Behind the Bastards - It Could Happen Here Weekly 249

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Starting point is 00:02:22 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, everyone, and welcome to It Could Happen here. My name is Dan Al-Kurd. I'm a researcher of Arab and Palestinian politics. And today I'm joined by Hussam al-Hamilawi.

Starting point is 00:02:56 Hossam is a journalist and socialist from Cairo, who was among the organizers of the 2011. protest. He's been involved in the labor movement and the fight against police brutality in Egypt for many years and holds a PhD in political science from the Free University of Berlin. He publishes a weekly newsletter on Egyptian politics, which I'll be linking in the show notes, and is author of the new book, Counter Revolution in Egypt, C.C.'s New Republic. Hassam, thanks for joining us. Thank you, Diana, for having me. So let me start off by talking about the beginning of your book. At the beginning of your book, you talk about your own abduction and torture. by state security in 2000.

Starting point is 00:03:33 And then you were an organizer, as I said, of the 2011 uprising. So how did living through this repression on a personal level shape the way that you studied the repression? And what can a participant see that maybe an outside scholar might miss? There was like a long-running tradition in academia and in journalism, which fortunately it's being challenged over the past couple of decades at least, whereby this tradition tended to regard the scholar or the journalist as someone who's completely separate from whatever they are studying or reporting on. They should be, between quotes, neutral, between

Starting point is 00:04:17 quotes, objective. Any form of attachment or passion for any cause would be considered a conflict of interest, more or less. But, I mean, a great chunk of my career, and this is also expressed in this book, I've been trying to challenge that. I consider myself a scholar activist, not just a scholar. I was also an activist journalist, not just a journalist. And in that regards, in answer to your question,

Starting point is 00:04:49 my experience when it comes to state repression has definitely shaped not just my intellectual intellectual trajectory, but my own personal life. After all, I'm doing this interview with you from Berlin, not from my home in Cairo, which I had to leave in 2015 and can't go back as long as this regime exists. My repression, which included the repeated arrests, torture, continuous threats to me and my family, exclusion from jobs and the list is too long have planted in me curiosity and also an existential reason to study who's repressing me actually. I mean, we tend to talk about the state or the security

Starting point is 00:05:44 apparatus and I was very much interested in putting faces and names to these kind of entities Who's doing what when it comes to repression? Who's doing the monitoring and who's doing the arrest? What's the profile of the officers who conduct these missions? Where do they come from? What's their background? What's their life trajectories? How do they justify for themselves their actions?

Starting point is 00:06:14 What's their worldview? And in so many ways, this curiosity has took me on a very long journey. to study this apparatus, also with the declared aim of dismantling it one day when we are victorious in the coming revolution. Yeah, so you really opened up kind of the black box of the security apparatus and disentangled, I think, the ways in which maybe outside scholars kind of gloss over or lump different things together. And everything you're saying really resonates with me as a Palestinian studying Palestine,

Starting point is 00:06:49 like this endless suspicion of your own perspective. I'm glad that, as you said, there has been a pushback from our region and from scholars and activists in other places. But on this question of actually doing the research, you know, it must have been challenging because this regime wants to obfuscate. It wants to hide its doers. So it must have been challenging to find sources. How did you find that information? What was your methodology for the book? That's a very good question.

Starting point is 00:07:16 From the outside, Egypt looks like a very opaque country for very reasonable causes at the end of the day. This is a repressive regime. It's allergic to the flow of information and freedom of expression in general. Egypt is not a researcher-friendly country at all. Once you mention Egypt in academia, people are always reminded with Giulio Regini, the Italian PhDs. scholar who was brutally tortured and murdered in Egypt. We don't have freedom of information acts in Egypt that allows us access into the archives of this security apparatus and the military and the other institutions that belong to that

Starting point is 00:08:05 sector. But you can always find your way if you decide to become innovative. And I will just cite a couple of examples. First is that sometimes the best information you can get about an opaque military like the Egyptians is through their sponsors. The Egyptian military is sponsored by the US. In the US, even when it's of course becoming cecified in so many aspects, but still there is a room, freedom of information acts and other laws that allows you access. So if you go then after we're done with the record, just go to the U.S. State Department website, check the FOIA section, and go back to 2011, and

Starting point is 00:08:55 check Hillary Clinton's emails that have been declassified. Right. The intelligence reports in these emails almost contain the Skaab generals meetings minutes, where Hillary is like saying, General Ruehany said this, while the other general, like, replied back saying, no, and it's as if she is sitting, you know, I mean. on the same meeting. But anyways, I mean, they are her proxies and clients, so she must get the information right away.

Starting point is 00:09:24 So I managed to get tons of information through actually declassified US documents. The second method, which I also invested some time in, just by the fact that the military are now in the front seat, not in the backseat when it comes to ruling, and I guess we'll touch more on this later. There are tons of mics that are shoved in front of the mouths of the different generals and the different senior officials as well as CC. And these guys don't have any filters.

Starting point is 00:10:00 They haven't received the same sophisticated training, I guess, where militaries in Western, quote-unquote democracies have, where they are always in contact with the media. So the kind of garbage and so many secretive things that you actually can't believe that they are saying, it's unbelievable. So just by browsing through their public statements, they are spilling the beans left and right. The last thing that I will say about the sources, I once heard a story in the beginning of the 2000s or late 1990s, when I was still a student. And to be honest, I have no idea if this story was, I mean, it did happen or it's just an urban myth. But when I heard it, it resonated with me and it stayed with me for four years to come and inspired me.

Starting point is 00:10:57 The story goes like as follows, following the peace treaty with Israel, when the Egyptians and the Israelis were sitting discussing joint cooperation projects. So the Israelis would, you know, some agricultural project, for example, and then they would tell the Egyptians, and we think that Mr. Muhammad, blah, blah, blah, at this department, at your agricultural ministry, would be the most qualified to lead it. And then they would like suggest others, and they would like keep on proposing names. And the Egyptians were shocked to find out that, as the story goes,

Starting point is 00:11:38 that the Musad had the entire map of the Egyptian bureaucracy, just by monitoring the obituaries. Because, you know, obituaries, maybe the Westerners don't know this, but obituaries in the Arab world, you tend to put your entire family tree and brag about all the members, you know, of the family. This engineer and this doctor, yeah, yeah. Yeah, the entire family tree.

Starting point is 00:12:02 And each one, you know, you start posting their CVs and, you know, their achievements. So actually, when I heard this, it stuck with, me that story. And I applied that same methodology on like trying to track down police officers who were involved in torture in the years like in the run up to the 2011 revolution. And I used the same technique in my research. So I managed to map, for example, the new administrative structure of the military intelligence through obituaries, through surfing through the obituaries and, you know, digging up names and departments and things like that. So, yeah, I mean, there is always a way to maneuver.

Starting point is 00:12:46 I like how the security apparatus becomes a family business, and the military becomes a family business. And I also love the fact that we can use the structures of American Empire to study its outposts. So, yeah, that's very clever on your part to weaponize those sources. Okay, so let's get into the argument of the book. Basically, there's this idea of a counterfeit, revolution, I think maybe for like the layman, also I think in some of the theoretical literature,

Starting point is 00:13:17 but just generally speaking, the way that people think of counter revolutions, we're thinking of a restoration of an old regime. But your main argument is that Zizi didn't restore Mobadok's Egypt. Mobadok was the president prior to the 2011 uprising. But he built something fundamentally different. You'll call it a second republic. So what makes this order different? And why How does that distinction matter for how the world should understand Egypt right now? This indeed was the main argument of the book. My book was sort of an intervention in political debates that have been happening among the Egyptian dissident community.

Starting point is 00:13:59 When I started this research, I'm talking here about the end of 2017, because, I mean, my book is, as you said earlier, it's my doctoral actually dissertation, which. I did here in Berlin. So at the time, there were still debates about whether this regime is a return to the Mubarak order or is it something new. Now, speaking to you in 2026, any five-year-old in Egypt who definitely would know that this is something completely different. You don't need to do a PhD about. But at the time, there was still so much unclarity. And my argument was, A victorious counter-revolution does not restore the old order simply because the old order has failed. And by failure here, Dana, I don't mean the kind of failure that you and I would think of

Starting point is 00:14:52 that the old regime was not democratic enough. The old regime did not distribute wealth in an equal fashion. No, in the eyes of the counter-revolutionaries, the old regime failed because it failed to repress the revolution. So the kind of victorious regimes that come out of such a counter-revolution are usually

Starting point is 00:15:18 regimes that try to avoid the mistakes of the past. So the generals, for example, who led the 2013 military coup, they regarded Mubarak as too lenient, as too weak. They completely

Starting point is 00:15:35 detested the way that Husni Mubarak between quotes, allowed those human rights NGOs to operate in the country. They couldn't believe that Hosni Mubarak allowed, again, between quotes, people to denounce him in the press, for example. So this was not a restoration of the old Mubarak authoritarian formula. I mean, make no mistake. I'm not nostalgic to the Mubarak days. I don't see it as a viable model.

Starting point is 00:16:07 but this was not a restoration of that old authoritarian formula. Instead, Cici built a new regime, which, by the way, he's the one who coined the phrase the new republic or the second republic. And I know many people, they like to ridicule, you know, this term for very obvious reasons. But it's actually, it's quite accurate. He contrasts the first republic, which lots. it from 1953. That's one year

Starting point is 00:16:41 after the three officers coup when they abolished the monarchy and declared the republic till

Starting point is 00:16:47 2013. This is all of it. It included three successive regimes, Nasser, Sadat and

Starting point is 00:16:56 Mubarak. C.C. lumped them all together in one lot as the first republic and actually

Starting point is 00:17:03 I'm arguing that he's right. Even when on the surface, they had different inclinations, different stated goals, different international alliances.

Starting point is 00:17:15 But when it comes to the core of how the state machine was organized, actually, they didn't differ that much. And there was some logic in organizing the security apparatus, which completely changed after 2013. Let's get into that in particular. It's the fact that Abdan Nasar and Onward, they pit, they pitiful. different parts of the security apparatus against each other. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Starting point is 00:17:53 I'm not a scholar of Egypt. But my understanding is that under Mobadok's regime, they really bolstered, for example, general intelligence and things like this. So always kind of historically fragmenting different parts of the security apparatus so that they are rivals. And of course, the dictator can be the arbiter.

Starting point is 00:18:12 What you're saying is, in the book, especially is that CC unifies them for the first time. And why is that unification the key to kind of understanding not only the type of repression, but the scale? And could it have happened without the 2011 revolution? There is a vast amount of literature in political science that discuss this term. It's called the dominant perceived threat. and the arguments usually that revolves around this term is that when autocrats reach power, they usually have a dominant perceived threat.

Starting point is 00:18:54 I mean, don't get me wrong, any good autocrat, if they want to stay in power for a long time, they have to shield themselves from all sorts of dangers. But there is always a dominant one, and according to that dominant one, they start structuring their security sector or security apparatus. So the argument also goes, and I mean, I support it, and I think it's correct and accurate, that if your dominant perceived threat is that of a military coup, then you tend to fragment your apparatus as you've just clarified.

Starting point is 00:19:32 So you create multiple security institutions. And I mean security here in the functional sense. like the military would be a security institution. They will all have overlapping mandates, hardly any communication or information sharing between them. They are always in a state of competition for resources, and there isn't much horizontal channels of communication. The only channels of communication are vertical,

Starting point is 00:20:05 so that, as you also clarified earlier, only the ruler would have the burden eye view of what's happening beneath them. At the same time, you know, this ruler or this autocrat would definitely take precautions against riots, against foreign invasions, against, you know, what have you. But that if the dominant perceived threat was that of a military coup, they will do, as we just explained. So during the First Republic, I mean, how did the First Republic start?

Starting point is 00:20:41 In case your listeners do not know in July, 1992, an eclectic group of nationalist army officers led by Colonel Gamal Abdan Nasser. They overthrew the British-backed king, and they declared the republic a year later. This was a time, Dana, where coups were almost a fashionable thing to do, I mean, across the global south. These were the years of decolonization. At the time, like, the militaries were still regarded in a favorable, actually, kind of lied by the nations that were still being formed. Many of them came from the anti-colonial fights. The military was regarded as a modernizing force professional that can get the country to go forward and catch up with the West. and break dependency ties.

Starting point is 00:21:41 There was all of these kind of nostalgic, romanticized visions of the military. So Egypt in that case was not really that unique. It was happening across our region and it was happening across the global south. So the immediate concern of these conspirators was a counter-coon. It makes sense. So this was their dominant perceived threat. And that's when the military intelligence. Colonel Zakeria Mohi Dine, who was dubbed Nasser's barrier in reference to Stalin's barrier,

Starting point is 00:22:16 he organized this security setup, which continued with us all the way up until 2013, whereby he fragmented the security sector. So you had the military, you had the Interior Ministry and its secret police, which changed its name several times, from the Mabakh Valle Amma to Mabash Vest Abkhamn-Dowla, to then after the revolution, Amn al-Watoni. And he created the General Intelligence Service in 1954, or our Makhabharat, as we call it. And by the way, it was modeled along the structure of the CIA from the start.

Starting point is 00:22:54 They were very impressed, you know, with the CIA. And actually, they enjoyed good relations in order to fight communism. Because, you know, many people actually don't know that initially the free officers. they didn't really express any left-leaning sympathies, but they were kind of like pushed into it in the following years. So this was the security setup. Not in their wildest dreams did they ever imagine that a revolution could happen in Egypt.

Starting point is 00:23:24 I mean here a proper, like popular revolution. And this is because our rulers, even when they, you know, came in the post-colonial years, they still maintain this colonial look whereby they despised their people. They saw the Egyptians as human beings without agency. They regarded the Egyptians as incapable of self-organizing and that if they are let free or let loose,

Starting point is 00:23:58 that they will bring the whole country together. So there always has to be some patriarchal kind of guardian ship of the Egyptians. They expected few riots to happen here and there, maybe some strikes here and there, but not in their wildest nightmares

Starting point is 00:24:17 that they thought a revolution could happen. Comes to 2011, and suddenly they are all shocked. And for two and half years, they were panicking about the fact that the entire regime could have collapsed.

Starting point is 00:24:34 So out of this, trauma and paranoia comes out the counter-revolutionary regime of Abdul Fattah Sisi, where the dominant perceived threat now is that of a popular revolution. And this is not, I mean, my own analysis. I mean, again, C-C does not miss a single occasion where he brings up 2011 and warns of 2011 and talks about, you know, the conspiracies to bring down the state. even, you know, a few days ago before we record this podcast, he inaugurated the octagon. If the Americans have the Pentagon, we have the octagon.

Starting point is 00:25:15 And the octagon is not really to protect, you know, the head of the state and the head of the army and the senior brass from, you know, foreign invasions, God forbid. It's Cici said it. He said that, you know, we're not going to repeat another 2011, which brought the whole country to. a standstill. So now we're moving the brain of the state, you know, somewhere safe. What ensued was the unification of the security apparatus for the first time since 1952. Don't get me wrong. I mean, they are still like three separate institutions. Friction is bound to happen between them and it does happen every now and then between them. They might have different views, but they are not in competition.

Starting point is 00:26:05 They are coordinating. They are sharing information. Sometimes they even share the same structures. I mean, there are units within the Egyptian army now that officially has the police as part of it. Like unit AAA, for example.

Starting point is 00:26:20 They coordinate and they do joint operations all throughout the Sinai counter insurgency and in the war on terror between codes in the Nile Valley. And in so many ways, everyone now, they understand that the military is the apex ruler. It's on the top.

Starting point is 00:26:39 But with it, its younger siblings, the Makhabharat and the Interior Ministry, are in this kind of unholy alliance trying to protect the state from the conspiracies of the evil Egyptian people at the end of the day. Yeah, I have so many questions. I could talk to you forever. Shoot me. Well, I mean, one of the questions that popped up while you were talking about, talking about is because of the emergence from decolonization and because of the wars with Israel,

Starting point is 00:27:11 you know, because of all of the history that the military, the Egyptian military has in the country, I mean, I think it's common knowledge and public opinion would back it up to some degree that Egyptian public perception has been very pro-military. And every ruler has come from a military background, as you mentioned. And given that the Egyptian people have now been named the dominant threat, do you think that that is changing public perception of the military apparatus? Let me first just go back to, I mean, even before 2011, whether Egyptians regarded the military favorably or not. There is definitely, I mean, this factor, which exists almost in every country and you're in America so you understand this too. The military is always a core pillar of

Starting point is 00:27:59 whatever nationalism or wherever nationalist ideology and patriotic ideology that exists in any country. And in the case of Egypt, the military, especially, you know, its role in the 1973 war against Israel, which is always depicted in our school curriculums and in our movies and, you know, whatever culture of production as a smashing victory against the Israelis, which is not, you know, I mean completely accurate, to be fair. So there is definitely this glorification, but here is the thing, you know, those who tell me that, you know, Egyptians love the military and they regard it favorably, I always tell them, you know, when it's conscription time,

Starting point is 00:28:45 do you find everyone just running to the conscription centers because they can't really wait you know, for the moment they put on the uniform and they get humiliated, you know, in some military factory or in some desert camp? Or do people try to find whatever excuses and fabricate whatever medical, you know, reasons in order to and buy their way out of the military? You know, I honestly, like from my humble knowledge and from what I saw all throughout my life in Egypt, it's a nightmare. Everyone tries to buy their way out from the military. Now, when the military intervened in the revolution, I'll go back also a little bit. Maybe the military was not running traffic. Maybe the military was not doing the actual daily policing before 2011. So most of the

Starting point is 00:29:45 hatred was directed against the police because they are the ones that, you know, know, that you see on a daily basis, who interact with you on a daily basis. The military, it is true that they were in their camps, but their tentacles were all over society. They had their own social clubs. As an Egyptian man, like, until a certain age, I can't leave the country except with their permission. They have their own economic and business ventures. They have their own special status.

Starting point is 00:30:18 So yeah, you don't see the brass daily, but they are always there somehow, but remotely. After 2011, I mean, they first deployed nationally on the streets following the collapse of the police. And in my book, I actually do go in details to clarify that not everyone welcomed their deployment initially. and with their own acknowledgement, I got statements from the military that talked about confrontations with the people as soon as they were deployed. But at the same time,

Starting point is 00:30:59 there wasn't any other choice at the time in front of the people except trying to win over the conscripts and win over the military. Confronting the military at the time after a very bloody war of attrition with the police over the previous days would have been suicide.

Starting point is 00:31:19 So the famous chant, El Geishu Shab Iid Wadda, or the people and the army are one hand, that came out in that context of us trying to win over the conscripts. An appeal. Exactly. So I know that this slogan

Starting point is 00:31:34 then later got, you know, co-opted by the military and by the counter-revolution to mean something else, but initially that's what it meant. So did the military keep its clout? throughout the revolution. I belong to the Egyptian revolutionary socialist,

Starting point is 00:31:51 which is a revolutionary leftist organization in the country. We were the only ones to issue an anti-military statement on the 1st of February during the 18 days. No other political organization issued any anti-military statements. And the 1st of February here was kind of like prophetic even, like this was one day before the Battle of the Camel that was enabled partially also by the military at the time. And initially we were an isolated minority.

Starting point is 00:32:21 Most of the public were against us. But then as the revolution progressed and people started to get disillusioned about the role of SCAF, the Supreme Council for the Armed Forces, they started to remember, oh, it was the Egyptian arrests who were warning us from the early on about this. And several confrontations exploded when it comes to SCAF in the street. whether it's the Muhammad Mahmoud uprising in November or the Occupy cabinet clashes in December 2011. So the thing of the military, like it goes back and forth, back and forth up and down. I cannot say that it's something constant.

Starting point is 00:33:04 With 2013, there were sections of Egyptian society who supported the massacres and supported the army's intervention. but also there were victims of that intervention. And I think SCC lost cloud as he proceeded because he's now running the country and governing it solely by coercion, no consent. People can see in front of them how the military turned into a monster that's basically taking over everything in the country.

Starting point is 00:33:36 Does that mean when another revolution breaks out that everyone will be anti-military? from the start, I don't think so. If there isn't a clear alternative that's telling the people that another solution is possible other than the military, I think they will play the same game

Starting point is 00:33:58 of like getting rid of the regime and retreating for a few steps, but keeping things as they are. And they are, you know, unfortunately, in some ways in a strengthened position, as you said, because they learned the lesson of the possibility of popular mobilization. I mean, they've moved the capital.

Starting point is 00:34:16 There's the octagon, like everything you've mentioned. And I think it's so apt the way that you describe the regime acting like a colonial occupier more than a national government because it does, as you mentioned, have this view of its own people as underdeveloped and unworthy of having their own political agency. So for Egyptians today in Egypt, what does daily life look like under the world? this, you know, unfortunately, more aggressive system? Unfortunately, it's a very miserable situation. When Cici rose to power and took office officially in 2014 as a president, Egypt's foreign debt was roughly $41 billion.

Starting point is 00:35:11 Today, it's over $163 billion. In this year's government budget we're talking about 63% at least of the government budget will go for the debt service 63% let me repeat that again 63% of the government budget it's not going to go for education it's not going to go for health it's not going to go for

Starting point is 00:35:40 whatever it's going just to pay the interest on the debt so this means also the following it means that there is austerity measures on steroids to the extent that people are sharing their memories of the 2000s and 1990s as the good old days. And again, these were the days of the height of our neoliberal transition, which is part of why we had the revolution in the first place. But the situation now, the economic situation is that bad that even the austerity of the 1990s and the 2000s, They sound like heaven today. Secondly, when it comes to political repression, the political repression also, it's compared to to C.C. Mubarak is a human rights activist, is a human rights defender, you know, compared

Starting point is 00:36:33 to what we're seeing today. The unification of the repressive apparatus in Egypt only led to heightened lethal and carcarsal violence. The regime, and this might sound Orwellian, but the regime was boosting in the public media that were building the biggest prison on earth, and they are listing this as part of their achievements. So how does life look like today? You have three or four generations of Egyptians from, let's say, 2013 up until today, who

Starting point is 00:37:12 graduated from university without ever taking part in a protest, without ever taking part in a political debate, without ever drafting a statement or distributing a leaflet, without ever taking part in a string union election,

Starting point is 00:37:28 without ever taking part in a parliamentally electoral campaign in their neighborhoods. CEC has deserted the political scene in Egypt. He dismantled most of the political organizations in the country. Even apolitical charities, any entity that's independent from the state got taken over or

Starting point is 00:37:53 dismantled by the state apparatus. So you have really a draconian kind of regime that we've never witnessed in our modern history. Even under Nasser, I mean, Nasser usually is always like referred to as the reference when it comes to military dictatorships and what have you, but it's not true. But yeah, I mean, he was a dictator, of course, but he feared the military. He feared a coup. So he had to create a vast array of political institutions in order to counter the military's power. And these political institutions were a vehicle for Egyptians, though with limits, of course,

Starting point is 00:38:32 but to mobilize, to conduct, to discuss, to organize, and there was some space, some kind of political education which is now nonexistent. As I'm talking to you now, you know, the Egyptian national team has returned to Egypt, our football national team. And they have done really a great achievement at the World Cup

Starting point is 00:38:55 which, you know, it never happened in our history. The government announced that they are preparing like a mass popular welcome for the national team. Alamain, not in Cairo.

Starting point is 00:39:11 So they arrived at the Libyan border, at our border with Libya, like all the way in the desert to be received by the state officials and later they will meet CEC. And, you know, like a few hundred people like showed up in the desert in that scratching, you know, sun heat to wait for them. Because this regime is so crowdphobic, so peoplephobic that they wouldn't even dream that, you know, know, they would have this welcoming Cairo, where the real crowds are. It is to that extent, our football league, for example, which has always been famous and popular, you know, in the Arab world, and let alone in Egypt, is being played without fans. It stayed for years and the stadiums were empty.

Starting point is 00:40:02 And then they now allowed only 5,000 people to show up. The capacity of the Cairo stadium, for example, is 120,000. and I used to attend matches where it was full. Now they only allow like, you know, 5,000 fans for each one because they are so crowdphobic. This is the reality we're living under, but I'm also arguing at the end of the book that this is not a sustainable model.

Starting point is 00:40:28 Yeah, an incarcerated population. But as you said, at the end of the book, you're saying there are cracks in the regime's internal unity and I think you also mentioned the parliamentary crisis. So what do you think are the seeds of another 2011? What would resistance look like this time? What would it need to look like this time? Because, I mean, you and I both agree that coercion alone cannot sustain these types of regimes. You were saying earlier that they have learned their lessons, which, you know, on the surface, this might be true. But I would argue that they have

Starting point is 00:41:07 probably learned the wrong lessons because there are counter-revolutions across history that, yeah, was violent, was repressive, you know, and there was bloodshed. But at the same time, these counter-revolutions also, since they were far-sighted, they tried to address some of the problems that led to the outbreak of the revolution in the first place, not because they are Democrats, but they just want to diffuse, you know, any potential problems. Now, let's look at Egypt. And actually, the Arab Spring in general, not just Egypt. There are tons of reasons why the Egyptian and the Arab revolutions broke out in 2011. But I can, in a reductionist way, you know, I can simplify them into two main problems.

Starting point is 00:42:01 one is the issue of political repression and police brutality. The other one is the social question or the unequal distribution of wealth. These were the two main structural problems that provided the objective conditions to have an uprising in Egypt. And actually the Arab world, I mean, I can generalize here. Again, knowing that each country had its own specificities, Syria had its own. on, you know, I mean, conditions and problems. Tunisia had its own, blah, blah, blah. But, you know, these two were the common denominator

Starting point is 00:42:38 and the main motor force for these revolutions. Now, let's look at Egypt. The counter-revolution, yes. I mean, it killed the revolutionaries. It repressed the revolutionaries. But did they provide answers to these two problems? No. Any child in Egypt, you know, could answer this.

Starting point is 00:42:57 You don't need a PhD scholar to tell you that actually political repression. is even much, much, much worse today. Secondly, when it comes to the distribution of wealth, it's even as much, the economic condition is, it's unbelievable at this point. So as long as these two structural problems continue with us, there will always be the objective conditions for another reward. What's missing here is the subjective conditions, which means is Husam and Dan,

Starting point is 00:43:31 and X and Y and Z and Muhammad and Michael and are we organized? Are we trying to put out new ideas? Are we trying to mobilize even under repression in these campaigns here and there? That's what's missing. The repression was extremely effective in terms of dismantling the different political organizations and the independent unions in the country. but part of also why the repression was effective was the fact that there was full blank check backing from the regional and the global allies of the regime the UAE and Saudi Arabia in specific

Starting point is 00:44:18 in the region and globally you had the US and more importantly the EU I would actually be arguing that it's the EU that's much more complicit in enabling the CC regime, more than America, which goes, you know, against the historical trajectory of that regime. So the regime was confident. The regime could ask, you know, the Gulf allies and the West as long as he was fighting the revolution, as long as he was dismantling the Islamists, and as long as he's killing this boogeyman called the January 2011 revolution. Until CC woke up by 2021 with COVID and the war in Ukraine to find out that first our death has spiraled out of control and that the Gulf were not really that keen on keeping these bailouts to continue. There were even like some leaked reports that Mohammed bin Zayed of the UAE complaining that CC thinks he's some ATM.

Starting point is 00:45:26 I don't know if it's true or not, but, you know, it signaled a different mood. And there was even a famous statement by Cece, which then was taken down from most of the news websites at the time. But I had screenshoted it and I listened to that speech where he was complaining, saying something along the line of some of our Arab brothers, they think that Egypt is incapable of progress and blah, blah, blah. He was like lamenting, you know what I mean, the situation. And that's when, you know, the regime started to act in a very unconfident way, released some political prisoners, called for a national dialogue, which, I mean, it never really materialized into anything important. But it was just a signal that they were scared.

Starting point is 00:46:16 They were scared because the economic situation was bad. And because that if any form of revolts take place, whether it's local or whether it's on the national level, they don't have that civil society in the Gramshan sense that can act as a buffer to protect them. Hosni Mubarak was an autocrat, it's true, but Husni Mubarak was presiding over very vibrant civil society. And it's that civil society that actually saved the state

Starting point is 00:46:51 from a full-fledged revolution in January 2011. There was the Muslim Brotherhood that you can try to negotiate with in exchange for, you know, suspending the Harrier and will give you, you know, a share of the cake. There used to be like left-wing political parties that you can try to negotiate with and promise, you know, some parliamentary seats in exchange for diffusing industrial militancy. There was this, there was that, there was this, there was that. This is what enabled Husni Mubarak to rule Egypt, for three decades, but it is exactly that authoritarian formula that Cici and the generals

Starting point is 00:47:33 regarded as the main reason for 2011. So what we have now is the state presiding over society without any buffers. It's the military that's micromanaging the society on daily basis. It's the police that's micromanaging society on a daily basis. It's the muqabarat who are also doing the same. and there is division of labor between them. They will remain united as long as things are going really well. But once you hit the wall, once a crisis erupts,

Starting point is 00:48:05 whether you are a political organization, whether you are the state, whether you are a group of friends, that's when people, you know, start looking at one another and exchange blames or propose very diverse ideas. Some will think we should go left. others will say we should go right and that's when cracks start to happen I'm not implying

Starting point is 00:48:29 that you know the divisions are now deep but you can start seeing few cracks here and there and in the background you started to see also an incremental rise in industrial actions over the past few years it's not like the 2006

Starting point is 00:48:50 till 2011 strike wave which you know once erupted in Mahala, it's spread by the domino effect all over, you know, the country. It's very incremental. Has its own problems, but it's rising. And it's that social movement, which I always bet on for the future. A lot to think about and a lot of historical events come to mind. So as you were talking, I was thinking about the bread into Fleda.

Starting point is 00:49:16 But like you mentioned, there's not some sort of buffer to absorb in today's Egypt. another thing I was thinking about as we were talking the entire time was this sci-fi collection, Egypt 100, about what Egypt looks like 100 years after 2011. I'm going to put that in the show notes if people are interested because it imagines what, like, moving the capital and doing all these things, like, what will that mean for Egyptians in 100 years? It's a little dystopian, but you are leaving me more hopeful than sci-fi leaves me. Thank you so much for coming on and I really appreciate your time. Thank you, Dan. It's always a pleasure to speak to you. Take care, everybody. Behind every night spent making the kids' lunches, there's a lot of suspense.

Starting point is 00:50:12 Will they finally eat the veggies? Will the pasto survive the first bite? Will the lunchbox come home empty, half full, or come home at all? And will you finish episode 8 before you're done slicing the cucumbers? Get Bell Pure Fiber Internet with Craved Netflix and Disney Plus from $94 a month. guaranteed for two years on internet with a two-year term and auto pay credit. Visit bell.ca for details and to check availability. Bell, connection is everything. Hey, everyone. It's the Jonas Brothers with the Hey Jonas podcast.

Starting point is 00:50:40 We've been catching up with some great friends, Paul Rudd, Michael Bublay, Seth Myers, Nile Horan, Jake Shane. And making some new friends while getting into what's really like to have sisters, like Alex and Ashton Earl. She likes to control everyone and tell everyone. Okay, well, control is a harsh word. I would say that's a harsh word. I am more outspoken. growing up a lot of the times because she was so quiet. I would speak for the both of us.

Starting point is 00:51:03 Now I'm working on like thinking a moment, reeling it in, and thinking before I speak. And Joey King. You know if your like mom is yelling at your sibling and even if you're annoyed with your sibling, you just like won't let that slide. It's like only you can yell at your sibling. I'm like, you can't do that here.

Starting point is 00:51:20 That is, you want to talk about her like that. Only I talk about her like that. Plus, we've been taking your calls, listening to your voicemails and giving advice. or at least trying to. So if you've got catching up to do, now's the perfect time. Listen to Hey Jonas on the Iheart radio app,

Starting point is 00:51:34 Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held captive for nine months. I survived, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are the Survivor Files. I just remember this low, taunting voice next to my ear saying shut up, don't say anything.

Starting point is 00:52:02 Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable. I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me. I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming. They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced. But these aren't stories about what's taken from them. There's stories about what it takes to make it out alive. Listen to the Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, this is Kylie Breakman.

Starting point is 00:52:39 Angel Geratana. Jeremy Colhane. Patrick McDonald. And we're the hosts of the Artists on Artists on Artists on Artists Podcast. The Improvised Character Comedy Podcast where each week a new panel of artists discuss their craft. Join us for a panel of wellness influencers. What I try to do is faux journal. I don't know.

Starting point is 00:52:58 Have you guys heard of faux journaling? Yeah, it's reading. It's called reading. So we don't like to use that word anymore. Okay. A panel of New Yorker cartoonists. Have you guys done Terry Gross's Peloton class? No!

Starting point is 00:53:10 I've been dying too. I'm so sorry. I'm seeing a reading of Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes by Audra McDonald's at the Wonderland Bookstore on 14. That's crazy. I went to the Wonderland Bookstore yesterday, and I heard Nora Jones do a reading of Zero Dark 30. No way. You have to come to the last bookstore, though. Kim Cottrell is reading the guitar tabs of yesterday.

Starting point is 00:53:32 A panel of Eurovision participants. And we do a little Halloween sometimes. Does the Pope dress up? He winks on Halloween. He gets right up next to the microphone. I hear you can almost hear the eyelashes hit each other. You never seen Italy so quiet as when the Pope gets up to wink on Halloween. Listen to artists on artists on artists on the I-Hurt Radio.

Starting point is 00:53:54 Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to It Could Happen Here. I'm Garrison Davis. On Monday, August 27th, ICE arrested right-wing provocateur Milo Giannoplas at the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport. And within just a day, Milo was deported to the UK. In a statement from August 28th, the Department of Homeland Security referred to Milo

Starting point is 00:54:24 as a quote-unquote, a legal alien from the United Kingdom, and said that he, quote, legally entered the country on May 14, 2019 through New York City, New York. He chose to overstay his welcome in violation of our nation's laws. Yianapolis was issued a final order of removal by an immigration judge on July 22nd, after failing to show up for his immigration hearing. So, according to DHS, Milo Yianapolis, both overstayed a visa and did not show up to immigration court hearings. And so, in abstentia, a judge ordered his removal. We'll get more into that later this episode, and we'll also get into some of Milo's background

Starting point is 00:55:10 in a bit. But safe to say that the former rising star of the alt-right currently has more enemies than friends on the political right and in the mega world. His deportation has been met with some amusement among the online left, but even more so among the online right. In fact, multiple far-right influencers have claimed credit for Milo's deportation, most notably and plausibly, one of Milo's old friends turned enemies, Laura Lumer. After reports of Milo's arrest broke online, Loommer posted on X the Everything app, quote, Breaking. A legal alien, Milo Yianoplas, has been detained by ICE. I was the first person to report on the fact that Milo is in the U.S. illegally where he incited violence against President Trump and worked for Marjorie Trader Green.

Starting point is 00:56:04 Recently, Candice Owens invited this illegal alien into her home. When Milo called for me to be assassinated, I reported him to ICE and the FBI. I told you all that Milo was an illegal alien. He was detained in Louisiana by ICE. Milo is going to be deported back to the UK where he can live among the Muslim. he has recently chosen to embrace. Today is a great day for America. The next day, Lumer said that DHS told her

Starting point is 00:56:33 that Milo is, quote, never allowed to come back to the United States ever again. Now, I'm not doing this episode to dunk on Milo Giannopoulos and cheer on that he has been deported. This mechanism of deportation should not exist in the country, whether it's used against poor working-class immigrants from Haiti or the most annoying right-wing fascist that you can imagine. Milo still has access to millions and millions of dollars of wealth.

Starting point is 00:57:05 He will be completely fine. The same cannot be said of the majority of immigrants who are deported by ICE. But this situation does represent a very interesting moment in right-wing politics. I never thought the leopards would eat my face, etc., etc. Milo played a not insignificant role in getting Trump elected back in 2016, and now is suffering some consequences from the world that he helped bring into being. And before I continue, I want to make one other note. I'm trying to be really careful in how I cover this story, because Milo himself is a professional attention seeker. It is not completely impossible

Starting point is 00:57:45 that whether he knew he had a final order of removal or not, he claims he didn't, but usually an inobstentio ruling only comes after the court knows the person is receiving notices to appear in court and is choosing not to. But regardless of whether he knew that he could be deported, Milo will certainly try to use this moment for political and personal benefit. A few days after being deported, Milo made his first public appearance on Pears Morgan's show. And I will play a few clips from this appearance, but let's be a few clips from this appearance, but let's be a few. keep in mind that Milo has his own careerist interests at the center of nearly everything he does in the public eye. That said, here are Milo's very first comments after being deported. I don't think I've ever been afraid before, like I was the last week. Maybe I've lived in

Starting point is 00:58:37 especially posited and cosseted life, but I think for the first time I know what it feels like to be really, really terrified. What were you terrified of? Well, I'd like to get to some of the claims that were made by Homan in a moment, but I didn't really understand the physical reality of how institutionalized the brutality is in America. The manner in which they arrest you, they put your manacles, your hands, your feet, chain it together. I mean, like, everybody is arrested is like an MS-13 gang member, and it hurts a lot more than it looks like on television.

Starting point is 00:59:19 So right off the bat, he is lying and trying to garner sympathy. He absolutely did know about the physical institutional brutality of deportation. While he is certainly correct that he has lived a sheltered, privileged life, he has also watched those videos of the U.S. government deporting or renditioning hundreds of people to Seacot. And in this interview, he references MS-13 gang members, even though most of the people sent to Seacot had no criminal convictions and no due process. And back then, Milo just didn't care about that and only cares about due process now for himself. After facing a tiny shred of the pain and suffering,

Starting point is 01:00:03 thousands of people less fortunate than him have been subjected to. You know, I was put from, you know, detention facility to a correction facility. You know, every three hours, they were sort of trying to keep ahead of my lawyers, so I couldn't, you know, whatever. But no one would tell me anything. It was, I mean, I know it's designed to be like that, but it's, it was, sure, it was humiliating and it was disorientating the rest of it. It was physically degrading. It was frightening. It was frightening.

Starting point is 01:00:38 I don't think I've ever been frightened like that before. Yeah, that sounds like it sucks, dude. But the thing is, later on in this very interview, Milo says he's still not opposed to ICE as an organization or deportations in general, but rather the problem is that we're just not deporting the right people. On January the 2nd, 2025, you posted punishing Somalis indiscriminately as a group and deported them all as the only way this administration would persuade the voters. It is serious not to the job.

Starting point is 01:01:10 And then again in May 25, there's one concrete thing we must insist on this administration delivering. It matters a lot more than debts measured in imaginary money. We'll deport millions and millions of people without that nothing else matters in September 2025, total legal immunity for ICE agents when they're on duty. And 21st of September 2025, justice system should be just ICE. So there you are aggressively promoting ICE being very aggressive and demanding that millions of people be deported. People say, Milo, you've been hoisted by your own partard. And I don't have a word to say. You got me.

Starting point is 01:01:45 I'm very... Look. I mean, they're doing what you told them to do. Deport millions of people. Not really. It just happened to include you. They're not doing it lawfully. And I think...

Starting point is 01:01:56 You did say about Somalis, they should be deported indiscriminately as a group. Deporting them all. Obviously exaggerating there. I thought is that ISIS supposed to be deporting criminals. So first, First it's, you got me. Then it's, no, see, they're not actually doing it lawfully. And later on, Milo plainly states that ICE is supposed to be deporting criminals.

Starting point is 01:02:21 Just in the past year, Milo has made multiple posts on X-The- Everything app calling for 10,000 deportations a day, has warned that if the Trump administration doesn't get real fast about left-wing terror and deporting millions of illegals, Americans will. adopt vigilante justice. In June of 2025, Milo called for ice checkpoints at supermarket entrances, gas stations, strip malls, intersections, government buildings, with, quote, on-the-spotation for anyone who can't prove they are in the U.S. legally. He has justified and celebrated DHS executing anti-ice protesters and has talked about getting horny while watching ice raids. Quote, what is the etiquette if you are going about your business and find yourself observing an ice raid?

Starting point is 01:03:13 I want to show a little respect and decency. Are you allowed to masturbate where you stand, in the street, or should you find some kind of awning or motor vehicle? Unquote. Let's back up for a second. Who is Milo Yianopoulos for those lucky enough to not be in the know? Milo is a right-wing provocateur in the truest sense of the term. His engagement with politics is based on provoking people. One of Milo's protégés, who lives in New York,

Starting point is 01:03:46 has described their own life as a form of performance art. And I think Milo sees his life in a very similar way. I'm not going to go over his whole history from the past 10, 20 years, because that would take up multiple full-length episodes, and I just don't think it matters all that much. But here's the broad strokes for context. Milo Yonoplas is a British, far-right political commentator. In 2014, he started working for Breitbart.

Starting point is 01:04:13 He was a major participant in Gamergate, and in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election, he became one of the first big figures in the then-emerging alt-right. Milo was an early mega-adopter. Starting in the summer of 2016, he began promoting a series of events called Twinks for Trump.

Starting point is 01:04:34 Twinks for Trump is a so-called art exhibition featuring scantily clad photos of boys or young men wearing Make America Great Again hats. Milo's canceled 2017 autobiography titled Dangerous, which was canceled by Simon & Schuster, discusses the Twinks for Trump art exhibit, which struggled to open after the gallery venue pulled out. To quote, Milo, I bathed in freezing cold peasant. pig's blood for 45 minutes, surrounded by images of innocent Americans slain by terrorists and illegal aliens. Now there was a genuinely subversive piece of art, gay men celebrating the orange Antichrist. Could you imagine if Madonna or Paris Hilton released a video with a bunch of underage boys in megahats? No, of course you can't, because the only people pushing the

Starting point is 01:05:29 envelope in art these days are Republicans. Unquote. Keep you. that underage boys comment in mind, it's a surprise tool that will help us later. So in this era of the mid-20 teens, Milo was a pretty big figure, big enough to earn a major book deal. But as I said, his book deal fell through. Because in 2017, Milo suffered a major fall-off after some pro-petophilia comments he made in 2016 went viral ahead of a speaking gig at CPAC 2017. In this frenzy around Milo's comments defending pedophilia, CPAC canceled Milo's speaking slot. His autobiography was pulled by Simon & Schuster, and he resigned from Breitbart. After stepping down from Breitbart,

Starting point is 01:06:23 Milo addressed public calls for him to be deported, based on the assumption that his work visa was tied to his job at Breitbart, something Milo denied. February 2017 was a big month for Milo Yanopoulos. Because right before things started going downhill for him, he was also supposed to give a speech at UC Berkeley after being invited to campus by the college Republicans as a part of his quote-unquote dangerous faggot tour, where he goes to various universities and tries to make college students upset.

Starting point is 01:06:58 over 1,500 people showed up to UC Berkeley to protest his speaking event, including about 150 people who the school referred to in a statement as masked agitators. These would be Black Block Antifa-style protesters. Based on the size and intensity of the protest, the police canceled Milo's speaking event two hours before he was scheduled to speak. Masked protesters, smashed windows, set off fireworks, lit fire, through Roxy Police and used Molotov cocktails in and around campus. This event was one of the first times that I can consciously remember Antifa as a concept

Starting point is 01:07:41 of people talking about like Antifa. It was in the aftermath of this UC Berkeley event. This was a pretty big deal. The day after this protest, President Donald Trump tweeted, quote, If UC Berkeley does not allow free speech and practice, practices violence on innocent people with a different point of view, no federal funds? Question mark.

Starting point is 01:08:06 This protest was a big turning point for left-wing street demos during this period and intensified what would become a nationwide conflict between right-wing agitators proclaiming their right to free speech and so-called anti-fascists seeking to counter and disrupt far-right events and de-platform figures like Milo. Around 2017, Milo started becoming more of a sideshow figure in the rapidly changing all right, far right world. Later in 2017, he married his husband in Hawaii, and the world carried on without Milo taking up as much oxygen, which made it all the more not really surprising but annoying

Starting point is 01:09:02 that in 2021, Milo attempted to emerge from irrelevancy to proclaim this. that he was no longer gay, that he had embraced Catholicism and is now, quote, ex-gay, and, quote, demoted his husband to housemate. You should remember this for later. Now, one of Milo's openly stated goals regarding this, what I'm going to call an ex-gay stunt,

Starting point is 01:09:29 was to reintroduce conversion therapy as a political project. To quote, Milo, given my new spiritual preoccupations, over the next decade, I would like to help rehabilitate what the media calls conversion therapy. And unfortunately, he may have been more successful in this endeavor than what one may have assumed back in 2021. Conversion therapy laws have since been loosened,

Starting point is 01:09:59 and forms of conversion therapy are now actively promoted by the federal government for trans youth. In 2022, Milo interned for Marjorie Taylor Green, and maybe did some ghostwriting for her, at least according to a lower loomer. Also, that year, Milo started working for Kanye West, along with Nick Fuentes, and we all know how that turned out. I am Adolf Hitler, Command of the Third Reich. Oh, and little known fact, Milo began working for Kanye again this year, after resigning in 2024, because of Kanye's decision to launch an adult. entertainment division of the Yeezy brand. During this 2022 to 2024 time period, Milo was burning whatever bridges that hadn't already totally combusted among the online right. In 2023,

Starting point is 01:10:48 Milo accused Laura Lumer of sexually assaulting one of her employees after Lumer criticized Marjorie Taylor Green on Twitter. Lumer and Marjorie Taylor Green have beefed for years. Lumer has said that Green saw her as like a rival to the queen of the Maga throne, and has claimed that Green was responsible for Trump not hiring Lumer in 2023. Though more recently, Lumer, who is strongly pro-Israel, has attacked Marjorie Taylor Green for her opinions on Gaza and Israel. But Milo and Lumer had been friends, or at least friendly, since at least 2018. And in 2020, Milo worked on Lumer's first unsuccessful congressional campaign.

Starting point is 01:11:32 They suffered a pretty severe falling out around when Milo started working for Marjor Taylor Green, severe enough to possibly lead to his deportation. And since then, Milo has not done himself any favors. After Trump took office, again, Milo has been reigniting old conflicts between himself and the mega hardline influencers. who defend any and all of Trump's actions. For years, Milo has claimed to have blackmail and a bunch of right-wing influencers. A few years ago, Milo accused Benny Johnson of secretly being gay.

Starting point is 01:12:09 Johnson promised to sue Milo in response, which he never did, and now says he couldn't do because Milo was running from ice. In response to Milo posting that President Trump has lost his way, On March 16th, 2026, Lumer wrote, Why hasn't the Trump administration deported Milo? He's allegedly living in Los Angeles on an expired visa. He's calling for regime change in the U.S. and posts Holocaust denial as an immigrant. It's time for him to be deported.

Starting point is 01:12:44 He didn't campaign for Trump. Milo is a foreigner, unquote. From what I can find, this post by Lumer is the first time she accused Milo of being in the country illegally and called for his deportation. Next month in April, Lumer said that, quote-unquote, sources told her that Milo was facing deportation proceedings. And after Milo was deported last month,

Starting point is 01:13:10 Lumer told reporter Will Somer that she reported Milo to DHS years ago. Here's borders are Tom Homan on CNN, being asked whether Laura Lumer put ice on Milo's trail. With several, a lot of people tipped ice off. Now there's a lot of people who's calling ICE. And she says she's one of it. But bottom line is, it doesn't matter.

Starting point is 01:13:32 He was ordered removed by an immigration judge, and ICE's job should execute that order. On Pierce Morgan, Milo insisted that he did not overstay a visa. Quote, but even if I had, things are supposed to happen in a particular order. Everything that happened was very off, unquote. Milo says he was swarmed by 15 ice agents after he got off the plane in Louisiana and said that two ice agents recognized him and said, yeah, I'm not doing this and this is not what I got into this for and quote unquote walked off the job. Milo also told Pierce Morgan that when he got to Houston, ice agents were getting calls from Washington every 20 minutes to inquire about Milo. those whereabouts? Well, people on the left have come forward, interestingly, who don't even like you, and to say that this is a disturbing infringement potentially of your First Amendment

Starting point is 01:14:31 rights to free speech, that you're being punished for your views of Donald Trump and the Trump administration and so on, and that Laura Luma, who is, you know, extremely devoted to President Trump and in his ear all the time, has used your association with Candice Owens and with Marjorie Taylor Green and others, has decided to basically shut you up by sending you back to the UK. I don't know how we can come to any other conclusion. This is not how immigration systems are supposed to work. And there are, you know, seven, eight, nine things that are supposed to happen that do for everybody else that didn't in my case because they were so anxious to just throw me on a plane because they know how much more difficult it gets once you know, once you

Starting point is 01:15:12 want you out. But, you know, I've very good lawyers and they do not believe this will stand at On CNN, Tom Homan denied that the Trump administration chose to make an example of Yanopolis by deporting him to send a message. We don't deport people based on political affiliation. Again, as soon as we get an order removal, our goal is removing as quick as possible, regardless of who they are. He overstayed his visa. I believe his visitor's visa, but I'm sure. But he overstayed the visa. He was ordered to appear in immigration court.

Starting point is 01:15:43 He didn't show up. The judge ordered him deported. So once ICE gets an order deportation from a federal judge, their jobs to execute that order, and that's what they did. On Pierce-Morgans show, Milo pushed back on homins and DHS's claims about his visa and legal status. Milo insists that he never overstayed a visa and did not know he had a final removal order. The thing that astonishes me, I have to say, is to see the various bits of the American government, all the machinery of the government, kind of lining up to line.

Starting point is 01:16:16 in the manner that Tom Homer just did. I mean, I want to be completely clear with you and with your viewers, like, I manage, I don't really do the right-wing provocateur thing anymore. I manage lawyers for a living. You know, I'm pretty organized and together person when I'm not being silly on Twitter. And I'm married to an American.

Starting point is 01:16:34 There's no reason I would take a risk like this. I didn't need to have a visa. There were dozens of companies who could have sponsored me, and I'm married to an American. Milo later said that he first entered the U.S. legally under an 01 visa years ago. That's a temporary work visa for, quote, individuals with extraordinary ability or achievement.

Starting point is 01:16:55 Milo told peers that he's actually had a few of these 01 visas, and the last one he had expired in 2019. But before that happened in 2017, Milo married an American citizen and got a green card. Filed for an adjustment of status, basically to switch tracks from a visa to a green card. And that's what I did. Went to the interviews, and that's what I had.

Starting point is 01:17:20 And you got a green card? Yes. But when... So if you have a green card, on what basis have they thrown you out of the country? They sent notices to an address they knew I didn't live at anymore. Two addresses ago in Florida, almost 10 years ago, in order to get an in-absentia hearing, which is basically they show up with a judge, they tell the judge, you didn't show up, you didn't respond to the notices, and they ask the judge to give them a...

Starting point is 01:17:46 you know, an order. That's what happened. So, Milo claims that notices regarding his immigration status and court summons were purposefully sent to an address that the government knew he didn't live at so that he wouldn't show up to court so that they could get a judge to agree to deport him. He's arguing that all of this was politically motivated because he has enemies close to the administration and was essentially set up. Milo also told Pierce that, quote-unquote, they had previously canceled his work permit without telling him, and claimed that the ICE agents who detained him said that they, quote-unquote, deliberately excluded Milo's lawyer from the immigration court process. Milo did claim that he had given his new address to immigration authorities,

Starting point is 01:18:32 but that they only mailed these hearing notices to his old address in Florida. And what of his green card? Is your green car still valid? No, because they cancelled it without telling me. When? That I don't know. But in what period of time could it have been cancelled? Well, it must have been cancelled sometime the last year.

Starting point is 01:18:52 I suppose have you travelled to and from America? I happened not to have done the last year. When was the last time you entered America? Probably two years ago. So Milo also says his green card was quote unquote, cancelled within the last year without him no. it. Revoking green cards is a very serious civil rights issue. This is something we have spoken on this show about the Trump administration's efforts to revoke green cards from protesters

Starting point is 01:19:22 speaking out about the genocide in Palestine. The issue of green card revocation is a serious one, though Milo admits that the last time he entered the country with his green card was two years ago. And this is interesting, Milo says he only had a two-year green card. that he had been renewing every two years. How long is the green card valid for? Well, you can either get it for two or ten years. What did you have it for? So I had two years, and I was renewing on a two-year basis.

Starting point is 01:19:51 Had that elapsed? No, no, I had not. No, I had not. So at least according to Milo, the world's most trustworthy man, his green card had not expired by the time of his deportation. It is certainly theoretically possible that Milo just did not renew his green card in time, had issues renewing his green card,

Starting point is 01:20:11 or his card was revoked in relation to issues with his marriage, which is how he obtained the two-year green card in the first place. More on that in a sec. But during this interview, Milo did confirm to peers that he is still married to a man, despite coming out as, quote, ex-gay five years ago. Well, I'm married to an American. I've got dependents.

Starting point is 01:20:35 I've got cats. I've got, you know, I've got employees. I have a whole life there. been there for 10 years. You know, everything is there. You're married to an American woman? No. Man?

Starting point is 01:20:45 Does that be... I don't know prior to your sexuality, but I know you've... I mean, you're a gay man and you're married to a gay man. I... Yes, I don't... I don't do the sex stuff anymore, but yes. Okay. Listen, I'm only asking because I just want to know what family you have left to America.

Starting point is 01:21:00 Yeah. Where is your spouse? Living in the same house at the other end of the corridor. In which state is this? This is in California. In California, in L.A.? Yes. Right.

Starting point is 01:21:12 What Milo doesn't say in this interview is that he's actually in the middle of a really ugly divorce, and that might actually be one of the main factors leading to his deportation. A few days after Milo was deported, some less than reputable news outlets reported that Milo's ex-husband, though they're still technically married, threatened to get him deported in 20. called him an illegal immigrant and said that he would call the quote ice hotline according to court documents from their divorce. And so last week I spent about $100 of company money requesting over a dozen documents from the LA Superior Court, totaling hundreds of pages to find out what was actually going on with this divorce and if it could relate to Milo's deportation. I read through hundreds of pages of court declarations, motions, requests, and evidence exhibits. Emails between Milo and his husband indicate that their relationship was falling apart around 2022.

Starting point is 01:22:28 Milo told the court that his husband started withholding sexual activity and denying physical affection that same year, which was shortly after Milo publicly announced he was no longer gay. In one of those emails about their relationship from 2022, Milo asked his husband for help with a new residency application. By 2024, Milo's husband seemingly had enough and began the process of separating. I'm going to read an alleged text exchange between Milo and his husband, submitted to the court by Milo's husband. Quote, you cannot keep me captive and disenfranchised because you decided not to be gay.

Starting point is 01:23:10 You cannot abuse me or your power over me anymore. Milo. Shut up, stupid cunt. Just get out. Husband. I've petitioned the court for a legal separation. Milo. Great news.

Starting point is 01:23:25 Now that you violated our deal and can no longer assist with my immigration affairs, you will be evicted from this house in seven days. Start packing. Unquote. Another series of texts submitted by Milo from Milo's husband reads, quote, Go fuck yourself, Milo, L-O-L-L, you can have the cats, I've been staying around tolerating your abuse because I feel sorry for you,

Starting point is 01:23:51 but enough is enough, unquote. In 2025, they started pursuing a divorce. And about a year ago, the husband got a temporary restraining order against Milo. And again, this is not something Milo said on Pierce Morgan's show, but Milo himself has admitted in court documents that he has run into issues renewing his green card because of a lack of cooperation from his husband or ex-husband stemming from their ongoing divorce. For whatever reason, Milo seemingly never applied for naturalization or a 10-year green card after getting married and continued to only do those two-year renewals.

Starting point is 01:24:33 And if someone with a two-year green card gets divorced, they have to fill out a two-year green card. a special waiver form, and USCIS needs to confirm that the marriage was actually a real marriage and not just a way to obtain residency. This is to prevent immigration fraud. Now I will read a text allegedly sent by Milo to his husband, submitted to court. Quote, I will pay you $100,000 in four installments in exchange for completing my green card process. You can have $25,000 upon agreement. 50,000 at interview, and 25,000 when the status is awarded. After that, I want nothing more to do with you, unquote. Milo has claimed that some of the text messages submitted to court were fabricated,

Starting point is 01:25:24 though he has not directly challenged the legitimacy of this particular message in the court documents that I have reviewed. In a declaration in response to a motion for a domestic violence restraining order, filed October 20th, 2025. Milo claimed that his ex-husband secretly sent himself messages from one of Milo's devices. To quote the motion,

Starting point is 01:25:48 quote, actively endangering Yonopoulos' status in the country, his husband has forged messages in which he poses as Yonopoulos and admits green card fraud, unquote. The specific message

Starting point is 01:26:02 which Yonopoulos claims was falsified was sent in February of 2025. It reads, quote, Fuck you, stupid, worthless N-word. I hope you wrought in hell with your monkey ancestors. I was only using you for a green card in the first place, but since you filed for divorce, I no longer have need of you.

Starting point is 01:26:25 And if you tell the court about this, I will fucking end your life. Your worthless leech with no purpose in my life. Your threats of reporting me for not paying taxes are nothing. No one believes N words, stupid cunt. You should know what my friends are capable of by now, so I suggest you think twice about going to the police. You eat when I choose to let you eat.

Starting point is 01:26:47 Your car is in repossession and will stay that way for as long as I wanted to. Enjoy poverty or shut your mouth and do what I say when I tell you. In the meantime, get fucked. Your little petition to the court means nothing to me. I've gotten myself out of way worse. people with much more value than you'll ever have. Now, for the last time, get fucked and enjoy poverty. As long as we're still married, I own you. Remember that. And start acting the part. Or next time, it'll be your face I kick in, not your door. What makes you think a judge will

Starting point is 01:27:21 believe you over me? No one believes the black man. Too bad you didn't take photos of your bruises, huh, not even man enough to hit me back. Get fucked, John. Do your worst file divorce. See if I give a fuck. White always beats black. You're the one with a master's degree in criminology. You should know this already.

Starting point is 01:27:41 Unquote. So, that is the message sent from Milo's account to his husband that Milo claims is fake. It does contain some phrases which are mirrored in other text messages sent by Milo. In his court declaration, Milo does like armchair forensic text analysis to try to prove that this message is actually fake, while also just not addressing the other messages submitted to the court, alluding to this same general situation. Milo's motion reads, quote, for years his husband has explicitly threatened the Annapolis with deportation from the country, calling him an illegal immigrant. he is not. He has informed Yianopolis he would call the, quote, ice hotline, knowing that Yenoplas's

Starting point is 01:28:31 green card status is dependent upon their continued marriage and has in the past refused to appear at mandated U.S.CIS appointments, delaying Yianoplas's application process until his latest set of financial demands is met. Yianoplas has endured years of extortion on these grounds, purchasing sports cars for his husband and making huge cash gifts to him in an effort to save their marriage, but also, of course, with these threats unavoidably in the back of his mind, unquote. And just that last statement by Milo could itself put his legal status into question, because there Milo is admitting in a sense that he has paid huge cash gifts to his ex to get him to cooperate with immigration proceedings.

Starting point is 01:29:23 In this same declaration, seemingly written by Milo, it's signed that way, even though Milo has lawyers, he spends a considerable amount of time on the N-word and accusations from his ex that he's used the N-word many times as a form of abusive language. Milo writes that the, quote, N-word is a kind of sick preoccupation of his husbands, and that his husband, quote, displays selective moral outrage about certain words and phrases,

Starting point is 01:29:53 choosing to receive them as hateful and vective when it suits his purposes. Yianoplas is British and has no particular attachment to the N-word epithet. Like most Europeans, he finds its outsized presence in American life, puzzling and absurd, and he enjoys expressing amusement at the hold it has over Americans of all backgrounds. In the course of his work for Yeh, formerly Kanye West, Yenoplas was issued with a physical N-word pass by the star, who was tickled by the sound of the word in Yenoplas's English accent, unquote. And Milo submitted evidence to the court regarding his N-word past.

Starting point is 01:30:33 He shared articles in the evidence exhibits proving that this N-word pass is a real thing that was given to him by Kanye West. Not sure how this is supposed to help with his divorce proceedings. But there's another document filed by Milo from late October, a motion to suspend spousal support to his husband. And in this document, Milo writes that he, quote, now realizes that their relationship has been over for many years. Throughout their divorce, there's been a lot of conflict

Starting point is 01:31:07 over how much Milo should be legally required to financially support his husband, $5,000, $8,000 or $15,000 a month. In October of last year, Milo claimed that he had given his ex payments and gifts totaling over $600,000 in 2025 alone. Now, part of this may include almost $40,000 a month in rent paid a year in advance. Milo's ex-husband has claimed that Milo earns between $35,000 to $60,000 a month from his work with quote-unquote hip-hop moguls. In this October motion regarding spuzzle support,

Starting point is 01:31:46 Milo wrote that demands for payments from his ex were, quote, manipulative and accompanied by threats, including threats to Unoplas's immigration status, as well as half a dozen malicious calls to the LAPD. Milo also claims in this motion that his husband threatened him by saying he's opening a criminal case in the UK regarding the quote-unquote fraudulent papers Milo filed. In evaluating all these different claims and text messages,

Starting point is 01:32:17 it's hard to say what exactly is true, false, or exaggerated, because it's two angry exes accusing each other of stuff in an expensive divorce. But the contents of at least three text messages could amount to immigration fraud. whether those texts are authenticated or not, the fact that they are in a court record certainly would not help Milo's case. And if his ex-husband is willing to say that Milo used him for a green card,

Starting point is 01:32:50 whether that is a true statement or not, is similarly not great for Milo in the eyes of DHS. Even just the presence of widely publicized articles where Milo claims he's no longer gay and that he's demoted his husband to housemate, just three or four years after getting married, could be hard to explain to DHS if he's under scrutiny for possible immigration fraud.

Starting point is 01:33:17 That accompanied by text messages promising $100,000 in exchange for completing a green card process, and Milo accusing his husband of, quote, violating their deal, and that he can no longer assist with immigration affairs, could create trouble for Milo in his appeal following his deportation, which yes, Milo is pursuing, and through that we may get more information

Starting point is 01:33:42 regarding the exact sequence of events that led to him being deported to the UK. These divorce documents demonstrate Milo was well aware of issues regarding his green card renewal, and he was certainly aware of Lower Lomers calls for him to be deported. And Milo may have just decided to use this, situation as an opportunity for one more career pivot, or he just never thought that someone

Starting point is 01:34:09 like him would actually be deported. Even if his status was questionable for a brief or maybe not so brief amount of time, he could have had it in his head that his politics or his social status would make him special and immune to enforcement, which of course is reserved for dangerous violent criminals, which, for whatever reason, he himself. would never fit into said category, as opposed to someone like, say, Alon Omar, who last year, Milo accused of committing, quote, the most brazen and shameless public immigration fraud in American history, and called on Tom Homan to have her arrested and deported. This post was just months before Milo told the L.A. Superior Court that his own ex-husband has accused him of immigration.

Starting point is 01:35:03 fraud. Behind every night spent making the kids' lunches, there's a lot of suspense. Will they finally eat the veggies? Will the pesto survive the first bite? Will the lunchbox come home empty, half full, or come home at all? And will you finish episode 8 before you're done slicing the cucumbers?

Starting point is 01:35:28 Get Bell Pure Fiber Internet with Craved Netflix and Disney Plus from $94 a month. Price guaranteed for two years on internet with a two-year term and auto pay credit. Visit bell.com.za for details and to check availability. Bell, connection is everything. Hey everyone, it's the Jonas Brothers with the Hey Jonas Podcast.

Starting point is 01:35:44 We've been catching up with some great friends, Paul Rudd, Michael Bublay, Seth Myers, Nile Horan, Jake Shane, and making some new friends while getting into what's really like to have sisters, like Alex and Ashton Earl. She likes to control everyone and tell everyone what to do it. Okay, well, control is a harsh word. I would say that's a harsh word. I am more outspoken. Growing up a lot of the times because she was so quiet. I would speak for like the both of us. Now I'm working on like thinking a moment, reeling it in,

Starting point is 01:36:10 Not controlling me. And Joey King. You know if your, like, mom is yelling at your sibling, and even if you're annoyed with your sibling, you just, like, won't let that slide. It's like, only you can yell at your sibling. I'm like, you can't do that here. That is, you do not talk about her like that.

Starting point is 01:36:26 Only I talk about her like that. Plus, we've been taking your calls, listening to your voicemails and giving you advice. Or at least trying to. So if you've got catching up to do, now's the perfect time. Listen to Hey, Jonas, on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.

Starting point is 01:36:40 When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held captive for nine months. I survived, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are the Survivor Files. I just remember this low, taunting voice next to my ear saying, shut up, don't say anything. Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable. I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me. I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming. They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.

Starting point is 01:37:26 But these aren't stories about what's taken from them. There's stories about what it takes to make it out alive. Listen to the Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your... podcasts. Hi, this is Kylie Brakeman. Angel Geratana. Jeremy Colhane. Patrick McDonald. And we're the hosts of the Artists on Artists on Artists on Artists Podcast. The Improvised Character Comedy Podcasts where each week a new panel of artists discuss their craft. Join us for a panel of wellness influencers. What I try to do is faux journal. I don't know. Have you

Starting point is 01:38:02 guys heard of faux journaling? Yeah, it's reading. It's called reading. So we don't like to use that word anymore. Okay. A panel of New Yorker cartoonists. guys done Terry Gross's Peloton class? No! I've been dying, too. I'm so sorry. I'm seeing a reading of Sadako and the thousand paper cranes by Audra McDonald's at the Wonderland Bookstore on 14th. That's crazy. I went to the Wonderland Bookstore yesterday and I heard Nora Jones do a reading of Zero Dark 30. No way. You have to come to the last bookstore though. Kim Cottrell is reading the guitar tabs of yesterday. A panel of Eurovision participants. And we do a little Halloween

Starting point is 01:38:40 sometimes. Does the Pope dress up? He winks on Halloween. He gets right up next to the microphone. I hear you can almost hear the eyelashes hit each other. You never seen Italy so quiet as when the Pope gets up to wink on Halloween. Listen to artists on artists on artists on artists on the IHard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Starting point is 01:39:05 Welcome to It Could Happen here, a podcast about the death of empire and its nightmare afterlife. I'm your host, Mia Wong. We are living through the end of something. An epoch, an age, a way of life, a democracy. We have covered this end through a series of prisms. From the pure and total dissent of the presidency

Starting point is 01:39:32 into a form of autocratic rule by fiat to the destruction of even the most basic state capacity, phyrology, meteorology, that now largely forgotten time that he funded the nuke police, the death of American science, and the wounds dealt to the education system, ISIS full on ethnic clenting

Starting point is 01:39:53 of a significant portion of the American population. This is the end of America that has existed since the end of World War II. But it is also the death of the Pax Americana. And today, we're going to be looking not just at the death of what was in America. We're going to be looking at what it means in terms of the American Empire. We're going to be looking at the Pax Americana, the modern era of American hegemony. We're going to be looking at what it was.

Starting point is 01:40:34 It's deep and profound ties and origins in the U.S. Navy. and how the remnants of that era and the empire that had been so carefully and bloodily constructed over the course of centuries was shattered by the Trump administration's attempt to do an even more overt form of imperialism. The era of American hegemony is over. And before we continue into the endless waking nightmare,

Starting point is 01:41:02 let us look at what it was. Now, I have been talking about the death of American hegemony for a while now originally in the context of the apocal disaster of the American War with Iran and recently we've seen

Starting point is 01:41:19 one of the most embarrassing and humiliating incidents and evidences of failure of the old American system which is the declaration and then subsequent walking back immediate walking back

Starting point is 01:41:35 it failure to launch of what was called economic deede. So for people who have forgotten what economic deede was, because I don't blame you, this was such a fiasco. Economic

Starting point is 01:41:51 deed day was supposed to be this enormous campaign of secondary sanctions against anyone trading with Iran spread over a number of sectors. This was designed to cripple what remained of the Iranian economy. And there was a giant press blitz about it

Starting point is 01:42:06 Again, they were calling it economic D-Day. And now, multiple weeks later, we have a couple of sanctions. We have a few sanctions that they applied at the time. We now have some sanctions against some Iranian airlines and a sanction against a Turkish bank. Now, again, originally, when this was described, this was described as a sort of like American total economic war, that the U.S. would completely isolate Iran from all of his trading partners.

Starting point is 01:42:33 However, in order to do this, you would have to actually go after China. And the Trump administration has obviously had trade disputes with China, but the kind of sanctions they would need to levy in order to actually, you know, completely isolate Iran are something that the U.S. is simply not willing to pursue. Because, get this, the U.S. and China make an enormous amount of money both from trading with each other. Now, what's interesting here is that this kind of devastating economic campaign, this is something that the United States used to be able to do. Now, obviously, wouldn't have been able to do it easily, right? But this kind of sort of, in theory, right, coalition-built large-scale sanction

Starting point is 01:43:24 package to completely economically isolate a country, this is what the American Empire has always been best at. And the fact that the U.S. can't. do it now, signals a fundamental transformation and death of what the old American Empire was. Now, to do the tie-in to the Navy here, because the Navy is a crucial part of the story and about what, you know, the sort of Pax-Americanana was, just to explain this very simply, right, a huge portion of whatever the Pax-American was was the ability of the American Navy and its sort of supremacy over most of the world's oceans, its ability to, maintain open, safe, and stable trade routes for global capital. And to sort of inelegantly pivot to this sort of naval apparatus, we can notice that D-Day was also an exercise in American naval power that is sort of astounding. I mean, the ability to do force projection on the other side of the world on that scale

Starting point is 01:44:24 is sort of mind-boggling for most of human history. And it's a demonstration of the way in which American hegemony was built by the Navy. Now obviously the U.S. originally is a land empire in ways that are very easily sort of naturalized and forgotten, right? The United States is a settler colony. It was built on a series of genocidal exterminations and land seizures from the indigenous people who had been here before over the course of centuries and centuries to continue to this day. So there is, on the one hand, right, this. in some ways, very conventional settler colonial land empire. But there's also always been a significant naval component to the United States because of, you know, how settlers got to the colony. And then also because of the economic ties that those settlers maintained with Europe and the ways that trade networks developed, you know, the U.S. has always, to some extent, been a naval-oriented

Starting point is 01:45:29 power as it's sort of established and as it sort of did its genocides, across the continent of North America. But for our purposes, there's an important departure in the history of the American Empire and how it functions in the mid to late 1800s. And it particularly intensifies around

Starting point is 01:45:49 this guy who was just kind of a random Navy captain named Alfred Thayer Mahan who writes this book called The Influence of Sea Power Upon History. It's this book basically arguing that if you're going to be a great empire, you need to have sea power, right? You need to be able to sort of, like,

Starting point is 01:46:09 maintain control over the world's oceans. He releases this in 1890. A lot of what this turns into is this attempt, you know, and this sort of reorientation of the American Navy around pushing into the Pacific. Now, obviously, the Navy had always been

Starting point is 01:46:26 a tool of American imperialism. It is what the U.S. used to enforce its rule over Latin America. And this is even before, this sort of late era that we're talking about, even before the 1890s, right? When you're looking at sort of, you know, American interventions in Latin America,

Starting point is 01:46:42 a lot of that is being done through the U.S. Navy. But Mayan is responsible is kind of too strong of a word, but he's an influential theorist of this push, you know, west into the Pacific, right? It's this, the 1890s is this era of, oh, well, we've done manifest destiny, we've, like, conquered this fucking brutal genocidal empire

Starting point is 01:47:07 from coast to coast. And there's this question of where we're going next. And where we're going next turns out to be, okay, we need to be able to sort of refuel ships across the Pacific. So we need to seize control of these islands that will allow us to have, like, coal refueling stations so we can continuously move and project naval power

Starting point is 01:47:23 through the Pacific. This turns into a, like, the Spanish-American War, which is, you know, not a war that is fought in Spain. It is a war that is fought in Cuba and in the Philippines

Starting point is 01:47:40 and at sea. And it also leaves the creation of what's called the White Fleet by Theodore Roosevelt, which is... I can plan a lot on this show about how just there is no such thing as subtlety anymore.

Starting point is 01:47:59 And it's true that there is not subtlety now. There was also not subtlety back then. When you read a story goes off about it, everyone goes, oh, it was called the white fleet because the holes of the ships were white. And it's like, yeah, okay, like, yes, technically speaking, that is true.

Starting point is 01:48:14 But every single one of these just unhinged racists who are involved in this entire project, like, everyone knows what it means to have a fleet called the white fleet. Right. You know, this is the fleece that is used to sort of, like, it was called

Starting point is 01:48:30 Opening Japan, but like, you know, is used to just force Japan to open itself, sort of Western traitors and Western imperialism. As a result of this, you also see eventually sort of the various stages of conquest and annexation of Hawaii. What you're seeing is, in effect, the American Empire entering its sea era. Its sea era is the era in which its international ambitions really, really expands. Now, obviously, the U.S. has been doing naval interventions on the other side of the world. I think, like, basically since the moment it was founded, there's, you know, obviously, like, the very famous, like, war with the Barbary states that the U.S. has, like, right after it's founded. But this, this period marks this sort of transformation of the U.S. into something that's, it's not quite accurate to call it, like, true global force projection.

Starting point is 01:49:37 but that's kind of what happens over the course of World War I and then World War II. And this gets us into talking about the sort of Pax Americana itself, right? Because if you're familiar with the term, it comes from this period of sort of Roman history that was called like the Pact Roman Empire where you have this kind of relatively unchallenged Roman Empire ruling as sort of a regional and global hegem. and that it was able to, you know, enforce some kind of degree of peace. Now, obviously, like, like, do you say peace, right? And obviously, anyone who has, like, lived through this period is well aware that, like, no, obviously this is not, like, an enormously peaceful time. It is, I guess, technically less war than, like, World Wars 1 and 2.

Starting point is 01:50:30 But, you know, and this is true with the Paxramana, too, is this isn't, like, actual piece. It's just a time in which there is an empire that is large enough that there aren't really as many sort of hot wars. But what's sort of called the Pax Americana starts after World War II. And this is important for a number of regions. One is the effect of World War II on the rest of the world, right? The U.S. has a significant portion of the entire world's manufacturing economy after the end of the war. It's one of a very small. number of intact industrial belts that exist in the worlds after after the war. And also, World War II shatters, it overturns the old sort of world-powered system in which the French and British empires, and also, you know, by this point, like this sort of burgeoning German empire, Nazi empire, and the Japanese fascist empire had sort of been dividing up the world. But it's this real sort of death knell specifically for our purposes for the British. who go from being the kind of naval power

Starting point is 01:51:40 of the U.S. was modeling itself after, right? This naval empire with the ability to project force anywhere that's able to rule over vast swaths of territory because it completely controls the seas or controls enough of the seas, it has control of sort of naval and trade lines. But like that fleet, like the British Navy gets just annihilated in World War II,

Starting point is 01:52:00 and the British Empire just doesn't have the resources to maintain itself. And through also a bunch of anti-colonial rebellions, it begins to tear itself apart. You know, and for sort of capitalism to function, and for it to function efficiently, you need someone who has the naval power

Starting point is 01:52:15 to control the seas. And you need this because this is how trade operates, right? And this is going to become especially true as this period goes on in ways we will talk about in a moment. So at the end of World War II, the U.S. is sort of the

Starting point is 01:52:33 driving force in a lot of ways behind, I mean, obviously, the allied powers are involved in various ways in the establishing of the United Nations. But the U.S. becomes kind of the seat of like the world's sort of global economic and institutional apparatus, right? If the IMF of the World Bank, you know, I mean, like the United Nations meets in New York, right? And, and this is maybe the most important thing for our purposes, right? now the U.S. becomes the world's reserve currency. And it also

Starting point is 01:53:08 becomes the currency in which you buy oil, which is also just an incredibly important advantage. And this is the basis of the American Empire. And one of the things that makes it so powerful is that, you know, this is what's called seniorage privilege, right?

Starting point is 01:53:24 Which is that like everything is being operated. The whole world economy is being operated in U.S. dollars. It is the world reserve currency, you can buy almost anything with it. And what that means for the U.S. is like, A, every time the U.S. prints a dollar bill, right, it's however much it costs to like make a bill and then like $100 exists now. And then B, and this is also extremely important, the U.S. can't run out of dollars in the same way that, you know, other countries, we've

Starting point is 01:53:54 talked about this before in other episodes, in the same way that other countries can run out of American dollars, which causes massive sort of economic crises. the U.S. doesn't have that problem, right? Like, obviously you have to do, like, inflation management, but you can't just, like, run out of dollars in a way that, like, anyone else in the world can. And this is also the currency where, you know, U.S. government bonds become the currency

Starting point is 01:54:20 that the rest of the world's reserve banks put their money in. So this means that the entire rest of the world, by, like, by purchasing these bonds, right, is effectively just, like, subsidizing anything the U.S. government wants to do. You know, government bonds are government debt, right? And most of the government debt, it turns out, is war debt, because what

Starting point is 01:54:39 the U.S. wants to do over this period, and again, I've been calling it the Pax Americana, but like, the thing the U.S. ramps up government spending to do is fight horrifying imperialist wars in Korea and Vietnam. But these are, like, bankrolled, for a large extent,

Starting point is 01:54:56 by these sort of large-scale bond purchases. But that is the deal of sort of the Pax Americana, which is that the U.S. has this enormous military. It will, quote, unquote, protect you from communism. That is a twin-pronged thing. On the one hand, right, you have, and this is why I've been talking so much about the role of the U.S. Navy, you have the U.S. Navy maintaining open shipping lines around the world.

Starting point is 01:55:24 And then, on the other hand, you have the U.S., shall we say, three-letter agencies and also the military and also still the Navy doing interventions and doing genocides and a whole bunch of countries in order to keep the communists out of power.

Starting point is 01:55:41 But the deal is you buy into the American protection racket, right? The U.S. will put a shit ton of military bases in your country. You will buy American bonds. You let the dollar be the world's reserve currency.

Starting point is 01:55:55 And in exchange for this, you're supposed to get again, secure trade lines and the capitalist class gets to, like, maintain its control of the means of production, and the workers do not get to have that stuff. Now, the importance of these shipping lanes are exacerbated by the other sort of wing of what you would call this. I don't know. It's maybe a little bit too...

Starting point is 01:56:31 Well, I don't think it's too out there to say this is also sort of another wing of American anti-communism and, you know, just like the war on the global working class in general, which is the expansion intensification of what's called containerization, which is based on shipping containers, right? It's the process that begins what's called offshoring, where dealing with this sort of declining global profits and the rising power of the working class in a number of countries, the global capitalist economy spearheaded by the United States

Starting point is 01:57:01 figure out that using these giant shipping and logistics lines and using these shipping containers, they can ship their manufacturing off to more, impoverished countries and countries in which it's easier to just machine gun workers. And this allows companies to reduce wages and have a firmer grasp on the control of the means of production by, again, just machine gunning workers if they try to go on strike. But in order to be able to suddenly make your cars not in the United States, but somewhere else, say, for example, Mexico or China, you need to be able to

Starting point is 01:57:39 do this massive set of shipping things, right? Because also you're you're now working in these extremely long supply chains that like stretch all over the world and they're bringing parts a bunch of different places and they're being assembled a different place and they're being assembled in another place in order to sort of pit the workers of every single one of these places against each other and then pit those workers who are working on it against the workers you know how longer have work. This is what's known as the spatial fix by the way. It's a story that was popularized by a Marxist geographer David Harvey. I think it's older than him or his work, but I am blanking right now on exactly where it's from.

Starting point is 01:58:20 Yeah, but the product of the spatial fix is that the capitalist class is able to keep making money. The international workers movement is sort of gutted and then has its spine ripped out. and you have the sort of like the end of history era. And even at this point, right, for a lot of countries around the world, this deal is worth it because this deal is like shut the fuck up and let the U.S. sort of rig things in its favor. It's obviously going to have a bunch of carve-outs in all these massive free trade deals that advantage it. You know, it's going to be running an empire. You're going to be complicit in this empire. it's going to force you to go do its imperialist stuff.

Starting point is 01:59:06 But, you know, it's worth it because you, the capitalist class of your country, get to keep making money. But again, all of this was based on the American ability to maintain control of the world shipping lanes. And this was something that had been uncontested, right? Like, I mean, I guess you could argue like Somali pirates or whatever. But, like, yeah, the U.S.'s ability to maintain. global shipping isn't even a thing that until Trump decided to invade Iran

Starting point is 01:59:37 that anyone was like thinking about really being contested. Like obviously you know you can look at sort of like Chinese expansion in the South China Sea or whatever. But like that's not threatening the ability to move oil around the world. But the problem here for this empire is that it was taken over by people who don't understand how it works. Like Trump doesn't really under stand and I say doesn't really. Trump doesn't understand any of this at all, which is why, you know,

Starting point is 02:00:08 it just never really seemed to have occurred to any of the people around them that like they wouldn't be able to take control of the Strait of Formuz and American policy towards the Strait of Formuz, other than that period where they said they were annexing it, has kind of just been to pretend that it's open and also screaming about it not being open at the same time. But this, this event, this loss of control of one of the most vital shipping lanes in the entire. world, which the American Empire had been able to maintain and keep open even though one of its mortal enemies like borders it, right? He had been able to keep the shipping lanes open, not by actually necessarily applying military power, but by threatening it. And this is also

Starting point is 02:00:49 the important thing about the American Empire is that American military power always works best when you're threatening it and not when you're actually deploying it. Because once you actually have to like deploy the U.S. Army to a place and fight a war, that usually turns into a shit show. I mean, you know, you look at the modern American history of wars and it's like, okay, well, you know, you have like the absolute

Starting point is 02:01:08 nightmares in Vietnam and in Iraq and Afghanistan and these sort of like, you know, actually like deploying the American military tends not to work out particularly well for the American Empire. But the threat of it and the threat of the ability to just

Starting point is 02:01:25 you know, to kill an unbelieve number of people to inflict this damage is enough to cause other countries to fall in line. One of the sort of Mia Wong promises if it could happen here is that if you're listening to this show, you will know what the Plaza Accords are and you will

Starting point is 02:01:40 know what the reverse Plaza Accords are. So the Plaza Accords are this thing in the 1980s with the U.S., you know, the U.S. manufacturing economy is tanking. And the U.S. basically goes to negotiating table and just says like, fuck it, you're American military.

Starting point is 02:01:56 protecterates. And the U here is Japan and West Germany, which are these rising industrial powerhouses, right? And the U.S. goes, fuck you, you're going to nuke your own manufacturing economies by increasing the value of your currency so that the U.S. can have a manufacturing economy. And Japan and Germany are forced to do it. You know, they're not like explicit about this, right? But that's the underlying tension of what's happening here. This is the American Empire for. functioning in the Paxi Americana as it was designed to function. Where, yeah, you have the Japanese economy, which in this period is, like, threatening to overtake the American economy as a large economy in the world, and the U.S. is able to just

Starting point is 02:02:39 kneecap it, because it's like, no, we control the seas, we have a million military bases there. We can just dictate your economic policy. Like, and this is like Ronald Reagan, right? Like, we're not talking about, like, the most subtle, technocratic, like, manager of empire, right? This is like a senile actor. He's become president, and he's able to do this. But Trump is not, right? You know, Trump sees the raw power of the American Empire and goes, oh, right, the point is to use it, right? Like, the thing, the thing that makes you a man, the thing that makes you a nation, is just deploying this shit and killing and trying to kill

Starting point is 02:03:17 everyone who opposes you. And this has led to him ending the basis of American, global hegemony, which is like for the first time, like, since World War II, it's like, yeah, no, the U.S. just like can't maintain the global shipping supply, right? And, you know, and you can look at the other sort of major challenge to this in OPEC, right? Where OPEC is, to some extent doing this attempt to, like, prevent the flow of goods through the capitalist economy, but OPEC is trying to do it directly from the production end, not through the distribution end. And the U.S. responds to this. and the attempts by a bunch of other countries

Starting point is 02:03:56 to form what were called mini-packs, to form like OPEX for like copper instead of oil, to form these like mini-cartels for all of the sort of like world's primary commodities. And the U.S. takes this enormously seriously. This is the G8, which was originally the G7, was founded specifically to head off this threat and to defeat it. Right? So the U.S. has always taken these kind of threats enormously seriously.

Starting point is 02:04:21 But even OPEC was threatening the pretext, production of like primary commodities, right? It was threatening oil, but it was threatening oil from the production side, not from the distribution end. And now it's like, no, the U.S. is like losing control of the distribution side for no actual, like strategic reason. And I obviously, like, I don't want it to sound like I'm angry that the U.S. Empire is failing. I am in fact quite glad that the U.S. empire is failing. Although obviously, you know, the way that it's going out in his death spasm is going to be absolutely hideous, right?

Starting point is 02:04:58 The death of rule by a single giant empire, if it's not actually replaced by the end of empire more generally, tends to become a bunch of different empires fighting and, you know, a bunch of empires fighting and also one

Starting point is 02:05:13 empire rule are both bad. There are outcomes that we check notes do not like, obviously, but it is astonishing the extent to which an incredibly sophisticated and old empire has just been torn apart in a year for no reason. And now we have to sort of grapple with what it means

Starting point is 02:05:38 that this older form of empire has died and that we're having this sort of new, more fascist form of empire rise and fight its horrifying wars. And the actual meaning of this is not, not just the peer examination of history. What this all means is something that is going to be created by people like you and people like me and how we rise or fail to rise to the moment the death of vampire is created. Behind every night spent making the kids lunches, there's a lot of suspense.

Starting point is 02:06:22 Will they finally eat the veggies? Will the pesto survive the first bite? Will the lunchbox come home empty, half full, or come home at all? And will you finish episode 8 before your day? done slicing the cucumbers? Get Bell pure fiber internet with Craved Netflix and Disney Plus from $94 a month. Price guaranteed for two years on internet with a two-year term and auto pay credit. Visit bell.com for details and to check availability.

Starting point is 02:06:45 Bell, connection is everything. Hey, everyone. It's the Jonas Brothers with the Hey Jonas Podcast. We've been catching up with some great friends, Paul Rudd, Michael Bublay, Seth Myers, Nile Horan, Jake Shane, and making some new friends while getting into what's really like to have sisters, like Alex and Asgen-Nerl. She likes to control everyone and tell everyone. Control is a harsh word. I would say that's a harsh word. I am more outspoken.

Starting point is 02:07:08 Growing up a lot of the times because she was so quiet. I would speak for like the both of us. Now I'm working on like thinking a moment, reeling it in and thinking before I speak. And Joey King. You know if you're like mom is yelling at your sibling and even if you're annoyed with your sibling, you just like won't let that slide. It's like only you can yell at your sibling. I'm like, you can't do that here.

Starting point is 02:07:30 That is. You want to talk about her like. that. Oh, I'd plug about her like that. Plus, we've been taking your calls, listening to your voicemails and giving you advice. Or at least trying to. So if you've got catching up to do,

Starting point is 02:07:41 now's the perfect time. Listen to Hey Jonas on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held captive for nine months. I survived, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them.

Starting point is 02:08:00 I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are the Survivor Files. I just remember this low, taunting voice next to my ear saying, shut up, don't say anything. Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable. I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me. I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming. They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced. but these aren't stories about what's taken from them.

Starting point is 02:08:36 There's stories about what it takes to make it out alive. Listen to the Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, this is Kylie Breakman. Angel Geratana. Jeremy Colhane. Patrick McDonald. And we're the hosts of the Artists on Artists on Artists on Artists Podcast. The Improvised Character Comedy Podcast where each week a new panel of artists discuss their craft.

Starting point is 02:09:01 Join us for a panel of wellness influencers. What I try to do is faux journal. I don't know. Have you guys heard of faux journaling? Yeah, it's reading. It's called reading. So we don't like to use that word anymore. Okay.

Starting point is 02:09:14 A panel of New Yorker cartoonists. Have you guys done Terry Gross's Peloton class? No! I've been dying too. I'm so sorry. I'm seeing a reading of Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes by Audra McDonald's at the Wonderland Bookstore. That's crazy. I went to the Wonderland Bookstore.

Starting point is 02:09:31 yesterday and I heard Nora Jones do a reading of Zero Dark 30. No way. You have to come to the last bookstore, though. Kim Cottrell is reading the guitar tabs of yesterday. A panel of Eurovision participants. And we do a little Halloween sometimes. Does the Pope dress up? He winks on Halloween.

Starting point is 02:09:50 He gets right up next to the microphone. I hear you can almost hear the eyelashes hit each other. You never seen Italy so quiet as when the Pope gets up to wink on Halloween. Listen to artists on artists on artists on artists on artists on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is It Could Happen Here, Executive Disorder, our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling world, and what this means for you. I'm Garrison Davis. Today I'm joined by James Stout, Mia Wong, and Sophie Lichtenen. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:10:26 This episode we're covering the week of September 2nd to September 9th. Welcome. Before we start, I have a tiny, Correction, massive correction, depending on who you are. Many people have reached out, at least half of the people who live in Florida and listen to this podcast, to let me know that there are, in fact, crocodiles in Florida. Many of them live near some kind of large power plant. Yes. I didn't know about this.

Starting point is 02:10:51 That is because in my life I have avoided Florida, you know, apart from when I was eight and went to see the animals that they keep in a little prison there. But yeah, thank you for letting me know. I'm excited to learn more about your crocodiles. Maybe I'll come visit them one day. I actually showed this Chomptha Olegarchy poster to a friend who's from Florida after we recorded, and they confirmed it is indeed a crocodile, even though alligators are much more common. They're like, it probably should have been an alligator. But I spent like five minutes looking at comparisons of crocodile photos and alligator photos. I think it's maybe a crocodile, but I don't know for sure. It's kind of like a crunchy, kind of low-poly image.

Starting point is 02:11:36 But crocodile confirmed. People in Florida, it turns out, really fucking love that crocodile. They're pretty cool. They're pretty scary. Yeah, congratulations on having a crocodile. I went bass fishing in Florida once. Don't do that. Credibly dull. Let's talk about the news.

Starting point is 02:11:52 Let's talk about the news. I hope everyone had a good fake labor day. I worked. Also worked. Well, there you go. I went camping. Well, on Monday, Labor Day, Mayor Mamdani signed an executive order creating the Office of Worker Power, which will be led by labor organizer Tony Perlstein, who recently served as the organizing director of the UAW.

Starting point is 02:12:18 It's the United Auto Workers. This quote-unquote, First in the Nation office aims to use city resources to help workers organize themselves, connect them with contacts, unionize, and build power. And this is inspired by the emergency. workplace organizing committee, which is a joint initiative by DSA and the United Electrical Radio and Machine Workers. Ah, EWalk. Conceptually really interested to see how this turns out.

Starting point is 02:12:44 Yes. And you can go to the website to nyc.gov slash worker power to learn more. Similar to the rental rip-off hearings earlier this year to address the concerns of tenants, the Office of Worker Power will be holding public hearings on worker issues, which will then drive policy going forward. But there's way more than just these hearings as a part of this office. Yeah. And I'm excited to see how this develops in the next few months.

Starting point is 02:13:08 Sounds good. Let's see if it can be executed in a very helpful way. In other news, according to a new legal opinion by the DOJ, states must report any undocumented immigrants that they know of to DHS in order to receive federal welfare funds to assist low-income families. To quote from this opinion, quote, when a state chooses to participate in the temporary assistance for needy families and the supplemental security income programs, all agencies within that state, not only those that administer benefits, must report individuals known to be not lawfully present in the United States to the Department of Homeland Security, unquote.

Starting point is 02:13:48 It's a new interpretation of law, revising an earlier opinion from 1998. Yeah, I haven't alluded to this. I was going to look into this. I thought about doing a a whole episode on like where we're at with public charge and like generally was uh so i think i might kind of hold off yeah yeah yeah i will say that like generally the states wouldn't have a they have consciously not kept lists of undocumented people as sanctuary states right which is largely who this will be targeting yeah so like it's not as if like the absence from one list does not necessarily mean you're undocumented and like they're creating a list of undocumented people would be a very unwise move. So like, I don't know what this means practically,

Starting point is 02:14:35 right? Like, like, if it's saying you have, if you have a list of undocumented people, you have to turn it over to get 10th and they can just be like, we don't have it. Like, cool. But I do need to spend a bit more time reading up on this in combination with the public charge stuff I spoke about a couple weeks ago. It's just a code to me the States would probably know who were dreamers, right? So they would have that available to them. It is expected that This will face some challenges that this new opinion from the DOJ will face challenges in court. But this did come out last week. Finally for me, one of the staffers who was fired after posting that Ron DeSantis

Starting point is 02:15:11 Faschwave video in 2023, which we did a whole thing on. It had a son and rat. It had all the stuff. All the thing. That staffer now works at the State Department. Great. As Mark Rubio's chief speech rights. and deputy director of the agency's policy planning office, according to your reporting from the New York Times.

Starting point is 02:15:35 Oh my. Yes. Yeah. That's cool and bad. Yeah. I'm recalling this sort of like language of like of like the left as this like, you know, gross diseased, like anti-civilizational force that was used in like Mark Rubio's like a left wing terrorism address at that conference a few weeks ago. Yeah. And thinking about who.

Starting point is 02:15:58 who his chief speechwriter is, it does help contextualize some of the words that Mark Rubio and others were saying. Right. All right, moving on, starting out a Russian drone transited Romanian airspace on Tuesday. They've been, like, I don't really know how to describe this other than like drone trolling.

Starting point is 02:16:19 There were two Spanish jets that were stationed there that scrambled to, like, intercept the drone. But their continuation of drone controlling states within the EU and NATO. Like, this is a serious thing, right? Like, these are serious and ongoing provocations. Yeah. Secondly, the Barmo Flotilla.

Starting point is 02:16:39 So the Barma Flotilla, if you remember, was reduced to six ships on its way to resupply the embattled Hunter Garrison in Myanmar. It lost five of those six ships on the way back. Now the Flotilla is just a boat. Incredible. Yeah. I think it illustrates how, like,

Starting point is 02:16:58 unconventional warfare or guerrilla warfare has changed in the last 10 years, right, that like the Upper Irawaddy River now is dominated by the resistance with FPV drones. Like that is what's taking. There are also like just straight up standing on the bank and shooting them with Karl Gustavs, but it's the FPV drones that have changed the way that this state can move. In this case, move. Rivers are very important in Myanmar, and this is just an illustration of how much much harder it is for the state to use those rivers. Next, a DC circuit court has ruled that the IRS's

Starting point is 02:17:36 choice to share the information of thousands of taxpayers with DHS violates the law. It also said that arguments to the contrary were, quote, weak source. And the court also suggested that there could be civil and criminal consequences for IRS staff who keep doing this. The United Kingdom, France and Canada this week announced sanctions on some. of the illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank. This is part of a new approach that we spoke about some time ago on ED, right? Like, where they are claiming that there will be consequences for some of Israel's more flagrant violations of international law, obviously not all of them. And like this alone is not going to be the thing that stops Israel just doing what the fuck it wants, including, yeah.

Starting point is 02:18:23 What would have been nice like 50 years ago? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, like some point in early, in the middle of the last century, would have been a great time to start doing shit. This is an interesting one that I thought, kind of initially, I thought maybe this fitted into the state-sponsored attacks on European countries, but a number of rocket attacks on German infrastructure have occurred in the last 10 days. And infrastructure for these rocket attacks have been found by German police

Starting point is 02:18:48 who arrested a man yesterday. So they're claiming the actions are like a single person, perhaps someone from the ecological movement as opposed to like a state incursion. This is still very new. So I'm going to keep an eye on this, especially given some of the attacks on like energy infrastructure that were mentioned by the State Department when they were most recently designated organizations to SDGTOs. There has been a degree of militant environmentalist action in Germany, specifically the past few years.

Starting point is 02:19:21 It's like the only left-wing movement. that's like kind of alive there. That's a little unfair, but yeah. Finally, the White House has posted a picture of New Mexico or a map of New Mexico, a part of it, but Mexico is crossed out and America has written instead. This is very silly. I'm going to come back to this a little bit in my section

Starting point is 02:19:43 because it's weirdly Canada-related. It's amazing. Yeah, I mean, I don't quite know what they're going for here. Like, it's not, I guess it is, all of New Mexico. Hey, our Supreme Ruler is a toddler. I've just noticed this map of New Mexico. Like, it has the bordering United States

Starting point is 02:20:01 states, but it does not appear to acknowledge that Mexico exists. Great. Great. Yeah. Great. Sensational. Yeah. In related news, television show,

Starting point is 02:20:15 South Park has changed their name to South America. Wait, what, really? In a, yes, their newest season will be called South America. Jesus Christ. Because it's just as I'm sure it's a whole thing with mocking Trump. They've always been a satirical show, but they've gone very hard into Trumpist satire the past few years.

Starting point is 02:20:38 I don't know. A lot of it's really funny personally. But, you know. Finally, we've deployed South Park against the enemy. They're doomed now. Yeah, yeah. Some of the most ideological committed libertarians out there. Yeah, yeah.

Starting point is 02:20:55 So speaking of surging fascism in very bleak ways, there were recent German state elections in the state of Saxony-on-Halt. Now, on the one hand, this is not a very well-populated state. However, comma, the neo-Nazi party, the alternative for Germany, has come in first in this election with technically sub a majority of 45% of the vote, but this is the first time that a fairly overtly neo-Nazi party has been the largest party in a German election since the Nazis were in power. This is extremely alarming. The AFD is the most far-right of the European far-right parties that are anywhere close to power.

Starting point is 02:21:43 They are further right even than something like Marie Le Pen's party in France. They are fairly openly talking about kinds of mass deportations that, on the way, one hand are happening right now in the United States, but journalists repeatedly infiltrating their meetings, you know, the stuff we're talking about publicly is the kind of stuff that ICE is doing in the United States. The stuff we're talking about in private, and not even that in private, is removing all immigrants and Jews from the country. So this is extremely alarming. It's unclear exactly if AFD can form a government. It kind of doesn't look like it. However, there is a small chance that the

Starting point is 02:22:22 breakaway I don't even want to call them left Germany has a another kind of like what I would call like a quote unquote left wing fascist party called BSW that was a breakaway from their left party that is a

Starting point is 02:22:38 like what if we went fascist on social issues but also did a welfare state party and if those guys tolerate an AFD government they could put them in power the problem is in order to form a non-FD government you need every single other party to work together. So it's a catastrophe. And the ruling CDU, a Christian Democratic Union, which is also like an increasingly right-wing party, lost an enormous amount of

Starting point is 02:23:03 support and is unable to form a government. So AFD is just three seats away from forming a majority on their own in the state parliament. Yeah. And ESW could put them over the line. So not great results in the regional election in Germany if you... Terrifying. Yeah. Care about people. Yeah. Also, like, notable, I think, because we had seen this tendency towards, like, a Trump endorsement is, like, the death now of electoral success. This has obviously not been the case here. Trump trothed about AFDA,

Starting point is 02:23:38 calling them a populist party today. Oh, yeah. And I think it's also worth mentioning that part of the danger here is the almost unique dysfunction of the German left, which has had its Green Party basically discredited by pedophile scandals that we talked about, or that Robert talked about behind the bastards. Dyrinka, their left party is a complete disaster and has been basically since its inception as a weird merger of East German communists and Western social movements. Even their autonomous theme is a wreck because there's a bunch of like ultra-Zionists

Starting point is 02:24:11 who will do things like push people in front of train tracks for, like, not supporting Israel. So, yeah, the, like, one of the things that is a contributor to the rise of the AFD and their continued rise is the almost unique, like, catastrophe that is the German left. There are obviously good people there fighting the good fight, but it's a bleak situation. Also, bleak is the amount of sports betting and other life betting apps. ads increased a sponsorship fuckery

Starting point is 02:24:49 that's been happening and in our faces particularly in the last week I just want to talk about a few of them like former Los Angeles Laker and now active Philadelphia 76er and man I used to admire I told the team this but I used to have

Starting point is 02:25:06 what I call my La Barbie which was a LeBron James Kendall I had to put in the basement I couldn't look at him wait is this the guy from Space Jam too That's the guy from Space Jam 2. But not Space Jam 1. That's very important. Oh, God. Okay. Now I understand.

Starting point is 02:25:21 Very different. No, no, no. The guy from Space Jam 1 made gambling his own problem. He didn't make it anybody else's problem. Very different. All the goats are involved with gambling in some way or another. Some way or another. But LeBron James is now one of the new faces of the prediction market platform, Polly Market. He teased on X the Everything app and a ad that was about 14 seconds with him like walking into Polymarket HQ and then put out a further ad

Starting point is 02:25:56 that like showed him with a bunch of other very famous athletes and celebrities like thinking back it was like Derek Jeter director Spike Lee Spike Lee brother come on you gotta do better than this Yeah, that sucks. A number of like current and both former athletes,

Starting point is 02:26:18 Eli Manning, across the board. And per Sportsbusiness Journal.com, quote, the terms of his deal with polymarket have not been discussed, but NBA rules restrict players, financial insurance and companies that offer league-related wagering or similar products, including limits on ownership stakes. However, back in February, also very famous NBA player, Yonis Ante Dekupo, who is now on the Miami Heat, wild off season in the NBA, posted,

Starting point is 02:26:49 We all on Kaushi now. And he posted this black and white image. Everyone is online. The internet is full of opinions. I decided it was time to make some of my own. Today I'm joining Kau Shia as a shareholder. We all on Kauci now, Yonis Antikupo. I think that it is really bad to have active athletes.

Starting point is 02:27:11 as the face of sports betting. Even if LeBron is talking not about basketball, you still, when you think LeBron James, you think basketball. So it's still having an impact there. I wish this out was the only part of the story that I was going to talk about. But as someone with a uniquely knowledgeable mind when it comes to bad people, ads and podcasting,

Starting point is 02:27:36 I have to talk about someone who, you know, has, is, if you could guess by the name of her podcast. Not great takes all the time. Amanda Hirsch, the host of the popular, and it is very popular. I mean, very, very, very popular. Probably not with our audience, but very popular podcast. Not skinny, but not fat. That's what the podcast called.

Starting point is 02:27:59 Jesus. market ag, pegged to the Lindsay Clancy trial. Herce shared a statement calling the ad insensitive wrong and out of character for her. But the original ad was posted shortly after the judge presiding of the Clancy case declared a mistrial. And in this video, she shared that 36% of traders thought that Clancy, who was on trial for strangling her three children, would be convicted of murder. Hersh all added that she had been so glued to this case and it was on the edge of her seat

Starting point is 02:28:39 waiting for the verdict. According to a screenshot, the ad was captioned, quote, the judge declared a mistrial in the Lindsay cancer trial. On at Polly Market, it was predicted that the verdict

Starting point is 02:28:50 would be not guilty. Are you supplied? Hashtag Polly Market partner. What the fuck? She since deleted it and apologized. But what in the actual fuck? Are we cooked?

Starting point is 02:29:04 That was my first thought. I read this article from the cut and I kind of sat in silence for a good amount of time. Yeah. Like, what are we doing here? Yeah. What are we doing?

Starting point is 02:29:14 What are we doing here? Like, she did an ad about betting on a trial where multiple children were killed. Like, how despicable are we as humans that that's even an option? Like, why are we betting on that? Why is that something people can bet on? That should not be okay. And then if that wasn't, you know, bad. enough. I got the whiplash of waking up this morning after staying up far too late watching

Starting point is 02:29:44 the U.S. Open to see that actor Sidney Sweeney, who's dating a horrible ex-manager and famous Zionist Scooter Braun. I just wanted to add that context. Quote, this is from variety. Sidney Sweeney stripped down for a steamy new ad for Novig. I don't know if that's how you pronounce it, but that's how I'm going to pronounce it. The latest sports trading app and prediction market for fans of football, baseball, soccer, tennis, and more. The Euphoria Star goes nude in the ad. That's not the problem. Be as naked as you want.

Starting point is 02:30:13 And poses with a variety of sports equipment like footballs, basketballs, a hockey net, and other athletic wear. She also joins Novig, bad name, as a strategic partner and equity holder. Quote, the campaign was all about embracing a fun idea, said Sweeney, in a statement. The concept is simple, cut through the noise, and put the focus entirely on sports. The campaign brings that idea to life with confidence, humor, And playful edge, it ruined my morning. It's out of control. Something must be done.

Starting point is 02:30:45 Yeah. I'm kind of hoping, and I posted this on blue sky. I'm like, I'm kind of hoping it's like that one time in the Super Bowl where a bunch of really famous people got in trouble for doing like crypto scam ads. And I'm kind of hoping that's what happens here. But I don't have a lot of faith, especially under this administration, that that will be the case. Yeah, the last thing I want to say in this, this is, I guess, anecdotal. And I don't know if it's statistically significant.

Starting point is 02:31:08 I think it is interesting. I have been seeing a move from kind of like mid-sized, like independent people who do sports stuff away from and sort of getting pissed off at sports betting and pushing away from it. And this has been people who had taken money from these companies before and have looked at what this has done. And it's just been like, oh my God. So I'm hoping that maybe in the long run we're seeing sports where this was born, become a place where people like lower down on the totem pole start to push against it in a way that can eventually do something. But right now it's, it's so bleak.

Starting point is 02:31:48 It's bleak and it's just in our faces. And speaking of things that are bleak and are in our faces, it's time for our capitalism. Here's some ads. Nice. All right, we're back. And we are now going to discuss two of America's longest-standing foes. Of course, I'm talking about it.

Starting point is 02:32:18 Iran and Canada. No particular order, but we're going to start with Iran because it's not the alphabetical one, I guess. So the US-Iran conflict has really been significantly escalating again just last week. The United States has sunk a tanker. The Houthis have been launching as much as the conflict in obviously the Houthis and either United States nor Iran, but conflict in the region. The Houthis launched a drone barrage on Saudi cities and Iran has responded by threatening boats all over the region. So if we start with that Houthi drone attack, 73 civilians were injured as infrastructure, including oil refineries, other civilian targets were hit by these Houthi long-range drones. In response, of course, Saudis have attacked the Houthis. And it appears

Starting point is 02:33:06 that we're likely to see a return of full-scale maneuver warfare in Yemen, right, with Saudi support. Just to clarify, the Houthi drone trucks are against positions in Saudi Arabia. Yes, correct. Yeah, yeah, so they're not against positions of the Yemeni state. They're there against positions of the Saudi state. Yeah. That's like a low blow to the Saudis. I don't know how to say it. You know, like, if you go after the Saudis oil refineries,

Starting point is 02:33:29 they're going to be pissed. Like, that's a way to trigger a response. Yeah, yeah. Now, the United States has also been going after oil infrastructure and transport this week. Notably, they sunk motor tanker Kylo this weekend, along with striking two other tankers over the weekend. And audio from one of the attacks, which CNN, I couldn't find the actual audio anywhere, but CNN has a transcript of it.

Starting point is 02:33:54 So I'm just going to read out that transcript. This is from US aircraft on an emergency frequency to mariners on those vessels. Motor tank, a stark one. This is the United States military aircraft. I am preparing to fire at your stern. You have 10 minutes to clear the crew from the stern of your ship over. In a later exchange, the ship is warned. This is your final warning.

Starting point is 02:34:14 get into your lifeboats and abandon the ship immediately. So I do like this vessel that Mototankakeira that went down, it does appear that people had got into their lifeboats and evacuated that boat. Right. Like I think there was some misunderstanding there on the part of some, like I saw people, like I think just assuming that they'd kind of struck it out the blue. But the way they'd generally do this is that they warn the people on emergency frequency, which they did again on Tuesday when they hit five.

Starting point is 02:34:44 boats in a single day. So Sentcom published footage of this. Generally, it's like black and white thermal footage. We see a couple of different like methodologies here. We see strikes in the sterns of the vessels in some cases and in other cases absolutely massive explosions and multiple munitions slamming into ships. One of these was near Kagg Island. Now the United States says it is doing this in retaliation for Iran firing ballistic missiles at a U.S. ship. Interestingly, not all of the missiles Iran has used recently have been anti-ship missiles. They've been using some of those Castle Breaker missiles that we spoke about last week as well. I don't know if that's because they're trying with that maneuverable warhead,

Starting point is 02:35:29 just like a different way of trying to get past defenses, or what they're going for there, or maybe it does suggest that Iran is running into supply issues of its own. But either way, it does rather undermine the claims of the United States to destroy Iran's ability to fire ballistic missiles because they are firing a shit ton of ballistic missiles right now. Iran today has, once again, we're recording on Wednesday for those listening on Friday. It's fired missiles, United States destroyers, facilities, and commercial vessels, including one in Iraqi waters. Over the weekend, we learned that Amman had to rescue 16 mariners after one of the strikes last week.

Starting point is 02:36:10 And Iran has also attacked Jordan again. What we've seen this time is interesting. They're using cluster munition equipped medium range ballistic missiles. And they are burning through this supply of Patriot interceptors, right? We've seen like so much reporting on the US running low on missiles and specifically interceptors, right? And so some of this appears to just be forcing the United States to burn up more and more interceptors over Jordan. Iran also this week captured a large displacement. andril underwater drone.

Starting point is 02:36:47 So these had not been confirmed by the US military to be operating in the region. And so the capture is kind of significant. I don't think this is likely a weaponized drone. I'm guessing it is used for like reconnaissance work, right? Andril lists a bunch of functions on its website, things like ISR, also like anti-mine operations. After Iran published photos of this clearly showed that, Andril drone. Sinkom made a comment saying, quote,

Starting point is 02:37:17 an underwater drone operated by U.S. forces malfunctioned more than a day ago. It was surveying regional waters in support of ongoing operations. The defective drone was an older model that neither collected sensitive data nor carried any classified sonar or radio equipment. US operations in area waters continue. You could collect sensitive data with a notebook and a pen. The age of the drone doesn't matter. I'm not an underwater drone guy.

Starting point is 02:37:44 I do know underwater drone people. This to me looks very similar to the model that is currently listed on Andrew's website. And it is significant, right, that Iran has been able to capture this. Like if nothing else, it will give them sort of a propaganda victory. And Iran loves a propaganda victory. Yeah. I'm returning after recording this to let everyone know that Palmer Lucky has tweeted, Zetid, a touching memorial to the drone.

Starting point is 02:38:11 It reads as follows. Everyone watching a run state-run TV news program probably noticed they picked up an Andril Drive LD. Our mass produced a treatable submarine. This particular vehicle has been swimming in Centcom for months, successfully operating in support of American forces for thousands of hours. It was explicitly designed to operate an environment too dangerous for humans, where capture is an expected possibility. I can't get into the details, but it provided significant value for months before cancer. capture. Rest in peace, little buddy. And then he has included a picture of the drone and a picture of an IRGC post of the drone where they know that they have captured it. Finally, the United States military has begun turning off, or has advised senators that is turning off advertising trackers on a range of devices. Reuters is claiming an exclusive on this. I don't know if they're

Starting point is 02:39:06 suggesting that, like, I would hope they're suggesting that the turning off, that they have confirmed that these are being turned off as an exclusive because we and others reported months ago that Iran was using ad tech to target US military personnel, right? And this is the nature of modern warfare, right? Like the surveillance done on us by capitalism is even more pervasive than the surveillance done than us by the state. It makes sense, therefore, that states are going to these companies

Starting point is 02:39:34 and purchasing that data. Why would you not? Yeah. It's so much cheaper for them to do, that then to run their own intelligence operations or like recruit someone in the US military or whatever. So this use of ad tech is not particularly new. We are finding out about it because Ron Wyden, who's an Oregon senator, has been pushing for months to get the military to say they've done something about this. And they've finally disclosed in a letter that they are

Starting point is 02:40:01 turning off some of their advertising, tracking stuff on their devices. But I think it's a really good illustration of how pervasive surveillance of capitalism, is so much more powerful than even like Iran is a state that does love to be spying on people and they still are nowhere near as effective at this as we are at giving away our own data on our Instagram clicks. Oil has hit 100 American dollars a barrel as a result of all this fuckery, which is a perfect time for us to talk about our other enemy, which also has its own strategic oil reserve Canada.

Starting point is 02:40:41 So speaking of our other war are just absolutely baffling trade war with Canada for no reason whatsoever other than someone showed Trump a graph of the countries that the U.S. trades with the most. And Mexico and Canada, we're at the top because they are right next to us and we've integrated our economies with them since we're both British colonies. Is continuing.

Starting point is 02:41:20 Now, as we have talked about on this show extensively, Trump illegally invoked the almost certainly defunct Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act to impose a 50% sanction rate on a swath of Canadian exports, though again, this does not include key sectors of the auto industry or

Starting point is 02:41:36 energy imports. Canada threatened retaliatory tariffs on $20 million of U.S. goods. Now, on Tuesday, as we were recording this, those tariffs went into effect. These are a range of tariffs. I'm going to do

Starting point is 02:41:52 one kind of important one and one extremely silly one, as we talked about this before. So as we mentioned last time we talked about this, part of the reason these negotiations collapsed was the U.S. wanting to be able to set Canada's steel tariff rates to put them in line with other countries' tariff rates. Canada has responded to this by increasing its tariff rate on American steel from 25% to 50%. There's also tariffs on cheese in what seems to be a very specific measure to piss off Wisconsin. They do this sometimes, right? Like when they do these tariffs, they do them on symbolic goods. Like, I think the EU tariffed Bourbon for a while. Yeah. Well, what's interesting is that the reporting on this has said that, oh, there aren't

Starting point is 02:42:31 symbolic tariff items that Canada did in like 2018. And no, if he's read to the tariffs, why else are you opposing a tariff on cheese? Now, as we mentioned earlier, in the middle of the negotiations collapsing and now as these tariffs went into effect, Trump has tried to change the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America, a thing which Google and other sort of bootlicking companies have bowed

Starting point is 02:43:01 to, I guess. And also, again, as we mentioned earlier, Trump is posting memes about changing New Mexico to New America. A fun aside on that map thing, I found out after we recorded last week that the company

Starting point is 02:43:16 that I used to work for that owned house Stuff works, now owns MapQuest. Oh, wow. Great. Incredible. The based map service. Because, like, I don't know if everybody knows, knows this entire thing.

Starting point is 02:43:32 But they're the ones that said that they would refuse to change the map, which, like, great. But, like, some personal Sophie history is, like, before Cool Zone, it was, like, I heart. Before I heart, I worked at how stuff works. And before how stuff works, the company was owned by a company called System 1. System 1 sold How Stuff Works to Eyeheart and then we started CoolZone. So there's like this weird thing where and then all of a sudden I'm reading it and I was like, and I still talk to a couple people that work there because they're lovely. And I was like, why the fuck does this company own math class?

Starting point is 02:44:11 And so that's just a fun aside. Anyways, continue. Well, I mean, there is something real here in that in these kind of just weird symbolic power moves, you're getting to see which companies are sort of purely just falling in line with the administration because it's profitable on which companies are not, because they're trying to cash in on the other side. There's probably, there's probably some genuine principle there too because this is absolutely ridiculous. The reason I bring up Ontario is that Trump has also been specifically feuding with Ontario because Ontario's premier, Doug Ford has been very, very vocal in

Starting point is 02:44:44 resistance to American tariffs. Doug Ford, welcome to the resistance. God, Doug. Jesus Christ. One of the worst guys in Canadian politics. I hate all of this. So in response to what Trump claims is discrimination

Starting point is 02:45:02 against American trade, which, like, again, I can't emphasize enough like this is happening because you impose 50% tariff on it. It's all nonsense. Trump is now threatening to put a ban on using

Starting point is 02:45:15 U.S. government purchasing power to buy planes from Canadian airplane manufacturer a Bombadier unless those planes are built in the U.S. Now, Bombadier already has a bunch of plants in the U.S., and this is pissing off. So Trump's congressional allies who have the company's plants in their state. It is not clear to me that Trump understands exactly what Rake he's stepping on here by having the U.S. fuck with a specifically a Canadian aircraft manufacturer

Starting point is 02:45:39 where this is the site of one of the most humiliating chapters of the history of Canada as a branch plant economy. and the destruction of the Arvo Arrow, which was a really quite good late 50s Canadian jet fighter that was created by this Canadian manufacturer named Arvo, which was supposed to be produced in this effort to have Canada become its own kind of like semi-independent military power and in the ability to have a Canadian fighter jet that would be used by the Canadian Air Force and then sold to the rest of the world. And then the Canadian government, under pressure from the United States, scrapped the entire project, destroyed all the planes,

Starting point is 02:46:15 and physically destroyed all of the manufacturing capacity. And this is one of sort of the peak moments of the U.S. just going absolutely not. You are not allowed to sell. You're not allowed to develop your own fighter technology. You are a,

Starting point is 02:46:28 like a pseudo colony of the U.S. And this is the kind of, you know, pressure that Canon has always been leveraged by the United States against Canada. But obviously, I personally want to talk about this because we're getting a peak into the imperialist nature of both of these settler colonies,

Starting point is 02:46:45 in that we are talking about sort of Canadian independence from the United States in the context of a fight over who gets to sell jet fighters to the rest of the world? Yeah. And like, you are Canada. What the fuck do you need an Air Force for? Like, why are you like manufacturing fighter jets? And the answer is to bomb a rock.

Starting point is 02:47:04 But, you know, this is, I just wanted to have this as a reminder that, A, Trump is stepping on very old, rakes in Canadian politics. He doesn't even seem to understand exist. And then B also, like, as much as it is like obviously trivially true that the U.S. is acting as aggressors here and that the U.S. is, you know, run by an unbelievably hideous right-wing imperialist government. Like, Canada is also a slightly less like brutal settler state. So, you know, we're not dealing with great nationalisms here. Now, technically speaking, and this is something that if you get to like page 9 of the reporting on this, you will get to the part where like the news mentions

Starting point is 02:47:46 that these tariffs on both sides are on something like 5 and 6% of Canadian and American imports. They are to some extent more symbolic than anything else, although it is worth noting that Trump's threat to, you know, stop the import and also like stop US government from purchasing things with Canadian companies is a fairly significant escalation. There's two things that are important here. One, Trump is once again wielding the hideously illegal powers of the defunct smootholy terror fact, which she could also use at any other country at any point if he wants to. And the other thing is that negotiations have broken down completely and are unlikely to reach a deal,

Starting point is 02:48:26 especially as Trump pivots to China in a weird mirror of the bomb administration's pivot to Asia, in the run-up to his upcoming September bilateral meeting with Xi Jinping. Now, I want to close I'm mentioning the U.S. Justice Department. is attempting to prosecute Chinese electronics manufacturer Huawei. I assume this is just a way of trying to put pressure on the U.S. government. Nominally, this is about Chinese sanctions violation and also technology theft, things that Huawei is doing, but hasn't really been cared about until now. It's sort of unclear what's going to happen with these investigations.

Starting point is 02:49:06 It's also weird that this is an investigation purely against a corporation and none of its employees. which is odd and baffling and why the announcement of this seems like a sort of negotiating play so we can also expect there'll be some kind of weird sanction stuff with China over the next couple of weeks as we go into this meeting with Xi Jinping

Starting point is 02:49:25 and that's our trade war that we're fighting for some reason as we fight another actual war and yeah it's six bucks six bucks for a gallon of gas here now oh boy yeah Love to live in the consequences of our ruler's actions.

Starting point is 02:49:44 Yeah, it's great. Do you know what else is the consequences of our ruler's actions? Yeah. It's the products and services that support this podcast. Port to you, but big oil. All right, Garrison, what do you got? So, although we are dealing with, you know, $6 gas, a pointless war, a pointless trade war, there is one thing the Trump government can still do without a problem.

Starting point is 02:50:18 And that's post. Oh, yeah, they'd be posting. They can keep on posting. In terms of symbolic actions, the actions that Trump administration have in the real world have not diminished their ability to take symbolic action online. Since Trump took office in 2025, the White House social media accounts have been used for some pretty heinous stuff. I often think of the ASMR-style edits of people being deported from 2025. The one I'm haunted by, I want to mention briefly, is the one where they synced up a bunch of hits from football players. and at the point of the hit,

Starting point is 02:50:54 they synced it up to various drone and missile strikes killing people. Yeah. Haunted by that. The social media strategy of the Second Trump administration has nearly fully embraced this kind of like internet brain rot fascism

Starting point is 02:51:07 with, you know, edits. I previously mentioned the DeSantis staffer who was fired after posting that Fashwave edit is now, now works for the State Department. And this sort of like edit culture is one of the main ways the White House accounts have been posting online. But as we've mentioned earlier this episode, the White House accounts also get used for a lot of just really stupid stuff. New Mexico turning into New America, right?

Starting point is 02:51:34 Attempts at trolling that kind of just portray just how hollow their politics really are. As Trump has just completely failed to economically deliver, has murdered children in a pointless war, the public has loudly rejected his inhumane and deadly nativist immigration policies, and he's fractured his own right-wing base but continuing to unequivocally support Israel, start a neocon-style war, waste billions of dollars and kill 18 U.S. service members. With this total level of failure, the politics of Trump administration are forced to fall back on punishing their enemies, just pure cruelty, to satisfy some of their most bloodthirsty supporters, and trolling the lips. And in particular, I want to focus on the latter here, how this

Starting point is 02:52:20 politics as trolling reveals how empty their political project really is. A few days ago, the White House posted a short AI video of Donald Trump using the green lantern power ring to construct the border wall. Oh, God. To manifest American manufacturing, to summon military jets, helicopter. and naval vessels. I gotta watch this. This is timed to the release of the HBO Green Lantern TV show.

Starting point is 02:52:49 Yeah, that's the link right there. Okay. I refuse to watch this that can't make me. I've seen it. You don't need to. Jesus, wept. Just yesterday,

Starting point is 02:52:58 they also released this Legend of Zelda video to match the ocarina of time announcement from Nintendo. But that's just a side point. And there's actually a bunch of this kind of cringy

Starting point is 02:53:11 Reddit stuff that's tied to the release of various pop culture shows and games. Yeah. Earlier this summer, the White House posted what is almost certainly an AI-generated version of the Rick and Morty opening theme with Trump and J.D. Vance in place of Rick and Morty. Great. A CBP agent arrests like a literal alien and Chuck Schumer's a robot.

Starting point is 02:53:32 Whatever. God, they're so boring and just like middle school humor. Like, grow up, Mr. President. Like, ew. Every Wednesday before we do this, I very briefly scroll the President of the United States' true social feed. It's fucking. It's just right now there's like a bunch of supercuts of AI stuff about Iran where he does not look like himself. And a video of him saying communism will never come to America.

Starting point is 02:54:05 Or with music, he probably didn't pay for the rights for. That's wild. You should instead not do that and be on. on my feed, which is just Nathan Fielder Elizabeth Holmes memes from his upcoming documentary. Every meme is good. I got to be honest, every single

Starting point is 02:54:23 meme hits. Garrison, continue. Sorry. Anyway, a month after the White House shared this Rick and Morty video, they also posted an X-Men 97 style video featuring the Presidential Cabinet captioned, to me,

Starting point is 02:54:39 my mega-patriots. For like a week in July, the White House just kept posting AI hydraulic press videos. What is an AI generated video of a hydraulic press crushing various MAGA slogans, like no tax on tips. Why would you, that seems like... Good question, Jay. That's, you know...

Starting point is 02:54:58 Okay. Fascinating shit. Yeah, okay. During the World Cup, they tried to make one of those like AI Lego videos. But maybe the worst one of these that I've seen was posted on July 4th, titled POV, America entered its 2000s era, which is like a 25-second, oh, wow. 2000s nostalgia edit. They've used Mr. Brightside here. They used Mr. Brightside.

Starting point is 02:55:25 Jesus Christ. It features clips of like music videos, video games, and children's cartoons from this era. Isn't it, we got Shrek, Simon Cowell, of Britney Spears. It's like a, remember when you were a kid and everything was awesome type stuff? Like, that's, that's what they're trying to. And everyone was white. It's just exclusively white people, I think. There's a lot of content on the White House account.

Starting point is 02:55:49 That's just trying to, like, pander to Gen Z by tapping into this early 2000s of nostalgia. And launder Trump and his policies as, like, epic-based awesome sauce by, hey, look, here's the Clone Wars 2008 show. Here's a clip of whatever bullshit children's cartoon at the time that's popular in Gen Z memes right now. That decade fucking sucked. It was fucking 9-11. The War on Terror Katrina and the 2008 economic collapse. Like, what are we doing? Well, I think most of the kids that they're trying to appeal to don't really remember much of the 2000s,

Starting point is 02:56:22 but they have this sort of like displaced nostalgia about things from their childhood, right? For being a child. Like, you know, when the war in Iran started back in March, the White House posted a video of an Operation Epic Theory video game on the Nintendo Wii, which was actually just cutting between Wii sports clips. and real footage of people being blown up. Yeah. Both the White House and ICE have previously used Pokemon imagery and music

Starting point is 02:56:48 and social media posts, leading the Pokemon Company International to rebuke the use of their brand. Though, besides the occasional musical artists, companies like Pokemon have seemingly avoided or failed to take legal action to protect their trademark property and brand. Which leads us to why I'm talking about all of this today. On September 3rd, the White House launched Arcade.gov. Five pixel art arcade games where you can build the wall, deport immigrants, fill a Trump bank account, and remove pre-packaged food from kids' school lunches.

Starting point is 02:57:27 After this site went online, the White House posted a series of videos riffing on the GameCube, Xbox 360, and PS3 startup animations. This is some of the most Reddit-occupied government stuff we've ever seen. These games are really just bad copies, like bad, bad copies of other games like Flaffy Bird, Snake, and Tetris, with a fascist coat of low-quality pixel art. Yeah, wow. In the Tetris rip-off, you have to build the wall to, quote, protect the border from the coming horde as an endless, quote, zombie border siege sends green aliens and zombies advancing toward the wall. Now, mechanically, this game makes no sense. The point of Tetris is to clear rows of blocks, not build a wall. And also, upon release, this game was just completely broken.

Starting point is 02:58:21 The blocks didn't clear after you completed a row. Inevitably, the screen just fills up with blocks to the top, and it forces you into game over. It looks like they've removed that one from the... Once I... This will come up later. Now, even more confusingly, the game over screen. green is labeled border breached.

Starting point is 02:58:43 So once you build the wall to the top, you lose the game and the border is breached. That's right. From your lips to God's ears. Yeah, I will say that you... Maybe there's a metaphor in here somewhere. So while this failed Tetris clone displays the kind of garbage quality of their incompetent troll-the-lib's provocation, the rip-off of the arcade game Snake openly demonstrates their racist cruelty, even more so than the Tetris one, frankly.

Starting point is 02:59:13 In Rio Run, you play as a pixelized version of Tom Homan, patrolling along the Rio Grande, rounding up immigrants who have crossed the river, immigrants who are almost exclusively a darker pixel shade than Tom Homan, who will then follow Homan in a line wearing matching orange jumpsuits. At the end of the game, your score is labeled as the number of immigrants deported. This is obviously gross, empty posturing, troll the libs, etc. In another game, you sort through a conveyor belt of food for school lunches, removing unhealthy items, and sending healthy food like beef tallow to children.

Starting point is 02:59:53 As a reminder, we are in the midst of a food safety crisis with a record high number of food recalls last month, following massive staffing cuts to the Department of Health and Human Services, the FDA and the Department of Agriculture just last year, and as a result of those cuts, the FDA was forced to suspend some food safety quality checks. For more on that, check out James Stout's episode on Cyclospora on his weekly podcast, Natural Causes. That's right. Great interviews, great journalism, bad government. Yay.

Starting point is 03:00:27 Yeah, that is one of our themes over there. Hell yeah. Based on all the different brands or properties or references I mentioned, to date only one company has come out strongly against the Trump administration for stealing their stuff, in this case, stealing their game. Pretty soon, after RK.Gov went live, the Tetris company publicly announced it was, quote, not involved in the creation of build the wall, and said, quote, at Tetris we believe in the power of connection and bringing people together, not dividing them.

Starting point is 03:00:59 We take copier infringement very seriously, unquote, and a few days later, the build the wall Tetris clone was taken down from the White House website. Victory for communist Tetris. But, you know, we've talked a lot about this stuff, this episode. You know, renaming the Gulf of Mexico, lakes, who knows, maybe renaming a state in honor of America, these little arcade games, these annoying social media posts, these are all lazily constructed, symbolic representations of Trump's political goals created or AI generated in hopes of pissing off liberals and satisfying the sickos by letting them, in the case these

Starting point is 03:01:39 games, literally act out the desires of MAGA in the midst of their political failure. It sort out school lunches in the midst of a food safety crisis, in the midst of total economic failure on the part of the Trump administration. And to me, the most interesting example of this tendency to, like, substitute real politics, like delivering real politics. actually improving people's lives with this sort of punishing your enemies and pissing off liberals. It comes also from this last week. On Sunday, Trump posted an agenary design for a United States Space Force Service dress uniform.

Starting point is 03:02:24 Oh, God. I will trough this one into the chat here. Let me see. Unfortunately, I've seen this. You've seen it? All right, all right, all right. Send it to me. I want to see the...

Starting point is 03:02:32 Let's drop this right. Yeah. It's a long, gray tunic-style jacket with a black belt sitting high on the waist and knee-high black shiny boots. It looks like something made for an evil space fascist sci-fi military. Yeah, it's giving low-budget bad guy. Right? Yeah, exactly. And well, well, well, some very small text near the top of the AI image reads, quote, inspired by the discipline and functionality of the Starship Trooper Uniform, modernized for the guardians of the space domain. Unquote.

Starting point is 03:03:09 Between this Starship Trooper uniform and the Marines playing Helldivers 2 music during their 250th anniversary celebration, Baudriard is rolling over in a one-to-one map of his grave. They've got the eagum, everything here. It's pretty astonishing. Yeah, because you think an American's going for a, gray uniform, they're going to be doing Confederacy shit. But no, this is just like, uh, yeah, like 90s low budget. Like, I'm pretty sure I've seen like a puppet, like animation, a bad guy.

Starting point is 03:03:38 He looks like fucking Joe Tracy is what he looks like. And the book, Starship Troopers, is a largely pro-war exploration of militarism using a science fiction setting. In contrast to the film adaptation by Paul Vernehoven, which criticizes and satirizes what the book was exploring in earnest. In Vernehoven's film, the officer uniforms are inspired by real military uniforms of the 20th century. This AI image posted by Trump seems to be more based on the Galactic Empire in Star Wars, whose design was pulling from both the Imperial British and German Nazi uniforms. Someone more annoying than me could do a whole simulacra and simulation essay about this fucking space force uniform. But this is a good example of how the Trump administration is obsessed with

Starting point is 03:04:25 creating these little simulacrums. In the case of Arcade.gov, propagating signs and symbols to create this illusion of actuality. And as Trump often does, scribbling on a map, and voila, the territory is now Lake America.

Starting point is 03:04:41 Should probably note the Space Force already has addressed uniform and it doesn't look like this. Yes. No, this is the new version that may or may not ever actually exist. But the image is what's important.

Starting point is 03:04:56 Right, exactly, yeah, that's the point. The point is not the change. It's the appearance of change. Who knows? Well, this has all been fun. And let's close by talking about 9-11, because 9-11 is this Friday, which means the center-right media

Starting point is 03:05:16 is being super-duper-normal, as usual. Late last month, Barry Weiss personally intervened to create the CBS headline, line, Michigan Democrat Abdul al-Said's deleted tweets on September 11 attacks invite scrutiny of past remarks, unquote. And one of the deleted tweets in question reads, quote, Today I mourn the 3,000 lives, 6,000 injuries, and infrastructural devastation in New York City, perpetuated ignorantly in the name of my faith. Tomorrow I'll mourn the 1 million lives, millions of injuries, and infrastructural devastation in three countries, perpetuated

Starting point is 03:05:53 ignorantly in the name of my country. A somewhat brave but completely defensible statement. Yeah. The post from CBS promoting this little article of theirs read quote, As the nation prepares to mark 25 years since September 11, 2001, Abdul al-Said, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Michigan, may be facing the risk of renewed scrutiny and fresh political attack. And now today, September 9th, the day of recording,

Starting point is 03:06:22 an attack ad against Abdulazid has been released with like a minute of 9-11 footage. And I will play a little bit of the ending here. 25 years ago, America was attacked. Not for something we did, but for who we are. The attackers tried to divide us with hatred. It had the opposite effect. We united with courage and with resolve. But the hatred behind 9-11

Starting point is 03:06:51 did not disappear. America deserved 9-11, dude. I hate America so much. Abdul al-Sayed gives comfort to that hatred. I don't know if that's a Chiron or a subtitle. Hurt people, hurt people. It's a quote from Abdul.

Starting point is 03:07:06 Okay. They're getting really, really weird about Hassan. Yeah. Yes. So this ad has about 30 seconds of 9-11 footage, then also has some footage of Hassan Piker. Last month, mentions of Hassan.

Starting point is 03:07:21 Piker were very close in total, depending on the count, around like 400 mentions on Fox News last month, but nearly matching the number of mentions of trans or transgender. So, Hassan and transgender, about equal levels of focus on Fox News now. Yeah, it tells you all the things. Well, all right, Hassan, get that up to 100%. I believe in you. You can do it. Be useful.

Starting point is 03:07:49 Yeah, take one for the team. I was about to say, come on step up, my guy. This ad is pretty, pretty wild. We saw ads like this when Mom Dani was running in New York last year. There's also been articles focused on clips from Abdul Dahl Seeds. Podcasts from years ago, I'll play a clip here. 9-11 scarred our country in profound ways. But what we did after 9-11 scarred millions of other people.

Starting point is 03:08:17 When we talk about 9-11, we often fail to center them. Again, completely defensible, completely accurate and true statement that is being turned into political controversy. Yeah, these are completely normal. By those on the right who certainly have no other reason to specifically attack Abdul al-Said. Fascinating choice to appear at an event with someone that much taller than you. Like, the high disparity is profound. James is referencing photos of Hassan Piker and Abdul standing next to each other. Yes, there is a considerable height difference.

Starting point is 03:08:51 It looks like they're on a podium, but I don't think they are. Speaking of New York City, following months of propaganda from The New York Post, earlier this week, ABC ran the headline, quote, Mayor Mumdani's has held attend 9-11 ceremony despite growing criticism. Unquote. Like, insane, an insane headline to run, like, completely absurd. Journalist Peter Stern in New York has. has talked about how there's about, at most, like, 5% of, like, 9-11 survivor victim families

Starting point is 03:09:26 who have been spreading this petition to ban Mom Dani. And vastly more 9-11 families have released a counter-petition in support of the mayor. This is a controversy that the New York Post and others have been stoking for quite a while in the lead-up to 9-11. But this ABC headline talking about the story is completely, absurd. There's another story that came out today in Variety, which they've edited since publishing, because the first version just did not address the blatant Islamophobic motivations in a lot of the attacks against Mamdani. And the Vanity Fair piece also has this crazy quote

Starting point is 03:10:05 from Bruce Blakeman, the Republican running for governor of New York, talking of Mamdani, quote, he's not welcome there because he has yet to say anything in opposition to the global antifada, unquote. The whole Vanity Fair piece is similar to this ABC article, just completely gross. There's no reason to cover it in the way that they are. Imagine the actual media crisis, the frenzy that would happen if the mayor of New York City, if the Muslim mayor of New York City chose to not attend the 9-11 service? Like, that would be crazy.

Starting point is 03:10:44 They would light up, right? This is a perfectly concocted political controversy. Like, they get to it either way. Now, Momdani would, of course, never not attend that. That makes no sense. But the right and the center media gets to kind of position themselves and, you know, talk about the controversy about him attending, even though it's like what is he, what's he going to do, not attend?

Starting point is 03:11:06 Meanwhile, on Tuesday, Mayor Mbondani released about 170,000 pages of records, city officials have kept from the public regarding air quality at ground zero following the 9-11 attack. These reports show that city officials at the time knew that the air was toxic and hazardous and get lied to the public by saying it was safe. The mayor said, quote, now close to 25 years later, more people have died from 9-11 related illness than were killed on the day itself. These documents are now searchable on a new portal, and they include the recently discovered quote-unquote Harding memo, which was sent to the then-depity mayor Robert Harding. This memo was titled, quote, legislative alternatives to limit the city's liability relating to September 11th, 2001, unquote.

Starting point is 03:11:55 Momdani said these records, quote, show what the city knew about the toxic air around ground zero, when they knew it, and how they acted to limit liability. John Stewart was also at this press conference announcing the release of these documents, and he has been a long time advocate of transparency for 9-11, and related illnesses and supporting the first responders and their families who have died or gotten sick in relation to 9-11 health complications. I'll play a short clip from him before we close this episode. The city began covering their ass three weeks in in a memo. The memo is entitled legislative alternatives to the fiscal responsibility for 9-11. And what we all knew who live in downtown Manhattan is that there was poison in the air and on the ground and in the windowsills and in your air conditioners and covering your pets and your clothes and it stayed there for months

Starting point is 03:13:02 everyone knew and now it's very clear that the city knew as well and rather than take the steps to ameliorate the damage that that would cause to its citizens and to the people that were down there, they instead covered it up to get back to business as usual. But unfortunately, after 9-11, business will never be usual again. If you'd like to email us, you can do so. It's cool zone tips at proton.com. If you want it to be encrypted, send it from a proton address.

Starting point is 03:13:38 Put a transcript on your couch. We reported the news. We reported the news. Hey, we'll be back Monday with, more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Coolzone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

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Behind the Bastards - It Could Happen Here Weekly 249

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