It Could Happen Here - It Could Happen Here Weekly 118

Episode Date: February 18, 2024

All of this week's episodes of It Could Happen Here put together in one large file. You can now listen to all Cool Zone Media shows, 100% ad-free through the Cooler Zone Media subscription, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. So, open your Apple Podcasts app, search for “Cooler Zone Media” and subscribe today! http://apple.co/coolerzone See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into tech's elite and how they've turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech brought to you by an industry veteran with nothing to lose. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, five-year-old Cuban boy Elian Gonzalez was found off the coast of Florida. And the question was,

should the boy go back to his father in Cuba? Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or stay with his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jacqueline 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. Black Lit is for the page turners,

for those who listen to audiobooks while running errands or at the end of a busy day. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Listen to Black Lit on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. AT&T, connecting changes everything.

CallZone Media. Hey, everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's going to be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions. Welcome to It Could Happen Here, a podcast about things falling apart. And you know, folks, season one of this, if you listened way back in 2019, we focused a lot on my fears about a massive coming civil conflict in the United States, you know, along the lines of a civil war, but sort of based around my experiences and civil conflicts in Ukraine and Iraq and Syria, a number of other parts of the world prior

to 2020. And one of the reasons I'm bringing this up right now is because, you know, what I experienced with the fighting in ISIS in Iraq was kind of instrumental in me understanding how conflict looked in the modern era and how the United States was closer to a conflict like that. And I think a lot of folks would normally, especially people who are kind of obsessed with the idea of a civil war as two big armies in gray and blue marching at each other, were willing to kind of to contend with. And when I was starting that reporting over there, you know, taking my first trips to Iraq, one of the first things that I did was watch every ISIS beheading video and some of the Al Qaeda in Iraq beheading videos prior to that, not as a voyeuristic thing, but because I felt like if I was going to take myself and another person into that situation, the responsible thing to do was make myself very informed of what the stakes were. And I'm bringing this all up, not because we're talking about the Middle East today, but because we are talking about a beheading video, probably the first beheading video directly tied to the U.S. culture war that I can i can name and i'm gonna throw to garrison

davis now all right so uh last week i believe most of this went down on january 30th a 32 year old man named justin moan shot his father in the head with a handgun he bought the day previously and then used a kitchen knife and machete to allegedly again this is all a quote-unquote allegedly allegedly yes to allegedly alleged by him in the video that he recorded yes uh cut off his father's head in a bathtub he put it in a pot and then recorded a video which which he posted publicly onto YouTube. It was about 15 minutes long, titled Moan's Militia, Call to Arms for American Patriots, where he ranted about a number of things and mostly called for the killing of federal employees. He fled.

I think he went a slightly upstate towards a National guard training camp and then was arrested a few hours later um after his mother found the severed uh head and body of her husband in the house that they all lived in together this is uh one of the most bizarre acts of extremist violence that i've come across in terms of like the amount of research i've done into this um and i think it it kind of points at a at a uh this trend of of extremist acts of violence done by people who have a lot of content on the internet not just like posting manifestos but like are are are positioning themselves as some form of like alternative content creator this guy had a lot of music had a lot of self-published books. In lieu of leaving a complete single manifesto, we get these just years of writing and artistic

creations that now live on archive.org as ghosts of this guy's presence. And I think what's interesting about that is that shift between, and I think the Christchurch shooter is probably like the KT boundary of this particular evolutionary shift from like, the norm would be that you would produce a specific manifesto as an act, like a political act as part of whatever act of violence you carried on. The goal was both to inspire other people to act and to, you know, partly just to frame yourself as something besides a lone maniac. other kind of creative endeavor is that it sort of mirrors the the idea that like in our culture the thing that people most want to be is some sort of like influencer content creator like that's the top desired job among like a lot of gen z kids and it's also just increasingly like the thing that

people creatively want to see themselves as and so like I think this fits into this trend of violence that is foreshadowed by someone, not by a work of, like, political thought, you know, which you may not want to think of a manifesto as that, but that is what it is, but is preceded instead by art. Yeah. So, I think I'll talk about a few kind of semi-similar or at least other cases that have some curious linkages probably close to the end of the episode. But I have some writing here prepared about the beheading video itself. And then a few other kind of random stuff about the art that he's made. And Robert will probably fill in some useful gaps because Robert acquired a very special piece of literature recently. So the night that this went down, as soon as I found out this guy had written not just a book, but multiple books, I was like, well, I kind of want to read these.

And I know they're going to get pulled by tomorrow. And Amazon will probably, Amazon can just take back the Kindle books that you buy from them. So I ordered a hard copy of the book that seemed like the most meaningful to him. It's called The Second Messiah, King of Earth by Justin Moen. It is distressingly thick, like 450 pages or so. It is so much book. And the weird thing about it, I've read through a chunk of it and we will be getting to some of it. It's not badly written. And I want to be clear. I'm not saying that like,

he's a good writer in the commercial sense or that he's a good writer in that. Like he's a, he's a skilled artist. I'm saying that like, it's clear writing. You're always sure what he's trying to say when he depicts events is happening.

Those events are crazy, but like he's, they're clearly depicted, which is interesting to me. Um, and yeah, we will, we will be hearing about more of that in part two, but I have learned a decent amount about him from, from this book, the second Messiah king of earth. So let's, let's get into that 15 minute video. He starts by holding up what is alleged to be his father's head inside a plastic bag. He holds it up for a few seconds and then starts talking. Now, my initial reaction to this video is just how unremarkable most of this rant is. There's like calling for killing federal employees which is like the one thing a lot of people do that but also you can hear so many of the sentiments that he talks about

from fox news contributors from popular right-wing podcast hosts and even sitting politicians they also talk about how quote america is rotting from the inside out as far left woke mobs rampage our once prosperous cities turning them into lawless zones unquote yeah that term a lot lawless zones that's a key that there's that term probably comes up like about 10 times across this whole video and i i want to i think we need to start before we get further into this with the elephant in the room which is like a lot and and what a lot of people have said about this guy well this this man was mentally ill and that is absolutely the case. You know, we,

I, I add the disclaimer whenever we talk about mental illness and mass shootings, people who are mentally ill, people who are schizophrenic are not more likely to do this kind of violence than anybody else. But that said, when they do it,

they're also not necessarily less responsible. And what I mean by that is a person can be mentally ill and engage in a shooting and that doesn't mean you shouldn't pay attention to what they are or or another act of violence that doesn't mean you don't pay attention to why they're saying they did it the fact that this guy is clearly i i believe schizophrenic does not mean that his reasons for doing this are immaterial. Because most people who have whatever mental illness this guy did have do not cut their dad's head off. So the fact that he is justifying it with this very boilerplate set

of right-wing culture war grievances is meaningful. And it's meaningful because absent that influence in his life, perhaps he either doesn't carry out an act of violence or it's at least a very different looking one and and so i i think that is important to just get out to up front he certainly had years of uh experiencing paranoia some conspiratorial thinking but but specifically the ire directed towards his own conception of of the federal government and how it is leading to societal decay is what sparked this act of violence and is why he called for copycat killings.

So inside this rant, Justin Moen talks about taxes, inflation, and an economy that no longer serves American citizens. He mentions how the traitorous Biden regime is sending over American troops to fight in a doomed war in the russian winter leaving america defenseless against a quote fifth column army of illegal immigrants invading our southern border to strike americans on our own soil unquote that's that that's another term he uses a lot fifth column yeah probably says it like four or five times and that's that's a very old term that's a term that you would hear in a lot of john Birch materials from like the middle of the last century, you know? So, Mone identified himself as, quote, the commander of America's national network of militias, also known as Mone's militia, which seems to be mostly a delusion. He had no known connections to actual militias in his state or any other states. This seemed to be an

idea that he got into his own head. He then ordered all, quote, militias and his state or any other states, this seemed to be an idea that he got into his own head. He then ordered all, quote, militias and patriots across the country to, quote, hunt down and murder every federal employee on site, and to siege all courthouses, FBI, IRS, and federal law enforcement offices, to kill and capture all border patrol, U.S. marshals, federal agents, and judges, and, quote, torture them for information and publicly execute them for betraying the country, U.S. Marshals, federal agents, and judges, and, quote, torture them for information and publicly execute them for betraying the country, unquote. He had this really, he had this line that stuck out to me. I didn't copy, this is a long video, I did not copy every single thing he said. He also, this is, this is one line he included, earn your place in heaven by sending a traitor to hell early. just the the the cold like very

like emotionless way he said that kind of stuck with me yes and that is not a belief that you have to go to a guy experiencing a mental health crisis to find you you you can hear shades of this all over fucking twitter among other places you can hear this if you listen to certain right-wingers give public comment like yeah in your in your local city council like it's not um so moan asked that police veterans and national guard join the fight or else cities like philadelphia will turn into lawless zones like portland and san francisco he also asked local militias to be his own personal security force so that federal employees do not try to arrest him yeah he said that state governments should be left alone unless they

intervene in his revolution quote the federal government is the enemy uh then moan declared that quote joe biden is no longer in power i am now officially the acting president under martial law unquote he ordered military generals to not deploy u.s troops against u.s militias and instead join their fight to defend the constitution it would be fun if the constitution worked that way if like they put that in back in 1787 like oh yeah and if uh you know if martial law is declared he's not around yet but there's gonna be this guy justin moan he's he's in charge so this is one thing that i'm still slightly confused on well there's a few things that are obviously confusing it seems confusing but

moan offered a one million dollar bounty on a number of high-level federal u.s employees and a hundred thousand dollars for every federal judge and even doxed one in pennsylvania he claimed to currently have 10 million dollars to uh to exhaust on these bounties and i that is not that's just not true uh yes definitely not man constantly complains about how he's in a poor financial situation as a result of a number of factors he does not have 10 million dollars now he ordered all non-military federal employees to resign before ending up like his father now his father was an employee at the u.s army corps of engineers for almost 20 years he resigned uh i think like last year or a few years back it It's interesting,

he called for specifically non-military federal employees to resign. He was very pro-military. I'm not sure if his father, working for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, how exactly that fits in to his ideology here, but we're not laying out a clear line of thinking, obviously. It is, this is just slightly off topic, but it's never not fascinating to me how strong the feeling of emotional attachment to the US military is. Like that even this guy would be like, this guy who was so clearly deranged and violent

about this kind of thing would be like, but they're the exception. Like they're obviously still basically good. It's just interesting to me. What else is interesting to me, Garrison, is where our money comes from. And you know where our money comes from? The Federal Reserve.

Yes, actually. We are sponsored entirely by the Federal Reserve. So please, I mean, literally anything you do will, I guess, help the Federal Reserve. So go exist in capitalism. And we're back. Speaking of another federal agency, one agency that moan addressed directly was calling for the postal service to suspend all services split from the federal government or else

he will not be able to offer protection and jesus christ no that's negotiating with the postal service that's very funny i mean this is serious but that is kind of funny this guy isn't a nazi he's not a nazi no no no definitely not he is a he is an extremist he is a he is a conservative extremist he does repeatedly in his book by the way also talk about like racism being bad like that is like very much uh a consistent through line but some of this like kill your local postman type stuff certainly reflects a strain of extremist neo-nazi thinking that particularly james mason's stuff from the 80s yes so he also said quote if the media spreads lies about this revolution i authorize the

targeting of news stations their owners and employees general kind of conservative anti anti-news anti-journalist rhetoric quote the hunting capturing and killing of america's federal employees will not stop until americans demands are met and the network of america's traders is wiped out unquote now some of these demands that he called for includes closing the borders mass deportation of immigrants that have entered under the Biden regime, ceasing all human trafficking of children and sex slaves, which is obviously already illegal, canceling all public debt, an end to the Federal Reserve, restore Congress's right to print interest-free money, print interest-free money and and ceasing all of the quote woke and gender ideology propaganda in the schools unquote so we have a weird mix of like very like libertarian stuff like the federal reserve interest-free money and then other more popular conservative stuff around like the border and then this thing about woke and gender ideology yeah there's even a little like nessara jessara

stuff in there too about like the whole like allow the government to print interest-free money again like that's that's it's interesting that that's mixed in tomato as well yeah yeah no it's a it's a curious collection of uh of political thought now traitors to the country included not just federal employees but also quote bribed members of the deep state labor racketeers of the prison industrial complex and globalist leaders of assorted industries unquote now there's there's a lot to unpack there um bribed members of the deep state i think doesn't need any explanation but moan had this idea that labor unions were working with with corporations to make straight white males have a hard time to find a job so that they would always be unemployed.

And unemployment leads to people being arrested and sent to prison as a way to fund the court system. So this is what he means by labor racketeers of the prison industrial complex. It's that labor unions are colluding with the government and businesses to keep certain sects of the population unemployed to fill up prisons. Now, in terms of globalist leaders of assorted industries, he specifically

was talking about big tech companies that commit tax evasion. He claimed that he used to work for Microsoft and witnessed massive tax evasion. I have not looked into that. I i do not i do not believe he definitely do like they all yeah they all do it's not i don't think they break the law because they have whole departments of people who are there to make sure that at least they're not breaking the law enough that it will matter but like whatever i mean again some of this does some of all grievances like this come from real things like the corporations like microsoft that are tremendously wealthy do not pay their fair share and in fact do a great

deal to elide their tax burden he's just like yeah it's it's one of the frustrating things about this is how all of this actual malfeasance feeds into these delusions and feeds into the conspiratorial narratives of the people that take advantage of people like Justin. Yep. He said that martial law will continue as long as Americans support him and until America is secured enough to hold a legitimate election, and that Moon would authorize police and military to use any force necessary to take back America's cities from, quote, fifth column extremist organizations such as the LGBT community, the BLM movement, and terrorist organizations like Antifa, unquote. This is where he went on a whole Antifa rant, saying Antifa is a part of the federal government's systematic top-down globalist and communist

takeover of America. Mone stressed the importance of capturing alive, quote, one of the key players involved in this treason, or else they will never be able to discover the entire network of evil, unquote. So Moan blamed Antifa, BLM, and the LGBTQ community for stoking a division to create a race war and religious war. It's just, it's, it's, it's, it's hard to hold it, to hold the justification of you're, you're accusing people of stoking division as you're holding up the severed head of your father. Like there's just that,

a complete disconnect here. Quote, the government has disallowed any peaceful solution. Violence is the only solution to the federal government's treason and the actions of their fifth column terrorist organizations like Antifa. This is an ideological and spiritual war, unquote. Very similar in some ways to what McVeigh was saying, right? Like, this is the only way to communicate with the government. It's the only language that they understand. Yeah. Yeah. And then lastly, he kind of closes this video with a further look into some of his own like political delusions. He said that before the 2020 elections, electors and campaign contributors from both parties said that they saw Justin Moen as the best candidate for the

president of America. He's 32 years old. He was he was like 20 what 28 back in 2020 quote i could have been the first unanimously elected president but i was betrayed by the fbi federal courts and my own family because there are people that believe i am the messiah which goes against the government's satanic communist ideology quick note if all of those groups didn't want you to be president communist ideology. Quick note, if all of those groups didn't want you to be president, how would you have been elected unanimously? Or would the FBI have been like, well, now that he's on the ballot, we got to vote for the guy. So after saying there are many people that believe I am the Messiah, he then said, quote, I would never compare myself to Jesus Christ, unquote, which is not true. He has many times. Yeah, he yeah he sure has you know most notably in the title

of his book the second messiah king of earth by justin moan yeah although that is about his self insert character who he says lives a life identical to his named buster moon buster moon uh-huh and then i will do the last little bit about this video quote if there is a federal employee in your family make it your new year's resolution to kill them in order to protect your own children unquote and then moan followed that by quoting from matthew 10 21 this is a verse in the new testament brothers and sisters will betray one another and have each other put to death parents will betray their own children and children will will betray one another and have each other put to death. Parents will betray their own children and children will turn against their parents and have them killed, unquote. It's interesting because I've heard that cited before and usually

it was in like older conspiracies of the new world order and like, yeah, that's what they believed the evil antichrist UN regime was going to do to them. them it's fun to hear someone be like that's what we have to kill the families of the people who are i don't think that's what he's actually saying he's saying like he's talking about how he has felt betrayed by his own family and by the government oh gotcha okay that makes sense this points to like this massive disconnect in his own head or how this is the betrayal he's talking about he is he he is using this verse as a reference to like the end times but he's saying like this is the betrayal that we're seeing and in response now we have to do this so on i'm going to quote from abc news here so the u.s marshal service

investigated moan uh in august of 2023 after he allegedly made a threat against a U.S. District Court judge. The case was closed that same month. He was reported to police pretty frequently for just bizarre behavior in his own neighborhood, like sitting on manhole covers and staring at houses for hours on end. Now, Moan has held conspiratorial and anti-government views for at least seven years and attempted to recruit

people to join his moans militia on reddit and discord though no one seemed to join and then at least one discord server threw him out because of his repeated recruitment attempts and after fleeing home uh after he posted that video he drove more than 100 miles north and broke into the pennsylvania national guard base with a gun and then was arrested after he was tracked there on his cell phone there is a song that justin uh wrote about three years ago about being arrested after being tracked on his cell phone after doing violence against his family you think he would have like not had a cell phone on him given that he was aware of that as a risk but i i don't know if he was really thinking logic like yeah if you watch the video like he like he thinks national

guard's gonna like join him yeah he's not he's not thinking about it that way so yeah uh i believe moan has published at this point nine books uh uh i'm gonna read from his uh his amazon about page uh justin moan is the author of seven books nine, and a musician of three albums and one single. His life story is unbelievable, and there may not be enough words to describe him. But one may begin to understand his complexity and experiences through his art. He only wishes to bring positive change to the world. Now, I will talk about some of those other books after we take a quick ad break here

and learn about some important messages from our sponsors. Yeah. So, Justin Moen's bibliography here we go so i think robert has one of his books the second messiah king of earth yeah there is many other books he's published including a startling number a book called the pink a book called poems i wrote whileoned, a collection of poems. They Will Burn This Book, The Punishing, America's Coming Bloody Revolution, The Kingdom of Darkness, Dark Ages of the Future,

a collection of short stories. And finally, The Revolution Leader's Survival Guide, How Schools, Workplaces, and Social Norms Kill the Genius Inside Us All. Not bad at titling, you know? Pretty effective. Good for SEO.

I'm on board. Let's start with that last book here. The Revolution Leaders Survival Guide. It targets the, quote, constraints against education, creativity, and human progress throughout history, unquote. And the book is mostly about Mohn's own inability to find

a high-paying enough job after college. This is a reoccurring trend in a lot of his books, including, I believe, the one that Robert has. Moan complains about student loans, how America's education system is faulty, and talks about being bullied in school as a kid. I'm going to quote from the book's description. I'm going to quote from the book's description. The author views the world on the brink of either a golden age of world peace and space colonization, or instead, a second dark age of global wars and depopulation within the next couple of decades, if not sooner. Included within the book is a transcript of a letter Justin Moan wrote to Donald Trump, warning that if America does not go under some great changes, Moan himself will have to lead

a peaceful revolution. In another book titled The Kingdom of Darkness, published on May 13th, 2020, it's a novel about Satan and fallen angels becoming, quote, trapped inside Earth's lowliest creatures after being banished from heaven. He has a whole bunch of other, like, fantasy and sci-fi type books, like Aliens, Space Exploration, a weird collection of genre. In a pamphlet he self-published on Amazon in August of 2020, titled America's Coming Bloody Revolution, the small book contains two chapters, one titled Why a Violent Revolution is Inevitable, and a second titled how revolution can be successful moan wrote quote americans will have to weigh what is worse allowing themselves to lose freedom and independence or killing their own family members teachers workers bosses judges elected leaders and other older generations unquote this is where we get a lot of, like,

predictive writing around what he's going to be doing. Moan described older generations as, quote, traders who wish to take away the freedom and independence that comes with America, democracy, and free market capitalism. Which leads me, then, to the book that Robert has, The Second Messiah, which was published in January of 2020. It's about a man named Buster Moon who moves from Ohio to Colorado and quote, painfully learns the dark secret of Colorado from everything containing satanic cults, the Democratic Party, and the Cold War. Now, we will get more into this book specifically

in a later episode. I'm going to read a little bit from the back cover. Now, we will get more into this book specifically in a later episode. I'm going to read a little bit from the back cover. The only thing more absurd than this fiction book is the fact that it's loosely based on the life of author and musician Justin Moan, whose four-year stay in Colorado caused multiple lawsuits, changed the possible outcome of the 2020 US presidential election by exposing three presidential candidates as corrupt, which forced them to drop out of the race. We have more of these presidential delusions that he was talking about at the end of his beheading video here. And in terms of how this mirrors, like I said, we'll learn more about this book later, but I will talk now some about his actual personal life, which will then become slightly reflected in the book,

like going to Colorado Springs. He graduated from Penn State with a business management degree and sued the federal government multiple times for letting him take out student loans that he was forced to pay back. The most recent case was last year, where he sued for $10 million because despite getting a degree with the loans, he was unable to, quote, find a satisfactory job as an overeducated white man to repay the loan, claiming that he was a victim of affirmative action and reverse discrimination, unquote. In a previously dismissed lawsuit against the Department of Education, he alleged that they neglectfully and fraudulently induced him to borrow money to pay for his education without

sufficiently warning him of the possibility that he would face a difficult job market and could be unable to pay back his student loan. So, Moan did move to Colorado, just like Buster Moon, about 10 years ago, eventually getting a job at Progressive Insurance, but was fired in 2017 for kicking down a door and, quote, breaking the company's code of conduct. Moan then sued Progressive in 2019 for not receiving promotions because he was a man. In his Violent Revolution pamph 2019 for not receiving promotions because he was a man. In his Violent Revolution pamphlet, Moan claims that he was a victim of discrimination from being a top-performing, over-educated, and over-qualified male employee. And in that same pamphlet, Moan wrote that his educational, employment, and legal issues are

evident that there is no peaceful solution for the youth to escape debt-based enslavement, unemployment, and ultimately imprisonment. He compared his experience to, quote, the Soviet Union's feared gulag prison labor system, in which entire states and countries were essentially turned into concentration camps. Mohn wrote that educators and parents who, quote, knowingly lie, brainwash, and dumb down their youth, unquote, must be killed to prevent the spread of, quote, globalized communism and corporate agendas. This is where we have an interesting combination of, like, anti-communism fears, but also anti-corporatism that you see in some sects of, like, libertarian conservatism. You sure do. He claims that communism is like a virus and that America must treat it like a virus. Quote,

the only logical way to do so is for every American born in 1991 or later to kill anyone born before 1991. Unquote. Well, now he's cooking. Okay. Okay. Yeah.

Yeah. I'm back on board. I'm back on board. You know, this could work. So it just so happens that that was the year that he was born uh-huh yeah yeah logical logical point to divide it on i'd respect it more if he'd been born earlier you know but so i already mentioned some of his music it had similar predictive elements of he was doing art in almost like in practice of what he was then

going to later do in person in terms of carrying out violence as well as just evident of kind of delusional and paranoid thinking he has a song about being gang stalked he has a song about i i think like a girlfriend who broke up with him he has songs talking about how it's okay to kill communists and how we're overall seeing a decline in american society so that is that is most of what i have to say about justin moan i could certainly say a whole lot more now on top of my research onto him himself i also wanted to look at the sort of online chatter that neo-nazis and other extremists were saying and i put together hey a large catalog of telegram conversations about Justin Moan, watching the

spread of certain conspiracy theories around this incident, and just to see what their overall take was. I will paraphrase my like 80 page research document here by saying, it seems most Nazis and other white supremacists or far right extremists thought that the Justin Moan incident was quote, or far-right extremists thought that the justin moon incident was quote fake and gay unquote they they need to keep up with these uh these thought fluencers really glad that we're getting some of their side many uh other far-right extremists uh took this to be a psyop sure they thought it was an attempt to push forward this anti-militia bill that's being talked about as well as distract from the crisis at the southern border. Certain white supremacists were upset that he used the phrase Judeo-Christian values because they are anti-Semitic and Justin Moen did not seem to be consciously anti-Semitic.

Yeah. And we had these conspiracy theories travel everywhere from standard kind of neo-Nazi telegram accounts to more conservative boomer mega type stuff as well, mostly picking up on the anti-militia angle, how this is probably a psyop from the deep state to push forward this anti-militia bill. Some people thought they were very clever in realizing this was a psyop because they thought Justin Moan was 33 years old and there's this conspiracy theory around the number 33 in a lot of these circles. The conspiracy is around how the number 33 is used a lot in like mass shooting incidents. Now it's not. This is just

pattern recognition, but also Moan isn't 33. He's 32. So great work there. And there's specifically one telegram channel that found a prop head i believe on etsy yeah like a prop severed head yeah we started seeing this spread all over twitter conservative news sites how this has to be fake because look we found we found the fake head they used which is quite simply not the severed head that justin moan's holding up in the video i don't think it's really much useful else to say about these conspiracy theories,

but yeah, they certainly were kind of laughing along at some of like the gang stalkery elements, thinking, you know, some people obviously thought he was based and cool for actually doing some of the ideological things that these Nazis believe in. Others thought it was, it's just fun to make fun of a guy. Um, so they decided it was a psyop. Yeah, that is, uh, that is most of, uh, what I had to say about Justin Moen. Well, this has been quite an inspiring journey. We are going to have more to say about Justin and finally get into his, his book, the second Messiah King of Earth, which is in a way become my Bible. I think I may keep this in my apocalypse go bag so I can do like a book of Eli with this thing if the world ends. Just be wandering alone across the wasteland telling everybody about this man's book.

I guess finally, the last thing I'll say is that this reminds me of two recent incidents. We had one mass shooting done by a Nazi in Denver, Colorado, and he previously wrote and made short films depicting the murder that he would then do. We also had the Highland Park shooting on July 4th, a few years back, who the person who did that created a lot of music online in this very, like, I would say the Highland Park music was much more in like the schizo wave genre of extremist content. I think the stuff, the stuff that Justin Moan is producing is honestly more like the

stuff that schizo wave is like parodying the, like Justin Moans was a lot more, uh, like sincere, less, less ironic. Uh, it was,

it was, it was, it was just like taken at face value. These, these two incidents I was reminded of just because of how much those acts of violence were predated by artistic expressions of the later thing that they would end up doing and yeah in moan's case it's exactly the same he has written about killing family members he's written about the exact way he would be arrested and tracked down writing that goes back like four or five years uh this is there's so many people online who have exact who are in this same scenario who are putting out this type of writing no one knows who they are moan had like five listeners

on spotify these people are unknown and every once in a while one of them decides that writing about it isn't enough and they actually do it in the real world and it's just this it just it's this interesting trend of these people like almost like hyperstitioning these own acts of violence by making art that predates it uh almost in some form of like preparation yeah yeah and we talked about hyperstition as a concept a bit in last week's behind the bastards but it is it is a term for essentially the the methods and ways by which things that are fictional become real and it can be kind of as esoteric as the idea of like preparing the way for a god-like ai by like spreading belief and that sort of thing or it can be as direct like as this as somebody envisioning the acts they're going to carry out in fiction and then carrying out those acts for real.

Like it, it, on an individual level, what you're doing when you're doing this is you're kind of, you are preparing yourself mentally for the thing that you're going to do. And when I would sort of lecture and talk about how to know something is like a real threat versus somebody saying shit on the internet,

because that's obviously, that's a real problem when we talk about this. There's a huge quantity of people saying stuff that could be them presaging like an act of violence. And you simply can't go after everything. And one of the key things for me always is, have they gone and done anything in the real world? So, for example, if a guy has been going out and egging homeless people or lighting their shit on fire and is also talking

about murdering homeless people, well, that's probably a guy who's going to do something, right? Because he's actively going out in the real world and taking steps. He's prepping himself. And I think this kind of work, when somebody's written a whole novel about their murder fantasies, obviously that's not a thing you can arrest or convict on, nor should it be. But that is somebody who is doing more than bullshitting online. That's somebody who has a fixation that they clearly can't get over and those do sometimes lead to violence and so yeah i i think um i think it's really valid to to look at this as not just a couple of incidents that are troubling but as evidence of a troubling trend

yep all right well that does it for us today yeah all right please do not earn your place in heaven by sending a traitor to hell uh early it does not seem to work out very well no earn your place in heaven uh i don't actually have a joke to finish this episode with don't don't commit murder bye We'll see you next time. If you love hearing real conversations with your favorite Latin celebrities, artists, and culture shifters, this is the podcast for you. We're talking real conversations with our Latin stars, from actors and artists to musicians and creators, sharing their stories, struggles, and successes. You know it's going to be filled with chisme laughs and all the vibes that you love. Each week, we'll explore everything from music and pop culture to deeper topics like identity, community, and breaking down barriers in all sorts of industries. Don't miss out on the fun, el té caliente, and life stories. Join me for Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get into todo lo actual y viral. Listen

to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season podcast or wherever you get your podcast. and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists to leading journalists in the field, and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible.

Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God, things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better.

Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez.

Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami.

Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to Podcast Man, Sad Bad People, the podcast about bad people that make the podcast man sad. I'm the podcast man, Robert Evans, and my co-host today is our friend garrison davis

garrison how are you doing good i thought it was one of my better intros unfortunately quite good for a topic about it's absolutely deranged shit yeah yeah so obviously oh this is part two of our series on Justin Moan, the author of our first politically motivated The Hennig video. Wait, why are you describing him as an author first? Well, because he was first an author. Better known for his other work. Yeah. I think people should know that when you make that joke, as you did the other week on Behind the Bastards, too,

behind the bastards too you are referring to a mathematics paper that cites the uh the unabomber's other published mathematic theories is like better known for his other work mailing bombs to people oh pretty funny yeah and like the unabomber justin moan is deeply accomplished as an all he's written more books than i have well i yes that is true i'm not sure if you want to be writing the types of books that justin is but yeah uh no but but he did write them and you get credit for that um sure so this was as you stated last episode published in 2020 and i need to start with the cover of this thing because it's something else. It's not a good cover. No. It is taken.

He appears to have taken it or someone else took it of him very close up at a rest stop. And this is relevant because rest stops play a critical, critical role in some of his beliefs about the world and some of his theories about things that have happened to us. Yes. Rest stops are happening places for justin moan okay he is looking behind him he's like slightly disheveled he's got like his shirt open weirdly down like a button further than yeah i'm getting some like gang stalking vibes here yeah it's very much again we'll explain gang stalking in a second but the the picture is him. He's like looking behind his shoulder. There's like two big lights behind him in the distance in this photo, clearly taken at a rest stop. And then there are like cartoon text bubbles over his shoulder next to the lights that say, get his picture. Hey, there he is.

And then like cartoon action bubbles that say snap, snap, that I think are supposed to represent people taking photos. People taking pictures. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. cartoon action bubbles that say snap snap that i think are supposed to represent people taking photos taking pictures yeah yeah okay this as soon as i saw this i had the same reaction you had which is like oh this is some gang stalking shit and if you're not aware of gang stalking gang stalking is kind of an ur web 2.0 conspiratorial belief system i don't know if a conspiracy theory is even really the right way to frame it. Gang stalking is people who have, I think these are generally people with schizophrenia.

And one of the things that you can experience with schizophrenia is both this kind of overwhelming sense of paranoia and also the stereotypical hearing voices, right? And some people become convinced that they are being followed. You know, this is something that has happened probably as long as it has existed, that they are being like tracked, that they are people are listening in on their thoughts. You hear variations of it with the Internet and digital communities.

A chunk of people experiencing this started forming communities online. And I don't know the exact of anyone has sort of like sketched out how this happened in time. But the belief they ended up at is that certain people are what are called targeted individuals within the community. And those people are being stalked at all times by large numbers of generally government spies. Now, when I say government spies, they are not envisioning like a James Bond type operator. They believe these are the regular people in the street around them, like people in their neighborhood. Their neighbors are all spies and are all stalking them all the time. And you can watch hours of videos.

These people will often film six, eight hours of their life at a stretch. And you can see them just like angrily shouting at their window at like some dude walking past their house or whatever or like a car be like see that blue car didn't pass three times and that wouldn't happen if this wasn't like that and it's so one of the things that like we one of the reasons that gang stalking is kind of interesting and invaluable to study if you're interested in like how we got to our present moment of like reality collapse in the United States is that this is an example of kind of feelings that have been associated with certain mental illnesses. I'm not going to say it's just schizophrenia, but certain mental illnesses bring about severe bouts of paranoia and a feeling that you are being stalked, right? Or people are listening in on your thoughts or whatever. Because of the way digital communities work, a number of people experiencing this

were able to not just get together and share their experiences, but convince each other that they were not the result of anomalous and are in fact the result of a conspiracy. And they have now built a mythos around that conspiracy. And it has led to killings before. People have killed folks they believed were stalking them over gang stalking delusions. It's been happening for years. So yeah, that was the first thing that occurred to me when I saw this cover. And you can find other art that Moan put out where

it's like real pictures of him and then fake art of like ghostly figures stalking him with cameras and stuff. Yeah. A few months before he released his book, he put out a song on Spotify called Justin's Stalkers, which is about being gang stalked yeah yeah and again gang stalking is not a political conspiracy theory other than that you have to believe the government's evil but don't we all right so it's very accessible there's certain gang stalking people who think they're like the the freemasons are stalking me or like the illuminati is talking it's like random antifa you know sure yeah shit gets grafted on as a result of politics but it did not inherently start as something that was like a political thing just kind of out of

this very x-filesy because the 90s is really when this starts to form i think late 90s and it's spread like wildfire on like early internet culture people weren't able to like convince each other or like have have their already like like a small delusion be strengthened and grown stronger by other people in this community all kind of encouraging each other and and i think it's relevant too that it's kind of a web 2.0 early web 2.0 phenomenon because i don't think you get the same thing and i'm not going to say that what you would get would be any healthier but from the social media because the way most social media works is everyone's kind of in a big pit together and this was really the result of a a kind of community that was closed

to outsiders that wasn't really being watched by people who weren't drawn to it building a culture and people like really it takes a lot of time for that to happen um obviously youtube is also a big place where this is is grown but i think after it it had its roots established that was a bit of a digression but i think it is kind of necessary because this is definitely that is definitely where justin comes out of you know like that is very clear to me all of this is kind of rooted fundamentally in gang stalking i think that's like the the foundational keystone belief in in what has become his like conspiratorial milieu. So into the book itself,

the first page after the page that lets us all know, Kindle direct publishing is responsible for this thing. Says, gotta love Kindle direct publishing. Thanks Amazon. The best place to find all of the wild extremist books you could otherwise never, never make.

They've, they've really done us all a solid. This book is dedicated to those who know who the real enemy is and can still laugh even in the worst situations hope i don't know what i hope that describes me yeah it's great so there are 10 chapters in this thing they are long chapters chapter one is 32 pages. Oh, wow. Chapter two is almost 60 pages. Jesus. Chapter three is like another 60 pages, like 50 pages for five. Yeah, these are like long, long chapters. And yeah, it's about 450 pages.

Wow. So chapter one opens. And I'm just going to read you actually a decent little chunk here. So it starts with like him talking to his parents. But why leave, Buster? You're a hometown hero, Mrs. Moon said. Mrs. Moon in her late 50s paced back and forth on the hardwood floor of the living room. Yeah, Buster, you're popular. You were at the top of your class in high school. You were a star athlete. You could end up mayor of this town someday. Why don't you stay around here where everyone knows you and see what happens? You'll have to start anew

elsewhere, Mr. Moon said. And obviously, Buster Moon is the actual Justin Moan, and we're talking about his parents. When we talk about Mr. Moon, this is his dad who he murdered and beheaded. Just, you know, keep that in mind. Mr. Moon, in his early 60s,

sat on a couch in the living room watching television. A black and white episode of The Twilight Zone was on. The sound on the TV was muted. That's the point. I want to start anew. I want to meet new people, or at least not associate with the people I grew up with and went to school with my whole life. They're all going nowhere in town, and they'll take me down with them.

And we get a little more of that, where he's talking about why he's not happy here. There's no future for him. What's interesting to me is why he depicts and we don't know that this is accurate to his experience with his parents, but also I don't necessarily think it is not because what he depicts his parents is saying is he shouldn't do this because it's dangerous. Leaving home is dangerous. You can't be safe on your own in a new place or in the city, and you will inevitably get murdered or have something horrible happen. He puts these words in his dad's mouth, right, after he, like, first his

mom tells him, like, you're gonna die if you move out, and then he puts this in his dad's mouth. Yeah, you're going to get kidnapped, addicted to heroin, and sold into a sex trafficking ring. Then five years from now, we'll find pictures of you bound and gagged on some Russian website where you're up for sale. So that's his dad.

And then his mom adds, why do you think your older siblings stayed within Ohio when they moved out? It's dangerous out of state without your family. So maybe that's just him putting words in their mouth, but like I have heard stuff like that from people that is not an uncommon thing to express, especially among conservative families.

Cities are dangerous. People are getting human trafficked all the time. It's not safe to be out on your own. And those are some things he talked about in his beheading video. And I know that after he had to move back home from Colorado after losing his job, he did move back in with his parents in Pennsylvania. Yep. He does have an older sister that just ran him other things. I know about his actual personal life and how that could maybe tie in.

But yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then, you know, a little bit later, as this argument goes on, there is a note where his mom's like, maybe it would be for the best if we took you to a psychiatrist, Buster. You don't seem to be thinking straight. Unclear to me if they did, but I think that does kind of suggest that was a thing his parents suggested often.

And then his dad says, yeah, you're talking crazy, Buster. If someone doesn't mug you when you step out of the car, you'll end up running out of money and being homeless. And then you'll get put in prison for panhandling, trespassing,

or stealing food, and ending up making prison love to Bubbaba the butcher and that has the feeling of something that he heard before that someone that's pretty specific like that sounds like something somebody was told and is kind of repeating here you know i i don't know that but that is very much the feel it has um and there's a couple other bits where it's like, I, I could see this being something you heard from your very conservative family or elsewise picked up in the media. Cause there's another point where his dad is like, you'll be all alone.

And they know exactly how much money you have. It's all digital. You can't beat the system. You can't beat dot, dot, dot. And then an italics, the machine,

Mrs. Moon shot a wide eyed glance at Mr. Moon. Huh? What do you mean? Buster said, Can't beat dot, dot, dot. And then in italics, the machine. Mrs. Moon shot a wide-eyed glance at Mr. Moon. Huh? What do you mean? Buster said. Mr. Moon shook his head. Oh, nothing. You'll have to find out for yourself.

And then at this point, a cow screams. That's how he describes the cow as screaming. And then their dog barks and they all run outside. It's clear that something has gone wrong. And Mr. Moon says not again those cult fucking commie bastards he grabs a shotgun and there they find the exsanguinated and skinned corpse of the family cow outside in the yard because they're at like a farm in ohio i believe yeah they're at like a the family farm so he thinks at first that this hide is a carpet then buster realized the carpet had black and white spots like a cow and was hide material. The cow had been completely exsanguinated

as the livestock industry would call an animal drained of blood. The cow's eyes were missing. The bones were strewn in a perfect circle around the cow hide in an almost ritualistic or ceremonial manner with a skull at the top of the circle. Well, 12 would be on a clock about the same time it was then. There was not one drop of blood near the scene. Huh. Now when I brought up X-Files earlier

that's kind of why because that's X-Files stuff. That's a very X-Files opening. Yeah. The Twilight Zone was playing on the TV

in the room in the scene. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And this is obviously by the way if you listen to a lot of or read a lot of like particularly kind of turn of the last century

UFO stuff a lot of it focuses on animals of like particularly kind of turn of the last century ufo stuff a lot of it focuses on animals being exsanguinated right cows killed in these like weird fashions now he is talking about a ritual murder and also the timing doesn't work out because they hear the cow run outside and it's been completely skinned and excited but well i think what's important is like you get an idea of like this didn't come into his mind unbidden right the term exsanguinated as referred to a cow's corpse did not come into his mind and been that's evidence of like the kind of media diet he had right i mean he was born in 1991 that's like yeah that's prime growing up with the x-files oh absolutely yeah i mean i'm not that much older than him and that

was definitely a big part of my childhood yeah but you know what could be a big part of your childhood retroactively? The products that can make your life better? That's right. That's right. Garrison, time is a flat circle. And that means that if you buy products that advertise on our show today, anything bad that happened in your childhood can be healed. So here's the ad.

Ah, we're back. And we're reading from the second Messiah, King of Earth, by our friend Justin Moan. So, it opened with what I would describe probably as, it's probably some kind of satanic ritual, I'm guessing. Yeah, yeah. We get a little more about what his dad thinks here because the next thing, you know, his dad starts crying and Buster tries to comfort him. And his dad says, a cow that waits nearly a ton. Well, look, the spelling's not perfect.

A cow that weighs nearly a ton gets completely drained of blood and its bones and organs are taken out perfectly without one drop of blood being spilled and it all happens right here in the middle of this field in less than an hour maybe even in just a couple of minutes it's the fifth cow this has happened to this season and betsy was my best cow we just won't be able to make a profit this year oh my gosh he starts to cry and then he says don't tell your mother i told you this but you're right to leave this place and go far away. There's nothing for you here. And in fact, there's nothing for anyone here. So at this point, Buster's like, hey, don't say that, Dad. You know, we've still got a farm.

It'll be okay. And his dad says, oh, Buster, soon you will learn. If you move out west on your own, there is an evil in this world which has found its way into this country, into every country. It is an ugly evil. Nearly all the family farms in this state and plenty of other states have seen the same trend in the past 20 years or so, a trend none of us have seen before. Unexplainable tragedies. Livestock gets mutilated or disappears. Crops get infested with bugs or disease. And then all of a sudden, the farm is taking a financial loss. The farm shrinks

and eventually the family goes bankrupt or their land is bought out by a big corporation. More farmers have committed suicide in the past decade than any other profession and i can't blame them now that ties into some very real and very powerful conspiracy theories um that this a lot of this ties into like bill gates stuff you know the idea he has bought up a bunch of farmland and among conspiratorial sex he has bought all the farmland and china's buying all of it or china and bill gates are buying it together and they want to because they want to control the food supply and take out the ability of americans to feed themselves right yeah like this is a uh this is something he picked up from right-wing media this

is not an invention of his for this book this is probably something he was either raised to believe or came to believe fairly early in life because of what other people around him were saying. This is common stuff. He has put a twist on it, but this is not coming out of nowhere. So after this, he basically tries to talk his dad into like, hey, can't you call the FBI or the police or, you know, surveil them to catch whoever's doing this? And his dad says, other farmers have tried. They just lose all their money faster. And the police and the FBI have investigated. But how could they stop something like this from happening out of nowhere? I've sold more than half the acres of the Moon family farm over the past three years alone, and we can still barely stay afloat. There's no fighting it. It's too secretive. It's too constant. It's too

well orchestrated. It's just too evil. But why is this happening? Why is the government letting America's farms get unfairly taken over? Well, as my father once told me, if you want to take over a country, you have to gain control of their food supply. Remember, my father was an immigrant from Germany, and he fled the Nazis with your grandmother, who was a Jew, to come to America. He used to always say, there are the Germans, there are the Russians, and then there are the Germans from Russia. And they all came to America for the same reason, land. And this is that is Justin's family history, which is also why some Nazis on Telegram did not like him.

Yeah, he's very much not a Nazi. And at the same time, there's elements of like what he's saying here that like yeah the germans from russia that moved here very much john birch stuff that like a fifth column of communists from europe have moved here and are trying to change this country so the conversation ends he goes to sleep he wakes up the next morning to like leave his family forever to start a new life out west uh and he starts by going out to the farm taking out his pipe and his last bit of marijuana a few green buds that he he says to himself perfectly calculated and then he smokes his last bowl of marijuana which i'm sure he did regularly and

certainly did not help his uh his situation moan did have a medical marijuana card that he had to give up on january 29th to go practice a handgun that he would then later use one day later to kill his father yeah i guess good that he had to give up his medical marijuana card first yeah that's certainly people say um yeah yeah really stop the problem so he says goodbye to his parents uh and he gets on the road right they seem he actually does not describe his dad as being very mean in this he's pretty sympathetic in the book but interesting um yeah which which is interesting but you know a few years went by between this one and between him killing his father so why when i brought up earlier that highway rest stops are a major part of this book that's because of what comes next so he crosses from from Ohio into Indiana, and he sees a rest area approaching.

Mmm, gotta piss and wouldn't mind a snack, Buster said. He pulls off the highway, he gets into a parking lot, and he describes most of the men and women wore overalls, flannel shirts, and straw hats walking in and out of the building to and from the parking lot. A few people stood off to the sides of the building and parking lot in a grass area. A few men were urinating outside near the trees. An old man was squatting at the tree line taking a shit. I've never been to, I've been to a lot of rest stops. I've actually not seen that happening at a rest stop, but this is to set up something that's happening at the rest stop, which he

learns about when he goes into the bathroom and it turns out to be a bad decision because as soon as he stands at the urinal, he hears someone him saying oh yeah that's real nice just look at that you want to try it another voice whispered buster eyed with one eyebrow and raised towards the stall on his left four legs stood in the stall and then he hears people snorting drugs and a bit of white powder falls to the floor and a guy falls down and then is like oh shit that's good how much for an ounce i think they're selling i'm not sure if it's supposed to be fentanyl or cocaine cocaine or something yeah something like that and then they realize he's listening to them do cocaine or whatever in the rest stop bathroom hold on a sec i think someone's in here listening to us the other person whispered should we kill him the

first person whispered at which point he flees the rest stop yeah it's a quick escalation this is like such a like to take into a a humorous degree but such a like oh what what the fox news viewing set thinks about like everything outside of their suburbs justin did not grow up in ohio he grew up in uh pennsylvania uh i think his family lived about an hour north of Philadelphia. So he grew up in a very like suburban area outside of a big city. And that all kind of graphs onto this. Yeah,

it makes sense. Now there's an interesting bit here when he's outside of, I guess they decided not to chase him out of the bathroom, but he's still walking around the rest stop. And we get a little like gang stalking bit here. People stared at Buster and kept glancing at him and he wondered why he didn't look or dress too differently and he was barely out of ohio then he realized everyone was with someone else nobody else was alone except him and like that's a delusion that's the kind of delusion that leads to gangsta because number one

there i guarantee you there were other alone people at every rest stop he ever went to but also like people don't pay attention to that sort of thing that is a voice in his head Because number one, I guarantee you there were other alone people at every rest stop he ever went to. But also, like, people don't pay attention to that sort of thing. That is a voice in his head telling him to hyper focus on this. So he gets freaked out by this. He describes himself having a panic attack, right? He describes himself like having a panic attack about the fact that he's alone out here. Now it seemed as though more people were glancing at him, even talking about him, if they sensed his feeling of vulnerability emanating from his chest like shark-smelling

fresh blood. So he finishes eating and he gets back on the highway and he drives for a bit more until he crosses, he passes Indiana and gets into Illinois and then we have another rest stop scene. This is like, he spends a lot of time

on rest stops and this is i'm gonna need your occult knowledge here garrison so you can let me know if he uh if he gets this stuff right so as he's like walking through the rest stop area he sees that like uh there's a poster on the wall that says this cabin was once an outpost for trading with the native americans used during the civil war to store guns and ammunition. Then he walks to another glass casing on the adjacent wall and he reads the poster inside. Considered haunted by locals after pagan witches lived in the cabin who were later burned at the stake for witchcraft, abandoned for over 100 years before being restored as a rest area.

So that's to set the scene. And then he goes, like, gets himself some food or something. And as he's looking outside at the surrounding forest, he sees 100 yards into the forest there are tiki torches lit. And it's 4.01 p.m. in the afternoon. What the fuck do they have torches lit in the forest for if it's not going to be dark for another two hours, Buster said. So he walks in and he sees a few individuals dressed like vagabonds dancing slowly in circles around the fire with their arms spread out, waving in the air. Buster quietly climbed through some bushes to get a quiet, closer look. There were two men and a woman, all in dirty, torn robes, dancing within a circle of lit candles and tiki torches. One male and female danced inside the circle, chanting and murmuring words which Buster

couldn't make out. The other male was kneeling on the ground inside the circle, carving a pumpkin. A picture lay in front of him in a bed of flowers please spirits of nature and beyond accept this pumpkin carving and our sacrifices on this day of sam hayne in remembrance of our deceased loved ones please ease their passage into the other world okay how's that sounding so far garrison is that real um is this supposed to be around halloween is this supposed to be it's unclear but based on the fact that it day ends at 6 p.m probably yes oh yeah okay well yeah i mean dancing around a fire is is certainly uh it's certainly fire rest stop sure all right well let's get to the let's get to them finishing the ritual so next a woman screams the magic words, Ayaka!

I don't know. Looked it up. Couldn't find anything. That does not sound familiar to me either, but yeah. Yeah. So she screams, and then another female emerged from behind a tree with a donkey by a leash in one hand and a stick carrying a decorated horse's skull on the other. The horse's skull had red ornaments in its eye sockets and a sheet draping over its head. She danced into the center of the circle of candles with the others. The man who was kneeling picked up a long, curved sword from the ground and stood up.

Let the sacrifice of this ass please the spirits of nature, the man yelled. Yeah. Well, you know, this is probably a little bit more intense than your average Wiccan Samhain ritual. But sure. Yeah, yeah. I don't know. An ass ass that's a unique sacrifice story usually it's like a cow uh or a chicken or something but i appreciate that so he raises the sword above his head no buster yelled hee-haw the donkey whined the donkey got scared and jerked away just as the

man swung the sword sloosh blood spurted upwards and outwards ah the female yelled the female fell to her knees and the donkey ran away from the forest her severed arms still holding onto the leash the female raised her bleeding stump you idiot you cut off my arm she said well the donkey got scared the man said now what are we going to eat the woman said the three others glanced at each other then looked at the woman on the ground with one arm. No, don't even think about it, she said. The man holding the sword raised it high above his head again. Ah, she screamed.

Ah, Buster screamed. The woman held her remaining arm up just as the man swung down the sword. The sword cut her hand in half from top to bottom between the middle finger and ring finger, slicing all the way down her forearm. Now, that's not where i expected this passage to go but it gets better because they all realize buster's there at this point and give up on their plans to eat this woman who they have now hacked at twice and instead

she and all of them start charging buster and he describes it as they all turned directly towards buster and began running towards him even all turned directly towards buster and began running towards him even the woman with one arm which was divided in half like a lobster claw ran towards buster her arm flapping in halves as she sprinted towards him that is some interesting writing uh yeah that's that that's i didn't call that coming i love that uh, she got lobsterified. Yeah, that's a very eventful Samhain. Yeah. I don't think that actually happened to Buster. I don't think that I don't believe on Justin's move from Pennsylvania to Colorado.

He stumbled across a pagan ritual where they dismembered a woman and gave her a lobster claw. I do suspect that maybe he saw someone walking their dog near a rest stop and filled in the rest. That is certainly possible. Speaking of dog shit, you know what's not dog shit? These ads? Uh-huh, that's right. These ads. Aren't we sponsored by the state of Ohio or something?

Uh-huh, oh yeah. Then in that case't we sponsored by like the state of Ohio or something? Oh, yeah. Then in that case, we probably should just move on. Ah, we are back and and having a really good time learning some more about our old friend, Justin Moan. So Garrison, at this point, he flees from the Wiccanists and their de-handed friend and he gets back on the road again. Doesn't seem to call the police over this, but I guess they probably were in on it too.

What could the police have done about people dismembering a woman directly next to a crowded highway rest stop so he decides he gets to st louis he needs to find a place to eat he finds a cheap italian restaurant and he parallel parked at the curb uh buster walked inside the restaurant to the counter a small man stood beside the counter with a thick italian accent i make a good pie for you like you find on the East Coast, yeah? No West Coast! And then he uses a slur for gay

people stuff. Okay? No. Good, thank you, Buster said. You ain't a slur, are you? The man said. No, sir, Buster said. You sure you don't want some pineapples on this with no red sauce all white and a cheesy stuffed crust huh and then he calls him a slur again no just very

stereotypical but also bigoted italian chef character here you know i actually i actually ate at an italian restaurant in st louis uh last year um i was not accosted for being gay but that's good that's good did your guy have a comedic italian accent no i think i was being served by a lesbian actually okay well that's probably why that's probably why yeah so buster tells him that he just wants a plain pizza and the pizza man is willing to serve him but he does use the slur again at this point two men barged into the restaurant wearing long black pea coats black pants and shoes and black fedoras i already paid my dues here we go this is this is what i was signing up for this is rest stops are fine this

this is what i wanted yeah i already paid my boys, the man behind the counter said. The man behind the counter spun pizza dough in one hand. Look, Tony, un pazo con pizza, one man said. The other man in the fedora laughs. The old fool thinks we're here to collect dues. So what the hella do you want? A fucking pizza for? And he just keeps using that. He can't, he cannot mention pizza without dropping a slur.

I am, I'll tell you what. I'm not sympathetic towards this Italian man's plight. Both men in fedoras laughed hysterically and turned towards Buster. They lifted their peacoats and revealed Thompson's submachine guns, aka Tommy Guns. Those are so much more expensive than modern crime guns. Why are they spending $3,300? Yeah.

Yeah. What? Oh, it's good stuff. Like, in Chicago, maybe. In St. Louis, come on. Sure, sure. Of course, Chicago. Come on.

St. Louis, let's be real here. The men never explain why they're killing this guy uh but as buster's eyes widen no slurs allowed buddy yeah yeah these are the these are the lgbt police so they they open fire uh they each empty a hundred bullets towards the man behind the counter jesus then they turn to leaf you saw nothing kid nothing got it the man said i didn't see shit buster said oh my god so the bigoted pizza man has been shot full of holes and honestly i'm fine not a big loss leaves and goes back to his car he finds a what a fascinating thing to include in the story. He's making a lot of choices here.

I wish I could ask him about some of his process. Like, why did the pizza man have to be stereotypically Italian? Why did the gangsters have to carry a gun that has been outdated for nearly 100 years? Anyway, he goes to a cheap Asian restaurant next. And again, parallel parks at the curve. He really wants us to know that he can parallel park this is this is something he's made a point of several times interesting oh no garrison i'm not not excited to try to read you this next line a small man stood behind the counter with a thick chinese accent no no no you can do italian i am i am not gonna try this um what's important you know is that he says the same thing as the italian man i make it racially but he says i'll make you good

food like you get on the east coast no west coast and then he also uses the same slur and then he asks several more times about it and repeatedly calls him a slur okay um i don't understand why they are both the same person um but the same two men in long black pea coats fedoras come in and uh then they shoot this guy repeatedly huh yeah yeah this that's actually more interesting that this whole incident gets repeated just with slightly different like cultural backing it is it is compelling right and again the guys are like you saw nothing but then they're like oh hey aren't you the same kid from the other restaurant where we just machine gunned a man and buster showing admirable bravery here says yeah what's going on i'm just trying to find something to eat

and the mafia man very nicely explains oi kid every restaurant in st louis is owned owned by the same gang that's why they all say the same script when you walk in but we're taking over their racket and we're taking over the restaurant business in st louis so that's why both the chinese man and the italian man said the same things as they have a script. Oh, wow. Um, huh?

Yeah, that's compelling. That is compelling. Yeah. So, so Buster stops at a gas station to get a pre-made tuna sandwich, which to be honest, seems like the decision to make after, after going through two of these.

Yeah. So he, he winds up driving again through the countryside uh he approaches columbia um in between st louis and kansas city uh and he asks a guy if he can use a public restroom yes sir just take this here key witches so you can get in the door the man held a key up towards buster the man laughed odd way to write laughter not how laughter sounds Buster walked up to the man and took the key. Thanks, Buster said. Well, say, mister, you're not from around here, is you?

I don't recognize you, the man said. No, I'm just passing through, Buster said. You making your way to Kansas City? Yes, sir. Well, you better be careful. There are bandits on that bridge that goes over the Missouri River sometimes at night. Now, that's not true, but also- No, i did run into bandits on my okay okay on my road trip through uh through uh kansas okay okay it's been a couple of years for me yeah st louis yeah

no it was it was intense so buster's like that's great i'm gonna use the bathroom anyway and the man says i'll be watching you and so buster says okay maybe i won't go and then the man yells i was gonna suck your dick so i think we've gotten a good picture of uh what's going on with this guy uh i'm not really sure why he it's interesting like even the absurdity does have kind of its roots and you can see some of these this like everybody is programmed like saying a same script or whatever like they're the like that's why these interactions seem weird to me is that like this isn't real people talking to me these are people reading from a script it's all yeah you can kind of tie it all back to some of the delusional

thinking i want cities are these like lawless zones yes yes there's bandits on the road and people just getting machine gunned in their in their restaurants yeah so this book ends one of the last chapters about this is the fbi and the cia electrocuting buster and asking him questions they're making him specifically they want him to tell them their sins right because he's the second messiah because he's the second messiah so one of the masks and they seem to know everything about his entire life right which is again kind of ties back to the delusion so one of them's like what about the time you were drunk and threw a punch at a guy who wasn't looking during a group fight in college not really sure what a group

fight in college is but we can move right past that um what about all the cigarettes you've smoked and acid you've taken and mushrooms and ecstasy and all the other drugs you did? I only did them a couple of times. It's not like I'm an addict. Still serious damage to the body and putting your life at risk. CIA is very concerned about his overall health. Yeah, the CIA famously on the edge about using psychedelics.

Yeah. So this goes on for a while. And then the CIA agent leaves and FBI agents put him into a black SUV and drive him to Andrews Air Force Base. The FBI agents wheeled Buster onto an Air Force One jet, also Air Force is one word, and got on board with him. Then the jet took off. By the time the jet landed in Moscow, Russia, Buster no longer shook constantly. But every once in a while, he had a full-body jerk. The FBI agents wheeled him off the plane. Two Russian FSB agents waited on the bottom of the ramp. The FBI agents nodded to the FSB agents, who nodded back. Then the FBI agents got back on board the jet. The FSB agents wheeled Buster to a black rectangular SUV and put him inside.

Then they drove to the Kremlin. Buster sat in a wheelchair in the Kremlin. He was motionless, stared off into the distance at nothing, and his jaw hung. Suddenly his entire body jerked, then he went back to being still. The President of Russia walked up to Buster. King Moon, there is an uprising for more food in several parts of Southeast Asia, the President of Russia said. Gah-ha, Buster chuckled. What do you recommend the Global Communist Confederation do to your majesty, the President of Russia said. Gah-heh, Buster chuckled. What do you recommend ze global communist confederation do to your majesty? The president of Russia said. Gah-heh-heh-heh, Buster chuckled.

Buster stared off into the distance still. Genocide? The president of Russia said. Yeah-heh-heh, I love that. Buster smiled. The president of Russia turned around to face representatives from countries all over the world. Kills them all! Orders directly from ze king of earth!

The president of Russia said. Fighters, jets, and bombers from the United Global Force of China, Russia, America, and Europe flew over Southeast Asia, dropping bombs on every country, destroying every main city, burning forests and villages,

and killing hundreds of millions of people. And that's how the book ends. So I am fascinated about this middle chunk. Yeah, so am I where he goes to colorado and uncovers a satanic conspiracy involving the democratic party um but that end bit kind of got me thinking about there was all of these like like um all these like artistic things he was doing that was almost preparing himself to do an act of violence against a family member but as much as that was the future he was building for himself you also mentioned that he was being transported around by the fbi and like i wonder how much that was a part of the future he was building for himself like now that he's arrested at a national

guard base he's now being taken from place to place by government officials. He's constantly now surrounded by feds. He has built the reality for himself that now he is actually always watched by the government because he's been arrested for doing these things. He has created this fantasy world that he can now live in forever. Yeah. Whether he goes to trial,

he's probably going to... If his defense is smart, they'll do some sort of insanity defense.'ll be sent to a psychiatric place like he's now always going to be watched he is being moved around by government agents like he is living the thing that he was writing about and i find that that that second half of like him being caught also a compelling like a compelling thing that he was preparing himself for and it i mean he is he expresses repeatedly variations of like because the fbi and the cia are constantly in this book and also like constantly just like people coming into his

life around him um which again is part of this delusion but also you can see how a lot of these common right-wing tropes about like everything is infiltrated by the feds january 6th with the federal op and stuff how this is also going to feed into the delusions of a guy like this right um like he's very much this is very much ripped from the headlines and that you can see how things he was encountering in like conspiracy culture and popular media grafted themselves onto the delusions that he had yeah you can also see i i turned randomly to a page i haven't gotten to yet in this book 260 and the first line i saw in the middle of the page is let's fucking kill them and then eat them a midget in a wheelchair yelled holding an rpg so there's quite a lot in this book all right well well then i don't know what

the line of good taste and is like i think it's i don't think we'll keep going back to this i felt justified and like well i want to know what's in this thing once it seems kind of bad to keep doing that with this guy who murdered people's book but man there's a lot in here uh no and i there is a use in understanding how these people think um and under unpacking the sorts of large large swaths of of content that that uh people that are doing these mass acts of violence or very targeted acts of violence have been leaving online because yeah it allows you to actually get a better look at overarching patterns. Specifically, his songs for me are very, very evident of that. They're very similar to a lot of stuff you were reading the book. The song about him being tracked on his phone is called

They Came for Justin Moan. They found him all alone. they tracked him on his phone he talks about the uh student loans that he couldn't pay off the payments made him groan money controlled his life they wanted him to die just like this all all of just all this stuff they said he was god they came for justin moan yeah anyway well it's it's it's it's not to like laugh at him necessarily no it's it's about actually understanding this and yeah this is all fucked up so a part of a coping mechanism is kind of laughing at some of the more ridiculous elements but it's it is it is a an attempt to actually understand this this growing trend in american culture yeah because you can't just like and this is the thing that the right often wants it wants to do with this is like well this is just a mental illness

problem and like no it's not like you have to understand it's american culture yeah what's going into people's heads even if they also have you know are are mentally ill what's going into their heads what they believe about the world influences how they act on those delusions and the nature of those delusions this is what happens to your brain when it entirely becomes corrupted by the culture of war like this is this is now taken over his entire method of thinking this is the only way you can see the world and there's people who are paid to get people to be like this like this is this is the only way you can see the world and there's people who are paid to get people to be like this like this is this is people's whole job is to get more and more people to only think in these terms um and this is one of the results of that of that effort by elements of

the american right yeah anyway it's bad that'll be a good book to explain to a young child in 50 years to be why yeah why is this on your bookshelf well let me tell you about a man named justin mode if i ever have a kid garrison this will be the first book they read no that's probably a bad idea yeah well let's, let's be done. Let's go away. Goodbye. Goodbye. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season

digging into how Tex Elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel winning economists to leading journalists in the field. And I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology.

I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. Hola mi gente, it's Honey German and I'm bringing you Gracias, Come Again.

The podcast where we dive deep into the world of Latin culture, musica, peliculas and entertainment with some of the biggest names in the game. If you love hearing real conversations with your favorite Latin celebrities, artists, and culture shifters, this is the podcast for you. We're talking real conversations with our Latin stars, from actors and artists to musicians and creators sharing their stories, struggles, and successes. You know

it's going to be filled with chisme laughs and all the vibes that you love. Each week we'll explore everything from music and pop culture to deeper topics like identity, community, and breaking down barriers in all sorts of industries. Don't miss out on the fun and life stories. Join me for gracias.

Come again, a podcast by honey German, where we get into todo lo actual. Listen to gracias. Come again on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999,

a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere.

Elian Gonzalez. Elian Gonzalez. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with.

His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Cuba. Mr. González wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian González story,

as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, and welcome back to It Could Happen Here, your favorite daily podcast about the steady dissolution of society as we know it. I'm your guest host, Molly Conger, joined once again by our friend Garrison. Hello. Happy to look at the abyss once again. Yeah, try not to ruin your day too bad today. So, Garrison, today I want to talk to you about some terrible guys that I know you're already pretty familiar with. The Goyim Defense League. The GDL. The GDL. They're sort of a loose network of neo-Nazi trolls, best known for their anti-Semitic flyers, headed up by a failed rapper named John Minnodeo, who calls himself Handsome Truth. Handsome Truth. Handsome Truth. So there's

this sort of core cast of characters in Minnodeayo's orbit that shows up in person, mostly in Florida and Georgia. But the group's real strength is online. They have this decentralized network of thousands of followers nationwide who are encouraged to download and print the anti-Semitic flyers and distribute them in their area. It's not a new model, right? Like the Klan has been doing this for decades. Sure. this for decades. And National Alliance was big into this in the early aughts. But that's what they do, right? They're in the news every few weeks, you know, your local news, wherever it is that you live, you know, somebody left these racist flyers on everyone's front lawn. And I know you and I have talked about doing an episode in the future about the sort of counterproductive responses to these in-person demonstrations, the flyering and the banner drops. There's a new law in Florida and a proposed law in Georgia that are sort of allegedly aimed at countering anti-Semitism, but are going to have some sort of counterproductive knock-on effects. And I hope we can get to that at a later date. But today I want to talk to you

about a little project some GDL members have going on the side called the City Council Death Squad. Are they going around and killing city council members? That is kind of what it sounds like. It does sound like that's the energy here. They haven't done that yet. But Garrison, how would you feel if I told you a former juggalo

calling himself Scotty Big Balls is trying to destroy the thing I love most, which is civic engagement in municipal government i have such complicated feelings on juggalos oh god um no i want to be clear i'm not slandering the juggalo community here right like mr big balls got his hatchet man tattoo covered up with a big snake holding a gun a couple of years ago so he's no longer um god there's a cool name for their community.

He's no longer a part of the juggalo community. I don't think the juggalos would abide this kind of behavior. Generally not. They are kind of semi-cool. No, I've heard chicken hunting. I don't think they abide. No, just by happenstance, you know, ICP is not my cup of tea.

No, no shade. It's not my cup of tea. But I did see them perform at the Lincoln Memorial a couple of years ago, and it was the most polite crowd I've ever experienced at a live music event. So hats off to the Juggalos. Yeah, yeah, yeah. enthusiast like myself, you may already be aware of the rash of racist Zoom bombings disrupting meetings around the country over the last nine months or so. Remote participation in meetings became nearly ubiquitous during the pandemic, and the opportunity to make a public comment without having to devote an entire evening to sitting in an uncomfortable chair at City Hall has made civic engagement more accessible for all kinds of people, right? Not just because of contagion, but remote participation benefits everybody, like parents who are managing a bedtime routine by the time the public hearing opens at 8 p.m. or people who don't work a nine to five or people without reliable transportation.

So it's been a boon for local democracy, but it's also created a unique opportunity for people who want to ruin that. So last year, Scotty Big Balls, Mr. Big Balls, the online pseudonym for a self-described Nazi named Harley Ray Patero Jr. started a group he calls the City Council Death Squad. The group organizes online to find government meetings, mainly city and county council meetings all over the country that allow public comment via Zoom.

Then he coordinates those members to sign up for speaking slots, crowding out actual community members who are trying to speak on actual matters of local concern. And when the members of the group get through, the calls follow a couple of predictable paths. Sometimes the caller just starts screaming slurs, right? As soon as they connect, it's just screaming the N-word over and over and over and over again until someone can hit the button to cut it off. Sometimes they do what they call the slow roll where they start off trying to sound like a real caller. You know, they'll say like, you know, I have concerns about zoning in my neighborhood or I, you know, I think we should pay the police more. And then it veers abruptly into some kind of bizarre anti-Semitic conspiracy theory about crime or 9-11 or advocating for public lynchings. Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Where they like spend a few minutes eating up

the city council time and then just curtail it with some unhinged ramble. Right. And then yell the slurs. Yes, yes. Another favorite of the group is a call format where they pretend to be gay or Jewish themselves and then ascribe to themselves various traits associated with bigoted stereotypes of the group. Okay, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. John Minadeo has participated a few times himself, and he loves this one. He pretends to be a gay Jewish person named Tammy and then says some pretty outrageous things. I bet. The callers give themselves inside joke names like Rudy Hess or Sadie N-Word,

which when you say it out loud sounds like say the N-word. So it's like a Seymour Butts kind of thing. It's like Bart calling Moe's Tavern, except it's Nazis. Wow. Very, very clever on the cutting edge of comedy. Yeah. Or they'll name themselves after a mass shooter like Dylan Roof or Anders Breivik. Or, you know, sometimes it's like a deep cut, like a more obscure killer whose name might not arouse suspicion right off the bat. Like Jim Adkisson, a man who shot eight people at a Unitarian church in Knoxville in 2008 during a children's production of the musical Annie because he was angry about the church's liberal teachings. So, you know, it's good jokes. Yeah, this is all like

kind of like old like old school kind of Chan humor. It's not even that popular anymore because it's kind of just out of vogue. You're kind of you're kind of outing yourself as like a bit of like a not an actual boomer but like it's become a boomer fied this type of humor it's not really uh this sort of thing that younger more hip neo nazis are into they've they have they have they have moved on they have they've other other horizons of bad jokes so ruining everybody's good time by shouting a racial slur is hardly an innovation, but this particular operation has a discernible origin point. In May of 2023, Patero, that's Mr. Big Balls, if you've forgotten already, and three friends showed up in person to a Sacramento City

Council meeting to show their support for Ryan Masano. If you're from the Sacramento area, you probably know him. Massano, a former Proud Boy with several failed runs for office under his belt, already had a long history of being disruptive in public meetings. In 2018, he was removed from chambers during a Vallejo City Council meeting after saying the city was, quote, infested with homosexuals and refusing to be called to order by the mayor. The meeting of the same body in 2022, he was picked up and carried out after refusing to end his remarks at the end of his time.

So in 2023, he's attending every meeting of the Sacramento City Council. This has been going on for almost two months. He shows up, he gets up, he makes his homophobic, racist, and anti-Semitic remarks, but he's keeping with the rules of the meeting and they're letting him make his statements, but people aren't happy about it. So activists are starting to show up to the meetings.

People are showing up with banners. People are booing him. People are showing up to counter this. And so he puts out a call for backup. So at this point, the Patero shows up with two masked associates and a man named Jeffrey Perrine, who like Masano was a proud boy with a failed school board run to his name. At that time in 2023, Perrine had recently been arrested outside the home of a youth pastor after publicly calling for others to join him in going to the pastor's home during a school board meeting that had to be adjourned because of Perrine's disruptive behavior. So we're seeing a pattern emerging here, right? Like at this point, we've got two proud boys who keep getting kicked out of meetings and failing to run for school board. These are people who are seeing the value in kicking up some kind of disturbance at a meeting. very popular. There was a lot of far-right influencers trying to convince their followers to run for school boards. This was kind of a very particular cultural moment in 2022, 2023.

So they show up to this meeting to support Masano, and it doesn't go well. One of the guys throws a Hitler salute. People react angrily. There's a bit of a scuffle. It devolves, and the council ends up going into recess and clearing the chambers entirely. Everybody has to leave. You just can't be in here. Too much yelling. Everybody's mad. Nobody gets arrested, but everybody has to leave. And the council ended up continuing the meeting without the public's presence. So I think there was a hearing that night on an ordinance involving homelessness that people had showed up to speak on and they weren't allowed to do that now. Council continues their business, but nobody can be there. And Patera's alliance with Masano didn't last.

They actually butted heads almost immediately over optics. Masano preferred to make his long-winded speeches that, at least in his mind, were more palatable to the listener and might more effectively spread his message and potentially red-pill the listeners. He was actually angry that Patero's troll forward tactic of just shouting slurs and obscenities was actually resulting in avenues for public comment being closed off. In September of 2023, he wrote, either out of ignorance or deliberate sabotage, the GDL has no idea what they're doing. So he was mad, right? Because he

was doing this thing where every week he was showing up to make his comment. And because of the different strategy of disruption, that was getting harder for him. Masano, for his part, continues his one man battle against the Sacramento City Council. He's still doing that. OK. He's a lone wolf out there in Sacramento. But Patero saw the potential in trolling on a larger scale. OK.

Almost immediately, he branched out. Over the next few months, it developed into an organized trolling machine, targeting meetings across the country, covering at least 17 states from Alaska to Maine, Idaho, Wyoming, Georgia, Virginia. They're all over the place, often hitting the same city repeatedly, and in some cases, showing up in person with flyers or banners either before or after the Zoom bombing. After targeting meetings in the city of Walnut Creek, California, the group hung a racist banner in the area. Councilor Kevin Wilk commented on the banner in the press, and the following week, the meeting was hit again, with members specifically addressing Wilk, the locality's first Jewish city councilor, asking him how he liked it. In a later stream, Patero laughed about that personalized follow-up, saying, that pissed him off, so I had to rub it in. After targeting the city of Worcester, Massachusetts,

the group didn't just flyer. They mailed homophobic materials to the homes of several councilors, including Tu Nguyen, the state's first openly non-binary elected official. And it isn't even just regular city council meetings. Some of the targeted meetings are incredibly boring governmental bodies like the Morristown, New Jersey Board of Zoning Appeals. Oh, wow. When Patera posted a clip of their racist calls into that meeting, a group member posted the board chair's home address in the replies. They've also, and this doesn't even fit the pattern, I think they just got the bug, but they've posted several compilation videos of the group disrupting AA meetings. All right, that's interesting. I think they just got into the idea of making prank phone calls.

So they target addiction support groups often geared towards members of the LGBTQ community. So, OK, all right. Yeah. Just doing like homophobic attacks on people who are trying to get sober. Huh. They're just like finding any any meeting they can and just spamming this thing. I don't know that they have other hobbies. and just spamming this thing.

I don't know that they have other hobbies. Yeah, this seems like a lot of time between keeping up on zoning board meetings and whatever local AA call-in there is. It seems to be a bit childish and time-consuming. Right, I mean, this is, it takes a lot of time and Patero is pretty clear about that. You know, he runs these online spaces where he's organizing, he's, you know,

making lists of meetings that they should check out. He's complaining about that. You know, he runs these online spaces where he's organizing, he's, you know, making lists of meetings that they should check out. He's complaining about how, you know, sometimes you have to wait for hours while they're just doing like regular government stuff. You have to just like wait for it to be your turn to yell the N-word. It's time consuming.

Do you know what isn't time consuming? Spending your hard-earned cash on the products and services that support this show? That's right. We make it fast, easy, and reliable by listening to these products and services. Okay, we are back talking about the Goy defense league the gdl so we were just discussing how they were spending a lot of time disrupting a lot of a lot of meetings with their little call-in campaign right and it's it's tempting to dismiss this behavior as oh it's just trolling right they're just trolls sure it's like this is so juvenile how bad can it be it's just people calling in

right but this has real world consequences and they know that they revel in the reactions to their behavior. They're fully aware of and celebrate the destruction that it leaves in its wake. When the city of Portland suspended virtual public comment, commenters in the group called it a big effing win. When there's other media coverage of cities who have limited or even ended public comment altogether, the headlines are posted triumphantly in the group, often captured only with lol. Comments like the calls will continue until the Jews leave and shut it down for the win and never let them regroup or rest. No comfort given. Litter the replies to posts about city after city ceding ground to this harassment. So it's not just causing little inconveniences. It is actually shutting down cities' ability to hold public comment and for the public to actually speak on issues that are affecting them and their city.

Everyone just leaves because they can't continue or, you know, the meeting does continue, but they stop taking public comment or they change their policies and procedures to limit public comment moving forward. So this is having real effects that are, you know, living on in these cities even after they've moved on. Group members suggest using burner phones and fake number generators to avoid being caught or blocked. Patero has written online that he's been, quote, banned on multiple devices, but I have some tactics to prevent them from stopping me. Patero noted on a recent stream that the ADL's estimate of over 130 disruptions is shortchanging them, insisting they've done at least three times that many,

sometimes hitting dozens of meetings per week. And they're not just doing it, right? It's not just the act of doing it that is the thrill to them. They then cut the clips and then post them online for everyone to enjoy. They're cutting promos and making highlight reels of their favorite moments. There are compilations grouped by genre of hate, right? There's videos combining all the best moments of homophobia, all the best moments of anti-Semitism.

There are these promo videos set to that sort of ugly electronic fash wave music that they all love so much. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The promo videos have titles like, this is our meeting now, or we're jacking your shit. So these are being shared on like BitChu and Odyssey and Telegram, I'm guessing? Yeah, they're, you know, GDL, they're on every platform that's open to people like them, right? Okay. You know GDL. They're on every platform that's open to people like them, right?

Okay. And following that GDL model, right, they're posting these videos and getting money. They're accepting donations to continue doing this. Then on the anniversary of Kristallnacht, they targeted a planning commission in Crescent City, California, entitled the video CCDS Goes Kristallnacht on Crescent City. Right. So it's it's just a joke, right? They're not really doing Kristallnacht, but they're using the language of this sort of genocidal violence. And it's like monetized. They're like making money off of it. They are making making those donos, as they say it. After a recent adl article about the operation patero posted fuck the adl we'll give those caselers something to kvetch about in 2024

and his wife hayley reposted that adding you think he's playing he lives for this they don't work they really do live for this it does sound like this is like the most important thing happening in their life, which is one quite sad. That also shows that they have a lot of time to dedicate to pulling off stuff like this time that they should be dedicating to parenting. Honestly, well, I don't know if you want them around their kids. Honestly, the more time they spend away from their children is probably better. God damn. spend away from their children is probably better god damn during the bombing in october an official in sausalito california voiced support for just cutting off the calls over objections from other

members of council that this could get them sued saying he would quote take the lawsuit if these people can even get organized enough to sue us and while the group has made no progress on actually filing any legal action there or anywhere else, they haven't forgotten it. Just last week, the group expressed an interest in seeking some kind of retribution for that comment, saying they may need a little visit. And the group is raising money to start traveling to meetings in person. A fundraiser on the platform of choice for right-wing extremists, GiveSendGo, has already raised $1,000 in donations to fund travel and lodging for the group members to travel to city council meetings for in-person disruptions. On their weekly live streams,

viewers can donate directly in the stream. On the stream, Patero thanks viewers for donations, often in the amount of $14.88. Yeah, that makes sense. Oh yeah, they live for the memes. Reminding them that every donation goes directly towards funding their IRL activism, getting them offline and into real life, traveling around the country to engage in racial harassment in person. He also says the donations fund a side project called Postcard Waffen. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Say that one more time, just a little slower. Postcard Waffen. Postcard Waffen. Postcard Waffen?

They love to add Waffen to things, right? That's just the German word for weapon. So this is weaponized mailings. And this is the nickname they've given to the work of mailing hateful materials directly to the homes of the elected officials who preside over the meetings they disrupt. This seems like a sort of targeted harassment kind of campaign. Sure. Targeted harassment, intimidation. There's some with the other like mentions, you know, it's like veiled threats. These types of neo-Nazis are not averse to actually doing violence on people. So, yeah, there's there's there's like an unpleasant

threat implied with these with this with this sort of rhetoric and activity and because of the decentralized nature of the gdl and i think this is something we can talk about in a later episode about kind of what they're up to these days is they don't have communication with or control over all of the people who are consuming this content so they may not plan to follow up with these people in a manner that would be criminal, but they're encouraging people to think that that's an option. And that has ramifications. Sure.

So this isn't just annoying prank calls. It's an organized effort to ruin local democracy, to make meetings unproductive and unbearable, to intimidate and humiliate local government employees and elected officials, to make your city council chambers an intimidating and uncomfortable place for you, closing off that avenue for you to address and engage with your local government and to take away options for actually engaging with local government by forcing cities to limit public comment. And we can't cede that ground to that. Oh, man, that is I mean, I know there's just been so many instances with city council meetings and various other kind of these big public forums especially school board meetings where like they are they are like discussing extremely important

stuff around uh like trans people um and forming policies that that that impact people and i know a lot of people do do actually end up going out to these and talking about their experiences and why proposed laws or ordinances would be so harmful. And just removing that option, whether or not you believe in like the electoral process TM, removing that option from people to actually speak on their own experiences does have like real consequences. Even if you're not a big believer in it being a meaningful political action to engage with your local government, I think we can all agree that it's not okay for Nazis to make it unsafe for anyone to do that. Yeah.

You know who won't cede ground to the Nazis trying to take over your local school board? The products and services that support this podcast. I hope so. It depends. Capitalism is quite strong, but we'll see how this develops. Okay, we are back. So this is kind of depressing. Molly, what... What is to be done? What is to be done, Garrison? Yes.

So unfortunately, a lot of the obvious solutions here are bad ones, right? The response that a lot of cities have had is that, well, they're just going to eliminate remote public comment altogether. You just can't participate remotely anymore. Which hurts people who are like disabled, hurts people who have tough things with scheduling, parents, people who work at certain hours. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like most people can't spend six hours sitting at City Hall on a Monday night. Most people can't. And so having remote participation was really, it opened up local democracy to people with all kinds of life situations, right? And that's like,

that's what happened here in my own city of Charlottesville. CCDS targeted us last October. And in response, the mayor eliminated remote participation in all meetings. We didn't get to revisit that. That's just how it works now. So they've moved on. But now my entire city of over 50,000 people lives with the consequences of that action. And we're left with a less accessible local democracy. They'd rather prevent anyone from calling in than have to deal with deciding whether they can do anything about it when someone abuses that process. And there's some really basic steps that cities can take right off the bat, like without even overthinking it or getting into the legal complications of the First Amendment. Cities like Linwood, Washington responded to their CCDS

Zoom bombing by adding a few basic layers of security to their virtual meetings, like requiring commenters to sign up the day before. So this group is organized in a private Telegram chat. And so like one person gets into a meeting and just drops the link into the chat. And so everyone just clicks that link. But if you make it so everyone has to have a unique sign in link that they signed up for with a real email address the day prior, that makes a little bit harder to coordinate a dog pile. Sure. You know, it isn't hard to make a fake or temporary email address to sign up to get the link, but if sometimes just adding one extra step is discouraging enough that they'll pick somebody else this week.

But this behavior is escalating, right? And making it a little bit harder to get into the Zoom isn't going to solve the problem. It's going to keep happening, and you can only make a public meeting so secure without actually locking out the public. Elected officials are understandably concerned about the legal ramifications of dealing with these kinds of calls. With some exceptions, they can't prevent someone from speaking based only on the content of the speech. I actually found a 2006 letter, I guess in 2006 the LA city council asked their city attorney I don't I need to do a little research on what was going on in 2006 in LA but the LA city council asked the city attorney can we make a rule that people can't say racial slurs in here which which

seems like an okay rule like I don't know like the answer was no legally you can't limit speech based on its content right because these are public forums put on by the government. I mean, it's what's called of appeals that covers that part of California, White versus City of Norwalk. And that decision upheld a city ordinance that authorized the legislative body to remove individuals who uttered, quote, personal, impertinent, slanderous, or profane remarks if the remarks disrupted, disturbed, or otherwise impeded the conduct of the meeting. So it's not just that your remarks were nasty, it's that your behavior was disruptive. The way that these remarks were delivered was interfering with the conduct of the meeting. So the meeting is disrupted because counsel is prevented from accomplishing its business in a reasonably

efficient manner. The court further wrote, indeed, such conduct may interfere with the rights of other speakers. And that's what's happening here, right? That these disruptions are not only not your right, you don't have a right to disrupt the meeting, but that behavior also fundamentally infringes on everyone else's rights to have the meeting. It keeps the meeting from being conducted and it's interfering with the conduct of the government's business. it's interfering with the conduct of the government's business. So if they open a public forum, anyone can speak in the public forum and you can't cut them off because of the content of their speech. But that doesn't mean there's no legal way to put limits on public comment. If the rule is content neutral and serves a legitimate government interest, the government

can impose some restrictions on your speech, right? Like requiring a permit for a parade is a limit on speech or saying you can't yell in a courtroom is a limit on your speech, but it's not a violation of your First Amendment rights to say you can't disrupt a trial. But more importantly, in the risk of getting too boring, right, like a meeting is not a sidewalk. There is something, this is not just any public place where you're speaking, this is a meeting where business is being conducted. There's a legitimate and compelling government interest in the ability to conduct the meeting. And so the rules that they can make in this space can vary state by state. Some states do or don't allow you to limit speakers to residents or they can or can't limit the topics that are germane. So it's going to vary a little

bit, but the courts have repeatedly upheld, not just in the Norwalk case, the ability of a council to adopt a content neutral rule and use that rule to cut off or remove speakers who are disruptive. And honestly, I have to say, I think any city attorney worth his salt knows this. This is day one stuff. If your whole job, well, not your whole job, but your job on Monday nights, whenever the meeting is, is to provide legal advice to a city council on how they're conducting their business, you know this because disruptive behavior during a meeting isn't some brand new phenomenon. But it's kind of remarkable. And I watched like a hundred clips of this happening,

right? And over and over and over again, you see these city attorneys saying like, oh, we're powerless here. We're powerless here. We don't want to get sued. There's nothing we can do. And that's not true. And they know that. Yeah. I mean, I've seen people get escorted out of chambers for being disruptive in city council meetings before. Like I think it happens relatively frequently. It's not like an uncommon brand new occurrence. Right. I mean mean i've seen that discretion applied appropriately and fascistically right like absolutely it happens but over and over and over again in these situations you see these city attorneys the city council saying like

i guess we just have to let them do it a commenter in one of the sacramento meetings from last summer actually pointed out that you know she was saying to her city council, you had no hesitation removing black members of the public from this room when they were angry that your cops murdered Stefan Clark. So why are you so nervous about infringing on the free speech rights of literal Nazis, like someone who's just in here screaming the N word? Why is that worthy of more breathing room? And something, you know, as a resident of the city of Charlottesville who watches our local government pretty carefully, something we found over and over again here is that if fear of litigation is your starting point for making decisions on how to govern, you're going to make cowardly, dangerous, stupid decisions every time. And you're probably going to get sued anyway so make the choice to protect people get good legal advice sure consult with your city attorney consult the case law don't be reckless but if you're faced with the opportunity to make a decision that

protects people a decision that serves the public good a decision that aligns with the values you claim to hold but might result in someone filing a lawsuit against you that they're not going to win anyway. Don't err on the side of shielding yourself from nuisance litigation at the expense of the public. Don't just look at us and shrug. Your hands are not tied here. And if you're not comfortable making that kind of decision, get off the dais. I mean, I'm not a city attorney, but that would be my advice, right? And so again, I think the bottom line here is that we can't cede this ground. The end result here can't be, well, local government just isn't a place where we can safely and meaningfully engage with elected officials on the issues that matter. Right. That that can't be the answer here. Don't wait until this is happening where you live to react to this. Right? Like it could happen here. It is happening in a lot of places. You know, if you're inclined to do so, you know, show up, engage, speak your mind on local issues. Don't wait for your city hall to become a battleground to show up to counter right wing influence, right? Like don't just react to reactionaries. Stake out that ground now. That's our space, right? takeaways stake out that ground now. That's our space, right? Make it clear that people are engaged and that they insist on their right to engage so that your city council can't say, well, people aren't really making public comments anyway. We just won't have it. And let me make

sure that they know that you will not accept the death of local democracy at the hands of some weaselly paradox of tolerance bullshit about letting Nazis dominate our spaces. I know there's been other people who've been like talking about and pointing out these instances of GDL Zoom bombing and shutting down these meetings, but there certainly has been less discussion of this being a deliberate tactic that GDL is doing specifically to actually like shut down the democratic process. Like it has been so, so focused on just like the trolling and the spreading of anti-Semitic rhetoric, which are big problems. But I think there's been a little bit less of a focus on actually looking at this as a deliberate tactic being employed to remove people's ability to engage democratically in the city or school board or

wherever they live and i think viewing it as a deliberate tactic like that like you've been talking about but both gets like a better look at how these neo-nazis are trying to organize but also like it it's it's a more uh holistic approach towards why why is this happening and it can allow you to look at this as more of a tactical decision, less than just kind of random trolling slurs XD, which it can be kind of reduced to, which is at the very least an incomplete way of looking at this phenomenon,

if not just kind of wholly inaccurate. I mean, I don't want to give them too much credit, right? Like they didn't have a brainstorming session where they were thinking about ways to contribute to the death of democracy. I think this is sort of a phenomenon that occurred as a result of their actions that they then saw and appreciated. Right. So it's not that they don't understand it, but I don't think they intended it from the outset. But at this point, it's hard to deny that that is something they're doing on purpose. And it's just been an interesting trend with the GDL specifically, especially considering the legislation trying to crack down on political flyering, which we might we might talk about at a later date. But yeah, it's been interesting watching the GDLs, this political force that yes, is like annoying and bad in the rhetoric they spread, but also they've had this interesting ability to just either affect legislation or like shut down people's

ability to engage with politics in their local area in a few notable ways. So it's important to sort of sit for a minute before you react to people like this, right? Like you were talking about that legislation that's going to end up infringing on a lot of people's political speech, right? Like you can't just react to the troll. You have to sort of think about the context in which this is occurring and make a reasonable choice about how to react so you don't end up giving them what they want, basically, right? Because they love the attention. They love the attention. Every time they do this, it ends up on the local news. People are talking about it. People are repeating their message. And you don't need to give them that. Well, thank you, Molly, for for putting this together. This has been very enlightening, if slightly upsetting. But that is kind of it's kind of it's kind of the entire bit we do here.

I suppose sort of the show. Where can where can people find your work online? You can find me on Twitter. I will never call it X, Socialist Dog Mom. And in keeping with the spirit of this episode, most of what I use my Twitter account for is live tweeting my local city government meetings. I've been doing that for, God, seven years now.

So this is a subject that's near and dear to my heart. I love engaging with municipal government. Fantastic. Yeah, I've attended more city council meetings the last year than I have ever before in my life. And it has certainly been an experience. A lot of wacky and unusual things happen in city council meetings. Thank you, Garrison, so much for joining me today. And hopefully we can bring the listeners something even worse someday soon.

Yeah, yeah. Stay tuned for more breaking Goyim Defense League news. Fucking dark. Thank you. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, better offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists to leading journalists in the field, and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible.

Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better.

Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. Hola, mi gente. It's Honey German, and I'm bringing you Gracias, Come Again, the podcast where we dive deep into the world of Latin culture, musica, peliculas, and entertainment

with some of the biggest names in the game. If you love hearing real conversations with your favorite Latin celebrities, artists, and culture shifters, this is the podcast for you. We're talking real conversations with our favorite Latin celebrities, artists, and culture shifters, this is the podcast for you. We're talking real conversations with our Latin stars, from actors and artists to musicians and creators, sharing their stories, struggles, and successes. You know it's going to be filled with chisme laughs and all the vibes that you love. Each week, we'll explore everything from music and pop culture to deeper topics like identity, community, and breaking down barriers in all sorts of industries. Don't miss out on the fun, el té caliente, and life stories.

Join me for Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get into todo lo actual y viral. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel.

I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian.

Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami.

Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everyone, this is It Could Happen Here, and I'm your guest host, Matt Lieb. I'd say most of you probably know me from Robert and Sophie's podcast Behind the Bastards, which, you know, I've become kind of notorious for the time that i use a jar jar bink soundboard

during a series about dr mangala yeah i don't have that soundboard with me today sorry fewer of you might know me from having the world's only sopranos slash the wire rewatch podcast pod yourself a gun but the fewest of you might know me from my brand new podcast, Bad Hasbara, the world's most moral podcast, in which me and some of my other anti-Zionist or non-Zionist Jewish friends, and our other friends, and our other guests, guests who, you know, you've maybe heard, like Shireen here, we have casual conversations about Israeli propaganda and Israeli propagandists. For some of you, this might be your first time hearing the word Hasbara. And that's why the homies at Cool Zone Media invited me here today. So this episode is all about Hasbara, aka Israel's public relations and propaganda machine. And I am thrilled to be joined by my friend and one-time

cat sitter, Shireen Younis. Hi, Shireen. Hi, Matt. What an intro. Yeah, I'm excited to learn more about this, actually. Also excited to know how you properly say Hasbara, because I don't know if I'm saying it right. Has-ba-ra. Yeah, it's Has-ba-ra. Yeah, that's i mean the sound and the yeah the law you know within with the the throat um has ba you heard it here first yes you heard it here first um i'm not i'm not the greatest at doing you know israeli accents or whatnot. So, um, throughout this podcast, I'm probably going to be butchering a lot of Hebrew words. Uh, and,

uh, you know, just, you're just going to have to deal with it. Yeah. And that's totally fine. That's just part of the game. I've,

I've mispronounced every, every name I've ever said on this show. So, yeah, yeah. I mean, you should hear me trying to pronounce Arabic names. Like, I can't do it. I can help if that ever happens.

I attempt. Yes, if there's any that happened in this episode, please. But before we get into talking about Hasbara, I want to start with a quick story. Shireen, are you familiar with the birthright trip? Yes, I am. It was one of those things where I was very excited to one day do the birthright trip. And I didn't really even question,

I knew like, you know, it was a little bit, you know, they were trying to whine and dine me to go there and, you know, maybe move or whatnot, but I didn't know um how much they wanted me

to move there until i went so for me my birthright trip is kind of why i'm here today talking about hezbollah it's why i started a freaking podcast about it it's it's when I first started clocking Israeli propaganda. So, I went in January 2012. If you don't know Birthright, it's pretty much a two-week, all-expenses-paid trip for young Jews from all over the world to go to the Holy Land, reconnect with their Jewish roots, float in the Dead Sea. It is a propaganda tour of a apartheid state. And, you know, I'm not going to get too much into the history of Birthright, you know, and all the like far right wing funders like Sheldon Adelson and stuff. There's like not enough time for that. But I'm mentioning it because it was the first time I saw how Hasbara was more than just propaganda and how, in my opinion, it more closely resembles like indoctrination. And the organizers at Birthright did like a

masterful job of this. Like I went on a trip of American Jews who were like me, like they were like secular, from mixed or like intermarried families, non bar mitzvahed. It was all like other matlib type Jews, like ethnic Jews. Right. And I realized this, I think it was like day two of the trip. One of the Israeli tour guides literally gave us a bar mitzvah, like all at the same time. We had a group bar mitzvah like all at the same time we had a group bar mitzvah yeah and they did it by saying like uh okay you're now bar mitzvah uh it just means you're a man now everyone here is a man

now choose an israeli name and uh that which was like for me i remember feeling a little you know i was like wait i i was there's supposed to be a theme party and fucking like a dj my dad's supposed to yeah dj my dad's gonna buy me a car or lease me a like a honda like i thought it was more than that uh at the very least i thought i would have to like memorize a torah portion but no you just go to, uh, you know, a tour guide does it for you. So like, it, it, it really works though. Like you really, you, you go there being like, you know, I'm a European Jew and you leave there and you're like, I invented falafel. So the Hasbara highlight of the trip for me was this like mega, like birthright mega event uh it was in jerusalem in a huge arena in which they had like israeli speakers donors uh rappers and there was like a there were rappers at one point who just started rapping about uh things that they claim israel invented like iPhone computer chips and like the cherry

tomato, uh, which was, you know, uh, like you. And by the way, a not insubstantial amount of the trip was spent telling us about how Israel

invented the cherry tomato. Like we went to places like, uh, you know, uh, farms and stuff where they showed us this like drip irrigation multiple people were just like man we invented the cherry tomato here can you believe it and i was like this seems like a lot of effort for just this one particular thing which uh may or may not be true

but um but yeah so uh the headliner of the mega event of that night the cherry tomato on top if you will was a speech by none other than prime minister benjamin bb netanyahu straight up the prime minister of israel was the headline speaker of this birthright event. And an arena filled with like 20,000 teens and like early 20-somethings, which was kind of like amazing. Like, you know, listen, here's the thing. here's the thing i knew benjamin netanyahu i like i knew enough about israeli politics to know that like he was a fucking right winger and bad but like i have to admit even i you know as a 26 year old who kind of was starting to get like woke on palestine you know so to speak like even i was like kind of like oh this is i'm a little charmed a little honored to see the prime minister

here he took time out of his busy schedule of doing crimes probably to address us uh and you know i actually found the speech of that night i actually have some clips from it that i want to play that is incredible that's great so yeah he was he was like casual he was off the cuff they wrote a speech for me i'm not gonna read it like he even did a little bit of crowd work anyone here named rachel so uh that right there is uh what we in the jewish community call rachel profiling that's when you just are in front of a group of jews and you ask who's named rachel uh shout out to rachel blumenthal for telling me that joke in college it was it was like a crash course

in hezbollah like he told us we were from Israel at one point. You all come from great countries, great countries, but you all come from here. All of you. That's your birthright. He was telling us that like, you know, once again, it was everything they invented phone, you know, the cell phone chips, blah, blah, blah. He was telling us to make Aliyah to Israel, which means to move, to return, to come back. Essentially, what he was vying for was like, move to Israel and start a family. It's very sex-based, the way it works. The big thing I

took away was him telling us that he wanted us to go back home and tell people the truth about Israel. But the most important battle that we have to fight is the battle for the truth. And all of you can become ambassadors for the truth and ambassadors for Israel. And of course, you know, he then proceeded to tell us what the truth about Israel was. Go back to your respective countries and tell the truth about Israel. The only way to fight a lie is to tell the truth. Tell them about a country where people are free, free to initiate, free to work, free to speak. It's a country where you can criticize the prime minister,

although he never makes mistakes. This is a country in which Arabs have full rights, something they've been denied in all the vast lands around us. And a woman in this country can sit anywhere she wants. That's our position. This is a free country. So, him going up there telling me that what he wants from me is to go back home and be an ambassador for Israel and tell the truth about Israel. You know, it was the first time I realized that he was giving me a job to do. And this is a job that I think a lot of

Jewish people who may be listening to this podcast can relate to. The job of telling the truth about Israel and the job of, you know, stopping the slander that is out there about Israel in the media and on the internet and press and all that stuff and uh it was the first time I realized that like oh part of the Hezbollah isn't just you know some government thing it's like my job uh my job is to is to tell the truth and he said something in that clip the only way to fight a lie is with the truth and um so i am gonna follow his advice that's what i'm gonna do shereen i'm going to tell people the truth about israel and uh i think i think it's time to do it so let's get into it about hasbara uh what is it what is it and so loosely hasbara is uh it's

a modern hebrew word derived from uh the word uh las beer hasbir, meaning to explain or explanation. I say loosely because it's kind of a made up word. So, you know, a lot of words in modern Hebrew are sort of made up words. Remember, Hebrew is like an ancient liturgical language and modern Hebrew was created by like Jewish linguist nerds who wanted to revive the language to be a spoken one and that's how you got modern hebrew which is fine there's nothing wrong with uh reviving a dead language um but because of that a lot of the words in modern hebrew are kind of inventions so according to mosaic magazine uh hasbara is a strictly a 20th century ism you won't find it in eliezer ben yahudah's monumental complete dictionary of ancient and modern hebrew whose second volume in which has

bara appears only as the first word of hasbara panim uh was published in 1902 so it's uh not something that you see in kind of like the original beginnings of you know uh the creation of modern hebrew like colloquially uh hisbara like refers to like uh media pr branding mudslinging it's kind of a like a sort of like catch-all term for general propaganda used to create a narrative based on israel Israeli government talking points meant for a foreign, usually American, or just generally Western audience. People who deal in Hezbollah are called Hezbarists or Hezbaristas, which is fun. That's true?

Yeah, yeah. Wow. I mean, listen, Hezbarista, I think, gives it a little bit more flair. You know, kind of imagine someone kind of like making you coffee, but instead of coffee, it's they make you lies. Alayte. Nope, I'm not going to do that. Sorry.

Alayte. I like it. No, no. I wish I never was born. No, okay. So, there's all sorts of like Hasbars. Like some of them have like official positions within the israeli government such as the head of the idf spokesperson's unit daniel hagari who you might remember is the

guy uh from that video taken at the uh you know the children's hospital um you know in gaza and he's like pointing at what he thought was a a list of Israeli hostages, but was like literally just a calendar didn't have any names. It was just, he was pointing at days of the week thinking they were names because that's what a calendar has. And also it's so fucking weird that they can't read Arabic. Like you're in the middle East. You are the spokesperson. I think something interesting about how Hebrew was revived as well is that a lot of words were taken from Arabic. A lot of words are very similar to Arabic.

So it's like even more funny that they would, they can't even read the language that they kind of took a lot of words from. But I'm saying that like, yeah, in Israel, it's almost like the, the appropriation was just part of the process of the cleansing, you know, just like stealing something, saying it's ours, and then not even being able to identify

an Arabic word that you yourself say. So, yeah, so there's him, then there's like, everyone, if you've been on Twitter, you've seen a lot of Elan levy who uh he's um his official title is the official israeli government spokesperson and that's through uh the basically the office of the prime minister he's a british guy like he raises his eyebrows it's like the meme you know like he he goes like that's what he's famous for then there's uh a lot of these like non-governmental like israeli civil society has bara organizations like stand with us or like uh apac uh the washington institute for near east policy the anti-defamation league christians united for israel the israel on campus coalition i mean there are tons of them tons tons of them. And then, of course,

there's people who are just in it for the love of the game, like celebrities, artists, actors, who make Israel public advocacy part of their thing. It's a fascinating world filled with ghouls and goblins. So, the word Hezbollah itself uh interestingly is hezbara so early zionists had no problem calling their pr campaigns um and like their branding for a jewish state and palestine uh propaganda they would say it's we got to do propaganda because in the early 20th century 20th century the term was generally considered to be neutral like people said they were doing propaganda when they were doing propaganda once the word became a pejorative, they created the word Hasbara, which is a nicer sounding word with more neutral connotations. And although it's now used as a

pejorative by critics of Israel and me and stuff, the word is still used to this day in Israel. It is still a fairly neutral sounding word. There are Hasbara workshops sponsored by Israel. They have Hasbara fellowships. That's the name of the fellowship. Like you can get merch that says Hasbara fellowship on it. And the reason is because it doesn't translate. The word isn't translate to propaganda. It just means to explain, which is, you know, seems innocent enough. It's you know seems innocent enough it's not about doing propaganda it's not about they don't call themselves liars they're not saying i'm going to lie they say they're merely just explaining and um i found this speech from the uh middle east

policy council that goes into depth about what Hasbara is beyond just like propaganda. Quote, Hasbara links information warfare to the strategic efforts of the state to bolster the unity of the home front, ensure the support of allies, disrupt efforts to organize hostile coalitions, determine the way issues are defined by the media, the intelligentsia, the social networks, establish parameters of politically correct discourse, delegitimize both critics and their arguments, and shape the common understanding and interpretation of the results of international negotiations. So, behind this term is a large well-funded information warfare apparatus dedicated to shaping you know israeli discourse in the media and the government and academic institutions everywhere and they use all of the tools in their toolbox to silence criticism of israel and what they

can't silence they soften Sometimes it's through coordinated letter writing campaigns. Sometimes it's harassment. Sometimes it's doxing, you know, people have been doxed. So, before I continue, I want to address that uncomfortable feeling you had when I talked about like Israel and the media. I want to say that is, that is not to say that is, I, that is not to say that Israel or the Israel lobby or Zionists quote control the media. All right. So they do not. That's why Hasbara exists.

You know, that's why the Israel lobby exists. If they controlled the media, they wouldn't have groups like camera, for example, constantly day in and day out harassing the New York Times and CNN and PBS to get them to talk about Israel correctly. Okay. So it's important when people hear these criticisms of Israel that they don't try to see them as like otherizing Israel or like, you know, a lot of people, they get uncomfortable because a lot of these things will match old anti-Semitic tropes. But it's important to remember that these lobbying groups exist in Israel. They exist in the gun lobby, in the big oil lobby. This is not unique to Israel. The unique thing about it is how willing the American public is and the West, uh, in general is to letting

themselves be lied to. That's why I'm interested in it. But let's talk about camera real quick, because this is a recent thing that happened. Uh, some news happened recently about, uh, the New York times and their connection to camera. This is from a recent article in The Intercept. The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis, or CAMRA, was founded in 1982 in response to what it claims was anti-Israel bias in the Washington Post reporting on the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Since its inception, Camera has successfully lobbied for hundreds of corrections in major media outlets seeking to streamline a pro-Israel line in news reports and editorials. It has smeared journalists whose work it disagrees with

and launched boycott campaigns against news organizations it believes are not responding with enough deference to its requests. So, the way this group operates is that they go through any and every article about Israel, looking for sentences, looking for terms, definitions, anything they disagree with, and lobby for corrections to be issued. Camera doesn't do this quietly. They openly brag about it on their website like recently camera successfully lobbied the new york times to issue a correction removing the word occupation uh from an article and they wrote this on their website quote the mask slipped for the new york times reporters kum hamas stenographers this week when they absently neglected to don down Hamas's preferred language before passing off the terror organization's talking points as original reporting.

Take notice of the framing of the New York Times is like, has and continues to have coverage described as biased in favor of Israel. Like according to an intercept analysis, it was found that in the first six weeks of the war, New York Times consistently delegitimized Palestinian deaths and cultivated a gross imbalance in coverage to pro-israeli sources and voices so the exact opposite of what camera is claiming is the truth here you know this is this is actually a famous hasbara tactic it is the uh the i am rubber you are glue tactic and um it's really something to see it in action like i don't know shereen if

you've seen how often you've like read some pro-israeli uh voices you know has baris online and heard them say stuff that you're like i know for a fact the exact opposite of this thing is true you know what i mean yeah every uh every accusation is a confession i've yeah it feels like that is true all the time when it comes to this stuff and also the intercept article is very good i'll put it in the description for those who want to read the whole thing i'm glad you mentioned that because i didn't know that much about camera until i read that article and i was just like what like i knew that that was a thing that it was that was done like they would change words recently the new york times was thing that it was that was done like they would change words

recently the new york times was like a decline of death or life like they used the word decline to describe to describe what was happening in gaza they decided the article's headline was going to be like death's actually declining in gaza exactly and like the standard ones are always there like blast or conflict or whatever it is those are unfortunately so normal now but right to see it all laid out by the intercept is really i'm really glad i did that article so it will be in the description and i'm glad you mentioned it but it does go back to the idea that every accusation is a confession i think that's something to remember every time you see a headline. It's true. And, and it, and it's something that, uh,

you know, it's almost become a cliche online because you've, I've seen it so many times people saying that. And I think it's important to remember that this is sort of the tactic of Hasbara. Like what makes Hasbara particularly notable and like often hilarious is that it doesn't merely just spin narratives, but it inverts them to essentially make like an alternate reality. It's not just that Hasbara is information warfare. Hasbara is straight up info wars like Alex Jones level shit the same way uh Alex Jones will run the same like fantastical paranoid thread

through every major news events that happens in order to reinforce his worldview and prove that he's right and everyone else is wrong you know like that's Israel does this but with like far more money and far greater success and it kind of makes sense why they're successful at it like alex jones info wars shit like praise on white christian paranoia that like the blacks are trying to take away our guns so they can make our children trans or whatever like total fantasy and insane shit that you have to be like already far right wing to believe well like israeli info wars preys on a much more grounded in reality paranoia that of anti-semitism like anti-semitism is real it's historical it's evil it's pervasive it's pernicious like this kind of paranoia makes sense

and not just for jews but like for anyone of conscience, anyone who has empathy, you know, like that they understand antisemitism is bad and needs to be fought. And that makes Hezbollah very effective. You know, people want to support Israel because people want to support the Jewish people and they want to fight antisemitism. And when the IDF dismantles a children's hospital and says, we had to do it to stop Hamas. Look, here's a list of hostages. People want to believe them. It's like Mulder from the X-Files. Like I want to believe, which is the same impulse as Alex Jones believers, essentially. Like you don't want sandy hook to be a possibility you want it to be a conspiracy to take your guns away you want those children to be secretly actors pretending

to be dead so like when israel says we aren't killing children we're killing hamas people want to believe that yeah and yeah as much as i hate that you compared Fox Mulder to the, like, you dragged him into this and I'll get over it, but I won't forget it. I'm sorry to, you know, to bring him into this conversation, but, you know, I'm just saying Mulder, if he wants to believe that stuff, what else does he want to believe? You just hope, you really hope and pray that he's not going to fall for the Hezbara, but he might. You never know. You really don't and it's like you know it's hezbollah is effective because it gives you something like a nice legitimate sounding explanation for why israel needed to do something that you might

usually think is bad like that's how it's worked for decades in the same way that hezbollah serves to explain things for you to basically take the israeli government at its word that's kind of how it works it gives you a believable explanation and not only sounds like kind of real but it can you know conforms to your personal beliefs and yeah but speaking of personal beliefs if there's one thing oh let's see if i can do, if there's one thing, oh, let's see if I can do this. If there's one thing I'd love to believe in, it's commerce. And so, yes, I mean, listen, people have to make money somehow. So it looks like we have some products and services that we have to sell.

And yeah, when they sell you these these products and services please believe them when they say how good they are and we are back uh so we were talking about hezbollah and how uh you know the explanations conform to your personal beliefs um the interesting thing about hezbollah is that they have different types of hezbollah for a wide range of personal beliefs it's uh it's not one size fits all it depends on who you are there's a conservative version and there's a liberal version. Like Israel, Israel has been very successful in their ability to brand themselves as both a liberal democracy and a outpost for Western values fighting the Muslim hordes. Usually, these strategies have been like pretty separated, right? You know, like you can't claim claim to you can't do them at

the same time it'll sound weird it's like israel is the only gay friendly climate conscious feminist democracy and that's why we got to do genocide like that doesn't that doesn't sound right like you tell the city dwelling liberal elites about the gay stuff you tell the conservative christians about the western civilization stuff that's kind of how it works the basic conservative hezbollah doesn't actually interest me all that much because it's uh i don't know they don't have to work that hard at getting conservatives to be okay with killing Muslims um you know it's like Muslims Arabs you know they they're they're fully willing to you don't even have to like couch it in something no that's just what happens to us it's it's fine right and it's interesting too because like this idea of uh of you know being a Western outpost, uh, an outpost for Western values is not like

that is very much falling into the, um, almost the, the whiteness thing of Europeans where you kind of like, cause Jews like European antisemitism wasn't about how Jews had Western values. It was about how Jews represented this other, this, this thing that, you know, they don't, they didn't share values.

There were some weird other thing. And, uh, you know, this was not the, uh, the charge of antisemitism in Europe. And now with like Israeli propaganda towards, you know,

that's aimed towards conservative Westerners. They're like, no, no, we're the most Western. Like we're like no no we're the most western like we're so western that we're gonna be the ones who are on the front lines stopping the evil you know arab hordes and uh yeah but it's like the that's interesting you know in some aspects but it's the liberal stuff shereen liberal hezbollah is where the lies get so wild and like that's the stuff that i grew up with

you know yeah no it really like pink washing in particular is like what yes it's just they're they're so egregious in their use of using like the gay struggle for their own agenda. It's really, really gross. Yeah. And it's, and it's weird at how effective it is or how effective it has been for so long, because it is something that I think it's kind of like the, the first stop on the Hasbara tour, you know, when you are hearing someone kind of like talking about why we need to stand

with Israel, they will start right there with the, you know, the pro-gay rights stuff. And it's like, the reason I find it interesting is like, Israel's so effectively been able to like brand itself as representing and supporting all these positive liberal traits while a lot of it is just not true. Like, for example, liberals are pro-LGBT rights, right? You know, they love gays, they love gay rights, and that's a good thing, of course. And yet, gay marriage is illegal in Israel. It is illegal. It's also, mixed-faith marriages are also illegal in Israel. They will recognize those marriages, but they will not

perform them. You cannot get gay married. You cannot get interfaith married in Israel. If they are performed abroad, then they will recognize them. That's kind of the loophole. Also, by the way, Palestinians from the West Bank or Gaza who marry an Israeli citizen cannot then get Israeli citizenship through that marriage. You also can't get Israeli citizenship if who marry an Israeli citizen cannot then get Israeli citizenship through that marriage. You also can't get Israeli citizenship if you marry an Israeli and you are from a quote enemy state. Read Arab if you want to know what the enemy states are. They mean Arabs. So, you know, I don't know. Liberals should hate that. They should look at that and be like, well, I don't like that. You'd think, right?

Another example, like liberals love democracy and they hate racism. Yet believe Israel when they say they are a democracy because they'll be like, we have, you know, 20% Arab Muslim population, you know, 2 million and all with the right to vote um meanwhile they're like ignoring the 5.3 million Palestinians who are currently living in the West Bank and Gaza under military control by Israel like this is a situation was which has explicitly been called apartheid by most major human rights organizations you got you know human rights watch amnesty international the international federation for human rights and even including human rights orgs in israel yesh din and but sell them they have all called this an apartheid state and apartheid to you know

to be clear is racist and i'm against it yes and i think most liberals would say they're against it don't you think shereen like you would hope so you would hope so that's kind of like part of the thing with the liberal you're like i don't like bad people right yeah yeah yeah but you know it's uh it's once again it's this thing where we're willing to be like oh they say they're a democracy and therefore i believe it and i think it's you know you have to remember that like israel's got like a caveat for all of this stuff it's it's usually they'll say you know their credentials are touted with this like like in the middle East, the, the most gay friendly in the middle East or the only democracy in the middle East. But like, once again,

that kind of only serves to implicitly condemn those enemy States, you know, filled with Arabs as being racist and backwards and homophobic and anti-democratic and therefore unworthy of liberal sympathies. So it's, uh, uh you know your liberals will look at it and they'll go like well i mean compared to iraq and you know the the of course it's like forgetting why why the middle east is the way the middle east is you know they they will there's a complete like vacuum like everything exists in a vacuum when it comes to American imperialism. So you don't, you just want to believe that Arabs are backwards people rather than looking at any kind of like Western imperial complicity. But also like reinforcing this like racist backwards stereotype also like dehumanizes Arabs and Muslims andlims and palestinians to such a degree

where people can't overlook genocide now you know like it's all part of that it's all part of that yes they're different they're not like us they don't like gay people they don't let women stand up or whatever the fuck it is it's just like it's it really is infuriating because you wonder like how can this happen it's because of little stuff like this. That's not very little when it's all together. And it just reinforces this like barbaric trope. And then people just go on their, go about their lives being okay with genocide because to them,

these people are human anymore. Right. 100%. You, you look at this like as part of a pattern of the delegitimization of the Arab being, in a way. from us that you just don't care if they live or die or more so you you more you're more willing to believe that the people who are like us the israelis are the ones telling the truth that they're you know they're the ones who have the empathy they're the ones who you know let women you know sit wherever they want whatever the fuck that meant from bb's speech but like you know they're more like me arabs i don't know them

and i guess you know if they say they're bad they're bad you know it's it's just part of it and i think what pisses me off about it is the liberal willingness to believe it and i i think it's like i don't know it's fascinating to me because especially right now in the last you know four months or so of this brutal incursion into gaza it's like so clearly illustrates why people on the left fucking hate liberals you know they're just so easy to manipulate if you know the right words you know like if it were any other group if it were any other group instead of jewish nationalists, like, if it were Christian nationalists, they'd be, like, clearly condemning it. Clearly. Like, liberals have such a facile identity and race essentialism

that they either excuse the crimes committed by the Jewish state because Israel asked them to do it, and they want to be, good allies or whatever or they ignore them because well it's not my place to say i'm not jewish i feel like i should like like there's just so squishy it like it kind of reveals the modern american liberal for what they are which is like a tiny baby whose self-perception is at the root of their ideology right uh and it's just it's important to remember that Europeans doing atrocities to indigenous populations has always come with the gift wrapping of these savages don't share our values. It's always been like that. So, when you see an Israeli soldier flying a

pride flag in the rubble of a raised Palestinianestinian city like just remember that's not liberation that is regular ass by the book colonialism same shit you know what i mean oh yeah i mean i still am loving the description of an american liberal as a tiny baby they are little babies they're little tiny babies you got they've got they can only hold like one sort of political critique in their mind at once and you know if they choose this kind of like identity essentialism then it's so much easier to just kind of go like hey you know i don't really think it's my place to talk about this right now. It's cowardly. Oh, isn't that fucking convenient?

Yeah, exactly. It's just, it's cowardly. And like, in retrospect, they're probably going to change their story about what their stance was like. You know what I mean? And it's just, it's really infuriating. And I think it is important to remember that what you're watching Israel do and what it has done for the past 75 years, over 75 years is just colonialism.

And it was described that way since the beginning, but that was, that was really, thank you for explaining all of that, Matt. Yeah. And, you know,

there will be more in, uh, in part two, we'll get down to some of these myths. We'll get down to, uh, the way in which Hasbara kind of works to invert narratives to a degree that, you know, are almost so shocking that you have trouble believing the historical truth and are more comfortable believing the historical fiction. But, Shireen, what do we do now?

Plugs? Yeah. What do I say? Commercial break. That's the end of part one. You did a great job. Thank you. That's listen,

I've never guest hosted a thing here on cool zone media, but I'm very happy to. And if, uh, you like, you know, me, uh,

obviously, you know, listen to bad as bar, the world's most moral podcast. If you like me and my wife, um, we're going to be at the sacramento punchline march 17th uh at 7 p.m that's a sunday uh we're headlining together um i mean you know co-headlining so

i'll go up she'll go up but it's really good it's a really good show we did it in san francisco it's so much fun please come out to it uh march 17th uh that's sunday march 17th sacramento punchline come see matt lieb francesca furantini where can people follow you just in case they don't know they should oh if you don't know uh at matt lieb on twitter at matt lieb jokes on instagram and uh yeah check me out and i'll i'll post all the dates and stuff over there and all the podcasts over there too awesome oh yeah great job okay goodbye bye hola mi gente it's honey german and i'm bringing you gracias come again the podcast where we dive

deep into the world of Latin culture, musica, peliculas, and entertainment with some of the biggest names in the game. If you love hearing real conversations with your favorite Latin celebrities, artists, and culture shifters, this is the podcast for you. We're talking real conversations with our Latin stars, from actors and artists to musicians and creators, sharing their stories, struggles, and successes. You know it's going to be filled with chisme laughs and all the vibes that you love. Each week, we'll explore everything from music and pop culture

to deeper topics like identity, community, and breaking down barriers in all sorts of industries. Don't miss out on the fun, el té caliente, and life stories. Join me for Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get into todo lo actual y viral. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how Tex Elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires.

From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, better offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists to leading journalists in the field, and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge, and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough, so join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry, and what could be done to make things

better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere.

Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with.

His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him.. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzales wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation.

Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everyone. Welcome to It Could Happen Here. I am your guest host, Matt Lieb.

Back again with Shireen Younis. What's up, Shireen? Nothing. This is what's up. No, happy to be back. Hopefully you guys listened to part one already of Matt's really cool little series we got going on here. But if you haven't, listen to that first and then we're continuing this hasbara this hasbara journey yeah this hasbara train stops for no man uh yeah so this is uh part two of this uh series about hasbara once again hasbara is um basically just means to explain and we're talking about Israeli propaganda and beyond. Not just propaganda, but so much more. So, we're going to talk a little bit about the myths about Israel that have kind of like gained a foothold in Western public consciousness to a degree that it's like not just a foothold but it's just kind of things

that we commonly think are facts um so if like if you grew up in zionism um which is like if you don't know that's a political ideology that birthed the state of israel you have probably heard a lot of your teachers your rabbis your friends your family uh your israeli friends your israeli family talking about how it's your responsibility to explain israel to the people and growing up you don't actually know that what you're doing is propaganda like you think you're just you know that you know more than most people because everyone else is getting their information from anti-semites you know you you think like you've got the the real scoop and that most people are just um you know born ignorant and biased against jews um and you don't have to be jewish to have been exposed to aspara chances

are that if you grew up in the west you probably hold several views about israel that are the result of decades-long pr campaigns so what i'm going to do now is a lightning round of myth busting this is just like real quick getting into some of the uh i don't know some of some of the most pervasive things that i think uh each one could be an entire episode. But, you know, listen, this is your guys' podcast. This isn't my podcast. I can't just take it away from you. So I'm just going to do a lightning round with you.

Are you ready, Shereen? Oh, board ready. Let's do it. Okay. Israel is not a land without a people for a people without land. Okay. There were people there. i don't know if you know that palestinians were there and 750 000 were expelled in 1948 this whole conflict has not

been going on for hundreds of years uh it is very very modern and it has nothing to do with an ancient religious rivalry so when someone says oh they've been killing each other for thousands of years. No, no, not even a little. No, that is not a thing. Israel, quote, lives in a tough neighborhood and it must act tough to survive. That is just regular ass racism and Orientalism. The idea that they just, you know, you have to be tough. You know, I mean, listen, a tough neighborhood is very much that is translated for an American, a white American audience.

You know what I mean? What is a tough neighborhood? It's one with a lot of people of color. Here's another one. There are plenty of Arab states. Why can't they just go there again this is a weird racist dehumanizing thing to tell someone whose house you just bulldozed like where you know whenever you see them like uh doing a big zoom out where they go like there's only one

jewish state and there's all these arab states you know it's like no no no personal what happened here don't don't you know it's like you guy had house army took house moved him to other area that is wrong period you can't just say go to another arab country that's that's just racism here another one. It's too complicated. No, it is not. Switch the roles in your head. Use your brain for a second. Switch the roles of Jews and Palestinians in your head, and you'll have an easier time condemning the side that has powerful government and army whose crimes include genocide,theid ethnic cleansing military

occupation and religious slash racist settler terrorism that is not complicated if it were the jews who lived in gaza getting bombed mercilessly you would not have a problem saying what was happening was genocide you just wouldn't just do that in your head all right here's another one zionism is an indigenous rights movement no it's fucking not it's not it is a settler colonialist movement that is something that was made explicitly clear by the creators of modern zionism they not only talked about like settling and colonizing palestine but they referred to the arab occupants there as the indigenous population they they said indigent they god it just pisses me off and also the indigenous argument is like wait i just hate it in general

when people go back and forth about who is indigenous there because it's so academic it's like it's dehumanizing and it obfuscates the whole thing because once again it is just palestinians being like i want to be able to vote i want to have my house back i literally have the key to my house and yes many of them literally still have the keys to their house all right there's there's so many there's so many goddamn myths and propaganda that i just like that i started a podcast about it that's that's that's why but like much of the stuff that you take for granted as fact is not only a historic but like wildly so like the idf outnumbered the arab states armies during the war 48

that is literally they say the opposite in the you know 1948 story of the creation of israel it's like un created israel all the arab states attacked that is not actually what happened we're not just that all the arab states attacked but that israel and the idf overcame this gigantic horde of arab armies the arab armies that were in this fight are far fewer than have been reported you know they say it's like seven it was more like four and only three of them only one of them had any sort of like modern military capabilities the rest were not really armies like and also they outnumbered the idf outnumbered these armies uh in 1967 here's another one israel attacked first in 1967 it was a preemptive strike like famously and yet the you

know once again the narrative around the 1967 six-day war is that you know israel minding its own business and then egypt uh along with the other arabs yeah evil arabs uh attacked the israeli army struck first that is a fact that they talk about and uh there's it's also very very much disputed as to whether or not the Egyptian army was going to attack at all. But, you know, there's no room for that narrative because it, you know, fucks up the glorious story of what became the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Another one, Ehud Barack absolutely did not offer the palestinians a state during oslo he did not nor did he offer 96 of the west bank and no israel did not invent the fucking cherry tomato wait they did it no they did not

there was a a haretz article about it where they're like no we didn't why do we keep saying this we didn't do this oh my god that's so funny no i mean so many of these talking points are some of the main arguments that zionists will use to be like well they rejected this and this is what happened here and it's just like you're these are all incorrect you just like regurgitating hasbara right and it's because that hasbara has been so widely repeated and so often that it just kind of sinks in ehud barak did not offer them a state in terms of what you would consider the definition definition of a state to be you know and that is autonomy that is sovereignty they were not offering them sovereignty they weren't offering 96 of the land they had taken such a large

percentage of the of it and what they were offering was an even smaller percentage of what they had already taken and they the thing they were offering again not a state not a state not a sovereign autonomous state but you know this is uh things people are willing to believe and that's just uh that's the whole thing and again i prefer to say it's the i am rubber you are glue tactic but you know it's the same shit you know hezbllah likes to invert the victim and the victimizer. And the reason is simple. They know that the West is much more willing to believe that Jews are the victims and Arabs are oppressors. It's playing on Western guilt and complicity in Europe during the holocaust and it's playing on kind of liberal

sympathies in general and honestly it's playing on well who do you know if you're in the west if you're in the west you know some jews maybe you don't know arabs the arabs you do know are on tv doing bad you know and that is one of the reasons for the effectiveness of it. And in terms of like the inversion of everything, like I think my favorite example is the map. So like Israel will often point to a map of the entire MENA region, like Middle East, North Africa. And they'll highlight all of the Arab countries in green and Israel in blue to show that like,

oh, Israel is just a tiny strip of land. It's a small being, you know, surrounded by big green Arab monsters. They want to kill Israel. Like that Hezbollah map will like often include the west bank and the gaza strip in green as well and it's a way to frame the west bank and gaza as not just being like this you know particular thing they will be like no these are part of the giant invading arab green monster because what they're trying to do is show the power imbalance is being completely

inverted from the reality here you know and anyone anyone who knows you know or anyone who's like watched the news knows that it's ridiculously false to claim that israel is somehow the less powerful uh agent here you know like you don't have have to have a PhD to plainly see the disproportionate power imbalance. Like there's Israel, a modern, you know, well-armed military cutting edge technology backing and funding of the

world's most powerful state, most powerful superpower, the United States. And then there is Hamas. That doesn't make Hamas the good guys or whatever. I'm saying it's just a clear indication of the power imbalance. You know, there is a clear power imbalance. And I think like, to what you were saying, the last hundred plus days have made it perfectly clear that for all the talk of like the Arab states supporting palestinians like it's clear israel could literally genocide palestinians

in broad daylight and the arab states would do nothing there is no giant arab korean monster that is protecting the palestinian like the palestinians only arab comrades right now are the houthis in yemen and hezbollah in le Lebanon, both of which are non-government militant organizations. They are not like, it is not the state of Yemen who is supporting the Palestinians. It's not the state of Lebanon. It is these militant states within states pretty much. And yeah, so it's like, you have to remember when Israelrael claims were just they were a small state the size of new jersey with you know in a tough neighborhood and trying to make you know the west bank and gaza look like the spear's tip of an arab invasion you have to remember that's not the case

the the truth of it is is like you want to talk about how small Israel is? Look how small the Gaza strip is. And that, you know, alone to like, look at that picture to know they are surrounded and to see that there's no way out. That I think changes the narrative for people. And it's a narrative that the Israelis don't like to show.

They don't like to show the West bank. And, uh, you know in terms of how it is cut into cantons that are basically everything is surrounded by uh israeli settlements and israeli military they took the best agricultural lands for themselves you know what i mean like they really and also i think talking about seeing the gaza on a map it really it's really infuriating to me because i feel like in the last couple of months more people have seen what gaza looks like on a map than ever before and we see how fucking small it is and it's

described as being five miles at one point like from the sea to the whatever and it's still not enough for people you know it's yeah to the wall literally to the wall but like it's just even seeing how minuscule it is is still not enough for people to be like oh 30 000 people dying in this little strip of land we should think about that like right yeah no i mean no it's it is uh it is my point is basically to dispel the idea that like, the Hezbollah has been Israel small, therefore deserves support and people standing with it. Because small, because scared. Because small, because baby. Because baby puppy. Because little, you know please help and that visual is

just such a it's such a gross lie and uh you know you've anything to make the palestinians you know seem bigger than they are is helpful for israel and that's why they do it. You know, this is, this is a way to invert the victim and the victimizer. And it's clear as day. Other things that are clear as day, these products and services that we're going to be selling. So stick around.

We'll be right back and we're back again people in the west by and large prefer the israeli explanation they're fine living in this alternate reality and uh you know people believe it for like a variety of reasons some people because they were raised to believe it some people because they just want to believe it but i think mostly most people in the west just don't really care enough about like palestinians to like look into it like they're you know they're just it's one of many news stories to i think a lot of people it's easy to put in a box and to be honest you know like wouldn't that be nice to be able to compartmentalize like it would for me shit it would make me way less stressed if i could just not care and that's not to like call out anyone who doesn't care

because I do think that it is absolutely human and valid to have some things that you just don't have emotional capacity to care about. I think my issue is not whether or not people are like, you know, supporting Palestine on their social media or whatnot. My issue is whether or not they're just going to allow themselves to be manipulated and then end up defending the indefensible because of it. Like, if you're not going to say nothing, don't do Hezbollah.

That's my feeling about it. But yeah, you know, people want to put it in a box. Beyond that, I think there's also no incentive for a lot of people to believe in it in fact to even question who are the victims and the victimizers in the whole israeli palestine quote-unquote conflict like it brings up a dark twisted irony that most people don't even want to entertain. You know, people don't want to think about that stuff. And it also, it, people worry about whether or not they're going to get in trouble. And that brings me to, um, another part of this, uh, speech I found from the Middle East policy council about Hasbara, uh, quote, it also seeks to actively inculcate canons of political correctness in domestic and foreign media and audiences that will promote self-censorship by them. It strives

thereby to decrease the willingness of audiences to consider information linked to politically unacceptable viewpoints, individuals, and groups, and to inhibit the circulation of adverse information and social networks. It focuses on limiting the receptivity of audiences to information. So, Hezbar is fucking Orwellian. That is, I think, one of the things that interests me about it a lot, is how Orwellian it is. You know, it goes beyond mere branding when the Israeli government and pro-Israel institutions like so effectively mold the parameters of what is and isn't politically correct, not just like in their own country, but in other countries in the West.

Like think about the self-censorship that you, the listener, do around this issue. Think about the times you wanted to say something, but didn't because you didn't know the exact right way to say it, you know, like how to put it. And like, think about the times that you were reading something critical of Israel by someone you trust and agree with. And one sentence or one word or one turn of phrase triggered you into questioning, not just the validity of the thing you were reading, but like the nature of the person who wrote it. Think about your reaction to me saying these things

about Israel and about how you felt when Shireen made a lot of these points on some other episode of this podcast. You know? Like, think about why that changes things for you. And, like, there was a time where I was also uncomfortable. And, like, I would only feel comfortable hearing criticism and doing criticism of Israel in the presence of other Jews. Like it had to be in a, you know, private all Jewish Facebook group or in like in person

or through text messages. Like I was so suspicious of the secret motives of non-Jewish people criticizing Israel, right? Like, someone could literally say something that I 100% agreed with, something that I myself had said, and then I would still get this icky feeling from them saying it, like, yeah, but why are they saying it? Like, why do you care? Like, that is probably Hezbollah's greatest success, to relegate the issue of Palestinian human and civil rights to a niche subject that is best talked about in private and only by Jews. So, I mean, Shireen, I know that like for you, you've got, you get shit for this, you know? I do. yeah i i feel like i'm done qualifying in my real life especially and also just like in work i'm done qualifying whether or not something i say is or is not

whatever because i i'm if i'm even can like entertaining the idea that criticizing israel is anti-semitic that's like feeding the fire i don't want to even bring that into i don't want to associate that religion and of course the state of israel and i feel like the more we have those disclaimers the more it's conflated and i've definitely i mean i've had a lot of anti-zionist jewish people on this show almost almost to like show people that like listen to these people with actual experience yes and and and that's not to it's not to um you know uh say you shouldn't and none of this is me saying like hey you shouldn't listen to anti-zionist jews or whatnot or just like you know like or you shouldn't be

discerning about who you're getting your information for because yeah there are nazis who are yeah you know wrap themselves in the guise of being anti uh israel or like you know anti-occupation or whatnot that none of this is is putting down anyone for being discerning or or being careful but it's to say that likezbollah has quite an effect on even the most conscious of people, like making Zionism and Judaism synonymous and like practically indistinguishable is like one of Hezbollah's like greatest achievements presenting Jewish support of Israel as monolithic, save for like a few cranks, know who are the exception that prove the rule you know like non-jews don't want to criticize israel because they don't want to upset their jewish friends or they don't want to be labeled an anti-semite you know it's like you know after

the large public outcry about israel's brutal response to the hamas terrorist attacks of october 7th there was a big push among hasbaris to frame all Jews of the world as feeling abandoned by the left and abandoned by their friends. You had people like Brett Gelman. Oh my God. From Stranger Things. Walking dumpster. I hate him so much.

Oh my God. Fucking Wooly Willy over here going on Instagram being like, hey, fake woke former friends. And like, he gave a speech, uh, at the like stand with Israel March. That was something like the Jews don't need you like presenting the, you know, the idea of people criticizing Israel or like not wanting at the very least, not wanting the complete obliteration of Palestinians in Gaza. Framing that as like, oh, well, all the Jews want that. You know, like his whole thing of being like, the Jews don't need you as if he and Israel

represented all Jews, like presenting the Jews of the world as a monolith, as if non-Zionist or anti-Zionist Jews don't even exist, as if we all felt this way. Like, you don't want to hate Jews, do you? Of course, if you don't, then you got to let Israel do whatever the hell it wants, you know? I think what really bothers me about him, I mean, everything bothers me about him, but people like him, they'll sometimes preface what they're saying with, hey, I care about Palestinians, and then continue on their whatever tirade their Zionist bullshit. And it's like, it really boggles my mind because I think he thinks he's a good person. I really think that he believes he's a good person when really he's just a piece of shit that does not see a huge group of people as human beings.

Yes. Does not see people as human. And this is something that you, I think that anyone who's like a self-described liberal or leftist or whatever would be able to easily recognize in any other situation. But it's just,'s it's it's clouded in this particular situation because of this conflation because you are willing to believe that jews are sort of a mono like monolithically agree with israel like they may be like a little bit like liberal zists or whatnot, but mostly, you know, they all love Israel. And that is not true. And it's a way of like,

more so it feeds into the continuing conflation. It feeds into this Hezbollah that Israel represents all Jews. And I am telling you right now it doesn't i don't think i'm telling anyone the something they don't already know like i think people know zionism is not judaism i think i've said that many times on this podcast trust me at this point you should know yeah if you don't know that by now please yes learn it now but like you know jews both inside and outside of israel have a diverse range of views about the israeli government that's not to say that jews in israel do not for the most part you know support the uh the government at least or support the project of zionism but that is to like to to me, that's to be expected. It's to be

expected that it's like fucking nine 11. You know, I, I, it'd be weird to not expect the kind of racist jingoism that, that you saw like after nine 11, you know, in fucking America. And I feel like that was the majority of people was that kind of like, like sehing anti-arab hatred and i'm not excusing it but what i'm saying is that jews have a diverse range of views inside and outside of israel and a lot of it includes wanting a ceasefire and that's why you see it in these jewish organizations that are trying to end the occupation they're trying they are openly critiquing israel that are trying to end the occupation. They are openly critiquing Israel, that are calling Zionism racism. You see it, and you see it because they,

because we're honestly trying to change this narrative. We're trying to stop people from believing this lie that the Jewish people are synonymous with the state of Israel. Yeah. And I think that's why Jewish, I mean, I've said this many times as well, but Jewish anti-Zionists are like a very integral part of the movement to liberate Palestine. Because it's, again, it's not a Palestinian issue.

It's not a Muslim issue. It's a very human issue to care about people not being fucking genocided. Yes. about people not being fucking genocided. Yes. Another thing that's pretty clear is how good the products are that we sell here at Cool Zone. So let's stick around, listen to these ads, and we'll be right back. And we're back so i want to say to everyone listening um i understand that the impulse to treat the subject of israel with more caution and care is rooted in a respect for the Jewish people and a desire

to stand firmly against anti-Semitism. And that is a good thing. I encourage that 100% you respecting Jewish people and wanting to stand firmly against anti-Semitism, wanting to fight it with every fiber of your being. You are correct in feeling that way. And I want to encourage it. And I also need you to understand that it's for that very reason that I urge people to speak out about Israel.

Because I believe Israel and their Hasbarist mouthpieces and the project of political Zionism are inherently anti-Semitic. And not in like the semantic sense, where it's like Arabs are also Semites. That's an argument I've heard. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about anti-Jewish, specifically anti-Jewish. They actively work to create fear amongst diaspora Jews, make us distrust our friends, our neighbors, our co-workers, our fellow Jews even. They tell us that, you know, they tell Jews that unless they support Israel, they are not real Jews, you know, or they are self-hating Jews. They use our past traumas against us. They re-traumatize us and manipulate us. Like, it's classic abuser shit. It is abuse. It's cult shit, too. And

they even deal in Nazi revisionism. And it's so important to point this out because you see the way that they, uh, the Israeli government uses the Nazi, you know, accusation in order to do a genocide. I mean, you see constantly, um, you know, in the last three, four months videos from the IDF showing, um, you know, uh, anad they found in a teen girl's bedroom and you know they open it up and there's uh the wallpaper of the ipad is uh it's hitler's face and you look at that and you're supposed to go oh my god i can't i can't believe that and you forget to question what the fuck an israeli soldier is doing in a 17 year old girl's bedroom. Why is it blown up?

And why is, why is he going through her stuff like that? You, you, you stop looking at what is actually happening and you start looking at what the Hasbaris want you to look at. They want you to see the Hitlerler thing and go like oh man this is a whole society of little hitlers and uh and i you know i look at that and i

i see the way they cynically use that while at the same time you know benjamin netanyahu has been pushing this line claiming that the holocaust was essentially the palestinians idea i mean this is something that uh that has been gaining more and more traction in like sort of this new uh israel palestine like a historical narrative that's been pushed about like you know the mufti and is and and hitler meeting up together and being like have you ever thought about killing the jews and hitler was like i never thought about that before that's so smart wow thank you palestinians like total bullshit totally revising like trying to do fucking like i don't know apologia for literally hitler is anti-semitic i don't care how you slice it it is and uh and that's something that the israeli government deals in they deal in anti-semitism

all the time i mean essentially israel tells the world that jews are a third column loyal to Israel first and foremost and tells Jews that our home isn't our home. They say this to us and, you know, that due to our traditions and our blood, you know, we are just merely guests in any other place. Uh, this is like an old racist worldview from a previous century filled with blood and soil fascism, you know? And like,

for me, like growing up in a mixed secular family, you know, where I'm like, yeah, I'm like culturally Jewish, I'm ethnically Jewish, but I'm like a blood Jew essentially,

you know? Like, and as like the very fact of me having Jewish blood was used by fascists to murder us during the Holocaust. Now under Israel's law of return, that very same Jewish blood is being used by fascists as a passport to allow me to move to Israel and displace an entire Palestinian family. If I choose to like, you know, being religiously Jewish doesn't have anything to do with my ability to do this. My blood is my passport to do apartheid. That's why I choose

to talk about this stuff, you know? If you're going to use my blood to make me complicit in crimes, the crimes of your state, then I'm going to have something to fucking say about it, you know? So, my final piece of Hasbara has to do with something that has been said over and over again by countless Zionists, including the current president of these United States of America, Joe Biden. Folks, were there no Israel, there wouldn't be a Jew in the world who was safe. The idea that the state of Israel alone can keep the Jewish people safe is an insane piece of hesbara. It is total, utter anti-Semitic bullshit.

A Jewish state does not and cannot keep Jewish people safe. Tying the fate of the Jewish state to the Jewish people is a recipe for fucking disaster. The Jewish people are a nation that has lasted thousands of years. Nations meaning like a people with a common origin, history, language, culture, customs, and religion and or religion. You know, it can be any of those things. And for a long, long time, we were one of many stateless nations that existed. And that's not to say that, you know, Israel shouldn't exist or whatever, but more importantly, what I'm saying is that Jews should exist, whether they happen to be located anywhere, like wherever they are, Jews should, should exist. The existence

of the state of Israel to me is not the question. And that is not what Israel claims to do. They ensure, they claim to ensure the existence of the Jewish people, but they do not. All they do is try to bolster the existence of their state. And it should not be common thought that the existence of Israel and the existence of Jews are the same thing. As I can personally think of nothing more dangerous for any people than to tie their entire survival to something as impermanent as a fucking state.

And that is the truth about israel so you know all this to say that uh i'm a i guess i'm an anarchist now there's one thing that you know getting into the whole israel palestine thing will do to you it turns you very quickly into someone who believes the existence of states is the problem. Yeah. Yeah. So that's me. That's how I feel about stuff. I'm so glad you did this series for us.

Where can people hear you do the same thing, but by yourself with other people? You do the same thing, but by yourself with other people. You can hear me do, you know, these talking about Israel and stuff on my new podcast, Bad Hasbara, the world's most moral podcast. It's a comedy podcast about hilarious Israeli propaganda that I find, that our listeners find. And, you know, I have on my friends like Shireen, I had you on, I had Anna on, I had all sorts of great anti-Zionist Jews and some really amazing Palestinian guests, or at least by the time this comes out, I'll assume those episodes will have come out. I, you know, I don't know when those are coming out, but anyways, I've only been doing the podcast for a month and it's and it's been a lot of fun.

It's been cathartic and it's been hard and it's definitely been, you know, like caused some stress in my life because, you know, looking for this content, you have to dig through a lot of really horrific shit. horrific shit so uh yeah check out badass bara or uh you know um check me out met leap jokes on instagram and go to a sacramento punchline march 17th sunday 7 p.m me and my wife my wife francesca fiorentini we're gonna be uh co-headlining there so get your tickets now link in the notes yay no thank you so much i really enjoy your podcast uh the most moral podcast i would say in the world for sure thank you for you know give me the opportunity to talk about this and uh you know i uh i promise you that uh the show the badass bar show is uh is funny. I swear to God it's funny. You'll enjoy it.

It's very cathartic. You're correct in that. It's very cathartic to just like event with your friends and people that think the same things as you, especially if you're surrounded by someone or people that are kind of purposely ignorant or whatever, you know. So, yeah. I appreciate it. purposely ignorant or whatever you know so yeah when you're surrounded by people who uh don't wanna either don't want to engage with this at all or are mad at you for even partially engaging with it it's nice to find the people that you know and love and like to joke around with and be like

we're we're not crazy right exactly and then we go yeah we're not and then right? Exactly. And then we go, yeah, we're not. And then we have a good time. Exactly. So yeah, check that out. And thank you. And thank you to everyone at Cool Zone Media. Yay. Yeah, go follow Matt. Go see Matt.

And my crush, his wife. Don't tell her. And yeah, they're really doing the work. And I really appreciate both of you guys just being really outspoken always and so yeah follow their lead keep talking about Palestine there's still a fucking genocide happening and that's the episode

alright bye everyone bye pre-Palestine pre-Palestine 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 iheart radio 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. of Google search. Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech brought to you by an industry veteran with nothing to lose. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, five-year-old Cuban boy, Elian Gonzalez, was found off the coast of Florida. And the question was, should the boy go back to his father in Cuba? Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him.

Or stay with his relatives in Miami? Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jacqueline 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. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while running errands

or at the end of a busy day. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Listen to Black Lit on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. AT&T, connecting changes everything.