Behind the Bastards - It Could Happen Here Weekly 92

Episode Date: July 22, 2023

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The True Crime Podcast, Sacred Scandal, returns for a second season to investigate a led sexual abuse at Mexico's La Luz del Mundo Mega Church. Journalist Robert Garza explores survivor stories of pure evil experiences at the hands of a self-proclaimed apostle who is now behind bars. I remember as a little girl being groomed to be his concubine, that's how I was raised. It is not wrong if you take your clothes off for the impossible. Listen to Sacred Skandal on the IHR radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. This is King Slime, the prosecution of Young Thug and YSL. The arrest of young thug sent shockwaves through the hip-hop world in the city of Atlanta. I'm Christina Lee and I'm George Cheating. As the historic and controversial jury trial of one of the music's most iconic artists begins, we're examining the case from all sides. All of this before a single juror has

been selected. Listen to King Slime on the iHeart Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. From the studio who brought you the number one podcast, the Pytan Massacre. Breaking news out of Moscow, Idaho. It was an unimaginable crime. The bodies of three women and one man, all 21 or under, were found together. The victims were attacked with a large knife. It's a cromcing investigators nightmare. Listen to the Idaho Massacre on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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. Chris Christotes, Ipsis Christotes. Welcome to It Could Happen Here, a podcast where the only person who actually took Latin in high school isn't here leaving me to do this Latin bit

I'm your host Mia Wong and with me is Garrison. Hello Hello, I'm not gonna try to speak Latin because if I did it'd be some like weird like esoteric and Countation and then it would open up a whole other can at worms itself. You know this is this is this is the most The most well-known Latin, that's probably not true, the most well-known Latin is probably some bullshit from Latin mass or something. But one of the more well-known Latin switches, who watches the Watchmen roughly,

it's not a test. The popular translation is who watches the Watchmen. And by that, I mean, we are asking the question, who ensures that the Americans or Supreme Court does not just sort of collapse into a ball of pure corruption? And the answer was nobody. So true, I always trust in the Supreme Court. Yeah, it's great. I learned, I learned that we pay these people $285,000 a year. Like, we pay them $285,000

to like take our rights away. This is just insane. Like, well, why? Why do we do this? It's, ugh. Well, I mean, there's a very clear reason why we do this. Actually, that maintains the sepulence of order and civility. Yes, however,

no, deeply fractured. However, however, a deeply fractured. However, this is coming apart because these stupid assholes can't even maintain the veneer of not being the most corrupt people in the history of mankind. So we're coming off of like to, I mean, not a,

there wasn't really a potential for this session of the court to be as bad as like last years one where they killed Roe, but they killed affirmative action. And they also did this really, really, just sort of really weird ruling on queer stuff and the businesses right to discriminate and choose. The business is right to choose how to use their creative expression, which is a result in a bunch of really funny things I saw this morning actually.

There's this hair salon who was for, who used to serve LGBTQ clients, which now all of like, all of the suppliers for the hair salon are no longer sending orders to the hair salon because they're also allowed to discriminate from this hair salon because of the same rule. So it's critical. These really complicated, like supply chain things with businesses choosing to be really homophobic and queer phobic. And then like type of like supplier is just not then just not giving these businesses the supplies they need

to operate their business, which is pretty funny. It's really amazing too. So the other thing about this is like this is the actual ruling. So the other thing about this is like, this is the actual ruling where any pretense that this is like a functional court was just sort of thrown out the window, because, okay, so one of the fundamental principles of, and this is one of the fundamental principles of the common law legal system, right?

Of the legal system that not only the US is based off of, but like literally we're talking like hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years of history that predate the American system, arguably can trace us back to the Roman system. One of the things that's fundamentally based on is that you cannot try a case on a hypothetical. Something has to actually happen for you to have a case.

And this case has just thrown that shit out the window. So what this case was, is there's this woman who supposedly is a wedding website designer, and we'll get back to that in a second because oh boy, just straight up lied to the court and claimed that a guy had requested her make a wedding website for a gay wedding. And this never happens, right?

This like did not happen. The journalist like tracked down the guy who she said had like requested a website and that guy is a straight B had already been married and C is a web designer. The whole story is just a fake example. What an em, example. I think that's the part of the story that I think got the most press. But the part of the story that I think is like funnier

is that she's not actually a wedding website designer. This entire case, she set up this entire site. What appears to have happened, she's not a wedding website designer now, right? What appears to have happened, she's not wearing wedding lipstick as they are now, right? What appears to have happened is that she and like, and this sort of like, one of the sort of like right wing like legal networks got together and cobbled together this business

like specifically so they could get this ruling. So, which seems like there should be like a legal, let's see this, this sounds like it's illegal. It sounds like legal fraud or something. She should be on trial for perjury right now. Her lawyers should also be like, her lawyers and her lied under oath multiple times to multiple different courts.

Like, yes, but that's not a scene ever gonna happen because we're like living that. But what we're seeing here, rice, the sort of like thin, legal veneer that has always been sort of over the Supreme Court that's supposed to make it seem legitimate, is just sort of like unraveling. And at the same time,

so if you think that makes the Supreme Court like look illegitimate, wait till we get to the corruption. This is the real reason we're doing this episode because oh my God, Jesus Christ, this is, I, oh God. I didn't think I really learned from this is I didn't understand how rich the Pune Corps justices are. Like, Clarence Thomas, and in all the pieces about Clarence Thomas, right, it starts with like, he is like the poorest as the Supreme Court justices, and his family makes $800,000 a year.

I was like, that seems like a lot of money. I was like, what are you even talking about? So in terms of the sort of corruption stuff that's been happening, there's been a bunch of, there's a bunch of research done by ProPublica into a bunch of just like incredibly shady and corrupt things that a bunch of Supreme Court justices are doing.

So we're gonna start with Bastard's Pot alum Clarence Thomas. So one of Thomas' close friends is this real estate mogul named Harlan Crow. And he, Harlan Crow sucks ass. He, Harlan Crow sounds like what you would name. Like some weird, like, rich villain in, like, a PULT P70's, like, mystery novel. I, I don't, did you see when, like, when people figured out who this guy was and it went around on Twitter?

No. Oh, I'm so excited for you. Okay. This is gonna be great. So okay, so so Harley Crowe is he's one of the country's largest landlords He has like a producer portfolio of $29 billion of assets. He owns properties like all over the US He also okay, so he has a giant mansion, right? And in his giant mansion, he's a bunch of Nazi memorabilia, including an autographed copy of Mike Cobb. Oh, this guy, yes. Okay. Now that you mentioned the Nazi memorabilia, I know. He has the things that like stereotypically you would assume that like a Nazi pair of familiar

guy has, right? Like he has like, he has that side, an autographed copy of Mike Cobb. He has a bunch of pictures that were drawn by, a bunch of actual paintings that were drawn by Hitler. But he also has weird shit. It's not that I've never seen before. He has these sets of napkins, that just have swastikas on them because they were official Nazi napkins.

I feel like we probably shouldn't, like, we can maybe keep one copy of these and the Holocaust Museum and the rest of this stuff should be like burned, right? Like, we shouldn't really have to this tough line around. Yeah, you know, like, I'm gonna circle back to this in a second because I think there's one, there's another piece of context that we need to sort of get you. He also has this thing called the, he has, he is this thing called the garden of evil, which is this like garden of statues of the garden of evil. Yes, and it's a statue garden behind his house that has like a bunch of like statues of

dictators. They're like almost all communist. He really hates Tito for some reason. I don't know why. Well, I mean, he's a billionaire, obviously, like, this is like almost all communists. He really hates Tito for some reason. I don't know why. Well, I mean, actually, he's a billionaire, obviously. Like, this is why he hates Tito. But if anything, it's like almost all, it's like almost entirely communist. Like, there's no like Mussolini or anything. It's like, it's all communist.

There's no Mussolini, what? No, no, there's like, there's a host named Bubaric and then there's one of, what's the guy's name? I've given him Briss name. I... Prince of the guy who shot Arstuk Ferdinand, which is weird because that guy was not, he was an evil.

No, well, I, that's, I will not, I refuse to take a position on that. I'm, that's not my position. My position, like, on the level. He's a levitator. Oh yeah, that's, like, on the the level of like evil on a dictator level. He's not he's He's no Mao he's no Hitler like come on like he also like again. She is not a dictator He was just some fucking random guy

Like I you kill our street for it like I okay bad bad for myself, but but okay the important thing about this walk First of all who would be your first five statues in your own Garden of Evil? Oh, the Garden of Evil. Oh, okay. This is gonna be very biased because I'm ranking this by people I have personal grudges against. Okay, well, so if you's two personal grudges,

that's your rest of your air to one. CC, what the fuck is his name? Paul Volker, who else do I have a personal grudge against? Who's a dictator? Mohammed bin Sombhan, because he bought my fucking Starcraft League. What the fuck are you talking about? in some bond because he bought my fucking Starcraft league. What the fuck are you talking about? We'll do that for the next one on that one day. I'll put, I'll put, okay, we'll put, we'll put,

we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put,

we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we'll put, we I bring up the garden of evil, right? Is that okay, so he has like a thing where he puts all the stuff from the evil dictators, but then all of the Nazi stuff is just like randomly strewn about his house. Yeah, like his living quarters. Yeah, like don't just be painting, he's like bush painting, too.

So he'll be like bush, they'll be like a red wall, and then they'll just be a Hitler painting. And it's like, he's this guy,, they'll be like a Renoir, and then they'll just be a Hitler painting. And it's like, is this guy, everybody, all of his friends and because this guy has like a bunch of like, right, we, because he's one of the guys here. His friends are normal, well-adjusted people.

All of his friends would be like, this man is not a Nazi, and I'm like, I, he has, I don't know man, like there are not many non-Nazi reasons why you would have like multiple of Hitler's paintings hanging on your wall. And also the signed autographed copy of. I just wanna remind myself that there's evil in the world.

You know, okay, okay. All right, this gets me pissed off. So my, my, what if my grandpa's, took a Nazi sword off a dead officer and brought it home from the war. And we still have it because what the fuck are you supposed to do with that, right? So we have one of those, right?

But we didn't take an autograph copy of my cov, we fucking killed a Nazi officer and took it from him. Like, if you're gonna do this, you have to do it correctly. Yeah. I don't know. But this guy, this guy, okay. Oh, also, he gets really, he's like unfathomably mad that people were chagol varo shirts.

Like, he's so mad. I mean, me too. I mean, me too. I don't see a chagol varo shirt. I'm usually not. I'm almost, I'm almost circling back around on it just because it makes this guy so mad. Like this guy is particular. He's like to be worse.

Most of the take of our shirts I've seen are sold by disgraced white, disgraced right wing commentators to even crowd ourselves. Oh God. What the, we've, we've, we've, we've truly entered hell world now. Oh. Okay. So why, why am I talking about Harlan Crow? Oh God, what the, we've truly entered hell world now. Okay, so why am I talking about Harlan Crow? Partially because he's really funny. Does it, does it feel like give a lot of money to like certain people?

So, okay, we're, we're, yeah, so she's one of the people who runs a really, really extensive network of sort of, like, it's like right wing like think tank dark money network that you know buys judges like pays for people's legal careers. And he's also very close friends with Clarence Thomas. And so I'm gonna just run through all of the shit that he's like, of this is like incredible corruption

that he's doing. So, okay, so I'm gonna start with like, this is like the level one corruption, which is so Crow bought Clarence Thomas's mom's house and then did, quote, tens of thousands of dollars of improvements to the home. And he seems to have bought the house for like significantly above market rate.

And so this is a, this is a, I'm going to do a corruption anatomy here because this is a classic Chicago corruption scam. So there's like six revenue streams in this, right? You have the money from the sale, which goes to like, you know, that's your level streams in this, right? You have the money from the sale, which goes to like, you know, that's your level one bribe, right? Is your selling, you're selling your house to someone at above market value. The level two bribe is,

you're now throwing in the renovations because his mom's still living in this house, right? Oh, so this is like actual bribery, huh? Oh, yeah, yeah, this is, and, so this is like actual bribery, huh? Oh, yeah, yeah. And again, this is like the mild stuff. So that level two is, you get the, you know, you, you, okay, so now you have the contractors and the contractors allow you to throw in more money

into the bribe because you're not, you're not doing all this renovation work like for free. The level three of the bribes is that, okay, so now, now once you have a renovation contract, you now have a contract that pays out money and you can use that to like reward your political allies. And so this is a, this is a classic, like absolutely classic like Chicago, I, I, I, like pay off scheme. now, the other thing that's so, so Harlan was contacted about this and she claims that he's buying this house because he wants to preserve it for posterity because Clarence

Thomas lived there. Uh-huh, sure. Like, she is very weird. She did give a hundred thousand dollars to Harvard to buy a portrait of, like to get them to hang up a portrait of Clarence Thomas. So, you know, she is a deeply weird guy, but this reeks of, oh boy. Now, yes, yes.

Well, probably good. Like, probably good points out also that they bought two random vacant lots in the area from Thomas for like unclear reasons and You now you can also you can also ask why does this supreme court just just like own a bunch of random vacant lots? And the answer to this question is that these people are part of the real bourgeoisie. They are like they they are like as alien to us Real estate scamming right? This is like yeah like basically. Yeah, like they're they're are part of the real bourgeoisie, they are like, they are like as alien to us. Real estate scamming, right? This is like, yeah, like basically, yeah.

Like they're doing stuff. Like they do stuff with their money that like makes them, like they are like as dissimilar to us as like we are from like a fucking deanderthal. Like these people, like the way they think about money, the way they like, just like the way they act in the world, the way they relate to other people, like the fact that they're just buying random fucking lots,

like across the street from their parents house, like why, who knows? And okay, so the thing that's very important about this, right, is if you, you know, okay, everyone in the government, right, from like starting from every court that is below the Supreme Court, down to like a fucking astronomer who works for a national lab. If you receive a, like a large gift over $500, you have to report it to the government and there's like an ethics process you have to go through. And this is the standard.

And again, this is the standard that holds from like the fucking president of the United States down to again, like a random astronomer. They are not allowed to have to do anything that has quote, even the appearance of impropriety. Now, do you want to know who these standards don't apply to? Does the Supreme Court? Yep. Does not apply to them. There's only one thing they have to do, right? Again, this is amazing.

Again, everyone else has actual enforceable ethics standards. The Supreme Court has, you have to report it. It doesn't have to go to an exes condition. You just have to report it. It's not to go to an exes commission. You just have to report it. And yeah, I give you three guesses as to how much of any of the shit that I just talked about that clearance Thomas reported. Probably none of it. Nope, absolutely not.

Zero, zero of it. Like over a hundred thousand, like probably like a hundred, fifty thousand dollars of bullshit, no reporting at all. I'm sure the cops are going to go arrest him for all these crimes, right of bullshit, no reporting at all. I'm sure the cops are gonna go arrest him for all these crimes, right? Yeah, yeah, right. At any day now, yeah, it's gonna be busted down his door. Now that we've cracked this one wide open,

A, okay, okay. Do you know who else is? And I am not joking, legitimately is bound by significantly stricter ethics regulations than the, I, I think ethics regulations, then the Supreme Court. It's the end of it. Plugging these products and services. The FCC advertising guidelines that we have to follow. They are a podcaster.

It every few months we've analyzed the Supreme Court. Every few months we have to take like a, like a 10 minute training. It just basically just plugs into our brains and it downloads all of these like terms and conditions that we then just robotically need to enforce. So, yeah, do you know who else commits fraud? We're legally not allowed to say that. These products and services. Oops, okay.

Well, I'm going to have to do another one of those FCC trainings after this one, aren't I? Well, here's the thing for the cause. Crime is just legal now. This is what I'm getting out of this is really important stuff. So, all right, I started with this housing scam because, hey, it's like, okay, this is like a classic level scam. Be because this is like absolute brush-le a classic level scam. Beab, this is because this is like, absolute brush league shit compared to like,

everything else that's about to happen here. Are you telling me this is gonna get worse? Oh, okay, so, all right, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna start reading this from ProBublica because I don't, I cannot think of a funnier way to just do this. In late June 2019, right after the US Supreme Court released its final opinion of the term, just as Clarence Thomas boarded a large private jet headed

to Indonesia. He and his wife were going on a vacation, nine days of island hopping in a volcanic archipelago on a super yacht staff by a codery of attendance and a private chef. If Thomas had chartered the plane in the 162 foot yachts himself, the total cost of the trip could have exceeded 500,000 dollars. Fortunately for him, that wasn't necessary. He was on vacation with real estate mogul and Republican mega donor Harlan Klo, who owned the jet and the yacht too. Uh, I see. This just sounds like a friendly vacation, right? I need to read another, like really just jeddie Wiley, one of the most brutal polls I've ever seen anyone do is later on this from public article quote, in Thomas's public appearances over the years, she has presented himself as an every man with modest tastes.

I don't have a problem with going to Europe, but I prefer the United States and I prefer saying the regular parts of the United States. Thomas said in a recent interview for a documentary about his life, which Crow helped finance. I prefer the RV parks. I prefer the Walmart parking lots to the beaches and things like that. There's something normal about it. Don't. Don't. I don't think he's going to be getting a charter to watch all the Walmart parking lots. Honestly, I don't really see that one happen. $500,000. The thing about this, it seems like he does something like this every fucking year

Oh, that does something like like I wish I could take I I wish I could take a Supreme Court justice out to the open waters of the sea of At once you hear you know When that when that be fun for everybody in falls Well, I mean here's the thing we're gonna have to pull our money into rent the submarine. That's true. That's true. But we look, we will persevere. We will achieve submarine.

There's no laws on the ocean. International waters, baby. It's legal as as as as are as as are regrettably off doing actual journalism. Colleague James constant the reminds us it is legal for him to fight the seal international waters. Just as legal is me disparaging all of our advertisers. So all right.. You know, okay, so like obviously what is happening, like, Harling Crow, like, this is a level of like bribery where it's like, the wheels kind of fall off of the word bribery because like, how do you even,

I don't know, I don't even, I don't have a way to adequately describe what this is. What I'm going to do instead is to remind everyone that Thomas was one of the justices who decided citizens united the 2010 case that made it legal to bride pole additions to campaign donations and allowed corporations to directly involve themselves in legal campaigns, uh, leading like directly to the hellhole. We now all live in. campaigns, leading like directly to the hellhole we now all live in. Now, once again, Thomas was required to report this as a gift to the government, and he simply did not.

And you know, this is one of those things where, okay, so like if a normal person does this right in the government, you would take them to court. But we've now returned to our problem of who watches the watchers because it's Supreme Court, right? They've established themselves as a dictatorial ruling council based on a power grab. And I'm gonna do my, the Supreme Court rant I do every time, but the Supreme Court does not have the power of judicial review.

They do not have the power to strike down laws. They don't have it. They fucking invented it out of whole cloth in 1802. It doesn't exist. It's not real. It's never been real. You can just fucking ignore them. But in any time, well, everyone believes it is real.

They get to do this bullshit. And you know, so yeah, so that Indonesia trip is like the big one that we know of he took another one to like Moscow and another. The other thing that that he seems to have been doing a lot is basically like he like just uses Harlan Crow's private jet as like his own jet. Um, Republican calculated that like one just like one flight that he took in 2016 would have cost $70,000, which is more than I make in a fucking year. Yeah.

Why, why, why did I cost so much? It's really expensive to, uh, to, to lease those kind of, like that specific kind of private jet. Oh, I mean, yeah, I, okay. If it's for a whole private jet, that makes sense. Yeah. I certainly wouldn't lease a whole private jet, but I'm just built different.

Well, I declare as Thomas is built even more different because instead of leasing it, he just has a friend who has the jet who just lets him take this like, like, one of the people who was doing this, they were just tracking the jet and they could match the jet showing up to the airport where clearance Thomas was going to be and then and the jet would mysteriously then appear in a location where clearance Thomas appeared and it was like. Hmm. And and and this is something we should specifically know. So okay, the reason the Supreme Court has to do any of this at all is that that the stream? Is that like someone finally had a good idea right

after Watergate that was like, we should actually make everyone in the government disclose their gifts. And this law actually like included the Supreme Court. Although I feel like it won't in like two years when they strike that law down or some shit. But you know, but again, like one of the things that like specifically in this law is if you take a private jet, you have to report it and Thomas has been just like jetting around in this fucking jet for like, a like many, like at least like, at least seven years that we know of and has never reported it.

So let's let me, I'm sure the FBI is gonna be bustin' down his doors any day now. Oh yeah, and again, like, let's you, let's you think we've reached the end of the Claire's Thomas corruption. Crow also like, okay, so you know how Claire's Thomas' wife is like a QAnon person? You tried to overthrow the government?

Yes. So she has like a So she has like a, she has like a, like a, it's like a basically bullshit like political lobbying group, but it's like, so it's a lobbying group, but like the actual thing that it does is reverse lobbying,

which is you can go to the lobbying group and use it for like to get access to Clarence Thomas. And that group funded, I didn't write down the number amount, but like that group got like $200,000, that again, his wife works for, got like $200,000 from Crow. There was another story that,

which just, now I'm no lawyer, these are not actual. These are these claims have no basis This is just an uneducated opinion, but to me if I saw this in a movie I would call this money laundry Oh, yeah, okay, so Let me just let me just go to the next one because there's fucking more. There's more like so Ah, let me just go to the next one because there's fucking more, there's more so Alright, I Has like a grand nephew that he like adopted as his son basically Like he like went to the family of this kid

It was like I can give this kid everything in the world so you should like give him to me I'm sure this is all above board. I I Don't sure this is all above board. I, I don't know. This is, what about this man has proved to you that he's untrustworthy. What do you mean? I, okay, too unfair. Clare's Thomas makes the argument that like he did this

because like he was abandoned by his father, as a kid and was raised by his grandfather. So he was like, okay, I'm gonna raise this kid. Like, so you're gonna steal this child's life. I, like, his parents seem to have a griddle. I don't know. I, you can read into that, the level of sketchiness that you want to, the part that I wanna talk about

is that this kid, okay, so a thing that I didn't understand until I got to like college is that, like,, okay, so I knew intellectually that private schools existed. I did not understand that private schools, there are, like there's like, because I was used to like, Christian private schools, right? Yeah, yeah.

I did not, like I didn't like get how rich people could be. And I didn't understand that they were like, I like walk in there and there's like nine kids who all speak Latin and every single one of them went to a private school that was like at least 50, so between 50 and $100,000 a quarter. Yeah, it's like, what the fuck?

What the shit? So Claire's Thomas isn't, so the school he's going to aren't quite that expensive, but the one he sends this kid to, so for two years, the estimate is that it was $150,000. Per year. That was for two years, so estimate is that it was $150,000 per year. That was for two years. So $75,000 a year, which again, more than I make a year.

That's reasonable. That's fine. That is more than like, that is more expensive than my fucking college. That is more expensive. Like I like that. No, it is, it is a ludicrous amount of money. And get, get, get who paid that I'm guessing Harlan Crowe

yeah that's why I don't know it's gonna just gonna pick it's just to pick like a random name off the top by head right at home this one hit there's an I'm not gonna say that. I'm not gonna say that. I'm not gonna say that. I'm not gonna say that. I'm not gonna say that. I'm not gonna say that. I'm not gonna say that.

I'm not gonna say that. I'm not gonna say that. I'm not gonna say that. I'm not gonna say that. I'm not gonna say that. I'm not gonna say that. I'm not gonna say that. I'm not of these guys. Yeah, well, it's this guy, this is the guy. And so, and every single way, this is like, the Koch Brothers fund a whole bunch of like content creators, like,

but on, yeah. Every, almost every big like right wing dude has one of these guys, which is totally unfair because the entire left has to share one of these guys. We only get one and he has to fund everything on the left. Meanwhile, the right has like a dime a dozen of these fucking billionaires. Yeah, you know, like legitimately,

like this was actually legitimately the thing that caused Soros to get into politics. He looked at us and he was like, what the fuck is going on? Like this is insane. Like why, what do you mean like the American Enterprise Institute just like creates Supreme Court justice? Is it like what?

And you know, but like, so the funniest part about this is, again, whenever any of these pieces come out, like every single conservative, like pundits, like in unison, and like all of their fucking newspapers, all of their magazines, they're all funded by these people.

So they all like published like identical things going like, how dare you criticize like the noble friendship of this billionaire and the Supreme Court justice or just pals, they're just extending hospitality like you would to any other friend by taking them on a half a million dollar cruise around on your yacht. It's like incredible stuff.

on your yacht. It's like incredible stuff. All right. We should do, we should do one more ads because you know who's do so. These are advertisements that we are being paid to promote. These are not our personal opinions. These are these are ads there. I followed the FCC guidelines. Here's the fucking ads. And we're back. Totally, totally not gonna get in trouble for that one. Let, let, let's you think, and I can't emphasize this enough. This is something that was like, when these stories first started coming out,

the way it was framed was like, like Clarence Thomas is like a uniquely corrupt Supreme Court justice. And then people did literally any digging and it turns out that Clarence Thomas is not a uniquely corrupt Supreme Court. Like all of the Supreme Court legal justice like experts were like, this is like a unique situation, the history of the court, and then like literally two months later. So Saville Lido, who is another Supreme Court justice, and this in 2007 appears on a $200,000 fishing trip

in Alaska with a billionaire hedge fund manager, Paul Singer, who is, Singer is like one of the most, as much as I don't like Harling Quarrow, like Singer is one of the most like, okay, as much as I don't like Harling Crow, like Singer is like one of the most evil people who's ever lived. Do you know who Singer is? No, but I'm sure this opinion is...

Singer is the same opinion as all of our advertisers. Probably our advertisers, probably don't like him. It would not surprise me. So Singer is just like incredibly, unbelievably relentlessly aggressive hedge fund guy. His thing is he goes into companies and makes really embarrassing slide shows about their CEOs and then deposes them and then takes them over and then trips them for assets and sells them all. That's one thing that he does. The other thing that he's cool. Yeah, I mean, it sucks because every single

person who worked, they lose their job. But that's the less bad thing that he does. That sounds cool. Well, yeah, I mean, it sucks, because every single person who had worked I lose their job. But this is the less bad thing that he does, right? And then this is what I'm talking about. This is legitimately one of the worst people in the world. For any, like Mitt Romney, right? That was the worst shit that he ever did was just destroying a bunch of people's lives

by annihilating these companies. For Singer, that's like the fuck, that's the bullshit stuff. That's like that's the fucking brush league shit. Singer's actual game is, so one of the things that happens over the course of the 70s and 80s is you get a bunch of, yeah, I've thought about this out length

when you live those episodes, but you get a bunch of these economies that basically like across the global South that just implode and they implode because there's this combination of like commodity prices drop and then they have all these adjustable rate like loans that they're taking out. And when Paul Volker hot like hikes interest rates,

all of these like loans suddenly have like 20% interest. And so you have all of these economies all over the world're just fucking are imploding because they suddenly have this like unbelievable debt that can't pay off. And so over the course of the 90s, this kind of like anti-IMF revolt starts. And I have seen national monetary fund, did the people who your borrowing money from who also destroy your economy to like, you know, like pay the IMF back the money. By the time you get into like the 2000s, it's gotten less bad. Well, I guess bad again, it tells me, but there had been this process of debt restructuring where these countries were allowed to like only pay like a small percentage of the debt because they just literally couldn't

pay it because their economy is a bit destroyed or and this is another very common thing. But you get a country where like a bunch of loans were taken out by a dictator and he would just buy planes with them and then he get deposed. But the IMF and the World Bank was still holding liable for the loans. It's like, well, okay, the money's gone. It's in a bunch of gold bars. This guy drove across the border when he like fled. Um, singer, singer is like the last guy who really goes in for like to buy this debt.

And the result is this. So for example, like he buys a bunch of the debt of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. And the result of this is that he turns like the entire Congo-Ease economy into this debt servicing machine. We're like just like every, like there's, there's, there's, there's stripping the copper wires out of the building storage to like fucking pay for,

or metaphorically. So metaphorically they're stripping the copper wires to pay this debt off. All right, not metaphorically they are taking food from the mouths of babies because the way this stuff is paid for is they cut a bunch of government assistance programs and they're like, you know, they don't build fucking hospitals, they don't staff hospitals. And so like a lot, like he has killed a lot of people. And his, his most famous

version of this was this battle that he waged against Argentina. Um, so in 2001, there is this massive like, basically like the, the, the last 20th century, like the last 20th century communist revolution happens in Argentina in 2001 and they lose, but it's, they, they lose pretty, it like only pretty narrowly doesn't work. Like, there is a timeline that is not that different from this one where like, like a bunch of anarchists basically have taken control of Argentina. And the result of this is that Argentina defaults

on its debt. And, you know, they default on this debt and so they enter the rest of the rest of the, like, people who are like holding this debt are like, okay, well, in order to let the Argentinian economy recover and get like some of this money back, we'll just like let, like, okay, we'll like right off most of our debt.

But seeing her like, look at this and it's like, oh shit, I'm just gonna buy all this debt that I know is junk and can't be repaid. And then I'm gonna go to the courts in the US and like just four Sushin Chiener would repay it. Now this is not how debt is supposed to work, right? The thing about debt, right? The thing about like lending someone money or you know, this is what essentially what buying

someone's debt is, right? The thing about that, right, is if the person can't pay you back, you're supposed, you are out of the money, right? Like that's, that's, that's, you know, this is, this is the theoretical economic justification for why you can charge interest because there's risk. But what singer figured out is that you could just use the US court system and, you know, the threat of the implicit and explicit threat of the US military to just like force people to pay you whether they have money or not. And so this is what he does. He's like the one, he's the one creditor because he buys like an enormous amount of this debt.

And he's the one creditor who refuses to negotiate. And so he like starts running around the US trying to like steal Argentinian assets. Like he tries to have like Argentinian central bank reserves seized. There's another, like the most famous incident is he tries to steal an Argentinian worship in order to pay down the debt. There's another one where like he tries to like, he tries to steal Argentinian's entire pension fund.

And this causes this like series of lawsuits that sort of like run their way through the courts. And in 2014, one of these cases finally makes it to this review court. And this is where singers, $200,000, a last-conficient trip pays off because semial elito rules that Argentina has to play singer 2.4 billion dollars. And eventually they do. So Alito, like, like, he's also, he also has another guy who just like pays for his vacations, who's the, uh, I don't know if I want to say incredibly name or disturbingly named, but this guy's name is Robin, Erkley the second.

Wait, Robin, Erkley the second. Got it. Yeah, and he's a also like a genuine, like terrible person. Like these are all like, you write hitchhikers, wait, have you read hitchhikers guy to the galaxy? No. Okay, so my favorite bit from that is

there's a bit where like the Encyclopedia from the foundation series, like from the future, like falls down and it falls open onto a page. And someone had just made a joke about how these people are gonna be the first against the wall and the revolution comes and the Encyclopedia for the future drops down and they open it and it says that these two people were first against the wall

when the revolution came. And that's like all of these people. These are like the worst people in the fucking world or like in the US. So this guy, um, Arclay makes his fortune like buying distressed mortgages and then for closing on people's houses and flipping them. So he is seems like a valuable contributor to me. Like I, I, you know, I mean, this is like this is literally like literally one of the old like crime-thaked jokes was when the bank sees your house the GDP GDP goes up.

Like that's literally this guy. This is the guy who makes the GDP go up by seasoning it by stealing your house. And so this guy takes a leado on a bunch of trips. So when when Republican like reaches out to a leado about this, he gets so mad that he, he, the Wall Street Journal editorial board allows him to publish a, like an op-ed that is just him yelling about how this article

that hasn't come out yet is fake And one of the specific things that he's really mad about is part of this article is talking about how The wine at this man at this like lodge that he's staying at that's being paid for by By the the fucking mortgage flipper guy has a thousand dollars of bottle wine And clear as time was like no the wine, the wine was not $1,000 a bottle. You could check the website and then probably people was like, well, yeah, but that's because the the lodge,

like the quality of the lodge was downgraded after. Alito had like one of the like, just a truly incredible meltdown that he was just allowed to have in the op-ed section of the Wall Street Journal in like in response, not even in response, like before this article came out. And the other thing that we learned from this is that also apparently, former Justice Antonin Scalia also was taking trips from this guy. So this is just like every

conservative like justice in the last like 20 years has just been doing this. They've just been getting like flown around the world on fancifications by their billionaire friends. Well, I don't actually know if I actually might merely be a millionaire. I'm not I'm not sure but he might be billionaire. I don't know. The other two definitely are on it. Wait, million are a billionaire because those are two very different things. I can't let I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I He is a billionaire. There's some dispute. At least the guy, there's like dispute over. What's his net worth? Oh, we don't know. It's unclear.

What's his name? There's dispute over it. Dispute, disputed net worth. Yeah, unclear. The other two guys definitely billionaires. This guy may be a billionaire, unclear. But like literally, like literally all these diseases have just been like taking just like,

and again, and the thing I forgot to mention that I should have mentioned is that like all of these people have had cases appear before the stream court. Hmm, curious. Curious. Now, and this is another amazing thing. This is the thing that came up like really prominently when there was a case that I, you know,

there was a case about the attempt to like overthrow the government in 2020 or in 2021 attempt to overthrow the government in 2020, or in 2021 that like, well, then 2020, 2021, that Thomas like objectively should have recused himself from because his wife tried to overthrow the government, and he just didn't, and this is a really important thing which is that Supreme Court justices, like your fucking daughter could be one of the plaintiffs

in a case and you don't have to recuse yourself. It's recruising yourself is completely voluntary, which is not how this works for fucking anything else, right? But again, this Supreme Court is not like, it's not actually a court, it's just like a fucking, it's just this like weird dictatorial tribunal that is subject to like, absolutely no authority whatsoever. And okay, so it also turns out that there's like, there's like yet another layer of

fuckery with this, which is that universities use Supreme Court justices to solicit donations by like so they'll have like a don't buy a justice to like give a talk at the university and they'll pay them a bunch of money. And then they'll have them like go to a dinner and then they'll advertise to all their donors like hey if you give us a bunch of buddy you can go to this dinner with Supreme Court Justice. And so a bunch of like, like a bunch of people who have cases in front of the Supreme Court like use this to go get access to a bunch of Supreme Court justices. So it's great. This is really fun. Oh, did I do the Venmo thing?

Venmo? Oh, it's not the Venmo thing. Okay, okay, here's the Venmo thing. So two days after I started, like two days ago, from the time of writing, this will actually be like almost exact, wow. It'll be like almost a week from when this comes out. I there was another thing of this that came out, which is that a bunch of lawyers had just been sending money

on Venmo to one of Clarence Thomas's aides. And these, okay, like the these are like these are not just people who have like active cases These are like like one of the guys who Venmo Tom's is a is the guy who won the affirmative action case and And another one of the other lawyers who've been about him is the guy who I I don't remember this like Like in like the last like term or the court. There was a case where I The screen court like fucked the EPA's ability to regulate greenhouse gases.

So that lawyer also paid a bunch of money on Venmo to clear it's tosses eight. So this is the level of corruption that we're working at, right? Which is like people sending public Venmo transactions to the AIDS of Supreme Court justices who are about to hear their cases. Oh, that's so good. Now, there isn't this as happening so the right has built just an extensive, an incredibly extensive network

to seize control of judiciary. Liberals have produced no such network because they're fucking hacks. And this is not just the sort of like, there's only one like liberal billionaire. Like no, there are liberal billionaires. The actual real problem with a liberal attempt to like take control of the judiciary

is that like liberal lawyers or hacks, instead of actually like trying to hold on to like judicial positions, right? And you know, attempt to like move their way up through like trying to hold on to like judicial positions, right? And you know, it's time to like move their way up through like certain courts in order to like like seize control of like large, like increasingly large portions of of the court system, which is what the public instead. I the Democratic lawyers, they'll they'll get like like they do the even lazier corruption, which is like they'll just they'll be a judge for like three years,

and then they'll just leave to private practice because they're all just fucking greedy shits. And, you know, the result of this is that all these like fucking liberal lawyers, I'd, you know, they go into private practice and make a quick buck and they leave us to fucking burn a death in the smoldering heat while they spend their vacations in Bali.

And, you know, and again, so the only thing that like could conceivably slow down the Supreme Court is the fact that like technically speaking, although it's never actually gone through, it is possible for like Congress to impeach the Supreme Court justice. But the Democrats don't want to do that because. Because then the right will be able to impeach all of the liberal system. It's just it's no it's worse than that. The act Biden's actual stated reason for why he didn't want to do it is because it would would undermine the legitimacy of the court.

And the result of this is that like for all their their fucking screaming about lawlessness and rising crime rates, the fucking biggest criminals in the entire goddamn country are just literally sitting in their stupid ass robes, taking the biggest bribes in the history of the fucking republic. And the Democrats are just like, well, if we do anything, it'll undermine the faith in our institutions. So I get fuck them,

but also like we don't fucking need these people. Like you could, like you could, you can fit all of these people in one submarine. And we could just be fucking dumb with it. And then we get a whole bunch of new Supreme Court justices picked by Joe Biden and they would save America. So that's why we need to vote for Joe Biden in 2024. Save America.

Yeah, yeah. This is the summer. This is the submarine plot. It'll go great. We have to mandate it. Submarine vacations for all Supreme court judges. The submarine is now the

oldie vehicle. You're allowed to travel on serious real justice. taxpayer funded Titanic explorations for all Supreme court justice. This we're we're already giving them $280,000 a year. It's not

actually that it wouldn't, we would save money if we just go to salary. My position on this is clear. This is a, this is a fiscally conservative position. Most of my positions can be interpreted as fiscally conservative. It's cheaper to put all the people at houses than do what we're doing now. Anyway, well, glad we could learn about how the Supreme Court is good and just.

Well, you know, the second thing you can learn is if you, if you, one day somehow are like a semi-minor Chicago politician, you now know how to launder money, which does sound exciting. Yeah. You never know. You never know. Well, thank you for this insightful look at at at at at at 1970s mystery villain Harlan Crowe who has a mansion full of Hitler paintings. who has a mansion full of Hitler paintings. This feels like it's like the location of like an agatha Christie book or something. That's all investing at the murder of Harlan Crow.

Spoilers, it was Supreme Court justice. The World Seigutskando, one of the best new podcasts of 2022, is back with a closer look at the darkness surrounding mega-church La Luz del Mundo and its leader, Nasson Joaquin Garcia. They believe that he was Jesus Christ on Earth. It wasn't even so much that he liked sex. He wanted something to pray. It's the largest cult in the world that no one has ever heard of. For three generations, the Luz del Mundo

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Listen to all episodes now on the I Heart Ready Up Rainy Up, Apple Podcasts, or whatever you get your podcasts. 911, what's your emergency? You shot her! Oh my God! It's a nightmare we could never have imagined. And a killer who is still on the loose. My small town rocked by murder. There are certain murders I'm scared to discuss.

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In that moment, I saw rage. And why do you some want the town secrets to stay dead and buried forever? I'm not sure why you're digging up all this old stuff again, but I'd be careful. Don't say I didn't warn you, Nancy. Listen to the murder years on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey what's up y'all, this is Eric Andreic, but I made a podcast called Bomming about absolutely tanking on stage.

I'm talking about your most amazing hair and several experiences of the performer. I tell gnarly stories and I talk to friends about the worst moments of bombing in all sorts of ways. Bomming on stage, bombing in public, bombing in life. Like the time I stole a girl's phone during a set and she dumped on stage and threw a big A-maker punch to my nose. I wanted to know what's the worst way they ever bombed or performed way too drunk or high.

There was a time where they thought they were going to crush and they stunk it up. Subscribe to my podcast, bombing with Eric Andre to hear more crazy stories from me and my friends. I'll have guests like Sam J. To us a Sloan, Michelle Butteau, Mac tomorrow. DJ Doug Pound, Saturday Night Live, Sarah Sherman, and more! Listen to Bombing with Eric Andre on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the I-Hard Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello and welcome to a crap in here. I'm Andrew.

I did your channel. Andrew is on and. Hi, this is this is Garrison. I've not been on an Android episode in a while. Yeah, it's been a minute, it's been a minute. And it's been a meme at this point that Aoteora or New Zealand is forgotten, you know, from maps, both physical and mental. But those islands contain a rich history of activism that deserves a spotlight, you know, much of what I've discovered has been thanks to the academic efforts of Teah, who, I hope

you say they're named correctly, but their research formed the foundation of my exploration My exploration of just some of the 20th century history behind contemporary Maori struggles for autonomy on the islands. The story of Maori oppression begins not long after the arrival of European settlers in late 18th century. The Treaty of Waithanghi signed in 1840 between the British Crown and Maori Chiefs, was meant to protect Maori rights and ensure a peaceful coexistence. However, as a bilingual text, it kinda sucked at being bilingual because some of the words in the English Treaty did not translate directly into the written Maori language at the time,

and to the Maori text is not an exact translation of the English text, particularly in relation to the meaning of having and seeding of sovereignty. In other words, the full implications of what they were sign in was not fully understood. The concept of private land ownership as the British understood it, clashed with Maori communal land proctoses, which led to significant land loss for Maori communities. The New Zealand government implemented policies and laws that systematically favoured European settlers, and throughout the latter half of the 19th century, Maori lost control of much of the land they had owned, sometimes through legitimate sale, but often by way of unfair land deals, settlers occupying land that had not been sold or through our right

confiscation in the aftermath of the New Zealand wars. And New Zealand wars were they also known as the land wars or marri wars, where a series of conflicts had took place in outie aura between the indigenous marri people and the British government and it's clearly our forces. These wars spanned from the early 1840s to late 1870s. And the underlying cause was that very struggled for land and resources, as European settlers were arriving in increasing numbers and one more dispute setter as an overland ownership and the interpretation of the Treaty of Watangi. The wars were fought on multiple fronts involving different Maori tribes and regions, conflicts included the Northern

War, the Taranaki Wars, the Wakai-Tu War, and the Taranga campaign. And these wars were characterized by a combination of guerrilla warfare, fortifications, and conventional military tactics. The results, as with pretty much all wars, was the disruption of, well, in this case, specifically traditional Maori social structures and economic systems and the results and hardship for those Maori communities. And so as the 19th and 20th century progressed, Maori oppression also manifest in the suppression of cultural practices and languages by the government as a government aimed to assimilate Maori into European culture because, of course, to them, European culture is considered superior. Maori children were often forced into English-speaking schools, where their own language and customs

were discouraged, and that also led to decline the use and transmission of the Maori language, and the loss of cultural identity for many Maori individuals. This, I think, can be characterised as a cultural genocide. Moreover, discriminatory practices were prevalent in various areas, including an employment, in housing and in political representation. Maori people faced significant barriers and discrimination when seeking employment or housing opportunities. They were also underrepresented in political institutions, which limited their ability to advocate for their rights and influence decision-making processes.

Now, the seeds of contemporary Maori activism were soling in the 60s and 70s. Struggles were taken place basically from the point of first contact, but Maori activism, as we understand it today, really launched with a new fervor in the 60s and 70s. The late 60s and early 70s really marked a turbulent period globally, because there was an upsurge in class conflicts and social activism. You know, there were the independence movements and decolonization movements happening all over the world.

It was a time when people all over were taking a stand against injustice and fighting for their rights. And this wave of political and social movements, also known as the New Left, had a profound impact on the islands as well. In New Zealand, as in elsewhere, student activism was really taken shape across the world, students were protesting against the Vietnam War. In the US, they were advocating for black liberation, and then they were also social movements given momentum, like the women's liberation movement, the anti-racism movement, the environmentalism movement, and the gay and lesbian rights movements. They were all, you know, sparking around the same

time. So the new left and out there role was shaped by these international developments. The late 1960s, it went as a surge in student activism and the emergence of various social movements, again, environmentalism, women's liberation, anti-racism, etc. And so Mari protest groups were really picking up on those movements and those movements would shape the mindsets and the actions Maori protest groups during that period. They would take in the analysis and the understanding of racism and other inequalities faced by Maori in a broader context. And so they were aligned themselves with class struggle as well and were deproversified to you to the left at large. So this point in time in the Maori struggle, it was characterized as largely leftist. That is something that will

change later on as the movements become more heterogeneous, but for now it's been mostly leftist. Even though there were some part protest groups that were less left-oriented and more just, you know, national liberation focused, they still saw themselves as part of this broader left movement. Okay. There was still actively working to incorporate these radical intellectual traditions, particularly Marxism and feminism into the Maori struggle. In the late 1960s, there was this very strong collaboration taking place between Pacquiao or European New Zealanders and Pacquiao and Theresa's groups and the emerging Maori protest movements. One significant event that really brought them together was the exclusion of Maori rugby players from the 1960

all-black tour of South Africa by the New Zealand Rugby Football Association. And that decision, of course, sparked widespread opposition because at the time, South Africa was very much involved in the part-time and this decision to exclude Maori rugby players from the team and from that particular tour led to many protests under this banner of no Maori no tour, which focused only on the exclusion of the Maori but also on the morality of the Maori, but also

on the morality of the occasion of the country practicing apartheid. More collaboration would take place in the form of the formation of the Holt-Oll-Raisis Toors group, also known as HART in 1969, which is an umbrella organisation that united a couple of different voices and groups both Maori and Pakeha in their opposition to really discriminatory sports tours. They were so involved organizations like Kair, which included young Maori political activists among its members alongside Pakeha, political activists, in organizing these panel discussions to address the position of Maori in New Zealand society. And then while this is going on there's also the

growth in the influence of individuals like Gagia Te Awikotuku and Tuan Awatiri. Beganchal and more and more light on the barriers are prevented, Mary Woman specifically from fully participate and contributing to Mary Society. They will all hear criticising the Peace Rural College show to show them our leadership, and on the occasion for the speaking rights of Maori women, transpiration from the pro-der non-Mari specific women's liberation movement as well. So these were like other, with these other movements that were happening in New Zealand, that were kind of working together, or this just like part of like a broader trend of these movements in the 60s.

Yeah, so they were starting to collaborate at this point in time. Both Pacquiao and Mari, a particular organizations who began to form connections and spark discussions. Those Pacquiao organizations are obviously being of the leftist variety. Yeah, and the Mari organizations

be in primarily leftists, apparently, align themselves with the leftists, causes and physical ideologies. But from like a more like indigenous perspective and standpoint, in like goals. Yeah, yeah, definitely. All right, got it. One particular organization, which was formed in the mid 1970s, was created by Marie Woman, within the Marie Octavis organization, Gatamator, who had embraced a feminist perspective to analyze the oppression faced by Marie Woman, particularly. And this awareness was fueled by their experiences of frustration and anger with the Marie Landrides movement.

Because these women are here and they're struggling for Marie Rites as a whole, but then also their face and issues as women, both in the organization and in broader society. So they fight into the pursuit of the politics and culture and language of Marie society, while also seeking liberation from the oppression that they would face in that Maori society. So it's a struggle for both preservation and also reformation of Maori society, or rather liberation, preservation, and reformation. There was also an increase in strike activity and general class struggle happened in June the late 1960s, which had a significant

impact in the political education of many Maori workers who were fighting for better wages and improved working conditions. Trade unions were playing a crucial role in providing an organizational base for Maori protest groups, as demonstrated by the emergence of groups like Te Hokioi and the Maori organization on human rights or MWHR, both located in Wellington and both strongly connected to trade unions. The Secretary in fact of the MWHR Tamapowata was actively involved in the Wellington Drivers Union and the New Zealand Communist Party. These organisations were advocated for an alliance between Maori and progressive elements in the Wukong class.

They viewed the fundamental contradiction in society as being between Labour and capital, between workers and bosses or landlords and racism was seen as a consequence of class inequality. And the majority of Maori being Wukong class were considered an oppressed segment of the Wukong class. Both. Both Tehokuoi and MWHR promoted the idea of a unified struggle across racial lines, focusing on class B strategies as the most effective means of addressing racism and reducing Maori inequality.

If you pick an up hints of class reductionism. Yep, I was actually going to mention that. Yeah. Yeah, there are some hints of that in this particular approach. And you'll see the consequences of that as we progress a bit further through the history. Could you briefly explain class reductionism in case someone is like listening and is unaware of that concept? Sure. So class reduction is basically the idea that the

expectation of label and the expectation of the working class by the capitalist class is the fundamental, you know, form of oppression within society. And it trumps all other social divisions, all of the forms of oppression such as racism or sexism. Yeah, like when you mentioned, like they're reviewing, like racism as like a consequence of capitalism, right? That puts racism like after capitalism, but racism has existed way before capitalism. And it's many way one of it is one of the main drivers of capitalism. It's not merely a consequence.

It's actually like a motivating factor. Yeah, and particularly their position that focus on class-based strategies would be the most effective means of addressing racism. Yeah. What I can see from a particular angle, considering that the majority of Maori will work in class at a time, saying that the best way to alleviate their condition, we to focus on things you do to impact their class position. Yeah, that would be true. But then at the same time, you also consider that the racism embedded within you see the society, you're not going to go away just as a result of the end

to that class-based depression. To be fair to the MWA HR, they will also play an active role in reason away as a water racism specifically. You know, in the reason awareness of what racism specifically, you know, in housing, in sports, in employment, and in violation, generally, of Maori political rights. They also had a very strong stance on issues related to the Treaty of Waikatangi, you know, the alienation of Maori from the land, and the completion of resources, and the inability of Maori to access those resources.

Their stance, it's just something enough, was really on sort of reclaiming the Treaty of Waitangi as a potential phone desion for homunias and biocultural country. With the conditions that passed injustices will address and rectify. However, like I alluded to earlier, there would be a shift as the movements would progress. The inspirational momentum behind the Tehokiyoi and MWHR had begun to weigh in, particularly during the early to mid-1970s and eventually in 1975, the MWHR would

merge with Matakite as part of the land rights movement which marked the end of their separate existence and also led to the rise of brown power. So if brown power sounds like black power, that's because it's copy and black power. Similar to the ideologies of black power advocated by folks like Kwame Turey and Charles V. Hamilton, Brown Power Center and the complete rejection of the racist institutions and values of New Zealand society and the belief that group solidarity was a center of effective, collective action and negotiation. The proponents of Brown Power each Maori people to unite, to recognize their shared history,

and to foster a sense of solidarity and community. Significant emphasis was placed on the goal of Maori self-determination, which involved the ability for Maori to define their own objectives and establish their own distinct organizations and institutions. So this is like, at this point,

Brown Power, much like black power is the opposite of just assimilation or adjustment or cool habitation with existing structures. It is a move my desire to complete autonomy from those systems, from those structures, and a solution of the freedom of ordinary people to exist and not have the existence imposed upon. The organization, Gartamitur initially drew inspiration from the revolutionary faction of the Bac-Po movement in the US. However, as the group evolved, different interests and objectives had emerged, which led to a division within the movement. On the one side, there were the

conservative university-educated members, such as Sid and Hannah Jackson, Peter Reiches and Don Awa Thierry, and on the other side, there were the more militant proponents of Black or brown power, like John O'Hire, Paul Kotara, and Ted Nia. Eventually, unfortunately, the more conservative members of Tamatoa really took center stage in the movement. Their strategies diverged from the militants and that they sought to change through alliance with more liberal elements within the ruined class. They believed that by implementing appropriate legal measures, Mari could achieve prosperity. So they were really advocating for like welfare and self-help programs for Mari development. And in fact, there was even some belief among them that New Zealand capitalism,

coupled with the Polymanj political system, could be rid of racism, that you could extract racism from capitalism and then everything would be hunky-dord. Interesting. Yeah. Which is like this perspective, which is like the opposite of like the class reductionism that we mentioned previously. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, this perspective is exactly the kind of thing that you see manifest again and again within political movements across the world really. The interests of middle class, uniquely steeducated individuals who are more focused on their own individual advancement within the existing system, that an actual thorough critique of the structure and history of that system. And so when you have, when you're fueled

by those individual interests and your focus on how you can advance through that system in business or in politics, whether the case may be, it's very easy to just, you know, be like, oh, well, I don't know what you guys are talking about. I'm sure once we get the racism all to the way, It's very easy to just, you know, be like, oh, well, I know what you guys are talking about. I'm sure once we get the racism all to the way, you know, we can all succeed, wink, wink. But of course, that is a rather myopic approach.

And so as a result of the centrality of those individuals and that particular perspective in the movement, the meaning of brown power as a slogan kind of got water down. It became more ambiguous and potentially associated with either Maori capitalism or evolution activity. Arguably the same thing could be said for Black Power, a lot of people, a lot of advocates of Black Power ended up going in the direction of Black capitalism, talented 10th, Black business, Black wealth, that kind of thing. And well, we've seen the conspets do that. I mean, they're more Black billionaires and millionaires and they have been in human history, but that doesn't mean racism as intel twist. Put it inside the capitalist oriented advocates of Brown Powell on the revolutionary side. A new group pretty much to challenge the system. And this group, and you're going to, you know,

pick up on a little bit of a theme here in terms of inspiration. This group was called the Polynesian Panthos. Interesting. Established. They were established in June of 1971 and they had a membership primarily composed of Pacific Islanders such as Sima Wan's Tongans and Yuan's. They drew obviously explicitly inspiration from the Black Panther Party United States. Just a heads up in Maori, well in New Zealand, the Maori and the Pakia, the Pakia, the Europeans, are the two primary groups, right? But in New Zealand, they're also minorities of other Pacific Irelandans, Pacific Islanders, similar ones and Tongans and New Orleans and people from the other smaller islands within Polynesia, within the area, from those various islands in Oceania and Pacific

Ocean. And a lot of them had arrived as immigrants during the 1960s economic boom that had taken place in New Zealand. The founders of the Polynesian Panther Party were actually high school students. They weren't university students, they weren't adults, they were mostly from working class, first generation families. That's cool. And their parents will actually encourage to buy the museum government to migrate as cheap labor during that economic boom. But of course, as these things go again, once even like looking at this history and for any significant length of time, you see certain patterns emerge. So governments are going to invite you like, yeah, yeah, yeah, migrants come, will take advantage of your label. And then the second

is a downturn in migrants, that's a blame for everything. So as the production boomer subsided in the mid 1970s and different conditions with deteriorating racism and police harassment against Pacific Islanders became even more prevalent. And by the Pacific Islanders does technically refer to Maori as well. And the Polynesian Panty Parties position is that Maori or Pacific Islanders are considered part of the Polynesian Panties. But as we can specifically about the migrant Pacific Islanders and the experience here, they're doing three, you know, just like the Maori they're doing

with low wages and poor living conditions and the government, you know, just like the Maori they're doing with low wages and poor living conditions and the government, you know, being migrants, they're in even more precarious position because government are taking a more aggressive stance towards overstayers, people who are overstay on their work visas, which put these first generation New Zealanders at risk of deportation to countries that they had never visited, had never known. You know, being forced into these precarious circumstances, a lot of young Pacific Islanders were living in unsafe neighborhoods and allowed them felt compelled to join gangs or to stay hidden at home for survival. After the Polynesian Panthers really emerged as an alternative option, seeking to provide a more positive path for young people in Pacific Islander communities.

The Polynesian Panthers were particularly influenced by Huey Newton's policy of black unity, and also echoed his distinction between revolutionary and cultural nationalism when debating the conservative members of the Gartamator. The Panthers identified the root cause of Pacific Islander oppression within the exploitative social relations of the capitalist system. And so they advocated for a liberation strategy that involved completely overthrowing the capitalist system and the social relations and enable it to exist. And so in practice,

this meant that the Panthers expressed solidarity with other liberation struggles, oppressed groups and activists, and ultimately aimed for a global revolution. They worked in power, the Polish community, and improved their quality of life. They organized strikes and factories, with poor working conditions. They protested outside, substandard wholesome, through their tenants' aid brigade. They established home work centers to help address educational struggles. And they focused on the reason awareness of writing and title months, among Pacific Islander families who were often unaware of their legal protections.

In fact, a lot of the Pantas focus was on assistant individuals who were caught up in legal issues. They distributed pamphlets that informed people of their rights. They provided legal aid for court representation, and they organized buses for families to visit their loved ones in prison. Faggot Pantas' support in advocacy in them the gratitude of prisoners who often contributed a portion of their legal earnings to the movement. As they shed light on the daily struggles faced by Maori and also other Pacific Islanders, ranging from land claims to discrimination police violence, the US context. There was some organizations or rather, there are some organizations that are not in the US context.

There was some organizations that are not in the US context. There was some organizations that are not in the US context. There was some organizations that are not in the US context. There was some organizations that are not in the US context.

There was some organizations that are not in the US context, there was some organizations, or rather, there are some, to me, side-off organizations that are attempting now in the present day to emphasize African-American unity above and before any other form of African-induced or more of that unity. So instead, you are seeds to attempt to distance African-Americans from the rest of the Black Lives bro and to ferment divisions between African-Americans and African immigrants or Caribbean immigrants.

So again, the tactics, the strategy is the, it feels like a canon event at this point. That there will always be these individuals or groups we're trying to find we as to chop up and to divide troops that should be united and have a lot to gain from being united in a common struggle. to gain from the United and the common struggle. The Panthers, along with any of the Pacific Island youth, were actively working to support Maori causes, including the 1975 land march and the Bastion Point occupation. They became one more stepped at political lobbying, which became apparent during the dawn

raids in the 1970s and the springbok tour of 1981. TNES was chaired for his actions during the tour, but was actually released throughout charge and will Aalohaya along with Honeh Harawira and others. One trial for two years only gets enough the charge after and you know they'll come your parents here. The shop Desmond 22 They'll come your parents here. Bishop Desmond Tutu, well known South African activist, flew in to be a character witness for their trial. And I think when I put a pin on it there, cover the seeds of contemporary of my activism, the trade union movement,

brown power, and the pollination partners. And in the next episode we'll talk more about the development of the land rights movement and the weaknesses of the Murray struggle in the post 1980s context. As a final for me, I'm Andrew. Good for me on YouTube at Andrew's home, and supporting Patreon or Combo Slash Andrew. This has been Ikr'Apniam. Sacred Skando, one of the best new podcasts of 2022. He's back with a closer look at the darkness surrounding mega-church La Luz del Mundo, and its leader, Nasson Joaquin Garcia.

They believe that he was Jesus Christ on Earth. It wasn't even so much that he liked sex. He wanted something to pray. It's the largest cult in the world that no one has ever heard of. For three generations, La Luz del Mundo had an incredible control on this community that began in Mexico and then grew across the United States.

Until one day... A day of reckoning for the man whose millions of followers call him the Apostle. Their leader was arrested and survivors began to speak out about the sexual abuse, the murder and corruption. This is just a business and their product are people. They want to know that they will kill you. Listen to all episodes now on the I Heart Ready Up, Apple Podcasts, or whatever you get your podcasts. 911, what's your emergency?

You shot her! Oh my God! It's a nightmare we could never have imagined. And a killer who is still on the loose. My small town rocked by murder. There are certain murders I'm scared to discuss. In the 1980s, we're in high school losing friends, teachers, and community members.

One after another, after another, for a decade. We weren't safe anywhere. We're teenagers terrified to leave our own homes. Would we be next? Who is killing all the kids? And why? In that moment, I saw rage. And why do you some want the town secrets to stay dead and buried forever?

I'm not sure why you're digging up all this old stuff again, but I'd be careful. Don't say I didn't warn you, Nancy. Listen to the Murder Years on the iHeart Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, what's up, y'all? This is Eric Andreik, but it made a podcast called Bomming about absolutely tanking on stage. I'm talking about your most invisible experiences of the performer. I tell gnarly stories and I talk to friends about their worst moments of bombing in all sorts

of ways. Bombing on stage, bombing in public, bombing in life. Like the time I stole a girl's phone during a set and she dumped on stage and threw a big A-maker punch to my nose. I wanted to know what's the worst way they ever bombed or performed way too drunk or high. It was there every time where they thought they were going to crush and they stunk it up. Subscribe to my podcast, Bombing with Eric Andre to hear more crazy stories from me and my friends. I'll have guests like Sam Jay.

To say slow and Michelle Butteau, Max DeMarco, DJ Doug Pound, Saturday Night Live, Sarah Sherman, and more! Listen to bombing with Aircon Dre and Wilfair's big money players network on the IR Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everyone and welcome back to it Grappin' here. In my last part I spoke a bit about the historical context of the Maori struggle in New Zealand or out of Europe. I spoke about the seeds of contemporary Maori activism, the involvement of Maori in the trade union movements and the development of Maori women's movements, as well as the development of the brown power slogan and the split between the movements

more radical and more conservative co-orderships, with the former eventually going on to as inspired by the Black Panther parts in the US US form the Polynesian Pantons. For those unaware, this is it could happen here. I am Andrew of the Germanel Andrews and I'm joined by... The garrison is also on this Zoom call. As we discuss, the Murray Land Rights Movement. Now, the struggle against Murray oppression, racism, a division within the movement regarding whether the existing political structures could bring about a real change or for a complete overthrow of the system was necessary.

The failure to address land alienation through official channels created a sense of pessimism about the government's commitments to Mario rights rights. The Māori land rights movement emerged from 1975 to 1978, bringing together diverse ranges of activists, the sort of alliances with workers, both Māori and Pakahil, viewing them as natural allies in the fight against suppression. The common enemy was seen as the racist and capitalist state. The occupation of Bastion Point and subsequent eviction from Bastion Point intensified the direct conflict that the movements will have with the state. It garnered their public support and also the involvement from the Pakea Left. The Auckland Trade Council placed a

quote-unquote green ban on the area, which refused until a law worked to commence on the planned subdivision. An north shore contractor even donated six trucks, including two bitumen tankers, to help with a planned blockade. The occupation at Bastion Point was followed by arrests at the Radland Golf Course, and many of those arrested were representatives of various activist groups. The land rights movement and the struggle against racism radicalized group of Maori women who were already part of Nga Tamatoa to go on to form the to go on to form the capital W, capital M, Black women's movement.

In the early 1980s, the Wattangi Action Committee, Maori People's Liberation Movement of our Terror, and the Black Women's Movement, emerged as prominent Maori political activist groups, primarily based in Auckland, New Zealand. They continued the protest tradition of Nagata Matua with annual protests to the Watangi day celebrations and they even came up with the idea to call the Cheety of Watangi instead of the Treaty of Watangi, very clever.

And they also called for a boycott of the celebrations. Now initially, Mari activists had collaborated with Susan Pakeha anti-racist groups, but that association was weakened after divisions emerged during the anti-Springbok tour protest in 1981, which, as you may remember from the previous episode, was a protest against the National Rugby Teams participation in a tour that included apartheid to Africa. The perception was that Adi Samanglari, that many Pakeha had failed to recognize the connection between apartheid and South Africa and colonialism and racism in New Zealand. And so the bonds between those two movements would begin into weaker.

You add on top of that prolonged economic crisis that was taking place in New Zealand during the 1970s and 1980s. As a result, of course, of the inherent tendencies of capitalism. The government had to grapple with the crisis of political legitimacy and of economic management, and that, of course, fueled further ethnic and gender inequalities, further social unrest, and worsening economic conditions and increases in unemployment. The absurdity, please do not time. In Maori protest, really highlighted the March line's position that Maori were dealing with in-usian society. And studies ended up confirming their disproportionately poor

education outcomes, high unemployment rates, low incomes, health issues, high imprisonment rates, low rates of wholorship and dependence on the state. While some Maori activists had forced strategies to challenge the system and address these inequalities, others ended up pursuing struggles that pulled little threat to the state and failed to address the root causes of economic and social crises inherent to capitalism. The initial focus of Maori culture nationalism was on securing Maori studies and language programs in the educational system.

However, the people who eventually shifted its emphasis towards discovering Maori history and culture more broadly, and along the way there was less emphasis on putting together a robust political movement and robust strategies for broader social change. And while William Movements had a very clear focus on left-wing politics, it's also on this time that we see a shift towards a broader range of politics, including right-wing. One of the most important books in the Mario Actress movement at the time was Donna Aurethiare's Maori Ciferentity, published in 1984. And that book was really less of a critique of right wing racist politics, and more of a critique of left social movements, which, according to Aurettarius,

was committed to a status quo characterized by white supremacy and Maori subordination. And she was called an everybody up. She was called a paquia activist, whether they be feminists, trade unionists, socialists, or otherwise. She called them all out as being committed to this status quo of white supremacy and marries with radiation. Around this time, there was also a gruring sense that pakeha's society

was intrinsically based in competition, exploitation, material success as opposed to Maori society and Maori values, which culturally was more communal, more collaborative, and more focused on the wellness of the whole. As the solution was seen as really emphasising cultural consciousness, but the emphasis on cultural consciousness on Lewin often led Mary away from political activism and towards purely cultural vitalist pursuits. In 1984, the fourth Labour government was elected and it sort of addressed the rise in Mari protests

by enhancing the status of Maori culture specifically and incorporating Maori representation and practices within state institutions. This approach is known as bi-culturalism and it extended the jurisdiction of the Waitangi Tribunal and incorporated Maori personnel and cultural symbolism into government institutions.

For those who may have missed it, the Waity Tribunal was basically an institution set up to deal with specific cases of violations of the White Tanky Treaty. And so, by extension of the White Tanky Tribunal, by incorporating more Maori into positions of government and of power, this gave a solution of a partnership and it ended up satisfying some of the Maori demands for self-determination. But at the same time, and again, echoes to other movements around the world, you see that the government seeds a certain ground, but it does so so that it doesn't lose other fights. It pretends to lose certain battles so that it can win the war, right? Because in conceding to more reformist demands of the movement, it allowed them to marginalize and

to disimpower the movements more radical demands. And it allowed them to, you know, put forward this PR face of doing a good thing for the Maori community, well, not actually challenging the underlying social relations of racism, capitalist society. Basically, the state's adoption of ethnic rhetoric and co-option of Maori elites into state institutions served to appease a decent portion of Maori protests

while maintaining the status quo. Now, after the Labor government had introduced the Treaty of Waikatoan Giamemian Act, which expanded the powers of the Waikatoan Gatribunal in 1985. With Waikatoan Gatribunal actually had very little power when it came to enforcing its recommendations. So, it would hear all these cases of land theft, or hear all these Maori individuals or groups would invest a lot of time and energy and resources into their land claim cases.

The tribunal would find them correct. It's like, oh yeah, they did steal from you. You probably should get that land back. But the only thing is we can already help you. The tribe you know, which was set up to help with these cases, they don't actually have the power to enforce its recommendations, to actually enforce the set of months that came to it.

It was too less. So it really ended up being a waste of energy. And at the same time, the labor government was doing some economic restructuring to reduce government expenditure and prevent an economic plan to restore profitability, which included measures like deregulation, privatization, dismantling of the welfare state, again, echo it.

This is new liberalism 101, thatcher, Reagan, all it up. Because the claims that were made to the White Tiger Tribunal and the recommendations made by the time you know, posed obstacles to that sale of state owned enterprises and that further restructuring the economy towards more neoliberal ends. There was a growing sense within the government that this was couldn't quote special treatment for Maori. Added to the political costs associated with the Tribunal was just causing too much headache for the government.

And so by 1989, just four years after they introduced that act under the immense pressure of these Maori people getting the way of the ability to neoliberalise the Labour government ended up downplaying the significance of a treaty policy. And while I was going on, the government is co-opped in key individuals in the Māori protest movement through various negotiations and consultations. One more of this quote-unquote Māori elite was being brought into the foe of the state, came in privileged positions and wealth, and so they became insulated from the grassroots Mario Shoggle. The following government, not the labor government,

but the national government, also sought to restore, you know, profitable investment in the New Zealand economy and to address some of the uncertainty created by the treaty claims. And so they went to the Marie-Elite, the little negotiations, and they decided to settle certain claims to the fisheries around New Zealand. And that became known as the Sea Lord's Deal, which caused a lot of headache and anger

and divisions in the Marie community because of the lack of transparency in democracy in these negotiations. The deal was made between the New Zealand government and a group of Maori corporate entities known as the Sealord Group in 1992. And under this agreement, the Sealord Group, which was said to represent Maori interests, acquired a 50% stake in Sealord, which is a major seafood company in New Zealand. The other 50% remained with the Japanese fishing company Nisui. And so the deal was seen as a resolution like, yeah, we paracels in the back, the Maori will make these claims over fishery resources. So we met up with some Maori businessmen and gave them a 50% stake in sea load.

Problem solved, right? Now, you know, they will get some commercial benefits from So we met up with some Maori businessmen and gave them a 50% stake in Seedwood. Problem solved, right? Now, you know, they will get some commercial benefits from this fishing industry, but no more than 50%. Of course, as a result, a lot of Maori were arguing that, no, this is not adequately addressed our grievances. The settlement is not sufficient. And on top of that, why are you going to make in these back rooms deals and not consulting the community as a whole?

The positions or the opinions of one does represent all of us. And it's actually kind of similar to what was happening during the initial stages of the land theft that was taken place during New Zealand's colonization. Because when I mentioned in the first part that some of the land was sold legitimately, what I mean by that is certain Maori individuals saw an opportunity to profit by screwing over everybody else in their community. So they would claim, oh yeah, this is my land.

Completely disregarding the fact that it says coming on land that it has been for generations. This is my land. So I will sell it to you. You give me the money. And so I, you know, profit and a real set of socks. I'll see kind of seen that mirrored in this 90s context. And then at this time with the divisions in the Maori community, over the decisions made by these Maori elites, they were even further division strained by some negotiations that were all taken place for the government's $1 billion fiscal envelope,

which is an attempt to evoke a full and final settlement of all remaining treaty vitality claims. Basically the government was saying, here, have some money, get out of the way, shut up, buzz it, so called reparations, right? And so there's another upsurge of Maori protests and more of people were frustrated and there was greater desperation because there was really a lack of options for resolving the grievances they were dealing with. Some of the protests were continuing the struggle of the Lannerites movements in the 1970s but others were challenging the decision making power of the ewe bodies. Ewe bodies by the way are the

largest representative bodies of Maori in out there. They're like mega tribes. And so there was an increasing frustration among some Maori of these representative bodies in ability to accurately represent them. And another key component to this division was the fact that the more middle-class elements, middle class professional elements of the Maori population were enjoying an expansion of opportunities and were growing and wealth and prestige. But they were leaving behind

the Wurk and Class Maori population, which was still struggling the same way they had been for decades. The policies of both the Libre government and the National Government disproportionately impacted working class Maori communities. And the move on to was supposed to represent them had lost sight of them and their interests. There was a lack of intermoving solidarity of pushing for fundamental social change instead of these individual changes.

And it was a sense of crumblings in Tuna, Gohishan. Some are activists, such as Te A'ahu, who, like I said, am a food spot. I drew primarily from their work when I resuch in this particular history. And they were very critical of that historical period and particularly of the personalization of the conflict for liberation. So their position was by focus on individual relationships and prejudices rather than

changing the systemic structures for patriotic oppression, it left the struggle to be fought on this individual level while the larger system was left unaddressed. I'm particularly because in the ETs there was a shift away from the class struggle as a central component to the Maori struggle, middle class and wealthy Maori interests were dominating the conversation and their interests were exclusively in cultural nationalism, with no real room for working class struggle for class struggle in any form. And then part of that whole strategy and that whole focus on exclusively cultural nationalism would attempt to throw everybody under this one, under this broad brush, right? The wealthy, new liberal, Maori politicians would be in the same vein as the impoverished

and unemployed working class Maori. Despite their clear differences in access to economic and political power. And so this notion of Maori as a homogenous group with identical experiences and political aspirations disregarding the diversity within Maori society and the conflicts and political aspirations. Disregarding the diversity within Maori society and the conflict and political strategies within Maori communities

would really weaken the cohesion of the struggle as a whole, and I don't know how else to see this, except there needs to be a recognition of racial struggle, gender struggle, class struggle, struggles for ability and disability justice, like intersectionality, intersectionality. It's really so simple. Cultural nationalism has its place, but it's very insufficient and very easily co-optible. That's why the new African anarchist Ashanti Alston says that we must go beyond nationalism even if we don't go without it. That's why I've made a whole video on the

subjects of nationalism, or most specifically national liberation for oppressed groups. You see, it's a tool that oppressed people can use in their struggle, but it's not enough. And focusing too much on it leaves a lot of exploitable gaps in one's analysis. It's a tool, it's not an end in itself, it does a little to change material realities. Teahu in their piece had said that while I'm quoting here, while culture and identity remain absurdees and jelta maris social wellbeing, it is not automatically follow the cultural identity alone, should provide the organizational basis for the fight against racism and mario disadvantage. Because identities are blurred and multiple, any fight against mario oppression must be

based upon bill and the strongest possible liberation movement by uniting different oppressed groups into a common struggle. This is essential because true liberation from Marie will not occur with her fundamental transformation of capitalist society and the creation of a classless society in which there's real women's liberation, the end lesbian liberation and freedom from racism and cult. Historical evidence has shown that the political movement is based solely on the identity of the participants. Could be very

diverse, let's just say, in the political spectrum. There are reactionary and their revolutionary segments of pretty much every national liberation movement from Black Power to free Palestine. Because when the focus is on cultural or national liberation, there is a lot of room to adopt a variety of approaches and a variety of political aims. There's also a lot of room for middle-class interests to dominate as they have a lot more time and resources to contribute and take over the rhetoric and the messaging of the causes. Another example of that, we see in the feminist movement, which in a lot of ways diverge from the struggle of working class women towards the more niche interests of the girl bosses who will face in genuine heels in their climb up the corporate ladder, but in focusing

on those instances, there was a loss of the needs of working class women and the precarious position that when as a whole are still in. Marie political activism has always been diverse. You know, there's a wide range of strategies, campaigns, and participants. There's not a unified movement, but there's a heterogeneous force with both radical and conservative elements,

each pursuing different methods to achieve the objectives. There's no unanimous agreement on the vision of Tino, Rangatira Tango, which is the Maori term for Maori self-determination. Tino Rangatira Tango can be associated with Maori capitalism, electoral power, cultural nationalism, or revolutionary activity. In the past, some activists had believed that fundamental transformation of the system was necessary for liberation, and so they rejected reformism.

But the landscape has changed. While some still advocate for constitutional changes in electoral politics to address systemic issues, some influential tribal executives and corporate warriors have even gone as fast to argue that Marie can only achieve true self-determination and liberation through unrestricted, free market capitalism. The objectives of Tino Rangatiratanga promoted by different groups are contradictory because there is no homogeneity in the Maori struggle. But I hope that the takeaway hereaway here has been clear, and that

is the need for a clear, intersectional approach to revolution in our struggle against racist, sexist, capitalist, etc. society. The Maori movement is still ongoing ongoing and the focus of these two parts has been primarily on the current rather has been primarily on the struggle of the 60s 70s 80s and early 90s. Marie Liberation has not been followed. Tino Rangatriatanga has not been achieved and they're still a long way to go. That's it from me. Again I'm Andrew from the YouTube channel Andrewism. You can find me there and you can support on patreon.com slash seintru. This has been It Good Alpenia.

The World The World The World The World The World The World The World The World

Sacred Skando, one of the best new podcasts of 2022, is back with a closer look at the darkness surrounding mega-church La Luz del Mundo and its leader, Nasson Joaquin Garcia. They believe that he was Jesus Christ on Earth. It wasn't even so much that he liked sex. He wanted something to pray. It's the largest cult in the world that no one has ever heard of. For three generations, the Luz del Mundo had an incredible control on his community

that began in Mexico and then grew across the United States until one day. A day of reckoning for the man whose millions of followers called him the Apostle. Their leader was arrested and survivors began to speak out about the sexual abuse, the murder and corruption. This is just a business and their product are people. They want to know that they will kill you.

Listen to all episodes now on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or whatever you get your podcasts. 911, what's your emergency? You shot her! Oh my God! It's a nightmare we could never have imagined. And a killer who is still on the loose. My small town rocked by murder. There are certain murders I'm scared to discuss.

In the 1980s, we're in high school losing friends, teachers, and community members, one after another, after another for a decade. We weren't safe anywhere. We're teenagers terrified to leave our own homes. Would we be next? Who is killing all the kids? And why?

In that moment, I saw rage. And why do you some want the town secrets to stay dead and buried forever? I'm not sure why you're digging up all this old stuff again, but I'd be careful. Don't say I didn't warn you, Nancy. Listen to the murder years on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. And I talked to friends about the worst moments of bombing in all sorts of ways bombing on stage bombing in public bombing in life Like the time I stole a girl's phone during a set and she dumped on stage and threw a big a maker punch to my nose

I want to know what's the worst way they ever bombed or performed way too drunk or high It was there every time where they thought they were going to crush and they stunk it up Subscribe to my podcast bombing with Eric Andre to hear more crazy stories from me and my friends. I'll have guests like Sam J. To us a Sloan, Michelle Butteau, Mac tomorrow. DJ Doug Pound, Saturday Night Live, Sarah Sherman, and more! Listen to Bombing with Eric Andre on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the I-Hard Radio App, Apple Podcast Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to it could happen here. A podcast about things falling apart and about what

we like to call the Crumbles in here. And the key aspect of the crumbles is the ongoing resurgence of fascist political parties and politicians in the United States and elsewhere. And today we're going to be talking about about one of said fascists. A fellow you might have heard of named Ron DeSantis. Putting Ron. Yeah, putting Ron, old Dessank Demonius. Now, Garrison, you've got a banger of an episode written out here. I'm looking at your script right now. It's beautiful.

Right before we get into it, I do want to give an update on a past subject of it could happen here. Lord Miles Rutledge, for those of you who may not have caught that episode, Lord Miles is a British man who went to Afghanistan to hang out and got caught up in the Taliban's victory in that war and then turned himself

into a danger travel influencer visiting in dangerous place, going to war, so he's going to Ukraine and like making it about him. He went back to Afghanistan because it really was better for his social media following than the any of the other places he went, uh, bragged about breaking laws, including faking his visa and then got arrested and has been radio silent for about the last five months. Now, a lot of people have wondered is Lord Miles dead that he liked Diane Custody and the Taliban are trying to keep it a secret, but worry no longer friends.

Today his account posted, this is a friend of Lord Miles to give an update. For months in Taliban custody, he's treated very well, has several servants, loads of movies on his laptop, goes on Pignix, and as T with the Taliban government, he still loves Afghanistan And then there's a photo of him giving the thumbs up doubt So he's not he's not dead guys. He's in a nice Taliban farm upstate of state He gets to run all he wants you know white open fields. He's super happy It's really funny one of his all of these people are so fucking

brain poised brain poisoned, but like a big part of miles. He was like trying to also be kind of a right wing influencer. He was doing this like anti woke. The Taliban is awesome and like actually kind of good guys because they don't like believe in the woke agenda. And one of his friends after this message got posted, like message to his account be like, hey, Taliban, if you guys have captured him, we really wouldn't back. I'll pay a ransom.

I know this is probably just a misunderstanding because you guys are on our side on the anti-woke war. That's not true. Yeah, I'm sure the Taliban cares about the woke culture war facing America. That's what they're all about what's they're all about that shit I'm sure they to hit the shot at the every night. Oh, yeah, so funny so funny anyway, that dude dead is dead as hell Look, I'm not saying that to gloat. I'm just saying that that motherfucker's dead as hell

I'm said it's gloat. I don't care what a prick. He's dead. He deserved it Okay, many many people have died in Afghanistan and it's been a tragedy. This one less so. Anyway, Garrison, please continue. All right. So we, we, we're going to return to this podcast being your number one source for slightly homoerotic, homoerotic fascist memes. Once again, that was how we pitched it to I Heart Radio. Yeah. He's explaining the homoerotic fascist memes.

A lot of people talking about fascists these days, but none of them are homoerotic. So on the last day of Pride Month, DeSantis' campaign shared a ad that's been described as bizarre and mystifying, where he pedals a whole bunch of pretty, pretty extreme like homophobia. He attacks Trump for, for, for previous statements that Trump has made regarding LGBTQ rights. And then the video kind of transitions.

And we see basically a, a version of a version of what we're going to call Fashwave. And I'm going to explain all of these terms here in this episode. But we're seeing kind of a resurgence of a political meme style that was popular years ago. It's kind of laid dormant, the past year or so, for reasons that we will very soon discuss. Um, but a whole bunch of both conservatives and liberals are kind of, uh, not really sure how to take this ad shared by the DeSantis campaign and, and, and our ill equipped to understand what the fuck is going on. But luckily I am equipped because I spent my, uh, my teen years, team years in telegram chats watching this meme style

develop. So how do you buddy? Yeah, thanks. In the telegram trend, Trish, once again, all right. So the first image of DeSantis when it flashes to this other kind of weird, more bizarre editing style has him with these blue or red glowing eyes. And this is going to be something that is going to be a recurring trend that we're going to be talking about this episode, these glowing, laser eye type things.

So we're going to start with this because this is actually one of the most common traits of Fashwave. And we've seen this be adopted by multiple politicians in the past. And most people probably don't know what the fuck this is. Like is this like a Superman thing? Like what the fuck is this? So laser eye memes started in the early 2010s, originally referencing video games like Mass Effect 2 and other like sci-fi and superhero media,

people like Superman or anyone with like laser eyes is also like a cultural touchstone for this sort of thing. The laser eyes usually represent like a figure growing in power. So when someone has laser eyes in a meme, it's like they are gaining power, the gaining security. The original caption for the early laser eye memes was assuming direct control, which was also just a video game reference. So again, I would have someone with like glowing laser eyes and text that says like assuming control or assuming direct control.

So this was this was this was this was popping off in like the early 2010s around the same time, synth wave and vapor wave were gaining traction as both like nostalgic musical micro genres and a mnemetic visual style featuring neon, glitchy, kind of 80s retro computer aesthetics mixed with traditional Greco-Roman sculpture for a variety of reasons, which we'll touch on. But vapor wave had influences from video games, cyberpunk, anime, and it was relatively popular as a microgenre in like the 20 teens. And throughout the 20 teens, both the laser eye memes were steadily growing in popularity on places like Reddit and 4chan, alongside the rise of Vaporwave. And it's kind of surrealist nostalgia, lead in aesthetics, focused on highlighting the comfort and unfulfilled promises of the internet of yesterday.

And this nostalgic surrealist aesthetic was prime bait for easy co-option into the reactionary meme variant dubbed Fashwave, which soon became kind of the de facto aesthetic of the then burgeoning alt-right. Glowing laser eyes on various fascistic political figures became a staple of Fashwave during the rise of the alt-right around 2016 to 2018. I actually kind of like Vaporwave. I think it's maybe a bit overplayed now, and it certainly is frustrating how much it was kind of taken overplayed now. And it certainly is frustrating how much it was kind of taken

over by by reactionaries because actual vaporwave is almost actually like anti-capitalistic in in a few ways. It's kind of it's kind of criticizing the disposableness of like modern consumerist culture using like forgotten 80s technology and like software, that kind of stuff. So I'm looking at two of my little vapor wave images here in the script. And it does some of some of the little like ways that the images are broken up makes it look kind of like like old internet pop up ads back when they had like clearly defined borders and X's and weren't just like overtaking your entire screen and you had no way to close them. But you know what does kind of overtake your entire viewing experience via an ad. It's podcast advertising because it's going to

go straight into your ears. There's no way to X out. You have to you have to suffer through the ad unless you unless you figured out that you can press a button that makes you go forward 30 seconds. Anyway, anyway, here is here is our beloved our beloved sponsors who fund such vital research that I'm doing for this episode. Anyway, the rise of the alt-right. This is kind of where where Vashway was both like getting the name Vashway and also, you know, it's becoming a larger problem because there's more Nazis walking around. So after the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, the alt-right went through a sort of split between the more Trumpian adherence who made up large parts of the then-dubbed alt-light, a term we don't really use at the very much anymore.

And then this kind of other section, which had more of the acceleration is to neo-nazis who were starting to congregate on the messaging app telegram. And then we have groups like the Proud Boys are in between, they're kind of Trumpian, they're also more fashy, but they're not like really full skull mask usually. Some would adopt that aesthetic later on, but that's kind of due to this cultic milieu that's starting to develop on telegram. So a fast way of largely followed the self-proclaimed fascists. So it too became the central visual style of the of the burgeoning network of militant accelerationist telegram channels, which would

eventually be dubbed terror gram, terror as a terrorist. And this was combining with a whole bunch of weird factors around 2018, 2019, including the Boogelloo boys, which Robert has written about at length before. It's, and it was also influenced by the Iron March forums and like the Skull Mask Network with groups like Adam Wathen and the bass, they were all kind of. Yeah, the Iron March forums are like the boomers of Nazi internet people. Yeah, not quite the boomers. Maybe the Jinx. The Jinx, yeah. The very much the Jinx.

Yeah, the forum generation. There's a generation of people who have forums before social media was a thing. It's not see something awful, right? It's we're not quite into the chans yet. Yeah, and after iron march kind of collapsed, a whole bunch of these weird accelerationists were starting to all congregate on Telegram. And this is where we see kind of fast-waived develop into a much more overt apocalyptic and a doomer focus.

The hauntology inspired nostalgic reflections on the false promises of techno-capitalism that were already present in vaporwave were ripe ground for the addition of like return to tradition style reactionary fascism. Do you want to explain how ontology of people are familiar? Yeah, ontology is a, I mean, it started as a term which then developed into a musical genre,

but it's similar to Vaporwave. It's about kind of looking back on the unfulfilled promises of the past that we were like promised as a culture that then never came to place, but these promises still kind of follow us. They kind of like haunt us. In hauntologies, a big reason why liminal space has got popular because of early 90s and 2000s, like aesthetics of like big office buildings that are now left empty. Office buildings like schools, like particularly like the, you know, like the doors to a school or whatever, you get a lot of like photos of that.

Yeah. So stuff that makes people feel, uh, belonging for a past that was never really real. Yeah. Like, uh, uh, a longing for like this sense of home and the sense of like a safe home. Yeah. You maybe that you never actually really had.

Yeah, because you hated being in school, you just have to be a kind of a thought-adjusted perfect post-memory when you remember things based on your kind of stance standpoint. So the sort of doomer accelerationism of this kind of variant of fascination or this like evolution of fascination was also accompanied by groups like the Bougaliboy's who are starting to make their memes in this style as well. I have a few examples of fascination here showing to Robert and James. like the the Sun Wheel version of the Swastika essentially. But a lot of these are like, remember tradition, embrace your race with like Nazi figures in like this monochrome style over like scan lines. Like you would see like an old like arcade video game that has like a horizon.

But you know, all like neon colors kind of like glitchy type stuff. There's one Trump one here from 2018, where he has glowing yellow eyes, also in the Fashwave style. So this was the aesthetic around 2019 here. And like, Fashwave was definitely still common on image boards, like 4chan, 8chan, and 8cune. was definitely still common on image boards, like 4chan, 8chan, and 8cune. But the ever-present kind of Hitler particles and poor web design on those sites drove away most of the mega conservatives who might try to stumble on to 4chan or to 8chan to watch QAnon stuff. It was just, the site was too hostile to them.

And then circa 2020, among waves of Twitter and Facebook suspensions, Trump's supporters and high profile far right figures started congregating on other platforms. A few Twitter clones popped off, like Parler and eventually Trump's own truth social, but a number of mega conservatives also ended up on Telegram, in part due to Telegram's largely hands-off approach to moderation. So around this 2020, in like just post-2020 time period, is when Telegram began functioning as the far-rights very own cultic milieu, a sort of like shared online space where various memes, ideologies, conspiracy theories, and propaganda could all intermingle with

each other and spread. Now part of this is how Telegram operates as a platform. I'm going to quote from an article about Telegram and the cultic milieu from logically. Quote, Telegram offers features that stride on the line in between social media and messaging app. Users can create channels, which function as one-way message channels that allow someone to send a feed of messages available to all of their subscribers. Public channels and group chats are searchable by name, allowing anyone to subscribe to a public channel or

join a public group. Channels and groups are uniquely connected on Telegram. When a message is forwarded from a public channel into another channel or group, it links back to the original group, creating a chain in between different channels and groups. Another common feature is for users to advertise for channels and groups in other channels and groups, with some users creating directories of these channels and these big group chats that have extremist content. Unquote.

So this kind of interconnected nature that allows this chain link of being able to forward a message, like you have a telegram channel with like 3,000 people in it, and you post-fascade memes. You can make some flashade memes in the style of Trump, and then you can forward this message to a Trump channel that has 45,000 members in it. They see this meme, they might like it, they click the meme, it sends them back into your 3,000-person channel, so now going to get exposed to all of the other weird shit you have going on. So it became a really easy way to kind of make a rabbit hole and

like a pipeline for people to get exposed to new aesthetics, new ideologies, and especially conspiracy theories. I think we should have an ad break now and we will return to talk about the increased Trumpian focus on on fashion wave that happened as a result of this kind of telegram across proliferation. That's right, everybody. We're going to break for ads from our sponsors who also sponsor Lord Miles Redledge. So let's hear it up for these ads from the Taliban. Ah, we're back and I don't know about you guys, but

Taliban's making a lot of sense these days to me. Good pickaxe. Pretty good. Yeah. I like I like their war on wokeness. Yeah. Speaking speaking of the war on wokeness. It's just right back to all Ron.

We'll meet ball Ron. Yeah. So to understand what the fuck is going on in that Ron Desandes video, this is probably one of the most important, important little tidbits of knowledge that some people may be overlooking is this brief fever dream known as dark mega. Oh, God. Oh, God. Go get twist. No, I know.

I'm just glad. Yeah, I'm glad this one didn't work out the way they'd hoped. No, it did not work out. So the opposite of the way they hoped. Yeah. So because of this kind of telegram cross-polliferation, the fall rates, Mimetic aesthetic, went through a sort of coagulation after 2020, which eventually resulted in the upsetting albeit a short lived dark mega also known as ultra mega, both of which are

wonderful names. Yeah. Yeah. Um, yeah. I remember ultra mega being big and like people putting a Twitter handles along with like a ego and a flag. Yeah. Yeah.

So the dark mega trend started around a year after the January 6th capital attack and steadily groomed popularity for the next few months during the lead up to the 2022 midterm elections. After two years of right wing influencers and politicians operating in telegrams, Celtic milieu, the influence of militant acceleration as propaganda is immediately apparent in this new stylistic iteration, which is basically downstream from Fashwave.

Dark Mega promoted a form of dystopian inspired overt authoritarianism with the assumed direct control laser eyes front and, and for emphasizing militaristic domestic connotations. Dimly lit images were usually edited in red or blue monochrome. Dramatic images of Trump are fairly prominent as is the presence of weapons and the occasional Nazi symbol. I have two examples of a fast wave here for, for, for the, for the gallery. James, what do you, what do you think of this? This is of these, Of these two pictures.

Okay, first of all, they look like somebody used like MS paint. Like it's kind of that that that's the tear of work when they think I hear. No, no, these are well-edited. No, they're not. 90s horror. Yeah, it is. One of them, the one on the left, he looks like it's like,

he looks like he's in the eighth movie in like a Jason or Freddie type series, right? Yes. Where it's like straight to DVD. Like they're moving that shit right into the red box and they just paid a guy $45 to mock up a cover. Like, it is, it is, it is a to be and direct to digital. But I think I do. I do. He's like, it looks like it's like, like being

developed in a dog room. It's like red or black. It's like all red and black. His eyes are glowing blue. He has a skin. It appears to be like a long, a springfield long rifle or something like that. I couldn't tell you the exact type. But that does. I am now thinking about like, so if you've ever loaded black powder, you tend to like have, you know, like a wrapped, you know, cartridge that's got the ball in the powder and you rip it in half in your mouth and you pour the powder and then you like spit the, anyway, Trump is such a germaphob. I just desperately want to see him try to like manage a black powder right now.

I would, I would really deeply enjoy that. It's as good as a Tucker Carlson shooting the like the select fire rifle was a very funny moment in the guys who pretend to like guns. Yeah. So, and then the, the, the other more horror inspired one has, has text on the bottom that says, it's time to just kill them with the truck and red laser eyes. I was upset to find out that the original person, the original like Nazi who coined the term dark mega,

which kind of started this trend, followed me on Twitter, which wasn't crazy. Oh no, oh no. Yeah, yeah. So that was a fun thing I discovered over the course of researching this episode. So one pro Trump neo not Z described dark mega as such quote dark mega is the aesthetic demand that Trump embrace a harder and more focused approach in the role only he can fill. He was too kindhearted to too forgiving. Dark mega demands he learned from his mistakes.

Another another dark mega propounded just described described the intentionality behind the movement of being quote, if you want to win, if you don't want to repeat the past, you have to get mean, you have to almost embrace the villain role that they're bringing you with. So that's fun. But like Dark Megas ambitions were to be more than just a meme. But instead, it kind of be the first real attempt at a coherent post-al-right aesthetic that was being pushed by mainstream political actors. And included in this push was kind of a pressuring back toward militant posturing after the failed

pseudo coup on January 6. Because in those first few months after J6, everyone was like, oh, you know, we probably shouldn't be doing super overt like violent propaganda if we're like on the right. And then over over time, and I think dark mega was part of this was the right realizing that maybe they should just keep going and like go back to that much more kind of like militant posturing that they were doing beforehand. I have, I have a few other, a few other dark dark mega images here. One with Trump and a skull mask and and pitvipers holding a Bible in front of us on and have a pipeers pitvipers are a type of like ski sunglasses that have a very distinctive look. There's nothing wrong with them. The company is actually anti Nazi. Yeah. Never people post their post-pipers pictures. They will like donate the price of that pair

of pitvipers to, you know, the ADL or something, but they've become a signifier for Nazis for reasons that we probably don't need to explain it. No, but you can read an article by me and Robert and Melania Ketter about white boy summer. If you want to, if you want to, if you want to, you really need that right now. You really want to hear more about pit viper's. Yeah, we can explain this shit at length, bro. And then I have these two other images of Trump in front of these American flags. And one of them is edited in a glitchy style with him holding a, it looks like some type like machine gun or something.

At a Tommy gun. Tommy gun. Yeah. Might be a Tommy. I can't really tell. It's too small to see. Oh no, no, that's got to be some sort of like either AR 9 millimeter carbine with a suppressor on it is what it looks like. Oh, I got ice to see. Oh, no, no, that's got to be some sort of like either AR 9 millimeter carbine with a suppressor on it is what it looks like. I used to me. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I think it's generic. He's got it. Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of wolf and Stein style almost that one. Yeah. All of these guys are obsessed with wolf and Stein. Yes. Oh, yeah. Very good. James. You figured it out. There's a longer conversation to be had because wolf and Stein, the most recent game, not a pro Nazi game. No, they're all anti-Nazi, because it's a game where the Nazis won the war and you're fighting them, yeah, yeah, yeah, because they're trying to do future Nazi troopers and it's like a video game where you want to make the bad guys look cool.

Same thing as making the demons look cool and doom and that, you know, it's kind of hard for Nazis to not like that. Very, very selectively edited clips of Wolfenstein cut scenes and music appears in Fashway propaganda fairly often. The Pearson Skits away propaganda, which is kind of another downstream iteration of Fashway, which I'm not going to cover on this episode. And I guess the one other meme style we have here is red and dark blue monochrome with Trump with these blue laser eyes.

And this is kind of the, this is like the main dark mega aesthetic here is this one that's just like red with with with with like a dark dark blue as like the accent and then these little laser eye things. Um, so dark mega had the goal of serving as both a rebrand and an attempt to reunify the various disparate factions of the online right into using attention grabbing authoritarian propaganda to push Trump and his supporters even further into the extreme while holding on the legitimacy that is lacking in the contemporary sketchiness of like the proud boy groups or like Patriot front, which especially after J6, the proud boys legitimacy took a big hit. And all of these

fucking dark mega guys think that Patriot front's like a fed op. So it's, it's, it's, it's a way to kind of like push a new version of the alt-right that still relies on the legitimacy of Trump. To quote the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, quote, the secondary aim of Dark Mega is to launder more extreme narratives and aesthetics into the mainstream Trumpist movement and attempt to introduce mainstream conservatives to more extreme parts of the right through melding Trump memes with these different aesthetics. So like we kind of mentioned before, the previous attempt at this was the white boy summer trend from 2021, which I and Robert have already wrote about before.

And white boy summer was influenced by very similar kind of fast-waived telegram aesthetics, but it was only really successful in leaking through to one or two Republican politicians, namely Paul Gosar. Paul Gosar, you can look him up if you want. He's one of the Republicans who had a degree of mainstream legitimacy and was also super tight with like just straight up, we want to set off bombs places Nazis. Yeah. Uh, but, uh, dark mega on the other hand was picked up by a large handful of conservative politicians, as well as like the usual suspects made up of right wing influencers and content creators.

Uh, among the dark mega proponents were Republican candidates like Tim Swain, a former strategist now blazed TV employee Logan Hall, Andrew McCarthy, far right propaganda, St. Jack Sobiek, now former congressman, Madison Cothorn, and former White House lawyer Andrew Closter, and was even boosted by the fall of accelerationism, Nick Land, accelerationism, a Nick Land was a, was a, was a brief dark mega for a potent himself. Um, famously, Marjorie Taylor Greene joined in on the action in May of 2022 under the hashtag ultra mega, but with the same like red monochrome images with the, with the big glowing eyes. Um, probably the most upsetting bit of dark mega lore was a post that Madison Cothorne wrote on Instagram. He, he, he had this post full of like, here's the list of,

of American first conservatives. Look how small the list actually is, the people who are truly America first. And attached to this little image of this list. He wrote an extremely unhinged dark mega post. This was also in May of 2022. The time for gentile politics as usual has come to an end. It's time for the rise of the new right. It's time for dark mega to truly take command. We have an enemy to defeat, but we will never be able to defeat them until we defeat the cowardly and weak members of our own party. Their days are numbered. We are coming." So this rhetoric did not secure Vassan-Cothord, a continued employment in the House of Representatives. Yeah, it turns out that most people in national politics are not entirely telegram-brained.

We cannot just head their skulls melted by that shit. So, yeah, to quote, and then to, so yeah, to quote in analysis from the Global Network on Extremism and Technology, quote, dark mega is an embodiment of the revenge president burst from the far right's urge to reclaim what they crave and have lost power. Proponents seek to punish their political enemies

without attending to political correctness. Dark mega is an appeal to accept the true desires of the most dissident Trump supporters and mainstream their feelings through the medium of memes, which played a crucial role in 2016 election. So Dark Mega peeked as an online search topic back in May of 2022. And it may have reached peak popularity

in actual spread of memes as early as March of 2022. And it may have reached peak popularity in actual spread of memes as early as March of 2022. I think it peaked in May because there was a few news articles about it, so more kind of normies were like googling what it was. But the actual peak was only in March of 2022. It only lasted like three months. You can still find some dark mega bubbling under the surface, but only by random not-season, like that doesn't signifying any kind of political movement. The reason why dark mega stopped being effective between March and May of 2022 is that there was something that happened that summer and that spring that effectively killed Dark Mega while also dealing a pretty

big body blow to Fashwave in general. And we will learn more about about Brandon's special secret operation in in part two. That's right. this is gonna be a surprise to partner because I wrote too many words. Yeah, yeah, because this took an hour and a half to record of dense, dense information. So now it's two days. You guys get to enjoy this for two days. Come on, come on, come on, come on, come on.

Come on, come on, come on, come on, come on. The World's Most Beautiful World Sacred Skando, one of the best new podcasts of 2022, is back with a closer look at the darkness surrounding mega-church La Luz del Mundo and its leader, Nasson Joaquin Garcia. They believe that he was Jesus Christ on Earth. It wasn't even so much that he liked sex. He wanted something to pray. It's the largest cult in the world that no one has ever heard of. For three generations, the Luz del Mundo had an incredible control on his community that

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You shot her! Oh my God! It's a nightmare we could never have imagined. And a killer who is still on the loose. My small town rocked by murder. There are certain murders I'm scared to discuss. In the 1980s, we're in high school losing friends, teachers, and community members. One after another, after another for a decade.

We weren't safe anywhere. We're teenagers terrified to leave our own homes. Would we be next? Who is killing all the kids? And why? In that moment, I'll rage. And why do some want the town's secrets to stay dead and buried forever? I'm not sure why you're digging up all this old stuff again,

but I'd be careful. Don't say I didn't warn you, Nancy. Listen to the Murder Years on the iHeart Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. app or podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. bombing in all sorts of ways, bombing on stage, bombing in public, bombing in life. Like the time I stole a girl's phone during a set and she dumped on stage and threw a big A-maker punch to my nose. I wanted to know what's the worst way they ever bombed or performed way too drunk or high. It was there every time where they thought they were going to crush and they stunk it up.

Subscribe to my podcast, Bombing with Eric Andre to hear more crazy stories from me and my friends. it up. or wherever you get your podcasts. Yeah, I hope you guys have a wonderful Christmas as well. Oh, thank you. And let's go brand it. Let's go brand it. I agree. Let's let's talk about let's go brand in. I bet the only good thing Biden has done so far. It's pretty funny. Hey, but let's go Brandon. I betan, the only good thing Biden has done so far.

It's pretty funny. It is very funny. And this is also the sort of attitude that is actually necessary to win the culture war side of these things. It's not like defending yourself. And it's not when they do something like put out this meme, like being like, oh my God, this is so dangerous

and like some are responsible. No, fuck with them right back, you know? Like it boolish it. Put some glowing eyes on Joe Biden and make it looks like he plans to shoot somebody. You know, it's funny. So let's talk about the rise of dark Brandon. And I also have the other thing that they're kind of

deturning and reposting with here is like taking the, what is it, taking the fucking Brandon memes and shit. Let's go Brandon, let's go Brandon and going, being like, all right, yeah, fuck it, call him Brandon. Like, doesn't hurt us. Like, yeah, we'll be Brandon. Biden did that himself when someone asked him about it. He didn't know what it meant.

And he was like, yeah, let's go, Brandon. I actually already had that clip inserted of above this conversation, James. So good job. We're on the same page. Yeah. So, which is just dubbing given the content. So dark Brandon combines two different pro-Trump memes

while trying to subvert them both. Pretty successfully, I would say. I'm assuming everyone listening to this is familiar with the fuck Joe Biden, let's go Brandon, kind of evolution. So I'm just gonna skip bright past that. Because the other half of Dark Brandon, I think it was a little bit more interesting.

So Dark Brandon began with chronically online leftists doing a satirical riff on dark mega, replacing the figure of Trump with an alter ego of Biden and having this like mirror universe president appear as some kind of like neoliberal socialist demagogue. Because when you replace the fascist figure with some largely ineffectual liberal given like militaristic and socialist or anti-fascist catchphrases, but like otherwise leave the rest of the authoritarian ascetic stylings of fascism,

the result is pretty funny because it's Joe Biden. Yeah. So again, I think I've read a lot of stuff on this. I mean, there's like a two, two, two like academic reports on dark brand and some people believe that dark brand and started as like a right wing meme, they are mistaken.

They are misreading irony poisoned leftists as being like, like alt-right memesters. Common, common mistake. But also, yeah. You wouldn't wanna be stuck in a car with any of the right way to do it. No, no. No.

But Doug Brandon evolved into satirically imagining, what if Joe Biden was actually the militant communist dictator many on the right made him out to be, with all of the authoritarian impulses of Dark Mega turned on its head and ironically targeted against Trumpian conservatives. Dark Brandon can be seen hunting down Trump voters for execution or sitting on a throne of AR-15s with a yellow Lisa rise. I'm gonna play one video for us to watch here. Oh, guy, I'm seeing this. All those of you who've owned a president Trump,

there's no way out. You won't be saving Joe Biden's America. He's putting on a Skullman. No, go Shwamalaki. No, like a Kochwa Malaki. No more Kochwa Malaki. Tie me to a missile and fire me into the suburbs. I'm ready. Oh.

It's genuinely quite amazing. It's pretty funny. It's pretty funny stuff. I do like the way that like Dark Brandon edits work is there's this one smile that Biden does that looks very like evil and mischievous that if you edit it if you like edit it in after you said something ridiculous it's pretty funny so he here we have here we have a meme about Joe Biden publicly executing Patriot Front members after they got arrested in Idaho. And probably my favorite dark Brandon meme is a picture of Biden with sunglasses and a list of names has Shinzo Abe neutralized gas prices neutralized COVID-19 neutralized, Antifa fully armed, Roe v. Wade too, coming soon, global homo, coming soon, communism, coming soon. Which is pretty funny.

That's good. So one of the reasons that dark Brandon was able to flourish where dark mega stagnated is that the Biden version is both based on and never lost its sense of irony. Imagining the feeble, bumbling Biden as some like hard-lined, ruthlessly effective tyrant is like an innately humorous premise from the very beginning. The ironic nature also made a dark brand in all but impervious from attack by conservative commentators on the right. Because like, how can you attack this meme? It's so ironic and absurd that there's no way to be

like, look how dangerous the dark brightened meme is. They made it. They made it. They made it. Come on. Come on, guys. So dark brand in grew in popularity as Biden's inflation reduction act also known as the IRA passed last summer and And it also it also kind of spread After news broke that an American drone strike killed the then leader of al-Qaeda on July 31st, 2022 So around this time period is when dark brand in broke containment. So dark brand and kind of started in March of 2022 and by by early August, it has now left the the irony poisoned leftist like Twitter sphere and has now broken out and is freely swimming around the liberal populace. Um, so come August, dark brand and no longer belonged to leftist

ship posters, liberals started to catch on and make dark brand in memes of their own, I'll be it much more cringy boomer versions. And although most of these liberals probably didn't really know what was quite being satirized, that didn't stop them from trying to emulate this cooler, more edgy version of Biden with glowing eyes. So here I have two, two liberal memes here with someone reacting to the news that there was no civilian casualties in the drone strike that killed the alkyna leader. I think Biden shooting laser eyes down from orbit and then also him eating ice cream in front of an explosion, which is horrid, like not a not very good meme,

but the fact that there was bad, like very, very bad low quality dark brand of memes is actually very important for later. Yes, yes. No, it's good that this happened. Yes. The internet has taken notice, and now there's a new meme out there known as Dark Brandon,

which shows a badass Biden with supervillain laser beam eyeballs. The liberalization of Dark Brandon was met with sadness from the original memesters that pioneered the overtly ironic dictatorial Brandon who commanded battalions of antifa. The the ongoing liberal co-option of dark Brandon was thought to signal the death of the meme, although a completely unintended positive side effect of this recuperation seems to be taking hold. We'll have we'll have more on that later. I have I have a four other pretty bad dark brand to be sincere Along with corn roast is fully fully sent me. Yes

It's not good. There's there's two of these are like Photoshop movie posters with Biden's face extremely important poorly photoshopped onto neo's Shit photoshops Again, there's no photoshop, but this is MS Paint at its finish. Yeah. And then a poster for the dark Brandon rises with the tagline that the Malarkey will end. Not not very good. So it wasn't just overly online Democrats on social media who were spreading these dark

branded memes soon enough White House staff joined in to celebrate the passing of the kind of neutered inflation reduction act. On August 7th, the White House digital director shared a high contrast photo of Biden grinning with red laser eyes pointed towards the camera that quickly went viral. Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut posted a dark branded meme, which was a drawing with yellow glowing eyes later that same day. And the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee posted the same picture as well.

And the deputy White House press secretary Andrew Andrew Bates, posted a whole ass dark branded meme writing dark brand in his crushing it with a horribly cringing photo, invited with red laser eyes and a white text that reads, your Malarkey has been going on for long enough, kiddo. In like, God. Oh my God, now you know what, Garrison?

We were just celebrating this, but I think I am now a fascist. It's done it. It is. The White House staff secretary joined in by responding to a tweet saying, lasers shooting out of Joe Biden's eyes is an official statement of administration policy

by saying that is indeed an official physician. Anyway, so, God, God do you admit. Many people, myself included, suspected that dark branded would suffer through kind of a regular meme cycle and die off pretty soon once it hit this peak popularity. But somehow,

Brandon showed a surprising amount of resiliency, partially due to liberals being a few months behind, and they're being really nothing else for liberals to meme about, because this was like one of the, this time in Biden's presidency was the first time the Democrats actually felt like they had something to celebrate,

and having this kind of overly outrageous kind of joking meme was like the first bit of like agit prop that liberals have like done since Trump went out of office. And it's also like the first effective agit prop they've ever done period. Now, dark Brandon showed one other surprising trait very soon, the ability to influence actual Joe Biden. On September 1st, Biden gave a prime time bombastic speech, addressed to the nation and spoke

about the threats to American democracy from extremist mega forces. Joe Biden stood outside of Independence Hall in Philadelphia, lit with high contrast red lights and uniformed Marines on either side. Far-right politicians and influencers reacted with Shrock and horror, calling the speech Demogogic outrageous and divisive, while liberals and even some leftists praise the speech for accurately addressing the threat posed by far right actors in this country.

But both of those on the right hand left definitely noticed the frank like brandiness of the entire thing, especially with this being less than a month after the White House's own brand in posting. The red lights, the back-art marines, and the impassioned and oddly well-delivered appeal to fight for the soul of the country from the Trumpian mega-extremist political faction set on dismantling democracy played very well.

The whole thing felt very dark brand and ask, and the takeaway many people had is that they had somehow meamed dark brand in into existence. I want to say, I want to say, I want to say, I want to say, I want to say, I want to say, I want to say, I want to say, I want to say, I want to say, I want to say, I want to say, I want to say, I want to say, I want to say, I want to say, I want to say, I want to say, I want to say, I want to say, I want to say, I want to say, I want to say, I want to say, I want to say, I want to say, I want to say, I want to say, I want to say, I want to say, I want to say, I want to say, I want to say, I want to say, I want to say, I want to say, I want to say, I want to say, I want to say, I want to say, I want to say, I want to say, I want to say, I want to say, I want to say, I want to say, I want to say, I want to say, I want to say, I want to say, I want to say, I want to say, I want to say, I want to say, I want to say, I want to say, I want to say, I want to say, I want to say, I want to say, I want to say, I want to say, I want to say, I want to say, I want to say, I want to say, I want to say, I want to say, I want to say, I want to say, I want to say, I want to say, I want to say, I want to say, I want to say, I want to say, I want to say, I want to say, I want to say, I want to say, I want to say, vital academic level research into dark Brandon, truly, truly un-unparalleled work on the part of myself. You're welcome. Here's, here's fucking ads. All right, we are back. Let's talk even more about dark Brandon. I cannot believe I wrote 3000 over 3000 words on this. All right, so like many natural predators, dark Brandon went through a period of hibernation, laying dormant through most of the winter. That is until a huge resurgence in April of this year.

This past April, Biden launched his new 2024 re-election campaign website, which not only featured a dark Brandon error 404 page reading your lost Jack, Let's get you back on the rails, which is Kind of funny, but not really funny because it's doing the whole like Biden and track reference and it's kind of funny Because it's like a 404 page, so it's like It's dark brand and telling you to get back to the regular website because you're now on like the Part of the website that doesn't exist because like dark brand and telling you to get back to the regular website because you're now on like the

Part of the website that doesn't exist because like dark brand and doesn't exist. It's not I'm over thinking this I'm doing way too high concept It's like bowtry art analysis of this this this joke is not that good But beyond the dark brand and error 404 page there is also Official dark brand in merchandise. Biden's dark line features dark blue monochrome images of Biden or Brandon staring forward with red laser eyes and a mischievous grin. The design comes on baseball hats, t-shirts, mugs, stickers, and tote bags. Product descriptions are as follows best worn while vanquishing Malarkey.

Protect yourself from Malarkey and the sun with this dark cap. Dark Brandon, dark roast. Dark Brandon, dark roast. Tea drinkers, welcome. And finally, the worst one, Malarkey is totes over after we reelect, President Biden. This is the, this is like the internet equivalent or the me, I don't know what the, I feel the same way I feel in like old Yeller when you're like, well, the dogs got rabies. You gotta shoot it. Like there's no other ethical way to deal with it.

It's just like when someone's put, but it's, yeah, it hurts. It's like when someone's dad turns up to the skate park. It's what's happening here. Yeah, you've got to shoot them. Otherwise, they'll give everyone rabies, right? That's what you meant, James. Yeah. Yeah.

It's time for their life to end. Yeah. This is also like fascinating because like the fact that that Biden, Joe Biden made assume direct control laser eye dark merch before Trump did is wild. And now Trump won't really ever be able to capitalize on this sort of thing because Biden just beat him to the punch on this and in a way that's not actually promoting fascism, which effectively, this whole thing effectively neutralized Trump's ability to cash in on Dark Mega and the Fashwave aesthetic, which is just a pretty shocking and like amazing trajectory for Fashwave.

The latest appearance of dark, the latest appearance of Dark Brandon was during the White House Correspondence Dinner this past April, when Biden handed off the podium to comedian Roy Wood Jr. Roy, the podium is yours. I'm going to be fine with your jokes, but I'm not sure about dark brand new. The coolest thing he's ever been. The lips were so happy to have a meme. To have a meme in their own. the first time they had a meme. They got one.

They got one and they were just, it's one of those things again, like a little kid having to shoot his dog. I just, I couldn't, you can't take it away from them. They were just so happy. I do have three, I selected the only three dark brightened memes I like here for the very end. One is just Biden in a beard and a night patch. It says it's over Jack. One has Biden with a very horrifyingly edited smile with laser eyes.

It's saying, but Larky detected. He looks like the monster in a fucking... I don't know exactly what from but like demon teeth like like nightmare teeth the left is there so much better at making these memes than anyone else and my favorite is this is a satirical riff on the this post has been fact check by real American Patriots Trump beam instead of having an image of dark Brandon with laser eyes, it's saying, this post was fact checked by real Dark Brandon acolytes. So this is not like fun and good, right?

Like this is fine, but there's actually a surprisingly like positive result from this whole dark Brandon Sega, because even as far back as August of 2022, myself, some research colleagues and other journalists that I have like no connection to, all started to kind of observe the same thing. The liberal recuperation of the fast-wave style via dark Brandon seemed to seriously damage fast-waves legibility in right-wing circles. The normy use of dark Brandon had already appeared to have like ceased all of the dark mega posting because there was this influx of like minions, Facebook tier branded memes, which offered very strong levels of vicarious cringe that provided a social disincentive for anyone wanting to post

laser eye dark mega memes due to their fear of being associated, even just aesthetically associated with the liberal boomer Biden memes, which now represented this cringe and dead style. The widespread nature of Brandon Laser Eyes also seems to seriously dampen the Patrick Batemanification of characters like Homelander from the boys who was at the time becoming one of the far-rights favorite memeable characters. There are a few things that these online Nazi weirdos fear more than their special toys being played with by normies. Because almost immediately, their esoteric plaything loses all appeal once the normies start using it. It's a signifier that you're part of the club. And if fucking the DNC is posting these memes, you're not part of the club anymore.

Right? Like there's no, or it's not a club you want to be in, I guess. Yeah. So I still maintain that one of the best things Biden has done since taking office is utterly destroying, fast-wave, by complete accidents. I postulated this back in 2022, and it still pretty much holds true now. And it's not just my opinion either. Others have noticed that Brandon's disturbance in the far right to meme ecosystem has really

taken effect. I'm going to quote Ali Brieland in Mother Jones quote, the fashion of aesthetic has already seen its best days and wasn't as pervasive on the far right internet as it used to be, but by associating himself with a meme style that had partially descended from it, Biden and his earnest staff and followers have probably made it impossible for neo-Nazi edge lords to make a fasciwave posts for at least a bit. By enlisting fascist meme offshoots the administration unlocked a code. Ernest Democrats like Biden may have a hard time being cool on the internet, but they can kill hip stuff that bad people like that is extremely powerful.

They made fast wave a bit cringe. Do you know what else is a bit cringed Robert? That's great, Scarison. The fact that we have to have advertising on my, on my fast-slave, Biden dark, dark Brandon episode. The only purpose of studying or learning anything is to provide space for advertisements. That's why we do it all. No more push while our Cuban work exists.

Yeah, actually, do you know if you subscribe to the new Apple Premium, you can have no more, but for Shwaii-Morlarky because they won't be any ads. So there you go. That's right. All right, we are back. And we are finally, finally going to talk about Ron DeSantis and his kind of fash-wave misfire. So this happened about a year after dark Brandon had taken control.

So there was at least a good year's worth of buffer where fashwave was unacceptable and just not really even attempted because of how cringe it is at this point. But that did not stop the DeSantis War Room Twitter account from trying to do it. And then we will see what the rights reaction to this was. So like I said at the beginning of the beginning of this episode, on the last day of Pride Month, DeSantis's campaign shared a video on their DeSantis War Room account, attacking Trump for previously held positions seemingly in support of LGBTQ people and statements that he said about like allowing transgender women to compete in his misuniverse pageants

and allowing Caitlin Jenner to use the bathroom of her choice in Trump tower. This video opens with footage of Trump at the 2016 RNC saying that he would quote, do everything in my power to protect our LGBTQ citizens. Unquote. Now, this is pretty gross that the video opens this way because very importantly, this, this was just a month after the Pulse nightclub attack in DeSantis's home state of Florida, which killed 49 people. That's why Trump was saying this is because there was just a massive massacre in the state of Florida.

And the fact that that DeSantis is opening up this Trump like homophobic attack ad by including this little bit is pretty is pretty gross. So this video then kind of transitions 15 seconds in accompanied by a dark synthetic beat to a black and white image of DeSantis standing in front of an American flag with red glowing eyes shooting out little laser-lightening things. Before, a wave of pulsating images of Spartans and the muscular Chad and clips of American Psycho, the Wolf of Wall Street, and Peaky Blinders. Overlaid on top of these flashing images are headlines and short clips about DeSantis' extreme anti-LGBTQ policies that he enacted in Florida. I cannot think of anything more horrifying.

It really has shut down. Drag. Just produced some of the harshest, most draconian laws that literally threaten trans existence. Congratulations Ron Sange, mission accomplished. You win! All right. So first off, Garrison, it had been so long since I looked at a bit-chute video, so weeks. So first off, fuck you for that. I had to watch a lot of bit shoot videos for this episode. Yeah, I know. Yeah, so that's, I mean, absolutely impenetrable for like anyone who is not out of their mind.

Like, it is this, yeah, sorry James. It feels like it's 14 year old nephew who goes by like Groipechad 1488 on 4chan. Yes. All the story. What's happening is like, you know, first you get obviously the beginning, which I think is clear just from the audio, these clips of Trump saying stuff that's not, it's pro gay, for back in 2016. And then it switches to footage of news articles about DeSantis doing horrible things to queer

people in Florida. And clips of, leftists reacting to how bad it is. And like clips of Rhonda Santas, like walking around or, you know, art of him Photoshopped with like sunglasses or like a super muscular, you know. American Psycho stuff. Yeah, clips of American Psycho clips from like,

like I think it was actually from the movie Troy. Yeah, yeah, it is. Yeah, just to like make him look, yeah think it was actually from the movie Troy. Yeah, it is. Yeah, just to make him look. Yeah, it's just sad. It's just sad. For example, so one little snippet of is one of these little headlines is intercut between a Chad meme and a clip from American Psycho and it shows Decentis in wearing sunglasses walking around with the headline Decentis science most extreme

slate of anti trans laws and modern history with this like pulsating music. So yeah, the whole the whole second half of the video is just like that. The video seems to receive an almost universally negative reaction. Yeah. It's so bad. It's like famously dog shit, like just instant failure. Upsetting both Trump supporters and gay Republicans

and confusing those who are actually sympathetic to the Santas, because due to the bizarre imagery in the video, I'm going to read some of the comments under the DeSantis War Room post. Nick Adams, alpha male, replied, why is the DeSantis campaign sharing a video comparing him to Patrick Bateman? Isn't Bateman a serial killer? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha it is disgusting that this ad is linked apparently to the DeSantis campaign. It makes me question my support for DeSantis.

You love DeSantis. A George Santos staffer said, quote, this ad makes the meatball look a gay. Wow. Now I don't want to, sorry, I think it's good to talk here. I think that was pretty funny. If you ever type out the sentence, this ad makes the meatball look gay. You can't, you can't be in America anymore.

You have to go somewhere else. Like that's banishment, right? Like they used to do in the old times. Like here's a backpack off you go. Off you go. Can't you're not allowed here anymore. Lisa loves Liberty replied, um, what? An American first commentator with over 150,000 followers asked, what's the message that the dissentist team wants people to take away from the sad that associates Ron with flawed criminal individuals. Is it that Ron is a bootlegging psycho killer who commits financial

crimes and has it a kill his heel? Because that's what it's saying. God, that's so funny. And finally far right activist former congressional staffer and aspiring conspiracy theory documentary film producer Daniel Boznik said, quote, this is the dayest ad in the history of political advertising. So that was that was roughly the response is to to descend is posting this ad. God, all of this is extremely fun. I'm having a good time. I like this. The only figure that I found who was in support of this lay-up ad, like the only like slightly, was Ian Miles-Chong. Yeah.

Everyone else on the right, that was the horrible decision. Again, if you're not a terminally online lefthus like us, if you're one of the nice, sweet liberals who liked the Joe Brandon memes, the dark Brandon memes, Ian Miles-Chong is a Malaysian senior citizen who has become a far right youth influencer through a series of decisions that like,

you don't need this to be explained, but he's one of the people that Elon Musk cares about the most in this world. You could Google a picture of Ian Miles Chong and understand everything you need to from that picture. I think so Fox news called the Decentis campaigns use of the ad mystifying and an unforced error. Now I'm also going to play a short clip from Miami, Florida's local CBS affiliate. By the way, the video that you're just about to see has over 24 million views.

I will do everything in my power to protect our LG HQ citizens. The video then suddenly veers in a different direction accompanied by dark images, loud music, mixed images of governor with shirtless muscular men, including actor Brad Pitt. A prominent group that represents LGBTQ conservatives also went on Twitter criticizing the video saying Florida governor can't tell the difference between common sentence gaze and the radical left gaze. Label the sentence positions as dangerous and politically stupid. So I think that clips also just a good reminder of the level of

specialized political analysis that you're getting by listening to this show versus what you get on local news. Yeah, because this local news could never explain this. This is gonna pay nash. No, if you, if you were to hand this over to a team at MSNBC, they would die. They would be, that's the next, that's the next clip I have. Ah.

Ah. Ah. Ah. The next clip I have is the handing the silver to MSNBC. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. This is one of my favorite days at work we've had. First of all, the DeSantis campaign sent out a tweet later that night saying, quote, opposing the federal recognition of Pride Month isn't homophobic.

We wouldn't support a month to celebrate straight people for sexual orientation. It's unnecessary, divisive and pandering. It's very, very cool. Uh-huh. Yes. So here is, here is, here is the clip of, of MSNBC reacting to this ad. It's, it's, it's, it's going to be, it's going to be, it's going to be pretty good. Meanwhile, Governor DeSantis is defending a controversial and frankly bizarre campaign video that attacks former president Donald Trump's view is on LGBTQ rights. Donnie, Deutsche, add man extraordinaire. What am I, what am I looking at there?

Extra narrators is stuffed, okay? I'm doing this for a long while. What are you doing here? What are you doing here? And the answer is, well, first of all, he's DeSantis' flailing, and he's trying to continually move to the right of Trump. This LGBTQQ thing is just, do you think this is moving voters?

Are you, and to pay Trump as a patron of this group, is, you know, as an ad guy, there's one thing I learned over years is people aren't stupid, okay? I don't know the voter that's going to see that go, you know what, Trump, I'm going to say this, you're my guy. And to say this is such a dark, dark, dark, I've talked a lot about it on the show. At the end of the day, I can't Trump, even though we eviscerate him, there is a likability if you're a Trump guy

about him, he's entertaining, he's allowing Jack, he's this guy, it's just a dark, the prince darkness. That is one of the darkest, most bizarre, twisted, deviant ads I've ever seen. Well, he was defending it yesterday, bipartisan backlash to the video, by the way, many people calling it homophobic, of every single day. I think that's the only thing that I think is the most interesting thing to do. I think that's the only thing that I think is the most interesting thing to do.

I think that's the only thing that I think is the most interesting thing to do. I think that's the only thing that I think is the most interesting thing to do. I think that's the only thing that I think is the most

interesting thing to do. I think that's the only thing that I think is the most interesting thing to do. I think that's the only thing that I think is the most interesting thing to do. I think that's the only thing

thing that I think is the most interesting thing to do. I think that's the only thing that I think is the most interesting thing to do. I think that's the only thing gender ideology into the mainstream where he was having men compete against women in his beauty pageants. I think that's totally fair game because he's now campaigning saying the opposite that he doesn't think that you should have men competing in women's things like athletics. And so we've been very clear on it that we believe in protecting the rights of our girls and the rights of women athletes to be able to participate with fairness and with integrity. In response to those remarks, Trump campaign spokesperson said, quote,

a desperate, desan'tess campaign with a flailing candidate is in its last throws of relevancy. So that's first off such bad analysis of that video. Yeah, I mean, if they're completely out of that debt here, yeah. No, no, the they're completely out of their debt here. Yeah. No, no, the point is not that he is so dark and evil. The point is that this is incompetent and impenetrable. You can just say that. It's okay. I'd like, yeah, it's my job to understand this shit and I don't.

Yeah. So beyond, beyond, beyond the standards being the prince of darkness as we've all experienced that way. Yeah, why try to make him sound cool? I know. This is what are you doing? This is the thing. This is the thing they don't understand, right? This is why this is why dark brain and happened by complete accident. Like it was it was so effective because there was no way for liberals to concoct this themselves. They were they were they were only copying the aesthetic styleings of of of like ironic left Um, so yeah, everyone is just baffled by this ad. They're saying, like, there's absolutely no way of understanding what's going on here. There's, there's absolutely

no, like larger trends that, that, like, maybe at play, but obviously we, we, we've kind of offered some insight into what's been going on here. Um, and in the end, DeSantis's attempt at Fashwave has been rejected by conservative America. Either through its just sheer like esoteric strangeness and also the kind of the the whittling away at at at Fashwave's power that the dark brand of meme has been doing for so long, there's just nothing, first of all, appealing about this, which makes all that remains just incredibly just like off-putting. So, like, what we have here from DeSantis, like in the actual video, but besides the obvious homophobia, is a sort of like meme soup

combining some elements of like, Ash wave and some like dark mega imagery, with other imagery from right wing meme tropes that have also gotten popular the past few years, like Patrick Bateman, who's kind of more popular in the Skitzo wave subgenre, just still heavily tied to Ash wave. It kind of glorifies the aesthetics of mental illness to push you towards doing like extremist violence. Yeah, and then they should say the aesthetics of mental illness to push you towards doing like extremist violence. Yeah. And then they should say the aesthetics of like how a specific subculture depicts mental illness. Yes. Yes. Yeah. And there's a bunch of other like pop culture,

sigma figures in this video. There's images of the real life Chad, mistaken in news coverage as a generic bodybuilder, but this is actually like a very specific online meme. It's like, it's not niche. And there's also like a very specific DeSantis Chad Wojack in this video. So, and in the end, like this attempt at kind of reviving a soft, fast wave style or kind of dark mega style for an attack ed by the Descendants campaign was basically wholesale rejected by conservative Americans. And with no with no other politicians co-signing this, the only

other, I mean, notable figure who applauded at this was the emiles Chung. No, no, no one else have note thought this was a good idea. Most dissantists and supporters were off-putted. The only people who really like like this were like chronically online fascist zoomers who are either not old enough to vote or just barely old enough to vote. Yeah, they are, they are teenage Nick Fuentez fans. Yeah, exactly. Because They are teenage Nick Fuentes fans. Yeah. Exactly. Because like they're the only ones who will like, we'll understand what's going on. So it like becomes a cohesive message. Because if the average viewer isn't turned

off by like the intense homophobia or the anti-Trump angle, the alien eating editing style and online references and other and other kind of bizarre attributes, like the music, the flashing images, it either left most ordinary viewers confused or just like turned off. And so in the end, I think there is a recurring trend here. And that like dark mega didn't help the Republicans win the midterms. Like that was a pretty, pretty big defeat for them. All of the, all of the work that they were doing beforehand, like, to like start getting people like wild up, get making, making, like, attention

grabbing authoritarian memes, all of like the critical race theory stuff. None of that panned out in the actual elections. And whatever deSantis is doing, sure doesn't seem to be helping him beat Trump. The only person who is winning right at this is Dark Brandon. Dark Brandon strikes again. He is the one that actually has made sure that DeSantis cannot use this playbook. Dark Brandon is sitting on a gargoyle over top of whatever city in Florida, the, the, the Santa's lives that dark Brandon is, is our watchful protector.

He is, he is, he is our silent guardian. Um, I'm not as garrison was just talking about this image of dark brand and sitting on a throne above, I'm gonna say Miami, they lifted up their shirt to show their new dark brand and chest tattoo. And wow, that must have been, what was that? 12 hours in the chair, Gary. It's big. It was, well, the first day was 13 hours, the second day was 12 hours.

So, wow, LED's. 13 12 at the end. Yeah, that's good, that's good. Very bass. When you run out of battery or the eyes are always going to glow. No, actually, those are for the rest of the, so I have to, I have to stand in the sun for, for like 10 minutes to charge them up. And I last the belly for five hours. Magic.

Magic. Love that. Yeah. I have a conspiracy theory here. I believe that Ronda Santis 14 year old nephew, a Gropechad 1488 was extremely online. So online that his parents took away his phone. And he just lost all contact with the internet, circa like early 2022, and then run the Santos Astro to make an advert, and this is what happened.

So the advert, so I tried tracking down who made this advert. I messaged someone who I suspect of making it who ignored my message. I messaged them on my Julius Evola Sockpapet on Telegram. And they still ignored my message. So the video was not created by the DeSantis team of itself. It was embedded in their War Room Twitter feed. created by the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the Proud Elephant is from what I can tell, the origin point of this video, I can't seem to find it in any earlier places. I've tried getting in contact with him to figure out what his intentions were

for like if he made the video or if he found it from somewhere. But this is why I clarified that the Decentre's team shared this video on their official campaign account. They did not make it themselves, which is also pretty funny, because they didn't spend any money on this thing,

and it still was a massive shot in the face. It's like, it's just like huge, huge blowback. They didn't need to embed this video, made by whatever weirdo loner who has Final Cut Pro on his computer, there's really no reason. They have an actual ad team. And for some reason, they did this instead. Now also as a part of this research, I joined as many

DeSantis telegram channels as I could. I scrolled through months of posting. I scrolled through all like all three of the official DeSantis campaign Twitter accounts. Nothing else in their propaganda quite compares to this video. It is such a weird outlier that makes me really wonder like, who, who, who, who, who was operating the Decentis War Room Twitter account that, that like hit publish on this tweet with this, with this video embedded. And like what their relation is to the rest of the dissentist media strategy, because

it's just, it is utterly, utterly baffling. I mean, I think some of it can come back to in 2016, kind of about a month or so. I think before the election, the Trump campaign came out with this really weird, very forechan inspired sort of like a ad video for the campaign that like a lot of Democrats, you know, made fun of, but it was a pretty effective ad. And I, you know, I wrote about this some at the time and I talked with a guy who'd been doing attack at the stuff and was like, I don't know. I think this is a pretty successful ad because it, it feels authentic in a way that political ads don't. And my guess is that when this got presented to them, people at the DeSantis campaign were like,

well, this could be that for us, right? This could be us leaning into something that's new, but it's like real and it's representative of how young people are talking these days and that will build the kind of excitement and the kind of like conversation around our campaign that can help take us to the next level. And I think the thing that they missed there was that Trump in sort of, you know, signposting to that online alt right was adopting and kind of making his own a real movement that

was representative of some things that were appealing to a lot of people. And this is not, right? Like there's been no ground swell of people who are into this, like these weird, like the only ground swell of a lot of normies getting into Fashway has been dark brand. It's like so body. It's like, like normy Republicans did not adopt like this kind of shit in a

in mass and I think it was a mistake like it was a it was a it was a mistake to think that like I don't know like random like GOP heads were going to see their candidate compare to a serial killer from a famously off-putting movie. And be like, this is a good call for us. This is my guy. Yeah. Like, no, not everyone is like a 17 year old suicidal alt-right teenager. That's actually not their prime base if you want to win an election. There aren't many of you kids.

Like they don't want teenagers voting at all. Which is, it's also really weird that DeSantis has been given multiple opportunities to pull back the ad saying it was, it was a mistake. It was not, it was not officially made by our campaign. It shouldn't have been shared. But every time they've been given this opportunity, they doubled down on the ad. That's his whole thing though. Like never admit fault, always put forward.

Yeah, I guess I mean, that is like a staple of fascism, but like, yeah, man. Well, anyway, that's good, Serving Stuff. I'm well-guarassant. This is made my week. This has been, what a fucking time to be alive. This has been far too much of my week, has been putting together these like 3,000, 4,000 words.

Yep. Well, I'm glad everyone was able to come away from this as enlightened as God. Oh yeah. No, I have, I have entered a state of noses. Thank you. Thank you for this. I've achieved enlightenment. All right, well, long-lived, dark Brandon.

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