would never sign an agreement with savages.
Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, we also saw that sort of thing
Speaker 2: throughout the Americas, where you would have these like alleged
Speaker 2: trities that then either under future rule or even sometimes
Speaker 2: under the exact same rule, would later just be completely disregarded.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you didn't sign it with me, you know.
Speaker 2: It's like a common colonial tactic to buy time.
Speaker 5: As well exactly established and sure buery resources for a
Speaker 5: later attack. Yeah, and I could just say, well, I
Speaker 5: didn't sign that, you know, somebody else signed it, so
Speaker 5: I don't have to be behold onto it pretty much,
Speaker 5: and so Chileo launched their campaign to annexed Mapuche land,
Speaker 5: known as the Pacification of Aracanya, initiated in the eighteen sixties.
Speaker 5: Some have argued that this attempted annexation was triggered by
Speaker 5: the events surrounding the wreck of Hooven Danielle at the
Speaker 5: coast of Hrakania in eighteen forty nine, where erecked Chilean
Speaker 5: navy vessel was allegedly looted and its survivors allegedly attacked
Speaker 5: on Apoucha territory by members of Apouche society, despite the
Speaker 5: Mapuche arguing there had been no survivors, and despite them
Speaker 5: handing over some of the accused of lutin to be
Speaker 5: tried by Chilean authorities, even retilling in so of what
Speaker 5: was allegedly looted. The perception of the incident as a
Speaker 5: brutal loot and rape by the Mapuche fueled anti Mapouche
Speaker 5: sentiment within Chilean society. Although President Manualnais of Chile dismissed
Speaker 5: the opposition's calls for a punitive expedition at the time.
Speaker 5: The conquest would eventually come to pass, begetting in eighteen
Speaker 5: sixty one. If you dig into this story, by the way,
Speaker 5: you come to find out that a lot of the
Speaker 5: Loutenant and Mapouche were accused of was actually members of
Speaker 5: Chilean society and bazilin the resources from the wreck and
Speaker 5: then play into office if the Mapuche were wholly responsible
Speaker 5: for the loss of the resources. Some of the same
Speaker 5: people who are accusing the Wapouchier looters of stealing all
Speaker 5: the all the loot from the ship, many of them
Speaker 5: had received some of that loot from the Mahuche themselves.
Speaker 5: Thempuche were trying to return the loot and they decided
Speaker 5: to keep it for themselves instead of you know, retaining
Speaker 5: it's the Chilean government. So it's like the whole trial
Speaker 5: was bunked. There was a whole bunch of corruption and
Speaker 5: it was a real master And although the president did
Speaker 5: you know, dismiss the attempts to attack at the time,
Speaker 5: like I said, it would come to pass. The campaign
Speaker 5: was justified as every government does by necessity. You know,
Speaker 5: the reality however, was a brutal invasion ended up Upuch communities,
Speaker 5: displacing thousands, absorbing their lands into the Chilean state.
Speaker 2: This whole strategy also just reflects this just general dehumanization.
Speaker 2: I mean, even the stuff with like the treaties and
Speaker 2: just like the going back on the treaties, denial of
Speaker 2: the legitimacy of treaties, that tactic would not be used
Speaker 2: the same way against like other colonial nations. And then
Speaker 2: every subsequent development and every subsequent incursion onto land, all
Speaker 2: all of it is just based on this like underlying
Speaker 2: level of dehumanization that just sees land as resources and
Speaker 2: the people there as like acceptable casualties or just fierce
Speaker 2: obstacles to overcome in conquest of those lands.
Speaker 5: Exactly, and obstacles they were because Chile knew where they
Speaker 5: wanted to reach in terms of what they saw as
Speaker 5: their right full borders and were literally a wedge an
Speaker 5: obstacle between them and region where they wanted to reach.
Speaker 5: At the tip of South America. It was almost like
Speaker 5: a race between Argentina and child had to see who
Speaker 5: could reach the edge and claim it first, and THEUCH
Speaker 5: will something that was keeping them from doing that, and Additionally,
Speaker 5: Tapouch would not have been granted the same legitimacy of
Speaker 5: a claim as Argentina. You know, Chile and Argentina would
Speaker 5: eventually comes in agreement about where their border would lie,
Speaker 5: and their respected that agreement. Same couldn't be said for
Speaker 5: them Puch. And of course there were a lot of
Speaker 5: border disagreements of course in South America following the you know,
Speaker 5: evacuation of the Spanish, but of course those are treated
Speaker 5: on equal foot in the natives are different matter. So
Speaker 5: Chilean forces would corner advance into Aracania forcibly, removed thousands
Speaker 5: of families from the ancestral territories and subject those that
Speaker 5: remade into the authority to the Chilean government. The traditional
Speaker 5: cumin land holdings have remained were fragmented and redistributed, often
Speaker 5: to Chilean settlers and the government's imposed European style laws,
Speaker 5: education and religion to attempt to assimilate the Mapuche and
Speaker 5: suppress the identity. Military outposts and settlements also established in
Speaker 5: the newly annexed land, fastily facing the region under martial
Speaker 5: law and making it difficult from Pucci communities to resist
Speaker 5: openly replace the words Chilean government with Israeli government, and
Speaker 5: Mapuche with Palestinian And that's just to tell you how
Speaker 5: antiquated the current tactics of colonization are. Very little has changed.
Speaker 2: No, That's exactly what I've been thinking about.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, a lot of the former major coal
Speaker 5: powers have found more subtle means of continuing their exploitation
Speaker 5: and subjugation of people around the world. So it's very
Speaker 5: rare to see something so open and flagrant. You know,
Speaker 5: It's something that you expect to see in historical accounts
Speaker 5: such as this of landhole ends being chopped up and
Speaker 5: give unto settlers, and laws and education and being imposed
Speaker 5: and to a native population to suppress and to assimilate
Speaker 5: the I dentity. You know, military outpost being established on
Speaker 5: New Leanix Land, Marcia law being established for the native inhabitants,
Speaker 5: all those things. Hear about it, and pushing of the
Speaker 5: American frontier, and you hear about it and throughout South
Speaker 5: America and Africa's cooling history. You don't really tend to
Speaker 5: think about that here and now it's happening in four.
Speaker 2: K No, Like, that's exactly what I was thinking about
Speaker 2: as you've been going through all this like how it
Speaker 2: just sounds exactly the same as what Israel is currently doing.
Speaker 2: And I think why people latch on to like Israel
Speaker 2: specifically so much is because of how like out of
Speaker 2: time their tactics of colonial expansion and feel and like
Speaker 2: similarly like it. It's just built on this base level
Speaker 2: of dehumanization exactly that a whole bunch of other like
Speaker 2: imperial powers kind of try to like hide or like
Speaker 2: mask a little bit, and with Israels just so mask off.
Speaker 5: So I think about all that time they were like
Speaker 5: a century late pretty much. Yeah, if they had starts
Speaker 5: in this process like a sentry Elia, they would have
Speaker 5: actually probably have gotten away with it.
Speaker 2: Unfortunately, well and they still might get away with it
Speaker 2: now to some degree. And that's like that is true.
Speaker 2: That's that's kind of the super that's the super frightening
Speaker 2: thought is that even though it is this outdated like style,
Speaker 2: what if it like still works and if and if
Speaker 2: it's proven to still work in Palestine, where like where
Speaker 2: else can this be used? Like will we just see
Speaker 2: more countries feel like they can get away with it
Speaker 2: because Israel did? And like that's kind of part of
Speaker 2: looking into the next four years and looking into just
Speaker 2: just how how the world is going in this general
Speaker 2: kind of far right power grab happening all like all
Speaker 2: over the globe. Will more and more countries be kind
Speaker 2: of willing to utilize these types of colonial tactics.
Speaker 3: And it's scary and bad.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean when you think about how the severity
Speaker 5: of the clomb situation it's just going to worsen, and
Speaker 5: you think about the pressures at places on the most
Speaker 5: exploitive regions of the globe, how that might pressure, you know, migration,
Speaker 5: and how that might pressure sort of efforts to resist
Speaker 5: the sort of tightening of the hold of expectation up
Speaker 5: until the call that was reading this book called one
Speaker 5: of People's History of Fashion, just thinking about the whole
Speaker 5: textile trade as a whole and how it impacts different
Speaker 5: parts of the globe and whatever, and just talking about
Speaker 5: this now, I'm just thinking like, if workers in those
Speaker 5: countries were to stand up, well, in all this time,
Speaker 5: you know, some of the most deadly struggles or taking
Speaker 5: place in these regions, in these saturns, but if they
Speaker 5: were to stand up and resist, now, I mean it, mind,
Speaker 5: you've got even more open and then blatant with the
Speaker 5: suppression of those people and those voices, and as they
Speaker 5: attempt to try and make their way out of those
Speaker 5: those hot spots, those hot regions of instability and violence
Speaker 5: and climate catastrophe. You know, we have all this migrant
Speaker 5: rhetoric to yes, make the struggle even worse.
Speaker 2: That's like the fucoas boomerang idea of all of these
Speaker 2: colonial tactics also can eventually turned inward. And right now
Speaker 2: you see the same level of dehumanization being levied against
Speaker 2: like millions of immigrants who are here both legally as
Speaker 2: refugees and are also here undocumented. But it's the same
Speaker 2: like rhetorical tactics that make people okay with this is
Speaker 2: that level of dehumanization. And you also see that, of
Speaker 2: course levied against like trans people. You still see that
Speaker 2: livid against indigenous people, and it's just like a growing
Speaker 2: list of people that are no longer seen as like
Speaker 2: real humans.
Speaker 5: Yeah, for some reason you're saying that, my mind fixates
Speaker 5: it on the fact that you said undocumented, and it's
Speaker 5: reminded me of the absurdity of all of this. The
Speaker 5: difference is literally some pieces of people. The difference is
Speaker 5: literally a rule of the dice spawn point from one
Speaker 5: side of the water or another. I have we allow
Speaker 5: this to like totally dominate our lives.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like a it's like a deep spiritual evil.
Speaker 2: So many people don't even like realize the absurdity of it,
Speaker 2: and how just like it takes away so much of
Speaker 2: like thought and empathy and people people just don't even know,
Speaker 2: Like they don't even like process that that's what they've
Speaker 2: done to themselves by like constructing this system that they
Speaker 2: believe is like divine or like enshrined by God.
Speaker 5: The right to exist defense.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like it's it is. So much of it is
Speaker 2: a dice roll. So much of it is situations beyond
Speaker 2: anyone's conscious control.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And to sort of pull us back on to
Speaker 5: the track, you can also see the mirrors between the
Speaker 5: current past Indian struggle and theon Gordmapuch struggle and even
Speaker 5: going back to this time that I have even discussing
Speaker 5: the Puchi struggle of the past, because despite all of
Speaker 5: this conal expansion, the Upuci resisted not only militarily but culturally.
Speaker 5: They held on to their language, they held on to
Speaker 5: their customs, they held onto their spiritual practices, they held
Speaker 5: on to their identity in defiance of assimilations policies and
Speaker 5: across the Andes. Meanwhile, Argentina was pursuing a similarly aggressive
Speaker 5: campaign just known as the Conquest of the Desert. This
Speaker 5: was led by General Julio Argentino Rocca in the eighteen
Speaker 5: seventies and eighteen eighties, and this really sort of eradicate
Speaker 5: and displace all the indigenous groups through in the area,
Speaker 5: including the Mapuch who had lived on the fertile Pampas
Speaker 5: and Patagonian regions, to secure valuable land for wait for it,
Speaker 5: cattle ranchin agriculture and European settler expansion cattaranchian as in
Speaker 5: you know, the whole meat trade.
Speaker 2: The cows are more important than the people.
Speaker 5: Exactly, and the demand for the cows is more important
Speaker 5: than people. They see this violence of agricultural and expansion
Speaker 5: other places as well, as I said, I was reading
Speaker 5: one and one of the things she notes is that
Speaker 5: part of what pushed the American westward expansion was that
Speaker 5: they were growing cotton, and cotton is extremely intensive and
Speaker 5: historically cotton was grown in a polyculture, was grown with
Speaker 5: other plants. Right with these cotton monocultures, it really quickly
Speaker 5: strips the soil of its nutrients, and so they were
Speaker 5: pushing westward because they kept on having to find new
Speaker 5: land to grow the cotton on. And of course who
Speaker 5: was working that cotton and who was working with plantations,
Speaker 5: just explotation all the way down and all that just
Speaker 5: to feed this rapacious appetite of expansion. You know, we
Speaker 5: had thousands of years of sustainable growth and sustainable cyclical
Speaker 5: economy use, but things that that would last, and just
Speaker 5: in these last few centuries we've just completely lost that
Speaker 5: because above all the line has to go up well.
Speaker 2: And like also part of that quest for agricultural domination.
Speaker 2: In order to make that possible, there's the invention of
Speaker 2: the international slave trade, which is similarly built on this
Speaker 2: level of just base decumanization and the desire for agricultural
Speaker 2: production being way more important than the humanity of like
Speaker 2: everybody involved in that process, yep.
Speaker 5: And then it's also tied to the petrochemical trade because
Speaker 5: to maintaining these soils in this unnatural form, you have
Speaker 5: to basically pump the land with these artificial fertilizers, which
Speaker 5: are typically derived from Patrick Ammick goals, and.
Speaker 2: Like that, that process of the soil basically becoming dead
Speaker 2: like started even as early as like the late eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 2: Like this, this is just like a modern problem in
Speaker 2: like the wet past, like fifty hundred years all of
Speaker 2: that land was like overused and starting to get destroyed
Speaker 2: almost like two hundred years ago, but specifically like the
Speaker 2: late eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and this is what we're looking at here, and
Speaker 5: this this particular historical narrative we're just watching. The fall
Speaker 5: of wild Mapo, of course, was looking at at a
Speaker 5: more grandize sence, the fall of the remaining communities that
Speaker 5: actually were maintaining that connection land there being in this
Speaker 5: process subjugated so that there is no resistance and no
Speaker 5: present to alternative to the extractive model that was at
Speaker 5: least part of the goal of this expansion. As we
Speaker 5: see in Argentina, the few Mapuche who survived this massacre
Speaker 5: because they employed all sorts of tactics rangers from scorch
Speaker 5: student policies to force relocations to like outright just you know,
Speaker 5: the few that survived for relocated to reservations, tripped to
Speaker 5: their land and reduced to laborers within this modern or
Speaker 5: rapidly modernized in Argentina and General Rocker's campaign was celebrated
Speaker 5: by the Argentine elite as a triumph of civilization over barbarism.
Speaker 5: Where have I heard that before? So in both Chile's
Speaker 5: passification of Aracanya and Argentina's conquest of the desert. He
Speaker 5: had this large scale dispossession of Apucca land. And while
Speaker 5: Mapoo now being fully split by the border of Argentina
Speaker 5: and Chile, the vast majority of Puce now live in Chile.
Speaker 5: There are only a few times one thousands left in
Speaker 5: Argentina to this day. Initially, Mapucha leaders and communities launched
Speaker 5: uprisings and gorilla attacks against the Chilean and Argentine military forces,
Speaker 5: fighting to defend their territories, but as military suppression tensified,
Speaker 5: resistance also had to adapt When Puchia communities had to
Speaker 5: adopt more fluid forms of opposition, intaining cultural practices, stories,
Speaker 5: and languages as an active resistance. Some of Pucci leaders
Speaker 5: petitioned for land rights and autonomy through legal channels, seeking
Speaker 5: to challenge dispossession through the courts. Others continue to resist
Speaker 5: through armed confrontation, often leading isolated uprisings when government forces
Speaker 5: overstepped or attempted to cease more landed. The future resistance
Speaker 5: that follows this period is basically rooted in the traumas
Speaker 5: of this period, as the people were forcibly integrated into
Speaker 5: Chilean and Argentine societies, yet never fully accepted. As we
Speaker 5: move into the early twentieth century, the Pusche communities continue
Speaker 5: to be hit hard by policies that aim to dissolve
Speaker 5: the traditional ways of life. The Chilean and Argentine governments
Speaker 5: squeeze Onucha onto reservations, but surrounding lands were given to
Speaker 5: power for landowners and settlers. Land's guesty was a significant issue,
Speaker 5: as from Puchet families often had thoughts too more to
Speaker 5: sustain their traditional agricultural practices, and the dispossession led economic
Speaker 5: hardship and wide tread poverty further marginalized them from national economies.
Speaker 5: The assimilation attempts to frame ndition as community identity as
Speaker 5: something to be erased in favor of European norms, pushed
Speaker 5: out the Mapundun language and cultural ties and aimed to
Speaker 5: impose Spanish as the primary language. Thankfully, today, Mapundum still
Speaker 5: survives as the language and the Jucha people at the
Speaker 5: time Mapuchi were also forced into the wage labor on
Speaker 5: settler farms experience and of course very harsh conditions are
Speaker 5: very little protection. Many of them. Mapuchi ended up migrating from
Speaker 5: rural areas to cities as the arable land twindled, and
Speaker 5: then found themselves in places like Santiago and Temuco beginning
Speaker 5: the nineteen thirty years and Anima Puchier families ended up
Speaker 5: working as laborers and urban centers where their these new
Speaker 5: forms of discrimination. A lot of Mpuche women ended up
Speaker 5: going to work as servants within the houses of the
Speaker 5: Chilean elite, and during this period of hardship, Iarlimapoucha political
Speaker 5: movements began to take shape. In the nineteen tens, Wabuchi
Speaker 5: leaders organized groups like Societ Dad Kapu Likan Defense Soa
Speaker 5: de la Arakanya, which advocated for land rights and civil
Speaker 5: protections agent to reclaim the dispossessed land and fight against
Speaker 5: the abuse of indigenous laborers. These early organizations marked a
Speaker 5: significant shift in Mapuche strategy represented a movement towards formal
Speaker 5: political approaches to resistance. The assaulstionment of political alliances that
Speaker 5: sympathetic groups also strengthened Mpucha cause. In the nineteen twenties
Speaker 5: nineteen thirties, indigenous organizations began working with the Chilean communists
Speaker 5: and socialist parties, focusing on indigenous labor issues and broader
Speaker 5: anti landlord campaigns. However, these alliances often prioritized national labor
Speaker 5: and Akrainian reform over specific indition's rights, leaving Themapouche to
Speaker 5: continue the fight largely on their own terms. But in
Speaker 5: spite of this limited political power, these early efforts helped
Speaker 5: lay the groundwork for later land rights activism. From the
Speaker 5: mid twentieth century onward, rapid and gustrialization, extractive forestry operations
Speaker 5: and monoculture plantations began to dominate Mapucha land, and pollution increased.
Speaker 5: Rivers were contaminated. Forest power of diversity was replaced by
Speaker 5: non native species like pine and eucalyptus plantations, and all
Speaker 5: of this leads, of course, soiled depletion. The remaining Mapuchia,
Speaker 5: agriculture and local ecosystems were naturally threatened, which fully compel
Speaker 5: their resistance. At the same time, they were still, of course,
Speaker 5: working to preserve their language, their cultural practices, their music,
Speaker 5: their arts, the spiritual ceremonies. For a small moment, there
Speaker 5: was some hope as the government of Salvador Allende, you
Speaker 5: know this is going passed an indigenous law that recognized
Speaker 5: their distinctive culture and history and began to restore Mapuche
Speaker 5: Commune a lot. But I think we all remember how
Speaker 5: that to end oubt. Bam bam, you have a who
Speaker 5: are coop sponsored by the US, and Pinochet is in power.
Speaker 5: In power, Pinochet calls for the division of the reserves
Speaker 5: and the liquidation of the Indian communities. He initially sounds
Speaker 5: like a cartoon villain of everything I've read and learned
Speaker 5: about him, I mean, who speaks of the liquidation of
Speaker 5: a people?
Speaker 2: Pinochet is extremely cartoon villain coded, except it was a
Speaker 2: real person. So I also have this tendency to not
Speaker 2: dismiss super evil people as like unhuman monsters, because I
Speaker 2: think that actually limits our understanding of how evil humans
Speaker 2: can be. Sure, and this isn't even just a pure principle,
Speaker 2: like I don't like dehumanization in general, it's that I
Speaker 2: think it actually makes these people harder to beat if
Speaker 2: you view them as like some monstrous force instead of
Speaker 2: something that's actually deeply human and Yeah, he is a
Speaker 2: cartoon villain. He's also like a person, and like that's
Speaker 2: actually kind of more scary than just viewing him as
Speaker 2: some monster.
Speaker 6: Very true, And I don't know, it's a.
Speaker 2: Frame of thought I've come back on specifically and like
Speaker 2: thinking about like anti fascism.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, that's something I always think about when
Speaker 5: I think of a lot of the most brutal world
Speaker 5: leaders across human history. I often think, you know, this
Speaker 5: person did not spawn out of the air. There was
Speaker 5: a time when this person was a newborn and they
Speaker 5: were babbling, learning to speak, learning to walk, became a toddler,
Speaker 5: small child, pre teen, teenager, young adults, so much nature
Speaker 5: and nurture would have gone into the police and they became.
Speaker 5: But they had the same spawn point as everybody else.
Speaker 5: They all started as a baby, and Pinochet was unfortunately
Speaker 5: no exception. After the pass and of his decree twenty
Speaker 5: five sixty eight to nineteen seventy nine, the number of
Speaker 5: indigenous creaties was reduced by twenty five percent and several
Speaker 5: Mapuchia leaders were murdered, threatened with imprisonment or excerpt. After
Speaker 5: the fall of Pinochet and returned to democracy, uppuch had
Speaker 5: a resurgionce and identity and political activism for the nineteen nineties.
Speaker 5: This revival gained momentum after the passage of Chile's Indigenous
Speaker 5: Law in nineteen ninety three, which acknowledged the Puche land
Speaker 5: right to advocated for bilingual education, opening new paths for
Speaker 5: cultural reclamatia. That same year, Nampuchi representatives at the UN
Speaker 5: pushed for Chile to adopt Iolo Convention one sixty nine,
Speaker 5: a key indigious rights treaty, but Chile didn't actually ratify
Speaker 5: the convention until two thousand and eight. Despite the established
Speaker 5: run to the National Cooperation of Indigenous Development or KANNADI
Speaker 5: in nineteen twenty three to facilitate indigenous inclusion in policy making,
Speaker 5: Mapucha involvement in such state institutions has not guaranteed geruine representation.
Speaker 5: Several KANNADI leaders who openly advocated from Mapucha autonomy or
Speaker 5: pushed against corporate interests have been removed from their positions.
Speaker 5: In twenty fifteen, Governor Francisco Juanchomia, a Promapuchi advocate in Aracanya,
Speaker 5: was removed from his position due to his support for
Speaker 5: legal reforms recognizing Mapucha rights. He can'tgo and change the system.
Speaker 5: System changes you will gets you out of the way.
Speaker 5: With the intensification of extractive industries roach lands, a wave
Speaker 5: of activism emerged, specifically aimed the protecting secret territories and
Speaker 5: the environment. Mapuchi activists frequently have stood up against forestry companies,
Speaker 5: hydroelectric projects, and multinational corporations that have aimed to exploit
Speaker 5: their resources, the e engaging land occupations and protests for
Speaker 5: land restitution and environmental protection. The Chilean stage reaction to
Speaker 5: Maputa activism is entirely predictable harsh repression under anti terrorism legislation.
Speaker 5: Mapoochier activists fe heightened police, civil lands, in prison, lond
Speaker 5: accusations of terrorism a toxic which is universally used to
Speaker 5: delegitimize resistance to injustice and violence, explotation, and destructure.
Speaker 2: It is kind of one of those magic words that
Speaker 2: has been increasingly invoked in the past twenty years.
Speaker 5: Yeah, terrorist is a magic wood. Illegal is another magic wood.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're all just like the humanization terms, right, Like,
Speaker 2: you are not a person, you are not an ex
Speaker 2: you are not well whatever, you are a terrorist and uh,
Speaker 2: terrorists do not have the same rights as humans. It's
Speaker 2: not a war crime if you do it against a terrorist.
Speaker 5: Luke Skywalker was not a terrorist. You are a terrorist,
Speaker 5: you know.
Speaker 2: But no like like whether you're like finding in like
Speaker 2: an actual resistance movement or you're just attending like a
Speaker 2: protest in a in an American city, both of those
Speaker 2: can now become quote unquote terrorists.
Speaker 5: Or or some like level clerk who just happens to
Speaker 5: be within has Aboulah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, or you're a daughter of a low level clerk
Speaker 2: who is picking up a pager and oops, I guess
Speaker 2: your dad shouldn't have been a terrorist in like Jesus Christ.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah. And then of course the media has a big
Speaker 5: part to play in all this. You know, terrorist as
Speaker 5: a term is associated with certain stereotypes about various groups
Speaker 5: of people. In the past few years, it's been the
Speaker 5: you know, machete and ak waven Islamist fightal but in
Speaker 5: other time periods it was another prominent stereotype, you know,
Speaker 5: the Black seventies revolutionary or Vietcong And in the Chilean situation,
Speaker 5: media portrayals have also reinforced stereotypes of ampuch violence, which
Speaker 5: of course serves the rule of obscure in the reality
Speaker 5: of their fight for justice and environmental stewardship. It hasn't
Speaker 5: all been for not the mapuch struggle. That is, they
Speaker 5: have had a few legal triumphs rulans where the Inter
Speaker 5: American Court of Human Rights has held Chile accountable in
Speaker 5: air quotes as much as any state is actually held
Speaker 5: accountable for valuating Mapuche rights. Grassroots groups and as collectives
Speaker 5: with white have also supported Mapucha efforts. But curly these
Speaker 5: small victories and triumphs are really not much. They're not enough.
Speaker 5: Within the broader Auch movement, you do have the reformists
Speaker 5: and the simulationists, and you have groups like Quording their
Speaker 5: Daughter Arako Mayeko or Camp and they're splinter group, which
Speaker 5: is why chan Alca Mapu and they've adopted separatist stances,
Speaker 5: advocating for direct actions such as land occupations and resistance
Speaker 5: against state forces because they view autonomy and territorial reclamation
Speaker 5: as essential to mapuchia soeignty and they have no interest
Speaker 5: in compromise with the extractive industries and government that are
Speaker 5: responsible for their suffering. Traditionally, these groups have focused on
Speaker 5: acts of economic sabotage against companies that are infringing on
Speaker 5: their lands and their stewardship. Within wider Chilean society. There's
Speaker 5: still some prejudice against some Mapuche, particularly, but not exclusively
Speaker 5: from the right way, but she lays twenty nineteen uprising
Speaker 5: against inequality and government abuses found strong supports and allieship
Speaker 5: between wider Chilean society and Upuche communities who had seen
Speaker 5: echoes of their own grievances and national protests. The protests
Speaker 5: were initially sparked by a Maturro affair hike, but they
Speaker 5: quickly became a national movement demanding systemic reform in both
Speaker 5: urban and rural spaces. Thepuche communities joined or supported protesters.
Speaker 5: Were resistant continued to government policies that marginalize their communities
Speaker 5: and undermined their cultural rights. Mapuocha symbols and flags emerged
Speaker 5: prominently align in aditional struggles with these were demands of
Speaker 5: social justice, and the government response can you predict, was
Speaker 5: swift and severe. Military and police forces were deployed to
Speaker 5: use excessive violence. Apuch Ben knew about this, but some
Speaker 5: of the Chileans their experiencing this for the first time,
Speaker 5: and this mutual experience of repression reinforced alliances between the
Speaker 5: Mapuche and the Chilean activists, as both faced the stature
Speaker 5: of enviolence of propaganda that portrayed them as radicals and
Speaker 5: terrorists and extremists. So despite the crackdown, the uprising saw
Speaker 5: unprecedented support for the Mapuche cause, amplifying calls for restitution
Speaker 5: of indigious lands, former recognition of Appouoche rights in a
Speaker 5: reformed constitution, and a declinal approach to governments the respects
Speaker 5: indigenous autonomy. The twenty nineteen protests laid the groundwork for
Speaker 5: a national constitutional reform was significant Mapucha involvement to public
Speaker 5: support in a new constitutions with the twenty one raised
Speaker 5: the potential for ensurance indigenous rights from Puccier representatives actively
Speaker 5: participate in the process and creating renewed optimism for meaningful
Speaker 5: legal reprotections the respecting Puja, culture, territory and autonomy. That
Speaker 5: somewhat progressive attempt at a constitution reform, which also included
Speaker 5: gender equality measures, was rejected, and so there was another
Speaker 5: attempt just last year enter to twenty three, but it
Speaker 5: was a very conservative attempt shaped by the far right
Speaker 5: Republican Party, which trickter provisions and immigration, a ban and abortion,
Speaker 5: and a free market focus that did not resonate with
Speaker 5: the majority of voters. Fifty five point eight percent voted
Speaker 5: against the twenty twenty three draft and forty four point
Speaker 5: two percent in fever. Chile In President Gabriel Borek, whose
Speaker 5: administration had supported constitutional change, acknowledged that further attempts that
Speaker 5: constitutional reform were unlikely. So for now, Chile continues to
Speaker 5: be governed by the constitution that dates back to the
Speaker 5: dictatorship of Pinochet, while its leaders looking at alternative calves
Speaker 5: for address and social, economic, and environments of this suites
Speaker 5: in line with Chilean public opinion. If you know anything
Speaker 5: about me and my positions, you know that I'm not
Speaker 5: confident in the ability of states to meaningfully respect people's
Speaker 5: agency and autonomy ever. But I wish them Pucha all
Speaker 5: the best wherever their struggle goes, and I've personally found
Speaker 5: their story very impactful. It's one of resilience, adaptability, and
Speaker 5: vase of centuries of advolicity. They've had an unyielding desire
Speaker 5: to maintain their connection to the land and cultural identity,
Speaker 5: and they aren't going fright. Is really just a testament
Speaker 5: to the power of solidarity. And that's it for me.
Speaker 5: This has been all power to all the people.
Speaker 10: Okay, hi everyone, and welcome to it could happen here today.
Speaker 10: We're very lucky to be joined by Vladimir von Bilgenberg,
Speaker 10: who's an underground journalist who covers Syria, and Curtis Dan
Speaker 10: has written two books, including one on the alliance between
Speaker 10: the SDF and the Coalition. Is that is that a
Speaker 10: fair introduction in Vladimir.
Speaker 2: Ye?
Speaker 6: Okay, thank you, thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 10: There has obviously been a massive increase, in a massive
Speaker 10: change in the conflict in Syria in the last week
Speaker 10: or so, just under a week, and I think the
Speaker 10: information that's available to people is often very bad, very delayed,
Speaker 10: or one side or rather putting out propaganda things which
Speaker 10: mischaracterized the situation on the ground, especially with regard to
Speaker 10: the Syrian National Army, who we're going to talk about.
Speaker 10: Would you mind giving us a sort of very reef
Speaker 10: explanation of what has happened since last Wednesday when HTS,
Speaker 10: who will have to explain later, launch their operation against Aleppo.
Speaker 8: Well, in general, I mean the current situation ALAPO came
Speaker 8: to a surprise too many many people didn't expect it. So,
Speaker 8: just after the ceasefire in Lebanon, the Hayata te Rocham,
Speaker 8: which is offshoot of al Qaeda, so they said they
Speaker 8: don't have relations with al Qaida anymore. They split off
Speaker 8: from al Qaeda. They launched a big operation in Alappo
Speaker 8: against the Serian government or the same regime, whatever you
Speaker 8: want to call it. I think initially they didn't think
Speaker 8: that they would go so far, all the way into
Speaker 8: Alappo city. There have been agreements between Russia, Iran, and
Speaker 8: Turkey and Syria in Astana about the deconflection zone in
Speaker 8: the northwestern province of Italy. So the HTS insurgents, they
Speaker 8: claim they launched this operation towards Aleppo in response to
Speaker 8: violation of this Astana agreement. So according to that agreement,
Speaker 8: this area will be in control of the HDS and
Speaker 8: the other area will be control of the regime and
Speaker 8: they wouldn't bother each other. But this agreement was never
Speaker 8: really implemented, I mean versus Russia. They were constantly bombing it.
Speaker 8: Sometimes the HTS would attack regime positions. Also according to
Speaker 8: this deconfliction zone, actually the Serian government and I reining
Speaker 8: back armed groups. They went actually in that the de
Speaker 8: confliction zone was supposed to be controlled by the Seyian insurgents.
Speaker 8: So they launched this operation in response to the they
Speaker 8: say the violations by the Serian government, and I think
Speaker 8: because when they realized that the defenses of the Serian
Speaker 8: government very weak, they pushed further into Aleppo. And it
Speaker 8: was not really planned to take the city of Aleppo,
Speaker 8: although there's also a video of Jiulani, the leader of HDS,
Speaker 8: saying that my brothers, one day we're going to be
Speaker 8: an Aleppo, So maybe it was planned. We don't know
Speaker 8: really for sure, but the fact is that the Syrian
Speaker 8: government defense is collab and for some people in the region,
Speaker 8: it was sort of reminded of the days of Mussol
Speaker 8: when the Iraqi army they fled Mussol in twenty thirty
Speaker 8: fourteen and then Isis took over, although the HTS really
Speaker 8: denied that they are similar to ISIS, although they have
Speaker 8: a similar Islamish ideology. So they took the city of
Speaker 8: Aleppo in three days, and they have been trying to
Speaker 8: go up towards Hama, a city more up so far,
Speaker 8: they haven't been able to take the city. And on
Speaker 8: the other hand, you also have another group called the
Speaker 8: Seran National Army, which is groups composed of basic groups
Speaker 8: that were supported by the Turkish government. They also started
Speaker 8: to move. They also started to carry out operations against
Speaker 8: Kurtish lad Forces also known as the Cerrian Democratic Forces
Speaker 8: of the YPG. And also they started to do operations
Speaker 8: against the Syrian government in above Albab and also in
Speaker 8: northern Aleppo. And they took also several towns in northern
Speaker 8: Aleppo and also they advanced and I think their main
Speaker 8: reason of that. So while the HDS is primarily mostly
Speaker 8: fighting against the Syrian government, I think the Serian National Army,
Speaker 8: because it's back by Turkey, they also have an interest
Speaker 8: to undermine the Serian Democratic Forces because Turkey in the
Speaker 8: past they have said they don't want to have a
Speaker 8: second Kurdish autonomous region in the region, because you have
Speaker 8: already won in Iraq, which was became recognized after the
Speaker 8: fall of the Damp, So you have a Kurdistan region
Speaker 8: in Iraq, and Turkey was sort of afraid to have
Speaker 8: a second Kurdistan region in Syria, especially because it's created
Speaker 8: by a group which has ideological affiliation with the pik
Speaker 8: Ak with they follow the idology of the imprisoned leader
Speaker 8: of the pik A k Abdulachlan, which Turkey sees is
Speaker 8: a terrorist organization. So it's very complex, which we always
Speaker 8: keep saying about Syria, but you basically have two different operations.
Speaker 8: You have the Turkish back groups that are trying to
Speaker 8: stop the Kurts from linking up with Aleppo, and then
Speaker 8: you have the HDS, the Islamist groups that are trying
Speaker 8: to go up and they already took Alepo and they
Speaker 8: also took many areas in the countryside of Hama, and
Speaker 8: actually they now control all of the province. So in
Speaker 8: the past the certain government they control some parts of
Speaker 8: lip but now they control the it's as they control
Speaker 8: all of Yeah.
Speaker 10: So I think if we start by looking, I think
Speaker 10: most people who listen to this will be familiar with
Speaker 10: the SDF, with the Autonomous Administration in North East Syria,
Speaker 10: and with the ri Java Revolution, and they'll be wondering.
Speaker 10: Kind of the question I get mostly is like how
Speaker 10: does this impact that? That's what people are asking. So
Speaker 10: with that in mind, I think we should explain. Perhaps
Speaker 10: we've talked before in this show about Operation Piece Spring
Speaker 10: e Fretty Shield and these Turkish incursions into previously SDF
Speaker 10: controlled areas and the genocide or violence that accompanied that,
Speaker 10: or ethnic cleansing, however you want to phrase it. Can
Speaker 10: you explain what happened in the areas where the SNA
Speaker 10: have advanced and like what that's meant for the Kurdish
Speaker 10: people who lived there or in some cases are still there.
Speaker 8: Yeah, in the in the northern Aleppo and Aleppo City,
Speaker 8: so you have two Kurdish neighborhoods called Ashrafiya and Chech Maksut.
Speaker 8: There are around one hundred to two hundred thousand people
Speaker 8: living there. Then you have also two small Kurdish towns
Speaker 8: called Tel Aran and Tel Hassel, which have changed hands
Speaker 8: constantly during the Serian Civil War between the YEPG, the
Speaker 8: Syrian government and Iran, then by the rebels done by
Speaker 8: ISIS than by al Kaida, like it was a big mess. Yeah.
Speaker 8: Then you have also you have like Kurts that were
Speaker 8: displaced from Afrine because Turkey they carried out an operation
Speaker 8: against the YPG in twenty eighteen, So you have thousands
Speaker 8: of Kurts that left Afrine. So the statistics are a
Speaker 8: bit unclear, but at least there were around ten thousand
Speaker 8: IDPs living in camps in northern Aleppo, and you also
Speaker 8: have people living outside of the camp, so the statistics
Speaker 8: are always a bit unclear, but it's they now say
Speaker 8: that they were around ten thousand families that were displaced,
Speaker 8: so they were already displaced from Afrine before. And there's
Speaker 8: this town of Tararapad, which has been a strategic location
Speaker 8: in Aleppo because it was sort of like opening up
Speaker 8: the way to Aleppo City and the Kurdish back forces
Speaker 8: they took actually this town with Russian support from the
Speaker 8: Turkish back rebels, so they had like grievances about this town.
Speaker 8: But Turkey, even during the Afrine operation, they didn't get
Speaker 8: the green light to take this town from the Kurtkish
Speaker 8: back groups. Also, the Syrian government was there by the
Speaker 8: way after dreamings, so this town always was like a
Speaker 8: focal point of contention between the Kurts and the Syrian insurgents.
Speaker 8: So what happened after HCS took Aleppo, the Syrian National
Speaker 8: Army with the backing of Turkey, they moved on towards
Speaker 8: Teara Lapad. And also because in the past, there was
Speaker 8: more bad because you have also two small towns called
Speaker 8: Mumble and Zahara. They were like prominently inhabited by people
Speaker 8: from the Shia religion, so there were Iranian back groups
Speaker 8: there and they were in the back of Telarafad, so
Speaker 8: they were sort of as a balance. So they sort
Speaker 8: of like the curves, were able to hold out in
Speaker 8: Tarapad despite like many offensive by the Turkish back groups.
Speaker 8: So what happened because of basically all the Syrian government,
Speaker 8: they were removed from Aleppo and as a result, like
Speaker 8: they were very weakend and completely isolated. I mean until
Speaker 8: now there's Kurtish forces in Astrophia and Czech Masud, but
Speaker 8: they're completely surrounded and embargoed by the HTS, which is
Speaker 8: not something new because before this conflict, this new renewed
Speaker 8: conflict in Aleppo, the Syrian government was also imposing embargoes
Speaker 8: on those two neighborhoods, not allowing food and topping electricity
Speaker 8: and bothering people at checkpoints because they had like always
Speaker 8: issues with the Kurtish led forces because they're sort of
Speaker 8: in the Syrian Civil War, they have always played sort
Speaker 8: of a third role, like they want to have their autonomy.
Speaker 8: Then you have the Shiran armed groups. They are trying
Speaker 8: to topple the Syrian government, and then you had the
Speaker 8: Syrian government trying to stop this from happening. And then yeah,
Speaker 8: the Kurtish led forces were trying to create the autonomous
Speaker 8: administration and they got some support from the US in
Speaker 8: the fight against ISIS since the Battle of Kovani. Yeah,
Speaker 8: so yeah, this is like the situation a lepos. So
Speaker 8: now what happened is that thea fat were in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 8: the Parabs of Telfad, they fled. Actually this after s
Speaker 8: THEFYPG took this down. So now the Seen rebels they
Speaker 8: took this down, and this time that the people that
Speaker 8: fled from after into these towns that they were living
Speaker 8: around four or five six IDP camps there, they were
Speaker 8: forced to flee. So the Kurdish groups they were like
Speaker 8: trying to resist the SNA advances, but they were not
Speaker 8: able to resist them because they were completely surrounded because
Speaker 8: as I mentioned, Nobel and Zaka fell, so they were
Speaker 8: like completely pinched from all sides. But before they had
Speaker 8: always like Nobble and Zacha behind them, so they could
Speaker 8: not not be completely surrounded. But this time they were
Speaker 8: completely surrounded. They were forced to leave there or not
Speaker 8: able to continue the fight. So I think there was
Speaker 8: like a de facto deal or something, because you saw
Speaker 8: like convoys with actually with fighters with weapons and armed hunvies.
Speaker 8: They were like being escorted two checkpoints and they were
Speaker 8: allowed to cross towards Sabka actually a town in northeast Aria.
Speaker 8: And maybe most likely the US they were involved in
Speaker 8: the sort of de facto deal and Turkey, but so
Speaker 8: far the US they haven't comment on that, but most
Speaker 8: likely there was sort of a deal for the forces
Speaker 8: in Tarafa to leave with the civilians and they're now
Speaker 8: hosted in camps, in displacement camps in the town of Tabca.
Speaker 8: And then there are still Kurts living as I mentioned
Speaker 8: in Astrapia and chef Marsuda to big neighborhoods in Aleppo.
Speaker 8: And then you have also two small Kurdish towns around
Speaker 8: the Hassa which are now controlled by the year National
Speaker 8: Army the Turkish back groups, so the hyattas their local administration.
Speaker 8: They offered the deal to the Kurdish fighters. He said,
Speaker 8: you can leave these two Kurtish neighborhoods and Aleppo without
Speaker 8: any issues and the Curs that are living there, we
Speaker 8: respect them and they can stay there, but the Kurdish
Speaker 8: fighters they have to leave. But then there was a
Speaker 8: statement i think yesterday by the leader of the SEF,
Speaker 8: the Muslim Ubdi. He was saying like we were forced
Speaker 8: to evacuate the people because we were trying to create
Speaker 8: a corridor between these Kurdish enclaves in Aleppo with the
Speaker 8: rest of North East area, because they are like Turkish
Speaker 8: backed rebels and the certain government in between trying to
Speaker 8: trying to make a corridor. So they said this corridor
Speaker 8: was actually was broken and they were forced to evacuate.
Speaker 8: But he said that the Kurtish forces were still in
Speaker 8: Aleppo resisting. So it seems that the YPG didn't completely
Speaker 8: follow this offer of the HS. But of course we
Speaker 8: don't know if there was maybe a backdoor deal with
Speaker 8: the HTS to allow first people in nordern Alapo to
Speaker 8: leave and then maybe in a later phase that they
Speaker 8: will also leave Aleppo because they are there in a
Speaker 8: quite difficult situation.
Speaker 10: Yeah, a very difficult situation.
Speaker 8: But they're now accused by I see rebels that they
Speaker 8: are positioning snipers in Aleppo and that they are still
Speaker 8: a Leppo. But they never left Czech Masut and Astrapia.
Speaker 8: But I also talked to people. They're saying that civilians
Speaker 8: they were offered in Czech Masud and Astrapia to leave
Speaker 8: that area if they wanted to leave, so they were
Speaker 8: not forced to leave, that they had the option opportunity
Speaker 8: to leave that area if they wanted. But then the
Speaker 8: buses didn't show up and they didn't leave, because I mean,
Speaker 8: they need only not only evacuated Kurdish civilians from northern Lepo,
Speaker 8: but I think they also evacuated the Shia population of
Speaker 8: Dubo Zakha. There were sometimes also that they were also
Speaker 8: evacuated to North East Ayria because they don't feel safe
Speaker 8: for their lives if those rebels take those areas. Yeah,
Speaker 8: and they are still there. They don't want to be
Speaker 8: captured by the rebels and used as hostages or so
Speaker 8: most likely they left with the Kurts to north east
Speaker 8: Syria and what will happen to them. They probably go
Speaker 8: to Iraq or to other areas in Syria.
Speaker 10: Yeah, you meet like in Northeast Aria, you meet sometimes
Speaker 10: like either former ragimes or people who have left regime areas,
Speaker 10: and like they've made their lives there. So now we
Speaker 10: have this situation right where, yeah, we have these two
Speaker 10: little islands, we'll just call them YPG for the ease
Speaker 10: of to not introduce another acronym, right of like a
Speaker 10: Kurdish armed folks in Aleppo. To complicate this further, and
Speaker 10: people will probably have seen this, I want to explain it.
Speaker 10: In the Rezor, we have a different situation, right, we
Speaker 10: have their the SDF attacking Iranian back Relicious and the regime.
Speaker 10: Do you feel comfortable explaining what's going on in Derisora
Speaker 10: where that's a different calculus.
Speaker 8: Yeah. So since former president or the incoming president Donald
Speaker 8: Trump when he pulled out troops from Syria in twenty
Speaker 8: nineteen when Turkey did an offensive against the Curves and
Speaker 8: Telabatasaain at that point in the US, they left, but
Speaker 8: then there was so much criticism from both Democrats and
Speaker 8: Republicans that he was forced to come back. So until now,
Speaker 8: there are still nine hundred Jewish troops in Detozor Province
Speaker 8: and in Husska Province, which is actually not a lot
Speaker 8: because if you look to for instance, South Korea, there
Speaker 8: are thousands of troops in South Korea and in other places.
Speaker 8: So it's not very a lot. But in the US
Speaker 8: discussions it's always discussed all we have troops in Syria,
Speaker 8: but actually compared to other countries, is not a very
Speaker 8: big number.
Speaker 10: Nine hundred people, no, not unto very small footprint.
Speaker 8: So they have the small footprint in Detzor and Hassaka
Speaker 8: and they basically they worked with the Kurtish led forces
Speaker 8: since the Battle of Kobani to basically defeat the Isiskelephate
Speaker 8: because it was a threat to European security and US security,
Speaker 8: and they were trying to carry out attacks in Europe,
Speaker 8: and there were many attacks in Europe and when civilians
Speaker 8: were killed, so ye had the anti Isis fight. This
Speaker 8: is one of the reasons actually why the Kurtish led
Speaker 8: forces they were forced to go to Detozor because it
Speaker 8: was their last beast on in twenty nineteen when they
Speaker 8: defeated the territorial Caliphate of Isis. So since there you
Speaker 8: have this the SEF there and they have their own
Speaker 8: administration in the Rezor and they have like local forces
Speaker 8: and Arabs that joined them in the fight against sizes.
Speaker 8: So what happened that in the last few years, in
Speaker 8: the last one or two years, there have been attempts
Speaker 8: by the Syrian government and Iranian back groups basically to
Speaker 8: recruit Arab tribes to fight against the SDF. So there
Speaker 8: have been several skirmishes and battles since that time. After
Speaker 8: also the SDF they arrested a commander of them that
Speaker 8: they thought he was like going to portrade them. So
Speaker 8: since that time, there were like several skirmishes between these
Speaker 8: milasies that are calling themselves the tribal army or something
Speaker 8: in that regard. And then you have the SCF, so
Speaker 8: you had like fights between the Ranian back groups and
Speaker 8: the SDF. And recently with all the changes in Syria,
Speaker 8: there were a number of villages around seven six villages
Speaker 8: that were actually Russian army was based in those villages.
Speaker 8: It was like the line sort of dividing the US
Speaker 8: back as theF forces and the Syrian government forces. And
Speaker 8: there's also a river, but those villages they were like
Speaker 8: in front of the river, so the river is sort
Speaker 8: of naturally dividing the areas between the SDF and the
Speaker 8: Syrian government. But there were like still a number of
Speaker 8: villages that were not on that line, and actually there
Speaker 8: were Russian troops based in that villages. Yeah, but with
Speaker 8: the whole crisis with Aleppo and the fight now between
Speaker 8: the HCS and the Syrian government in Hannah, the Russians
Speaker 8: they moved out from those villages. So those villages that
Speaker 8: actually are almost empty, there is nothing there. So during
Speaker 8: this situation they as UF they just moved in those
Speaker 8: villages and there was actually not so much fighting, although
Speaker 8: on the social media I see that all there's fighting
Speaker 8: and this kind of stuff. So there was some over
Speaker 8: these like the last one or two years, they have
Speaker 8: been heavy fighting between the SDF and Reign Impact Groups,
Speaker 8: but in these villages not so much because it was
Speaker 8: just anti villages and they just took them over and
Speaker 8: there was no one there.
Speaker 10: Yeah, Okay, So that leaves us with like I guess
Speaker 10: an e S getting a little bit larger in the
Speaker 10: south and then how smaller in the west.
Speaker 8: Yeah, very much faller in the west. And it's even
Speaker 8: not clear if they can keep their presence in Aleppo
Speaker 8: because I mean, Chef Marshut and Asia is now completely
Speaker 8: surrounded by the HDS, and it seems that the HDS
Speaker 8: they have been a little bit softer with the SDF
Speaker 8: and YPG than the SNA, because the SNA, I mean,
Speaker 8: they have their issues because they're also backed by the
Speaker 8: Turkish government and the Turkish government they always said their
Speaker 8: policy is basically to stop the SDF from treating autonomous area,
Speaker 8: and they also said the SDF is linked to the PIKK,
Speaker 8: although the SDF they deny links to the pi AK,
Speaker 8: although they don't deny their idological affiliation with the prison
Speaker 8: pick A k Here.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 8: So Turkey always said that they are feeling threatened and
Speaker 8: they have always claim that attacks were planned on Turkey
Speaker 8: from northeast Asyria, from Rosava on on Turkey. Yeah, THEFF
Speaker 8: deny that. I think there was also there was not
Speaker 8: so a long time ago. There was also an attack
Speaker 8: in Ankara, and Turkey also claimed that it was a
Speaker 8: carry planned from British cities in Syria. Yeah, so that's
Speaker 8: that's like the situation.
Speaker 10: Yeah, they gives Yeah, they give us a pretty good
Speaker 10: summary of the situation. I think. So let's talk about
Speaker 10: HTS a bit, because I think you're going to see
Speaker 10: one of two things. Right when we talk about the
Speaker 10: SNA and HDS, A lot of outlets will just collapse
Speaker 10: them under the same descriptor they will just say Syrian rebels,
Speaker 10: and I think people will think of the original largely
Speaker 10: secular uprising in Syria in twenty eleven, and if they
Speaker 10: have not been paying attention, they'll realize that ISIS has
Speaker 10: been and gone.
Speaker 3: But they'll think, oh, these must be the same guys.
Speaker 10: These are not the same guys. But some of them
Speaker 10: may be the same guys who are originally part of
Speaker 10: Jiulani was originally sent there by a back daddy way
Speaker 10: back to be part of ISIS. But these are not
Speaker 10: the secular rebels who originally rose up in Syria. And
Speaker 10: so can you explain like HTS has this very interesting
Speaker 10: kind of legitimacy project right, like it's trying to build
Speaker 10: a pseudo state and present like a kind of gentler Jihadism.
Speaker 10: I don't know how to say it, but can you
Speaker 10: explain a little bit of this transformation of HDS and
Speaker 10: what you make of it.
Speaker 8: I mean, as you mentioned that Julani, the current leader
Speaker 8: of the HS, he was sent by at that time,
Speaker 8: I think it was al Kai the are the Islamic
Speaker 8: state of Iraq, and yeah, Syria basically to establish like
Speaker 8: but at that time there was no ISIS yet I
Speaker 8: think so so later basically he refused to budge allegiance
Speaker 8: and he basically did his own thing. He created Jabalta Nostra,
Speaker 8: which was the affiliate of al Qaeda. But then he
Speaker 8: decided to basically split from al Qaeda and he announced
Speaker 8: like these links to I think at the time that
Speaker 8: it was Zawahiri, but I'm not sure. So he basically
Speaker 8: split from al Qaeda, and you still have a split
Speaker 8: off group from al Qaeda in itlyp it's called h
Speaker 8: Russell Din, which they actually they had issues with. They
Speaker 8: had some problems with them. So HDS, although Isis territory
Speaker 8: was defeated twenty nineteen, the HTS or they basically with
Speaker 8: all the creates in Syria because I mean they have
Speaker 8: been fighting out for all the problems between the Sern
Speaker 8: government and different armed groups. They managed to sort of
Speaker 8: cementa crowd throw in the province of lip and they
Speaker 8: created their own little administration there. But despite that, they
Speaker 8: say that we don't have any links to al Qaeda.
Speaker 8: I mean they're still listed by for instance, the US
Speaker 8: as a terrorist organization.
Speaker 10: Yeah, there's a ten million dollar bounty on Julani still, right,
Speaker 10: they just never took it away from Yeah, I mean.
Speaker 8: It seems that the US doesn't believe this moderation idea
Speaker 8: that the HS tries to show them more moderately. But
Speaker 8: my idea of the HS, it's more like a sort
Speaker 8: of a lighter, softer version of ices. I mean, they're
Speaker 8: not like ices that they're gonna broadcast people being blown
Speaker 8: up or beheaded on the film screen. It's just that
Speaker 8: they do it in the back of the screen. I mean,
Speaker 8: there's people being executed according to the Islamic Shadia a lot,
Speaker 8: there are people being imprisoned. I mean, you also had
Speaker 8: protests actually it left against Jolani that they were actually
Speaker 8: opposed to the authoritarian rule. And I think then you
Speaker 8: have separate from the sort of the Islamic Islamics, which
Speaker 8: you can actually sort of compare to the Taliban. Yes,
Speaker 8: I think that's a good comparison, Yes, to the Taliban.
Speaker 8: And also I think Taliban they have some relationships actually
Speaker 8: the HS, and they also congratulated the HTS after they
Speaker 8: took control of Aleppo, so sort of it's like a
Speaker 8: Taliban rule, though of course Taliban is very different contacts
Speaker 8: related to Syria culture Afghan culture, so it's different of course,
Speaker 8: but they're both, yes, Islamist projects with a national project
Speaker 8: at the same time. So it's Islamist project for Syria
Speaker 8: and the Taliban have an Islamist project for Afghanistan, although
Speaker 8: you also have Pakistani Taliban et cetera. Yeah, so it's
Speaker 8: not like a transnational jihad, but you can call it
Speaker 8: like a national jihad maybe.
Speaker 10: Yeah, I think that's the crucial difference, right at least
Speaker 10: for the US, like that makes them kind of more
Speaker 10: amenable than than ISIS or even Al kaider Is that. Yeah,
Speaker 10: they have this nationally contained Jahadi vision, so.
Speaker 8: They don't do attacks in Europe or in the US.
Speaker 8: But of course there are several groups in ITLAB that
Speaker 8: are sort of falling under the control of HDS that
Speaker 8: are possibly could do external attacks, et cetera. And apart
Speaker 8: from that, you have the Syrian National Army. So the
Speaker 8: Syrian National Army, it's like a mix of different groups.
Speaker 8: As you mentioned in the beginning of the series Civil War,
Speaker 8: you had the Phisian Army, but then the Free Serrian Army.
Speaker 8: They split in several groups. I mean some like linked
Speaker 8: to Muslim brotherhoods, some linked to Turkmen groups, other groups
Speaker 8: secular groups et cetera. So all these groups that were
Speaker 8: basically fighting in different provinces, they were all gathered because Turkey.
Speaker 8: They did several Turkish military did several operations in twenty
Speaker 8: sixteen in northern Syria with the main aim is to
Speaker 8: stop the YPG from linking up the Kurdish enclaves on
Speaker 8: the border with Turkey. So they did I think the
Speaker 8: first one I was Euphraid Shield. Then they had I
Speaker 8: think Operation All of Brands in Afrin in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 3: Yeah, incredible names.
Speaker 8: Then I think the last operation account Recalled was in
Speaker 8: twenty nineteen when they took Telaviat and Serkania from the
Speaker 8: Kurtish Laud forces the YPGSDA. So they had these three operations.
Speaker 8: And these groups are sort of a mixed as I mentioned,
Speaker 8: a different groups with also different ideologies. Some are more
Speaker 8: Turkmen in nature, some of them are more Islamist in nature.
Speaker 8: Some there are like sort of leftovers from secular groups
Speaker 8: that used to FI. Some of them even they in
Speaker 8: the past they received support from the US from the
Speaker 8: CIA against the Seian regimes. So some of them they
Speaker 8: receive support and this is like a sort of umbrella
Speaker 8: of self organizations. So HDS is one group and they
Speaker 8: control also other groups in but it's one group. But
Speaker 8: the SNA there are like a lot of different groups,
Speaker 8: and they also have been fighting each other several times
Speaker 8: in areas and Turkish control. So this is very different
Speaker 8: and there are more sectarian in nature, let's say more.
Speaker 8: I mean, they have also been less under control than
Speaker 8: the HTS in the way that there have been a
Speaker 8: lot of kidnappings for ransom, a lot of like sexual
Speaker 8: violence against women and rape. This is all documented by
Speaker 8: self organizations, Juan organizations. They also have child soldiers, so
Speaker 8: they have different kinds of issues, and but they have
Speaker 8: been more accused of like more sort of gang style
Speaker 8: of activity, and that's why. Also some of them there
Speaker 8: were sanctioned by the US and also some of them
Speaker 8: they have integrated like former IIS fighters in their ranks.
Speaker 8: And you also have like first you have some groups
Speaker 8: that are frondos or the other are originally for instance
Speaker 8: from the area around Mato or Aza. Some of them
Speaker 8: they could they were displaced from Gutta, so a lot
Speaker 8: of them there also they came because the Serian government
Speaker 8: they advanced with Russian support, and then these groups were
Speaker 8: brought by buses to the areas under Turkish control. Yeah,
Speaker 8: so these areas became a sort of like maybe it's
Speaker 8: a bad word, or sort of a dumping ground for
Speaker 8: all these Srian rebel groups that were not completely defeated
Speaker 8: but displaced by Serrian government and offenses with the Russian support.
Speaker 8: So I mean before they were an Aleppo and homes
Speaker 8: and Hamma and Damascats in all this group they were
Speaker 8: moved with buses through agreements between around Turkey, Russia and
Speaker 8: Syria to northern Syria to it and now these groups
Speaker 8: they are coming back because they were never completely defeated.
Speaker 8: I mean they had their own administration, so the Syrian
Speaker 8: Army they fall under the Turkish back the Cerian opposition
Speaker 8: I think they call it the Serian National Coalition or
Speaker 8: in Arabic the ital AF, so they have their own
Speaker 8: interim government administration in THEIRS on the Turkish control, and
Speaker 8: then you have the Salvation government under the Ahso the
Speaker 8: are t two different administrations. And they also doesn't mean
Speaker 8: that they agree with so so just calling them the
Speaker 8: rebels it's a little bit like, yeah, it doesn't really
Speaker 8: doesn't fit to the reality. But of course you also
Speaker 8: have to deal with the fact that for media, if
Speaker 8: they want to explain complex situations to a general public,
Speaker 8: it's very difficult to just say, Okay, you have this acronym,
Speaker 8: and you have this acronym, and you have the white
Speaker 8: and the Ahs and the SNA. So people they will
Speaker 8: lose their interest. So that's why it always becomes sort
Speaker 8: of this black and white. So, oh, you have the
Speaker 8: Syrian insurgence and then you have the Serian government, and
Speaker 8: then it's already complex enough to also add Kurts to
Speaker 8: the mix. So they also, of course often the Turkish government.
Speaker 8: They got very angry that the media keeps calling the
Speaker 8: YPG the curse because oh, they don't represent the curse.
Speaker 8: But you can't say that with any group in Syria
Speaker 8: or anywhere in the world. I mean, I mean you
Speaker 8: have in Americans, you have different political parties. You have
Speaker 8: different parties in Syria, you have different parties in Turkey.
Speaker 8: So these groups don't represent all the Syrians, or all
Speaker 8: the Arabs, or all the Kurts or all the Allwais.
Speaker 8: There are always different political factions and that's what it
Speaker 8: makes so complicated in Syria because a lot of these
Speaker 8: based groups got fragmented. But actually with versus the support
Speaker 8: of Turkey, they actually united on the one umbrella, which
Speaker 8: is called the Syrian National Army. And then of course
Speaker 8: even on the Syrian government side, there's many different groups.
Speaker 8: I mean you have you have Iranian back armed groups,
Speaker 8: you have groups from Lebanon that are helping the Hezbola
Speaker 8: Albani says Bola. Then you have Iraqi Iranian back groups
Speaker 8: that are supporting Syrian government. Then you have also Shias
Speaker 8: that were recruited from Afghanistan. And then also in the
Speaker 8: Syrian government security structure, I mean, in the past there
Speaker 8: was no room for malicious but they have, for instance,
Speaker 8: the NDF, which is sort of like a Syrian govern
Speaker 8: want back militia, which even sometimes part with the Syrian
Speaker 8: government itself when they tried to become become more too
Speaker 8: much powerful, sort of like what you haven't Wagner in
Speaker 8: Russia that we try to challenge the Russian government and
Speaker 8: then they got third bailed. So it's like even with
Speaker 8: a certain sort of the forces back in the Cerian army,
Speaker 8: it's not like so simple. It's also not you have
Speaker 8: just a Serian army that's it. You have also different
Speaker 8: kinds of militia, some supported by Iran, some supported by
Speaker 8: Russia that are backing the Syrian government.
Speaker 10: Yeah, everyone wants I think Ukraine has really reinforced this.
Speaker 10: They want war to be like colors on a map
Speaker 10: and a front line, and the front line moves and
Speaker 10: that's you know, and that's just not how like oftentimes
Speaker 10: there's little lines on a map will be in reality
Speaker 10: it's people driving around and pick up trucks with dishcas
Speaker 10: in the back, wondering where the other guys are and
Speaker 10: what's going on.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 10: It's not like Ukraine where you have trenches and people
Speaker 10: firing each other from trench lines to gradually move. And
Speaker 10: as much as it would be easy to have modelists,
Speaker 10: we we just don't.
Speaker 3: In Syria.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I mean, sorry, it's different because of it's more
Speaker 8: there are more religious and ethnic groups done in Ukraine.
Speaker 8: I mean ucrin Is you have the the Ukrainians and
Speaker 8: the Russians, and I mean you also have people speaking
Speaker 8: Russian in other areas of Ukraine. But it's where it's
Speaker 8: much more complex in in in Syria. Althoio obviously also
Speaker 8: have different groups fighting in Ukraine, but in Syria it's
Speaker 8: a bit more complex and it's difficult for the media
Speaker 8: to get a grip on that without like you know,
Speaker 8: like trying to also explain to a normal reader of
Speaker 8: what is going on in Syria. But also in general
Speaker 8: you have all this international media that are cutting down
Speaker 8: costs and they're closing there for and bureaus. So also
Speaker 8: i mean the money for like extensive reporting in Syria
Speaker 8: is also getting less or in general in internationally speaking, yes,
Speaker 8: And then you have another problem is that you have
Speaker 8: the problem of access in Syria. So if you are
Speaker 8: wanted to go to the same government area is very
Speaker 8: difficult because if you have reported in Syrian rebel areas,
Speaker 8: the same government is not going to give you a visa.
Speaker 8: You have to be like very l Serian government if
Speaker 8: you go to the areas under rebel control to be honest, like,
Speaker 8: it's very difficult for any journalists to go to HDS
Speaker 8: areas or the Eran National Army area. So even if
Speaker 8: a journalist wants to report positively about the rebels, it's
Speaker 8: very difficult. Then they have like a press adcutation in
Speaker 8: Turkey and they have to cross the boarders very complicated,
Speaker 8: so there's barely in very rare cases journalists going into
Speaker 8: northwest Aria and then with the Kurdish controlled areas if
Speaker 8: you can call them like that, like northeast here, it's
Speaker 8: a bit easier. I mean, there are people flying to Iraqi,
Speaker 8: Curtistan and then they can get like a permission from
Speaker 8: the Kurdish authorities. They're in Iraqi, Curtistan and then they
Speaker 8: can cross the border. So it's a bit easier. But
Speaker 8: the number of journals going there is very limited, and
Speaker 8: most of the interests actually of the Western media was
Speaker 8: not so much about the cern conflict. It was more
Speaker 8: about this western ISIS woman and ISIS fighters that were
Speaker 8: jailed or held in in Northeast Airia. So most of
Speaker 8: the focus of the Western media was most of the time, okay,
Speaker 8: what's happening in the whole camp, because you have thousands
Speaker 8: of ISIS families there or in versus in the prison. So,
Speaker 8: I mean, the American journals were interested in US doash fighters,
Speaker 8: and the Dutch were interested in Dutch ices families are fighters,
Speaker 8: and the same for many other countries.
Speaker 10: Yeah, the British media is terrible for that. They'll go
Speaker 10: to northeast Syria and then talk about Northeast Airia and
Speaker 10: this our whole just exists as kind of a bubble
Speaker 10: outside of context in that reporting.
Speaker 8: Yeah, they just talk about Shamima Begoon and she became
Speaker 8: sort of a celebrity in the UK. Yeah, although I
Speaker 8: think even on that actress nowadays it's like very limited
Speaker 8: because a lot of the zer countries in the UK
Speaker 8: they have their own domestic issues. So also in general,
Speaker 8: the interesting in Syria has gone down a lot, and
Speaker 8: I think also with this current conflict and Aleppo, it
Speaker 8: will get some intention in the media for a few days,
Speaker 8: but at some point it's gonna go down again, yes,
Speaker 8: of course, and maybe there will be conflicts and other
Speaker 8: parts of the world again. So I think at some
Speaker 8: point also this media attention because the media attention for
Speaker 8: Sir already was like very low, unless it's gonna affect
Speaker 8: Europe in a large extent because it could also create
Speaker 8: new waves of refugees trying to go to Europe. Yeah,
Speaker 8: there's many people that were displaced. Again. It was a
Speaker 8: very nice post on X by one Journeys from I
Speaker 8: think a Saudi outlet, and he was saying it's very
Speaker 8: sad to see. He was basically saying like at any moment,
Speaker 8: our people can be displaced at any time or can
Speaker 8: be displaced again. So that's like sort of the life
Speaker 8: of Syrians that live in these different like front lines,
Speaker 8: like anytime they can displace, like the people at Traffreine
Speaker 8: they were displaced in twenty eighteen and now twenty twenty
Speaker 8: four they were displaced again. And then you have people
Speaker 8: displaced by the Syrian government living in the houses of
Speaker 8: kurts in Afrine and they're also victims of this conflict.
Speaker 8: So yeah, so it's a very complicated situation, people being displaced,
Speaker 8: moving in the houses of displaced and displace living in
Speaker 8: other people's houses that are also displaced. So it's like
Speaker 8: a very cynical and sad situation.
Speaker 10: Yeah, and a very very difficult one for civilians. And certainly,
Speaker 10: like with the changing government in the US, it seems
Speaker 10: unlikely that we will be reaching out to help those
Speaker 10: those displaced civilians in the near future. And certainly we've
Speaker 10: seen a lot of Kurdish people who have been displaced
Speaker 10: either by Turkish aggression or who there's a whole other
Speaker 10: situation with the Kurdish areas in Turkey at the moment
Speaker 10: and their elections and such which we don't have time
Speaker 10: to go into but many of them have come to
Speaker 10: the US, and I've interviewed lots of them for this show,
Speaker 10: so we've I think people will be familiar with that, right,
Speaker 10: I mean, I think that's probably about all we have
Speaker 10: time for. But I wanted to offer you a chance.
Speaker 10: You have very good tweets, you have a very good
Speaker 10: understanding of the whole situation. You have your articles do
Speaker 10: an excellent job of making it understandable. So where can
Speaker 10: people find your writing and follow you?
Speaker 8: Well, I mean I you can find my tweets on
Speaker 8: my personal the page which is on my name Lady
Speaker 8: Melberg at x Vivan Wrockenberg. And also I write for
Speaker 8: different outlets and think tanks like first As, I write
Speaker 8: for mid at least I fig form from the Washington Institute. Also,
Speaker 8: I've been writing some pieces for Carnegie, So yeah, I've
Speaker 8: been if we're writing for several places on the current situation. Yeah,
Speaker 8: and sometimes Side to Interview, Side talked on BBC a
Speaker 8: few times on the situation and Aduchavella. So you can
Speaker 8: find my work on my Twitter profile. Always post my
Speaker 8: articles there and yeah, yep, that's great.
Speaker 10: Is there anything else you'd like to maybe suggest that
Speaker 10: people follow I think it could be really easy to
Speaker 10: get a lot of propaganda when it comes to two sirius,
Speaker 10: So I think you'd suggest that people kind of get
Speaker 10: their news from well.
Speaker 8: I mean, I think in general x is still like
Speaker 8: a good platform. It has been from the beginning of
Speaker 8: the series Civil War, although of course you have different accounts,
Speaker 8: different views supporting different factions. So it's always good to
Speaker 8: verify any videos posted, although it's like more difficult to
Speaker 8: very five videos than the pictures, but it's always good
Speaker 8: to verify locations and the background of people that are
Speaker 8: posting stuff. And then also I think it's very interesting
Speaker 8: and good to follow the maps of the Serian Civil
Speaker 8: War because you have several places where they publish maps
Speaker 8: of the civil war, so it's easier to follow it
Speaker 8: on the map than by tweets or posts on eggs.
Speaker 8: But I think in general, I mean, I mean, there
Speaker 8: are still like many international media that are trying to
Speaker 8: do reporting on Syria, but I think in general what
Speaker 8: I've seen it's becoming more limited, and it's mostly based on,
Speaker 8: for instance, the Serum Observretory for Human Rights. Yes, so
Speaker 8: the same observatory for human rights. It's a good source.
Speaker 8: They have a page in English and Arabic, although sometimes
Speaker 8: they are the English pages are a bit difficult to
Speaker 8: follow for people if they don't know the background of
Speaker 8: the conflict because it's more written for locals. Yeah, and
Speaker 8: then also you have fends. There's this civil site organization
Speaker 8: that focus on human rights abuses. I think it's called
Speaker 8: Seriance for Justice. They are very good reports on the situation,
Speaker 8: but it's a bit slow because it's not like twenty
Speaker 8: four hours. I mean it's like they're doing investigative reports
Speaker 8: on abuses by all sides of the ceriin civil conflict. Yeah,
Speaker 8: so Johtal I think it is very grud And also
Speaker 8: like telegram, I mean a lot of these different groups
Speaker 8: they have telegram channels where they post the latest updates,
Speaker 8: but of course all of them are quite biased, but
Speaker 8: bias you will get anyway in such a conflicts, in
Speaker 8: over the war, so.
Speaker 10: Yeah, everyone's biased to a degree. You will see dead
Speaker 10: people a lot if you go following telegram channels to
Speaker 10: the certain civil war. So if that's not something you'd
Speaker 10: like to see, that's probably not platform to be on.
Speaker 6: Big Death.
Speaker 10: Thank you so much for your time. I know it's
Speaker 10: late with you, and we'll let you get to sleep,
Speaker 10: and we do appreciate you joining us, and hopefully people
Speaker 10: will follow you on Twitter and and get good information
Speaker 10: about what's happening.
Speaker 3: Welcome Dick had Happened Here a podcast that has increasingly
Speaker 3: become about it happening in other places in the world.
Speaker 3: I'm your host via wog with me as caare.
Speaker 8: Hello. Hello.
Speaker 3: So if I'm remember incorrectly, and it is entirely possible,
Speaker 3: I have forgotten several coups that I've covered. I think
Speaker 3: this is the second coup that I've covered in six
Speaker 3: months that feels right. And you know, when we last
Speaker 3: left the dumbest coup I had ever seen in my
Speaker 3: entire life. We were in Bolivia and it was a
Speaker 3: truly spectacularly stupid coup. That coup ended with the army
Speaker 3: running away from a bunch of protesters who were just
Speaker 3: like yelling at them meanly, so that one had I
Speaker 3: thing I've never seen before, which is the army that
Speaker 3: the protesters were trying to bring something up to break
Speaker 3: a barricade, and the army ran away before they could
Speaker 3: get the like anti barricade thing up to the police barricade,
Speaker 3: So that was a disaster. Today we are talking about
Speaker 3: what I having now studied this like since it was
Speaker 3: since it started, I genuinely believe this somehow is an
Speaker 3: even stupider coup than the last. Like I you have
Speaker 3: to go back to like the CIA coup in Venezuela
Speaker 3: where everyone just got that like arrested by fishermen to
Speaker 3: find a stupider coup than this, it is, and even
Speaker 3: that one, like at least they like landed guys with guns.
Speaker 3: It was over so quick, like yeah, I think the
Speaker 3: official number is that the amount of time the martial
Speaker 3: law was technically in effect before the Assembly voted to
Speaker 3: get rid of it was one hundred and ninety minutes.
Speaker 2: Like people could have like slept through this coup, which
Speaker 2: is really funny, right, I.
Speaker 3: Made an executive decision, right, and I was like, I'm
Speaker 3: going to sleep in for one more hour, so I
Speaker 3: woke up at eight am instead of seven am, and
Speaker 3: I missed like half of it because I was just
Speaker 3: iceleft for one hour. So let's let's let's get into
Speaker 3: a bit about what happened here because you know, as
Speaker 3: as dumb as this looks now, because it failed this
Speaker 3: was for people who don't know there was a there
Speaker 3: was an attempted coup in South Korea. I don't know
Speaker 3: what day it's gonna be when I don't know what
Speaker 3: day it's gonna be in Korea when this comes out,
Speaker 3: because yeah, but on on Tuesday day, on our Tuesday
Speaker 3: in like the the it was I think ten thirty
Speaker 3: night there the hideously unpopular president of Korea, Sok yel yun,
Speaker 3: tried to declared martial law. Une is. His approval rating
Speaker 3: is like half of Joe Biden's approval rating. Like his
Speaker 3: approval rating is like twenty percent. He is staggeringly unpopular.
Speaker 3: He yeah, so you. And he won one election in
Speaker 3: twenty twenty two, very narrowly, in a race where neither
Speaker 3: of the candidates were particularly good. And he is a hardline,
Speaker 3: far right dipshit. He's you know, I mean, one of
Speaker 3: his big things. He has this unbelievably hardline in North Korea,
Speaker 3: which is not you know, doing anything productive at all.
Speaker 3: He's also you know, and this is like if you
Speaker 3: want to look at like, who are his twenty percent
Speaker 3: of supporters left? He was the guy of the unbelievably
Speaker 3: unhinged Korean misogynist movement. I guess you would call them,
Speaker 3: who are some of the worst people on earth. I mean,
Speaker 3: these are guys who will just There was a court
Speaker 3: case recently that decided that you can't just like beat
Speaker 3: someone up for having short hair because you think they're
Speaker 3: a feminist. Like, that's the kind of like unhinged misogynists
Speaker 3: that we're dealing with. That's that's Union's base. However, a
Speaker 3: couple of things have happened since then. One is that
Speaker 3: he's racked by like a thousand scandals everyone in his
Speaker 3: in his cabinet. He keeps getting impeached for doing corruption.
Speaker 3: There are so many different corruption scandals with him going
Speaker 3: on right now that I was considering like reading out
Speaker 3: a list of all of them as a joke, but
Speaker 3: it's too long. One of the important ones is that
Speaker 3: he was like basically doing like a pay for play
Speaker 3: thing to like fuck with his own party's primary process.
Speaker 3: Nice and this has pissed off basically his entire party,
Speaker 3: which is great, which is exactly the thing you want
Speaker 3: to be doing right before you auld take the stage
Speaker 3: of coup, is piss off your own political party. So
Speaker 3: all right, let's get to the coup. He major problem,
Speaker 3: one of his very major problems is that he hasn't
Speaker 3: been able to do anything basically since he's been in power.
Speaker 3: And the reason he hasn't been able to do anything
Speaker 3: is that his first sort of like off election was
Speaker 3: this unbelievably crushing electoral defeat for his party. The National Assembly,
Speaker 3: which is their like parliament, is just straight up controlled
Speaker 3: by the opposition Democratic like Liberal well, okay, let me
Speaker 3: be very cific about this is controlled by the opposition
Speaker 3: Democratic Party, who are the sort of like Korean Liberal
Speaker 3: Party and also a bunch of like minor allied opposition parties,
Speaker 3: and they keep on again impeaching all of his cabinet members,
Speaker 3: which is very funny. You know, he was trying to
Speaker 3: get a budget through and the budget got eviscerated and
Speaker 3: he hasn't been able to do it. So he's been
Speaker 3: very very angry and very frustrated, and so his plan
Speaker 3: apparently to deal with this was just to knock out
Speaker 3: the National Assembly.
Speaker 2: This is so funny because like, because of who I am,
Speaker 2: I was talking about this at the bar last night,
Speaker 2: just completely insunderable. And the one thing I couldn't put
Speaker 2: together is like what his exact motivation was besides like
Speaker 2: rooting out like political enemies.
Speaker 3: No one knows that he like.
Speaker 2: Labeled us like quote unquote anti communist, right, But let's
Speaker 2: like we were talking about, like how funny this all is,
Speaker 2: and like I still can't quite understand like why he
Speaker 2: did this.
Speaker 3: No one news like this this is Jenny Why, Like
Speaker 3: nobody has any idea why the fuck he thought this
Speaker 3: would work? Like the best thesis and we'll get to
Speaker 3: this a bit. The best thesis that I've seen is
Speaker 3: that he wanted to do this because he was pissed
Speaker 3: off with the fact that he hasn't literally been able
Speaker 3: to do anything his entire time in office because he's
Speaker 3: really mad at the National Assembly and also his own party, And.
Speaker 2: It's so funny to do that and then have that
Speaker 2: be underscored by them like be like, oh god, no,
Speaker 2: actually you can't do a coup. No, no, thank you,
Speaker 2: nice try legally you cannot koubi.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like the I think the the semi serious part
Speaker 3: of this is that it doesn't make any sense to
Speaker 3: me how this could have been done if there also
Speaker 3: wasn't a faction of the Korean military that wanted this. Right,
Speaker 3: the Korean military is I mean, most of Korea's history
Speaker 3: still to this day, but I think I think it's
Speaker 3: still a majority of the amount of time South Korea
Speaker 3: has been in existence has been under military dictatorships of
Speaker 3: various kinds. There's been a whole bunch of them. They
Speaker 3: were staggeringly hideous. They killed unbelievable numbers of people, they
Speaker 3: tortured unbelievab numbers of people. They were full back by
Speaker 3: the United States, and the military has also always had
Speaker 3: this real chip on its shoulder about sort of liberal
Speaker 3: civilian politicians, and they have their version of like all
Speaker 3: of the conspiracy things that we have about how all
Speaker 3: democratic communists and how they're all like secretly et cetera,
Speaker 3: et cetera. So for this is like they're all secretly
Speaker 3: North Korea supporters, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 2: Right, And this is something I was also seeing yesterday
Speaker 2: people being like, oh wow, when did South Korea become
Speaker 2: North Korea? And they're like, oh my god, that's so
Speaker 2: that's like what a weird like orientalist racist comment. This
Speaker 2: is this is the most South Korean thing to ever happen.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is like military coup and then military coup
Speaker 3: being overturned by protesters is the single most South Korean
Speaker 3: thing ever, right, Like, this is just how South Korean
Speaker 3: history has been.
Speaker 2: Having the fucking Assembly have to like break in in
Speaker 2: the middle of the night to vote.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's so funny. It's just it's Yeah, we're gonna
Speaker 3: get to the actual details of it a second, but
Speaker 3: I want to I want to go back to what
Speaker 3: was actually in this declaration of martial law. So the
Speaker 3: Korean constitution does let you declare martial law, but you're
Speaker 3: only supposed to do it if there's like a war
Speaker 3: going on, or like.
Speaker 2: If there's like an actual crisis happening.
Speaker 3: Yeah, instead of just like I'm mad I can't pass
Speaker 3: my budget, which used to be what was happening here.
Speaker 2: You feel bad on a Monday night and you're like, oh,
Speaker 2: I guess i'llnucular martial law.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so okay, I'm gonna read some I'm gonna read
Speaker 3: a thing about what was going on here, about how unhinged.
Speaker 3: This was from Hawkura, which is a Korean media outlet.
Speaker 3: Quote Commander park Ensou announced quote martial law Command Proclamation
Speaker 3: number one, which, by the way, that's how you know
Speaker 3: you're dealing with people who have done this before. When
Speaker 3: when they start doing their like Decree number one, Decree
Speaker 3: number two. Oh yeah, that's that is an that is
Speaker 3: an experience the side of like very very experienced military
Speaker 3: coup people announced martial Law Command Proclamation number one based
Speaker 3: on the contents of prohibiting all political activities of the
Speaker 3: National Assembly and local assemblies. The acclaimation also included contents
Speaker 3: that controlled the press and publications and prohibited citizens assemblies
Speaker 3: and demonstrations, as well as strikes and workstop wages by workers.
Speaker 3: It is also notable that it included the content quote
Speaker 3: all medical personnel, including residents who are on a strike
Speaker 3: who have left the medical field must return to their
Speaker 3: original work within forty eight hours and work faithfully, and
Speaker 3: violations will be published in accordance with the Martial Law Act. Now,
Speaker 3: it's important to note here if the thing you are
Speaker 3: trying to do is impose martial law on Korea according
Speaker 3: to the Constitution, and obviously if you're in the state
Speaker 3: where you're opposing martial law, the law has kind of
Speaker 3: got out the window. But you can't get rid of
Speaker 3: the National Assembly. That is not a thing that marshial
Speaker 3: law allows you to do. With In fact, very explicitly
Speaker 3: in the Korean Constitution it says that like the National
Speaker 3: Assembly can't be gotten rid of by martial law. So
Speaker 3: this suggests to me that, yeah, this was something that
Speaker 3: was also being sort of spearheaded by parts of the
Speaker 3: Korean military. Because if you're not someone in the army
Speaker 3: who has their own interest in doing a coup, and
Speaker 3: someone asks you to just like overthrow the parliament, which
Speaker 3: is a thing that they're not allowed to do, you
Speaker 3: just say no, which which also makes the failure of
Speaker 3: this and how unbelievably stupidly it was all put together
Speaker 3: even more baffling, right, because if we assume that parts
Speaker 3: of the clicks in the army had to have been
Speaker 3: involved with this, and like we know and this only
Speaker 3: FPR talks about Un is like fucked right. There's no
Speaker 3: way he's holding onto power. He's screwed and he's gonna
Speaker 3: be That will make him the second Korean president in
Speaker 3: seven years to be ran out by mass protests, and
Speaker 3: dream the last set of politicians who were getting rid
Speaker 3: out by mass protests. The army actually started drafting like
Speaker 3: procedures for how they were going to do a military
Speaker 3: takeover to like to knock out the protests, and they
Speaker 3: never did it. But this is a this has been
Speaker 3: a thing that's been in the background for a long time,
Speaker 3: and the liberal the liberal establishment has been talking about
Speaker 3: how the right wants to bring back military rule for ages.
Speaker 3: This is a situation that in some ways is similar
Speaker 3: to Brazil, where the right has always been a sort
Speaker 3: of like, we like military rule kind of thing, but
Speaker 3: nobody actually seriously thought they would do it until they did.
Speaker 3: And you know, I'm gonna read one more thing before
Speaker 3: we go to ads here, which is he claimed that
Speaker 3: the National Assembly was quote the mastermind behind the downfall
Speaker 3: of the country, which, okay, that's pretty normal coup stuff,
Speaker 3: quote monsters and quote anti state forces seeking to overthrow
Speaker 3: the system. Now again he has just described the National Assembly,
Speaker 3: which is the Korean parliament as quote anti state forces
Speaker 3: seeking to overthrow the system, which now gives us the
Speaker 3: specter of the Anarco Parliament.
Speaker 2: I do wonder how much of this type of stuff
Speaker 2: is influenced, like by Trump's victory and like the enemy
Speaker 2: within rhetoric. I'm not sure how much influence Trump has,
Speaker 2: I know, guess a degree of influence like pop culture,
Speaker 2: why something in Japan. I'm not sure of his influenced
Speaker 2: in South Korea, but like in terms of just like geopolitics,
Speaker 2: like that's very similar to the type of like deep
Speaker 2: state enemy within rhetoric that like Trump used to success. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I not to like tie everything back to America.
Speaker 3: But like this like subversive shit is like stuff that
Speaker 3: you can trace back to like the original dictatorship. Right,
Speaker 3: Like this is a very very old, long running thing
Speaker 3: in Korean politics. Okay, we will get to the coup
Speaker 3: after I guess we get to a faction that didn't
Speaker 3: back the coup, which is the Korean capitalist class.
Speaker 2: So here are some ads salute to our comrades.
Speaker 3: We are back now. I will say it is true
Speaker 3: that this whole thing folded so quickly that we never
Speaker 3: really got a chance to see how the Korean capitalist
Speaker 3: class would have reacted, other than the fact that all
Speaker 3: of the newspapers immediately were like, what the fuck are
Speaker 3: you doing? So it's also worth noting if you're trying
Speaker 3: to do a coup, right, there are four things that
Speaker 3: you need to do. You need to arrest your senior
Speaker 3: opposition political figures. You need to seize the radio stations
Speaker 3: that this includes you know today, like newspapers, TV stations.
Speaker 2: Like podcasts obviously, you know streamers.
Speaker 10: You know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, we're a vital part of the media infrastructure
Speaker 3: that must be controlled.
Speaker 2: I show Speed or whatever his name is, he has
Speaker 2: to come under your control. You gotta get Aiden Ross
Speaker 2: locked into cage fast fast.
Speaker 3: I think Speed would have fucking gone just gone sicko
Speaker 3: mode on their special forces guys, given how just like
Speaker 3: unbelievably their asses got kicked. You know, you have to
Speaker 3: seize the airports and you have to take the major
Speaker 3: government buildings. Right, So how many of these did this
Speaker 3: coup manage to do? They did like zero, right, They
Speaker 3: sort of kind of took most of the National Assembly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but that last and what like an hour?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, Well we'll get to that in a second.
Speaker 3: So it seems like what we have reporting from the
Speaker 3: Democratic Party of Korea. They claim that the military attempted
Speaker 3: to arrest the head of the National Assembly, the head
Speaker 3: of the Democratic Party, and then also the head of
Speaker 3: the PPP, which is People's Power Party, which is Yun's
Speaker 3: own party. So he tried to have the head of
Speaker 3: his own party arrested by Korean special forces, and it
Speaker 3: didn't work because none of them were at their offices.
Speaker 2: It's so funny because they kept putting out they think
Speaker 2: arrest worts for like, but like the opposition party his
Speaker 2: own party, and the Assembly was like, oh.
Speaker 3: Tryser And you know, they did legitimately shut down some
Speaker 3: news outlets and that was it. You know, that was
Speaker 3: sort of genuine.
Speaker 2: I saw reporters like fucking like fighting with the military
Speaker 2: in the streets.
Speaker 3: It was sick. Yeah, well, this is why this is
Speaker 3: such a bad idea, right, Like, in the words of
Speaker 3: a football commentator whose name I'm forgetting right now, who
Speaker 3: had the greatest cast light at all of human history. Oh, no, disaster,
Speaker 3: what a idea like? I okay, just just from the
Speaker 3: logistics of this, right, pretty up on the list of
Speaker 3: countries you don't want to try to hold by by
Speaker 3: military force is South Korea. And there's a lot of
Speaker 3: reasons for this one. You know, you're dealing with like
Speaker 3: one of the largest GUESTI bases in the world. The
Speaker 3: other thing is like, this is an entire country of
Speaker 3: protesters and capitalist protesters, very scary. Well, but like everyone
Speaker 3: fucking like fucking everyone in this country either like was
Speaker 3: a protester when they were a fucking kid or was
Speaker 3: one now to the extent we're like liberal members of
Speaker 3: parliament know how to build barricades. It's so cool. This
Speaker 3: actually matter enormously, like like fucking guys who are just
Speaker 3: like random aids where and there are videos of this
Speaker 3: of the of like just like random staffer guys like
Speaker 3: holding barricades from like against like paratrooper units and like
Speaker 3: like just random staffers like shooting fire extinguishers at army
Speaker 3: special forces units. Like can you fucking imagine that shit
Speaker 3: in the.
Speaker 2: US, Like it was very cool to see.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like this is this is why this is such
Speaker 3: a terrible idea because everyone has a whole bunch of
Speaker 3: institutional memory and experience of this, right, not just because
Speaker 3: you know the Democratic Party, right, which is which is
Speaker 3: the party that this was largely targeted at most of
Speaker 3: Like the elder statesmen of this party used to be
Speaker 3: Korean student protesters, Like they are all veterans of the
Speaker 3: campaigns that brought down the military government. And it's not
Speaker 3: just that there's like a there's a memory of it.
Speaker 3: It's like there are a protests outside the National Assembly
Speaker 3: like every fucking day, right, Like again, the last time
Speaker 3: they brought down a prime minister with maths protest was
Speaker 3: seven years ago. This is a whole country of people
Speaker 3: who know how to do this shit, and for some
Speaker 3: reason these idiots were like, we have no popular support whatsoever,
Speaker 3: and we're just gonna be able to like roll over
Speaker 3: this entire country in one night. So I think the
Speaker 3: plan was to hold the National Assembly and prevent the
Speaker 3: National Assembly from convening so that there was nobody who
Speaker 3: could override the martial law order.
Speaker 2: Yeah that sounds pretty basic, right, just to keep them
Speaker 2: out of the building so that they can't do anything.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So they failed, easy, right? Oh oh no, they failed? Yeah.
Speaker 3: So so the thing that the problem here again is
Speaker 3: that you're dealing with an entire country that has been
Speaker 3: doing this for fucking ages. Right, So they did this
Speaker 3: at like ten thirty at night, and immediately what happens
Speaker 3: is just like a bunch of drug guys in bars
Speaker 3: like show up to the National Assembly. Like the moment
Speaker 3: I knew it was doomed, was there. I was reading
Speaker 3: in the New York Times they had an interview with
Speaker 3: this guy who showed up. This is again the part
Speaker 3: I'm I'm talking about this being a country of protesters.
Speaker 3: Like these guys aren't like leftists like revolutionaries, right, this
Speaker 3: Like one of the guys they were talking to the
Speaker 3: New York Times, like their journals on the ground, pulls
Speaker 3: over a random guy and he's a sixty year old
Speaker 3: real estate agent. Right, this is a guy who should
Speaker 3: be like, this should be the base of a military coup. Right.
Speaker 3: This is a sixty year old man who doesn't real
Speaker 3: estate it and he heard about this and immediately his
Speaker 3: life was quote, this is the end. So he drove
Speaker 3: for a fucking hour at like one in the morning
Speaker 3: to show up to the National Assembly to go fight
Speaker 3: the army. There was just no way this is good
Speaker 3: to work. And so people, even though it's really late up,
Speaker 3: people just flood out. And suddenly there's all of these
Speaker 3: protesters in front of the National Assembly and they're doing
Speaker 3: shit like there's this unbelievable video of this soldier like
Speaker 3: tries to take a guy's phone, and this guy has
Speaker 3: some kind of e martial arts trading. It just grabs
Speaker 3: his arm and just spins him around.
Speaker 2: The coolest thing.
Speaker 3: And the guy just like I'm just like, well, fuck,
Speaker 3: guess I'm not dealing with this ship and there was such.
Speaker 2: Like a resignation. Yeah, in the movements of that military
Speaker 2: officer be like it's just like, well, shit, we could
Speaker 2: keep fighting, but why like yeah, what's the point? Like
Speaker 2: why am I out here? It's midnight? I should be
Speaker 2: in bed. What's going on?
Speaker 3: And like and part of this too also, and this
Speaker 3: is this is a smart decision by someone, is that
Speaker 3: these guys weren't issued with actual bullets. So when I
Speaker 3: say these guys and this is this is the you know,
Speaker 3: the actual loving part about this is that these were
Speaker 3: largely Korean paratrooper units, and Korean paratrooper units are some
Speaker 3: of the most unhinged like fascist troops in the entire world. Like,
Speaker 3: these are people who didn't just fight in the Korean War.
Speaker 3: A bunch of these guys fought in Vietnam. Like on
Speaker 3: the American side. They are notorious as the people who
Speaker 3: the military has always used to sort of put down protests.
Speaker 3: One of the most famous examples of this is the
Speaker 3: Guandra Uprising in nineteen eighty, which was a pro democracy
Speaker 3: uprising after one of the various stages of insane military
Speaker 3: coup stuff was going on in South Korea in nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty and there's a large democratic uprising from sort of
Speaker 3: students and workers. There's a bunch of strikes. They take
Speaker 3: this area and the paratroopers come to shoot them all.
Speaker 3: They killed probably several thousand people, and a lot of
Speaker 3: the paratrooper units that were deployed to take the National
Speaker 3: Assembly were literally the same units that were sent into
Speaker 3: crushes uprising in nineteen eighty, So this was in some
Speaker 3: ways very very scary, right because these are like, again,
Speaker 3: these are the units that were sent in to shoot
Speaker 3: a bunch of fucking civilians in the streets in order
Speaker 3: to keep military rule intact. However, this time these para
Speaker 3: units just got their shthanded to them. So it's sort
Speaker 3: of unclear exactly what was going on in the National Assembly.
Speaker 3: It seemed like some National semi members were still there,
Speaker 3: but somehow, and we don't part of how this happened,
Speaker 3: which is protesters were just there's a video of I
Speaker 3: think it was like the opposition leader. The protesters like
Speaker 3: like pushed him up over a fence so he could
Speaker 3: break into the National Assembly and get past the military barricades.
Speaker 3: Like like one hundred and ninety lawmakers somehow like got
Speaker 3: into the National Assembly and barricaded themselves in.
Speaker 2: This also shows a level of like dedication. Yeah that
Speaker 2: I suspect none of none of our lovemakers would do. No,
Speaker 2: they're not gonna they're not gonna break into the capital
Speaker 2: when it's surrounded by military guard.
Speaker 3: You know, we had this with January sixth, right, and
Speaker 3: like what what what did our congress people do dream
Speaker 3: January sixth they all ran and hid.
Speaker 2: I mean these are slightly different circumstances.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is true, but like but like you know, okay,
Speaker 3: so if if you look at there's been a lot
Speaker 3: of shit talking of the of the American people's willingness
Speaker 3: to protest and stuff in the light of like watching
Speaker 3: the Career, and people overturned this coup in like three hours.
Speaker 3: And I will point out that in twenty twenty, this
Speaker 3: was this was literally four years ago. Like we put
Speaker 3: the President of the United States in a bunker. People
Speaker 3: fought the Secret Service hand to hand outside the gates
Speaker 3: of the White House. Like the police in this country
Speaker 3: lost control of the centers of several major American cities.
Speaker 3: So like Americans will fight, right, but can you imagine
Speaker 3: like Nancy Pelosi or like like Chuck Schumer or whoever
Speaker 3: it was around like trying to set up, like setting
Speaker 3: up barricades to stop the army from like marching into
Speaker 3: Like no, it's unreal. And these were good barricades too.
Speaker 3: These were very well constructive barricades. These are barricades that
Speaker 3: like are better than a lot of barricades I've seen
Speaker 3: set up by protesters over the like in the US
Speaker 3: over the last few years. And the consequence of this
Speaker 3: was that the National Assembly just voted for the coup
Speaker 3: to be over, because they can just vote to say
Speaker 3: that the martial laws over. And then the military kind
Speaker 3: of was just like, well shit and just kind of left.
Speaker 2: I mean they waited in the wings for a little bit. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and we were all curious to see what the president
Speaker 2: was gonna do after this. Emily was like, uh, nice,
Speaker 2: tryser and I guess we will talk about that after
Speaker 2: another message from these ads.
Speaker 3: And we are so back. We are so back. It
Speaker 3: has never been more over for President UNI. That is true,
Speaker 3: it has never been more over. So part of the
Speaker 3: weird part about this is that you just like vanishes
Speaker 3: for most of this, Like we don't hear from him
Speaker 3: until like the morning when he announces that he's going
Speaker 3: to roll back the martial law thing, but he needs
Speaker 3: his cabinet there to do the vote, so he's gonna
Speaker 3: do it later. I don't know. But the troops have
Speaker 3: already all pulled out by this point and like they
Speaker 3: go back to their barracks after the National Assembly is
Speaker 3: like what the fuck. So there's been a lot of
Speaker 3: haymade about how one hundred and ninety members of the
Speaker 3: National Assembly showed up and every single one of them
Speaker 3: voted to end martial law and like that's cool. But
Speaker 3: I've seen a lot of people be like, oh, look
Speaker 3: at how democratic the PPP, which is the right wing
Speaker 3: party that UN's a part of, is from, like they
Speaker 3: voted to do it, but like, okay, yes it was.
Speaker 3: This was a unanimous vote. I need everyone to understand
Speaker 3: that there were three hundred members of the National Assembly
Speaker 3: and that means that means one hundred and ten of
Speaker 3: them didn't show up, and that of the people who
Speaker 3: showed up, there were only eighteen members. Yeah, of the
Speaker 3: PPP who showed up to this now, and part of that,
Speaker 3: like it is true, it is. It was a bit
Speaker 3: difficult to get through the fucking military occupation fit with
Speaker 3: paratroopers but everyone else you have managed to, so you know,
Speaker 3: and UN's own party also just hates him because again,
Speaker 3: like one of the scandals he's going down for is
Speaker 3: like fucking with their primaries and like getting a bunch
Speaker 3: of people who had safe seats, like losing their safe
Speaker 3: seats so he could put his guys in. And again
Speaker 3: he also tried to arrest the head of his own parties.
Speaker 3: So like, these people don't like him for very immediate
Speaker 3: person or reason is not because the PPP is somehow
Speaker 3: like a party more committed to democracy than the Republican
Speaker 3: Party is here like no, these people all suck, like,
Speaker 3: oh god, But this leaves us with the aftermath of this,
Speaker 3: and the first thing I want to kind of go
Speaker 3: over is what the fuck were they doing? Because again,
Speaker 3: if you look at the sequence of events here, right,
Speaker 3: there's this coup, right, the martial law goes into effect,
Speaker 3: the army backs it and tries to occupy the National Assembly,
Speaker 3: but then the National Assembly votes that the martial law
Speaker 3: is over, and then the army just leaves. Now what
Speaker 3: if you go back to remembering when I was talking
Speaker 3: about the beginning of this, right, seizing the National Assembly
Speaker 3: is not something you are allowed to do in a
Speaker 3: state of emergency or a martial law in position, right,
Speaker 3: that's something explicitly the army is banned from doing. They
Speaker 3: did it anyways, which means that like probably like a
Speaker 3: bunch of generals are also going to prison for this.
Speaker 3: But then they also immediately back down when it be
Speaker 3: came clear that you know, they were gonna there was
Speaker 3: going to be resistance, and that if they were going
Speaker 3: to try to stop this, they were either wouldn't have
Speaker 3: to beat the shit out of or just like actually
Speaker 3: shoot a bunch of lawmakers in the National Assembly. And
Speaker 3: I understand that that's a bad idea, and I get
Speaker 3: why these people didn't want to do that, just like
Speaker 3: from their own things politically, But if if you weren't
Speaker 3: willing to do that, why did you do this in
Speaker 3: the first place? Like, how did you think this was
Speaker 3: gonna go? The only thing I could think of was
Speaker 3: that they thought they could just should have. I thought
Speaker 3: it was ten thirty at night, we can just shock
Speaker 3: and awe everyone. Yeah, we'll just roll them over. But like,
Speaker 3: do you know what country you were in?
Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, it's a massivest calculation. That's what makes
Speaker 2: this the worst Cup since Bolivia.
Speaker 3: I think it's worse in Bolivia.
Speaker 2: Oh, absolutely, because like it shows a complete like disconnection
Speaker 2: from understanding the country that you're in.
Speaker 3: What were they doing?
Speaker 2: Yeah, like the willingness of the people to like get
Speaker 2: mobilized at ten thirty, yeah, and the willingness of your
Speaker 2: own lawmakers, uh, to try to put like some level
Speaker 2: of resistance to this, even if it's not like physically
Speaker 2: fighting the art, which is something that I ended up doing,
Speaker 2: which they did. They fought the army, Like, ah, what
Speaker 2: a world.
Speaker 3: And also with Bolivia too, you know there's other Okay,
Speaker 3: so a with Olivia, there's a lot of debate over
Speaker 3: where that coup was real or not. I lean towards
Speaker 3: it was. There's a lot of people think he was staged.
Speaker 3: But also if it wasn't staged, the excuse they have
Speaker 3: is that the general who was leading it was about
Speaker 3: to get fired, so he just had to go, right.
Speaker 3: It's like, well, yeah, okay, it looked like a completely
Speaker 3: half cocked coup because it was they just they had
Speaker 3: to go before he got fired. This one, there was
Speaker 3: no time pressure. He could have just done this whenever
Speaker 3: with better planning, And I don't know it's it's all
Speaker 3: very very deeply weird in terms of what's happening next.
Speaker 3: I mean Yun was finished anyways, Like he again he
Speaker 3: had a twenty percent of proof of rating going into this.
Speaker 3: Coming out of this, there's immediately a Democratic party is
Speaker 3: trying to impeach him, Like a bunch of the PPP,
Speaker 3: who's again supposed to be his party, are also going
Speaker 3: along with it because they hate him. There was some
Speaker 3: very funny comments from PPP guys who were like his supporters,
Speaker 3: who were like, well he literally one of them said
Speaker 3: that he did this thing and as anyone thought about
Speaker 3: like the pressure of burden placed on him, maybe someone
Speaker 3: should have gotten to talk to him or did this
Speaker 3: because he was lonely, which is the most insane thing
Speaker 3: I've ever heard of my life. Like he just he
Speaker 3: just tried to argue that this guy you need a
Speaker 3: coup because he was lonely. What the fuck?
Speaker 2: It's the in cell evolution. It's finally happening in South Korea.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and like he is going to get impeached. The
Speaker 3: only way he's not going to get impeached is if
Speaker 3: the judiciary steps had to save him. And I can't
Speaker 3: imagine them trying it after again, he just tried to
Speaker 3: do a coup. He's going to prison, like probably his
Speaker 3: defense secretary is going to prison, Like the Defense Minister's
Speaker 3: going to prison. Probably a bunch of military guys are
Speaker 3: going to prison. Like this is it's so funny. They
Speaker 3: have just effectively annihilated their own political power for a generation.
Speaker 3: Like this faction of people who have been running the
Speaker 3: country is just gone. I mean they'll still be the PPP, right,
Speaker 3: this will be like conservatives, but like, they just have
Speaker 3: obliterated themselves in maybe the most spectacular fashion I have
Speaker 3: ever seen. And you know what happens when they are
Speaker 3: sort of unclear? Is it right now? We're recording this Wednesday, Yeah,
Speaker 3: Wednesday at like ten am. Yeah, so it's it's unclear
Speaker 3: exactly what's gonna happen in the time between when this
Speaker 3: when we record this and when this goes out, but
Speaker 3: uns finished. This is it's pretty yeah, and I'm I'm
Speaker 3: hoping that we see a serious attempt to actually like
Speaker 3: deal with the fact that the army is ran by
Speaker 3: a bunch of people who tried to do a coup.
Speaker 3: We won't and we might well no like it. Here's
Speaker 3: the thing in the US, absolutely not South Korea. Maybe
Speaker 3: there's a chance, there's like a there is a slight
Speaker 3: chance that people get purged from this, right and in
Speaker 3: a similar way to like Lula kind of purging some
Speaker 3: of the army.
Speaker 2: My South Korea does good things card is to already
Speaker 2: full up because of yesterday.
Speaker 3: That's true.
Speaker 2: I can't imagine they're gonna you more because it's South Korea.
Speaker 3: Well, I will also say, like one of the things
Speaker 3: that's happening is Korea is like major trade union federation
Speaker 3: is like doing a general strike until until the impeachment happens.
Speaker 3: So you know, there was a lot of pressure to
Speaker 3: clean house here, and like a lot of Korean liberalism
Speaker 3: is based on this, the sort of mythos of like
Speaker 3: of the student protesters, and like the protesters, you brought
Speaker 3: down the military dictatorship and trying to do a military
Speaker 3: coup and immediately failing is like the best possible thing
Speaker 3: you could have done for them. The consequences of this
Speaker 3: for you and are going to be extremely bad. I
Speaker 3: hope we get a better Korea out of this. I
Speaker 3: hope this sort of starts to stem the tide of
Speaker 3: the unhinged right wing surge that's been happening there for
Speaker 3: a while now.
Speaker 2: Be n I said this was like the tip of
Speaker 2: the bell curve. Yeah, in the global far right takeover. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean it's wow, it went bad. I may every
Speaker 3: single right wing attempt to do this go this because
Speaker 3: good lord, what.
Speaker 2: A heartwarming tale.
Speaker 8: Yep.
Speaker 2: Well that's that's been it for us today. You're at
Speaker 2: It could happen here. Tune in tomorrow for more exciting
Speaker 2: tales of political collapse.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and quite quite possibly, quite possibly, this is going
Speaker 3: to happen to you too. And I want everyone to
Speaker 3: understand that in terms of military cues in the last
Speaker 3: six months, the protesters are two to zero in the
Speaker 3: army's zero and two. So if this happens to you soon,
Speaker 3: Whitchie very much might go get them. Welcome to You
Speaker 3: could happen here a podcast that is quite often about
Speaker 3: abortion in this country. I'm your host, Na Wong. Things
Speaker 3: have been very bad under the last administration and the
Speaker 3: administration before that, and the administration before that, and going
Speaker 3: back a long long time, things have been not good.
Speaker 3: They've been steadily getting worse, and there is a lot
Speaker 3: of fear, and I think a lot of is very
Speaker 3: justified that things are going to get even worse under Trump,
Speaker 3: and to talk about what we need to be afraid
Speaker 3: of and what we don't is Kate Bertash, who's the
Speaker 3: executive director of the Digital Defense Fund, and also Crystal,
Speaker 3: who's an abortion worker and also a volunteer for abortion hotlines.
Speaker 3: So both of you two, welcome to the show.
Speaker 11: Excellent, Thanks for having us on.
Speaker 12: Yeah, thanks for having me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm really excited to talk to you both, and
Speaker 3: I'm also excited to let Kate talk a little bit
Speaker 3: about what the Digital Defense Fund is.
Speaker 13: Excellent, thanks so much, longtime listener, first time caller.
Speaker 11: I suppose.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 13: The Digital Defense Fund is an organization that's been around
Speaker 13: for actually since the last election. It was started in
Speaker 13: response to Trump winning for the first time, and we're
Speaker 13: an organization that was put together to provide free digital
Speaker 13: security and technology resources for the front lines of what
Speaker 13: then was just the abortion access movement. We've since moved
Speaker 13: to support other variety of autonomy and liberation movements, but
Speaker 13: we provide free digital security evaluations trainings. We do a
Speaker 13: lot of project management work to help people set up
Speaker 13: what they'd like to change about their systems and security
Speaker 13: and we also help people pay for it, which is
Speaker 13: a really wonderful way to get to kind of see
Speaker 13: through our values. So I'm excited to be on here
Speaker 13: today to talk a little bit more about the implications
Speaker 13: for both organizations and individuals.
Speaker 3: The very first wave impact of this election has been
Speaker 3: a lot of sort of fear about what's coming, and
Speaker 3: I wanted to, I guess, ask you about what kinds
Speaker 3: of fears you've been seeing and maybe talk a little
Speaker 3: bit about which ones are more justified than others, because
Speaker 3: I think, I mean, there's been some concern that I
Speaker 3: think is justified as good, and there's also been some
Speaker 3: stuff that is kind of not rooted in what the
Speaker 3: threats are.
Speaker 13: Yeah, I think it's a great time anytime this happens
Speaker 13: to sort of get to ask and answer the question,
Speaker 13: which is like how do we know? And I think
Speaker 13: we're sort of lucky in this way that we know
Speaker 13: what are likely to be risks now to both people
Speaker 13: who are seeking abortions as well as people who help
Speaker 13: them get their folks as well, like Crystal, I know,
Speaker 13: will provide some additional color to this as well, But
Speaker 13: we know what kind of threats face people facing abortions
Speaker 13: in those who help them, because unfortunately a lot of
Speaker 13: these threats have been happening for the last several decades,
Speaker 13: people have been prosecuted for suspicion of ending their own pregnancies.
Speaker 13: We get a lot of really incredible and insightful data
Speaker 13: from organizations like IF one how who put out these
Speaker 13: reports that are called self care Criminalized, and they look
Speaker 13: backwards across all of the different cases that have happened
Speaker 13: to this space and try to come up with sort
Speaker 13: of like these key aspects. And one of the big
Speaker 13: things that we know that I'm sure we're going to
Speaker 13: talk about a lot through this episode is that the
Speaker 13: core way that people come to the attention of law
Speaker 13: enforcement for seeking to allegedly end their own pregnancies is
Speaker 13: through usually someone they know reporting them or someone responsible
Speaker 13: for their care. So that might be like healthcare worker,
Speaker 13: social worker, other representative agent of the state, and it
Speaker 13: can be really devastating to kind of hear and I
Speaker 13: think internalize that it's often people's family members like X
Speaker 13: or friends, neighbor who might turn somebody in expecting or
Speaker 13: misunderstanding that it is a crime to end your own pregnancy.
Speaker 13: I think one of the things that's really hard about
Speaker 13: this is that it involves some of the ways in which,
Speaker 13: like I guess it's what you would call very unfortunately
Speaker 13: typical policing practices, the way in which people's rights are
Speaker 13: violated when they are interrogated, when they are pressured into
Speaker 13: disclosing information. There's something called consent search that it unfortunately
Speaker 13: ends up being a very common feature of these kinds
Speaker 13: of cases, which is where you're put in a room
Speaker 13: and you're talking to representive agent and state or a
Speaker 13: police officer, and they sort of pressure you into agreeing
Speaker 13: to unlock and disclose often your phone and other device
Speaker 13: or to or whyse share information quote unquote voluntarily. And
Speaker 13: it's easy to see why people kind of get pressured
Speaker 13: into that. So that is something that tends to happen
Speaker 13: in many kinds of prosecutions of crimes or alleged crimes.
Speaker 13: And I think it's hard for a lot of people
Speaker 13: to imagine what that's like to be pulled over and
Speaker 13: searched in this way, or like they're often like people
Speaker 13: are not the targeted victims of something like stop and frisk,
Speaker 13: and so it's sort of hard to imagine in your
Speaker 13: mind the way in which somebody is information or their
Speaker 13: data or their case comes to the attention of law enforcement,
Speaker 13: and so we like tend to then imagine these other
Speaker 13: threats that feel perhaps closer to our daily experience, especially
Speaker 13: as like often people who are not racially targeted by police,
Speaker 13: who are not targeted by the family policing system, or
Speaker 13: have their pregnancies surveiled by the hospital systems. So people
Speaker 13: like to imagine then that. I think a big one
Speaker 13: that we all hear and I think we're all going
Speaker 13: to take a deep breath at the same time is
Speaker 13: period tracking apps was kind of remarkable, as Crystal.
Speaker 11: I'm sure you've heard this too, mm hmm yea.
Speaker 13: And I would love to lease space, Crystal for you
Speaker 13: to add any context to sort of like the threats
Speaker 13: that are that are present versus stuff that people imagine.
Speaker 13: I know we're going to spend a lot of time
Speaker 13: talking about our friend, the period driver.
Speaker 14: So at the time of recording, it's been like about
Speaker 14: almost a month since election day, and uh, you know,
Speaker 14: I answer the phone for a couple of different places,
Speaker 14: places for both work and volunteering, and there's been a
Speaker 14: lot of fear, you know, and not saying that like,
Speaker 14: abortion access has been without fear up until this point,
Speaker 14: but people are very afraid. And you know, I'm getting
Speaker 14: a lot of questions about people asking like can I
Speaker 14: be arrested for giving you my information, funding in my ID,
Speaker 14: giving you my real name? Ordering medication online? Can the
Speaker 14: United States get my records if I order from this
Speaker 14: provider overseas? Such as women on web and just yeah,
Speaker 14: people asking like can I be arrested?
Speaker 12: You know, can I do this? Will I be in trouble?
Speaker 14: And it is something that is going We're going to
Speaker 14: see an increase in criminalization and increase in abortion bans.
Speaker 14: It is a complicated answer, you know. The strait of
Speaker 14: it is that yet you can access abortion medication online,
Speaker 14: even if you're in a band state, even if you're
Speaker 14: in a state with a total abortion ban, you can
Speaker 14: order the medication from reliable resources online and have it
Speaker 14: mail to you. And people do this every day, hundreds,
Speaker 14: hundreds and hundreds of people do this every day without
Speaker 14: any issue. But there is also risk and it's kind
Speaker 14: of like what Kate was saying, where people tend to
Speaker 14: it seems like people don't know what the risk has
Speaker 14: been or what it looks like because like Kate was saying,
Speaker 14: there's like I been all these years of pregnancy criminalization,
Speaker 14: and we know what it looks like, and it tends
Speaker 14: to not be what people are worrying about right now,
Speaker 14: where people seem to be thinking like that the police
Speaker 14: are going to come up arrest them for putting in
Speaker 14: this order along with hundreds of other people in a
Speaker 14: given day, or that the police or somehow are going
Speaker 14: to get their period tracker information on their on their phone,
Speaker 14: and you know, like, of course, you know, practice dicial
Speaker 14: security in a way that makes you feel comfortable. Like
Speaker 14: if you don't want to use a period tracking app,
Speaker 14: you know there are safer ones to use, or you
Speaker 14: don't have to use it. But the fact of the
Speaker 14: matter is is that even if you are using pen
Speaker 14: and paper to record your period, if you have an
Speaker 14: abusive partner, they're going to be able to take pictures
Speaker 14: and collaborate with police. So the biggest threats are always,
Speaker 14: you know, as the data shown, like Kate was saying,
Speaker 14: going to be healthcare workers and the people that you
Speaker 14: know such as partners, family members, neighbors, friends, et cetera,
Speaker 14: who are going to get access to pictures, screenshots.
Speaker 12: And of course, the police and warrants.
Speaker 14: It's not going to look like the Handmad's sale, where
Speaker 14: somebody's like coming in and going and forcing you to
Speaker 14: do something and.
Speaker 12: Dress a certain way, et cetera. It's not going to
Speaker 12: be like anything new and fancy.
Speaker 14: It's going to be the same old police surveillance and
Speaker 14: criminalization that we've been seeing. But there are ways in
Speaker 14: which we can protect ourselves when we're doing that. When
Speaker 14: somebody calls and they ask me, can I get in
Speaker 14: trouble for ordering this medication online? And people can get
Speaker 14: really in trouble for anything in the United States. You know,
Speaker 14: if the police want to go after you for something,
Speaker 14: they're going to find something, So you just have to
Speaker 14: not leave evidence. Like so, yeah, you can order the
Speaker 14: medication online, but you can also use signal and we
Speaker 14: can know that Kate's probably going to go more into this,
Speaker 14: but you can make sure you have disappearing messages. You
Speaker 14: can use encrypted emails and search engines. You have to
Speaker 14: make sure you're thinking about who can see your data
Speaker 14: and you know where your data is being recorded. And
Speaker 14: that's really like if you want to protect yourself in
Speaker 14: terms of avoiding criminalization for abortion and pregnancy outcomes and
Speaker 14: you know, having a secure and safe abortion in the
Speaker 14: United it stays. Then you have to look at the
Speaker 14: basics like this, And I'm going to let Kate talk
Speaker 14: about that a little bit more because I know that
Speaker 14: you have all the good information that the Digital Defense
Speaker 14: Line has looked into about the apps and then how
Speaker 14: to delete data and what data to delete and how
Speaker 14: to think about this.
Speaker 13: Yeah, I think one of the really tough things right
Speaker 13: is that, like so like neither I or Crystal or attorneys,
Speaker 13: but often people are just getting a lot of advice
Speaker 13: from attorneys, and some of our work here is to
Speaker 13: make sure that like when you get sort of this
Speaker 13: idea of when something might be criminalized, or often like
Speaker 13: in this circumstance where we just like don't know actually
Speaker 13: how it's going to show up a lot, yet we're
Speaker 13: trying to think about sort of what are the ways
Speaker 13: we can have our digital devices and our technology sort
Speaker 13: of support us with these by default type of settings.
Speaker 13: One of the things that's really tough to I think
Speaker 13: understand until you've been through it is sort of like
Speaker 13: what it looks like when you go through any kind
Speaker 13: of investigation. I think the other hard kind of like
Speaker 13: context to get from the way we talk about it
Speaker 13: now is that a lot of how pregnancy is criminalized
Speaker 13: that sort of scaffolding that infrastructure was built during the
Speaker 13: drug war. So one of the most common kinds of
Speaker 13: pregnancy criminalization in America is drug testing people who are
Speaker 13: pregnant or come to give birth without their consent. And
Speaker 13: you know, so we basically consider like being an alleged
Speaker 13: drug user to be the sort of like primary way
Speaker 13: that our decision of like how much the digital evidence
Speaker 13: matters has like kind of come to take shape. So
Speaker 13: often when an investigation is happening, the police will look
Speaker 13: for where are all the sources of information I can
Speaker 13: find about this, because like the human body is like
Speaker 13: not super compliant with like digital forensic evidence.
Speaker 11: Every dadiary processes.
Speaker 13: I think it's like one of the most magical things
Speaker 13: about humans is that, you know, our bodies defy the
Speaker 13: letter of law in so many wonderful ways. But that
Speaker 13: means that they sort of have to then go to
Speaker 13: this like digital body of evidence to kind of tell
Speaker 13: the story or as like all the wonderful lawyers that
Speaker 13: advise us, like to say, to sort of like be
Speaker 13: able to draw the dots or the blndes between the
Speaker 13: dots and form this kind of like coherent set of
Speaker 13: facts of what happened between one moment to the next.
Speaker 13: So often when we're like imagining all of the data
Speaker 13: that lives in our phone, because unfortunately, in many cases,
Speaker 13: when you are perhaps coerced into consenting to the search
Speaker 13: of a device, they will often take your phone and
Speaker 13: then have you unlock it. It gets plugged into a
Speaker 13: device that makes clone of the entire drive, and then
Speaker 13: they can sort of with many different techniques kind of
Speaker 13: leisurely look through it for keywords to kind of tell
Speaker 13: where there might be evidence somewhere on your phone that you,
Speaker 13: for example, when on the internet, search for and purchased
Speaker 13: abortion medication. So yes, like period track and data might
Speaker 13: be one portion of that. But unfortunately, in all the
Speaker 13: cases that we've seen, or at least in most of
Speaker 13: the ones that we're most familiar with, all of that
Speaker 13: quote unquote plain text data. So where you've just written
Speaker 13: out in your own unencrypted words into a search bar
Speaker 13: in the search engine on your phone, or you've sent
Speaker 13: a text message to a very close contact with somebody
Speaker 13: telling them how you feel about your pregnancy. That you
Speaker 13: desire to end it, perhaps your plan to buypills, even
Speaker 13: the receipt that comes into your inbox. It's not necessary
Speaker 13: then to go to all these companies and go file
Speaker 13: a you know, for a warrant and get all that information,
Speaker 13: because now it's in just plain text, quote unquote on
Speaker 13: your phone, and that is far more information than the
Speaker 13: like abstract information that might come out of a period tracker.
Speaker 13: So unfortunately cops don't tend to use these in cases
Speaker 13: that we've seen because it's quite simply not necessary. That
Speaker 13: kind of like plain text admission of your state of
Speaker 13: mind or the statement of your intent has unfortunately been
Speaker 13: the sort of core evidence that comes up. And I
Speaker 13: think this has like a lot of like really quite
Speaker 13: sad implications. I know, in prior to prepare for this episode,
Speaker 13: we were discussing a couple of cases that I know
Speaker 13: folks might be more familiar with. A big one that
Speaker 13: came up is, you know, the case of a mother
Speaker 13: and daughter out of Nebraska who were having a discussion
Speaker 13: around allegedly helping the daughter to find and end for
Speaker 13: her pregnancy over Meta's Facebook messenger. And I think what
Speaker 13: I find really quite devastating about it for many reasons,
Speaker 13: is that these messages were actually ones that like I
Speaker 13: think any of us could hope to have with a
Speaker 13: very supportive parent or other person in our life. Is like,
Speaker 13: why we have, you know, these conversations so that we
Speaker 13: can feel connected and supported through such a complex and
Speaker 13: affecting process. It then becomes very sad to me that
Speaker 13: it becomes a criminal matter just because it was in
Speaker 13: a place that that conversation, you know, Meta did not
Speaker 13: have this family's back in terms of encrypting those messages
Speaker 13: or ensuring that they were free to speak of what
Speaker 13: they wish when they wish by default. So I think
Speaker 13: like when we start to give out advice, it's been
Speaker 13: important for us at Digital Defense Fund to kind of
Speaker 13: work backwards. I know it's been an existential crisis I
Speaker 13: think for everybody in the digital security space to know
Speaker 13: that like the list of advice I could give you
Speaker 13: on how to protect yourself when going through these transactions,
Speaker 13: or when seeking support, or like just having a normal
Speaker 13: you know, questions and going on the Internet being able
Speaker 13: to google them and get them answered. That we have
Speaker 13: to kind of like start from the basics, because like
Speaker 13: you have the right to find information from reliable resources.
Speaker 13: You have the right to buy pills from a reliable source.
Speaker 13: You have the right to like seek that kind of
Speaker 13: connection and support from people in your life. And so
Speaker 13: we're trying to cut down on like all the infinite
Speaker 13: amount of advice that we could give and try to
Speaker 13: like narrow it to like what is actionable, what has
Speaker 13: the greatest impact potentially in the cases we've seen.
Speaker 11: And I know we're going to dig into it, but
Speaker 11: I would love to.
Speaker 13: Leave room to tack a little bit more about that whenever,
Speaker 13: it's a good time in this conversation to go through
Speaker 13: our top three action items.
Speaker 3: So before we get to that, unfortunately we are under capitalism,
Speaker 3: which means we have to do these ads. Moving back shortly.
Speaker 12: And we are back another lawsuit. This is a little different.
Speaker 12: It's not a criminal charge.
Speaker 14: It was a lawsuit in Texas, and I want to
Speaker 14: bring up just as an example of like, how are
Speaker 14: you know our data can betray us.
Speaker 12: In these moments?
Speaker 14: Is there was and this was a really silly lawsuit
Speaker 14: has been dismissed, But there was a Texas man who
Speaker 14: filed a wrongful death lawsuit accusing three women of helping
Speaker 14: his exoife obtained abortion pills.
Speaker 12: I believe. I think it was dismissed last year, or.
Speaker 14: Maybe it was earlier this year. It wasn't even under
Speaker 14: the aid and event in law in Texas. It was actually,
Speaker 14: you know, they say, sought a different avenue. There actually
Speaker 14: hasn't been a successful lawsuit against an abortion seeker under
Speaker 14: Aida bet law or any other law in Texas in
Speaker 14: the last two years, which I think is just something
Speaker 14: worth bringing up, is that, you know, we actually haven't
Speaker 14: seen that happen yet other than this case.
Speaker 12: But what happened in this.
Speaker 14: Case is this person was planning on terminating their pregnancy.
Speaker 14: They were talking to some friends who were helping them out,
Speaker 14: and their iPhone was synced up to their iPad. So
Speaker 14: if anyone's familiar with that, you have your your I
Speaker 14: messages appear on both devices. The I messages that are
Speaker 14: coming to your phone are also going to be going
Speaker 14: to your iPad. And her ex husband took pictures of
Speaker 14: the I messages coming through on her iPad, and that
Speaker 14: was what was used. Even though the lawsuit was dismissed
Speaker 14: because it was a very silly lawsuit, total waste of time.
Speaker 14: But that is the kind of thing that we really
Speaker 14: you really need to be asking yourself, is you know,
Speaker 14: where are my messages going?
Speaker 12: Who is seeing my messages, who is seeing my emails?
Speaker 12: What is it connected to?
Speaker 8: Yeah?
Speaker 12: Because yeah, because it can just look like that too.
Speaker 11: I would say that's exactly right.
Speaker 13: Is I think I had a good friend who works
Speaker 13: in another area of security who and this is like
Speaker 13: how we learn these things, right, is that folks who
Speaker 13: work in the parts of security that deal with, for example,
Speaker 13: intimate partner violence or the sort of quote unquote in
Speaker 13: household surveillance threat model I think is vastly underestimated. I
Speaker 13: can't recall the figures at the moment, but one of
Speaker 13: those more recent reports from if one how actually had
Speaker 13: detailed just how frequently actually that sort of like how
Speaker 13: it is also this like intimate partner violence situation that
Speaker 13: comes up also in a regnancy or abortion criminalization case.
Speaker 13: And so you know, this person challenged me to think
Speaker 13: about the exact threat model of the unlocked iPad on
Speaker 13: the on the family coffee table and thinking about like
Speaker 13: when we share information and we share devices kind of
Speaker 13: like where does it go? So like, actually, our first
Speaker 13: piece of recommendation that we often give is is it
Speaker 13: can sound deceptively simple and it doesn't sound technical at all,
Speaker 13: but it is to think about like who you are
Speaker 13: telling about your experience and about like you know, your
Speaker 13: abortion or wanting to have an abortion, and then understanding
Speaker 13: whether you've like been clear about your boundaries, like do
Speaker 13: you expect them to not share or tell with others?
Speaker 13: Like can you delete any messages with them? Would they
Speaker 13: ask if you ask them after the fact to delete
Speaker 13: things for you, would they absolutely do that? I think
Speaker 13: you've can be really challenging to kind of like zoom
Speaker 13: out and realize, like you know, it's often not as
Speaker 13: easy as it sounds to like kind of do this
Speaker 13: mental inventory and think about all the different ways that
Speaker 13: like me and my best friend talk, or you know,
Speaker 13: when I mentioned things to people offhand, we don't have
Speaker 13: a really good I think like social practice of you know,
Speaker 13: understanding the implication of like sharing other people's information without
Speaker 13: their permission, and so, like you know, it's very impactful
Speaker 13: but also very difficult, and it can't be very individual
Speaker 13: for all of us to kind of think more carefully
Speaker 13: about with whom we share things and how we ask
Speaker 13: people to keep our confidence, and how we can even
Speaker 13: offer each other the ability to like delete things that
Speaker 13: we don't want to exist indefinitely. I think one of
Speaker 13: the biggest sort of existential struggles that crosses over to
Speaker 13: where people get support for abortions from like organizations, also
Speaker 13: includes the fact that I know has been discussed many
Speaker 13: times on this podcast, that there is a difference in
Speaker 13: how much information is kept depending on where you were
Speaker 13: having a conversation on your phone. So an SMS text message,
Speaker 13: those little green bubbles that go back and forth between
Speaker 13: you and possibly other people who are on iOS like
Speaker 13: iOS and Android combination conversation you're friends with and an
Speaker 13: Android might have a green bubble come back to you.
Speaker 13: That basically means that that is going as an SMS
Speaker 13: text message to your phone carrier, and that means that
Speaker 13: it's going quote unquote in plain text, totally unencrypted to
Speaker 13: the cell tower, and it's being held by that phone carrier, unencrypted,
Speaker 13: readable as it is as you typed it in as
Speaker 13: far as we know forever. It can vary depending on
Speaker 13: whether or not you move to a different carrier. But unfortunately,
Speaker 13: phone carriers have a very long history also of disclosing
Speaker 13: that information readily on request, either from law enforcement or
Speaker 13: from other agencies, and I think that is troubling. I think,
Speaker 13: like no person would really like to know that, regardless
Speaker 13: of what that you intend to do with your text messages.
Speaker 13: But it's why we often then encourage people as like
Speaker 13: sort of a second step to try and use encrypted
Speaker 13: chat with Signal or another trusted and encrypted chat. Again
Speaker 13: sounds overly simplistic, but I think having those disappearing messages on,
Speaker 13: especially between people who are seeking support from one another,
Speaker 13: whether it's somebody in your life or another organization that's
Speaker 13: helping you to get your abortion, there really is something
Speaker 13: to that ability to again speak freely, to be best friends,
Speaker 13: helping your friends you know, allegedly get abortion medication, or
Speaker 13: to being a mom you know, there to support your child.
Speaker 13: No matter what, I think, it's just something really wonderful
Speaker 13: about how using disappearing messages with Signal like reflects the
Speaker 13: values that we actually have already with each other and
Speaker 13: just like make sure that technology companies or corporations or
Speaker 13: law enforcement don't get to get in the way of
Speaker 13: how we want to live our lives.
Speaker 14: So yeah, yeah, so really supporting somebody through an abortion
Speaker 14: includes digital security.
Speaker 12: Yes, same with providers to people who are answering the phones.
Speaker 12: Digital security is one of the number one priorities.
Speaker 14: And yeah, if you're supporting somebody with an abortion, that
Speaker 14: should be your number one priority as well.
Speaker 8: Well.
Speaker 13: And like I bet people like you know when when
Speaker 13: you talk to people like you're often I imagine one
Speaker 13: of the first people that they're expressing themselves to it
Speaker 13: all about what they're going through. And you know, I
Speaker 13: know that that the point is to help people get
Speaker 13: to their procedure, but often they're bringing a lot of
Speaker 13: other things with them and they're not sure.
Speaker 11: If they're important.
Speaker 13: I remember, like you mentioning this, but just the amount
Speaker 13: of weight that is for y'all as a sport too.
Speaker 12: Yeah, and like people are scared for good reason.
Speaker 14: You know, we do live in a fascist country and
Speaker 14: a police surveillance state, so you know, their fears are founded,
Speaker 14: but there are a lot of excellent resources. They're not alone,
Speaker 14: like you know, you and I know this case, but
Speaker 14: there are so many people who's got the back of
Speaker 14: everyone who needs an abortion, and you know, you may
Speaker 14: not know the safe way of going about it, but
Speaker 14: there are people who are committed to digital security and safety.
Speaker 14: And you're in you're and you avoiding criminalization, So you know,
Speaker 14: part of the service is also reassuring people of that too,
Speaker 14: that it is possible to have a safe abortions.
Speaker 12: Even still, the next thing that.
Speaker 14: I know that we were talking about Kate in terms
Speaker 14: of like really practical, like what you can do now
Speaker 14: to protect yourself is having a plan for when you
Speaker 14: need to go get health care and you have to
Speaker 14: interface with like a medical team, a medical site such
Speaker 14: as an er a clinic.
Speaker 12: I'm an obgyn, a doctor of any kind.
Speaker 14: Because I think I believe the number one source of
Speaker 14: criminalization like who's reporting who who is criminal? Like who's
Speaker 14: calling the police, who's reporting these and giving over the
Speaker 14: information is as often healthcare worker.
Speaker 12: I believe that is the number one source.
Speaker 14: So you know, you do that is something to keep
Speaker 14: you to I am a healthcare worker, but it's just
Speaker 14: it's just a fact that that's something that we all
Speaker 14: need to be mindful of. And as a patient somebody
Speaker 14: is seeking healthcare, it's completely appropriate to be thinking of
Speaker 14: your own security and your safety when you're if you
Speaker 14: need to access health care. So you know, one thing
Speaker 14: is that luckily abortion is very safe and very effective,
Speaker 14: and if you don't feel comfortable going to an er
Speaker 14: for very good reasons. There are many good reasons to
Speaker 14: not want to go to r including costs, including your
Speaker 14: safety and security, the chance of criminalization.
Speaker 12: There is a free medical resource and a free legal.
Speaker 14: Resource that you can call. I'm going to talk about
Speaker 14: the medical resource first. There is the Miscarriage an Abortion
Speaker 14: Hotline or MA hotline dot org. But you can call
Speaker 14: and get some you know, feedback from a doctor about Hey,
Speaker 14: do I even need to go to the er?
Speaker 12: Is this normal?
Speaker 14: Is something wrong? You actually can run that by a
Speaker 14: safe person before just going to the er. And that's
Speaker 14: like one example of like having a plan, you know,
Speaker 14: like Okay, I think I might need.
Speaker 8: To go to the er.
Speaker 12: You know, let me check with a trusted resource.
Speaker 14: Let me check with the Miscarriage and Abortion hotline if
Speaker 14: I can get some feedback on what's going on with
Speaker 14: some of my symptoms. And you know, it's like this
Speaker 14: extra kind of added support that you can access as
Speaker 14: a pregnant person or you know, if you're having a miscarriage,
Speaker 14: if you're having an abortion, to assess your risk and
Speaker 14: to see if you can avoid even going to a
Speaker 14: medical slight given that you know, going to an emergency
Speaker 14: room in a banned state is something that does increase
Speaker 14: the risk of criminalization.
Speaker 13: Yes, and I think it was from our peers M
Speaker 13: and a hotline, and then I know the other hotline
Speaker 13: that if you have questions, also, the repro Legal Hotline
Speaker 13: is a wonderful resource that I know in all the
Speaker 13: show notes will include these. We try to include along
Speaker 13: with the miscarriage and Abortion hotline, so you have folks
Speaker 13: you can call who are professionals to ask about medical questions.
Speaker 13: If folks you can call who answer questions about legal
Speaker 13: questions about your abortion or pregnancy experience. I know that
Speaker 13: it's really hard because often when folks are in a
Speaker 13: hospital setting, we're sort of socialized to disclose everything. You know,
Speaker 13: we want to tell our doctor what's wrong and tell
Speaker 13: them everything we took, and you know, you worry it
Speaker 13: might be relevant. But I was reassured, I think by
Speaker 13: many other professionals in the space that doctors treat based
Speaker 13: on the symptoms that you present with, regardless of how
Speaker 13: they got there. You might be at a physician where
Speaker 13: you don't know, so you know, if you just tell
Speaker 13: folks what's going on with your body, what you are seeing,
Speaker 13: what you were feeling and experiencing. It is their job
Speaker 13: to treat you regardless of what you choose to share.
Speaker 13: And I would say that that's actually a true regardless
Speaker 13: of what healthcare condition you come into the ear with,
Speaker 13: it is your right to only disclose as much as
Speaker 13: you feel safe doing so. So I think, like that
Speaker 13: was something that I know, again we're not used to
Speaker 13: thinking about that as like a digital security measure, but
Speaker 13: it is an information in security measure, and I think
Speaker 13: an operational security measure that you know, we've had to
Speaker 13: like then realize that that's actually probably almost more important
Speaker 13: to tell people before we start getting into this nitty
Speaker 13: gritty of like things to do with your phone, is
Speaker 13: to understand that those principles that we believe that you know,
Speaker 13: the human again, the human body is very varied and
Speaker 13: how it experiences something like pregnancy, miscarriage, and abortion, and
Speaker 13: that you know, folks have a responsibility to treat you
Speaker 13: regardless of you know, what's in your phone or what
Speaker 13: happened before that, or the like statement of facts that
Speaker 13: are relevant to a courtroom and not to your care.
Speaker 3: So, yeah, do you too have anything else you want
Speaker 3: to make sure the audience knows before we head out.
Speaker 11: Yeah, just kind of like.
Speaker 13: One more piece. It's kind of our last piece of
Speaker 13: the puzzle, So you know, just to reiterate because I
Speaker 13: know it's good to hear things repeated again, you know,
Speaker 13: with the actual kind of pregnancy criminalization, digital security advice,
Speaker 13: we talk about understanding who you're disclosing stuff too, making
Speaker 13: sure they are clear on your expectations. Try to if
Speaker 13: you can have conversations with them in a secure place
Speaker 13: or a private place like signal with disappearing messages on.
Speaker 13: For our second item, we're going to make a plan
Speaker 13: for if we need to get care after the fact
Speaker 13: and ensure that we're trying to again have our support people.
Speaker 13: Also understand that you know, doctors treat you based on
Speaker 13: the symptoms you present with That is I don't have
Speaker 13: to tell them anything else that you do not wish
Speaker 13: to disclose. And the third thing is that something that
Speaker 13: I think as digital security practitioners we kind of forget
Speaker 13: is super important, which is that like you know, I
Speaker 13: think I run into this conflict where as like experts
Speaker 13: or smart people, we try to like imagine in our mind,
Speaker 13: like how we would have this perfectly like footprint free abortion,
Speaker 13: you know like this like use signal, use Tori's bitcoin,
Speaker 13: kind of like strange way of architecting, you know, privacy
Speaker 13: in our mind, And I call it the ghost abortion,
Speaker 13: like that it's it's a myth. You can't have one.
Speaker 13: There's no such thing as an abortion that leads no footprint.
Speaker 13: But I think we forget then that it actually is
Speaker 13: super meaningful to delete what's within our power to delete.
Speaker 13: So our third recommendation for folks is to like be
Speaker 13: aware of what's collected and then ensure that you know that.
Speaker 11: You can delete your browser history.
Speaker 13: You can delete your Google Map's history from like driving
Speaker 13: in to the clinic. You can delete your emails, you
Speaker 13: can delete messages on certain platforms, and I think, just
Speaker 13: like understanding that deleting what you can is actually super meaningful.
Speaker 11: Well, I actually didn't know untill.
Speaker 13: I got this job that certain platforms, like even Google products,
Speaker 13: like if you delete something from it, it is purge
Speaker 13: from the servers like something like two and a half
Speaker 13: months later. So when you delete stuff, it's very meaningful.
Speaker 13: I think there you get more options than ever to
Speaker 13: decide like how long you want to keep something, And
Speaker 13: it does make it so that that primary thing we
Speaker 13: talked about, like if somebody were to take my phone
Speaker 13: from me and to like you know, make a clone
Speaker 13: of it and try to look through it, at least
Speaker 13: it's deleted. That copy is no longer on my device.
Speaker 13: Even if they would have to go to like you know,
Speaker 13: get a warrant later, that is still great. It still
Speaker 13: gives me and my council time to respond and also
Speaker 13: allows me to access my right to do process. And
Speaker 13: I think so like these are like these three simple
Speaker 13: things I know that will give to link that our
Speaker 13: guide that kind of puts this all in a row
Speaker 13: and very plain language. We also have a Spanish language
Speaker 13: guide for it as well. But just to know that,
Speaker 13: like you know, these things are within our power. I
Speaker 13: think it's really easy to get tangled up in the
Speaker 13: idea of like abstract data and things that are really
Speaker 13: tough for us to always know when they're generated, like
Speaker 13: ad tracker data or you know, who is reselling or
Speaker 13: doing something with my period tracking apps. There are great
Speaker 13: options that are local only to your phone, like Yuki app.
Speaker 13: If you are concerned about that other apps seeing whether
Speaker 13: or not they use best practice of security. If they've
Speaker 13: responded and said like how they would respond to a
Speaker 13: legal request.
Speaker 11: That's awesome.
Speaker 13: I think that just sort of taking that uncertainty away
Speaker 13: is great because tracking your period is really important. As
Speaker 13: Crystal would tell you, it is an essential way that
Speaker 13: you're going to know how pregnant you are and find
Speaker 13: the option that's safest for your circumstances. So yeah, and
Speaker 13: that I'll pass to Crystal for anything else you think
Speaker 13: our folks should know before we depart.
Speaker 14: Yeah, tracking your period is important because if you don't
Speaker 14: know what's going on with your period and you get pregnant,
Speaker 14: it can delay your care.
Speaker 12: And you know, optimally you're.
Speaker 14: Getting the safest, quickest, most comfortable care for you, right,
Speaker 14: so it's really good to track that.
Speaker 12: I use Yuki.
Speaker 14: What I love about Yuki is that it has a
Speaker 14: pass code, and it stores everything locally and you can
Speaker 14: set to autoda your data and I love all of
Speaker 14: those things. So you know, and you know, I don't
Speaker 14: like using my paper calendar. If you love using your
Speaker 14: paper calendar, go use your paper camp, you know, whatever
Speaker 14: you want to do. But it is very important to
Speaker 14: know when your last period was because it can just
Speaker 14: make your care more timely. And that's really important given
Speaker 14: the abortion restrictions and the abortion bands. Now we are
Speaker 14: only you know, admittedly they're going to get worse. This
Speaker 14: is going to get less safe. There is going to
Speaker 14: be greater risk of criminalization. So when people call, when
Speaker 14: people call and they ask like can I access pills.
Speaker 12: Yes you can. You know, no matter what Trump does.
Speaker 14: You're going to be able to get abortion pills. There
Speaker 14: are countries all over the world that have total abortion
Speaker 14: bands and they have these abortion.
Speaker 12: Pills all the time. You know, it's not new in America.
Speaker 14: But you know, you do have to have a digital
Speaker 14: security plan while you're doing that, Like so, yes, you
Speaker 14: can order pills online, but yes, also have a digital
Speaker 14: security plan and keep this stuff in mind. It's really
Speaker 14: it's part of your healthcare plan now.
Speaker 13: Yeah, because you have the right to use safe, accessible,
Speaker 13: common sense like amazing technology products to actually obtain the
Speaker 13: abortion that you want. We really really do believe that
Speaker 13: like that part of autonomy. It includes digital autonomy as
Speaker 13: well as bottle of autonomy. They're all part and parsonally
Speaker 13: can't have one without the other. So thanks for having
Speaker 13: us on.
Speaker 12: Yeah, thanks theah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I want to close with one more thing
Speaker 3: that is related to this, but it's also what general advice.
Speaker 3: Don't talk to cops. Oh god, you know, I think
Speaker 3: that the common thing people say it is it is
Speaker 3: legal for them to lie to you, And that is true,
Speaker 3: but it's not just that as legal for them to
Speaker 3: lie to you. It is their job to lie to you.
Speaker 3: You cannot trust a single word that comes out of
Speaker 3: their mouths because it is their job to get you
Speaker 3: to confess to a crime or to get information out
Speaker 3: of you. They'll let you confess your crime, so invoke
Speaker 3: your right to remain silent, get a fucking lawyer, don't
Speaker 3: talk to them. And you know, listen, this is advice.
Speaker 3: It's not just coming from me, right like this, This
Speaker 3: is the advice you will get from every single person
Speaker 3: who does who does any kind of from offense. This
Speaker 3: is what you'll get from a public defender. This is
Speaker 3: what you'll get from anyone who has even sort of
Speaker 3: interacted with the legal system. And this is also true
Speaker 3: even if they tell you, oh, you're not a suspect,
Speaker 3: you're just a blah blah blah. We're trying to get information.
Speaker 3: It is their job to lie to you. Think about
Speaker 3: it roughly the same way of like if you're dealing
Speaker 3: with like a country secret police. How much information would
Speaker 3: you give them? The answer is do not. Simply do
Speaker 3: not do this.
Speaker 13: Exactly, and you know, no, no matter what that there
Speaker 13: are people again like Crystal Sapho will support you. Yeah,
Speaker 13: there are amazing teams across the United States, from medical
Speaker 13: support to legal support. We're there for you and they
Speaker 13: would all, I think wholeheartedly endorse as do we. Yes,
Speaker 13: please do not talk to cops. And that's a great
Speaker 13: note to end on.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, thank you to you both for coming on.
Speaker 3: And maybe we live to see a world better than
Speaker 3: this one where you could just do this stuff and
Speaker 3: not have to have any concerns.
Speaker 12: Yeah, one day, but until then we can do this
Speaker 12: very securely.
Speaker 11: Yes, we got our own backs. We can do this together.
Speaker 11: Thanks for having us on.
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 11: It could happen.
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Speaker 2: You can now find sources for it could happen here,
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Speaker 11: Thanks for listening,