Speaker 1: Push Kidd. Last episode, we heard American Petroleum Institute President
Speaker 1: Mike Summers talk about his concern that a small fringe
Speaker 1: was threatening our way of life.
Speaker 2: A small fringe is stuck in the past. They oppose growth,
Speaker 2: expansion and new infrastructure. There are against new jobs, higher
Speaker 2: living standards.
Speaker 1: Trump, the president with the most fossil fuel money backing
Speaker 1: of any president ever, is not so subtle. What they've
Speaker 1: done to the country is just incredible. The environmentalists, I
Speaker 1: mean they are terrorists.
Speaker 3: They were terrorists.
Speaker 4: I call it the environmental terrorists.
Speaker 1: Repression of descent is a key marker of fascist as
Speaker 1: is the targeting of an internal enemy, which for the
Speaker 1: Trump administration includes climate activists, the nebulous Catchell Antifa, and
Speaker 1: of course immigrants breaking.
Speaker 5: Into people's cars and homes and scenes that evoke Nazi
Speaker 5: Germany or Stalinist Russia.
Speaker 6: What's happening right now in America is evil and it
Speaker 6: is completely illegal.
Speaker 1: We're even hearing about it from folks who helped elect
Speaker 1: Trump in the first place. You don't want militarized people
Speaker 1: in the streets just roaming around snatching people up. Are
Speaker 1: we really going to be that the Gestapo? Where's your papers.
Speaker 5: Is that what we've come to, and.
Speaker 1: Of course it's all connected. The immigration enforcement apparatus is
Speaker 1: being used to punish non citizens who engage in protest
Speaker 1: of any kind.
Speaker 7: For example, arresting and threatening to deport non citizens student.
Speaker 8: And faculty for engaging.
Speaker 2: In luliful political protests is a practice we associate with
Speaker 2: a card to regimes.
Speaker 1: For the record, the courts have ruled over and over
Speaker 1: again that non citizens do have the right to free speech,
Speaker 1: and of course we laid out in our season the
Speaker 1: real free speech threat. How the creation of the Department
Speaker 1: of Homeland Security and the US War on Terror led
Speaker 1: very quickly to an expanded definition of terrorists, which led
Speaker 1: to the targeting of environmental and animal rights activists not
Speaker 1: just in the US but everywhere. Here's a clip from
Speaker 1: a UN report about it.
Speaker 4: We don't have a globally agreed definition of terrorism. As
Speaker 4: the ash was smoldering at the Twin Towers had fallen
Speaker 4: Security Council meets, and in that first month they create
Speaker 4: a new resolution UN Security Council Resolution thirteen seventy three.
Speaker 9: We have adopted a very ambitious, comprehensive strategy.
Speaker 4: Their vortage for throughout the m.
Speaker 3: Meeting as a jount.
Speaker 10: Requires them to legislate against terrorism, but there's no agreed
Speaker 10: definition of terrorism. So each state essentially has got to
Speaker 10: define what terrorism is on its own terms, and the
Speaker 10: absence of a common definition has meant that there's been
Speaker 10: this real ripeness for abuse. States get to define whomever
Speaker 10: they like is a terrorist.
Speaker 11: With almost no consequence at the domestic level.
Speaker 1: And so what we're.
Speaker 10: Seeing around the globe is the imprisonment of civil society.
Speaker 1: Actor.
Speaker 10: We're seeing direct targeting. In some cases, they're killing by
Speaker 10: the permissive framework of counter terrorism.
Speaker 1: Now the Trump administration is targeting civil society groups writ large,
Speaker 1: using foreign influence laws to cut off funding to NGOs
Speaker 1: it doesn't like, and launching federal investigations into organizations that
Speaker 1: focus too much on civil rights or climate change or
Speaker 1: whatever else he's decided he doesn't like that month. In fact,
Speaker 1: nowhere have the fingerprints of the fossil fuel industry on
Speaker 1: this trend been so visible as during the two terms
Speaker 1: of Trump's presidency. That's our story today. After this quick break,
Speaker 1: I'm Ami Westervelt, and this is drilled.
Speaker 12: We have to see more and more dangerous and distructive
Speaker 12: tactics going to season destructure project.
Speaker 4: I'm a shut them now altogether.
Speaker 1: This is Derek Morgan talking at a meeting of the
Speaker 1: American Legislative Exchange Council in twenty sixteen. At the time,
Speaker 1: Morgan was the top lobbyist for the American Fuel and
Speaker 1: Petrochemical Manufacturers, the trade group for refiners, pipe and petrochemical companies.
Speaker 1: They're kind of like the American Petroleum Institute for a
Speaker 1: different part of the industry, and instead of being dominated
Speaker 1: by Exxon, they're dominated by coke industries. Anyway, Morgan was
Speaker 1: there to pitch conservative state legislators on a new sample
Speaker 1: bill that they could take home and adopt to increase
Speaker 1: jail time and fines for protests, specifically protests near big
Speaker 1: infrastructure projects like I don't know oil pipelinestistics on.
Speaker 8: The Dapple protests.
Speaker 12: So between ten and fifteen dollars protesters, seven hundred and
Speaker 12: sixty one arrests, ninety four percent of those from out
Speaker 12: of state, and third or really that happened for ourcrineral records.
Speaker 1: These are all classic anti protest talking points, especially the
Speaker 1: out of state activist thing which fossil fueld companies in particular,
Speaker 1: have been using since the early nineteen hundreds.
Speaker 13: What we wanted to do was.
Speaker 12: Really strengthen the laws on trust me so I would
Speaker 12: see that through as well as auto legislation with highline
Speaker 12: criminal trustment.
Speaker 1: Trespassing laws of course already existed in all of the states,
Speaker 1: just like private property laws and all kinds of other things.
Speaker 1: What these guys were really worried about was protest, particularly
Speaker 1: the Standing Rock protest, the largest Indigenous led protest in
Speaker 1: the country in decades, and one of the largest climate
Speaker 1: protests in the world. That's the Dapple protest that you
Speaker 1: heard Morgan reference earlier. It started in twenty sixteen, but
Speaker 1: by the time Trump had been elected and took office,
Speaker 1: the protest was ending and the backlash was getting going.
Speaker 1: Derek Morgan, the lobbyist you just heard talking there, he's
Speaker 1: a VP at the Heritage Foundation today. That's the organization
Speaker 1: that's spearheaded Project twenty twenty five. Before he got into Advocate,
Speaker 1: he was a lawyer working for a law firm that
Speaker 1: might sound familiar to listeners of this podcast, Pressure Gibson,
Speaker 1: Dunn and Crutcher. That's the firm that eventually accused Greenpeace
Speaker 1: of orchestrating the Standing Rock protests, winning their pipeline company
Speaker 1: client a settlement of over three hundred million dollars. We
Speaker 1: did a whole season on it. Check it out season
Speaker 1: twelve's left. Before Morgan worked at Gibson Dunn, he was
Speaker 1: senior staff to Vice President Dick Cheney. The laws that
Speaker 1: were written and passed as a response to Standing Rock
Speaker 1: during Trump's first presidency put in place a lot of
Speaker 1: the restrictions that were then used against campus pro Palestinian
Speaker 1: protesters during his second term. Earlier this year, Marco Rubio
Speaker 1: did a little tour of an oil rich part of
Speaker 1: the Latin American and Caribbean region, stopping in Guyana and
Speaker 1: then Surinam. He wanted to talk about oil, but the
Speaker 1: press corps kept asking him about the targeting of protesters
Speaker 1: back home. First it was a Reuters reporter at the
Speaker 1: press conference in Guyana.
Speaker 7: Mister Secretary, a Turkish student in Boston was detained and
Speaker 7: handcuffed on the street by playing clothes agents. A year ago,
Speaker 7: she wrote an opinion piece about the Gaza War. Could
Speaker 7: you help us understand what the specific action she took
Speaker 7: led to her visa being a revolt.
Speaker 11: Let me be abundantly clear.
Speaker 9: Okay, if you go apply for a visa right now
Speaker 9: anywhere in the world, let me just send this message out.
Speaker 9: If you apply for a visa to enter the United
Speaker 9: States and be a student, and you tell us that
Speaker 9: the reason why you're coming to the United States is
Speaker 9: not just because you want to write op eds, because
Speaker 9: you want to participate in movements that are involved in
Speaker 9: doing things like vandalizing universities, harassing students, taking over buildings,
Speaker 9: creating a ruckus.
Speaker 1: We're not going to give you a visa.
Speaker 9: If you lie to us and get a visa and
Speaker 9: then enter the United States and with that visa participate
Speaker 9: in that sort of activity, We're going to take away
Speaker 9: your visa and we have a right, like every country
Speaker 9: in the world, right to remove you from our country.
Speaker 11: So it's just that simple.
Speaker 9: I think it's crazy. I think it's stupid for any
Speaker 9: country in the world to welcome people.
Speaker 11: Into their country.
Speaker 9: They're going to go to your universities as visitors. They're
Speaker 9: visitors and say I'm going to your universities to start
Speaker 9: a riot.
Speaker 1: At this point, you can see the Guyanese leaders nervously
Speaker 1: exchanging glances and for good reason. This is a wild answer.
Speaker 1: First of all, students who go to the US to
Speaker 1: study and then decide to take part in a protest
Speaker 1: didn't lie on their visa application. They didn't immigrate solely
Speaker 1: to take part in protests. They might not have even known,
Speaker 1: in fact, almost certainly didn't know that they were going
Speaker 1: to take part in One second, as I mentioned earlier
Speaker 1: in this episode, the first amendment extends to visitors, as
Speaker 1: Rubio calls them. The next day, Rubio's entourage moved on
Speaker 1: to Surinam, and The New York Times hit him with
Speaker 1: another version of this.
Speaker 6: Question, related to China. In twenty nineteen, you supported legislation
Speaker 6: to have the US government support the protesters in Hong Kong,
Speaker 6: the pro democracy protesters, and mostly the protests are peaceful,
Speaker 6: but also occasionally the disrupted public life. And so based
Speaker 6: on your rationale for deporting campus protesters in the US,
Speaker 6: would you now support the Chinese Commanist Party or Hong
Speaker 6: Kong authorities supporting foreigners who took part in those protests
Speaker 6: in twenty nine.
Speaker 9: So, the people that we're getting rid of in our
Speaker 9: country are vandalizing. They're not protesters. They're taking over college campuses.
Speaker 9: They're harassing fellow students. We let them in our country
Speaker 9: to study. They didn't say I want to go to
Speaker 9: university and I want to vandalize your library, and I
Speaker 9: want to wear a mask over my face like if
Speaker 9: it's Halloween and terrorized people. We didn't give them a
Speaker 9: visa to do any of that.
Speaker 1: Keep in mind Rubio was saying this as masked ice agents.
Speaker 1: We're terrorizing the city of Minneapolis.
Speaker 9: So we don't want those people in our country. They're
Speaker 9: going beyond demonstration. They are going and they're creating a ruckus.
Speaker 9: They are creating riots basically on campus, and it's unfair
Speaker 9: for students. People pay a lot of money to go
Speaker 9: to these they borrow money to go these schools. You
Speaker 9: can't even go to class because some lunatic who's covering
Speaker 9: their face is running through campus, spray painting things, harassing people,
Speaker 9: and they're in my country.
Speaker 5: As a guest.
Speaker 9: We want them out, every one of them.
Speaker 5: I find.
Speaker 9: We're going to kick them out again.
Speaker 1: In these press conferences, it's fossil fuels, American might a
Speaker 1: lot of reals, strongman, tough guy rhetoric and targeting of
Speaker 1: a minority group that's causing problems. Or in Rubio speak,
Speaker 1: a ruckus. We talked interseason Carbon Bros. With Non Toxic
Speaker 1: about the connection between male identity and particularly American male identity,
Speaker 1: and fossil fuels and the way that environmental and climate
Speaker 1: policy can then be seen as not just an attack
Speaker 1: on America, like Doctor Brule explained last episode, but also
Speaker 1: as an attack on masculinity. You hear this in the
Speaker 1: way that folks like Jordan Peterson talk about climate.
Speaker 3: You know, it's an intrinsic part of life to feel
Speaker 3: guilty in relationship to nature and to feel guilty in
Speaker 3: relationship to culture. No, it's difficult for us to live
Speaker 3: in harmony with the natural world and for the natural
Speaker 3: world to live in harmony with us, and so we
Speaker 3: have that sense intrinsically that there's a lack in us
Speaker 3: that needs to be redressed, and unfortunately that can be
Speaker 3: weaponized and has been. And what I see happening to
Speaker 3: young men that we have this sense in the world
Speaker 3: that human beings live in antagonism to nature, and that
Speaker 3: we're actually a malevolent force, and that our social structures,
Speaker 3: which are clearly capable of the commission of atrocity, are
Speaker 3: fundamentally oppressive patriarchal in their nature.
Speaker 14: And so then if you're a male in a society
Speaker 14: with that ethos, you're the motive force that drives you
Speaker 14: into the world to live is associated with rapaciousness and
Speaker 14: despoilation on the natural front, and then oppression and atrocity
Speaker 14: on the social front. Well, then if you're the least
Speaker 14: bit conscientious, because this sort of accusation hurts conscientious young
Speaker 14: men the most, then the best you can do is, well,
Speaker 14: let's say castrate yourself.
Speaker 3: How would that be?
Speaker 1: You also hear it in the way the big tech
Speaker 1: guys are thinking and talking about this stuff, which is
Speaker 1: less climate is a hoax, and more unchecked climate change
Speaker 1: is going to send the unwashed masses after us. What
Speaker 1: do we do? This harkens back to a certain strain
Speaker 1: of American male identity too, as Hannah Morris laid out
Speaker 1: in her book Apocalyptic Authoritarianism, particularly with respect to the
Speaker 1: peak oil movement in the early two thousands.
Speaker 11: And they learned about this peak oil and this cops
Speaker 11: of civilization, and this provide them a sense of control,
Speaker 11: a sense of power because of feeling like they are
Speaker 11: among a minority, a small minority of people who knew
Speaker 11: what the future holds, and that they can then navigate
Speaker 11: through that through their sort of rugged individualism, the s
Speaker 11: frontiersmen kind of identity and start tapping into really longstanding
Speaker 11: American masculine identities of feeling as though there's a special
Speaker 11: trait among American men who can really grapple with harsh
Speaker 11: conditions and build a new society, build a new civilization.
Speaker 1: This is being echoed again today in the rhetoric of
Speaker 1: the guys pushing these so called network state idea. When
Speaker 1: Trump and Jade Vance were beating their chests and talking
Speaker 1: about taking over Greenland, yes they were doing classics strongman
Speaker 1: fascism stuff, but they were also pursuing Greenland for a
Speaker 1: very specific reason. The Peter teelbacked company Praxis had tried
Speaker 1: to buy Greenland for the purposes of turning it into
Speaker 1: a network state. That's a neo feudal concept where countries
Speaker 1: are replaced by corporate controlled regions or, in the euphemistic
Speaker 1: language of the network state bros, free economic zones. Anyway,
Speaker 1: Praxice had tried to buy Greenland and failed, but since
Speaker 1: Teal had funded both Trump's campaign and Praxis, they just
Speaker 1: tried again. This time with a Teal vance Pick as
Speaker 1: the US ambassador to Denmark. Here's Practice founder Dryden Brown
Speaker 1: expounding on some of his beliefs in a really interesting
Speaker 1: interview with Amanda Cassette on Endgame. The parallels to peakists, colonialism,
Speaker 1: and little boys in rocket jammys are heart miss.
Speaker 5: In the beginning, you know, we were talking about you know,
Speaker 5: traditional Western values. We were you know, eating eating raw meat,
Speaker 5: drinking eggs. We were like we had a suit of
Speaker 5: armor in our in the apartment. I think there are
Speaker 5: people who sort of found Found Practice, found us and
Speaker 5: thought it was maybe like an enclave of sanity. Maybe
Speaker 5: it was like a you know, a better place to
Speaker 5: be like a guy. Who's a better place to be like
Speaker 5: a man. There are a ton of women in Practice too.
Speaker 5: It turns out that women didn't like the sort of
Speaker 5: you know, COVID man, double vaxed mask wearing soy man.
Speaker 1: All these folks, from Trump and Rubio to Dryden Brown
Speaker 1: and Peter tele complain about the woke mob and snowflake
Speaker 1: liberals cramping their style. They think Gota Tunberg is the
Speaker 1: anti Christ. Literally in Teal's case, They long for the
Speaker 1: days when men were real men. All while not really
Speaker 1: fitting the bill themselves. It's hard to believe that any
Speaker 1: of these guys has ever thrown a punch let alone
Speaker 1: forged a frontier. Perhaps it's their own internal snowflake that
Speaker 1: they're really mad at. In any case, for the past
Speaker 1: several years, the same folks fighting for a particular type
Speaker 1: of masculinity have been fighting against climate action as those
Speaker 1: saving the planet is somehow antithetical to the notion of
Speaker 1: men being heroes. Again, they've also been connecting oil and
Speaker 1: emissions with manliness. Sociologist Carry Daggett says this is no accident,
Speaker 1: and she even coined a term for it, petro masculinity.
Speaker 1: Here she is talking to my Carbon Brose co host
Speaker 1: Daniel Penny.
Speaker 13: With that term. I think it took on a life
Speaker 13: of its own, which was a total surprise to me
Speaker 13: because it can be understood in this deep, structural and
Speaker 13: historic way, which is really where I wanted to go
Speaker 13: with it in the article. And at the same time,
Speaker 13: it's so visibly present that I think just saying the
Speaker 13: word people can understand or think of examples that they see.
Speaker 13: When I wrote about this, it was during the first
Speaker 13: Trump administration, and what I wanted to do was understand
Speaker 13: this connection and far right movements between misogyny, anti feminist politics,
Speaker 13: anti queer politics, and this support for fossil fuel and
Speaker 13: climate denial, and they still tend to be talked about separately,
Speaker 13: as if they are sort of coincidentally inhabiting the same movement.
Speaker 13: And the work that I was reading that led me
Speaker 13: to feel that they are not coincidentally happening together was
Speaker 13: really feminist and ecofeminist work that has for decades pointed
Speaker 13: to the structural connections between the way so called women's
Speaker 13: work or reproductive labor is exploited and treated, and the
Speaker 13: way that often racialized work and colonial work is exploited
Speaker 13: and treated, and then also the way that the work
Speaker 13: of nature or the work of non human animals and
Speaker 13: creatures and plants as exploited and treated. That these kinds
Speaker 13: of justifications and narratives are really interconnected, and so on
Speaker 13: the one hand, it's this deep structural thing that can
Speaker 13: be very hard to see. But on the other hand, conveniently,
Speaker 13: now although tragically it's very easy to see on the
Speaker 13: surface that these things are coming together.
Speaker 1: There's another thing happening to both men and the fossil
Speaker 1: fuel industry right now an existential crisis. And no, I
Speaker 1: don't mean climate change, although yeah, I mean that too.
Speaker 1: But just as fossil dominance is being threatened, so is
Speaker 1: the patriarchy. The same men who feel threatened by the
Speaker 1: existence of trans people also feel threatened by the side
Speaker 1: of a windmill, and they're responding in the same way,
Speaker 1: trying to hang onto power in every way possible, scapegoating
Speaker 1: minority groups, and trying to insist on this st quo
Speaker 1: using force and violence when necessary. Next time on Drill,
Speaker 1: We're gonna wrap this little mini series up in a
Speaker 1: perhaps unexpected place, Guyana, with a look at what the
Speaker 1: US attack on Venezuela was really all about.
Speaker 8: To Brazil, and we gave all of this to Venezuela.
Speaker 8: SLAUNI claimed that two thirds again that it belongs to them.
Speaker 8: Nata no way, sorry here not happening.
Speaker 1: Drilled is an original Critical Frequency production distributed by Pushkin Industries.
Speaker 1: This mini series was written and reported by me Amy Westervelt.
Speaker 1: Our producers are Martin Saltz, Austwich and Peter Duff. Matthew
Speaker 1: Fleming did the art work. Our first Amendment attorney is
Speaker 1: James Wheaton of the First Amendment Project. Thanks for listening
Speaker 1: and we'll see you next time.