Behind the Bastards - It Could Happen Here Weekly 101

Episode Date: September 23, 2023

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Listen to Peter and the acid king on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Sometimes the pop culture we love is teens hits differently in retrospect. Maybe it's a tabloid story we couldn't get enough of or an illicit student teacher relationship on our favorite show. We're Suzy Bannock-Harram and Jessica Bennett, posts of the new podcast in retrospect,

where each week we'll revisit a cultural moment from the past that shaped us and probably you to try to understand what it taught us about the world and our place in it. You're the first person that I've talked to about this for years and years. Listen to InRetrospect on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you find your favorite shows. Coolza Media. Hey everybody, Robert Evans here and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch. If you want, if you've been

listening to the episodes every day this week, there's going to be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions. Hello everybody and welcome to it could happen here. It's Shrene and today I'm joined by James and Robert to welcome our guest. In this episode we are joined by Adam Brumberg. He is an artist and activist and an educator. He was born and raised in Johannesburg, South Africa. His parents and his entire extended family are Holocaust survivors,

and he had a very Zionist upbringing. We talked to him about how he grew up in a partite South Africa, how he broke free from Zionism as a teenager, and how he's come to be a very vocal Jewish anti-Zionist. He currently lives and works in Berlin, and he's exhibited his art all over the world. He's also regularly on the ground in Palestine, and he exhibited his art all over the world. He's also regularly on the ground in Palestine and uses his work to raise awareness about the crimes committed daily by the IDF. Members of the German government have accused him and labeled him as being anti-Semitic because of his criticism of Israel, and we're going to get into all of it. I want to just go back into your background a little bit. Your family on both

sides are Holocaust survivors and your ancestors like fled to South Africa and that's where you grew up with your parents and I read that you went to Azayin the School starting from age six. Can you tell us about your family background and your experience going to Azayin the School as a Jewish person? going to his IANA school as a Jewish person. So you remember the podcast you did about Lithuania and that particular character who was from the pale who had to flee from the pogroms and all that stuff? So basically this is part three. What he's talking about here is a Spanish civil war, a specifically about an episode we did more than a year ago. As many of 30% of the fallen volunteers who fought in some units in Spain were Jewish. Some of them, like Alchegin, who I've written about a lot,

had fled persecution in the pair of settlement at a very young age and arrived in the USA to relative safety. But after a few years in the USA, they began to see the menace of anti-Semitism, spreading back towards them through Nazi Germany and laid it through fascist Italy. And they decided to take up arms and stop it when it threatened to overwhelm democratic Spain. Imagine that kid gets on a boat and that kid is my grandfather, my grandfather's name is Joshua, right? And he's like a towering six foot three beautiful man.

He's studying medicine. He's fleeing his mother. His family's not wealthy, the pogroms are going on. He's studying medicine. Very bright guy, but every lack of cell in his body says, you've got to get out of here. Also, he gets this opportunity. He meets a woman called Dora Clatch girl, a grandmother who's like four foot two, right, becomes from a very wealthy family in Lithuania. And it's kind of an arranged setter, and I think Josh was paid.

Anyway, they get on a boat bound for South Africa. Some landed up in Scotland or oddly, because the bolts found for America, they would disembark most of the, all of the people on board and tell them they were in America and then take a whole lot of other people and then carry on to America so they could double the fee, by the way.

But anyway, so Joshua and Dora land up on the boat and they land in the port of Durban. It's around 1933. Oh wow. Okay. And they speak mostly Yiddish. I've never seen a black person in their life. They land up on these foreign shores. My grandmother, I think, headed towards Johannesburg. And this I got from my mother on her deathbed. My mom passed away December 17th last year. So it's like six, seven months ago,

and she did it magnificently, and she managed to tell those last little bits of stories. And one of those was that her mother, Dora had a child who died at nine months old and she was unknown in Johannesburg when the child died and Joshua her husband was still in Durban. So you can imagine the kind of the weirdness of that, right? I mean, imagine the father of your child not coming to be with you when you lose your child. Coupled with the fact that they had both lost,

I think, Dora, my grandmother was one of eight or nine children. I think only three survived the Holocaust and her parents were killed and the same with Joshua. So they lost all their family and there they were Right. Without, without any kind of orientation, right? Yeah. Can you talk a little bit about, you mentioned your, how you described it as bottom feeders. I listened to another podcast you were on and you said that they, your family suddenly really enjoyed and appreciated the change and status they had in society. Can you talk about that a little bit? Well, yes. They got on the boat and the identity were Jews. They were exposed from Europe as Jews. The minute their toes touched the land in Africa,

their identity transformed from being Jewish to being white. Right. Right. Yeah. Suddenly they were identified as white people. Like the word Jew almost like, just fell off. You know, that yellow star that they had to wear. It just fell off. So suddenly they were like, oh my god, they for the elite, for the white supremacist,

or for the white people, the Jews who arrived were able to plug into that privilege. And there was about 250, 300,000 Jews who fled and arrived in South Africa. So it was quite a big community. And they did very fucking well. Let me tell you. And I can tell you why I can tell you, because my father, who had just saw about three days ago, what's left of him, when he was active and like potent, he was, he was the top tax lawyer in South Africa, which means that his clients and those clients are people who walked through my house, came through my house in the 70s and the 80s. We're probably the most hideous characters in history. You know, we're talking Soul Kursner. Soul Kursner started something called Sun City.

And he exploited the Bantristan, the Homeland System, that apartheid built. And he built this casino hotel resort called Sun City. At this point in our conversation with Adam, we wanted to ask about his personal journey into anti-Zionism and where all began. So I think an interesting way to approach this then would be like obviously they found themselves and your parents have found themselves in this country which is systematically discriminating against people, right? It's this partite South Africa. And Jewish people were at once active in the anti-apartment movement,

and as you're saying, also active in the apartheid government and the apartheid regime. And you found yourself, I guess, going to the school, which was explicitly Zionist. And I'm wondering, at what point, and I suppose this involves seeing what's happening where you are, as well as what's happening in Palestine, at what point did you make that connection and be like, her, this, like what, what, because you're very explicitly anti-Zionist, right? Like, is, is, is, yeah.

What, was it something you read, something you saw, like what caused you to make that leap, and how was that received into South Africa? So I think it's a mixture of things. I think I've got three older siblings. It's time the last born by seven years. I've got a brother poor, seven years older sister, man, he was nine years older, who lives in Israel. And my oldest brother, Jonathan, is 10 years older than me. Jonathan and Paul, Paul specifically, was very politically active. So he started an organization.

Unlike Israel, so that in South Africa, the universities were like the bastions of the anti-apartheid movement, right? And he was in New South, National Union of South African students. And he started a thing called the end conscription campaign, which was to fight against forced conscription of white men who were compulsory, you know, called up into the army at the age of 18. And so given the fact that he was seven years older, when I hit about 14 or 15, at 15 I went on a thing called all pun, which is kind of you've heard of birthright. Yeah. All pun is something. So I went to the Zionist Jewish day school. So every day I'd go, I'd have to pray, like going to the synagogue pretend to pray for about an hour, right? And I was looking at my school, like my sister is like a gorgeous

archivist and she made this book called Adam's Life. And I was looking at the school grades at the age of six and it was like Jewish studies. And we know what those Jewish studies were, right? So you walked into the Jewish studies room and there was a little blue tin which was the Jewish national fund and you would put your spare change in there and that money would go towards making the desert bloom, I say, in like, quirk marks, right? So that money would go to planting like 240 million pine trees in, you know, which are not indigenous in Israel, but just to swing back. So at about 14 or 15, what happened is in parallel, I was being told on a daily basis two things. I was being told, now you've got to remember, this was the heights of also

the cold war. So there were these proxy wars that were being fought all around South Africa in Angola. In Mozambique, so in Mozambique you had Frelimo, who were backed up by Cuba, Russia, right. You had Renamo, that were backed up by America and South Africa. had renamo that were backed up by America and South Africa. And they were running these guerrilla bush wars. And many of my friends who were called up in the military would be flown into Angola or into Mozambique, be dropped there. And they were told, look, if something happens,

you won't hear. we're not there, we're not going to come and find you." What I'm referring to here are the proxy conflicts throughout Africa that saw national liberation movements often supported by Cuba and the USSR, fighting against various last-class colonial regimes and African-anti-communist groups. These groups are often supported by the US under the guise of anti-communism. These wars include the Civil War in Angola, the Namibian War of Independence, the most ambicune war of independence, and the Zimbabwe War of Independence. You might know that the last one has a Rhodesia and Bush War, but Rhodesia doesn't exist anymore. Living in the United States,

it's easy to use the phrase Cold War as a conflict free standoff mediated by nuclear powers just something. Without acknowledging that, in many parts of the world, proxy wars in these post-colonial states and the conflicts of decolonialization throughout the late 20th century made that period anything but cold. The point is that so at the age of 14 I'm going to At the age of 14, I'm going to the schools and I'm being told every day that if apartheid ended, that would mean the end of the white people in South Africa, right? Because we were by far the minority, white people were by far the minority. I don't know what it was, 10, 12 percent. And there was this kind of, you could see the fear because the walls started getting higher, the security gates were built, the razor wire, the electric fences, you know, it was, it became more increasingly visible in the 80s, the fear,

of keeping, keeping a partite, keeping people apart. keeping a partite, keeping people apart. So I was told all the time, like if a partite ended, that would mean the end of white people, at the same time I was told, given that my community was like second generation Holocaust surviving, you know, the notion of Israel as a place of salvation, a place of...

When the shit hits the fan, that's where we can go, right? And that what we were always told that. And we were also told daily, this is a land without people, for a people without land, that became a kind of mantra. Honestly, it was like it was said to me over and over again, right? So, but when, and what started happening is, I think that I became an activist at the age of 16. There's an amazing, she's now a dear friend of mine, we've reconnected, she's a field director called Yael Farber. And we started an organization called LYNX,

the age of 16, which was to educate white kids about apartheid. And what we started to do was to literally kind of break the apartheid. Whoa, we'd start doing visits into Soweto. We'd start doing visits into Alexandria Township. And we started forming friendships. And you know, most kids just didn't go out of the suburbs. And suddenly we'd go away on these weekends, like led by kind of older activists. And we'd all hang in the same, you know, we'd all sleep in the same dormitories and we start chatting, chatting and smoke cigarettes together. And so like genuine, just basic childhood friendship started for me. And when that stuff that profound, very successful othering that the propaganda

of apartheid succeeded in creating, you know, the black person as the other, as the enemy, you know, the black person as the other as the enemy, which it does, it does in Israel, right? On the other side of the apartheid wall is the worst enemy your imagination could possibly conjure up, right? And it's exactly the same process. And suddenly when I kind of pierced that wall and that started falling apart, then the kind of ideology around Israel and the notion that Palestinians didn't exist. Suddenly they started to exist for me somehow. And so it was around the age of 16, I'd say. and so it was about around the age of 16, I'd say. And it was interesting that it was like through your experience of living in a partite state that you were able to, I think, appreciate that what was happening to the Palestinian people was like another form of settler colonialism.

I mean, I think, like none of this is intellectual. So I think like everything that came to me or has driven to me is lucky, is through lived experience, it really is. So I think it's like through these friendships that I realized, and you know, like touching, touching skin. And this is the difference between apartheid South Africa and apartheid Israel Palestine.

Is that we were segregated by law. I mean, mixed marriages were prohibited by law. Sex was prohibited between races. But the thing is that we were mixed together because the labor force was needed, right? So the 1916 Tax Act forced a lot of black migrant male workers into the cities to work on the gold mines, which meant that there was the presence of the other amongst us. And because there was the presence of the other, there was also the desire. And it is a sexual desire or a central desire. And the smells, and we would touch each other, and we would walk through the city and

kind of rub up against each other. Now my nieces and nephews have been grown under the interfered and because of the apartheid war, they've been deprived of that sensual experience of the other. In Palestine, Israel, you mean? In Palestine, Israel, yes. So they've built this 12 foot, this 12 foot 700 kilometer long concrete tsunami of a wall that divides people, which means that, you know, until recently nobody uttered the word Palestinian because they didn't exist, right? And so for my nieces and nephews, what was on the other side of that wall was, like I said,

the worst enemy that the imagination could conjure up, and children's imaginations are amazing, right? And I did say this a while back where you know how Foucault spoke about, he spoke about the structures that were built around the plague. And after the plague ended, you were still left with these structures, right? Now, let's think about the apartheid wall. You've got the 700 kilometers long massive like concrete thing. It goes like five meters underground. Yeah. Now, unlike for cause hypothesis, that wall has created the plague. That wall has created the enemy the plague. That war has created the enemy because what's on the other side of that war,

that's only accessible through these little checkpoints that are manned by these poor teenage, like, little foot soldiers of the state. That's the only way to penetrate that wall. So on the other side of that wall is whatever you tell the people is there. And that's the horror of that situation. I actually am kind of glad you brought up the plague idea because you mentioned that on a different podcast and I thought it was really poetic to illustrate that a plague can be constructed by the structure versus actually good thing in the plague. And it's also kind of worth noting, as you were talking about the restrictions on interracial marriage in South Africa, versions of that very much to exist to this day in Israel, including heavy restrictions on intermarriage

between Israeli and Palestinian people. That's a bigger topic than I want to just kind of casually get into it. Like there's a number of restrictions that exist into the present day, because like civil marriage is not really a thing there as it is in a lot of other countries. Yeah. So I wonder, like you said, that Palestinian people existed in your childhood only as this sort of construct, right? It's this other construct and your experience of black people in South Africa

has shown you that those other constructs for false and misleading and served perhaps an agenda. When you decided that your stance was anti-sianism and then you said to your, I'm guessing to your friend, your family, to your fellow children at the school, like, hey, this is fucked up here and this is fucked up there too. How was the response? Well, it's like, you know, one doesn't come to these decisions overnight and like announce it, right? Yeah.

So, so there's vague memories I have, like I said, I was on that opuntrip, which is like this three week or three month trip. I mean, they send like 115 year old kids. You live in a building in Jerusalem and it's basically like this three month propaganda tour, right? You're given a Bible and you told that that's your guidebook. Literally, you traverse this place and following the stories of the Bible and

that meant to be your holy land. But I did have one of the, it's called a muddrich, I think, a teacher. He must have been 18 or 19. He happened to be kind of vaguely liberal Zionist and I remember clearly him taking me to an antique Kahani protest. So there was still like Meyakahani was alive and we know that Meyakahani, you know the Kahani's movement as you know it was a kind of know, they spawned the Ben Gaviris and these fascists who are in power now, but at the time, they were deemed a terrorist organization by America, and I remember going to an anti-Kahane protest. So somehow that planted a little seed in me and I guess You know, I think the anti-Zionism came afterwards because I was so

focused on the anti-apartheid struggle because that's where I was and and that's what I was doing and my university was either spent like running battles with riot police or smoking weed. I literally went to about three classes, honestly. I was definitely the odd one out in my school. I mean, you know, if being a scientist, Jewish, Dyscore, I'm still, you know, I'm still probably perceived as like an absolute fucking aberration, you know?

Yeah, you did describe your mother in one podcast as a diehard Zionist and so I can only imagine, and you mentioned your nephew and her husband both were in the IDF, so I can only imagine, I think it's good to bring up that despite all of that, you were able to like, think deeply about it and work your way out of that brainwashing essentially. Before I get too carried away, let's take our first break. We'll be right back, BRB. And we're back.

I wanna talk now about your experience in Germany and how you experienced state level accusations of being an anti-Semitic person, even though you're just a vocal Jewish anti-Gianist, can you talk about what led this person? I didn't even know this person existed. Stefan Hensel, who was the anti-Semitism commissioner of the city of Hamburg, that's a position someone has. But what led him to call you, these really atrocious things in so many newspapers and like basically like just libelist stuff?

Okay, so check it out. So my mum dies 17th of December, yeah. I go away to a yoga retreat with this like there's no coverage. I'm offline. I get back to Berlin and there's emails from people I really trust, and serious people in my life saying, dude, you've got to respond to these allegations that are in like, the sites, Berlin, the site, on tads, basically every major newspaper in Germany and social media all over the place. There's this character, like you said,

Stefan Hensel, who is the Commissioner of Anti-Semitism for the State of Berlin. Now, eight of the states of Germany have commissioners of anti-Semitism, right? None of whom were Jewish, none of whom were elected. They kind of semi, it's super weird. They are, it's semi-legal. I mean, like nobody knows they exist, nobody knows, but nobody elects them. Nobody knows they exist, nobody knows, but nobody elects them. This character Stefan Hensor, and I don't want to pay too much attention to him because he's just like a nebulous, Islamophobic, prosynist bureaucrat.

But anyway, he does a series of interviews and to summarize the numerous interviews and his social media posts, I am called, quote, literally, a hateful anti-seemite who advocates for terrorism against Jews. Now, this is two weeks after bearing my Jewish mother who was a second-generation Holocaust survivor. Now that is the definition of gaslighting. Right? Now as a white man, it's testimony to my provenage that I haven't experienced gaslighting on a daily basis as most women do. Certainly every Palestinian friend I have, they experience that every minute of their lives because their very essence is illegal being Palestinian.

You know, the blood that runs with their veins is illegal. They don't exist because they're Palestinian, right? But so I stand accused of these things and I'm like, I'm God-smacked. I'm like, and the reason is is because I've been vocal about my support and solidarity for Palestinian rights. And it was particularly about your support for the BDS movement, right? Exactly. So BDS, boycott divestment sanctions has become a kind of,

it's like one of these terms that emerges in the world, it's like terrorism or war on drugs or what are the terms that can we come up with. It's like, it's one of these catch phrases and it's like, be de-yes. And it's like, people don't even associate it with boycott divestment sanctions. If you break it down, you know, what ended apartheid in South Africa? There was no sudden moral awakening. Basically, the Cold War ended. Reagan and Fatcher, who were total supporters of apartheid South Africa. Suddenly the Cold War ended, South Africa wasn't that important in asset, and there was international pressure, and more and more people started to see what the atrocities that were going on,

and sanctions and divestment started to happen, right? So Polaroid, the company Polaroid, I did a project about this, was one of the first companies that colluded with the South African government but also divested when they were exposed. And that led to a number of banks that are vesting from South Africa. So sanctions and our vestments,

and essentially the South African government in the late 80s was financially broke. So they were forced to the negotiation table because they were broke, not because they woke up one morning and said, oh my God, we're oppressing the majority of black people in this country. to. And so BDS, which is a peaceful, non-violent means of resistance that started during the second interfaither, has become one of these catchphrases. And I'll tell you a story. And this all came to a head around last year's documenta, which

happens in the city of Kassel in Germany. Now, documenta is a really interesting art event in the art world calendar. And last year, documenta was a very, very interesting little theatre play. So what happened during documenta last year is that there was a group of Palestinian artists who were invited to show work and their space was invaded and there was graffiti was sprayed on the walls. There were two things were sprayed. One was the number one eight seven and then the word perolta. Can you just explain what

those both mean? I'm not exactly sure, but one eight7 I can tell you. Okay. And the reason I can tell you is because 1-8-7 was spray painted outside my front door inside my apartment building and 1-8-7 as any gang member in California will tell you is the Californian penal code for murder. And when you spray 187, it's a death rate. Oh my god. And so, what the media did in Germany is said, oh, no, no, no, hang on. There's a hip hop band in Hamburg called 187. Okay, I wonder where that came from. Wow. Yeah, I was going to mention that sublime also has a few songs with 187. Hi, first sublime fan.

It's like graffiti. Yeah, like that way. That was a blind song about the 92 riots. There was a radical branch of the sublime fans, like graffiti pop. Yeah, they liked that way. They were sublime songs about the 92, right? It was a radical branch of the sublime fan club. Yeah, KPU. I mean, I'd love to hear this music. I'm a lady. But I think you don't want any sublime.

No, no, I really do. After this, I'm going to actually listen to it. But so on the morning when so back to document her so they spray painted this stuff and and then there was a funeral because there was there was an Indonesian collective who did a giant mural and one of the pieces, one of the characters in this mural depicted an IDF soldier, an Israeli defense force soldier or an Israeli occupying for soldier as a pig. I mean, that's an old trope. We've all done it, right? You know, they're the pigs. Polic are the pigs. But there was an IDF as a pig, and it was, and so it

was deemed anti-semitic. And fair enough, it's like it's Germany, it's an Israeli person in uniform, depicted as a pig, it's tasteless, it's tacky. Immediately they kind of covered the mural art, but bang! The troops came in, the Israel lobby, the Jewish lobby came in boom right they seized the opportunity and they hit and suddenly the word BDS came in right and so the two curators from Gron Rupa who were amongst the connective who were who were curating that year's documenta were visiting professors at the art school in Hamburg, where I had been a professor for the previous six years. Okay, and Stefan Hensel, like a little kind of surgeon,

and Stefan Hansel, like a little kind of surgeon, he pinpointed these three little panaceous kind of pro-Palestinian people that were inside a German university and he wanted to remove them with his little tweezers. And so he grouped us together and he slammed the word anti-Semitism. He accused us of being anti-Semitic. And so he weaponized this word and this word, like such an interesting word, right? Anti-Semitism. It's like, so here you've got a guy. Now, he's never declared,

and not that it's of any interest to me, whether he's Jewish or not. whether he's Jewish or not. I mean, I don't think he has the right to buy into my lineage of trauma. He doesn't have that right. But he married a Jew. He named his son, I think David or something, right? He's, so there's all these kind of like gestures to make him seem like he's has the

respect and ability to save these things. Not a loophole as much as a kind of dress code. My son's called David. I'm married to a Jewish person. I've lived in Israel for six years. I ran the Udisha, the Israeli-Shari-Jamanish organization, Israel, German organization, which is like,

an Islamophobic kind of weird, or weird-ass thing tank, I don't know what they do, right? But the point is, he has this guy and I bet you I would lay money on it that his parents or his grandparents were perpetrators during the Holocaust. And this is the way... cost. And this is this is the way this is the psychological twist. This is the like the beautiful little whoo that the mind does to get oneself out of like feeling shit about yourself. Yeah, I mean, even attempting to remove those people from their posts is like, that's a great example of Germany using anti-semitism,

like weaponizing it at an institutional level. Like that's really unfortunate. I do want to mention this really quick. In 2019, Germany tried to make BDS a hate crime, and even though it was challenged and then it was found to be unconstitutional, the fact that that 10th was made, from what I understand, there's still an attitude in Germany about BDS being this illegal-ish thing. That fair thing.

Exactly. So, it's like, my father was a lawyer, as I said. So I know, I know the difference between law and justice. And I know what a test case means. So you bring something to trial, enters into the language of society, right? And when you say is BDS anti-Semitic and you like test this thing, suddenly there's this presumption and there is a presumption that BDS is anti-Semitic and I can give you concrete examples of how it's happened, how it's played out over the last couple of years.

Oh wait, I want James to mention. You looked up that word, right James? Isabel Peralta, yeah, I'm familiar with her, unfortunately, and I think this kind of lines up with the sort of, she came on the scene in 2021 that I had been around doing antisemitism for a long time. She is a self-describe fascist in Spain. She's part of a group, or at the time, is leading a group called Hoven to the Pasadayortica, which is patriotic youth. And the speech that she's most famous for was delivered at a commemoration for the Division of Thoul, which is a blue division. They're the Francoist volunteers who fought for Nazi Germany, which, you know, if you're commemorating that, you're kind of a piece of shit. And then she went on to be a further piece of shit, I suppose, by, like, she's very explicit in her anti-semitism,

right? She doesn't do what a lot of these people do and kind of veil it. She talks about Jewish people as the eternal enemy. And it's worth pointing out that in Spain, Spain has had what's largely called anti-Semitism without Jews, or sometimes called that, because Spain conducted an ethnic cleansing, or it conducted a, literally they'll call it a limpiefa, like a cleansing and a removal of Jewish people. And Spanish Jewish population is still very small. And so this sort of virulent anti-Semitism

that we're seeing on her behalf had impacts all around Europe and she was kind of the most prominent and outspoken anti-Semite for a little while there. So that was the name Beg refeeded along with 187? Yeah, I guess trying to tie this document to her disgusting, anti-Semitic, which is entirely distinct things, right? Like, I think as you were saying, and like that, by putting the two in the same phrase, we can flate them

when they are entirely distinct things. And I think all of us would agree is a terrible person as we pronounceable views. But if we dig a little deeper, we get to the core, which is, why did the Nazis and the Zionists collaborate in the 1930s? Because they had the same desire, they wanted the same outcome, they wanted the Jews out of Europe. They wanted them to move to Palestine, right? Zionism was a European project started in the early 20th century. In Vienna, they wanted the Jews out of Europe and into Palestine, the Zionists did, so they collaborated.

And I think, really truly, I think that we do face a real threat of real anti-Semitism in Germany. And I have two children. My daughter is 13, her name is Lanny. My little boy is 10, his name is Marlar. And if you look at the police report of 2022, that was released in Berlin, there are multiple numerous incidents of visual and quite violent incidents of real Right? Yeah. And why are we not addressing that? Because my kids are in danger. And instead,

we have the Minister of Culture, whose name is Claudia Roth, And a couple of weeks ago, on a Friday night at the opening of Haqqa Ver, you know, a huge institution that my dear friend, Bonaventour, who comes from Cameroon, is, he's been made the head of this institution. And it's the Friday night, and the whole is full of people. And it's glorious. It's a Friday night and the whole is full of people. And it's glorious, it's a beautiful night. I mean, you have diversity like you've never seen. This is like queer, diverse, blackness, indigenous thought. It's queer thought. It's like fucking peaches is there,

everyone's there, you know what I mean? And Claudia Roth takes the stage, she takes the microphone, and what does she say? She says, the silence in the room, and she says, BDS is anti-submitted. Like what the fuck? Yeah. BDS is anti-Semitic. And I'll tell you, I love Borna. Now let me tell you about Borna. Borna came from Cameroon 13 years ago. He has a PhD. He has a PhD. His PhD is in biotechnology. He worked all day building pacemakers while he set up a cultural institution called Sabi Contemporary.

And Sabi represented the biopop community in Berlin and in Germany, right? Bona is a genius. He deals with post-colonialism like, I mean, he's a maestro, he's amazing. What he has done, he's changed the landscape of this country. He's brought colonialism into the discourse of the country, into the culture, right? But my fear is, is they've used him as a Trojan horse. And they've got, the German states have got their fist up, his fucking ass. And that night when he it was Bonner's night it was it was the night of diversity. There comes this

pernicious minister of culture and she stands up and out of the blue she says BDS is anti-Semitic. Bona, because he's such a graceful, smart man. And because he knows that we are fighting intersectional struggles that happen at different velocities and happen at different speeds and come at different angles. He came up on stage and he said, we come in peace. It scares me. No, it's, it's, I could only imagine what it was like to be there in person. I mean, it sounds mortifying, especially if you're Palestinian or Arab or just an anti-Zionist in general. I brought up a story here that I heard Adam talk about on a different show, but Futurme is recording this now

because I wanted you to have some more context to the story so you can really grasp the irony of it all. It's a great example of the divide and intensity that happens or that can happen with anti-Zionists and Zionists within the Jewish community itself. Adam said that some of the people who he had assumed were friends and allies have disappeared, which is one of the prices you pay for criticizing his real. Adam had been spending more time in Hebron, what he described as a wasteland. He said in a

previous interview that you spend 10 minutes in Hebron and you get the notion of apartheid, occupation, and Jewish supremacy. You get it, and no one has to utter the words. Adam has documented violence in places like Maximum Security Jails, Afghanistan, 2003, Iraq, 2005, but he said the two times he's felt the most exextentially and physically a threat of death. One of those times was last year, when he was in Hebron, and him and his team went to take photos of all of most ex-extentially and physically a threat of death, one of those times was last year, when he was in Hebron, and him and his team went to take photos of olive trees. Olive trees in that area can be 2000 to 4000 years old, and since 1967,

Israeli settlers have destroyed one million of these trees. I have an episode about this and the significance of the Palestinian olive tree about how it's not only an immensely important crop, but also a symbol of Palestinian culture and resistance. I talk about this in that episode as well, but a bear's repeating that destroying olive trees is one of the most clear examples that Zionism isn't about wanting to return to a sacred land that is destined to you. Instead, Zionism is hateful and inexcusable. Adam shares the sentiment, which I appreciate, and I really loved learning about his work with

Olive Trees. I just don't think Zionists have any kind of rebuttal or reasoning to support why the hell they keep restoring Olive Trees decade after decade.. Like in what universe can you say and believe that you have a genuine attachment to that land, a biblical right to that land? Like how could you say that you love that land as a sacred space, but then also go and destroy what Adam describes as its quote oldest indigenous citizens, aka the olive trees? That's not a person who loves that land, but it's a person who was driven by hate. So Adam's working to preserve and protect these trees. Settlers pour gasoline down the center of the tree trunk, so by the time you see smoke, the tree is already dead. He was there and had run with the camera taking photos of the trees, and then Jewish settlers

sent these packs of kids that he said were ages 5 to 17 dressed in full religious garb, accompanied by the Israeli military. Adam and his crew kept getting attacked by these kids, as the military stood by, but he explained that you can't lift a finger to defend yourself because these kids are miners. Adam talked about this and said, if I was Palestinian and I pushed back, I would be shot on the spot. The fact that I'm Jewish, I would just be removed, and the work would simply be over. So he got beaten pretty badly several times, and apparently there's footage of it somewhere, and his experience at Hebron again is one

of those two times that he's felt the most existential and physically at the threat of death. The second time happened a few days later, which is the story I briefly mentioned to him in the recording that we did that I wanted to talk about more here. So a few days after that incident, Adam returned to Berlin, and it happened to be the anniversary of Crystal Nacht, or the night of Broken Glass, which is widely known as the beginning of the Holocaust. It's also called the November Pagrom, and it was a Pagrom against Jews carried out by the Nazi Party with some participation from the Hitler Youth and German civilians throughout

Nazi Germany on the 9th and 10th of November in 1938. The German authorities looked on as this happened without intervening. The name Kristallnacht is literally translated to Kristallnacht, and this name comes from the shards of broken glass that littered the streets after the windows of Jewish-owned stores, buildings, and synagogues were smashed. So back to Adam's story. A memorial for Crystal Nacht is held at the site of the two oldest Cinegogs that had been burned down in Germany.

Adam arrived there with a crew holding signs that said Jews against fascism everywhere. He surrounded by fellow Jewish people, and this big guy comes up to Adam, and Adam describes this guy as being much bigger and much taller than him. And so this big guy looks down at Adam and he says, get rid of those signs. Who gave you the right to be here? Adam responded, quote, the death of 90% of my family. What troubles you about the sign? Are you anti-Semitic? Are you fascist? Are you bothered by the word everywhere? Have you got this weird synesthesia thing where you see the word everywhere and you see Israel?

Do you think I'm implying that there's a possibility that Israel could have fascist traits? In response to this, this big guy starts attacking Adam. So Adam ran. Absolutely terrified. He ran and sought protection from the German police. The irony of a Jewish person feeling his life threatened by another Jewish person and then seeking refuge from the German police. Adam says this was the most surreal moment of his life. So so ironic, but let me flip that story on its head, right?

And now, okay, so it's 1988, and I am on the front page of a newspaper, and I get home to my mother and she's furious. She's fucking furious, because there I am on the front page of the newspaper and I'm whole, I'm there, my face is there and I'm holding up a flower and in front of me is a South African riot policeman, right? And it was one of the demonstrations I was at at the age of 18 on the campus at Vitt's University. All right. And I got into shit from my mother who said, what the fuck are you doing standing in

front of the right police? I got into shit from the Black Student Society because we as white students took orders from the Black Student Society. He said, what are you doing holding a flower to the fucking pig during This is not the 1960s, we're fighting a struggle. So I got in the ship from both sides, right? Now, cut to May, a few months ago, I mean, Iranian plots, there is a commemoration organized for the ongoing Nakhba. All right, we know what the Nakhba is, the catastrophe, right? So in 19, we don't have to explain that.

But all for two, the year before that, all commemorations for the Nakhba were banned. And in May, the commemorations for the Nakhba organized by Palestinian groups were banned. So Yudisha Stima, which means Jewish voices, the organization, they organized a commemoration. And we gathered together on a beautiful Sunday morning. And you know, it was really lovely and there were kids there, there were old people, it was great. and there were kids there, there were all people, it was great. And we were all gathered together there.

And we gave the platform to some Palestinian voices who were just speaking about freedom from the river to the sea. And suddenly the riot police came, boom, boom, boom, you know, lines of them intersected us. And I was faced again at the age of 52, not 18. So, from 1988 to 2023, and I'm facing eye to eye with the fucking white right policeman, and it was the same right policeman. And you know what I said to him, I said to him, where was your grandmother during the war? And he didn't answer me and I said,

do you know where my grandmother was? And he said, I don't care. At which point, I turned around At which point I turned around and two or three embers, there's footage of this from every single angle. Two or three of these riot police when jumped on top of me brutally beat me and arrested me, handcuffed me. The handcuffed me so tightly that they had to call the fucking fire brigade to cut the handcuffs off me. And like hang on, it gets worse. Then an hour later, I'm on the front page of the Berlin and Zaitung. There I am being marched off by German police, right police. And you know What the headline says, 100 anti-Semitic and Estonian protesters disrupt Jewish memorial. Check it out. Check it out. And you know what?

I think it's still up there. Yeah. Okay. This is where we're at. This is where we're at in this country. Like forget fact checking. This is not we're at. This is where we're at in this country. Like, forget fact checking. This is not a Palestinian. I'm a fucking Jew. You've arrested a fucking third-generation holocaust surviving Jew, you mother fucking Nazi. And they tell me, de-nartification never happened

in this country. There's not such thing as neo-Nazis. They're Nazis, man. And this deaf and hence though, he wants the Jews out of Germany. That's what's underneath all of the shit, right? Because if they were worried about anti-Semitism, let's talk about anti-Semitism, okay? Because I've got kids and they need to be safe. Yeah.

I mean, I was reading the other day, a news article from I think 51 or 52, that was about one of the, God, now I'm spacing out his name, but he was a very mocked general who was commanded troops on the Ostefront, survived the war, and later got into German politics.

It was just, it was an article about one of his political rallies, where protesters were like broken up and beaten up by German police officers. And it's kind of this, this same like, yeah, what were your, what was your family doing during those 12 years, you know? Like it's, it's, it's a question you can ask, but it's rarely really a question, right?

Right. Yeah. Like, it was never any, that's such an important point, you know, particularly when we talk about like why there is, you know, such what you can call technically support for Israel that's rooted as you noted often in just getting Jewish people out of Germany. Like there was never any kind of real denozzification. No, no systemic devil.

This is all about white supremacy, man, because I'll tell you what, and this goes deeper. On the 15th of July, they made a law in Bolit that all public swimming pools, they claim that there was a rise in violence in public swimming pools in Berlin. Particularly in Neukorn and Kroitsburg, which as we know are the areas of migrants, particularly Palestinian, Middle Eastern migrants, right? And in fact, if you look at the statistics from 2019 to 2022, violence has gone down by 21 or 23% I can't remember correctly. So that's incorrect. But now we have a stay, a position where at the entrance of every swimming pool, there is a police van and they are ethnically and racially profiling

people who come into swimming pools, right? And there is basically a law that says that there shall not be more than three men read, three men of color in a public swimming pool. Okay. And this is where we're heading. Felix Klein, who's the Federal Commission of Antisemitism, Stefan Hensel, who is the hamburger one, these people, the mayor of Berlin on Pentecost 9, he tweeted, check out, check out his tweet, he tweeted something, it went like this, it said, we wish everybody a happy Pentecost and we wish our guests a lovely time, our guests. This is like, dude, I mean, you know, it's a script. It's gin, it's gin, it's grim. It's fucking grim, man. And you know,

these people want a white, they want a white Aryan Christian fucking country. They want the dark people out. I mean, that's a huge part that people don't realize as that Zionism is mostly white supremacy, and mostly very anti-Jewish, because that's it advocates for just like the expulsion of the Jews again. Well, it's a fucking mental illness is what it is. I don't disagree with you.

I had wanted to reflect maybe as we end up on how far the needle has swung. When we talk about anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism and sort of where, because they do overlap, yeah, but they are not the same thing. I think about how there's just is led at New York Times published, like it was in the late 1940s, 48, 49. It co-signed by a lot of prominent Jewish intellectuals, including Hannah, Rent, Albert Einstein, talking about the settler policies in Israel at that time

and by Zionist groups at that time as fascist, which is something that would now be considered to be like anti-Semitism. Like that's calling Israel fascist was what got you chased at him by that guy. It's considered to be anti-Semitic in Germany, right? And these are people who, you know, that had lost family members, you know, like in their nuclear family to the Holocaust, like prominent Jewish intellectuals who would now be considered I guess anti-Semitic under this, like by saying shit New York Times would publish. And the Times wouldn't publish that now.

Yeah. You know, a few of us got together in Oranian plots in a place where we were arrested in May, a few like Jewish friends of mine, like some from Brooklyn, some from Israel, some from here. And, you know, five nights ago, a young Palestinian man was arrested by 12 Israeli policemen, and they branded a, they cut with a knife, the star of David into his cheek. My God. Yeah, and there's four to two of this. And they literally cut the star of David into his cheek. And we wore red stars of David at this vigil tonight.

And it just strikes me as ironic, you know, like 80 years ago, my ancestors were forced to wear a yellow star as a lapel on their arm band or stuck to their jackets to shame them, to declare them as Jews, as dirty Jews in public. And now, I feel like I've got a wear that's red star because of our collective shame, because of what's been done in our name by the state of Israel

and by Zionism. And this is not allowed to be done in my name, really. Sorry to be so grim, fuck. No, I mean, I if there was ever a story, yeah, I, yeah, it's a grim story, but I think it's a great place to, to end. There's still so much I want to ask you. I would love to know your thoughts about like liberal Zionism, but that's going to have to wait for next time. Thank you for giving us time in the middle or the early mornings. Thank you so much. Of course. Yeah. Adam, where can people find you online

and help support the advocacy you're doing? Mostly, I'm a bit of a geriatric, so I'm just on Instagram, Adam Brunberg. Great. Good stuff. I'll put it in the description for anyone that is curious. Thank you for doing your work. Everyone go follow Adam.

Make sure everyone doesn't just let's protect Adam. Let's protect Adam and his family out there. Thank you again. Thank you guys. Yeah. Thank you Adam. Really appreciate it. And that's the episode. Hi everyone, it's me James and I'm coming at you today, sweaty, smelly and exhausted from my pickup truck out in the desert where I have been spending the weekend trying my best to help along with lots of other dedicated mutual aid workers to mitigate the damage done by an entirely preventable humanitarian crisis at the United States Southern border. People are being held in the open desert in Hacumba where it gets hot in the day. It gets very cold at night and there are children, there are old people, there are young people.

All the support they're getting, it's from mutual aid workers, then maybe get some water from Border Patrol, from federal government and on which else. And I'm here before your podcast to ask you if you can to help. We've all spent all of our time and most of our money. The last few days, we are trying to help. We're all pretty broke, and we're all pretty tired, but I I could really do with your support and I'm going to give the Venmos and cash apps and PayPal information for two organizations who I daily love and whose work I have seen is extremely effective and is the only thing keeping this situation from being a lot worse and please don't think that if you don't have much money that you shouldn't give we can can work out, do a lot with a little. So if you only have five bucks, that is great.

If five bucks is a top for someone to sleep under or a few hot meals and what we're going to buy is food, blankets, tops, water, the things that start people dying at a desert. Those two organizations, Border Kindness and FreeShit Collective can be found online at Border Kindness and at Free free shit PB on Twitter. For border kindness, event mode is at border hyphen kindness. The cash app is dollar sign border kindness cash and the zealem paypal information is info at borderkindness.org. Free shit collective are at free shit collective on cash app and PayPal and at free shit pb on twitter. Thank you very much guys. Welcome Jake and happened here.

A podcast about things falling apart and sometimes how to put them back together again, I'm your host NeoWon. Now this is not one of those times where it's about how to put things back together again. This is one of those episodes about why everything is absolutely awful. And one of the reasons why everything is absolutely awful and something I've been driven progressively more and more insane by in the past sort of half a decade is the way people think and talk about class in the United States. Why, for example, do people think that Trump is working class? Why am I watching people argue that being a barista isn't actually being a worker? Why are all these millionaires driving

forward F-150s, while simultaneously claiming that they are also somehow working class? Why are billionaires fleeing to Colorado and Wyoming to cause play as workers by wearing jeans and t-shirts to bars? Why is every white ring dipship posting the same video of a guy in an oil rig meeting approximately 60,000 OSHA violations? Why is it the only part of the working class that anyone ever seems to call the working class is the white working class? Why is it that when people talk about the white working class

and then try to explain it with data, and this is true across the entire ideological spectrum, why do they start defining working class by things that are objectively not class-like education levels? And this reached a breaking point with me a few weeks ago, and has finally caused me to snap and write this. Now, I've given the game away a little by leading with the white working class stuff, because a lot of the reason that everything sounds so nuts is that when people talk about class in the US, most of the time

what they're actually talking about is race and gender. And this pisses me off because I think more about class than a lot of people with my ideology usually do, and I think it can actually be a very useful way to understand the world. However, comma, thinking and talking about class as a kind of floating signifier that you can just jam conservative racial and gender politics into is a really, really bad way to talk about class. On top of just the racism and the sexism, this way of looking at class reduces class, which is a social relation, into aesthetics and grievances.

And this leads to the question, how did this all happen? Now, you could take a really expansive look at this here and go back to Aristotle or start later with Locke or something. But I'm not going to do that because, well, okay, partially because this would be 17 years long, if I tried to do this, and this episode is already now three episodes. The other reason I'm not going to do this is that the actual story of how everything got like this is the story of how the right adapted and distorted the incredibly successful leftist

conception of labor that built the identity of the working class in the 18 and 1900s. And in order to do that, we need to talk about the labor theory of value. Now, when I talk about the labor theory of value, there are two things going on here. You have on the one hand, Marx's law of value, and then you have the set of slogans that are passed down the main line of the workers movements. And these are not the same thing at all, even though what someone just says is the labor theory of value. If that's the thing that you've heard of, you probably immediately think marks. So, for example, let's get into a sense of sort of what this kind of like sloganeering looks like. Here's the beginning of the Gotha program, which is the program of the German Social Democratic

pardon in the late 1800s. It begins quote, labor is the source of all wealth and all culture. Now, Marx hates this line of, he writes a thing called the critique of the Gotha program where he goes on a giant rant about how, you know, nature also produces use values and so on and so forth. But Marx's sort of bitterness at this aside, labor is the source of all wealth is a very,

very common sentiment. It's the expression of the sort of common understanding of production, class, and nature of value in the 19th and early 20th century. As the anthropologist David Graber pointed out, Abraham Lincoln, a man who is by no means a socialist and is in fact the president of the United States, talks like this. Here's Lincoln, quote, labor is prior to an independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor and could never have existed if labor had not existed first. Labor is superior of capital and deserves much the higher consideration. Now, this is obviously not something you'd ever hear from a president of the United States today.

And we'll come back to Graber's argument about why that is later. But I want to get a bit deeper into not just the common conception of the labor theory of value, but what the sort of capital W capital M workriest movement believed in. And this as it turns out has a tenuous relation to Marx, but is not the same thing. And I think it's different enough that I'm actually not going to spend another like 15 minutes trying to explain Marx's version of the labor theory of value or Marx's law of value because it doesn't ultimately matter that much, which is a very weird thing to say about the actual sort of, you know, about Marx's role in labor movement,

but it kind of doesn't. So what I'm going to do instead is read, well, I should, okay, I should also mention like we are going to get a bit more into like the things that Mark's actually wrote and why they mattered to the specific movements like next episode, but you know, we'll deal, we'll deal with that tomorrow. And in the meantime, I'm going to read a bit from the journal and notes from Unity and separation. Supporting workers' claims to respectability was a vision of their destiny with five tenets. 1. Workers were building a new world with their own hands.

2. In this new world, workers were the only social group that was expanding, whereas all other groups were contracting, including the bourgeoisie. 3. Workers were not only becoming the majority of the population, they were also becoming a compact mass, the collective worker, who was being drilled in the factory to act in concert with the machines. Four, they were thus the only group capable of managing the new world in accordance with this innermost logic. Neither a hierarchy of order givers and order takers, nor the irrationality of market fluctuations, but rather, an ever more

finally-grane division of labor. Five, workers were proving this vision to be true. Since the class was realizing what it was in a conquest of power, the achievement of which would make it possible to abolish class society and thus bring man's prehistory to a close. This is the basis of the formation of the identity of the working class. It's how people understand themselves as workers. And so in Marx's terms, this is the class in itself becoming the class for itself. This is the identity that produces the workers movement.

It's the expression of what people believe about themselves. Now, they were ingrained ideological assumptions here that go sort of beyond peer arguments about class, right? This is an argument about a very specific kind of factory worker. And in some sense, I think the focus on the factory worker as like the sort of emblematic like bearer of this. And this is true both of the theorist of the time and for people like end notes were looking back on it from like a hundred years later. I think this is kind of a distraction from what a lot of the actual base of the workers movement is, which is to say like coal miners and workers involved in energy logistics, you know, you

could take, for example, like the beating heart of the anarchists movement, much of the 20s and 30s are these and allucine coal miners whose built in C and ability to sort of control the supply of coal that, you know, capital, the capitalist class relied on for production, gave them enormous leverage. And as the sort of, as a historian, Timothy Mitchell has argued, it was this sort of capacity to break the economy through shutting off the coal supply through strikes and sabotage, which workers, workers at the time think of the strike as a kind of sabotage. And it's this capability that informs a lot of the sort of politics and sense of possibility of the 20th century worker's movement. And given what the people who are working in

a coal mine or like a dock worker or if you are working in a factory, right? It makes sense that these people believe this, right? You know, in terms of, you know, if you're looking at something like, you know, workers are building the new world with their hands, right? Or like, we're, you know, we are the only social group that's expanding. I, we're the only people who are capable of managing the new world according to its own logic. This makes a lot of sense if you are one of the people who live in a world that has effectively disappeared now. And that is a world where you literally are watching

cities because you're struck out of the tiny shells of villages right the the only the only way you can sort of experience that now is if you were one of the people in sort of the late the the 90s in the 2000s in China who you know like watch shenzhen turn from a fishing village into one of the largest cities in the world. But that's not really a thing anymore but on the other hand like this is what these people are experiencing and this is a group of people who can literally feel in their hands, the sort of the power and the value of the labor in what they're producing. They can see commodities appear in the world

and they can know that it was by their hands that the world was built. And this is not purely a metaphor, right? These are people who are literally creating the world around them. To quote one of the verses of solidarity forever that modern trade unions hilariously notably do not include in the version of the song that they tend to sing at things. The trade union version drops a bunch of verses. And one of those verses is in our hands is placed a power greater than their hordered gold, greater than the might of armies multiplied a thousand folds.

We can bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old, for the union makes us strong. And this is both the positive vision of the workers movement and its own sort of theoretical self-conception wrapped into one. It is the sort of rosy romantic picture of what the workers movement is. However, comma, this is the incredibly romantic version of this. And before we sort of leave the world of pure romance and go into the sort of dirty and grimy worlds of reality where everything kind of sucks and things are not what they normally seem. We are going to take an ad break

and we're back. Now, there are a lot of things about this work as a movement that if you just sort of look at it theoretically or if you're looking at this, one of this sort of like incredibly sort of rosy self caricatures, I guess, if you're purely looking at the kind of propaganda that the movement produces in order to create itself, you are going to get a very distorted picture of sort of what was actually going on on the ground.

And this also makes it very, very difficult to understand what happened because, you know, if you want to understand how this movement was defeated and how the like all of the sort of branches of the work, Christmas, like all of his different ideologies, all the different manifestations are essentially destroyed, you have to get to the point where you start to realize that the ideological conception of productivity, right, of the producer of what the worker is, was never as sort of dry and objective as theorists wanted us, and you know, you get the sense that they wanted like themselves, to believe. Case in point is the nature of what Marx calls the lumpin proletariat. So here's from end notes again. Who were these lumpin proletarians preaching anarchy? Attempts to spell that out usually took the form

not of structural analysis, but rather of long lists of shady characters, lists which collapse in on themselves in a frenzied incoherence. Here is Marx's paradigmatic discussion of the Lumpen-Prolotariat from the 18th-Mayer of Louis Bonaparte. On the pretext of founding a benevolent society, the Lumpen-Prolotariat of Paris had been organized into secret sections, each section led by Bonapartist agents. These lumpens supposedly consisted of, quote, vagabonds, discharge soldiers and jailbirds, escaped galley slaves, swindlers, motton bunks, lazorani, pick pockets, tricksters, gamblers, pimps, brothokeepers, porters, liter litter-roddy, organ-grinders,

rag-pickers, knife-grinders, tinkers, beggars, in short, the whole indefinite, disintegrating mass, thrown hither and vither, from which the French call La Bohème. Is there any truth in this paranoid fantasy? Do escaped convicts and organ-gr grinders share a common counter-revolutionary interest with beggars, which distinguishes them from the common mass worker who are apparently revolutionary by nature to think so is insane. The Lumpen-Proliteria was a specter haunting the workers' movements. If that movement constituted itself for the dignity of workers, then the lumpin was the figure of the undignified worker, or miraculously, the lumpin was one of its

figures. All of the movement's efforts to give dignity to the class were supposedly undermined by these disillute figures, drunk singing in the streets, petty criminals and prostitutes, references to the lumpin proletariatariat registered what was a simple truth. It was difficult to convince workers to organize as workers and, mostly, they didn't care about socialism. A great many of the poor, especially the very poor, did not think or behave themselves as proletarians or find the organizations and modes of actions of the movement

as applicable or relevant to them. In their fear of time, they'd rather go to the pub than sing worker songs. In the figure of the lumpin, we discover the dark underside of the affirmation of the working class. It was a biting class hatred. Workers saw themselves as originating out of a stinking morass from Katsuki's the class struggle, quote, at the time of the beginning of modern industry, the term proletariat implied absolute degeneracy. And there are persons who believe this is still the case. Moreover, capitalism was trying to push the back into the muck, thus the crisis tendencies of capitalism could only be resolved in one of two ways, the victory of the working class or in its becoming lumpin. Now, you can see a couple of

things very clearly here. One is there's been a lot of attempts to like resuscitate the lump and proletariat as like a functional class, especially, you see, especially the 70s and I really I really would recommend those people go back and read what Marx actually wrote about the lump and proletariat because it makes no sense. It is just like absolute sort of blithering nonsense. And the reason it's this kind of like incredibly bizarre, like paranoid, you know, list of fantasies is that beneath the sort of like faux scientific objectiveness, like of the workers movement is this incredibly petty moralism,

and a set of sort of Victorian social values with all of the sort of cruelty of the aristocratic masters. And I want to sort of point out here, like this kind of thinking, you know, this kind of like we are the movement that is a liberation of the class, but in order to do that, we need to prove that like we are like actually sort of like real dignified human beings and that there's another group of people who are just us, but we hate them because they don't behave the way that we think they're supposed to.

This is a very, very common thing that you see in basically all social movements, especially in their earliest and shittiest iterations. You see this in the early feminist movement, I mean, you see this still in the feminist movement, but there are sections of it that do this too. There's a really good piece called Some Like It Hot by Sophie Lewis about the sort of feminist reaction to Marilyn Monroe.

And I'm gonna read a little bit from it. One of the things that you get the sense of is that people like Gloria Steinem just absolutely hate Marilyn Monroe. And the stuff they write about her is stuff that you would be almost incomprehensible to imagine any of these people, or even just sort of like a modern conservative writing on purpose about a woman and being allowed to sort of get away with it. I mean, they're just horrible things about her. Oh, I'm gonna read a little bit from the piece.

Perhaps it was Monroe's dumping of three husbands. Two of them were famous and powerful that posed, quote, no adult challenge to Steinem's mind. Or perhaps Steinem's comments closed, nothing so much as her own inability to see high-fem people as subjects. Here, in case it might pierce the veil, Isman Row, Apejim, written on Waldorf's story at a letter paper in 1955. Quote, everyone has violence in themselves. I am violent.

Here is another spoken to photographer Bruno Bernard in 1956. Both the anti-communists on the House Committee on Un-American Activities and the movie censors on the production board should be buried alive. Perhaps Steinem, who proudly worked for the CIA in the 50s and 60s, would not appreciate this kind of courage. The courage of one Norma, who, when notified by the police at Los Angeles Roadblock in 1949 that a nearby house was being monitored for ties to communists, shouted the officers ear off and went straight to tip off blacklisted screenwriters, Nourma and Ben Bowersman.

And so you can sort of see what's happening here, right? It's a very similar thing where there were these sort of like, you know, you have these very sort of like, like respectable mainstream feminists who look at someone like Marilyn Monroe, who, you know, and they just fucking hate her. They absolutely despise her because she is sort of, she is the image of what they sort of think that they're fighting against, right? Like, their, their, their, their, what liberation looks like for them is to like not be this kind of woman and that's you know and that's you know and that this is that's the sort of unspoken or sometimes just overly spoken core Of what a lot of this stuff is and you know this is how these people like can justify like working for the fucking CIA right

And you know somehow claiming to as else to be like superior feminist feminist to Marilyn, Marilyn Monroe, who at great personal cost and at great danger, fought Hugh Wack. And shit, so this kind of, we are the group who is going to free our own group. We're also not like, because we're not like those other people who are literally the same as us, but we don't like them because we don't think they're respectable enough.

This is a very, very old trend. But it has real social consequences, and it's a really disastrous strategy, because it means that all of these movements have these sort of flanks from which they can be attacked. One of these flanks for the workers' movements, and one that's become increasingly important now, is the kind of producerous conception of what a worker is. You know, this is the man sort of creating the new world with his bare hands. The problem is that, you know, this is never what most labor actually was. Here's David Draper again.

In fact, there was never a time when most workers worked in a factory. Even in the days of Karl Marx, Charles Dickens working class neighborhoods, housed far more maids, boot blacks, dustmen, cooks, nurses, cabbies, schoolteachers, prostitutes, caretakers, and costar mongers that employees and coal mines, textile mills, or iron foundries. Are these former jobs productive? In what sense and for whom? Who produces the who flay? Is because of these ambiguities that such issues

are typically brushed aside when people are arguing about value. But doing so blinds us to the reality that most working class labor, whether carried out by men or women, actually resembles what we archetypically think of as women's work. Looking after people, seeing to their

wants and needs, explaining reassuring, anticipating what the boss wants or is thinking, not to mention caring for monitoring and maintaining plants, animals, machines, and other objects, then it involves hammering, carving, hoisting, or harvesting things. And you know, you can see in this sort of issue, right? You can see the access upon which the workers who have been is going to be split in the 80s and 90s. If you can convince a set of workers that what they're doing is, you know, masculine productive labor, right? And that, you know, what those other people are doing is this, like, feminine care labor

that doesn't produce anything. You can turn the entire ideology of the work as we've been on its head and transform it from a liberatory ideology about the end of the class system to a patriarchal ideology about the necessity of labor to sort of manhood and masculinity. And once the ideological shift is made, you can start writing off entire fields of labor as being insufficiently, quote, unquote, productive, or, you know, as the right wing shift renders it, you can say productive and mean insufficiently masculine to count as part of like the working class TM.

This problem, you know, is Graber argues, is a consequence of the sort of maniacal focus on production that defined the workers movement, because it obscures the fact that, again, most of actual labor is care labor. And this is something we've discussed at length on this show in sort of ethnographic, if not theoretical terms, while talking to Starbucks workers. And in these conversations, it becomes almost immediately clear that a huge part of the job has, you know, very little to do with making coffee or even classical customer management and the interpretive and emotional labor of doing service work. What these workers are actually doing is acting as a replacement for the collapsing of

American social safety net. They are taking care of and literally saving the lives of people who capitalism is spat out and left to die. This is by any actual, I'm not going to say objective standard, because I don't think there is an objective standard for what work, like, how much work something is. But, you know, in terms of the amount of labor and the difficulty of labor and in terms of like, what is being expected of expected of these workers. This is incredibly intense, difficult labor. But because of the patriarchal idea and conception that is consumed, what our collective conception

of what a quote-unquote real job is, the enormous amount of care labor that perists do every day, and there's a good argument and. Graber makes a very similar argument to this that you can look at the entire job. You can look at most economic production as care labor, right? Because you're producing this coffee in order to care for someone. You make a bridge in order to like, like in order to that people can use it, right? But there's a good argument that like

all everything a barista does is care labor, but because it's not like making cars or being one of the last 50,000 coal miners left in the US, it's not considered real labor. And all of this is just a bomb that is left sitting under the ideological core of the workers' movements. And that bomb probably would have just gone off on its own. You know, why say on its own? That bomb probably would have been set off by something we're going to talk about tomorrow,

which is the ship and the labor force in a lot of countries that sort of deindustrialized towards this kind of labor being the sort of standard, like being just even more obviously the standard form of labor. But the ruling class figured out a way to sort of set this bomb off and ensure that, and ensure that it would just detonate the workers immediately.

And the thing that they figured out to set this bomb off is racism. And that is what I'm going to talk about tomorrow. The story of how the fusion of racism and sexism that I may well be remembered by historians is the force that burned the entire world, consumed what was left of the workers movement, and turned this country into Neil Liberal Reagan hell. Hi everyone, it's me James and I'm coming at you today, sweaty, smelly, and exhausted from my pick-up truck out in the desert where I have been spending the weekend trying my best to help along with lots of other dedicated mutual aid workers to mitigate the damage done by an entirely preventable humanitarian crisis at the United States Southern border. People have been

held in the open desert in Hacumba where it gets hot in the day, gets very cold at night, and there are children, there are old people, there are young people. All the support they're getting, it's from mutual aid workers, then maybe get some water from Border Patrol, from Federal Government, and on which else. And I'm here before your podcast to ask you if you can to help. We've all spent all of our time and most of our money. The last few days, we're trying to help. We've all spent all of our time and most of our money. The last few days, we're trying to help, we're all pretty broke and we're all pretty tired, but I could really do with your support.

And I'm gonna give the Venmos and cash apps and PayPal information for two organizations who I daily love and whose work I have seen is extremely effective and is the only thing keeping this situation from being a lot worse. And please don't think that if you don't have much money that you shouldn't give, we can work out, do a lot with a little. So if you only have five bucks, that is great. Five bucks is a top for someone to sleep under or a few hot meals. And what we're going to buy is food,

blankets, tops, water, the things that start people dying in the desert. Those two organisations, border kindness and free shit collective can be found online at border kindness and at free shit PB on Twitter. For border kindness, event mode is at border hyphen kindness. The cash app is dollar sign border kindness cash, and the zeal and PayPal information is info at borderkindness.org. FreeShit Collective are at freeShit Collective on cash app and PayPal and at freeShitPb on Twitter. Thank you very much, guys. Welcome to Eggadab and here a podcast about why everything absolutely sucks. I'm your host, Neil Wong. I'm back again. And last episode, we talked about the problems with conceiving of all of labor as production, from a sort of macro-feminist

perspective of thinking about how thinking of all labor as production doesn't actually capture what most labor is. And we looked at how this allowed patriarchy to become a wedge to pry the workers who've been to part. But there's another sort of more micro problem with thinking about productive labor. And that micro problem is that people are just absolutely unable to think of about productivity in anything other than moral terms. As to why this is the case, I'm not gonna put forward an answer. I've seen every theory from like its Christianity to like its structural feature of capitalism

to its human nature or whatever. I don't know, did pick your theory about why everyone is incapable of being normal about productivity, but this turns out to be a real problem for anyone who is trying to use productive versus unproductive labor in a purely technical sense. Now the most famous person to do this is, as some of you probably know, one Carl Marx, and I was hard on Marx last episode. But this one and the stuff that's

going to follow isn't really his fault. Marx here is actually doing one of the times where he's being very reasonable and he's being very specific about what productive labor is. And everyone else is being extremely unreasonable. And you know And given the incredibly dark places, this is going to go, maybe this is one of those things where like, I don't know, you need to pick different words that aren't as emotionally charged as like productive and unproductive labor. But all in all, the catastrophe that's about to unfold

is not Marx's fault. There was really no way that he could have known how not everyone was going to go over this. So what actually is the distinction between productive and unproductive labor from Marx? So first off, and this is very important, productive versus unproductive labor is a technical term. It has no moral content at all. All it means is that some labor produces capital for the capital owning class and some labor doesn't. That's literally it.

Here's Marx. The commodities the capitalist buys for his own private consumption are not consumed productively. They do not become factors of capital. Just as little to the services he buys for his consumption, voluntarily or through compulsion from the state, etc. for the sake of their use value. They do not become a factor of capital. They are not therefore productive kinds of labor, and those who perform them are not productive workers. As you can see, this has literally nothing to do

with the contents of the labor itself or morality whatsoever. If a dancer works for production company and gives it performance, you know, working for the company, that's productive labor because the company has turned their capital into more capital by using the dancer to produce a commodity, which is, you know, the performance and then selling it, right?

If that same dancer puts on the same performance in the same place for a crowd of, you know, just like their friends, or even the same people who are paying a production company for it, suddenly the dancer who, again, is doing the same thing in the same place, like even could be on the same day, is doing non-productive labor because no capital was being created from it. Or as you know, here's how Marx puts it, labor with the same content can therefore be both productive and unproductive. Milton, for example, who did Paradise Lost, was an unproductive worker. In contrast to this, the writer who delivers hack work for his publisher was a productive worker. Later on,

Milton sold the product for $5 into that extent, became a dealer in a commodity. But the light-sick literary proletarian who produces books, e.g., Compendium, Political Economy, at the instruction of his publisher is roughly speaking a productive worker. Insofar as his production is subsumed under capital and only takes place for the purpose of the latter's valorization. This is a valorization of capital, which is like having capital make more capital. A singer who sings like a bird is an unproductive worker. If she sells her singing for money, she is to that extent a wage laborer or a commodity dealer.

But the same singer, when she is engaged by an entrepreneur who has her singing order to make money, is a productive worker, for she directly produces capital. A schoolmaster who educates others is not a productive worker, but a schoolmaster who was engaged as a wage laborer in an institution alongside, along with others, in order to make, in order through his labor to valorize the money of the entrepreneur of the knowledge-mongering institution, is a productive worker. Now, okay, I'm reading a lot of marks here. I'm focusing on marks, you know, because whether or not someone in, you know, the 1800s is a Marxist or not, and if you picked just like a random worker in the period when this is being written, the

odds are really bad that they're going to be in Marxist. Marx was enormously influential, particularly in Europe as sort of social democracy swept through the Germany's and then comedies and sort of swept back to Europe and the US. And Marxist also, and this is something that Marx himself takes great pains to conceal a lot of the time, Marx is a kind of medium through which the broad cultural consensus on labor was transformed into like capital T theory. And in this capital T theory, productive versus unproductive labor is not a moral claim at all. It's a measure of whether any given labor produces capital for the bourgeoisie. not a moral claim at all. It's a measure of whether any given labor produces capital for the bourgeoisie. Now, part of what Marx is trying to do here is to intervene in an existing discourse

about productive and unproductive labor to turn it into useful theory instead of people just yelling stuff at each other. And Marx, I feel you, buddy. Oh boy, taking this as a validation of what I'm doing. Here's an example. I'm just going to put it here in barks being very mad about this. The self-employed laborer, for example, is his own wage labor, and his own means of production confront him in his own mind as capital. As his own capitalist, he employs himself as a wage laborer, a non-molies of this type then offer a favorable field for outpourings of drivel about productive and unproductive labor. So, you know, even in the 1800s, people are,

people are being incredibly normal about this, they're saying things that are great and good and only that, they're being exceptionally good. Marx isn't slowly being driven mad by reading it all. But when it's being used as a technical category, the sort of productive versus unproductive distinction, it can tell you a lot of stuff about how a capitalist economy functions. But when it inevitably becomes a moral category, things get very bad very quickly. So we're going to go into two times that this has gone very badly. The Nazis and a ruddled Reagan. Now the Nazis and Reagan aren't quite doing the same thing. There's a lot of similarities, which is to be expected from a band who went to a Nazi cemetery that included

a bunch of SS dudes and then gave a speech defending his actions where he said, and I quote, they, which is referring to Nazi soldiers, quote, they were victims, just as surely as the victims and the concentration camps, which I, I, what the fuck? What are you even supposed to do with that? Like I just, this guy was a president of the United States. I mean, I, like, I don't know, it makes sense, but like, he'd never even crossed my mind that it was like, it would even be possible to have a take

that is people in the Nazi army are actually just as much victims as the people in the concentration camps. Like I, I don't know, baffling stuff by Reagan. I mean, I guess not baffling considering how closely his administration has tied to a bunch of sort of Nazis who became like anti-communists. So I'm here. We're always anti-communists, but who became part of sort of like institutional anti-communism

and like the post-war era, but God what a what a terrible thing. I'm getting my shots in at Reagan now because this is about to get so incredibly bleak so Yay So okay, so the the the right is able to sort of, you know, very successful, in fact, in transforming this distinction between productive and non-productive labor into a moral category. And then, they infuse it with anti-semitism. And through this sort of, I don't know, the horror of anti-Semitism, productive labor is transformed into, you know, productive and unproductive members of society.

And this is one of the origins of sort of Nazi race science and race craft, you know, they have their attempt to quote unquote purify their race, which relies on a distinction between sort of productive and nonproductive members of society, who's like, quote, unquote, value and productive capacity, you know, comb to be seen as like, genetically heritable, which, you know, from the Nazi perspective, they're like, oh, this is tough, this is heritable. We need to do eugenics and mass exterminations of, you know, increasing numbers of disabled queer communists, and especially Jewish and gromo people to ensure that only the quote, unquote, like productive members society remain and like pass down their traits. And this is fucking horrible, but this is also too simple for an explanation for what actually happens.

In order to actually fully grasp the depths of what's happening here and how this stuff functions. We need to go deeper into specifically looking at anti-semitism. In order to do this, I'm going to turn to the great sort of, the great social theorist Moish Pestone, Dresden piece, died a few years ago. Apparently a great guy, I don't know, but yeah, Piston and his essay anti-Semitism in national socialism. This is something I recommend people read in full. It's a bit theoretically intense. It's also like one of the most heartbreaking things we've ever read. But I think it's important to understand what national socialism actually was and what it's what it's sort of ideological basis was because

it oh boy not only has it not gone away it you know it's doing it's doing it's doing a lot of the sort of work that we've been sort of discussing um okay, okay, so what is, what is, what is Piston actually talking about? So Piston sees Nazi anti-Semitism, not just as, you know, the sort of socialism of fools were like Jewish people that got substituted for capitalists to deceive the worker. And okay, like, yeah, it's like it serves as function to some extent. But for Piston, like not the anti-Semitism is its own sort of horrific, incomplete anti-capitalist system. It's this sort of ghastly, Aryan-beer of like Marxism.

And you know, okay, so to get an understanding of what he means by this, because this is something that is, you know, like, it's deeply, it's kind of theoretically intense, but it's worth it. So in Marxism, the central mystery of the commodity is that a commodity is a, well, I mean, central mystery isn't the right word, but this is one of the opening things in capital is that, you know, this is this thing called the commodity fetish. You have a commodity. A commodity is simultaneously a concrete physical object that nonetheless contains within it an abstract social relation. It has at the same time a use value, which is like, you know, the thing that makes it useful, right, like take a pencil, right, pencil, it has a use value,

the use value is that you can like use it to write things, right? And you can use it to erase things. But the pencil also has an exchange value. And the exchange value, you know, is the value, quote, unquote, that you use to compare it to other commodities, right? It's like how much is this thing worth? How much is this compare to other commodities.

This is an enormous, it's kind of a simplification of it. But what's happening here is that, the sort of the exchange value that lets you compare how much a pencil is worth, how much a bracelet is worth, right? That's not an actual characteristic of the pencil or the bracelet that is a serious, that's an embedded social relation, right?

So an embedded, it's an embedded capital, a social relation that allows a commodity to be compared to all of the commodities by, again, like embedding this capital, a social relation into it. The important part for our purposes is that the commodity has, at the same time, a concrete component, which is the physical object and an abstract component, which is the sort of capitalist social relation embedded in the pencil that makes it appear to have value. Here's Piston.

As indicated above, on the logical level of the analysis of the commodity, the, quote, double character allows the commodity to appear as a purely material entity rather than as an objectification of mediated social relations. So this is, this is a more complicated way of saying what I've sort of been trying to get at, which is that the commodity, you know, because it's a physical object, right? The commodity fetish allows the commodity to appear as if it's just a peer physical object instead of something that is produced by capitalism and contains within it capital of social relations that give value. So we'll back back back to Piston. Relatedly, it allows concrete labor to appear as a purely material creative process separate from capital

of social relations on the logical level of capital. The double character, labor process and valorization process and by valorization process, he means the process that turns, you know, capital into more capital. So the fact that there's both a labor process and a valorization process allows industrial production to appear as a purely material creative process, separable from capital. The manifest form of the concrete is now more organic. Industrial capital can then appear as linear descendant of, quote, natural artisanal labor, as, quote, organically rooted in opposition to, quote, rootless, quote, parasitic finance capital.

You can see here where the whole sort of productive versus unproductive labor distinction has ended up, right? It's been transformed into the sort of organic concrete rooted like productive national worker and like entrepreneur versus like rootless parasitic finance capital. like entrepreneur versus like ruthless parasitic finance capital. This is unbelievably dangerous because now having set the concrete against the abstract, the fascist proceeds to turn the abstract into a people, which is Jewish people. The result of this is that in the fascist mind, the sort of concrete productive worker and the entrepreneur stand against the abstract anti-national finance capital, personified in the figure of the Jew. Here's a person again at what happened next.

The extermination of European Jewry is the indication that it is far too simple to deal with Nazism as a mass movement with anti-capitalist overtones which shed that husk in the 1934 Rome push. At the latest, once dead served as purpose and state power have been seized. In the first place, ideological forms of thought are not simply conscious manipulations. In the second place, this view misunderstands the nature of Nazi-Cote anti-capitalism, the extent to which it was intrinsically bound to the anti-Semitic worldview, Auschwitz

indicates that connection. It is true that the somewhat too concrete and plebian quote-unquote anti-capitalism of the essay was dispensed with by 1934. Not however, the anti-Semitic thrust, the knowledge quote-unquote, that the source of evil is abstract, the Jew. A capitalist factory is a place where value is produced, which, unfortunately, has to take the form of the production of goods, of use values. The concrete is produced as the necessary carrier of the abstract. The extermination camps were not a terrible version of the factory. The extermination camps were not a terrible version of the factory. The extermination camps were not a terrible version of such a factory, but rather should be seen

as its grotesque area, quote, anti-capitalist negation. Auschwitz was a factory to, quote, unquote, destroy value, that is, to destroy the personifications of the abstract. Its organization was that of a fiendish industrial process, the aim of which was to liberate the concrete from the abstract. The first step was to dehumanize, that is to rip away the quote, unquote, mask of humanity, of qualitative specificity, and reveal the Jews for quote, what they really are, shadows, ciphers, numbered abstractions. The second step was to then eradicate that abstractness, to transform it into smoke, trying

in the process to rest away the last remains of the concrete material, use value, clothes, gold, hair, soap, Auschwitz, not the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, was the real German revolution. The attempted overthrow, not merely of a political order, but of the existing social formation. By this one deed, the world was to be made safe from the tyranny of the abstract, in the process the Nazis, quote, unquote, liberated themselves from humanity. in the process the Nazis, quote, unquote, liberated themselves from humanity. The Nazis lost the war against the Soviet Union, America and Britain. They won their war, their revolution against the European Jews. And this ideology, this pitting of the abstract against the concrete,

is so powerful that it was never defeated. By the time the Nazis were defeated militarily, they had, you know, by the combined might of five of the largest empires in human history, they had already won. And their ideology never went away. If you look closely, you can still see it moving throughout the world. You can see it in the left making exactly the same mistakes it made before, waging war against the abstract and the name of anti-captain of the anti-capitalism that can never end with the actual destruction of capitalism in that specific form. You can see it in a right that openly espouses these exact same ideas

in the form of pitting their nationalists and patriots against the globalists, in the way it pits national American or Russian or Hungarian workers against George Soros. It is the basis of all modern right wing thought. And when we come back from ads, we are going to talk about right wing thoughts other basis, Ronald Reagan's rampant racism. We've now seen one way that the productive and unproductive worker distinction can be turned into unfathomable right wing violence. And now we're going to take a look at another one, which is the myth of the welfare queen. So one of the ways that Reagan eventually took power was by, I mean, literally he was doing this for like a decade.

He does it for like 20 fucking years. He's insufferable. He's screaming about the myth of the welfare queen. So the welfare queen for people who like, I don't know, were too young to like remember what, I mean, I wasn't around for the original height of it, but like I fucking remember it from when I was a kid. It's this sort of like mythical racist caricature of like a black woman who lives off of scamming the welfare system.

And you can see what's happening here pretty clearly, right? This is not like a particularly subtle political maneuver. The plan is to pit, you know, sort of so-called like productive workers and entrepreneurs versus people on welfare. And through the sort of incredible power of racism and specifically misogynoir, which is, you know, through the power of America's just like,

specific abide in case you're a black woman, the identity of the worker is transformed into a racial category. So what you're a black woman, the identity of the worker is transformed into a racial category. So what you're actually dealing with is this opposition Reagan is trying to create between quote unquote, like productive white people who like work for a living or whatever. And you know, black welfare queens, quote unquote,

who are dependent on the state and don't work. And this is sort of Reagan's framing of it. Now, if you go back to the sort of older, bark, just conception of class, right? Like unemployed black people are like unambiguously part of the working class. And this is something that Reagan understood. Now part of what was going on here actually was Reagan

attempting to sort of crack down on black welfare activists who were doing a lot of, you know, really incredible organizing, ranging from sort of like incredible organizing ranging from organizing mass protests, to doing squats, to doing full-on building occupations. Reagan and more so the people around Reagan by the end, because by like term to Reagan has basically checked out, but the people around Reagan can see which way the wind is blowing. And you know, they are busy sort of like lining up every fan they can find to make the wind blow a bit stronger. And the way that

the winds are blowing is that a bunch of people are about to be spat out of the capitalist system into increasingly precarious service jobs or just no jobs at all. And as the sort of crisis dynamics emerged and intensified, and people tend to forget this, but Reagan's term started with him nuking the economy, setting off a recession and jacking employment up to 10%. But as this unfolds, Reagan sees a perfect opportunity to sever what Marx would call the industrial reserve army, who are all the people who've been spat out of the capitalist system and forced to face

sort of precarity and unemployment. He sees an opportunity to like, to split these people from workers who held onto their jobs. And the way you do this is by talking about class in a way that's really about race. This new sort of moral division of like productive non-productive worker is incredibly racialized which is to say that like, I mean, it's just really racist.

There's no certain, I don't know, there's no, I'm not gonna do the circumlocution on that shit, it is really racist and it's specifically designed to pit white workers against black workers and it's also designed to pit white workers against black workers. And it's also something we should point out here. Like reality has no effect on the sort of, like the actual propaganda value, but like the people who are on welfare are working. Like they're off, they're working a lot, they're working really shit jobs, they're working

more than the people who aren't on welfare in a lot of cases. What's happening here, right? So this entire thing is very specifically designed to pit white workers against black workers by invoking racial prejudice and slightly more subtly, it's designed to remove black workers from the category of labor altogether through the sort of means of America's like deep in abiding, hatred of black women. of labor altogether through the sort of means of America's like deeper to bonding he should have black women. Now back in sort of reality and then again bearing in mind, reality has no effect on this bullshit, but back in reality like the actual biggest welfare cheat of the modern era is Brett Farh, former quarterback of the Minnesota Vikings,

please send all complaints to I rate okay on Twitter. Far has managed to spend $77 million of welfare money on a bunch of bullshit that includes like trying to get a multi million dollar volleyball facility built at his daughter's school. The actual woman who was like the model for the first like welfare queen thing like may have stolen $8,000. But, you know, this doesn't matter at all

because again, like reality's ability to combat propaganda is incredibly weak. And, you know, and the other thing that's important to understand about this, right, is this was never actually about the money. And this is something that people use to try to combat this stuff, right? Which people will point out and they're right that like, yeah, like, you know, in order to like quote unquote combat welfare fraud, like you spend more money,

try to combat the fraud that you save on the fraud. But that's not the point. That's not the point at all. The point is again, like turning white workers against black workers happen to be unemployed. And it works incredibly well because they they tap into just really powerful wells of emotion racism and they tap into a second one, which is people hating work. But because this is the right, the way they tap into people hating work was they transform it into the seeding hatred and resentment at the possibility of someone not having to

have the suffering that you have and doing the thing that you always want to do, which is not work, and then tying that to, oh, these people don't have to suffer the way that I do because they're living off of like the product of my labor. And, you know, you can see the sort of ghosts, right, of like an anti-capitalist critique of labor, which is like, yeah, there are a bunch of people who like don't work a fucking day and their lives off the prosciit proceeds of our labor. They wear a bunch of suits and they, you know, they're like 17th generation, like Descendants of the Walton family or whatever, but this is the sort of right wing version of it. And so, through the sort of

lines of racism and through the sort of transformation of class and productivity, like into into sort of like pure race. Just of course, they've managed to sort of, you know, they've managed to completely transform the way people think about class. And this is a big part of the reason why the way Americans think about class is so absent, so incredibly messed up. And it's a big part of the reason why,

you know, the United States has spent, I mean, spent the next 50 years doing this unbelievably merciless, like ruthless purge and just like mass inflection of suffering on the poorest people in the US. It's because of this shit. And this is also the reason that no one, you know, if you're fucking reading the New York Times, right, you will never hear

anybody talk about black workers. They will only ever talk about white workers. And this is because that ideological project, the ideological project that Reagan was attempting to do was, a big part of it was again about an attempt to expel black workers from the popular collective imagination of the working class. And it fucking worked. If you're a white pundit, you can do this thing. You can make an entire career off of studying, quote, unquote, the working class only ever talk to white people because that's the only part of the working class that like exists

to these people that they even will pretend matters. And then, you know, never mention black workers exist even existing at all, much less like engage with black workers as like the core of the workers movements. And no one outside of like actual left-of-circles were even bad and I know, no one even thinks this is fucking weird, right?

And you can get away with this shit because you know, 80% of all discourse about class is really about race or gender and you know, 80% of all discourse about race is fucking white people talking to other white people. And that's what we're going to end for today. We will, we will come back to the sort of ruling class reaction to this under other time. But in the meantime, this has been Naked App and here. Go out into the world and make something that's not this one. History meets excitement at Senna Gbuffalo Creek Casino. Walking distance from all of Buffalo's best attractions, Senna Gbuffalo Creek Casino. Walking distance from all of Buffalo's best attractions, Senna Gabaflo Creek Casino is the perfect addition to your Buffalo to-do list.

Enjoy the thrill of gaming and gourmet cuisine from small plates to fine dining. Unwind at one of our lively happy hours and take in the stunning cityscape from our patio with incredible sunset views. Plan your visit at Senna Gabaflo Creek Casino.com. Senna Gabaflo Creek Casino. Nothing else comes close. I'm Penelope Spheras. I'm a film director. I want to tell you a story about a friend of mine. Back in the 70s Peter Ivers moved to LA to start his music career. He scored Ron Howard's directorial debut. I didn't know one thing about Peter Ivers. I just said, okay, let's meet him.

An event hosted a late night cable TV show. It showcased LA punk bands in all their glory. The crowd started getting bigger and bigger and then there was Beverly Danzola. There was John Baloozy. But then it all went to hell. Peter was murdered. Peter Ivers was murdered on March 3rd, 1983. And it raised a question that 40 years later, we still don't know the answer to. Who killed Peter Ivers?

Listen to Peter and the Acid King on the I Heart Radio app Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts This is in retrospect a podcast about pop culture from the 80s and 90s that shaped us I'm very much a product of the pop culture I consumed and I don't think that's a bad thing. I'm Jessica Bennett, a New York Times writer and bestselling author. I'm Susie Bette Karam, an award-winning TV producer and filmmaker. Every week we'll revisit a moment in cultural history that we just can't stop thinking about. From tabloid headlines to illicit student-teacher relationships and one very memorable red swimsuits. I found myself in Pamela Anderson's attic as you do. I put that red swimsuit in a safe because it seemed

everybody wanted it. We're digging deep to better understand with these moments taught us about the world and our place in it. I want you to really smell the axe body spray that emanated during this time. It was presented more as kind of like a crime topic. Okay. And that's not a lie.

It's not a love story. It had been branded on the uteruses of every single woman from C to shining C. Listen to In Retrospect on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Hey, everybody. Robert Evans here. The episode you're about to hear was recorded late last night at like two in the morning due to the time difference between me and Joe, who is based in Armenia.

As you may have heard, Azerbaijan launched another attack on the independent Armenian majority region of Artsakh, which is in territory that Azerbaijan claims. Since we recorded this a couple hours after, the Artsakh defense forces have surrendered. There's currently negotiations and something that's being called a ceasefire, although there continue to be reports of shelling and other violent acts by the Azari military. It's kind of unclear what is going to happen. Tens of thousands of frightened Armenians have crowded the airport out of Artsakh. The pictures are pretty stunning and sobering.

Out of fears that a genocide will be instituted against the Armenian populace in that area. The episode you're about to hear is Joe and I kind of talking earlier in the invasion pretty soon after it happened, going over some of the history, what's going on now, fears for the future. So, I thought it was still valuable stuff, but I wanted to let you know the situation has advanced since we recorded this, as is often in the case when you're talking about, you know, unfolding events. So thank you. Hey everyone, welcome to It Could Happen Here, a podcast about It Happening Here, and unfortunately for our guest today,

it is again, this is not the first time that it has been happening where this person happens to live. Joe Kassabian, Joe, hey, how you doing, buddy? Hey, you're over. It's, I would like to say it's good to be back, but this tends to happen a lot. We did, in between the first time you were, or the last time you were

on this show, and now, you know, we had a surprise meeting in Dublin that was a lovely time. That is true. That is true. Yeah. And now, Joe, you, you, you are a podcaster, a, a genocide, expert and academic studying that. And also, you know also the host of the Lionsled by Donkeys podcast, which is a lovely podcast. And you are based out of Yervan, which is the capital of Armenia, which is a country that is not yet being invaded, but is also in another way is being invaded right now, right? Like it's a complicated situation. Basically, the gist of it is folks, if you're kind of tuning in. There is a, there are a number of different little republics in the Caucasus region.

There are a number of different little republics in the Caucasus region. And one of the, like over the course of the last, like, I don't know, a couple of thousand years, there have been a lot of Armenian people in this area that we call the Caucasus, right? And, you know, you have your, you know, a couple of thousand years of history, around the 11th century, you get some claims start being made to this area in what is now called Carbac. Art Sack. And yeah, now you've got this kind of area

that is a Armenian majority region where the surrounding Azari people argue that it is their land, their territory, that they should be allowed to take it. And there have been a series of wars that have been fighting, that have been going on over this area since the fall of the Soviet Union. And now, as we are talking right now, Joe, you and I, the Azari military has just launched a new invasion

with the presumed goal, with the stated goal, really, of retaking this entire region and potentially the goal of engaging the Armenian military in a wider formal way, right? That's at least the way the Azeris have discussed it. The Armenian military, the Armenian government has said like, this is not, you know, Artsakh is not Armenia. This is not like our troops and stuff on the ground here. But the Azaris have basically just said like, we are disabling Armenian military equipment. Yeah, it's, it's, you know, it goes back to December of last year. I mean, obviously, this goes back even before then, but if you start talking about, you know, history people's eyes are going to glaze over. Um, yeah, this, the, the war that was fought in 2020, obviously, I survived on one and ever since then, uh, a car

block or art, art sock has been cut off from the Republic of Armenia through this area called the Lushing Corridor. And yeah, according to the treaty, it was supposed to be maintained by Russian peacekeepers, but it never was. And specifically since December of 2022, Carbock has been completely cut off by the Azaria and Russian military and is effectively being starved out. So it's been, you know, quite a long time. And we knew, like everybody knew the war was going to come again. But we kind of assumed it was going to be in like 2025 when the Russians are mandated to leave. But it's already yesterday. It's already yesterday.

It seems like I think it's like the Zarez invaded right after about 23 tons, something like that of essentially like bread was brought into like across the the Lachon corridor, right? Like literally we got like this. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, this tiny amount of food makes it into this starving populace and then the next day invasion starts. Yeah, since December, they've done as much as they possibly could turn Carbock into what is effectively an open air

concentration camp. And the military operation now, what it is, it to me is it's a continuation of the 2020 war because they couldn't conquer the Pondock carrots in 2020, which is the capital of Carbock. Yeah, due to external pressures pressures as well as military capacity. Because during 2020, the Republic of Armenia, despite not legally, directly fighting the war, was of course helping Garbock with volunteers, soldiers, military supplies, everything. This time they can't. It's completely cut off.

And this is not a war of any kind of near-pure powers. The local car box defense force called the Art Sock Defense Army is a self-defense group. They have some heavy equipment, but the vast majority of it was destroyed in 2020. So this is effectively like a local gun trying to try to fight the US Army. This is more or less a militia going up against, I mean, like the Azeris, one of their major suppliers of arms is Israel. Israel and Turkey, yeah. Russia is well too. And Russia is selling obviously to our media as well. they actually aren't. We found out, I believe, last year, we, the government isn't the best at transparency.

I feel like it is the best way to word that. And we have been paying Russia for weapons since 2020. They have not delivered a single bullet since the last war. Sorry, I should have said, Armenia is paying Russia for weapons. Yeah. Yeah. What's again, we are being fucked by Russia. But as far as the state of Missouri goals are, they're very different.

In 2020, when the war ended, they could frame it as a victory because they took over all these areas that they lost during the first war. Yes. About an area where about 120,000 people live in Stuponacarth and the general outskirts there. But this time the messaging is much different. It is, you know, the government must collapse. They only gonna, like this is going, quote, unquote, until the end, until they see a white

flag from Stuponacarth. So this is, because now if they don't do that, they can't spin it as a victory. Right, right. And since December, the lashing corridor has been shut for everybody. People couldn't leave. People who live in Carbock,

who are in Armenia for like school or whatever couldn't go back. And now suddenly yesterday when the war started, again, they are saying there's a humanitarian corridor through the through lashing. So the goals are very, very clear here. And we know from their conduct in 2020, government propaganda, just the general attitude of the Isari government towards Armenians, which is they don't, they can't exist here. Like this is a liquidation of the open air government towards Armenians, which is they don't, they can't exist here. Like this is, you know, liquidation of the open air concentration camp that they've

created. So I mean, Joe, first off, I guess what I want to ask is like, what, uh, what is it like in Yerevan right now? Because, you know, you are, you are not far from, from where the fighting is, is continuing at the moment, but obviously, you are, Armenia is not technically involved at this point, right? Like that's at least according to the claims of the Armenian government, the Assyrians, alleged that they are striking Armenian military targets right now. What is it like in Yerevan right now? I think everybody is, you can see it on everybody's faces.

Like there's one information, they want to know what's going to happen next. There's a lot of protests yesterday and into the night because the prime minister came out and said, like, we're not going to get involved. And he's not exactly very popular despite the fact he kind of is our best option at the moment. So there's a lot of, you know, rightful anger towards him,

towards Russia, towards the EU, you know, you name it, everybody's mad at everybody. So there's different protests yesterday. There was, you know, fuck Russia protest. There was fuck, Nicole Pashnion, who's our prime minister protest. There was a combination of the two protest. They all kind of met in the middle.

There is some fighting with the police. I heard reports that someone, uh, quite a few people tried to break into government buildings. Um, that all seemed to have cooled off by that, because I went down to the area where there is protesting and I didn't see any of that. Um, but it seemed to have also started up again after I left. Um, but again, it's only day one. People's anger is only going to get worse as the situation in Carabot gets worse. Yeah. Yeah.

You know, the fall of Carabot and Stepanakarit if and when that occurs, I have a hard time believing that the current government here in our Armenia will survive. They'll either resign before it's out. An unfortunate third option might happen, especially with the messaging coming from Russia, where they're blaming Armenia, and specifically the Prime Minister for all of this, because since September of last year, Armenia has been doing decent diplomacy in turning towards the West. There's American soldiers in the Republic of Armenia right now for training. We've sent supplies to Ukraine.

We've all but left the CSTO, which is like Russia's shitty version of NATO. So this is a fairly not very functional, right? Like, yeah, yeah, I mean, this is effect, I mean, this is a green lit punitive expedition on the ship's behalf effect. Yeah. And this is, you know, a couple of things. So like, obviously, the way in which the paper on paper alliances here, kind of like chart out out is is not friendly to the sort of like sound bite media of our current day, right? Because our media on paper, our media is like big supporter has been Russia recently, right?

As well as Azerbaijan. Like, it was before Russia invaded Ukraine, they like cemented an alliance. But you know, because as you mentioned, it's been very overt, I guess you could say, and their support for Ukraine, giving them money and supplies here and there, non-military supplies, but humanitarian supplies. This gets spun in the brain-dead info sphere

as it being like another Russian ally that being, I mean Armenia is being invaded or you know people equate cariboc to Crimea and Ukraine's war goals and since Azerbaijan is you know a PR ally of Ukraine and Supplying the EU with gas and supplying you with Russian gas as well. Biggest spun is like people are cheering for Azerbaijan, which is absolutely baffling to me. Like I wish I could say I'm confused, they're surprised, but like when you treat war, like it's a team sport,

you wanna put on your favorite football jersey or whatever, like this is how it goes. When you know, Karabakh declared independence from Azerbaijan during that the Azari Soviet Socialist Republic, when that was legal to do, and the state that they have created is one of the most free in the region, whereas Azerbaijan, according to like the, the, the freedom index is one point above the Taliban controlled Afghan state at the moment. Yeah. So, this is not a play, this is not like a liberation, a dictator cannot be a liberator.

No, and a lot of what is happening and why Azerbaijan is engaging in aggression right now is due to what's been happening to like the price of oil and like what that's done to the Azari economy, right? Like this is a, like, I mean, it's a pretty standard page in the authoritarian playbook, right? Of course. I mean, there are classic fascist dictatorships and so far as every problem in the state

that they have of which they have many because it's effectively a kleptocracy built around a petro-dictatorship is caused by Armenians. There are, you know, every single anti-Azari piece that gets published in any media, and you can use the term anti-Azari to mean like literally anything, is funded by the Armenian lobbying group,

which I mean, any Jewish conspiracy theory that we all know and hear about constantly, in Azure by John, you just replace Jewish people with Armenians and it's functionally the same thing. So, you know, we're this global superpower with our tendrils and everything, but also we're weak and pitiful and need to be destroyed. It's same kind of messaging that we're used to hearing for, like, classic fascist propaganda. of messaging that we're used to hearing for like classic fascist propaganda. And you know, that as far as like why they're doing it now is because they've so in sconce themselves

in the European good graces and the over the last little bit, they know nobody, nobody's going to stop them. The EU literally can't. And the United States, I mean, they're an outside player when it comes to European politics, at least internal politics. And they are only loosely connected to Azerbaijan. They do some military funding, but it's mostly to do with like these weird ghosts of the early global war on terror,

where they're looking for friendly Muslim powers that would act as counter-terror forces. But as Rajan's secular, this war has nothing to do with us being Christian or them being Muslim. Yeah. Though it does tend to be free, frame that way, by the worst people imaginable. Yeah.

It slots conveniently for a lot of people into those, but like this is, I mean, again, as I tried, and this is, we're kind of like throwing this together in media res. But like this is, we're talking about, like this is the result of a very long period of conflict and movement of peoples in a region where they have been for thousands and thousands of years,

right? Like that's, like, it's not, I would say the current conflict is mostly rooted in about the last 30, 35 years. I mean, the ancient, the ancient history gets thrown around a lot by like propagandists, but this is a direct result of the Soviet Union's policies. It has nothing to do with like, you know, the 1300s. Would you take it back though to like, like World War One, right? Where you've got, you've got this like very brief period where like Azerbaijan and Armenia and Georgia all attempt

to have this like, almost little like Caucasus you win or EU of their own, right? And then they all get like gobbled up, you know, over the course of the end of the war by Turkey and then by Russia. Like, it's this, like, that's kind of where it all results from, right? That's at least that's my understanding of it. If you want to go back that far, it has more of a result of early Soviet policy and specifically Joseph Stalin before he took over the Soviet Union here in the head of like the office of like minorities effectively. Yeah. He he is a Georgian.

Yeah. He's so is barrier. Yeah. Yes. And he would he'd re drew the borders to include what is today a carabock within the borders of what effectively would become the Azari Soviet Socialist Republic. And during the entire period of the Soviet Union, which a lot of people like to frame is this.

There's no problems on the Soviet Union control these areas, which is magical thinking. There were protests by the Armenian populace, right? There was a lot of protests during the 80s. You have what's called the Karabakh movement wanted either a Karabakh to become its own Soviet socialist republic or b to be given to the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic and away from these areas and failing that they declared independence which was within the rights under the the the Soviet Constitution, which did exist. I mean, which was within the rights under the Soviet Constitution, which did exist. I mean, it was largely fluid and completely ignored as we see today. And that's what that triggered a lot of different pogroms between Azarees against the Armenian population

within Azerbaijan and Armenians at the same thing here as well. But that started the first war, which ended with Armenian winning and Artsak becoming a de facto independent republic, not recognized by anybody to include Armenia. And it's, I mean, it becomes at that point kind of one of a series of sort of little frozen wars during this, this kind of like early 90s period where the US was, there was this, there was some belief that the US would act if like these conflicts got out of hand. That was like, often proved wrong, right? Like the best comparison is effectively Kosovo. Yes, yes, yes. The only difference is that because of geopolitics, you're getting involved in this war, whether it be in the 90s, in 2020, or today, is it's not geopolitically evantages, like telling

Azerbaijan to go fuck themselves by supporting the art soccer means doesn't help anybody. Geologically, if it was Russia invading us, it would be reigning weapons from the West, but geoplitically doesn't benefit anybody to support us. There's this concept of ethics and morals from superpowers, whether it be the bastion of democracy in the United States or this concept of European ethics and morals in the EU, like that's all propaganda vapor where it's not real. If your country is being helped by any of these countries, it's because it benefits the countries that are helping you geopolitically.

It's not because of they support whatever it is that you're doing. And because the Republic of Armenia itself is kind of in the situation as well, but the people of Artsakh are certainly in the situation. And so, like right now, I mean, honestly, like what is there to do but watch, right? Like is there, is there, do you have any kind of like hope for sort of positive, productive action

at this point? Or are we kind of stuck in this? We're going to see what the next chapter of this, this conflict looks like, you know, as it kind of rolls out here. Well, there's two options really. Stop it through military force or let the largest genocide of the 21st century go unimpeded. Right. Because the reason why our prime minister said that the Republic of Armenia is not going to get involved is because it literally cannot. You know, we have Turkey on one border that will almost certainly be involved.

If we do, these areas also have guns pointed at our southern border, which they have said for years now they want to conquer. The Armenian military is not a superpower by any stretch of the imagination. And since we are not connected to art sock in any feasible way, it would require a massive counteroffensive to just relieves the Ponticart from the current siege, right? There's a reason why it didn't happen when they were being starved. So, Armenia lacks the ability to stop this. However, there's multiple countries in the world, mostly France and the United States. That could end this in five seconds if they truly wanted to.

You mentioned at the start that there are US troops who are in Armenia right now. My thoughts are drawn back to in 2019 when Turkey carried out an expanded invasion of some of the regions in northeast Syria that composed Rojava. Right. And, you know, US peacekeepers pulled out previous to that. Now, the US troops who were in Armenia were training. They were not there as peacekeepers, but... Right. They have no mandate to do anything, and there's only like 200 of them from some national

guard unit. It's not like it's a, you know, brigade combat team. And pressures, whatever you want to call them, are simply not going to happen. The European Union is not going to sanction Azerbaijan. They rely on their oil. Azerbaijan has only become more powerful in this petro diplomacy since Russia invaded Ukraine. The United States has no functional sanctioning powers over Azerbaijan that could really affect them.

Not to mention, as we've seen since the Russian invasion of Ukraine The sanctions don't stop wars. Yeah, I mean they never had like again This is something the left is supposed to know right after like what happened with Iraq in the 90s But like they don't they don't do anything like no of course not like the only thing that stops a genocide is military force And there's never been a genocide that has not ended from military force from one actor or another. I might push even a little bit to say that like one thing that in this case, I think could potentially at least reduce the risk of certain kinds of of genocide is like keeping

US troops in the area, not even as like a viable combat force, but as a like, all right, as there was Jan, if you, if you are going to like disrupt the territorial integrity of the actual Armenian state, then, you know, we've got people who are in country. And, and so you'll have to, you'll have to kill them, you know, and that's something that probably have been arguing for a long time now, not necessarily Americans exactly, but some kind of international peacekeeping mission, because we all knew that what Russia was doing. Like, this war benefits them as the previous instability in the region benefits them, because

it allows them to have their hooks into Armenia, which is why we're kind of worried of what happens next year, because if Azerbaijan does complete the conquest of Stepanikar, which unless someone gets involved, they will. They will. I need to be practical about these things. And once that happens, Russia won't have this sort of damacly hanging over the Republic of Armenia's head anymore. So it does make, it does make us wonder like, and everybody is very, very stupid if they think Azerbaijan stops with Artsakh. Right. In September of last year when I was on your show,

they were invading the Republic of Armenia. They were not invading Carbock or Arts. They were invading the Republic of Armenia. And their stated goals have not changed. The only thing that would happen is that this thorn in their side over the last 30 years would not be there anymore. They would have no impediments at all within what is considered their own borders. They could focus everything on the Republic of Armenia. So people who believe that this ends in Stepanakar, like you only have to go back to this time last year to see that is not the case. The only thing that's going to happen

is maybe they'll take a little bit of time. The war is coming to Armenia. This massacre will come across our borders. It's only a matter of, is it one year, two years, three years? That's the only thing. So without some kind of immediate intervention, the slaughter will continue until they are defeated. You don't negotiate with people who want to murder you. It's impossible. No, you can't. And it's also, this is a very dangerous situation in part because like the reason why Armenia is acting now, right?

And part is because, you know, they have been watching and I think like keying and like sort of editing their behavior as a result of how the Russian campaign in Ukraine has gone, right? Yeah, they definitely see it as a way to get away from Russia. Yeah. I mean, like any small state in Russia's sphere is doing right now. What the exception of Georgia who's kind of doing the opposite. Yeah.

And there is this, I mean, one of the things that is really unsettling right now is there is this, there has been kind of a freeze and a number of conflicts around the world that we have seen thawing out for the last really the last five, six years. It's been particularly like accelerating this kind of like thaw and a bunch of these old frozen conflicts. And part of why is that there's this understanding by a lot of these regional powers that like, well, if I kick the fucking door and nobody's coming after me Right and that and as you're by John understands that to a certain extent Which is why they acted the way they acted last year in September?

I mean the CSTO is a joke, but It does have a mutual defense clause just like NATO does so invasion of our borders should have triggered it And that was if people had some kind of not sure if Russia could commit to other things, that cemented it for a lot of people. It cemented it for Armenia specifically. And we're still technically legal members of that alliance, but we have no representation anymore. We don't take part in trainings. We don't go to meetings. We're functionally out of it. And we certainly will be after this, I believe, but I mean, as an example of how you can't really negotiate

with someone with this kind of ideology in so far as from this position, like I'm not saying that like this only ends with international peacekeepers hoisting a flag over Baku. But with this kind of power discrepancy, the, the Isari government has said that they will negotiate with the government in, it's the Pondakirt in Karabakh once they dissolve and lay down all their weapons. So once you completely disarm and get rid of all of the ways you can defend yourself

from the obvious slaughter that's coming your way, then we'll talk. Is that really a way, is that a way of any negotiations could ever happen? Like being realistic, of course it's not. The government of Karabakh is the only thing that government of Karabakh and the small local self-defense force is the only negotiating like little crumb that they have because it's stopping them from being murdered. And for people who think I'm being like I'm overreacting or something, look at how they treated that any Armenian civilians that fell into their hands into the 2020 war. They cut off their ears, they cut off their fingers, they cut off their noses, they fucking beheaded them. It was like watching ISIS videos, but they're wearing multi cam and wearing fast helmets. And they published them proudly on the

internet. They're not ashamed of this. You can only imagine what happens when a city of 100,000 people falls into their hands. And that is I'm more so on the 1940s, something around like, yeah, about 120,000 people who are still there. Our media cannot solve this problem. No. We do not have the power to force that negotiation table to guarantee the rights of existence for people where they live. The countries that do are now friends with the country

that is doing it. So, it requires some actual diplomatic spine. And the thing is, you know, the joke is every time someone is deeply concerned about something, you take a drink and then you die of alcoholism. But you can't say, you know, we call for an immediate cease of the military offensive without an ore. Or like, or what? Or fucking what? Like, what are you doing? Like, you can't use strong words to stop a fucking ballistic missile. Yeah.

There needs to be an ore. We're staring at about a century. Since we had a series of conflicts, many of which were based around different sort of like regional powers, scapegoating, and then carrying out acts of tremendous violence against groups of people, including specifically the Armenians. Every time a tale is old as time, it's being treated as an anti-terror operation. And you can go back to 19-13 during the genesis of the first genocide. And it's the same exact excuse the Unimitarious.

Well, and it's being treated, you know, that's what how the Azaries are excusing it. But over here, like when you're talking about like U.S. politics, you're talking about Western politics, it's, it's, it's a thing that's happening over there, right? Like it's a couple of countries that most people don't know very much about. And like what is our, why are we involved in this? And it's like, well, because this is the thing that we said, like after 100 something million people died, the idea that we all kind of came together with was,

well, we should probably stop folks from doing some of the things that led to all of those terrible wars. And you'll often know your people, Freeman, as, oh, those people have just been fighting forever. Yeah. No. We haven't, it's been within my lifetime. Like, I'm 35 years old. This war is not older than I am. Yeah. Like the, the, there was not always mass violence between like the people in this region, right? Like a, a Zarees and Armenians have not been killing each other over Artsakh for thousands of years, right? Like, no, of course, yeah. There's Armenians and about as old as all the US, yeah, they used to live next to one another. We're not this intractable millennia long enemy. But it is, this isn't one of those conflicts.

I mean, you shouldn't do that with any conflict because it's a scapegoat to get you to stop caring and educating yourself about it. But specifically in the context of this episode, certainly not this conflict. This conflict involves very recent events. And it's tied to major geopolitical events happening in the world right now that whatever Country that you're living and listening to your country is involved in and it's I mean like the the the actual As far as I can see the the actual like realistic solution here because this is not a case, right?

I don't think like shipping a bunch of fucking weapons is a realistic thing to hope for. Like the actual realistic case for stopping this is putting people in the country that provide some sort of like barrier to a zary aggression, right? Like that's like it's taking action to keep things that we did for Kosovo. Yes, yes. Exactly what we need without any kind of negotiations or debates, like that is the only thing

that'll stop what is coming. It's not an if, like this is coming. And hey, online left people, you know, the a zaries are are buying Israeli arms. Like, this is a situation in which like, we're not talking about, we don't need, we don't need guys kicking indoors. We literally need dudes standing around to create a barrier by the, the, the, the sheer political fact of their existence, right? The fact that's all it takes. And not to mention, if you're trying to frame this in like an anti-imperialist context or whatever,

Agimashon is literally a fascist fucking dictatorship. Like, yeah, I and Armenia, we have our problems. Carbock, they have their problems, you know, but they're functioning representative democracies. And with people in land that they've lived on, it's I mean, there are other people who are indigenous to that land as well, but it's also theirs. It's if you want to think of it in that way, which I don't really like to do because it's dirt. But the real issue here is the people. The people's lives are, I like, it doesn't

fucking matter who controls the panna care at the end of the day. The people's lives are, I like, it doesn't fucking matter who controls the ponder curve at the end of the day. If people are allowed to live there and live their lives in dignity in the way that they choose to live them. Yeah. But that's not going to happen if the fascist dictatorships, genocidal armies come storming through. Right. It's it's simply impossible. And that's the one. The reasons why Karabakh, Karabakh Armenians and the Armenian state as well has continuously said that Karabakh can exist within the frameworks of the Azari Republic because the Azari Republic is demonstrously anti-Armenian. Like for instance, if you have an Armenian surname, like I do, you can't

even go there. It doesn't even matter if you've even been to this country or not. Simply existing is enough to be denied entry. It's not a place. I mean, if you want to see how they'll be treated, look how they treat their own fucking people. Yeah. It's like asking anyone to be liberated by the fucking forces of North Korea or Saudi Arabia or something. It's obscene. It's absurd. The only thing that like, and I'm not saying I support the government in Armenia as anybody who knows me, I don't support any government, but the only constant track they've had is we support the right for self-determination as anybody should. And they voted in the 80s to be on their own,

not to be part of Armenia, not to be part of Azerbaijan, but to be the Republic of Artsakh, because they're the only people who care about their own rights, their own dignity, and their own right to existence. That's all anybody you should ever defend is people's rights to do that. Yeah. And ever since they've made a functioning state with free and fair elections, ministries that

handle these things, ministries of health, ministries of defense, ministries of education. It's a functioning republic. It's not some state lit that barely functions. And the power is invading it don't only mean to destroy those, the, the separatist power, they mean to destroy the people that live there. Yeah. There's no, there's no room for them to exist in this country. So, Joe, what do you expect us to see coming in the next couple of days here? As we, you know, we are about 24 hours in right now to the renewed Azari attack on Artsak, like what is your kind of expectation for what happens next?

Well, the Artsak defense army is doing their best. Yeah. I mean, obviously they're fighting as hard as they possibly can. However, without immediate international intervention in some capacity, I mean physical intervention, a you will stop or this will occur type situation. It's only a matter of time until it ends. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's um, and to quote the former head of doctors without borders, you cannot stop a genocide with doctors. Yeah. There's only one way to stop it.

And, you know, like I've said a million times before, I believe before on your show. Yep. The only thing that's allowing this to go on is the unwillingness of literally anybody to get involved. And there's a couple of quotes about that. Yeah, exactly. It's not it's not a new concept. Yeah. And genocide studies. As someone who studies war studies genocide and his

fought and war war is fucking awful and I don't want it for anybody. I don't want a zary kids to conscripts to be fucking dying for this. I don't want Armenians to be dying for this. But the only thing that's going to stop it is someone who is not Armenian, not as Aryan, and certainly not fucking Russian to say stop or we will fucking stop it. Yep. Yeah, I think that's, I think that's as good a point to close on as there is, as we're going to find at least. Joe, do you have anything else you wanted to kind of like bring up before we roll out here? Um, I would, I would, this is normally where I would say you could support the people involved

in this in this way, but unfortunately there's, it, they're under siege, they're surrounded, nothing can get to them. There's, I got nothing, man. Yeah. I mean, that is the reality, right? It's like, there's nowhere to send money. There's nothing to like, and to be quite frank, I mean, I think people should be harassing their representatives over this, but I'm not overly optimistic. The Biden administration has been making noises, you know, but I, you know, I have not seen evidence that they're going to do more than that yet. So I hope

they have the United States gets involved and they really want to turn Armenia to the West, which they absolutely should. There's no better time like now. This is the chance to do it. You want to show that like the West is the way for Armenians and pull them completely away from Russia because everybody wants to get the fuck away from Russia. Like there are thousands of people marching down the street literally saying, fuck Russia yesterday, but you need to give them a path to do so. And this is the way to do it. Yeah. Well, shit. Thanks, Joe. Sorry. sorry, we keep having you on the show in this situation. I will come on and talk about something. I don't know. We probably won't. Neither of our shows

ever talk about anything. I never first talked about anything lighthearted. Check out Joe's show, Lionsled by Donkeys, the Lionsled by Donkeys podcast, great military history podcast. Joe, thank you for being on and please, I don't know, good luck. Yeah, thanks for having me on, Rob. Yeah. Hi everyone, it's me James and just before you hear the episode, I'd want to warn you that you can hear our telephones going absolutely mental for much of this episode. That's because as we were recording, people found out that SDG and E, San Diego Gas Electric were restricting access

to one of the sites where migrants were in need of aid. People were very concerned about that, so they were reaching out to James and Jacqueline and Pedro to ask for assistance and to me to let me know if I could get the word out. That's why you can hear off those, going crazy. And I think it's good that it's in there in a sense because perhaps you can get a sense of how mad the last few weeks have been for everyone.

I've found constantly beginning off. I'm sure mine are a lot less than James and Jacqueline and Pedro's because people are overwhelmed and they need more help than we're able to give. Consider that background noise, a blessing, and I hope you enjoy the episode. Thanks. Hi everyone, it's me, James, today, and I'm here again to talk about the border. Today, I'm joined by some guests. I'm joined by James and Jacqueline from Border Kindness, who we've heard from before, and I'm also joined by Pedro Reyes from the American Friends Service Committee. If you guys would like to introduce yourself

and explain the kind of role you play along the border, that'd be wonderful. If we start with Pedro, because folks haven't heard from him before, that would be great. Great, thank you James. And it's such an honor to be on the show together with folks from Border Kindness, James and Jacqueline.

It's great to see you. Again, my name is Pedro Rios, I'm director of the American Friends Service Committee's US Mexico Border Program, which is a Quaker-based human rights organization. I've been on staff now for 20 years working in San Diego on border issues and it's been a whirlwind of two decades of work being able to follow this topic. Our work primarily focuses on border issues and we have four components, one of which is documenting civil and human rights abuses that occur when contact goes arrive between primary federal immigration authorities with

members of civil society including migrants and border community residents. Documentation could be case involving abusive practices, abusive policies, cases involving abusive authority and so on and so forth. We also do a lot of policy analysis and advocacy at the local level, at the state level, at the federal level. Trying to hold agencies accountable, making them more transparent, ensuring that there are oversight mechanisms and how they operate. That's done in conjunction with several coalitions at the county- wide-level in San Diego, but also at the national level with the Southern Border Communities Coalition and other organizations as well.

And then we obviously work in allyship with a lot of other organizations that have campaigns of mutual interest, some of which haven't going on for a long time, such as a French-A-Parc and trying to gain access, public access to French-A-Parc, which currently has been impacted by the construction of two 30-foot border walls.

And we also work directly with community members in providing information about what the rights are, how they can become and our leaders in their own communities, and how they can be active and strengthening their communities and providing guidance to other people who might be in the same circumstances. So in the nutshell, that's the work that we do. Yeah, great. It's very important work. And then James and Jacqueline, do you want to explain,

folks are familiar, I think, with border kindness from the previous episode, but maybe what have you been doing in the last, I can't remember, two weeks, since people started being held out in the open again? So in our organizations, kind of always with like the evolving needs at the border. And over the last, I want to say like year in particular, we've really started to emphasize our services being present in the rural border. We're based in Mejikali primarily. Our water drops are generally in the Imperial Valley region.

And we started to extend our services to the rural community in San Diego County with regards to like day labor, providing aid to the migrant community that's living in rural communities. So all that to say when the border appeared to be having one of its episodes of chaos, that's happened in the last couple weeks. With folks being detained between the walls down in San Isidro and then folks being, you

know, just dumped out into the street at the transit centers. If we've been seeing all over San Diego County, we sort of held off because we knew this was going to happen in Hakuma. It was kind of one of those six cents kind of things like when you see the writing on the wall and it was like only a matter of time before people ended up pushed into rural San Diego County and unfortunately that has been the case. So we were actually out in the desert doing a water drop and heard that that in fact had occurred and there were hundreds of people in Hikumba. So we've been out there providing aid ever since. Yeah. So perhaps we could describe these. So there are like three things

I think people would benefit from knowing about. One is the detention of people between the walls in San Isitra, which I think Pedro has seen a lot of. I've seen, we've seen each other down there several days. The detention of folks in the open desert in Hacumba, and this dumping of migrants of various transit centers across the county. Those are the three things that we've seen, like, in massive numbers this last couple of weeks. So perhaps we could start with explaining her Cumba and then Peter can take on explaining the other two because I know he's been responding to those. So can you just tell us like what you saw the number of people, the conditions in which they're being held, that kind of stuff? Yeah, usually what we're seeing now, I mean, now it's currently what today, what is

it Wednesday? Wednesday. So I know it. It is, yeah. Yeah. I woke up this morning and asked Jack on what day it was because it just seems like a broken blur and, you know, the day in and out. But we are on Wednesday now, that Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday. Every day so far, we have noticed a revolving door of roughly 200 to 250 spread out

between one to three camps every day. There's a camp on the east side in Hukumbud. There's a camp that's on the west side of Hukumbud and there's a camp that's just outside Hukumbud and Boulevard. That seems to be the biggest camp right now. That camp is the largest one because it's kind of hidden. You got to drive down from the main highway, you have to drive at least 15 minutes, down some dirt roads, back roads, past ranches and stuff like that to get to that open air camp

where the other ones, especially like we saw in May, were more wide open, closer to the towns, closer to visibility, closer to highway access. And so what we've noticed is that speaking with the locals and seeing for ourselves that every day the camps that are more visible are having less people coming in and they're being taken out faster.

And so that part, I think, is, you know, could be done for for a multitude of reasons, but the camp that's hidden and out of view is the one that seems kind of strategic and seems calculated on a greater level that as people are being loaded up on bands or buses to be taken out for processing, almost the same amount of people gets walked in to that camp from the actual border, by border patrol. So it's definitely a, an odd situation that's going on there.

It seems definitely calculated or illustrated and something that, we feel that we'll be going on for quite a while. Yeah, let's, when we talk about that, people are crossing and then being transported, like you say, on foot by border patrol to the camp. That's your understanding, right, to that camp in near Boulevard, I'll say, I don't want to give the exact location. Correct, yes. We witnessed that as well. We witnessed on Monday night that we were there to help distribute food and warm supplies. And I think a total of five or six border patrol vans had about 100 people or so lined up and

loaded up onto those vans and then right as they were getting ready to have the last two vans leave, we saw in the distance in the opposite direction, war patrol, they're driving behind a group of roughly 80, 85, um, you know, migrants coming in on foot right around. There's a gap in the fence. Yeah. I saw people walking in. I was there the day before you guys. I was there early as I was there only Monday morning.

And I saw the same thing, like, you know, sort of just after dawn. Um, I couldn't make out who was walking home just because it was dark. Can you explain briefly, and then we'll move to Pedro's situation? Can you explain the services that are'll move to Pedro's situation. Can you explain the services that are provided for them by Border Patrol and then what is provided for them by volunteers? By Border Patrol it's essentially nothing. When this occurred in May, we heard that at most people were receiving an eight-ounce

bottle of water daily, not really distributed in an organized manner. Currently, we're observing that people are, when they arrive, they're at times provided with a 16 ounce bottle of water and potentially a little toddler-sized pack of goldfish crackers. Border Patrol is not providing any other continued services, food, shelter, sanitation, anything like that. Those things have all been organized at a community level by a variety of organizations, such as ours that's comprised of just regular people. So it's the government's task of managing a humanitarian crisis.

They have like really outsourced it to the general community of supporters. So they have taken not just the role of not having any responsibility towards caring for migrants in in the most basic manner, but it also seems like they have come to expect the general community to come in and fill the gaps that they're not meeting.

So board of patrols not providing them with anything. It's everyday regular people that are showing up with blankets, food, water, hygiene items. It's getting really cold, so people are just being warm clothing, diapers, formula, anything that people need is being provided by the community. Yeah, yeah, that's a good summary, I think. So, Pedro, could you explain how the situation is in San Isidro, and then also at the transit centers. And it's pretty similar situation, I think. Yeah, sure.

I'll start with San Isidro and the location where community members and organizations have set up is known as Whiskey 8. There are at least three other locations that we know where encampments have formed. One is Whiskey 4, which is close to the Las America shopping mall. It's an outlet mall, closer to the Port of Entry. And then about a mile west of whiskey eight, there's Spooner's Mesa, and then close to that, there's 91x. The Spooner's Mesa is primarily where the man's

encampment has been arranged, and this happened back in May. There was an incident where Border Patrol decided to move while the single adult men and walked and marched them essentially about a mile up a hill and then up another hill to get to Spuner's Mesa. After some advocacy last week, we convinced Border Patrol to allow two of us to go up there to feed about anywhere between 380 and 400 men. And it took us over an hour, about an hour or 15 minutes to feed all of the men. Fortunately, we just barely had enough food for all of them.

This was in the evening and as we were driving in and driving out, all we could see was mylar blankets, uh, thrown about, um, and that's all that was up there. And these were the men that were these mylar blankets down in whiskey, how, uh, community members and organizations have arranged the solidarity support stations have been in four sets. So you have the charging station, you have the medical supplies and other item station, then you have the food station and then the water station. And so we tried to maintain the medical supplies. The food station is available only when we have enough food to provide sustenance to everyone there.

We don't want to create a situation where we only serve half of the people or a quarter of the people and then the other people go hungry. And mind you, it's important to point out that when people arrive there, they are hungry, they are thirsty, some of them have scrapes because they scale the primary border barrier and injured themselves, others are wet, because they've walked through the canal to get to that location. I've also witnessed several locations where Border Patrol will tell people

who are injured to walk towards our location because they tell them that that's where we will provide them with medical care. Now, I think it's important to mention that under CUSSIS and Border Protection, which is a parent agency of the Border Patrol under their national standards, for how they are supposed to transport escort, detain, and search people under their custody,

they are obligated to feed, to provide water, to provide shelter, to treat medical urgencies anytime that individuals are under their custody. There is some back and forth, or, of which will locally, will say that individuals are not under their custody until they are being transported, even though they will provide them with wristband or bracelet. In some cases tell them to remove their shoe laces. Direct them to where they should be walking. Y'all let them when they're not forming in lines in order to be picked up. Sometimes throw a fit and will not pit people up even other supposed to be there to do

that because people are not in lines as quickly as they should be. All of this to several of our organizations indicate that Border Patrol, at some degree, has people under their custody. And as such, it's violating these national standards, because it's not meeting their needs at any level, besides maybe the bottle of water might provide and the one or two granola bars, they provide per day if even that. Yeah, I think it's the national border patrol PIO also claimed to me that they were not detaining people and that people were free to quote return to Mexico, which like, it's people are from Mexico and in many cases. And like, I think

the first day I maybe saw you speaking to one family who had come from Mexico, but the vast majority of people weren't and there's also be entering Mexico between ports of entry because they're in the United States at this time. So yeah, it's just not. Those people are like, there's also evidence that they're being detained, even if they say they're not. What then happens to those people? We've all seen it, right? These vans pull up.

They generally process people in a certain order, which is to take unaccompanied minors and women who are alone with children and then families and then single adults. What happens to them once they get on that van? Do we have a clear sense of that when they end up? They will be taken to any one of several board of patrol stations for processing. And it's that processing stage where most of them who are in these locations are there because they want to present themselves to the authority and begin an asylum claim. And so it's how they answer the questions while being processed that they get tracked mostly for asylum.

There are some that will be quickly removed from the country expeditiously, but most of them will be tracked for a asylum. They will be given a court date when they should show up and that court date, the court location depends on where the final destination will be. Technically, Mexicans can only be detained for 48 hours. Non Mexicans can only be detained no more than 72 hours. So within that detention period, they then are being transported to one of four locations in San Diego County, two of which are in San Diego, the San Lucido Transit Center and the Iris Transit Center,

one in Oceanside and the other in El Cajon. And so we're seeing the majority of the people being transported to San Cidero and to Iris and that's where colleagues with other sister organizations are leading the charge to try to support them with cysteine and charging phones, providing food, clothing, getting them to the airport, getting them transportation, getting them food, clothing, getting them to the airport, getting them transportation, getting them housing, and as much as limited as that's possible. Trying to connect them with lost family members because families have been separated. There are adult children, 18, 19 who also are trying to figure out where their family members are. And in some cases, as a conversation I had with the man from Venezuela, he had no idea what city he was at, he didn't know he was in San Diego.

So trying to make that type of arrangement and clarification is always challenging as well. Yeah, and obviously also expensive, right? Like these things all place burdens on your donation network and both the community in general. And perhaps we can talk about, because the scale of support that's been provided by the community

is extremely impressive, given how many people have already come through this sort of not detention detention system. But perhaps both of you could talk about the support you've been able to provide and how people who are not in San Diego can help you continue to provide that support. So, the first day that we heard folks coming in because obviously it's interesting because

border patrol, like Pedro says, they're claiming that these people are not under their care, but they're very much acting as if they are under their detained care. They're telling people that if they call an ambulance to seek medical care as we observe, they say, well, that's going to affect your case if you leave. And so people are very much under the deliberate impression that they are being detained, but they're not being cared for in the most basic way. And so we first responded on Saturday by Sunday, we were there with 500 meals that went very, very quickly, providing shelter items for people. So tarps, Hakumbah is a very rugged desert terrain. So, tarps, Hakumbah is a very rugged desert terrain. There is no shade in these areas,

so people are making sort of like, make shift shelters, but there is nothing shielding them from the sun, which is really unrelenting all day, and it gets up to 90s. So, we've been providing tarps, pop-ups, that sort of thing, so people are not becoming sick from overexposure. We're providing hygiene items. We're providing just basic needs. And that gets incredibly expensive because if it was a static situation such as in May when there was 1800 to 2000 people, that was a huge undertaking that also took

a lot of community collaboration to meet the needs of so many people. But this time around as James says, it's like a revolving door of hundreds and hundreds of people. So it's taking hundreds and hundreds, while at any given time, there may be only, and I say only two to 300 people. It doesn't mean that two only two to 300 people, it doesn't mean that only two to 300 people needed to be fed that day. It's that, you know, that is who is there at that time. And when people arrive, as Beloro said, like they haven't eaten in days,

we talk to people that said that they took two days to walk to Hakumbah. So if they arrive to Di Kwana without much food in their belly, and then they're having to walk for two days to walk to Hakumbah. So if they arrive to Di Kwana without much food in their belly and then they're having to walk for two days, they're arriving starving and begging for food and not being provided with absolutely anything. So if it wasn't for all of the organizations that are showing up and taking sort of shifts to feed people, there would be nothing for them. And we have absolutely no idea how long this is going to go on. It could be over today.

It can go on for months, year, I mean, we really don't know what to expect. And organizations are being relied on to provide, you know, life-sustaining care for people, but we're not being communicated with from Border Patrol as to basically anything. What the outlook is, what the numbers are, what the updates of how the situation is going to evolve. So every day is a surprise, and we need to have resources to be able to meet the needs of that day. It's incredibly,

and we need to have resources to be able to meet the needs of that day. It's incredibly like consuming of every resource including time and gas to $6 a gallon. Yeah, yeah. Now, and as you... You need to drive your truck, right? Because like you can't get to some of the locations. Like, I know I have a bigger truck and lots of my friends about to catch a ride with me because their cars can't make it there. Exactly. Like we have people that have gas efficient low-preases with me because they can't make it there. Exactly.

Like, we have people that have gas efficient low pre-释 and stuff and they're going to bottom out out there. So we have our huge lifted Jeep that, you know, doesn't get as much gas mileage as something, but it's also going to be able to get the supplies out there. So every aspect of it is incredibly consuming of resources. And we don't know what to expect. every aspect of it is incredibly consuming of resources. And we don't know what to expect.

It's hard to budget. I don't know what to expect. So the community has obviously come together in support. But then it's like, well, how do we manage this? When we don't, we can't forecast what's going on. So it's tough, it's definitely tough. We need sustained support. If I may add on that, as Jacqueline said,

the people are showing up hungry, have an in for days, you know, we get reports that people are showing up, just begging for food. And the federal government, more specifically, DHS, more specifically CBP, board of patrol, know this. They're trying to stall people out at whatever the end game is.

It may be just another arm of prevention through deterrence. It's cruel. It's on purpose. People are the ponds and whatever game is being played. And it's cruel. And that's, we're doing what we can to try to offset that as much as possible. But cruelty is definitely there all across the border. Just to kind of build on what James said, I think it's very easy for this construct of migrants to like always be like this sort of demonized other and Fox News and KUSI and all these outlets do that very well.

But I think it's really important to like the people who were being cruel to like, I saw a lady breastfeeding in the desert on Sunday night. I've seen grandparents, I've seen people who are eight months pregnant, little children, like these aren't, like people who have done anything wrong, and they just, for whatever reason they come here doesn't really matter, they don't deserve to be treated like that. And like James said, it's something of an induced, like I've been to natural disasters all over the world and reported on those and seen those, and I've been to refugee disasters all over the world and reported on those and seen those.

And I've been to refugee camps all over the world. But like it's something of a unique to the US problem that federal government can click its fingers and induce a humanitarian crisis. And then like hold a stand up in the air and say we can't help you. Like that. Like aside from dictatorial regimes and places I've reported in, like, good people, don't, governments don't do that very often. And like James said, it's these people who paid a price.

It's not us, but a most part. Peter, could you maybe expand a little bit of how American Foreign Service Committee has been able to respond and the resources you've used and how you can help make this a little bit less painful for the people who are being held in between the fences. Sure. Learning from the experience that we had back in March, April and May, we heard a few weeks ago that there were people lined up in an area that we could not see from the US side but but could be seen from the Mexican side just west of the San Isidu Port of Entry with people wearing and using mylar blankets. So the mylar blankets were an indication to us that people were there for probably longer than four hours. So we kept monitoring that asking colleagues in Dijuana to inform us if they had seen any

other groups like that and often on over the past month, there were reports of that and it wasn't until about two weeks ago that someone said that they were there for a long period of time. So last week we set up what we called an observation post at WISC-K8 so that we could determine for ourselves how long people were there, what sort of needs they might have, and how to respond, whether to set up the solidarity support stations again. Quickly we determined that that's what we needed to do. So we call our colleagues from other organizations. When I was at a vocal ad, for instance, has been extremely helpful and leading the charge in different places.

The free-ship collective, some mutual group also has been extremely important in having their people out there and friends of friendship park also has been important. So all these organizations that responded quickly and started to build from the experience that we had back in late spring, setting up these stations to charge phones, phones are lifeline for people and back in May, Border Patrol threatened us and they said if you want to keep feeding people, you can't be charging their phones. And so we said, well, we're going to have to keep charging phones because people need them and fortunately, Border Patrol going to back off then. And now it's part of what we do, right?

We charge phones. And it's how people are able to communicate with their loved ones, especially if they've been separated. Getting people is just as much as we're able to, even if it's just a sandwich, even if it's a warm meal that we're able to get through the bars or the secondary border barrier, that could mean the difference between someone staying healthy or someone becoming seriously ill. Bandaging up small cuts could relieve someone from getting an infection. Identifying when medical emergencies pop up. So an eighth

month pregnant person who is suddenly having labor pains and having a needing to call 911, for instance, or insisting with Border Patrol that the one month old child cannot remain overnight in between border walls and just insisting and insisting and insisting. Insisting that the two port of parties that they have there need to be serviced, for instance. And so all of this advocacy is happening at the same time that our colleagues and allies are also feeding people and the constant communication with different elected officials, pushing on them to take charge and to respond has been one of the different aspects of our response to what is a humanitarian

disaster that has been slowly evolving over years and years because human migration is insended around humanitarian needs and human rights. It's been sent around enforcement, around militarization, around cruel deterrents, as James was talking about, which creates conditions where people are led to suffer. And that's what we're seeing right now. People suffering because of how this has been manufactured, how immigration has been dealt with,

regardless of who's in the White House, over and over and over. And so now we're challenged to respond to these humanitarian needs in ways that are stretching our limits, but we're able to do it and hopefully lift enough the dignity of people that are placed under the serval in humane conditions. Yeah, I think it's very important to give people a little bit of dignity as much as we can. One thing that you mentioned that we haven't spoken

about, we should, is elected officials and local federal state government. How much support of any have heard by these sites received from people in elected office? We have had support from Senator Steve by the year's office. That's been, to me, impressive to see how much interest there is, how much advocacy there is from staff from that office. We have not necessarily had much support from congressional or federal senators. We have not seen them really on the ground. There is a responsibility, I believe, that the county of San Diego has

responsibility I believe that the County of San Diego has to meet some of these challenging circumstances at the transit centers. They're blocking a fuel and to the detriment of people who need these services and need the support. I believe the San Diego Police Department has been suggesting where people should be dropped off and not listening to folks on the ground about how the Irish station should be central and not dividing the drop-offs between Irish and Sinicidro, for instance. So there's a lot of a lot of necessity for local governments to be coordinating with state and federal governments and that's lacking again to the detriment of people who are caught in the middle. How about James and Jack in the view scene any sort of government support? No, not at all. I've heard through channels of you know sources that

of, you know, sources that work for the county and they claim that they're handcuffed or that it's border patrols responsibility and then border patrol is saying it's the county's responsibility. And it just, it seems like appointing fingers, no one's trying to take, you know, responsibility for it. And maybe that's because it's going to be something that's going to go on for a while. It's not something that either wants to, you know, take on the responsibility of. And, you know, you've seen county supervisors speak out against it, pushing the blame. People are here. This is San Diego County. This is the United States.

Someone needs to take care of, you know, the people here That's that's the role of the government. That's why people pay taxes for you know, four services and services need to be provided for You know, we pay taxes so other people can get services as well citizens nonsense and it's like that To me, it seems so easy. Yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah, I believe here. In theory. Yeah, in theory. Absolutely. I mean, that's everything that you've been told,

but everything that you're not seeing in practice. So, I mean, this whole thing is, to us on the ground, it seems so simple of how it should be done. But, you know, anytime, and we spoke on it, I think, on the last episode as well, like, money's big issues. You're going to spend all this money. They need to make sure that the money's going in the right pockets that they want it to. Yeah, like, I was sitting out in, in her cumber with a, with a colleague and, uh, we got

overflowing by a UH 60 black hawk, like a border patrol helicopter, right? And it just, it's hovering around, checking us out. And like, it's just so, I don't know, it's just so depressing to see this helicopter, which costs millions of dollars, which are thousands of dollars just to take off next to the border wall, which got 12 million dollars a mile. And like on the same day that the San Diego City Council filed an Amicus brief in this case of the Supreme Court to allow it to further criminalize and house people, we have all these resources, and we're just throwing them, as Petra said, enforcement and criminalization of the most marginalized people in our communities rather than giving a first-year person a bottle

of water or like a little baby blanket. And yeah, it's really hard. It's one of those agents over time of the day could literally feed everybody there. Yes. And we're all like, you know, calculating calories per dollar of like the meal and trying to get like every single dollar to stretch because we don't know how long this is going to go on because we know that public perception and interest is something that is not sustained. And that's the purpose too because for instance, Border Patrol is claiming and they

were on what outlet was it? CBS-8, local San Diego said, you need to report that the Hacuma Campcher clear, there's no one's there. I just, you know, I had to step away from this, this recording for a few, you know, update that there are people still showing up. There's getting, trying to get cleared out as quick as possible as people show up because it's in the public eye, but also now the power company is threatening

legal action and criminal action against any aid orbs or people to show up. Oh, great. Cool. That'll be fun. Yeah. I mean, yeah, the reporting on this has been poor, even more poor than it was in May. I'll say like out in Hukumba, yeah, it's hard to get to James and I both spent a decent chunk of yesterday morning trying to direct people how to not get lost out there. But like I think more importantly when there is non-nelection or like a narrative that migration fits in, it gets certainly by national outlets forgotten. With the end of Title 42 in May, I think everyone had their like sort of doomsday op-eds in the weeks beforehand. And that didn't actually happen

in the way that it had been sort of like quote-unquote experts who don't come to the board very often had predicted it would. And so folks turned up, especially at Whiskey-8 and did this, did this sort of crisis story. But we haven't seen that this time. And you know, now it's appearing really different because like you see sort of the management by Border Patrol of the situation in order to sort of shield the public from like the true sort of shield the public from like the true level of the crisis. So in claiming that the Umba has been cleared, I suppose that's technically correct if they're referring to the, you know, there are really a lot of ability in order to so people,

the average everyday person that's not immersed in this is going to read that and be like, oh, good, it's been cleared. Because like my family back home, knows a lot of like really conservative folks out there in Peruvian, and like even the most conservative people I knew back in May were like, oh my gosh, how could they have babies out there in the desert? That's so horrible and people had a lot of really strong emotions to seeing families huddled in the desert for a week.

Now it seems like there's a really deliberate management of the PR with respect to this situation. So, yeah, relying on the technicality of Hakuomba being cleared because the main camp in town has been cleared, but 10, 15 minutes away, there's still hundreds of people, and we're the ones that are out on social media screaming into the void and to each other, hey, this is still happening. ones that are out on social media screaming into the void and to each other, hey, this is still happening. People are, you know, there's an amputee out here whose leg is bleeding. There is someone out here who hasn't had his heart medication for a week. Like those kind of situations are occurring still while the report and the public perception is like, oh, Hukum has been cleared.

It's all good. So unless somebody is like already involved, they're generally not hearing about it. And I think that's on purpose too. Yeah, yeah, I think it's, yeah, that's a very niche technicality, isn't it? It might not be within the boundaries of the town of a combo, but like, people are still being coraled in the desert with no services. Right. And that's what we should care about, not which district they're in or what have you.

So I think people have probably heard by now that things are bad and we don't know how bad they will be and then maybe they'll get worse, maybe they'll get better and hopefully they'll want to support. So how can people do that? Like what resource, I guess the concrete actions can they take? Where can they give you money? How can they send you supplies? If they want a volunteer in their in the county, how can they do that and what kind of volunteers are most needed? Yeah, for border kindness, monetary donations are the biggest help that allows us to meet current needs, daily needs. We're on Venmo at border dash kindness cash app at border kindness cash. They'll info at border kindness.org. That's what I call volunteering.

Volunteering is pretty sensitive. We understand that our team is already incredibly taxed. So we do need support in terms of like food preparation understand that our team is already incredibly taxed. So we do need support in terms of like food preparation and getting supplies out there, transporting supplies, but it is a very sensitive situation. So we do want to, I don't know if vet, or we want to be able to talk to the people that want to volunteer. So certain expectations that they may have or certain needs that we may have are all communicated

really clearly. So the organization, Alotro Lado, very amazingly agreed to help us with that task of screening volunteers. So people, if they are wanting to do so and come out to Hakumba, to email volunteer at alokeralado.org. Perfect. Yeah, that's pretty good. Yeah, I'll send you that info. And they can just say, like, what are they interested in doing? Where are they located and that sort of thing and then we'll be in touch. I mean, more than anything like $20 is a tarp to cover a family and keep somebody shielded from the wind. We can feed a lot of people with $100. So if financial support is the most direct way,

even though it's not necessarily always feasible for people, it is the most efficient way for us to be able to buy items in bulk. Yeah, I like even five bucks, right? Like maybe that's two people and it really makes a day to have a whole meal. Oh my gosh, yeah, anything helps. So yeah, people can definitely do this.

How about for American French service committee petr, how can people donate volunteer help? Yeah, I mean, I would also stress what Jacqueline said in terms of vetting people and volunteers. It's, you know, it's not, it's not easy work and we want to make sure that when people are volunteering, that there's a certain level of emotional strength that people are able to have, it's very tough work. And at the same time, make sure that what we're doing does not negatively impact those that we are presuming

to want to help, right? And so that's important. I think going through those channels, if you, you know, the folks that are leading the work at the transit centers check in with them first. But then there are other things that could be done. The other day someone showed up with 20 boxes of pizza, you know, a very useful, easy way to support,

connecting with people and finding out what the needs are. That's another way if you would rather purchase the tarps yourselves, for instance. Do that and then we can pick them up. We can find out how to meet and pick up those items. If you want to donate, there are multiple organizations doing this work. I believe someone was working on a list to produce. For us, go and on the website afse.org and be sure that you find our locations, San Diego. So that our program then receives that donation directly. If the program goes to the overall AFSE, we won't see it.

So just be very mindful of when you're donating to afcafc.org, first locate the send-ego program office, and then find the donate page on there so that we can be assured that you are sending it to our program. Or you can definitely contact me, and I could also assist you with that. Yeah, I think it's great. I think it's important that both of you sort of

centered with regard to volunteering, that like there are organizations that exist to serve volunteers who are facilitating like a service experience to them and that that's not what is happening here. Like this is about serving people who are very vulnerable. So like there has to be some kind of vetting process and people have to understand that like that's part of keeping those people safe and that's why that's happening. So yeah, thank you very much for this. We'll keep covering it obviously and I really hope people can find some resources to donate because it's been very taxing financially and all these groups and in our community generally. Is there anything else you guys would like to share

before we finish up? The only thing I would add is that pressing the authorities, that's the way, if you are able to connect with the county, or your county supervisor in San Diego, press on them that they have a responsibility and an obligation to respond to this in a way that supports people who need to support. And that's where I would push towards. Yeah, I'll add to that that having spoken to people in the county

and in state office, like if you call that makes more difference and if you email, so if you have the time to make a phone call, that could help a lot. Anything else from you, James, or Jacqueline? That's what I can think of. I mean, everything changes daily. So if we were to record them, so to every single day,

I'm sure I can come with something new. Yeah, yeah. For people to stay clued in with channels of communication, such as this podcast that are actually with people on the ground and share that with their community is really important. Like we're already getting like some social media kind of comments.

I mean, it happens every time about how we're aiding and abetting people breaking the law. It's the government breaking the law. They're breaking international asylum law. And it's really important for people who aren't as versed in all of this to stay aware of that everybody who is presenting for asylum has a legal right to do so. Not that it matters. I mean, they have like, it's a humanitarian right.

Yes. But for people who are very concerned with legality or at least they lean heavily on the Galathe, presenting for asylum is a legally protected right. And that's something that is actually being cut short by the government in violation of that. Yeah, I think you're right. It doesn't really matter. Like I really don't get a shit about like, no, come back. People that really are like get a shit about like. Yeah, but it's come back.

People that are really are like, nowadays, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's good to, it's good to remind them that they are wrong. I had both morally and legally. Exactly. Yeah. So what would your social media spare people wanted to keep up to date with what's happening?

Border kindness on Instagram tends to have the most up to date comment. I mean, shares of like what we're doing, and that will have updates like in our stories and our posts of how to help. What's going on? How about you, Pedre? We're we're terrible with our social media, but you can definitely find some of our work there. AFC San Diego. Just took for AFSC San Diego minus Pedro Gonzáfos, Pedro Gonzáfos, mostly on Twitter, some IG, and I'll be updating some items later today.

Perfect, yeah. One more question. Because people contacted me in May to ask if they could donate air miles to facilitate travel for folks after they've been paroled into the US. Is that something that AFSC can do? There is another organization. I'm not sure that's what you just mentioned now that the

miles for migrants. Yeah, miles for migrants. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Wonderful organization and that we've used through some of our other sister organizations and getting people to their final destination. I would say that might be the best way right now. Okay. Yeah. So that's the thing people can do.

If they happen to have a surplus of those. And great. Thank you so much for your time. I know you're all extremely busy. I appreciate it. And yeah, hopefully people listening will find a way to support it. Thanks, guys. Thank you. Great. Thank you.

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