It Could Happen Here - It Could Happen Here Weekly 102

Episode Date: October 14, 2023

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Hey guys, I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast, Post Run High, is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You should probably keep your lights on for

Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow. Join me, Danny Trails, and step into the flames of right. An anthology podcast of modern day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The 2025 iHeart Podcast Awards are coming. This is the chance to nominate your podcast for the industry's biggest award. Submit your podcast for nomination now at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. But hurry, submissions close on December 8th. Hey, you've been doing all that talking.

It's time to get rewarded for it. Submit your podcast today at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. 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. Hey everyone, Robert Evans here. Welcome to It Could Happen Here. As I'm sure you're aware, at this point over the weekend, somewhere between 500 and 1,000 Hamas fighters, those numbers have a lot of flex in them, it's really unclear at this moment that just kind of my guess based on what I've seen so far, carried out a successful infiltration and sneak attack across a wide swath of the Israeli border. Their methods were varied, from motorized hang gliders and boats to mobile columns of technicals and bulldozers which they used to breach fence lines.

Surprise seems to have been nearly total. In their worst intelligence failure since the 1970s, many IDF troops were caught literally in their underwear. Casualties seemed to have been highest among the police, who were unprepared for militants armed with conventional military weapons. Casualty accounts remain heavily in flux, so I will not labor over them here. Suffice to say that the best information at the time that I'm writing this suggests at least a thousand dead in the first day or so of fighting. It appears at the moment to be fairly

evenly split between Israeli soldiers, police, and civilians, as well as Hamas fighters and Palestinian civilians. We can expect the death toll among Palestinians to rise steadily in the near future as the bombing of Gaza escalates. It is very clear, though, that the Hamas did not strike only military targets, and Israelis and Palestinians are not the only people killed. Right now, there are reports coming in that a music festival, it was some sort of psytrance, psychedelia festival in southern Israel on land that was possibly illegally occupied, was attacked by Hamas militants. Something like 260 people are confirmed to have been killed. There's a pretty

hideous video of a young German woman in her 20s, her corpse stripped, being paraded around by fighters. It's very ugly stuff. There's also unclear videos of other killings. I've seen one video of a man beating another man's head in. It's claimed to be a Hamas militant in civilian clothes beating a Filipino guest worker in Israel to death. There's claimed to be a Hamas militant in civilian clothes beating a Filipino guest worker in Israel to death. There's no actual evidence that I've seen as to who either person in the video is. And a lot of the videos of horrible things that are spreading right now are just that videos that definitely show violence, but that are extremely unclear as to who is perpetrating the violence and why. We do, of course, know that

Hamas targeted a number of civilians. A significant number were killed, including people in their homes, and unknown numbers of people were kidnapped and taken back across the border to be ransomed later for imprisoned fighters and Palestinian civilians. This has happened before in previous escalations of conflict in the area. It's not a new tactic, and the videos of it are, of course, horrifying. The capturing and killing of civilians is by any definition of the term a war crime. Israel's response has been horrifying as well, and writ on a larger scale. Significant chunks of Gaza have already been leveled in airstrikes. At least one hospital has been targeted, killing a nurse. Israel has cut off power to Gaza, an act of collective punishment

that also qualifies as a war crime. That term has less weight than it used to these days. Many of us in the West grew up with illusions about a rules-based international order. The crimes occurring now will continue to erode the idea that war might ever have limits, like white water cutting a path through stone. I try to stay plugged into such things, and I become aware of this most recent eruption as it happened. I spent several hours trying to understand the early open source intelligence, watching people that I trusted in the region post videos that they could verify, and then I went to sleep. When I woke up, I saw the expected river of

bloodthirst on social media. This is also nothing new. The internet has not created this behavior. You may have read when you were in high school that early in the US Civil War, picnicking civilians would show up to ogle the Battle of Manassas. Certain aspects of online culture have, however, lent a deeper ugliness to the affair. I noticed this for the first time during the fighting against ISIS. I reported from Mosul several times and kept up with various Telegram channels, WhatsApp groups, and Twitter accounts that shared footage and updates from the field. A subculture developed around this, fueled by a mix of professionals seeking intel and amateurs, some of whom later became experts, and others of whom

simply liked watching the violence. All of us experienced a degree of desensitization, and Gallo's humor was common. Researchers would share their favorite ISIS nasheeds, effectively jihadi theme music, and throw Arabic phrases that they'd read in issues of Dabiq, ISIS's magazine, into daily conversation. Lines of dialogue from different videos of combat became catchphrases. The best known of these was probably a video released in April of 2016, which showed a group of four ISIS fighters battling Kurdish troops north of Mosul. These guys were not overly familiar with their weaponry, much of which had recently been looted from Iraqi army stores. One of the fighters in the

video, Abu Hajar, fucks up constantly, at one point roasting his own men with the backblast of a rocket launcher. The timing on it is pretty perfect, and it's basically impossible not to laugh a little at this. His comrade shouts a now infamous line at him, what is wrong with you, Abu Hajar? The man who filmed the video dies, of course, and so did a bunch of other people that day. Now, these guys are ISIS fighters, so it wasn't hard to laugh at the footage and move on. I did, and so did many other people. I still chuckle sometimes at it. Of late, though, I've come to find the laughter more unsettling.

This started after the expanded Russian invasion of Ukraine. I began to see videos of wounded, dying, and dead Russian conscripts. These were often close-in, gory shots, devoid of broader information and shot purely for entertainment. It's one thing to watch combat videos in which people die if it gives you an understanding of the nature of combat in that theater of war, the kinds of weapons used, the efficacy of certain tactics. It's another to just look at a bleeding teenager as he slowly dies and joke about it. Now, some of the folks who were laughing are people I knew, Ukrainian civilians and volunteers,

and I cannot blame them and do not blame them for taking satisfaction or even mirth in the death of an invader. That is how war works. That is how war has always worked. It is foolish and cruel to ask for decorum from people under siege. I'm sure many Gazans feel the same about footage now flooding the internet from this most recent attack. But many of the people cheering at dead Russian conscripts were not soldiers and not civilians who were being shelled by that state, but were random Americans, middle-class suburban war aficionados far from the danger, who spent time, who took a moment from their day to joke about suffering soldiers in a foreign country. A mirror of that behavior now proliferates as well.

It curdled my gut then, and it still does, but my feelings here are immaterial. I have come to believe that this behavior is impossible to avoid or even mitigate to a very substantial degree. It also appears to be nearly universal. Social media has made barbarism easier than ever to monetize. As the years have gone on, every new eruption of violence around the world brings with it more footage faster. OSINT, open source intelligence accounts, have gone from a niche obsession among reporters and conflict nerds to mainstream entertainment.

Because views equal money, especially on Twitter, where Elon Musk pays people based on the engagement they get, there is now a financial incentive to post videos that will be shared widely. And as always, the stuff that is shared most widely is the stuff that makes people angry. Videos need not be truthful to spread. In some cases, this means reposting old footage as if it is new. This is particularly easy with the conflict in Gaza, since Israel has launched so many strikes against it over the years. One video of a building crumbling into rubble after a missile strike is as good as another to the rats scrambling for Elon Musk's pocket change.

Many viral disinformation videos are just clips from the Czech video game Arma 2. For roughly a decade, footage of in-game combat has gone viral, netting followers and sometimes money for all manner of shady figures. If you see video that's claimed to be an Israeli helicopter or a Russian helicopter or an American helicopter being shot down in some erupting field, you should really double check that because there's always a very good chance that it's a clip from this video game of a chopper going down or some other kind of military vehicle being taken out. In real warfare, it's quite rare to get footage at a good angle and close to that sort of thing, so anytime you see footage that seems like it might be too good to be real, it probably is. Such disinformation is, of course, unsightly, but that's not all it is. It can provoke violence as well. A recent New York Times article on social media disinformation makes this clear. Quote, the Times found several pieces of

misinformation that spread out across Israeli and Palestinian neighborhood and activist WhatsApp groups this week. One, which appeared as a block of Hebrew text or an audio file, contained a warning that Palestinian mobs were preparing to descend on Israeli civilians. Palestinians are coming! Parents, protect your children, read the message, which pointed specifically to several suburban areas north of Tel Aviv. Thousands of people were in one of the telegram groups where the post was shared. The post then appeared in several WhatsApp groups, which had dozens to hundreds of members. Now, there were no reports of violence in the areas mentioned in this post. This kind of thing happens all over the world and has been happening for

years. And the fact that it's untrue does not stop similar viral lies from inspiring and justifying mass violence in places like India and Myanmar. In both those countries, much of this targeted disinformation was posted at the direct behest of state security agencies to further their efforts at genocide. None of this is new. It all just works much faster thanks to social media. The one truly significant change in recent months has been the addition of a direct profit motive to sharing lies. The best recent example of this is a fellow named Mario Nafal. He's a con artist and a crypto scammer who embezzled from his own company

and has built a massive following retweeting out-of-context videos, starting with the Wagner Rebellion in Russia earlier this year. Elon Musk, whose ignorance of that conflict is unsurpassed, called Nafal's messages the best coverage I've seen so far. More recently, Mario Nafal has been responsible for spreading fake news about the potential capture of Nimrod Ohlone, who is the commander of Israel's southern forces in the region. The video that he claimed was Nimrod Ohlone being taken into captivity was, in fact, a completely different person. It's actually unclear who. Mario does not know

anything about anything and I think was just lying because that would be the most salacious thing possible. It's also worth noting that Elon Musk recently made a post highlighting a couple of OSINT accounts that were his recommendations, his picks for credible people to report on the conflict, and you should follow these folks. He then deleted part of that tweet and self-censored himself when one of the sources he had picked referred to dead Hamas fighters as martyrs, which Elon had an issue with. Clearly, what he's doing is attempting to pick and set his own propaganda dispensers, you know, the people that, for whatever reason, he thinks are providing the most convenient narrative about what's happening. None of this

should be mistaken for actual news. It is likely that much, perhaps most, of the footage on your timeline from the fighting in Gaza and Israel is reposted video that is not current. Obviously, there is a lot of current footage going out right now now too, but a significant amount of it is not. I find this exasperating, even as I wonder how much that really matters. Is sharing old footage of civilian homes being leveled by Israeli missiles really an issue when similar homes are being bombed at the same time? I do still think so, but I'm no longer sure that my feelings on the matter are quite rational. The most commonly accepted definition of intelligence, of intellect, that you'll find, is the ability to adapt to, change, and select environments,

or the ability to deal with change in your environment. If that is truly the best measure of intelligence, then my disgust at disinformation makes me kind of stupid. Its purveyors have had blinding success in using it to push their own narratives and to shape reality. I used the word barbarism earlier to describe this, and it's a loaded word, but not nearly so loaded as its synonym, savagery. Savagery is a word that inspires powerful emotions, for good reason. It was often used by white supremacist colonizers to paint whole peoples as backwards and less human, especially when they engaged in acts of resistance that were, in reality, no bloodier

or more violent than the acts being perpetrated against them. The word predates European colonialism, though. It seems to date back to around 1300, and it entered French, sauvage, like the Cologne Johnny Depp hawks, from the Latin salvaticus, which literally means of the woods. Why this digression? Because in 2004, an Islamist strategist named Abu Bakr Naji published a book on the internet titled Management of Savagery. In Naji's conception, savagery was defined as terrorist attacks against civilian infrastructure and stuff like tourist facilities, which were meant to provoke violent escalations from superpowers. That violence would radicalize more people against the West and lead to a progressive degradation of social order and operational capacity in the nations Nagy saw as enemies.

The management of savagery was a key text for the men who wound up creating the Islamic State. Some will use this to argue that the tactics failed, since ISIS is not exactly thriving at present. To do so would be to ignore the $6 trillion the United States lit on fire fighting a disastrous war on terror, which supercharged much of the underlying instability in our country and may yet lead to a collapse in domestic order. I will admit that I have found the framework of managing savagery useful in my interpretation and understanding of conflict, both domestic and international. In 2020, I got to watch the process up close over the course of dozens of protests. The basic strategy of most Portland protests that year went like this. You got a bunch of people to march up to a police building they would chant and yell until the police got

angry and then gassed and or beat up everybody after a while this dynamic was widely understood and accepted by protesters they saw their suffering and the risk that they engaged in as an acceptable trade-off because it revealed the violence and savagery inherent in policing as an institution this they hoped would radicalize others against it people who watched acceptable trade-off because it revealed the violence and savagery inherent in policing as an institution. This, they hoped, would radicalize others against it, people who watched clips of videos from the protest or who attended themselves. And for a time, this strategy worked quite well. Many people who had been apolitical on the matter grew utterly hardened against the cops after a few hours in the gas clouds. People cannot endure violence, however, without being changed by it.

So as the weeks wore on, participants grew more and more comfortable with not just property destruction, but with the use of things like Molotov cocktails. One may consider a Molotov to be necessary sometimes, and throughout history, they often have been. But savage is as good a term to describe firebombs as any. No one was killed by any Molotov that I ever saw used in Portland. But of course, no protests come close to the savagery of warfare. The emotional dynamics at play are shades of each other, though, and I thought it might be useful to mention. Perhaps a

more illustrative example would be my own experiences in Mosul in the early summer of 2017. My team and I were embedded with an Iraqi federal police unit in the old city where the fighting was intense and hideous. We came under fire from a sniper. Some of the shots were so close that chipped concrete hit my helmet. The mortar team with us responded and with the help of a spotter,

they dropped explosive shells on homes and shops until they hit and killed the sniper. In that moment, I felt elation I've seldom felt since. After we found better cover, I began composing the scene in my head, laying out how I would write it. Then my fixer, Sengar, said something that interrupted my train of thought and has remained with me ever since. Did you count how many rounds they fired before they hit him?

I told him I thought it was six or seven, maybe. Where do you think the others landed? From his tone, it was clear what he meant. The old city was crowded. Many civilians had not yet been able to escape the ISIS lines. Their homes were often next door to fighting positions, and the density of the city meant that any honest hit still had a good chance of hitting someone. Later, I met a man whose house had been hit 20 times by mortar rounds and rockets before he had a chance to escape with his family.

So the glee of the moment faded. My writing about that scene was more sober, more careful, and much better as a result. Zangar's words have helped me shape both my coverage of war and my reactions to it ever since. This shouldn't matter to people being bombed out of their homes and losing loved ones right now. It might be helpful, though, to those of us watching Bloodshed from behind a screen, at least until we're the ones filming. Hey guys, I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show,

where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast, Post Run High, is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together you know that rush of endorphins you feel after a great workout well that's when the real magic happens so if you love hearing real inspiring stories from the people you know follow and admire join me every week for post run high it's where we take the conversation beyond the run and get into the iHeartRadio.com. Dare and thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter?

Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonorum. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnne Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jack Peace Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me and a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while commuting or running errands. For those who find themselves seeking solace, wisdom, and refuge between the chapters.

From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary works while uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them. Blacklit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to life. Listen to Blacklit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to It Could Happen here. I'm Garrison Davis. Welcome to It Could Happen here. I'm Garrison Davis. This is the show where we talk about how everything is kind of falling apart and how we can sometimes put it back together. Joining me is my dear collaborator and friend, James Stout. Good morning, James.

Good morning, Garrison. That's very kind of you. Thank you. And we got a very special episode here today. We are talking with four people who have put together a new book by AK Press called No Par Seran. We're going to have kind of a little bit of a like a group discussion about anti-fascist history and this kind of this the state of anti-fascism in the past few years i know this is how i kind of got started with radical politics growing up in portland oregon you see nazis marching around in your street and you're like oh well this is obviously a problem someone should probably do something about this um and stuff has changed a lot the past the past few years i mean like the the anti-fascist movement that i got, that I kind of got into in like 2018,

you know, it's very different now. And it's, I don't know, there's these types of things live on through like oral histories, as well as, you know, books. And I think it's really cool to have these types of conversations. So joining us today is Shane Burley, Emily Gorchinsky, Michael Novick, and Daryl Lamont-Jakins. Greetings, everyone. I'm going to hand it over to Shane, and you can kind of talk about the book, I guess. Yeah. Thanks, Garrison. Thanks, James, for having us on, the whole crew of us.

Yeah, this book was something that came out last year, but we had been working on it for about four years. I'm starting in 2018. I was drunk with Kim Kelly in New York, and we thought it'd be really great to put together something with all of our friends. And when you do with a big group of people, it takes like four or five years to pull off. But really, the idea was trying to do something that was bigger than what had been written about anti-fascism at that point, which was shockingly narrow, what people understood of as just a few movements, mostly very recent history. And so much wasn't being included in that conversation. So the idea

was how can we build out like a much bigger picture of this by including as many voices as possible. So we ended up getting a couple of dozen folks together that had different takes on it. Some talking about tech, some talking about deep history, some talking about anti-fascism in other countries, other continents. And so in general, the idea was to make it feel like a discussion between people who either know each other or should be like in some kind of comradeship with each other. So that was sort of where it came together. I think with this conversation, the way we were thinking about this is I wanted to, I wanted the opportunity to talk

with basically my friends about their history a little bit. And so I asked three folks that had a really long history with doing organizing work. And so I thought it would be cool maybe if we go through talking to them a little bit about their prehistory or their early history organizing. And Michael, your history goes back the furthest, as you know it does. So I thought we could kick off with you and then talk with Emily and then Daryl, just kind of getting into your background. So how did you get started in movement work? Actually, I should say first, when did you get started in movement work? Well, yeah, so I sometimes feel like a little bit of a dinosaur. I was born in 1947. So the fascism and power was a fairly recent reality in my life. My father was an immigrant from Poland. He came here in the 30s. Most of

his family was destroyed in Bialystok. They had an uprising there, similar to the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, and almost everybody was liquidated in that process. So there's a family history there for me. Also, obviously, grew up in the shadow of the U of the US atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the US incarceration of Japanese Americans in concentration camps. So those are realities in my life. I lived in an Orthodox Jewish immigrant working class family and neighborhood in Brooklyn, which is now dominated by extremely right wing forces. Borough Park, it's one of the bastions of probably, you know, neo-fascist Republican pro-Zionist.

But somehow when I grew up there, that was not the case. when I grew up there, that that was not the case. Uh, anyway, uh, I got involved in politics in the sixties, uh, and, uh, you know, student movement stuff, anti-war stuff. And, um, and, uh, at Brooklyn college, which when I was there was, uh, uh, uh, free public four-year, uh, college part of the city university system in New York. And, um, I was actually eventually elected student body president. They had liquidated the student government earlier

when people opposed the Korean War. And we had a struggle to get, you know, for student rights and anti-war stuff and so on. And we succeeded in getting student body elections for offices for the first time in about a dozen years. But, you know, I was part of all that anti-war and anti-police brutality and other stuff that was going on in Brooklyn at the time. And then we raised the question of the fact that Brooklyn College was 98% white or 99% white in a borough that even then was, you know, majority black and Puerto Rican. And suddenly all the student support we had had for all the other struggles,

cops off the campus and, you know, Navy off the campus and so on. And we got, you know, got a dean of students fired and other stuff. But as soon as we raised the question of opening the campus up and having open admissions to the city university system and a special admissions program for black and puerto rican high school students most of our student support evaporated and for me that was an object lesson that unless you're you know consciously organizing about internalized and institutionalized racism everything else you do that is you know progressive or anti-imperialist or anti-war is kind of a house of cards or castles made of sand.

And in particular, in raising those issues, we discovered that there was a fascist element on the campus. There were people who formed the early Jewish Defense League in Brooklyn who were primarily anti-black. And also there's a group called the Youth, what is it? Young Americans for Freedom, YAF, which was like the youth wing of the National Review, right-wing Republican formation. And they were pretty openly fascistic in their politics. So it became a question that if you were doing anti-racist and anti-war and anti-capitalist organizing, you

were going to face not just a struggle against the force of the state, but that there were reactionary elements within particularly white society. And I think because of settler colonialism, there's a mass base for that. And struck by the title of the show, I'll just say, I don't know if people are familiar with the book. It can't happen here. But obviously, your title is a reflection. It could happen here.

I think it has happened here, for one thing. I think that fascism has always been an element of U.S. political culture because of settler colonialism. You know, M.A. Césaire's definition of fascism is that it's bringing the methods of rule of the colonies into the metropole but the u.s is a settler colony and therefore there are colonized people inside this country and always have been and so fascistic elements of you know slave labor genocide you know land theft all the rest of it have always been part. And part of that is also creating that mass base within the settler population that supports that leadership. So anyway, I think that both those personal aspects and that consciousness.

And so I came in contact with the very radical forces in the Black Freedom Circle back then. The Black Panther Party was very active. There was one of the people in the Black Student Union joined the Black Panther Party. You know, it was a period of very fascistic attacks. And the Panthers had formed the National Committees to Combat Fascism and had an analysis that, you know, the U.S. was fascistic. fascism and had an analysis that uh you know the u.s was fascistic and uh you know george jackson at that time said you know fascism is already here and i think he meant it you know literally and so that's part of the perspective i've carried through for you know i don't know what that is 60

years now close to yeah i mean i think quickly, I would like to hear kind of what your experience was with forming John Brown. Where did the idea come from? Because I think for a lot of people who are thinking of recent anti-fascist, American anti-fascist history, that ends up being kind of a starting point for a certain kind of no platform tactic. So how did you first kind of develop that? What brought you in? form tactics. So how did you first kind of develop that? What brought you in? So, yeah, just to say, I was, you know, coming out of the movement as I did. I moved from New York to California because there was a strong, there was a newspaper called The Movement, which was the newspaper, basically of friends of SNCC. It was the people who left SNCC

when SNCC adopted a black power analysis and said that white people who were involved should go organize in the white community. And there was a, you know, kind of a, I was part of a working class organizing collective in Hayward, California. Eventually out of that, I got connected with, you know, some of the people that later formed Prairie Fire Organized Committee. I was in a group in the Bay Area called the June 28th Union. It was a gay men's, pro-socialist, anti-imperialist, pro-feminist collective of mostly people of European descent. And we went to what was called the Hard Times Conference, which was put on by Prairie Fire

Organizing Committee in Chicago. conference, which was put on by Prairie Fire Organizing Committee in Chicago. And it turned out that there was secretly an effort by the Weather Underground to come up from underground and create a new communist party. And they serviced that at that conference. But there was a lot of opposition to that from across the board, from different Black Liberation, American Indian movement, Puerto Rican independence struggle, Chicano movement, all of them felt that there was a sellout of the politics there. Anyway, out of that process, I was part of,

I joined a Prairie Fire Organized Committee eventually, and that split. And then there was a West Coast group, which kept the name Prairie Fire. The East Coast formed a group called the May 19th Communist Organization. And they launched the original John Brown anti-Klan committee, an initiative from the prisons. The organized prisoners in New York had discovered that there was an extensive

network of Klan claverins that were based in the prison guards and some of the white prisoners. And they asked for outside supporters to begin to expose that and deal with it and help them deal with it. And John Brandon's Committee was formed out of that. Separately, very far on the West Coast, it formed a group called Take a Stand Against the Klan. There was a lot of, you know, that was the period at the beginning of the sort of

Nazification of the Klan that was going period at the beginning of the sort of Nazification of the Klan that was going on. So this was the 70s. And eventually, you know, under a challenge from particularly the New African Independence Movement, the Malcolm X grassroots movement, New African People's Organization, which both pre-fire on the West Coast and May 19th on the East Coast were connected to. They pushed for a joint organization. So at that point, there was a kind of reconstitution of John Burnett and the Klan Committee.

And so I was part of that. And we merged, you know, there were chapters in Atlanta, Chicago, the Bay Area, Los Angeles, where I ended up, New York, I think Bowling Green, maybe the couple of Connecticut. And so they were quite active in that period in, you know, street level confrontations and, you know, other exposures of early neo-Nazi activity and Klan activity. And, early neo-Nazi activity and clan activity. But particularly from a perspective of conscious and active solidarity with the Black Freedom Struggle and particularly the New African Independence Movement, which is a very high level of unity.

And over a period of time, there was a struggle to broaden that out and try to be a more all-embracing organization that could relate to the struggle. There were a lot of different formations at that time. There was the National Anti-Klan Network and there was a couple of others and there were differing politics among all of them. And John Brennan at the Klan Academy at that time took more of a position of pro-direct action and also, as I say, conscious solidarity with the Black freedom struggle as a basis for doing that work.

The anti-Klan network, I think, so people kind of know that's where the Southern Poverty Law Center eventually came out of another networks of these different groups out here in Oregon. The rural organizing project was sort of like a down the line there. I think it's interesting, too, about the line there. I think it's interesting too about the founding story. I was talking with our mutual friend, Lisa Roth, who was part of the founding of that very first iteration of the John Brown Committee, was they were doing a prison organizing with Black Panthers in upstate New York. And they were writing these letters saying, the prison guards are Klan. And they thought, you mean they're really racist?

You know, obviously they're prison guards. And when they went and looked it up, no, the president of the prison guard union was the grand dragon of the state KKK. And they were actually doing that. He had a position within the prison system as the head of the sort of education, educational activities in the prisons.

And was using his formal position within the prison system to organize white prisoners along with the guards into Klan caverns. It seems like a total, that was sort of a validation. With the centerpiece of John Brown being that cops and Klan have that kind of collaboration because that was their kind of the founding lesson of that organizing. Sure. The blue by day, white by night. and a lot of those slogans come out of that period and you know i think it is you know it's related to later the ara line that you know fascism is built from above and below that there's you know elements within the state that are operating independently

but they're also state forces and then there are you know independent yeah so-called revolutionary fascists that you know claim to be opposing the state but are not really well i think to fast forward a little bit quite a bit um emily i don't remember when we first met each other obviously it was probably shortly after unite the right happened but how did you first get drawn into organizing? Did you have a long history before that happened? Or were you just part of getting involved around the ramp up to that? No, I think, you know, compared to the other folks here, I'm sort of the summer child of the group, right?

I don't have a super long history in organizing. I think that, you know, I came to anti-fascism before Unite the Right happened. I work in the tech industry and sometimes sort of around the Gamergate era, I started noticing how white supremacist the tech industry had become. supremacist the tech industry had become, right? It was sort of this nexus for a lot of this strongly libertarian, strongly supremacist mindset. It was sort of the worst of that meritocratic ideal that a lot of us had to experience in university and in our workplaces. And it just seemed like it was getting out of control. And that was kind of at the same time that we were seeing a lot more women come into the tech industry. We were starting to see a lot of changes in the space. And then there was sort of like this vacuum left by Gamergate as that all sort of died

down. A lot of this sort of energy needed to go somewhere. And so I started speaking out against some white supremacist organizing that was happening at conferences and things like that. And I think the first wake up call for me happened when some folks that are linked to Milo Yiannopoulos put together a list of SJWs, social justice warriors. And this was journalists and activists and people who were speaking out. And I somehow made that list. And I realized after, you know, looking at this and seeing what was going on, that being apolitical, being sort of just somebody with an opinion

wasn't, you know, there was no way to be, that wasn't a defense against what was coming. And so I just sort of looked inside and said, well, if this is the way it's going to be, like, I'm going to fight back. I'm going to figure out what to do. I didn't really have a lot of organizing ties. I didn't really have a network. So like every other person, I just, you know, shouted at Twitter and somehow that worked. And the irony of this all is that

all of this was going on. I was starting to do, you know, digital activism using my tech skills to try to shine light on things that were wrong in the federal government and the Trump administration and things like that. And I really just wanted to step away from that. I kind of had like, I went to Prague after Trump was inaugurated. I wanted to like, you know, clear the air a little bit. I didn't like the fact that I was on this hit list that was put together by people who have like a couple of handshakes away from the president's desk. So I went to Europe, I went to Prague and I cleared my head.

And when I came back, I said, you know what, I'm going to just focus on local activism. I'm going to focus on the issues that are in my community. I knew that we had things going on with our local low income housing space. We had a lot of, you know, stuff around the statues that was coming up in town. And I didn't really expect, like, it was kind of random that Unite the Right was, you know, destined for Charlottesville. And so all of the work, all of the organizing that I had started to do that spring, and that, or I guess that winter and that spring, started to pay off as, you know, as Charlottesville became the target of all of the neo-Nazis. So I think it was sort of, I don't want to say it's fortunate because it's not really the greatest, like, it's not a positive

thing that that's what happened. But I guess that I am lucky that as I came to this awakening, it was happening, you know, before and not after. And that I was able to use the network that I was building, the audience I was building in order to help fight back. So, yeah, I guess that's, that's sort of like, I don't know that I would have been, you know, as much as dedicated as I was, if it wasn't for that very personal, um, sort of experience. And I look back at that and like, I'm kind of embarrassed by that but um you know we all have our own paths yeah absolutely and i think you know there's something interesting about that year in advance of the unite the right where people were different groups were testing the

waters a little bit and how that was their ability to ramp up in the area but it was also the anti-fascist ability to ramp up you you know? So talking with Mimi and other organizers there, like those earlier events, like the earlier Klan rally that happened, like months earlier, or kind of that early flash mob that Richard Spencer led, that gave people the opportunity to build up the base. So how did you kind of shift to focusing on that?

First, I guess, how did you hear about Unite the Right as this big kind of like target event? But what was the steps along the way there yeah i think um one of the things that really um that i really tried to do that year was to use the experience i was having traveling to try to understand the history of movements that were against, you know, great state powers, right? When I was in Prague, I spent a lot of time reading about and looking into and walking through the sites of where the Prague Spring took place and where the Velvet Revolution took place and how these groups of people were able to overcome this massive amount of state violence and still be successful. And when Richard Spencer first came to town, that first flash mob, what is now called Charlottesville 1.0,

I was in Berlin at the time. I woke up to see what was going on. And it was, you know, I think, again, just sort of these, you know, the universe coming into alignment. As that was happening, there was also this big anti-Nazi demonstration that was happening, there was also this big anti-Nazi demonstration that was happening in Berlin. So I took that opportunity to go and learn about what anti-fascists are doing in other countries and other localities, how they are organizing, how they spread their message. learned about all of this going on, what the first thing that I tried to do is just look around and say, what can we learn from people who have been here before, who have done this before and have

this in their living memory? And that's what I tried to take back to Charlottesville. And then, you know, I think it was after that trip, I was in Berlin in May, I came back for that trip, I joined an anti-fascist march, almost as soon as I got back. And that's when we had heard we've learned about the two rallies, the July 8th KKK rally and the August 12th Unite the Right. And at that point, like from that moment, it was just like every waking moment of my day was spent organizing for those rallies. for those for those rallies it's the sort of effect that just circumstance sort of speeds people's capacity to do it but not maybe even maybe capacity is not the right word the kind of understanding of like what it takes to do that work so i was interviewing um a number of the rabbis in the area and these were not super political folks these were not people like from some activist synagogues or mainline synagogues. But they connected with a number of faith leaders from the historically Black churches,

both of which were saying, OK, we're both going to be targeted here. And there's no there's no institutions coming to help, really. There's no one we can count on here. So they created those collaborative spaces and really pretty complicated and effective organizing models, having no experience doing it because of that hyper intense space, which I think is in a way, that's why those circumstances have such an important effect on it. So how did you basically plan those couple of weeks in advance? How were you thinking about it?

And what was the kind of groups you were working with? Were these like networks that were coming together or formal organizations yeah i think um there were a bunch of you know organizations on the ground that i connected with um certainly we had a local chapter of surge showing up for racial justice and they were doing a lot of organizing um and there was you know the anarchist people of color apoc um they were a great group of people that we connected with and that I connected with. And it also happened that I started dating somebody who was also connected to the local anti-fascist scene at the time. So I sort of brought into all of these circles through that relationship as well. and so I think that sort of all of these things combined really made it clear that we had a small but very knowledgeable base of people that could organize and I think that one of the things

that we did exceptionally well in the lead-up is because we had such a small core of people who don't who didn't really have you breadth of experience in doing this, we were able to compartmentalize really well. Some people were focusing on, what are we going to do with the clergy collective? And how are they going to organize? What is their action going to be? And we had a media collective,

and that was where I put most of my energy. And so I think that we had these different groups of people that could focus on different things that helped us unblock ourselves from the grander, sort of more theoretical, more abstract way to respond. We didn't have the time to debate over tactics. We didn't have time to debate over the ideology of anti-fascism, what the right thing to do was, or what the best thing to do was, we really had to focus our time on what do we have time to do? What can we achieve given the constraints that we have? And with those sort of constraints, I think that maybe we left some good actions on the

table, but what we came up with, I think, was fairly effective. Do you think that it carried those community folks together through and after the event? Do you feel like those community ties were still there? I think some of them are and some of them are not. There are certainly community ties that have broken. There was a lot of pressure that built up. There were differences of opinions that we set aside and hoped to resolve afterwards. And those did not necessarily get resolved. In some cases, some interpersonal issues, some inter-organizational issues.

I remember at one point there was a decision that was being made, driven by a couple of the organizing groups, that they would not support anyone that was going to be armed. And this was a tension point between those groups and groups like Redneck Revolt that were coming armed to help support anti-fascist rallies. And that, like, that is something that still, you know, affected me pretty well, because I was being targeted. Because of how present I was in social media and Twitter and things like that. I needed to have an armed security detail. And that created a lot of tension. I had legal support pulled away from me. I didn't have

legal support until November of that year when noise of a lawsuit started happening. until November of that year when noise of a lawsuit started happening. So I think that some of those things did create some tension that led to fracturing of community. But some things actually really did tie the community back together and kept it close, even as we have drifted apart and moved into different cities, different countries, different states, whatever. I think it's a bit of both. cities different countries different states whatever i think it's a bit of both you know there's one of the founding members of rose city antifa said something that kind of stuck with me which is that a lot of people will look to anti-fascism as a way to rebuild the left or is to build this big mass united left but that's not actually what's being demanded of the situation

the situation is very pretty straightforward. It's to basically destroy this opposition of people. And how you do that, I mean, you can have considerations about how to bring in the community and try and align with other groups. But in the end, there's other decisions are being made. And so people often get disappointed when that ends up being what those projects actually are. Now, Daryl, you were down there at Unite the Right, right? Correct. I was there. You're everywhere when we're there. I try to be.

I think one of the things about Charlottesville that was really important is that we saw it coming and we had seen it coming months, probably even years before it even happened. Hell, we saw it before in my case, because one of those everywhere places I had been was in York, Pennsylvania, about 20 years prior, where you had somebody from a group called the World Church Creator. He was a local from World Church of the Creator that invited

the leader of that group, Matt Hale, to hold a public meeting at their local library. It was a tactic that that particular group had. And what that resulted in was about 300 neo-nazis coming to york pa about three four hundred anti-fascists coming out to oppose them and you pretty much saw a parallel of um charlottesville as i said um up to and including a this was january 12 2012 and up to and including a, someone driving into a group of people. And no, no one, no one died. No one was killed. Hurt pretty bad. I think the only reason why he served two years was because one of the people that he

hit was a cop. years was because one of the people that he hit was a cop. Now we fast forward to Charlottesville. And ironically, I saw the person that organized things in York represented Vanguard America at Charlottesville. And two days prior, we, my crew,

one people's project had a little bit of a podcast where we basically said that after everything that was going on in Charlottesville prior to Charlottesville 1.0, Charlottesville 2.0, and then this whole Unite the Right thing was happening, where they were just making a big production out of having this event. making a big production out of having this event. We pretty much were resigned to the idea that this was going to be the so-called alt-rights ultima in the sense that this was going to be what sent everybody, you know, realizing how bad things can get. You know, it's going to be bad. We expected it to be bad. I went to Charlottesville armed. And I think really it was one of the first times that I ever did strap up when I went to one of these things. Um, when everything went down, I mean, prior to everything

going down, I was just basically doing my thing, videotaping everyone, cracking jokes. I was playing happy warrior because, you know, you see this all before up to and including the fighting. The fighting is there. I mean, that happens all the time. Even that massively, I'm that I'm used to it. What I wasn't used to was when someone was murdered, when someone was killed, because that's never happened. And that actually freaked me out. I actually got really pissed off when that went down. I think a lot of us did. Because if we recognize this ourselves, if we who have been on the front lines all these years recognize that this was the direction it was going in, we also recognize that we had the ability to do something about it beforehand. That's one of the reasons why the ACLU got into a lot of trouble, because they were

busy trying to protect the free speech of everybody and all the neo-Nazis there and insisting that they were going to be in that park because that's where they wanted to be. And when everything went down, a lot of people just looked at the ACLU and said, could you at least recognize just how dangerous they was trying to make the situation? ACLU, I believe, will no longer represent groups that insist on holding armed rallies. I think that was one of the things that they had said that they were one of the change ups. I think that was one of the things that they had said that they were one of the change ups. And even with the whole discussion about their freedom of speech and saying it was a matter of their free speech, people's attitudes were just like, OK, fine, that's a given. But couldn't you let them get their own attorneys? Why do you have to keep defending the worst of society in the name of a free speech that, frankly, doesn't seem to be afforded the

rest of us whenever we are opposing them. That's the attitude that a lot of people had. And it was really the last straw. Charlottesville was really the last straw. And people really got on a different footing in dealing with fascism. I was used to people trying to pull all the stops and trying to defend the, quote unquote, defend the freedom of speech of not just the fascists in our society, but the right in general. So every time I would criticize somebody on the right, somebody would try to say things ranging from, we have to respect their freedom of speech, or we should just ignore them.

You know, and I hated it whenever it was, and when it was combined. The best way to fight hate speech is with more speech. You use the more speech. Well, why don't you just ignore them? That stopped after Charlottesville. All of a sudden, people started saying, OK, we need to start doing something about this group. That's why you saw 40,000 people. In Boston, protesting against the fascists up there when they tried to hold a rally maybe a week or two later. That's why you saw websites like the Daily Stormer get yanked out of the mainstream,

and now they're sitting on the dark web. That's why you saw people disowning their family members because they went to this rally. We are seeing people being not just James Fields, but others being held legally accountable for what they did in Charlottesville. And all of those individuals are fascists. All of the individuals are white supremacists. We realized that we had the ability to do something. We realized that we had the ability to do something. And we started doing something. Unfortunately, we stopped after Trump lost and people tried to go back to that whole just ignore them routine. And within months, we got January 6th. And that was when they ratcheted it up again about how we're going to really curtail the right and all that.

But now that just became rhetoric. We're here again because you're starting to see a lot of the rumblings with the attacks on the trans community. Basically, conservatives across the country are primarily trying to essentially do something to the rest of the country. I mean, you heard that when you go to the CPAC meeting, the Conservative Political Action Conference a couple of months ago, all they did was talk about things they wanted to do to America, you know, and this is what we have been fighting all our lives. This is what we have been warning about all our lives. And while anti-fascism has essentially become mainstream, While anti-fascism has essentially become mainstream, there is still a lot more work that we have to do in order to basically see all that work bear fruit. And that's pretty much the deal. that for that 40,000 person kind of response to a Proud Boy rally in Boston, just a couple of weeks

after Unite the Right, it was one of the most common sense kind of moments. And it totally dwarfed them. I mean, 40,000 people will do whatever they want, right? 40,000 people will stop any kind of small march, even a large one. And so the lesson was learned and it seemed to be forgotten immediately. And they're a perfect example of that because that group that they were protesting went on to become Super Happy Fun America. They're the group that are now pushing the straight pride rallies and they are really in the forefront of all the anti-trans, anti-LGBTQ plus activity. And of course, some of them got arrested in January six. So they pretty much built up their stock since then. But so did we. And it's just a matter of using that stock, who's going to use that stock more effectively. Yeah, I think it was really interesting how you centered this like this shift that

happened among people who weren't previously involved in anti-fascism from this kind of neoliberal understanding or maybe even liberal understanding of the sort of struggle against fascism being one that could take place in the open with free speech being the most important thing that's at stake and one that moved like in a moment right when when a nazi killed heather hire to there's a ton more at stake than we thought and i think you're right that we've gone back uh like right we've gone back to to the previous understanding which i think is what everyone kind of a lot of people i guess they felt like they could vote for joe biden and then it was done like it had disappeared and i'd be interested to hear all of your insights with all your experience in the movement and like

what needs to be done i guess to keep that organizing going as we're in this kind of nadir or i know thermidor of uh like anti-fascist organizing in the u.s uh if i could offer something from maybe a little bit of a longer view uh yeah please yeah uh you know daryl talked about somebody being killed and that never happening before but of course it has happened before and so 1979 there was a death of the Klan rally in Greensboro, North Carolina, and people were attacked and killed by an alliance of the Klan and the Nazis with the ATF had people in one and the, I forget, I think the FBI had people in the other and were instrumental in bringing the two forces together to attack the anti-Klan group.

And several people were killed in that. And then the same thing with ARA in Las Vegas. Len's newborn black tattoo artist and Darren Scherste was actually, I think, a sailor, active duty sailor who were in anti-racist action in Las Vegas, were executed and killed by neo-Nazis there. And so I think there is a history of that that we need to be aware of, but also that there's ups and downs and lulls in both fascist organizing and anti-fascist organizing. One of the things that happened after the 79 killings is that Ronald Reagan launched his campaign for president in Philadelphia, Mississippi. The scene of the killing of Schwerner, Cheney and Goodman on a state rights platform. And while he was president, you know, brought in Pat Buchanan and, you know and went to Bitburg. So there's a long history of the state playing footsie with these people, and I think we should recognize that. But also

that there are going to be ups and downs in both fascist and anti-fascist organizing. And I think that the longer range perspective on that is important to understand. The other thing I did want to take a little exception to is, is the idea that the role of anti-fascist is to destroy fascists. And I think that I don't completely agree with that analysis. I think that it's critical that actually anti-fascist forces see themselves as part of a revolutionary transformation of the society in its entirety. And that the ability to actually reach and organizing people has to do with making it

clear that fascists are not providing an alternative to what's wrong with the society, although they claim to be. And that we are, that we are part of liberatory and self-determination elements, anti-colonial elements, you know, support for sovereignty of indigenous people, you know, support for LGBTQ people's rights and all those things that have a positive aspect of a way to reorganize society in a different way than the fascists are putting forward. And I think that that is critical to trying to sustain a base and build a base by, you know, having a positive. sustain a base and build a base by, you know, having a positive, you know, one of the things that I've been doing for many years, I published turning the tide, which, you know, started as a little zine. We were sending it to the other chapters of anti-racist action and also into the prisons. And, you know,

eventually we changed the subtitle of that to the journal of intercommunal solidarity in the sense of saying, okay, it's not just anti-racist action. It's not just anti-fascist, but what are we for? You have to have a positive. You really want to organize people. You have to have a positive sense of what you're struggling for, not just what you're struggling against. Yeah, Michael's right. Greensboro did happen. I was really referring to, in recent time, it was the first for myself um to be at a rally and not see anyone um and see somebody um get murdered but yes greensboro um november 3rd i believe 1979 um in north carolina that happened and all the clan members had actually gotten away with it

um they did not um they were found they cleared them they said meanwhile in state court and federal court both their claim was that they were not uh they were brought up on civil rights charges in the federal court and they claimed they weren't against black people they were just against communists and that right there was something that even family members when i first heard of remember i'm a kid at this time I'm sitting there listening to family members basically laugh about the situation because all they saw were Klan and communists. And they were just had the attitude of just let them kill each other. And that was actually a line that was said. I don't I don't know which family member said it, but that was a line that stuck with me since I was a kid. And at the time, I wasn't really politically astute.

I just that's how I recall that situation. And with Dan and Spit, the Las Vegas murders on that, that is a different situation, however, because that was on the rally. They sought them out. That was basically on the off time, so to speak. Yeah, that was an assassination. Yes, and we've seen that before, most certainly. Luke Croner from Portland, for example, I mean, he survived, but he's a quadriplegic because somebody came after him.

The German police intercepted one when Attenlofen came to Germany to try to get me. I don't know if you know about that. Yeah. I don't know if you know about that. Yeah. No, I didn't know about that. Yeah, similar. It is the same thing.

Yeah. Because I have been fairly public. I've been doxed and tracked down by fascists on several different occasions in different places that I lived in. And we've had armed patrols at various points. It's clearly, they do try to target people as well as attacking mass actions. Emily, you've gotten as much as anyone I've ever seen

in terms of doxing and harassment and targeted attacks and threats like that. Wait, who are you referring to? To you. Oh, I think we've all gotten it bad. I don't think that there's any, there's no competition here. Contest. Who has the most death threats on 8Q? Let's take a tally off.

I did want to just jump back real quick to the thing that you were mentioning, Michael, about, you know, building. Antifascism needs to be about building. i think that there's two there's two sides to this um i like to to talk about like the breaking work which is what a lot of the street anti-fascism is is about right like sometimes nazis come marching into your town and you have to break that you have to stop that you have to confront that and you have to do things um to make it so that they don't want to come back into your town or any other towns like your town. And I think that that's breaking work. You know, the work of fracking down Nazis, doxing them, exposing them, whatever, that's breaking work. I think that in the last few years has become more high profile for various reasons. But I think that as we're looking at, you know, what you were mentioning, Daryl, like the anti-trans legislation, the rise of the political far right in government and in power, we do need a different solution.

I'm not saying that you can't go out and like intercept Ron DeSantis' motorcade and like punch him in the face. I am saying it will probably end very badly for you if you try to do that. Right. Right. So maybe what we actually also need is to try to build those alternative structures that are not reliant on the state. Right. You know, when we see these, these trans bands coming in, like it's a horrible thing, but the only thing that actually comes through my mind is we have more tools, more resources now to create the networks of support than we've ever had in history. A lot of our energy should be pouring into supporting those networks, supporting that care, supporting that mobility, and that freedom of movement, rather than just trying to run up against this brick wall that is this Republican, you know, behemoth that is moving, you know, forward into all of our rights. Like,

we're not going to face it down head on. We need to go around it in some way. And I think that going around it is going to require that building, that community, that sort of redevelopment of those alternative structures. So I think it's so important to have that as well. Big thanks to Shane Burley for setting up this conversation. The second half of our talk with Michael Novick, Emily Gorchinsky, and Daryl Lamont Jenkins will be coming out tomorrow. We'll talk a bit more about the modern state of anti-fascism and what things from the past might help inform us in the anti-fascist struggle of today. See you on the other side. Hey, guys, I'm Kate Max.

Hey guys, I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast, Post Run High, is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. You know that rush of endorphins you feel after a great workout? Well, that's when the real magic happens. So if you love hearing real, inspiring stories from the people you know, follow, and admire, join me every week for Post Run High. know, follow, and admire, join me every week for Post Run High. It's where we take the conversation beyond the run and get into the heart of it all. It's lighthearted, pretty crazy, and very fun. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Welcome. I'm Danny Threl. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter. Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors

that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network. Available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Welcome back to It Could Happen Here. This is Garrison Davis. This episode is part two of a conversation that myself and James Stout had with some of the contributors to a book by AK Press titled No Pasaran. It's an anti-fascist anthology that talks about the modern anti-fascist movement and some of the writer's own experiences with anti-fascism. So we'll pick up our conversation

basically right where we left off, talking about the modern state of anti-fascism. Anti-fascists and like, you know, the left, quote unquote, in general right now is kind of in a weird place. You know, like a lot of people were, you know, extremely kind of catalyzed after, after Charlottesville. And that led to a like massive resurgence of, of anti-racist action and anti-fascist action.

And I think the, the quote unquote, like Antifa movement of the 20 teens, absolutely like was, is probably one of the largest, like politically radicalizing forces for people, especially people my age, people a little bit older. It's, you know, it's very influential in what the kind of the modern, like anarchist or,

you know, left, you know, scene is. And there's like, there's a lot of positive parts of that. There's also, you know, there's some, some drawbacks for that as well. Kind of one, one kind of recurring thing is that like, when your only tool is a hammer, then everything is a nail. And there's certain elements of, of like, and, and this like Antifa notion or like people who like grew up with, with like anti-fascism being their primary kind of, uh praxis, then it can be very easily turned horizontally. But, you know, it's after, after J6, after, after Biden's been inaugurated, we have had this very weird lull, but there's still been, you know, a lot of fascist mobilization, but the sort of

response to it that, you know, was very normalized in 2018 has, has definitely shifted. We've seen like, you know, the one thing that's been new is like you, like you mentioned regarding, you know, Charlottesville, there's a lot of like debate around if people should show up armed. We now have like the drag time story hour kind of defense, like armed defenses with John Brown gun clubs becoming more popular. But you know, the. But one of the kind of recurring things that everyone's kind of been talking about, I've been hearing like, there's so many parallels

for what we've been going through the past like five, 10 years to other kinds of things in the past. Like all of the John Brown anti-Klan committee stuff. There's just a lot of cyclical notions. I mean, even I'm here in Atlanta right now, there's this RICO grand jury indictment. Everyone's thinking about like green scare stuff. Even John Brown anti-clang committee did grand jury resistance back in like the eighties. Like it's this, these things have happened before.

And I think one thing that, you know, the quote unquote laughter anti-fascists sometimes are kind of bad at is actually passing down the history. There's this tendency that when people get involved, we're kind of forced to reinvent the wheel every time, but it's like completely unnecessary. But we tend to just keep trying the same things over and over again. So there's even people younger than me who weren't even old enough to get involved in anti-fascist stuff in like 2017, 2018. And they're now kind of growing up. There's still this fascist mobilization. You know, liberals are kind of passive because they have their guy in the White House. And we're going to be reaching a really interesting tipping point in 2024. So for these

types of people who are like either wanting to get involved or who are like just starting to realize that, hey, maybe we should actually do something about all this stuff, especially as, you know, trans existence is one of the main things under attack right now. What is some lessons from the passage you would like to be passed down to people? A couple of things that come to mind. I was reminded, because James is in San Diego, about one of the things we haven't talked about at all is the border. And that's been a recurrent theme of the state, both in terms of building repressive apparatus.

So going back to the early days of People Against Racist Terror, which is the group that I had in L.A. after John Brant and Anti-Klan Committee left, anti-Klan committee left, one of the first actions we did was there was something called American Spring at the Mexican border, which was a neo-fascist element. It kind of grew out of the previous Klan border watch that David Duke had done. And they were trying to build up a base of support for, you know, close the borders. And so we did bring people from LA and joined up with people in San Diego. And actually at one of those rallies, somebody drove a car at and nearly hit someone from the, you know, the anti-fascist forces. So I think that's an important piece of we should be thinking about. The other thing in terms of killings and shootings, you know, somebody from the Red Nation was just

shot in Albuquerque. And I think that, again, the question of sovereignty and indigenous rights is a leading edge of struggle. A lot of the struggles around missing and murdered indigenous women have to do with the fossil fuel industry and the back end and other places where, you know, women have disappeared and been killed by, you know, people in the fossil fuel industry, basically. And I think bringing all that to bear is really critical to have the breadth of consciousness and the understanding that there is a global struggle that's going on and indigenous people in particular are part of that about the survival of humanity and of the planet in a sense. And to situate anti-fascist struggle in that context, I think,

is really, really important and relates to who are our allies, who are our leadership, where is the struggle being led by? And so, you know, one of the things we uncovered here in LA is that the people involved in the militia movement started their operations by supporting Christian militias in Guatemala and the Philippines, attacking left forces in those countries and indigenous forces in those countries. And having that global perspective, and I think that's one of the really great strengths of the book, by the way, that I thought was really amazing is the coverage of anti-fascist movements all around the world and, you know, anti-fascist in India and so on. And having that sense that it's not just, you know, people of European descent or, you know, African-Americans in the United States

who are opposed to fascism, but there's a very, very broad, you know, movement around the world and inside this country of people who are experiencing fascism literally all the time that, you know, gives a strength to anti-fascism. There is an exceptionalism that exists even in the left, an American exceptionalism that exists even in the American left when it comes to how bad things are, how good we are at organizing or whatever. And I think that a lot of the times, one of the things that we often forget is that we are not the only people going through this, both in time and space. There's movements that are going on elsewhere that are facing a much deeper sort of repression than what we see in the United States. And they are still finding ways to organize.

I like to, you know, when we talk about like the attack on queer rights, and, you know, things like all of these hateful laws that are being passed, which will almost certainly be thrown out in the courts. And that's, you know, it's going to be a couple of years. But, you know, people are saying, well, this is going to make pride illegal. And this is, you know, this is the worst thing. This is like, you know, a step towards genocide and all of that stuff. And I think it's actually important for us to put things in perspective. Istanbul has a much stricter set of restrictions on queer organizing, queer demonstrations.

Pride happens every year. Pride is attacked by cops every year. They still continue to persist. What can we learn as Americans from that movement? I think that's a really important thing for the American anti-fascist scene to really start to think around and try to take this moment. As you mentioned, there's a lull that is happening now, both in the organizing and in the popular support. We need to take that moment to reflect on what is working, what is not, to regroup and to find new

approaches, new tactics. This is something that I write about in the chapter I wrote on new approaches, new tactics. This is something that I write about in the chapter I wrote on transiently fascism, right? We need to absolutely bring in historical contexts and comparative analyses into what we're doing, but that does not mean that we need to say that everything is literally the Holocaust. What we need to do is look at what are the factors, what are the causes, what are the root causes of the things that are happening, and how can we strategically organize to disrupt and to bypass those forces. So I think it's really important to have that multifaceted perspective. I think that Emily has touched on something that is really important when we say that the police are being, are attacking pride events, pride marches and such. That suggests that somebody initiated something on our side. That speaks to what it is we have to do. We have to initiate certain actions.

We cannot keep waiting for the fascists. We can't keep waiting. We can't keep being reactive. We do have to go on the offense. I mean, that's one of the reasons why myself, me, and others have been so successful is because we don't wait for the fascists to do something. We do something to them before they make a move. And we know when to do it because they basically send us signals out courtesy of their free speech that they want to do something. And

we just take those cues and say, okay, here's how we are going to go forward. We're going to let people know about you. We're going to let people know how to keep you at bay. I mean, that's the kinds of things that we need to do. We need to just basically say, we are establishing this institution. We are establishing the security around this institution, and you are not going to be able to breach this institution. The other thing that we do need to do in that, while we build that, is also make it clear to some of those that, for lack of a better term, are wishy-washy on the subject, or mainstreamers and liberals and such who are quick to defend the fascists that they say they don't believe in before they defend us, we got to start telling them to chill and we got to start telling them to pick a side and stop getting in everybody's way.

Stop being a bulwark because you're too cowardly to put up this fight or you're too interested in protecting your other interests as opposed to being concerned about what's coming down the pike. The book starts off with a discussion about a three-way fight. We definitely are in one. Do you want to explain what a three-way fight is? Well, a three-way fight is not only you're dealing with, you know, the obvious enemy, so to speak, but you're also dealing with those that are hesitant to do something about that enemy to the point that they will fight you more. To the point that they will fight you more. And frankly, it's frustrating. It is a frustrating thing, but it is there and it has been there throughout history.

And I mean, even the I mean, I'm surprised I'm actually referencing a Mel Gibson movie, but even the movie Braveheart brought that up. Now, I don't I don't think that we need to smack people upside the head with a mace. I don't think that we need to smack people upside the head with a mace. But by the same token, we do have to let people know that we do have to be a little bit more, I should say, assertive in our efforts as we go forward and basically try to route this particular fascist element. And assertive means blowing past those that are supposed to be on our side. I mean, because I was thinking about the fact that this is now the 12th anniversary of Occupy. Right. And Occupy was trying to do that. Occupy is still trying to do that in many respects, the folks that were in Occupy. respects, the folks that were in Occupy, but some of the folks, because what you also saw at Occupy were a lot of folks who thought that they will be able to take advantage of

the progress that we were making in this effort and turned it into a more fascist thing. I mean, I was just looking at a lot of the characters that come out of Occupy that went to the went to the fascist side. And when you look at who they are, you realize that you had a whole bunch of opportunities that were within our ranks that were looking for something totally different than what the rest of us. We were looking out for each other. And I could buy the true people that were dealing with Occupy Wall Street. We're looking out for each other in our communities. These guys just thought, hey, perfect opportunity to just say that we're one with them and drag them over here to the right. That's strasserism. That's straight up strasserism. But when you look at it even further, it's just a bunch of people that only cared about themselves ultimately. And we've seen it year after year after year in this fight. So I think

that it's going to be very important to build and protect our institutions and recognize what it is we are protecting them from. And it's not hard. We have shown over and over and over again that we are prepared to wage that kind of war. We just have to basically recognize it within ourselves when we have to do it. And do not wait for people to die. I mean, Heather Heyer did not have to die. No one in January 6th, regardless of how I feel about any of them, had to die. That should not be the thing that we should respond to. We already know what to do. We just need to do it. Yeah, I think it picks up on a lot of what everyone said, especially Michael. I think part of what gets out here is having a place for like broad social movements

where they're able to interact with one another and support one another. So anti-fascist movements as a defensive movement have often been essential to actually operating other kinds of organizing. You know, so like when I was working with houseless encampments and we were doing food not bombs and stuff, you get attacked by far right groups. You had to have a defensive element. There was no other choice. Same thing. I've been at union offices that were attacked by the far right.

You have to have that defensive element. And then on the same token, we're talking about mass actions against far right demonstrations. It requires people that are coming probably from all kinds of political backgrounds, but they've gotten involved from different kinds of practices. We're having mutual aid networks that support people getting there, sustaining themselves there, medical care, all kinds of component pieces. So those things require that kind of back and forth. And I think that also begs to how do you get people in? We are talking about a lot of problems with people on the moderate left, not kind of taking those next steps, those defensive steps that are necessary, but also

how do we find a pathway for them in? If we're talking about mass participation in something, if we're talking about like a revolutionary movement with huge masses of people, we have to figure out what those pathways for people are and giving them access to them. And I think also moving past what we've thought of as the far right before. I mean, people have talked about this a little bit. You know, a lot of what we think of as recent anti-fascism was built around fighting the alt-right and other kind of recent short-term projects. And what we have now is just radically different, just like it will be in a few years. And so having a deep kind of

intersectional understanding of how that works, because when you do that, you have that kind of natural understanding of where this is going to show up again, how it might interact with different communities and what role it places for you. How are you able to interact with it as this person coming into a social movement? Yeah. I mean, especially considering something I've been kind of watching, and we're seeing a little bit of it with this set of Republican primaries, is that we have an incoming new wave of kind of Gen Z and millennial Republicans who grew up in the alt-right era who are now bringing that sort of like alt-right street politics to electoralism and how that's going to be opposed is going to be,

you know, I was just talking about before how we shouldn't just try to like retread the same ground over and over again without learning the histories from the past. But like this, for a lot of people who have just been doing like street politics the past few years, figuring out how they're going to oppose fascism in this much more electoral setting is going to be an interesting shift. Because, yeah, you can punch Richard Spencer and no one really cares too much.

But if you punch someone like DeSantis, that is going to be a different thing to sort through. a different thing to kind of sort through. And so, yeah, I think that is kind of one of these shifts that, you know, maybe, maybe coming up here soon and whatever kind of evolves on the anti-fascist side to kind of meet that is going to be interesting to watch and take part in. Yeah. I think that, you know, the part of the ARA analysis has always been that fascism is built from above and below. And I think we really have to understand that, that the fascism is not only a factor of the street politics and the people who

declare themselves to be fascist, but that there are fascist elements in the structure of this society and there are fascist elements in power in this government right now. And, you know, fascism has come to power in quite a number of, you know, in Italy, this neo-fascist is the prime minister in, you know, in the United States, Matt Gaetz. And that element has a clear, you know, they're in power within the Republican Party. They control the House of Representatives in a way. And I think that that's a critical understanding, but also it speaks to the fact that fascist practices and elements exist in a lot of different places. And I think one of the things I've always tried to put out to people is that this is an aspect of the nature of imperialism, central colonialism. And I want to emphasize that because I think there's a fractal

character to what we're dealing with or holographic. think it there's a fractal character to what we're dealing with or holographic in other words any element of this society that you attempt to deal with you're actually facing the entirety of imperialism and fascism there so if you look at the labor movement right now labor is a big resurgence particularly here in southern california there's just, you know, hotel workers and restaurant workers on strike, the screen actors on strike, the writers killed on strike. And the fact that, you know, there is a fascist element to the employment structure and trying to organize it. If you look what happened with the Amazon

Union or just the fact that, again, going back in history, you know, the Taft-hartley act was written to criminalize uh uh you know communists and also solidarity with the labor boom then outlaw uh you know solidarity strikes and and that's fascist that is you have to understand that and uh you know one of the reasons that the puerto rican independence movement attacked congress was that the us attempted to put the taftHartley Act into practice against the labor movement in Puerto Rico. And the Nationalist Party said, no, we're going to counterattack. So I think that's a really critical understanding.

We started out talking about the prisons and, you know, there's nothing more fascist than prison. And one of the things they do in prison is they use privilege to try to divide the prisoners. You know, and we haven't talked much about privilege and how it operates in the society. But, you know, it's a key factor in how people are organized by the system to collaborate, to, you know, get along by going along. But even inside the prisons we've seen here in California and elsewhere, Alabama, Georgia, elsewhere, prisoners are able to organize under conditions of fascism that exist in the prisons. They have ways to communicate with each other. They've built interracial solidarity in many cases. So I think those are examples of anti-fascism that we need to embrace and understand the same way that people, you know, if you're organizing a union, you're operating on a certain level clandestinely, because if you're open about it, you're going to get fired and they're going to retaliate and they're going to, anybody you talk to is going to get fired and they're going to retaliate and they're going to anybody you talk to is going to get fired so we need to have an understanding of ways to organize that are not always i'm not talking about armed struggle i'm saying that people have to organize below the radar when

you're dealing with fascism especially when it's in power and fascism isn't a power in a lot of sectors of the society right now and people are dealing with it, as Emily said about, you know, Istanbul and pride marches, you know, so, you know, I think we need to make those connections into the labor movement, into the prison movement, into the, you know, formerly incarcerated people's movement, you know, the solidarity with indigenous struggles that are going on against fascistic colonization of their lands and, and, and struggles. And I think that if we understand

that that's an aspect of anti-fascism i think it actually strengthens what we're engaged in definitely i think it's also important just to like um i guess if people are thinking about their organizing and it's always important to hear from those struggles as well as you know to to include them but to really include them in a sense of listening and learning from rather than telling and saying, this is like a cis-het white guy. It's definitely a thing that I've perceived in the movement in the last few years, is a desire to speak a little more and listen a little less. One thing I enjoyed about your book is that when we talk about fascism

and we'd already mentioned, Michael's mentioned the border as a sort of a location for fascist experiments within the United States, which I think it's very hard to argue against living on the border. Like if you protested in 2020

against police violence, you were surveilled using technology that has been used for years where I live and against migrants and citizens who live here but um i really liked your perspective on like looking at global fascisms um because fascism is it's very easy to spend too much time defining fascism especially as anti-fascist right like it's extremely easy to be like it's not fascism unless it comes from the fascia region of italy kind of like this like cheese or champagne definition of fascism uh but they like they focus on for instance fascism in india like if i go to the border i was at the

border uh a couple of days ago right there are tons of punjabi sick people uh camped out in the desert right now because border patrol are holding them in an open air concentration camp essentially because of what's happening in india that they turn up here right and as well as bringing sort of migrant um detention resistance and migrant mutual aid into anti-fascism i think it's important anti-fascist also like we can take concrete action to protect and uh like to care for a victim of survivors of fascism i guess people have fled fascism uh and like when i think about what my background in the study of the spanish civil war right that's what my phd is about um the thing that radicalized young uh often jewish men growing up in the same part of new york that you did was often seeing

people fleeing fascism coming to their communities and then being like we can't allow that not only to not happen here but the crucial step that like we can't allow that to happen anywhere and that that being what kind of motivated them to um to travel to spain and many of many of them died fighting in the spanish civil war right but i think we could do better to do that as well uh like now i know not all of us are living in the united states right now but uh sometimes like emily said american anti-fascism can be very exceptionalist or whatever but I think that we have so much to learn from anti-fascists in um you know my sort of formative experiences were in Catalonia and Spain but also in India uh also in Russia right um and I wonder uh if if anyone

could share like sort of I guess concrete ways ways that people listening can help to expand that solidarity into like an international anti-fascism. I think there's an interesting example and it gets to what Michael was stressing about fascism being kind of colonial rule brought back to homeland. You know, a lot of the methods that were used against kind of mid-century anti-fascist organizers, for example, the Anti-Nazi League or later Anti-Fascist Action in the UK, were basically test run against Irish Republicans in Northern Ireland, right?

So those uprisings, different kind of methods of crowd control, use of quote-unquote non-lethal weapons, different kinds of forms of incarceration, then used later against the anti-Nazi League. So there's sort of a step. They're taking this colonial rule back home. That's the testing ground and then using it domestically. And I think what that actually does is create a certain bridge between two communities that there is now a point of connection where they can relate.

It doesn't mean they're in the same situation, right? Like it doesn't mean that like someone protesting in the United States is the same situation as someone in a colonized space, but having that shared system that actually binds us together in that sense of solidarity, that's a new model of safety. That's a new model of community. So it's now seeing my strength in that alignment with someone else. So connecting with communities internationally, learning from what they're doing,

but making real connections between them, ones that have a real sense of weight between them, where someone's success in international social movement has real effect on your lives and back and forth. I think committing to that is actually the kind of biggest thing we can do that creates an international movement and it

makes everyone stronger everyone more effective yeah yeah i think one of the strengths of anti-racist action was that it was always an international organization it was u.s and canada and there were a lot of chapters in canada and that really helped break some of the you know u.s exceptionalism uh understanding but he also had corresponding organizations. It was Resistencia Redskin in Colombia, in Bogota, and a couple of, Cali, I think. And, you know, I think that that really is an important element. And again, what I said is that we need to understand that, you know, similar to what Lenin said about the Russian Empire, that it's a prison house of nations,

that there are captive nations inside the borders of the United States and that indigenous sovereignty and Puerto Rican independence and Hawaiian sovereignty and a lot of other issues. And I think those are things that the fascists try to exploit also. They present themselves, fascism presents itself in the third world as a strategy for, you know, national independence when the Japanese, you know,

empire put itself forward, it was the, you know, they presented themselves as being opposing British and US imperialism in Asia, you know, that, and, you know, then they were imposing their own imperialism. But, you know, that internationalist element, I think, is really critical. And I think the same thing in labor. I think that the labor movement in this country needs to think about prison struggles as part of the labor movement, needs to think about international solidarity with labor struggles elsewhere. One of the things I raised in relation to the Screen Actors Guild and Writers Guild here is that,

you know, they raised this whole thing about artificial intelligence. And I don't know if people are aware, but artificial intelligence depends on tens of thousands of people in the Philippines and elsewhere that are working, you know, as gig workers processing stuff to put it into artificial intelligence. And the same thing you were saying about the border, the technology of self-driving vehicles

is based on the same technology they're using for motion detection on the border. using for motion detection on the border. And the reason they're doing that is also because the people driving self-driving vehicles is not just Google and Uber, but it's the U.S. Army Tank Division, which wants to have automated self-driving tanks the same way they have drones. And having that understanding that it is up against the global system and the fascists are a piece of that, but they're not the only piece of that, I think is really, really critical to understanding what we have to deal with. We talk about, you know, what would a fascist government look like if it was in control, you know, full control with no opposition. I think there are plenty of examples of that. There's a fascist war happening right now in Ukraine.

And I think that there's so much that we can learn from what is going on there that oftentimes I think that as anti-fascists, we find ourselves wanting to be with the left that we get into a political situation that gets muddled. that we get into a political situation that gets muddled. I went to the border twice in Ukraine when the war broke out. I would relive Unite the Right 100 times before I had to go back to that again. We don't understand scales until you have seen it, until you've seen the thousand yards there from hundreds of people,

you know, pouring over the border. I'm sure, James, you're very familiar with this, with the border work that you're doing there. These things are so often distant and abstract to us that we lose sight that we think that we can influence things within our own spaces that will then have an impact on these bigger systems, and we can't, right? So I think that, you know, to go back to, you know, what would be the call of action? You know, what would I want the listener to take

away from this? I think that this is about, as somebody said earlier, listen, listen more and speak less, right? Try to read, try to, to see what people elsewhere are doing, how they are organizing, what their needs are. You know, how do we do mutual aid in earthquake and flood stricken areas? How do we do mutual aid for refugees who are fleeing a war and things like that. There's just so, so much out there that we need to bring into perspective. And if you think that you can fix any of it, or even just a small part of it, simply through speaking up or, you know, awareness campaigns, I think that you're misled. So I think my call to action is go out, read books, meet people, get off of Twitter. It's grass for me to say it,

but the master's tools can't dismantle the master's house, right? We can't keep this pattern of outreach cycles up in order to move the issue forward. We have to come up with something new. My challenge to people is to put your brains together and figure out what that news is going to look like. Maybe that's where we could end actually is with each of you suggesting like something like Emily has just done, right? Something to read, something to do and an action to take that could concretely

sort of help us oppose and rebut and push back against fascism. I think it was pretty much going back to what I was saying earlier, that it will begin when we take the bull by the horns. It will begin whenever we decide that we are going to establish this. I mean, it goes back, you know, I grew up with hip hop. I was in the punk scene. Both those both those genres, both those cultures were created by people who by those who didn't see, say, the mainstream listening to them. So they said, you know what? We don't need them. We need to just go ahead and do what we need to do so we can benefit what it is we want to do. And that's the attitude that we got to have. We got to have that hip hop attitude, got to have that punk attitude. And we just simply got to build the institutions that will

address the situation. And I will say it again, that's what Occupy was about. I think we need to continue to learn the lessons from Occupy in order to go forward. And once we start doing that, first of all, when we do that, we're going to see, again, people trying to either co-op or take it down. And we got to also protect ourselves from that as well. I mean, I know I'm repeating what I had said earlier, but I think that the solutions, and you know what I didn't say? I think the solutions are already being implemented.

I think that we all have been working and doing this. Folks that aren't on this podcast, folks that would never be on any pockets are just basically putting their time in to make sure that um that things are done properly i just got i just saw on the news that they had uh in delaware they just passed the law against um i guess what they call panic um panic killings in regards to the lgbtq community uh you know the what they used to call back in the day the gay panic thing gay panic panic defense yeah yeah yeah delaware became the 17th state i believe yesterday to um to make that illegal it should have been illegal in the first place but um but they basically for those who don't know what that means it generally means you cannot kill

somebody because you're freaked out over someone being gay i mean that's just basically what it is concern for it happened after um jenny jones uh somebody expressed their feelings towards another man. And that person after the Jenny Jones show had murdered that person. And the killer, instead of getting first degree murder, got second degree murder because he used the gay panic defense. So people initially, that was where everything started. And everybody was saying that we got to do something about that. If it was not for us putting together the mechanisms and the institutions to basically voice our concerns, voice our issues and say we got to do something about this, today would not have happened.

It should not be 17 states, by the way. It should be all 50. But that's the kind of things that we need to do. These are the things that it's all going to depend on us and how we react to things that is going to make all the difference in the world. So when everybody's ready, let's rock and roll. I think I'm really interested in getting people connected to social movements for their entire lives and seeing things through being really connected communities. And I think that's about looking about where people fit in, where they feel comfortable building those relationships because it happens both at the kind of local

and national international scale. So finding, I think, a piece of pathway for folks. I mean, right now, I think considering what we're dealing with, with climate and economic collapse, mutual aid networks are an absolute essential piece of that. So it's the labor movement and going where the far right is having their front lines, making our defensive front lines. So, for example, in defense of trans health care against antitrans legislation, in defense of queer events like Drag Queen Story Hour, that's absolutely important. And we have those relationships now. So it's about sort of finding a place to be able to reproduce those social movements and grow them. And again, like Daryl said, people are doing

that. And I think like, as there are shifts, people have to kind of redefine that a a little bit but having that adaptability is what we've kind of learned over this rapidly changing environment the last few years yeah i'll second that again to give people a little bit of sense of the longer view i think that the rise of the christian right in this country has a lot to do with the destruction of the labor movement and the collapse of organized labor was that vacuum was filled by, you know, the Christian right, because the labor movement at one point did touch people throughout their lives and their culture. And it was not just in your workplace, but it was a community organization. And I think that we have to rebuild that, you know, from the bottom up. And it is happening. There's a lot of young people

involved in labor organizing. I think that, again, what I said earlier about the fractal nature of the system, I think one of the things people often say is anything they're trying to do, they have an enemy. It's not just a problem that they're trying to face. There is an enemy out there that is trying to enforce the system that we have as it collapses. And I think that that's critical. So yes, the mutual aid and the kind of things Emily was talking about, I think are critical. I think people working on people's assemblies, I was at this dual power gathering in the Midwest, and there was just one up in Portland recently. And I think that the understanding that all the power and all the wealth that this system possesses is actually stolen from the people that it oppresses and exploits and that it's our power and it's our power to take it back.

We have the creative power. I think that's critical. And that their power is exploitive and power over and our is the power to create, I think, that understanding and that concept of solidarity. And I do think that again, Stephen Biko, part of the Black Consciousness Movement in South Africa said, the greatest weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the

minds of the oppressed. And I think to the extent that we can wage a struggle for a different consciousness that is not based on privilege and is not based on getting along by going along. It's not based on individualism, you know, but is based on collective solidarity. And that actually disempowers the people that we're dealing with and threatens them in ways that, you know, they're freaked out.

They understand better than we do the the tenuous nature of their power and uh you know the reason for fascism to turn to fascism is that they want to try to intimidate people and uh you know uh you know break people people solidarity up and i think that that you know we need to understand there's a dialectic there and to the extent that we can create those connections between people, it actually disempowers them, the fascists and the state. I have a different perspective on the three-way fight. I think the three-way fight is versus the fascists, the self-declared fascists, and against the state and the capitalist bourgeoisie. They're not identical.

They have contradictions with each other. We can exploit those and drive wedges of our own. I think we have to find wedge issues that peel people off from their identification with the oppressor, with white supremacy and with imperialism and pull people together who've been separated from that identification with the state and with white power and bring them into solidarity with the global majority of people who are struggling for survival and a better world.

Does anyone have anything to plug besides the book? Yeah. We explicitly plugged the books. I don't think we did. Like, where can you buy it what's it called yeah i i can plug in and do the uh the self-promotion um so the book is no passer on anti-fascist dispatches from a world in crisis so we all have chapters in it i edited it it's with ak press who listeners are probably familiar with so you can get it at ak press i always recommend folks go to AK Press and buy it directly if they can, but you can get it pretty much anywhere.

And it's a hefty read. It's about 500 pages, about 25 chapters, and it really covers the gamut. Some of the stuff we talked about, some stuff we didn't get to. So it's a really good overview of some of the different conversations happening in the anti-fascist movement, and hopefully where it goes in the future. Yeah'll second that i think the chapter in anti-fascism the black metal scene was really fascinating and worth the price of the book all by itself honestly the stuff about india i i did want to talk to other books i've been involved in one is called the blue agave revolution it's a self-published myself and Oso Blanco, an indigenous political prisoner.

Contact antiracistactionsantiracist.org or email me antiracist underscore late yahoo.com. I was also involved with, although I did not edit or anything, but I contributed a lot of material to We Go Where They Go, which is from PM Press. It's the history of ARA.

And it's chock full of incredible material about specificity. One of the things we didn't talk about ARA was involved in was Copwatch. But, you know, just a lot of, you know, cultural material and other stuff there that's well worth reading. Well, I guess I'll chime in and say I have a lot of stuff out there right now. One of the things that you can look for with me is a documentary that was put out in 2018 called Alt-Right Age of Rage. It's somewhere online. I believe it's on Tubi right now. It was on Netflix. I found out that the reason why it's not on Netflix anymore is because Netflix has deemed it too political. So but you can still find it out there. It's a really good

primer on basically what it is we're fighting in this current time. We Don't Walk in Fear is the latest documentary that I've been involved with. Some students in Villanova University wanted to do a documentary about me. And it's not exactly available to the public. What I've been, you can probably find it at film festivals and things like that. But what I've been doing is showing it at various events that I've been invited to, whether it's some sort of speaking engagement or what have you. So it's only a half hour long, but if anybody is in a university or in a bookstore or whatever, and would like me to come out and show the documentary to folks and talk about it later, please feel free to give me,

hit me up over at our website, one peoples project.com. We also have a news line. That's Ida Vox.com. Both are on threads and on IG. We also have also, the last thing that I would like to hype is also in 2018, there are, there was the movie skin where Mike Coulter who played Luke, and it's in the TV show Evil, he plays me. It's about a neo-Nazi, someone from the Vinlander Social Club, one of the Nazis and forces, who got out, thanks to myself and others. And it's a beautiful story, and it's been out since 2018. The short film is a different story. I'm not going to say too much about it because I you need to watch it.

You can find it on YouTube or you can find a feature feature skin on Amazon Prime. But you can find the the final short film on YouTube. It actually won an Oscar in 2019. And I'm listed as a consulting producer. So I guess I have an Oscar. And that's about it. I mean, if, if you want me to speak, come to your colleges or whatever to speak or show the documentary, we don't walk in fear. Feel free to give me a ring. I'll be happy to see you. I love traveling. Like I mentioned, one other thing actually I did, we talked earlier. I love traveling. Society of Native Nations and American Indian Airwaves on the radio. We have La Raza radio, a lot of other very worthwhile.

It's kpfk.org. And we're in a current membership drive for October. Anyone wants to join the station, they don't have to live in LA. And antiracist.org has about 35 years of Turning the Tide and a bunch of stuff. Actually, from earlier, I put some of the stuff from Brother Reform, from Sex Sexism that I worked on in the 70s up there, including a letter from Michelle McGee, who was just recently released finally after, I think, 48 years in prison, a survivor of the Marin Courthouse Rebellion. I don't have anything to plug. I have a book that I'm working on getting representation for, but that's still a little bit too early for me to plug.

So I'll just maybe plug a little bit of what is continuing to happen in Charlottesville before we end. So some of you may not be aware that criminal cases are still being brought against the neo-Nazis who marched with the tiki torches. Nazis who marched with the tiki torches. We have sort of successfully convinced the local prosecutor to do something about these fascists who have obviously terrorized the community and continue to do it in their other communities. Whether or not you agree with that approach, the community in Charlottesville and Alpenraul still needs that support and that witnessing as this all heads to trial this winter. We're expecting some renewed fascist attention. So I'll just give a shout out for the community and ask for your awareness.

Great. Well, thank you very much for your time, everyone. I think that was really instructive and interesting. And yeah, everyone should read the book. I read much of it before we started today. It's great. It's very interesting. Yeah, thank you very much. Hey, guys, I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs,

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Listen to Blacklit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to It Could Happen Here. I'm Garrison Davis. This is the show where we talk about how everything kind of feels like it's falling apart and how we can perhaps sometimes put some of that back together. In about a month's time, there's going to be what's being labeled a quote-unquote mass non-violent direct action converging on the Cop City construction site in Atlanta, Georgia. Now, a few weeks ago, I interviewed the two people going around the country giving the Block Cop City speaking tour in preparation for this upcoming action next month in Atlanta. Like always, the opinions of those interviewed on the show don't necessarily reflect the views

of the show or myself. And with this action in particular, there has been quite the variety of opinions regarding its risk level and its ideological and tactical validity. But the action is going to happen. It is going to take place on November 13th, no matter, you know, some people disagreeing with aspects of it or having concerns about aspects of it. It is going to take place. So my interest in putting out this episode is to have a very open and clear discussion regarding some of the questions people have about this quote-unquote non-violent action, and also provide enough information so that people can make their own informed decision regarding what's going to

happen next November. So with that, here is my conversation with Sam and Jamie from the Block Cop City Speaking Tour. Joining me today is Sam from Block Cop City and Jamie Peck. Both of you have been going around the country. I think it's around 70 cities right now doing a speaking tour to talk about this upcoming action in November to block Cop City. Thanks for coming on, guys. No problem.

Yeah, thanks for having us. So I assume anyone who's listening to this is already familiar with Cop City, whether through their own keeping up with the news or even if they just listen to the show. We have covered Cop City quite extensively the past two years. So let's talk about this kind of upcoming action because it's very different than kind of the previous mobilizations that we've seen, which have taken form as like weeks of action. We had one last June, we had one the previous March. So what's different about this new upcoming three-day kind of mobilization? So yeah, obviously it's taking place on one day instead of a whole week. And there's gonna be two

days of nonviolent direct action training leading up to the day of, which will be really important to make sure that everybody feels prepared for what we're about to do. It's different in a few different ways. I feel like this is Passover. I'm answering the four questions. How is this action different from all other actions? Well, it's going to be a real centralization of efforts because other weeks of action have been a little more diffuse, a little more spread out. And here, we're bringing to bear the full power of all the people coming from all over the country in the same place at the same time, because there's safety in numbers, and there's power in numbers. And I feel like

the June week of action, people were going all over the place, not really sure what to do when. And I talked to a lot of people who were like, just tell us what to do. Tell us what the move is on this particular day, and we'll be there. And there is no one to do that, which is sometimes a hazard of anarchistic movements. Nobody's in charge. And we're not in charge right now either, I should say. Everybody is going to have a chance to have input on the final plan in a thing called spokes councils that we're doing the weekend before the action. But yeah, I think we're picking a lane and we're doing a thing. And this particular lane has been chosen for a number of different reasons.

The movement is in an interesting place right now where more people than ever know about Cop City, more people than ever are opposed to Cop City as evidenced by the 120,000 petition signatures that the referendum campaign was able to collect to actually get a referendum on the ballot to let the people of Atlanta actually vote on whether or not they want this thing built. Of course, the city is throwing every trick in the book at them because they do not want to let the people vote. But on the other hand, right, lots of people know about it. Lots of people oppose it, but the number of people who are willing and able to show up and do direct action against it has dwindled. And that's for a few different reasons, right? There's been so much repression

of the movement. Um, a hundred people at least are now facing charges. We've got people facing domestic terrorism charges. We've got people facing RICO charges, just like an absurd overreach of the state, even according to mainstream legal scholars. So we really need a way for people to feel empowered doing direct action again. And this is what we've settled upon as the solution. And maybe Sam can take it from there. Maybe Sam can take it from there. Sure. Thanks. Yeah. To build upon that, I suppose, right? You were sort of asking, why is it that less people than ever are taking embodied action in the forest? And one of those reasons also is people have been directing attention to other initiatives, right? So the 120,000 petition signatures was gathered by something like 3,000 volunteers. you know, gathered by something like 3000 volunteers.

There's all sorts of different parties throughout the movement who have been trying, you know, just another diverse tactic, right? This movement has seen incredibly diverse tactics over the last two years, all sort of moving in unison with one another. And we sort of see Block Cop City as just another type of tactic in a larger repertoire of a toolkit. You know, we haven't actually had an instance of over a thousand people doing embodied direct action in the forest. Like that's never occurred in this campaign. We've had a lot of people during some weeks of action, but this is a little bit different in scope.

It's a little bit different in flavor. I liked what you were saying, Jamie, about the sort of like a lot of other sort of convergences in Atlanta that were called weeks of action where we're distributed, we're very autonomously organized, and we're sort of treading a line between like the main sort of organizing style. You know, we're on tour right now, right? I'm calling in from Vancouver and you're over in Maine, a vast continental-wide tour. One of the primary functions of this tour is the activation of affinity groups to catalyze and come down to Atlanta so that crews can have the confidence, the flexibility, the warmth, and the revelry that comes with moving through space with your homies, with your comrades,

while at the same time, there's a very large cohort of various logistical teams trying to figure out various programming events, the locations of these trainings, how to feed people, how to house people, how to keep people entertained, things like that. So I think the scope is larger, So I think the scope is larger, potentially hitting 80 cities if we can finalize a few final requests. And the action itself, as Jamie was saying, is confined to one day. But it's a four-day convergence. being our goal is to sort of carve out a space that day of on the morning of Monday, November 13th, which thousands of people can take embodied action together in the forest again. When you say like embodied action, I know this thing has been advertised as using quote unquote strategic nonviolence, as opposed to like moralistic nonviolence, like where

you like oppose violent direct action on principle. Instead, this has been trying to employ nonviolence as a strategic action. Do you want to talk a little bit about kind of how that's being envisioned? Because I know there's certainly, even in Atlanta, there's a lot of people who are either skeptical or confused or fear that there's like other safety issues with an action as public as this, right? Because you're trying to get thousands of people to show up. So this is this very publicly announced thing, which also gives the police a big heads up. So I know there's been a lot of, you know, there's a lot of questions.

And I feel like, you know, this aspect of nonviolence is a very interesting one because the Defend the Atlanta Forest movement has been, I think, very historically defined by, you know, very spontaneous, fiery acts of sabotage. So I guess, yeah, just let's I want to kind of I'm interested in this kind of strategic nonviolence aspect. Well, I don't know that it's been defined by the Strategic Act of Sabotage, which, by the way, I don't consider violence against private property to be violence. I tend to apply that to human beings only. But yeah, we certainly don't disavow violence. We don't disavow any tactics in this fight. I mean, the highest level of violence that any activists have even been accused of is probably about the same level that you'd find

if you've ever had a Roman candle fight with your friends, right? You're shooting fireworks in each other's general direction. Obviously, that wasn't happening for fun when folks did it in the activism world. But yeah. Why nonviolence? Why now? It's a great question. And when people are doing a higher risk action, it's inherently something that you can't really go around the country talking about and engaging groups of people that you don't know. So we wanted to strike this balance, right? And what are we doing? Well, yes, technically, it's a crime. So was what Martin Luther King did in the 1960s. And we wanted to draw on that legacy, right? Because the civil rights movement has a deep, deep legacy in Atlanta itself.

So we've had rallies at the MLK Center. And now, so okay, we're doing a thing, right? There's 1000 people there. There's children, there's clergy, it's in broad daylight. The state is sort of caught in a bind now because, okay, it could arrest a thousand people in broad daylight and charge them with domestic terrorism. That would create a political crisis and that would be an international outrage. And I think it would also be fairly unprecedented. It's possible that that would happen, although I don't think that's what's going to happen. There was recently a similar kind of direct action on the construction site that the Faith Coalition Against Cop City did. Actually, five people chained themselves to the construction equipment and they were arrested. They're all out on misdemeanors now, which is what you usually get

charged with for a protest of that nature. So yeah, the state could hypothetically arrest a thousand people and charge them with terrorism. That would be an international outrage. That would be a political crisis. On the other hand, the state could do... And there are signs that it's been pulling back, right? Because what I just said, if the state charges people with misdemeanors for doing the exact same thing that people were recently charged with terrorism or hit with RICO charges for doing, that will also serve to further delegitimize these charges for the people already facing them. Mass arrests are certainly a pretty big concern for people when they're deciding if they want to go to such an

action. And I mean, because this action is happening and, you know, one of the most, I would say it's probably in like the top five most policed areas of the country right now is in the South River Forest, specifically the Cop City construction site. It's certainly a concern a lot of people have, especially when, you know, we're talking about possibly police arresting hundreds of people, trying to kettle them in the site. It's certainly a concern a lot of people have especially when you know we're talking about possibly police arresting hundreds of people trying to kettle them in the site it's it's certainly a very very valid concern to have i'll also add a little bit to that so for me the the question of like mass arrest is actually maybe not even in the top five reasons why i'm interested in and doing this campaign um i think it obviously is a possibility right i would say the goal of this action um for me at least is not to get arrested

obviously like um you know many civil disobedience campaigns like that's an explicit part of their understanding yeah like a lot of change right yeah a lot of like the extinction rebellion kind of tactics even some of the more kind of Earth First tactics kind of revolve around being arrested as a part of the tactic itself. And there's certainly been a lot of pushback towards that type of like self-sacrificial tactic here in Atlanta the past few years. And kind of in the general kind of anarchist milieu that's kind of been like stewing. and kind of in the general kind of anarchist milieu that's kind of been like stewing that, you know, is this kind of self-sacrifice of being arrested actually useful in any way?

And I'm sure that is part of some people's thought process going into this is, you know, if there's a decent chance I am going to get arrested just for walking onto a site, is it worth it? But sorry, I realized I interrupted you and went on a short, a short rant. No, that's okay. It's a, it's a, it's a very important issue to a lot of us. Right. So yeah, like sort of, as I was saying, like the,

the goal of this act is action is not to get arrested, but, but obviously as you were saying, like we're waltzing onto the fucking sorry cop city construction site uh it's a very good chance to say the least um and but for me the other interesting parts about this is is right is is embodied action in the forest has just not felt possible for months and months and months there hasn't been an occupation of the forest since the cops killed tort in January of this year, except for a couple days during the March week of action. But largely speaking, the forest has been held by big, scary men with big, scary guns for many months now. And the horizons feel incredibly obscured. You know, it's very unclear what the movement could do right now that could jumpstart

our energies, that could serve as a container for the thousands and thousands and thousands of disillusioned and disenfranchised folks who have been working tirelessly at other methods of change as well, right? So our sort of theory is that the most powerful action that we can do is one that's sort of defined by our power in numbers, by our power in our unity, by our power in sticking together. So for me, the interesting question isn't even necessarily what happens on November 13th of this year, the day of the action. For me, the interesting question is like, what new horizons does this open up in the movement? How we can reactivate and recatalyze our energy and understand and prove to ourselves in a collective fashion that embodied action in the forest is indeed possible at a mass level. hasn't actually occurred, right? What's going to happen is more people than ever will be in the forest together at the same time. And that right now is precisely what's needed in this moment. And the only way to do that as we're doing this publicly and above ground, one, to help aid in that sort of facilitation of just a numbers game, right? And then two is like, we want people to be

able to make an informed and consensual decision on how they want to engage. And the only way that they can do that is for them to actually know what the heck is going to happen, right? So we're going around and being incredibly clear about what the plan is and how the finalized version of the plan will be, as Jamie sort of opened with, discussed democratically and horizontally at these in-person outdoor COVID safe spokes council meetings on Saturday, November 11th and Sunday, November 12th down there in Atlanta, where all of these affinity groups from around the country, around the state and around the city of Atlanta will sort of elect one of their homies to go to

this larger general assembly type thing that will then sort of democratically and horizontally determine what the actual specifics of Monday's plan will be. Are there any sort of community agreements that we want to uplift and highlight so that we can all sort of know and be on the same page and move in a similar way together? And those could be, I don't want to speak for what they are, because those will be determined in the Spokes Council. But there's sort sort of like there's been questions i guess lastly there's been questions about well what does that actually look like to maintain a level of non-violence whatever that might actually mean in a space right so like i'm sure a lot of folks listening and myself included probably all of us here have have witnessed uh you know for lack of a word, peace policing or something to that effect, right? Our wager with this, our goal with this is the activation of

affinity groups of crews that roll up together who enter into this sort of like consensual horizontal decision-making space where community agreements are explicitly laid out in the days leading up to the action. Those specific affinity groups can hold each other accountable to those norms in whatever way that they want, right? You and your homies holding it down for one another in like what we're calling for, right, is nonviolence, like that we can debate, we can have a heady political debate about like the meaning of violence and the meaning of nonviolence, but like the language of nonviolence has a rich history in American social justice movements, right? That term has meaning to a lot of people. And that's actually what's being advocated for on this day.

But only on that day, right? Like, so what we're talking about is like in this specific space that we're going to like create together, this is what we're doing, what we're calling for in this moment in time, in this specific geography. If people have other ways to engage in other spaces or at other times, one of the hallmarks of the movement is that by all means they should, right?

That's what's kept this movement strong. And this is no different. Yeah, I'd like to add that there's definitely a precedent for this within the movement. There were probably a number of events like this, but this was the one that I was there for. There was a march, a rally and a march at the MLK Center

during the March Week of Action. And it was put on by Community Movement Builders, which is a great group, all-Black group, organizing in specifically Black working working class communities in Atlanta, led by Kamau Franklin. And he put out a statement before this rally in March saying, you know, attention comrades, this particular event is going to be a low risk event.

We've decided that is what we need today. We've done a lot of work in the community, getting community members to come out to this who maybe haven't been that involved in the past. A lot of older working class Black people are going to be there. Please don't do anything that's going to attract extra attention from the cops. Don't do anything spicy. Don't break windows. If they tell you to stay on the sidewalk, stay on the sidewalk. Not that there's anything wrong with those tactics in general. And he went out of his way to say, we do not denounce these tactics in general. It is just

not the right thing to do today at this particular thing. And everybody pretty much listened and everybody bathed themselves. And I thought it was a really cool example of, you know, the respect, the mutual respect across different corners of this movement. Yeah, I've definitely been thinking about that action in relation to this upcoming kind of event. I think it was on the Thursday of the fifth week of action. A few days after there was like the mass arrests at, at the music festival. Um, cause I mean, they were, they were in, in, in, in the lead up to that community movement builders March, there were very similar questions around like, yeah, like who's going to enforce nonviolence, which is kind of a silly question. And there is, you know,

there is precedent absolutely of, of people people peace policing and even turning over people to the cops. That is a precedent. But in this case, you know these specific people and community movement builders have been pretty down with the more militant aspects of this movement for years. And, you know, in the hours before that action, you know, people sought and gained more clarification on like, no, like, we're not going to like fuck you over. But like, hey, we're trying to like bring our grandmas and our kids to this. And not that the police need any excuse to, you know, attack people. But this is, you know, this is the thing that we're planning. This is what we're trying to do. You don't have to come if you don't want to. And, you know, and it is that type of like mutual understanding and agreement that actions like this kind of rest on. Because I certainly know that there's probably a good deal of forest defenders who, you know, would like to jump at the opportunity to do, you know, spicy stuff on the site. Because that's a, you know, from their perspective, that's a very, it's a very attractive proposal, which, you know, also has preced, that's a very, it's a very attractive proposal, which, you know, also has precedence in these types of big mass mobilizations.

There's certainly aspects of that that kind of intersect with this, especially, you know, one concern people may have is that this is being pushed as like, hey, we're, you know, we're going to all these cities, we're trying to mobilize all these people, get 1000 people, we're all planning this thing together. There's a certain risk that that type of language could be turned against any of the possibly hundreds of people arrested on March 13th and have that roll in to the RICO charges that people are facing in Georgia. Now, I also kind of, from my understanding, part of this action is to kind of showcase the kind of absurdity of these recode charges by demonstrating that this is like very typical civil rights kind of, you know, social movement organizing.

But I think those two things, I think, can actually coexist. Where, yes, this is very typical civil rights organizing. And also the state, specifically the state that in Atlanta have not cared at all and is very willing to use charges like this as a chilling tactic to suppress any future protest or mobilization against cop city. So this is, I think, one other or mobilization against cop city. So this is like, I think one, one other dynamic that people are certainly thinking about in terms of, you know,

deciding if they want to participate in something like this. Sure. Yeah. Above all, one of the primary functions of repression, right. Is to, to scare us into inaction. Right. And in the face of that that the worst thing that we can do is cower away and shrink and precisely this type of mass mobilization is the ultimate show of solidarity with all people who have been swept up into various trumped up legal charges related to this movement and um and also there's you know in throughout the history of American social movements, there's, there's, there's precedent after precedent after precedent of people organizing their communities and their friends that they care about to travel to a place of, you know, of injustice and stand in solidarity together. like this isn't a classic organizing tactic it's nothing particularly new it's the first time that i've been involved in sort of this scale of organizing and this sort of specific flavor um i think with any action right just because we call it non-violence doesn't mean that

violence won't occur on the site specifically maybe at the hands of the police or other law enforcement agencies right uh just because we call it it nonviolence doesn't mean that there isn't risk involved. Right. With any action that we go to, there's risk involved. But, you know, our understanding is that the risk of inaction far outweighs the risk of action in this moment. Yeah, because they're going to build that thing if nobody does anything. They're trying to build it right now. And what's going to happen after that? Well, there's going to be hundreds and hundreds more cops on the streets,

trained in all the latest militarized technological ways to, you know, oppress and terrorize civilian populations and put down the next big popular uprising, which they've connected it with very explicitly. So we should be thinking about it in that way, too. And, you know, we're a generation without victories, right? It just sort of feels like we... I don't want to minimize the real tangible wins that do indeed happen. But largely speaking, it feels like we're a generation without victories. We need to win social struggles. And tens of thousands of people from around the world are watching the Defend the Atlanta Forest movement, hoping that it wins, right? So I sort of asked

myself, what would have happened if Standing Rock would have won, right? Like Standing Rock raised the bar for what it means to resist a pipeline encampment on unceded indigenous territory in this country. It raised the bar for that, right? So the next time that invariably rolls around, hopefully we can begin from that point. But the pipeline is built, right? Oil is flowing through it. Oil is leaking through it. It didn't win that element of the work. And that's why it's important that we have victories. And that's why, you know, there's so much, so many people pouring so much energy into the defend the Atlanta forest, stop cop city, no Hollywood dystopia campaign, because we know it's winnable. But we need to ratchet it up. And this is precisely the sort of level of accessible, but also drastically heightened level of ratcheting up of our intensity of our collective power together that's possible in this moment. ratcheting up of our intensity of our collective power together that's possible in this moment. One thing that, Sam, you kind of mentioned earlier in this conversation is that this plan is really just one spear in the many that's trying to put cracks in the facade of the Cop City project.

And this action is really just being put in relation to a whole bunch of other things that could happen that would eventually lead to Cop City being stopped. I think that's a really important aspect to kind of clarify because, you know, there are some detractors who are, you know, framing this action as being like the only, you know, path forward that organizers are wanting to do. And I don't know, this movement's been very, very based on people taking their own spontaneous action and there being not just one strategy, not just one plan. There's always a big, a big, you know, litany of things that could be going on, which all kind of starts to put pressure on this, on this house of cards, so to speak. There's a political crisis, a ruin in Atlanta, and it has been for a very long time,

right? Andre Dickens, for some reason, has put all of his chips into this thing, and he is like hated for it, right? The Atlanta Police Foundation has taken out millions and millions and millions of dollars of loans to build this thing. If they fail to build Cop City, which they will, then they will default on those loans and they might go bankrupt. So this entire project is essentially a house of cards. And it doesn't really feel that way because it's being buttressed on all sides by corporations, by crony politicians, by big men with big guns, you know, but they're doing so precisely because it's fragile, precisely because it's a house of cards and there's zero buy-in from the community and from people and standing in solidarity around the world for this project. What could be a fatal death blow to this movement is a mass quantitative uptick in the number of people taking action in the forest.

And that would be a new and novel blow to this thing that it hasn't really seen. There really is a battle happening over the like, who gets to use this language of social justice and who gets to draw on the legacy of the civil rights movement. Right. And there are two really competing narratives right now. You have the Stop Cop City movement, which has a pretty complete analysis, I would say, of the ways that racial oppression and class exploitation power American capitalism, right? And the ways that Cop City feed into and enable those things with the help of the bourgeois state. And then you have the cynical take from the city of Atlanta and from the political class. I'm looking at a post that just, I think,

just was posted by the city of Atlanta Twitter account. It says, Mayor Andre for Atlanta welcomed guests to the March on Washington's 60th Dream Youth Panel at North Atlanta High School. Mayor Dickens highlighted the significance of MLK's nonviolence movement and shared his hopes that our youth will work together to fulfill MLK's dream. Hashtag M-O-W-60. So there we have a cynical attempt to harness the legacy of the civil rights movement, right? Because what the fuck is he even talking about? Like, how are you going to work together to fulfill MLK's dream of, you know, freedom, equality, not just in terms of who gets to buy things at a particular store, but like true economic power and equality for everyone,

especially black proletarians who have served a very specific and important role in American capitalism, right? What is he talking about? If not, like, we're doing exactly what MLK used to do. This is a nonviolent act of civil disobedience. So what could he, what else could he mean by that? Does he mean voting for Democrats?

Does he mean, you know, working for NGOs? Does he mean joining this political class? Because I think like it, it actually makes me feel better that the people of Atlanta seem to know that this is bullshit, despite all of the propaganda that's been coming out from from the state and from the, you know, the bourgeois media and the mainstream press that just kind of uncritically reports the things that the mayor says, the things that the cops say. The propaganda isn't working. 120,000 people signed this petition in a city of 500,000.

I mean, I think they can clearly see who's really carrying on this project of social justice and equality. Great. I always love checking up on the City of Atlanta Twitter account because at least once a day they post some absolutely absurd thing. I guess the last thing I think it's probably worth mentioning is that a big part of this plan is trying to catalyze affinity groups to come to the city, you know, specifically with the idea of them participating in this action on November 13th. But, you know, nothing is stopping affinity groups from pursuing other forms of direct action during the four or so days they might be in town.

I think that's, you know, a big, a large part of this movement's been very based on like self-determination and radical autonomy, whether that includes your ability to participate in big collective mass actions or just having fun with your friends around the city, like what happened near the end of the last week of action where eight motorcycles mysteriously vanished from the material plane. So we're about a month away from this. If people are interested and want to kind of learn more information about this proposal, where can people find said information? Yeah, thanks for that. We're currently in the middle of our WeLani Worldwide Mass Action Speaking Tour, 80 cities from Portland, Maine to Portland, Oregon, Vancouver to Tijuana, and everywhere in between. Jamie and I will also be co-hosting a Zoom tour stop on Saturday, October 14th at 3 p.m. Eastern time. Check out blockcopcity.org for information on those tour stops, including the ones on Zoom. There's also going to be a schedule for the

weekend's festivities that is coming up quite soon, which could include several cultural events, welcoming ceremonies, two in-person spokes council meetings, general direct action, nonviolent direct action trainings, as well as other ways to spend time, quality time together down in the forest leading up to the mass action on the morning of Monday, November 13th. together down in the forest leading up to the mass action on the morning of Monday, November 13th. If people have resources they would like to donate to the movement, whether that be in the form of in-person housing, help with transportation, help with collective cooking processes, help with social media outreach, journalistic outreach, help with just thinking through this thing, right?

outreach help with just thinking through this thing right um and how we can make it as empowering and successful um as possible and help sort of allow this to to once again raise the bar for what it means to to fight against deforestation to fight against over policing in black and brown communities around the country to fight against economic injustice and the attack on dignified forms of life across social movements and regions, you can contact us via our contact form on the webpage, which you can find on blockcopcity.org slash contact. And there's a contact form to fill out. There's also a Gmail, blockcopcity at gmail.com. So if any of those things, or if you want to figure out how to plug in, feel free to direct your correspondence to one of those channels. Yeah. BlockCopCity.org. You can watch our hype video. You can read our invitation to action. You can... Well, the tour might be mostly over by then. But you can look at where the tour has been.

Lots of good information on that website. and there's also lots of ways to get in touch so yeah hope to see you all in november yeah you're cordially invited to activate an affinity group come down to november between friday veterans day november 10th to monday november 13th and then also it's important to note that probably on the 14th and the 15th, there'll be collective days of healing and anti-repression work that will be happening citywide as well. That does it for us today on the show. Once again, thanks to Sam and Jamie for talking with me about this action. Hopefully you have a little bit more information about this than you had going into it. You can certainly find more information about this action and, you know, a variety of

other opinions on the scenes.noblogs website and other kind of anarchist news websites, if you want to go seeking out those other opinions. See you on the other side. Hey guys, I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast, Post High is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. You know that rush of endorphins you feel after a great workout? Well, that's when the real magic happens. So if you love hearing real, inspiring stories from the people you know, follow, and admire, join me every week for Post Run High.

It's where we take the conversation beyond the run and get into the heart of it all. It's lighthearted, pretty crazy, and very fun. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora, an anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time.

Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jack Peace Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me and a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while commuting or running errands, for those who find themselves seeking solace, wisdom, and refuge between the chapters. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry,

we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary works while uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them. Blacklit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to life. Listen to Blacklit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, everybody, and welcome to It Could Happen Here. My name is Shereen, and a lot has happened recently, and we definitely need to talk about it. There's a lot to cover, and things are changing

every day. I can't possibly talk about everything in a 30-minute podcast episode, but just for context, I'm recording the bulk of this on Wednesday, October 11th. There are many different things that we should get into, and we'll probably get into them in other episodes, so look forward to those. But today, I want to talk about why exactly this attack from Hamas is so different and so unprecedented for many reasons, and why the response by Israel is also extremely unprecedented. incidented. There has been a lot of violence, a lot of death, and I thought a better way to start to learn about this might be with something really specific, like learning about the border fence that has been caging in Gaza for years, why Israel thought it was so impermeable, and how they were wrong. So let's begin. running to the other side, I don't think you can find anything better to represent the long history of Israeli-Palestinian tensions, the decades of brutal Israeli occupation, the recurrent Hamas

bombings and rocket strikes, and the political deterioration on both sides than this image. No one thought this was going to happen. Professor Clive Jones, Director of Institute for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at Durham University said, this is the first time since 1948 that any Palestinian militant movement has taken territory in Israel proper. That symbolic victory and defeat for Israel will resonate across the region. So on the morning of October 7th, there was a surprise attack from Hamas against Israel. What happened was a colossal failure of Israeli intelligence as well as the Israeli government. I'll go into this in more detail in a bit, but in this surprise attack, resistance fighters were entering in up to 29 different

locations outside the Gaza Strip. Most significantly, fighters tore through the border fence, which has also been called the Iron Wall. They knocked it aside with bulldozers, drove right through it with jeeps and motorcycles. Other Hamas fighters sailed right over it with fan-powered gliders, and others hopped on boats to try to reach the other side by sea. A crucial component of Israel's defense from an attack like this, or at least it was supposed to be, was this sophisticated border fence. I want to talk about how exactly Israel came to build this fence, because throughout most of its history, the IDF did not want much to do with defensive measures. Its traditional security concept rested on three complementary pillars, deterrence,

early warning, and decisive battlefield victory. Guided by this concept, the IDF built offensive power designed to deter its enemies from attacking, and intelligence arrays in order to detect when that deterrence had eroded. If it was unable to convince the other side that it was better off avoiding conflict, the IDF would bring the full might of its offensive capabilities in search of a rapid and decisive quote-unquote victory, which just means they would end up killing a lot of people. They would flatten cities and massacre hundreds of people in order to essentially make the other side lose all hope and not fight back. And if they did, to tell them never to fight back again. This would, according to this concept initially, strengthen deterrence. The idea of defense for Israel began sneaking into the

conversation in the 1960s as Israel considered purchasing the Hawk surface-to-air missile system from the U.S. This idea had some opposition at the highest level of the IDF. Air Force Commander Ezra Wiseman opposed the idea on the grounds that it would give Israel's political chiefs an excuse to avoid the bold offensive operations, in this case surprise airstrikes that would take out entire buildings, which he viewed as necessary to win a war. In the end, though, five Hawk missile batteries were purchased just before the 1967 Six-Day War for $30 million. The first makings of the present-day security fence began in 1994 after the signing of the interim agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip when Israel constructed a 40-mile fence

along its boundary with eastern Palestine. The construction was completed in 1996, though it didn't necessarily represent a hard border. In 2005, under former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Israel carried out a disengagement from Gaza, which included, among other things, pulling out its troops. This meant that the one-kilometer buffer zone that the Israeli Defense Forces maintained after the first fence was torn down by Gazans in 2000 was no longer a possibility. A plan for an alternate fortified fence a few dozen meters east of the original fence entirely on Israeli land was then developed. The present-day 40-mile-long barricade has several sections. A 20-foot high smart fence, which is the over-the-ground

fence, with a maritime section manned by sensors to detect incursions from the water, and an underground wall of classified depth and thickness with sensors to detect any digging. The overground barrier, which makes up 81% of the fence, is supported by a complex network of cameras, radar systems, as well as command and control rooms. 140,000 tons of iron and steel were used in the construction of the underground wall, which took three and a half years to complete. The total cost of the project is estimated at $1.11 billion. The project of the quote-unquote smart fence was publicly announced in 2016, and in 2021, Israel announced the completion of the smart fence,

which included an underground concrete barrier. This addition, which I feel like is important to mention, was because Hamas used underground tunnels to blindside Israeli forces in 2014. Access near the fence on the Gaza side was limited to farmers who were on foot. On the Israeli side, observation towers and sand dunes were put in place to monitor threats and slow intruders. With the announcement of its completion in 2021, the then-Defense Minister Benny Gantz said the barrier placed a quote iron wall between Hamas and southern Israel. But on October 7th, as we saw, the wall failed massively, and a surprise series of coordinated efforts enabled Hamas to get past the wall. The fence

was breached at 29 points, according to the IDF. There were also Israeli guard towers positioned at every 500 feet along the perimeter of the wall at some certain points, and the Hamas fighters there appeared to encounter very little resistance. It soon became apparent that the border was minimally staffed, with much of Israel's military diverted to focus on the unrest in the West Bank. Matthew Levitt is the director of the counterterrorism program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He said, the most compelling parts of the system were the ones that provided indicators and warnings. But you don't see in advance that someone is masked at the fence. It's still just

a fence. A big fence, but just a fence. Still, he says, the idea of a bulldozer getting that close to the fence at all just boggles the mind. The attack has been documented as the following. To put it very simply, using commercial drones, Hamas bombed Israeli observation towers, communications infrastructure, and weapons systems along the border. Israel said Hamas fired more than 3,000 rockets into its territory, with some reaching as far as Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Militants also used explosives to blow up sections of the barrier, and men and motorbikes drove through the gaps. And then the bulldozers did the rest, and this allowed for enough space for their larger vehicles to drive through. Experts said an attack of this magnitude with all of these elements would have required weeks,

at least, of preparation and subterfuge. But maybe you're asking, well, why now? Why did Hamas now decide to launch an attack of this magnitude? There are some clues in the name that Hamas gave the attack. They named it Operation al-Aqsa Flood. Just days before the attack, hundreds of Israeli settlers, with the protection of the Israeli forces, stormed al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem. I've talked about this before, but this compound is a very important and contested religious site, and it's often, is a very important and contested religious site, and it's often, very often, a target by Israeli settlers and the IDF. And Hamas said it launched its attack in response to the desecration of al-Aqsa. Muhammad Yif, the Qasem Brigade's commander, said, We have decided that the time has come to draw the line, for the enemy to understand their time is up and they

can't keep going without consequences. But again, experts said this plan would have taken weeks to plan. I'm sure the attacks on al-Aqsa Mosque played a role in the attack, but it was probably being worked on for quite some time before that. And Hamas also said the attack was a response to decades of Israeli violence and occupation. The daily impact of that occupation on the lives of Palestinians in Gaza and other occupied territories like the West Bank is a huge part of this story. Let's take our first break. Before I forget, no clever segue here. Just listen to these ads. I forget. No clever segue here. Just listen to these ads. And we're back. Analysts and experts have been warning for months that the reality on the ground in Palestine and Israel was leading up to this. Noor Uday, a political analyst and former Palestinian Authority spokeswoman, said,

the record number of Palestinians killed, dispossessed, injured, and traumatized by Israeli forces and settlers across the occupied West Bank, the continued siege on Gaza, the relentless attacks on al-Aqsa Mosque, they were all pushing the situation towards this moment. I don't think anybody imagined the particulars of this moment, but I think everybody with a sense of what was going on knew that this quote-unquote calm was deceiving and that something was going to happen, something big. And it did happen. The wall came down. But for the 2.3 million Palestinians who have been virtually trapped for 15 years, as well as the Palestinians on the West Bank who have been constantly surveilled, having their movement restricted, and have experienced growing military violence,

bulldozing through this fence means something else. While the Israeli response was fed by the failure of this system, making the future of all Palestinians even more precarious, the impact of Saturday's attack for Palestinians is hugely significant psychologically and symbolically. It shatters the idea of Israel's military superiority. It's a physical symbol of breaking out of the open-air prison they've been held captive in, letting them step onto the land that they've been forced out of, some of them for their entire lives. Most of the Palestinians in Gaza are children, and they have only ever known life within the confines of that fence. So bulldozing a hole right through this fence to the

other side will obviously have ripples in more ways than one. I want to mention something here that I've been thinking about, is that Gaza is often referred to as the world's biggest open-air prison, which is true. But I was thinking about it, and prison implies that they did a crime. They did not do a crime. The Palestinians are innocent. They're stuck in a cage against their will, and they have no way out. I think a better way to describe Gaza might be an open-air concentration camp. The biggest open-air concentration camp, period.

This is something I've been thinking about because I feel like open-air prison implies they're all criminals, and they're not. So just something to think about when it comes to semantics and the power of words, I suppose, even if it's subconscious. Gaza has been under a land, sea, and air blockade since 2007. More than 2.3 million Palestinians live there, all crammed in, and they cannot leave without Israeli permission, which very few people get. Hamas is a political and armed group that took control in 2006, and there hasn't been an election since. It's part of a regional alliance, which also includes Iran and the armed group Hezbollah in Lebanon. Hamas has been designated a terrorist organization by Israel, the U.S., and the EU, among many others. We'll be doing a history more in-depth about Hamas soon, but it's important to note that Israel basically helped create it.

More details will be in that episode, obviously. But just to summarize very briefly, Israel bolstered Hamas' creation and funded its expansion because it wanted to divide the Palestinians amongst themselves. And they viewed the leftist PLO, the Palestinian Liberation Organization, which was the governing party at the time, as a threat. And so they encouraged Hamas to flourish and thrive, which leads us to now. Again, that'll be a separate episode. There's so much to cover and I can't do it all today. Although the PLO used to be the dominant party decades ago, in recent years, the PLO and the secular Fatah party, which the PLO is centered around, is often criticized for being ineffective. And so many Palestinians see Hamas as the most active group when it comes to resistance against the violent Israeli occupation. comes to resistance against the violent Israeli occupation. Palestinians have lived in violent occupation for 76 years, and the world has largely done nothing. Palestinians have no outside support

whatsoever, and no one is coming to their aid or rescue. They unfortunately only have this militant group because of this. And also just a reminder that Palestine has actually tried everything and that violence is not their first resort. Many Palestinians don't even support Hamas. Let's not forget about BDS, which is a Palestinian non-violent movement which calls for boycott, divestment, and sanctions for Israel. BDS is now deemed illegal. In 2021, 35 states passed anti-BDS laws. So even boycotting Israeli products is suddenly illegal. So that was BDS. People are obviously still engaged in BDS, and I encourage everyone to read more about it because divestment and sanctions work. It worked in BDS, and I encourage everyone to read more about it because divestment and sanctions work. It worked in South Africa, but here we are. And then in 2018, Palestinians in Gaza mounted the

Great March of Return to show the world their plight. Day after day, they walked unarmed to Israelis' military fences around Gaza. How did Israel respond to this non-violent protest? They shot 8,000 Palestinians with live ammunition, killed 220 people, and wounded 36,143. Palestinians are getting killed regardless of the existence of Hamas because Israel bombing Gaza isn't actually about Hamas, but occupation and ethnic cleansing. Israel and Hamas have fought many on and off, quote unquote, wars. I say quote unquote because it's not a war if only one side has an army. And I personally really hate when it's referred to as a war because it's falsely portraying an occupation as an equal fight when there's actually an oppressor and an oppressed. But

regardless, the last big war Israel had had with Hamas was in 2021. In the past, it's usually been an exchange of fire across the Gaza border. Hamas launches rockets into Israel, Israel drops more bombs on Gaza, Hamas launches rockets into Israel, Israel drops more bombs on Gaza, Hamas launches rockets into Israel, Israel drops more bombs on Gaza, and so on. Usually this results in a huge civilian death toll in Gaza, with Israel bombing entire residential buildings and killing entire families and hundreds of children. And just a reminder here that Gaza does not have an iron dome to defend itself when Israel bombs Gaza it does so knowing it is very densely populated and filled with hundreds of innocent people that have nothing to do with Hamas they drop bombs on buildings hospitals schools nothing

it's off limits I don't have to remind you, or maybe I do, that they've also killed members of the press clearly wearing press vests, but I guess that's another topic for another day. What happened this time around with the attack that Hamas launched on October 7th was very different though. It's repeatedly been called unprecedented, and this is true for a few reasons. One, because of the scale of the attack that Hamas launched, and two, because nobody really saw it coming. As of this recording, more than 1,200 Israelis and foreign nationals, the majority of whom were civilians, were killed, and more than 3,000 were wounded. Hamas also said that it captured more than 100 Israelis, including some senior military officers. Nothing like this, especially at this

magnitude, has happened since 2006, when Hamas captured one Israeli soldier, Galat Shalit, and held him in Gaza for five years. And three days after Hamas launched this attack on October 7th, there were still gun battles going on between Hamas fighters and Israeli forces in the three main areas in southern Israel. And despite verified footage and reporting from Gaza that indisputably shows countless Palestinian children who Israel has killed so far. Israel's murder of Palestinian children is receiving little to no media attention in the U.S. or globally, but they create the worst possible enemy so the world supports the destruction of an entire people. And as an Arab, I want to mention that it's really hard to see all of this play out. And if you have any Arab friends, I'm sure they're going through it too, especially if they're Palestinian, because it's almost like deja vu of what happened after 9-11.

it's not like Islamophobia took a break and then came back. It's always been there. But now it's very shameless and disgusting, and it makes no attempt to cover itself, because it's not only ignored but encouraged in order to validate the actions of the U.S. military and the Israeli military. Another reason for this all being so unprecedented is Israel's failure to stop it from happening. The Israeli army is one of the world's most sophisticated military and intelligence organizations, as well as one of the most powerful armies in the world because of the United States' support and billions of dollars in funding. Any kind of communication going in and out of Gaza, at least in theory, would be listened to by Israel's intelligence units, and, the fence is heavily militarized,

but still, it collapsed. I think another significant result of this, which I kind of touched on earlier, is that the successful attack from Hamas completely undermines the never-endingly talked about power of Israel and the power of their army and military, especially their capability in the region. It kind of disrupts their entire image in a way. I also want to quickly mention that the claim that Hamas's attack was unprovoked is ignoring the years of brutal occupation and exactly why they attacked in the first place. It was a surprise, yes, but I would never say it was unprovoked because you can't keep someone in captivity their entire lifetime and expect them to hug it out. And maybe what I'm saying sounds radical to you, especially by the standards of American media.

But here is this award winning Israeli journalist and writer, Gideon Levy. He wrote an incredible piece about what's happening right now. He writes opinion pieces in a weekly column for Haritz, and he focuses particularly on the Israeli occupation of Palestine, and he has won awards for his articles on human rights. He wrote an incredibly moving, powerful piece called, Israel Can't Imprison Two Million Gazans Without Paying a Cruel Price. I want to read excerpts from this because he is speaking as an Israeli, and I think it's extremely important to hear what he has to say. Behind all this lies Israeli arrogance. The idea that we can do whatever we like,

that we'll never pay the price and never be punished for it. We'll carry on undisturbed. We'll arrest, kill, harass, dispossess, and protect the settlers busy with their pogroms. We'll fire at innocent people, take out people's eyes and smash their faces, expel, confiscate, rob, grab people from their beds, carry out ethnic cleansing, expel, confiscate, rob, grab people from their beds, carry out ethnic cleansing, and of course, continue with the unbelievable siege of the Gaza Strip, and everything will be alright.

We'll build a terrifying obstacle around Gaza, and we'll be safe. We'll rely on the geniuses of the Army's 8200 Cyber Intelligence Unit and on the Shin Bet Security Service agents who know everything. They'll warn us in time. It turns out that even the world's most sophisticated and expensive obstacle can be breached with a smoky old bulldozer when the motivation is great. This arrogant barrier can be crossed by bicycle and moped, despite the billions poured into it and all the famous experts and fat cat contractors. We thought we'd continue to go down to Gaza, scatter a few crumbs in the form of tens of thousands of Israeli work permits,

always contingent on good behavior, and still keep them in prison. We'll make peace with Saudi Arabia and the United Emirates, and the Palestinians will be forgotten until they're erased, as quite a few Israelis would like. We'll keep holding thousands of Palestinian prisoners, some without trial, most of them political prisoners. And we won't agree to discuss their release even after they've been in prison for decades. We'll tell them that only by force will their prisoners see freedom. We thought we would arrogantly keep rejecting any attempt at a diplomatic solution, only because we don't want to deal with all that, and everything would continue

that way forever. Once again, it was proved that this isn't how it is. A few hundred armed Palestinians breached the barrier and invaded Israel in a way no Israeli imagined possible. A few hundred people proved that it's impossible to imprison two million people forever without paying a cruel price. Just as the smoky old Palestinian bulldozer tore through the world's smartest barrier, it tore away at Israel's arrogance and complacency. And that's also how it tore away at the idea that it's enough to occasionally attack Gaza with suicide drones and sell them to half the world to maintain security. On Saturday, Israel saw pictures it has never seen before. Palestinian vehicles patrolling its cities, bike riders

entering through the Gaza gates. These pictures tear away at that arrogance. The Gaza Palestinians have decided they're willing to pay any price for a moment of freedom. Is there any hope in that? No. Will Israel learn its lesson? No. in Gaza about occupying the Strip and punishing Gaza, quote, as it has never been punished before. But Israel hasn't stopped punishing Gaza since 1948. Not for a moment. After 75 years of abuse, the worst possible scenario awaits it once again. The threats of flattening Gaza prove only one thing. We haven't learned a thing. The arrogance is here to stay, even though Israel is paying a high price once again. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu bears very great responsibility for what happened, and he must pay that price. But it didn't start with him, and it won't end after he goes. We now have to cry bitterly for the Israeli victims, but we should also cry for Gaza. Gaza, most of whose residents are refugees created by Israel. Gaza, which has never known a single

day of freedom. I just think that piece is very powerful, and I know I read a good chunk of it, but I think it's important to hear, especially from an Israeli. But as he mentioned, Israel, because of this, has responded to the attack with extreme force. Prime Minister Little Bitch Netanyahu said, the enemy will pay an unprecedented price. Israel has bombed Gaza for days, hitting Gaza with airstrikes, targeting hospitals, mosques, entire residential buildings, and calling Palestinians animals to the media. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant said, we are fighting animals and acting accordingly. Israel also said that it wants to wipe out Hamas's military capability and end its control of Gaza, which doesn't really make sense because they're kind of targeting anything

and anything they can hit, including civilians. And at the end of the day, they want control themselves. So I think a lot of right-wing Israeli politicians, which is most of them these days, say empty, stupid shit. And it also looks like amidst all this, that a ground invasion is likely going to happen because the IDF has been readying tanks and military jeeps. It sucks that I have to like say this out loud, but peace should not come at the expense and the brutal oppression of others. There was no peace before this attack. The violence of the Israeli occupation has been there since the state was established in 1948. Hamas is a direct result of that violence. There has never been peace in Israel because it was created in violence.

And this clearly does not justify Hamas killing innocent people. That is never okay. Hamas killing innocent people, that is never okay. But Israel also can't justify killing thousands of people because of that. Abby Martin, who is the creator and host of The Empire Files, she also made the film Gaza Fights for Freedom, which I highly recommend. She posted this exchange on her Twitter between her and one of their field producers in Gaza. And he says, I'm scared, Abby. I feel I could die any second. Most of the people here lost power and internet connections, so we don't know where they hit. Entire neighborhoods are being erased.

They killed 1,200 of us so far and destroyed massively, and yet they say they have not started yet. We know massacres are coming, and we're sure they got the green light from the U.S. to kill us all. So that is a perspective of someone standing in Gaza, living in fear, which isn't entirely new as far as living in fear goes, because that's been the reality for Gazans for decades. But this time it's different, because it's very clear that Israel is committing a purposeful genocide, but they're in the dark with no one to help them, and I can only imagine how helpless and hopeless it feels. It just, it breaks my heart. I just wanted to give a update, an unfortunate update, because things are just fucked and people keep dying. But I'm recording this update on the afternoon of October 12th, like a day after I recorded the original stuff.

And Israel has killed 500 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip since this morning. 500 in the last 6 hours, 12 hours. Gaza's health ministry said that 1,537 Palestinians, including 500 children and 276 women, have been killed. And there are almost 7,000 others wounded because of these Israeli airstrikes. Loss of this magnitude is unsettling and overwhelming. And I also want to mention, this is something I just learned, Israel has bombed the international airports of Aleppo and Damascus in Syria, and this has forced them out of service. So not only are they massacring entire families in Gaza, but they're also dropping bombs on civilian airports in Syria. And the Western

media still wants you to think that Israel is the victim. It bears repeating that Gaza is very densely populated, with 2.3 million people trapped in a very small space, unable to leave, with nowhere to escape to. An example of this empty, stupid rhetoric that Israeli politicians are saying is when Netanyahu said that civilians should leave and evacuate Gaza. He said that knowing full well that that is impossible because his government forbids it. He said that to the media so the world can see that he is just and not trying to attack any civilians. It's all a fucking show like I guess all politics are, but it's still really infuriating and I hate it so much. And in Gaza, before all of this, before the thousands that have already died,

there was already a blockade. They were trapped for 15 years. And now, in addition to this blockade, Israel has imposed a total siege on Gaza, inflicting collective punishment, which is illegal under international law. But Israel routinely commits war crimes and goes about its business unchecked. Why would it be any different this time? Remember that half of Gaza's population are under 18. Hundreds of children have been murdered and horrific videos have been circulating of the destruction of Gaza, of bodies and babies and innocent people being pulled out of the rubble.

I had a breakdown last night because I saw a video of a Palestinian father holding his dead child's corpse and hugging it for the very last time. And I'm very privileged to be sitting here recording this. And if I have difficulty processing it, I cannot imagine what Palestinians are going through. Israel controls everything in Gaza. They've cut off electricity, food, water, and gas for an entire population. Israel is massacring Palestinians in a blackout on purpose so they're unable to connect with anyone from the outside. No electricity also means that hospitals have no way of the already limited machines they have available to them so they can save lives. Before this, the water in Gaza was already 97% undrinkable,

and now it's completely gone. This will lead to dehydration deaths, among many, many other deaths. Israel is starving an entire population live on your television, openly committing genocide as the world watches on, as it always does. Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening. monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening. what my podcast Post Run High is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow. Join me, Danny Trails, and step into the flames of fright.

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I'm bringing you all the latest happening in our entertainment world and some fun and impactful interviews with your favorite Latin artists, comedians, actors, and influencers. Each week, we get deep and raw life stories, combos on the issues that matter to us, and it's all packed with gems, fun, straight-up comedia, and that's a song that only nuestra gente can sprinkle. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.