It Could Happen Here - It Could Happen Here Weekly 121

Episode Date: March 9, 2024

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That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. 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. 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. Oh, boy, howdy. Welcome back to It Could Happen Here, a podcast about it happening here. And the it is different most episodes, but today the thing that is happening here is discussion about the growth of self-immolation as a form of protest from the 20th to the 21st century. obviously we are recording this less than a week after aaron bushnell a 25 year old uh serviceman in the united states air force lit himself on fire in front of the israeli embassy in washington dc and you know repeatedly uh stated free palestine as he was doing it he said more than that obviously he wrote you know um i think very clearly about why he did what he was doing this is something that you'll have heard a lot of debate about there's a certain kind of person

particularly in the media who feels obligated to say this is mental illness and we shouldn't discuss it as anything else uh i think that's wrong for the same reasons by the way that it's wrong to to dismiss you know any sort of mass shooter or whatever as mentally ill. Not that either of those are similar in terms of the actions. They're not. But that attempt to dismiss it because it's something it makes you uncomfortable to consider that somebody could do something so incomprehensible to you for a logical reason. Now, when I say a logical reason, that doesn't mean I'm arguing this is something more people should do. It doesn't mean that I'm arguing that this was the best thing that Bushnell could do. What I am saying is that from everything that is available, this was a rational act. He understood what he hoped to accomplish with this, and he took concerted steps to ensure that he succeeded and that attention was drawn to it. His reason for doing it was clear. He took actions like to set up a will and whatnot.

This seems to have been a rational and principled action. And we are not really primarily going to be discussing what Bushnell did, because I don't really know that there's much to say. You know, it's everyone here's stance that what's being done to Gaza is a genocide. I don't know that this will help. I certainly hope that somehow it does, but we're simply not at a point where we can say what the impact of this on the overall situation in Gaza is going to be. Yeah, and I mean, I guess the thing we can say off the bat is whether or not this matters is to a larger extent up to you because like someone, someone like, I mean, this is the thing, right? Like the genocide is not- It matters in the sense that it has an impact on the, obviously I think it matters because

he was a person, right? Well, that too, right? Yeah. But like, yeah, in the, in the, in the, in the sense of whether it accomplishes political objectives, that's up to us figuring out how we're going to run a political movement in such a way that the genocide gets stopped. Yeah. And that yeah and that is yeah that's not something i have a clear answer for you on right now but i do think there i think

so i think the thing we're going to try to do that i think can be helpful in this is attempt to provide some context on what is the history of self-immolation as a protest tactic how does it tend to work in the past and and and in the present? And in what sort of situations has it been more or less effective as an instrument of protest? That's what we're going to try to cover today. Obviously, this should not be seen as a totally comprehensive look at the entire history of this because as I'm about to come, this is what we can get for you in about a week. And I think it will help and provide a broader sense of context as to how this sort of thing has worked in other situations around the world and throughout time. Self-immolation goes back very far as a protest tactic. There were Christians who were being

persecuted by the Roman government in Nicodemia in 300 AD, who lit a fire in front of the emperor's palace and threw themselves into a bonfire as an act of protest. In Russia, I think in like the 1600s, orthodox, I don't, there was an orthodox sect. I don't really know much about them, but they locked themselves in churches as a protest for some of the czar's reforms and then lit those churches on fire. So like died inside the churches that they were in. So this is a kind of thing that goes back quite a while. I'm sure there are other cases in, you know, ancient history that go well before that, but it's not a new thing. However, when we talk about kind of 20th and 21st century self-immolation, the first sort of really

famous case of this, and the one that gets brought up every single time people talk about self-immolation as a protest tactic, was one that occurred during the Vietnam War. And it was the self-immolation of a Buddhist monk named Thich Quang Duc. I believe that's T-H-I-C-H. I think that's how that's pronounced. I wasn't doing it before we started recording this, but that kind of stuff slips out of my head, so I apologize if that is the case. He's an interesting guy. I think his early life is probably pretty common for people who became Buddhist monks in kind of central Vietnam in this period of time. He left home when he was like seven. He became a novice at 15. By 20, he was a full monk. And one of the things that's happening during this period of time is the South Vietnamese government is this guy, he's called the president. He is a dictator, I think, in everything but name. No din diem. And he's a terrible guy. He's a French-educated Catholic. And if you know anything

about the French history and into China, right? Like that does not suggest somebody whose role before Vietnam got its independence from France was particularly great. His brother Ngo Dinh Nhu is the head of the secret police. And they are, despite the fact that Vietnam, South Vietnam is a Buddhist majority country, they're passing a lot of policies that are like actively cracking down the secret police and they are despite the fact that vietnam south vietnam is a buddhist majority country they're passing a lot of policies that are like actively cracking down on and reducing the right of buddhist people to worship right and you know this is there's a lot of reasons for this but they kind of boil down to the fact that dm was was horrible was just a fucking dog shit absolutely sucks yeah really really trash, I've heard it said online

when people bring up this self-immolation, you know, within kind of the context of what's happened recently, like, this wasn't a, you know, people are wrong when they say this was an act

to protest the Vietnam War. It wasn't. And that is technically true because, like, the thing that Duc was protesting was not U.S. involvement in Vietnam, but he was protesting the U.S backed government of south vietnam and that government is very relevant to why there

was a vietnam war so i do kind of think it's it's not entirely accurate to be like well this wasn't a vietnam war protest like no no it was it was it was just about the fact that like the the catholic theocratic drug dealing fascist government was like seems like you're splitting a hair there bro i feel like the murdering buddhist thing might have been part of why there were so many people willing to fight the south vietnamese government not a zero percent part of that equation maybe but yeah so these guys these buddhists i mean buddhist religious leaders in the country get increasingly angry about what's happening there are debates i think for several years

kind of within sort of the the more highly ranking kind of leaders in in the the faith as to like what do we do about this crackdown on our rights and like should we they were talking for quite some time about having a self-immolation protest, right? Like it was the kind of thing where there was a decent amount of like discussion earlier. And Duck is actually the one who I think suggested it initially to like other leaders in the church. And yeah, while there was like, for a while, they tried to push back against this. Eventually, the level of prosecution just became so clear that, you know, they basically said, OK, let's like you can do this.

And Duke is going to be the guy who is going to like physically, you know, destroy his body in order to carry out this act of protest. As is always going to be the case when we talk about these famous self-immolation cases. Half of the story is the guy who does, or the individual who lights themselves on fire, and half of the story is the reporter who happens to be there. And in this case, it was a guy named Malcolm Brown. He is, I believe he's an American reporter. He's stationed in, you know, Saigon, and he's, you know, doing what a lot of journalists were doing at the time. And in the springtime of 1963, there start being like these kind of messages put out by the Buddhist church that are sort of, he describes it as hinting as some kind of spectacular protest. one of the monks or an immolation. And either way, it was something we had to pay attention to. And like a lot of journalists, he's got some sources within the church. He gets a call one day and they're like, you should show up at this pagoda at this specific time. And here is how Malcolm describes what he saw. By the time I got to the pagoda where all this was being organized,

it was already underway. The monks and nuns were chanting a type of chant that's very common at funerals and so forth. At a signal from the leader, they all started out into the street and headed toward the central part of Saigon on foot. When we reached there, the monks quickly formed a circle around a precise intersection of two main streets in Saigon. A car drove up. Two young monks got out of it. An older monk, leaning a bit on one of the younger ones, also got out. He headed right for the center of the intersection. The two young monks brought up a plastic jerry can, which proved to be gasoline. As soon as he seated himself, they poured the liquid all over him. He got out a matchbook, lighted it, and dropped it in his lap and was immediately engulfed in flames. And yeah, that's, you know, what happened that day. Malcolm

takes a picture of, he takes a bunch of pictures. can see all of them there's a good time article uh malcolm brown the story behind the burning monk uh that has all of the pictures that he took or at least like a long list of them and they are worth seeing uh they are i'm not i don't i shouldn't have to put a trigger warning in here right these are photos of a man burning to death like that shit sucks can say from researching this like yeah good god it doesn't look good it looks really bad yeah now obviously one of specifically one of the photos you've probably seen it where like half of the monk's face looks okay and the other half is just like wreathed in fire this goes like the 60s equivalent of viral right president kennedy said of the photograph no news picture in history has generated so much emotion around the world is that one. And at the time, it may have been true. And it is it is number one. It does have a role in the anti-war movement because, you know, this is related to a protest against the government we were backing.

Maybe the most directly successful cases of self-immolation I've seen, because this does play a significant role in the vision of the Buddha, I respectfully plead to President Noh Din Diem to take a mind of compassion towards the people of the nation and implement religious equality to maintain the strength of the homeland eternally. Yeah, when this kind of happens, as I quoted earlier, Kennedy is like shocked and furious. He yells to his national security advisor, who the fuck are these people like how did we not know this was going to happen he's he's very angry about all this does he know what buddhist is like i feel like like that's the kind of people i actually have trouble imagining like jfk having a a significant amount of context as to like what buddhism is oh god but maybe i'm wrong so i i want to quote from this really good medium article um the suicide that changed american policy in vietnam by a purva tadepali

and this is for a series they write called near pod which is an interactive classroom tool for students and i found this a a very readable and concise description of kind of what happened after Duke's self-immolation. Quote, the publicity of the incident increased pressure on Diem's government to deal with the crisis, but he did not take the incident seriously enough. His response to the death was an announcement on the radio later that day that wildly missed the point. The state of affairs was moving forward so smoothly, he said bizarrely, when this morning, acting under extremist and truth-concealing propaganda

that sowed doubt about the goodwill of the government, a number of people got intoxicated and caused an undeserved death that made me very sorry. What? Okay, I see a lot of terrible statements about self-immolations. That might be the worst one.

It is. We need to to do the bastards episode on him because dm is like he's horrible he causes a lot of damage to a lot of people but he's such a fucking scrub right yeah like fucking stalin would never you know like the oh geez very sad you think saddam hussein would have gotten caught up in that shit no not my man listen this is like this is bush league shit even by like fucking like east asian dictators like can you check like no way oh no kai shek wouldn't have gotten caught up in this shit absolutely not shek if someone had tried to do this specifically chen kai shek chen kai shek would have shot the guy himself absolutely yeah oh my god so anyway this scrub he makes he makes like a promise that they're going to do reforms and stuff

and like while he's doing this his family including his brother new who's like the the head of the saigon secret police is basically is saying like like literally says if the buddhists want to have another barbecue i'll be glad to supply the gasoline. Jesus Christ. And his wife, who's like a very Marie Antoinette figure, Madame Nhu, who is, it's his brother's wife, but she's basically the first lady, right, of South Vietnam. She's like, let them burn. We'll clap our hands. Oh, God.

So, it's pretty, it's pretty cool. oh god so it's pretty it's pretty cool like dm is actually kind of the smart one in the family because he's trying to like tell his sister-in-law and his brother-in-law like nah bro or his brother and his sister-in-law like you guys don't understand we have to be a little bit careful here this could really go badly it really seems like like they haven't figured out the playbook for dealing with this yet no because like the successive governments like everyone has like the same line that they say when it happens and these people it looks like they're really kind of scrambling here they didn't have any they'd never even considered that something like this could happen there would be reactions to their policies like this there are a bunch of protests by monks

and nuns uh the police arrest a bunch of people this continues to draw outrage and make the situation worse. Nhu, the secret police guy, has his goons ransack and destroy a bunch of Buddhist temples, basically. A lot of people, like 1,400 people, are rounded up and arrested. Diem accuses the monks of being part of the Viet Cong, which is, again, like...

Sure. Yeah, okay. So, one of the things that is important to understand here is that this is at a very different part stage of the vietnam war the u.s has troops in the country but not a lot like very few compared to how many are going to be there and at this stage dm actually isn't happy that we have even though it's going to become very clear that like the US troops, the only thing allowing this regime to stay propped up. Yeah, he is like, I don't want them here. They don't even have passports, right? Like he's, he's, he's like, weirdly anti the like, and part of it is because the US is about to act here, finally, to take support away from his regime. So three days after his buddy,

his brother-in-law, or his brother Nhu has a bunch of raids on these Buddhist temples, there's a cable sent from DC to the US ambassador in Southern Vietnam that's like,

we're not backing this guy anymore. And this ends with a bunch of South Vietnamese generals who had already been planning a coup being given the go-ahead from the US basically, saying like, we're not, our guys are not going to take any actions to stop you from overthrowing this guy. And on November 2nd, Diem and his brother are kidnapped while trying to

escape, and they are killed not long after. So, this is, you know, pretty successful self-immolation, you have to say, right? Yeah. Yeah, works seems like it it works about as well as you could have hoped for that right like the at least i'm sure is as well as that monk hoped because you know dm is not just out of power but is fucking killed as a result of this so although the problem is the subsequent people the u.s put in charge yeah also suck but that's that's also part of a pattern unfortunately and there's like a weirdly there's like a history of self-immolation leading to regime change we're going to talk about tunisia at the end of the episode and that does tend to be the story of like yeah we got rid of

the dictator and then a guy who sucked just as much came into power okay well the the taiwan the taiwan one we're going to talk about in a second actually goes pretty well yeah so yeah and and before we go into that because we're going to let you take over from here mia or at least for the next couple of parts of this but first let's let our advertisers take over and we're back all right mia you are on deck yeah so i i think i think people are kind of broadly aware kind of if you know anything about self-immolations about the self-immolations in vietnam and then also the sort of the ones in the u.s like as as anti-vietnam war protests the ones that i don't think most people here know and that i only know about like because like my mom was born in

taiwan right is the taiwanese self-immolations yeah so this guy's name is chan young rong he is he's he's also noticed his the the thing most people call him is nylon jung for reasons that i i guess will become clear when he lights himself on fire so nylon jung is a a very very influential uh well okay i don't know if very very influential is quite there but he he's like he's a pretty famous and very influential pro-independence activists in taiwan during the the kmt's occupation there and this is something i i don't like americans tend to not understand this very well so okay so the the the kmt the chinese nationalist party they take power in taiwan after just invading it effectively they when they when they when they lose the civil war theMTs are combating forces and a bunch of their supporters flee to Taiwan.

And there are three groups of people who the KMT spend most of their time killing. And that is communist feminists and Taiwanese independence activists. They also hate Presbyterians for reasons that are... Hey, hey, we all hate Presbyterians for reasons that are hey hey we all hate presbyterians am i right okay look look i am not normally a presbyterian liker the taiwanese presbyterians like legitimately do good work in the sense that they are like one of the groups that's like pretty important in bringing down the kmt one party dictatorship but okay so taiwan has this like really appalling like-party dictatorship.

Nihon Jung's actually born, I think. If I'm remembering this right, he's born during the February 28th incident, which is this thing in 1947. Actually, we are two days. I think when this goes out, we'll be two days after the 77th anniversary of it, where there's a giant uprising in Taiwan because people in Taiwan fucking fucking hate the kmt because they suck and they murder people and there's this giant uprising and the kmt eventually like their military forces get reorganized and they so the initial uprising takes most of the islands and then the kmg just come back and kill everyone they kill about 20,000

people in a week um it's one of the sort of like i don't know one of the kind of like defining incidents and what becomes sort of taiwanese national culture is just this like massacre and then you know it's basically it's legal talk but afterwards this is this is the beginning of the sort of white terror in china and they're gonna you know this is the start of the kmt kidnapping and torturing like tens of thousands of people one of the things that happens in this this is actually so this is this was my family's experience of it is that okay so there's there's this up there's the uprising right but one of the things that starts happening pretty quickly is these like retaliatory killings against like against chinese nationals and that was stuff my family was like yeah we like couldn't go outside because if you leave your house like you're gonna get killed by

mobs and that stuff that stuff like sucked yeah that that does sound like it sucked no it's not good it's a thing because it's it's weird because it's like that uprising like broadly good but it turns like parts of it turn into race riots or like it's weird like i don't know it turns into these like like anti-chinese national like riots and that stuff you know so zhong is from a chinese like like just from like a a sort of like chinese national family that like fled to taiwan after the war and his family is protected by other uh taiwanese like like uprising people who are like no like we're not going to fucking just kill these random chinese people like what are you guys talking about and that's this really formative thing for

him where this is one of the things that caused him to grow up to become like the kind of chinese like taiwanese independence activist that he is where he's one of these people who is really big on taiwan as like like like liberating taiwan as a nation but having it be like a nation of ideals, not a nation of blood, because his, you know, because he sees how badly this kind of like ultra-nationalist bloodline-like shit can go.

And so he becomes like a pretty prominent independence activist. He runs one of the anti-party newspapers, like anti-canti newspapers and he's he's mostly doing a lot of this stuff in the 80s where so basically like you have two consecutive like like there's shankai shack and then you have like more guys from that family by the 80s you're like democratization is kind of like slowly moving forward because the Taiwanese ruling class is losing American backing, they're losing backing overseas. But even by

1989, which is in the period in which people are talking about, well, democratization's happening, it's going to go forward. The country still has... They haven't had real national elections and they still have these really really intense what are called anti-sedition laws and so one of the things that the the pro

independence activists and this is the period in which like taiwan's like modern ruling party the the the uh democratic progressive party like comes into existence like they're coming to existence as the anti-kmt party and this is the sort of milieu kind of in which leon jung is sort of mobilizing right but he's also i don't know he's like he's a kind of guy that doesn't exist anymore which is like he's kind of like a a like like liberal, national liberation supporter. So I found a really interesting thing translated by Yen Hon Chen, this guy I kind of am aware of from Twitter, who translated this thing that he wrote about Palestine,

where he is a pro-Palestine guy. But it's interesting because he sees Palestine as, like, another nation that's been, like, subjugated in, like, a similar way that Taiwan has. And, you know, he's, like subjugated in like a similar way to taiwan has and you know and he's like an anti-arm struggle guy but he's also very sort of he's very committed to to taiwanese independence as a national liberation movement and specifically like the thing that you're liberating it from is the kmt and so you know he he he gets into trouble constantly with like the kmt government they arrest him a bunch of times and eventually in 1989 he gets charged with these by these

anti-sedition laws he gets charged with insurrection for like spreading drafts of a potential new taiwanese constitution and so he barricades himself in his office refuses to show up to court he gives this giant speech about how like you'll never take me alive and the police kind of take him seriously he's he's barricaded himself in like his newspaper offices and he's there for like two months and at the end of month two a cop who is the current mayor of new taipei city tries to burst down his door that doesn't seem like a job that you should be able to have no no this is one of these things where it's like okay so like the kmt this is one of these things about sort of tony's politics that's weird is that the kmt is the modern sort of pro-china

pro-unification faction right those guys suck like like they're they're not at they're not the same sort of like just death squad party they were in the sort of late in like the 20th century but they're also like yeah no it's literally their mayor their mayor of new taipei which is okay i'm not going to go into what the difference between new taipei and taipei is here that's that's the whole thing i'm guessing it's like the difference between you know new york and old york right it's it's it's closer to the difference between new york city and new york okay okay but that makes sense yeah that works like this guy this guy who again like was elected like two years ago tries to kick down his door and nylon Jung likes himself on fire.

And this has a enormous impact on the sort of subsequent course of Taiwanese politics, because this is a, this is a, like, this is a PR disaster for the, like for, for the ruling for like for,

for, for the current government, which had been trying to sort of like do it's like, ah, we're doing moderate reforms, blah, blah're doing you have local elections now you're doing democratization suddenly like their cops break down this guy's door and he lights himself on fire and you know that the the cop later says like oh yeah we broke down the door because we were trying to save his life it's like no you didn't what the fuck are you talking about like i love things that have never

happened that's my favorite kind of thing yeah and you know so so there this is one of these things that i and this is actually a thing that that's become that's a very very common thing like now so now on jung has he has funeral. I mean, this is an absolutely enormous funeral March and the police attack it. And when the police attack it, another pro independence activists also lights himself on fire, like in front of the cops when they refuse to do it. And this, that, that second guy is like a lot less remembered than now on Jung, but this becomes a massive sort of rallying cry around like you know for the pro-dependence people but also for the sort of broader fight for like an actual like actual free democratic elections

like the big thing these people were protesting like specifically was free speech because the thing about the sedition laws is if you you know again if you start passing around copies of the constitution they try to arrest you and throw you in prison yeah i mean nothing says sedition like the constitution of the country you're in yeah and like you're changing it i guess it's sedition it's like the kmt really suck like cannot emphasize that enough but the the sort of the result of this is that you know okay like so this is one of these actions that's kind of complicated because the arc of Taiwanese politics was bending towards democratization and some kind of, like, actual electoral system. And it probably would have happened even without this, but this supercharges the whole process. Within about two years, two or three years years all the sedition laws are repealed and within well it takes a while before you get i think i think it's like 2000

i think it's like really when you can what you can call like the first really free like taiwanese national election when the when there's actually like a transition of power between the kmt and uh the the the the democratic party sure but yeah it it was to a large extent very successful like i don't know okay so it it accomplished the goal of knocking off the kmt sort of one party state it knocked off sedition laws the the kind of taiwanese independence like that's very very sort of national liberation driven is kind of not the same one that exists in taiwan now it's a bit different but on the other hand like yeah they they did it it was it was really it was pretty effective um and yeah i don't know like this is this is i of the ones that i've seen i think this was the most clear he won nolan jung's like is sort of to this day a pro-independence hero um there's there's a

there's a statue of him uh so they they i think i think i'm pretty sure they they turned the office real in himself on fire like into a into a uh like into a museum and there's uh there's a there's a very famous sort of like pictures of this the statue of his burned corpse that's just harrowing it's one of the symbols of the sort of taiwanese democratic movements um and it's also it's also a sort of it matters a lot this is also happening in the same year as tiananmen like yeah so there's that kind of like it's in the air right yeah yeah and his his widow goes on to be a dpp politician um and it's one it's one of the things that it's it like his memories invoked during like so in 2014 taiwan had their own version of occupy that's like shittier called the sunflower movement i'm sorry

this is this is where we're getting into the the Mia has a bunch of political beefs with people in Taiwan where I think they're all libs. But it's yeah, like they have their own sort of they have like this large series of street protests. And this like he's one of the figures that's, you know, one of like brought up in. Yeah, that's going to be the same thing with um uh the guy in tunisia we're about to talk about too where where they become even to people that they would not you know certainly we're not like expressing similar views they still become this like icon um that gets cited yeah yeah and i i think i think the last thing too is he's the fact that the cop who kicked it who kicked his door down is now the fucking mayor of new taipei city it's just like oh appalling stuff yeah the kmt absolutely suck uh and those are the people who want taiwan to be reunified with china so if that understands who you're making your bed with if that's the kind

of politics that you you want to be engaged in yeah so that's that that's that's that's the kind of politics that you want to be engaged in. Yeah, so that's the Taiwan self-immolations. I guess kind of, I don't know. Not enough bad things happen to the cops who trigger this kind of stuff, which sucks. They often don't. Although I guess the cops in South Vietnam didn't do great. No, no, no. I mean, ultimately, right?

It doesn't immediately really cause them any problems. It takes a while. Secret police a bit. Speaking of secret police, this podcast is sponsored entirely by the secret police. So, you know, check that out. And we're back yeah we just got beaten by uh phone books because they don't leave any bruises by our sponsors at the secret police so you know the secret police like the police but secret mia

did you have another one you wanted to get into before we talk about Tunisia? Do we want to do Tibet first or do we want to do Tunisia first? Why don't we do Tibet? Yeah, so I think, other than Tunisia, I think the most famous wave of self-immolations was the ones in Tibet that started in about 2009. was the ones in tibet that started in about 2009 there there is actually a guy in tibet who lights himself on fire in the late 90s but that doesn't have the same kind of sort of it doesn't have the same effect as 2009 ones so one of the things that's been periodically happening i guess over the sort of course of the the history of sort of occupied tibet is the dalai lama so the dalai lama like flees there's this whole giant drama in 1959 so okay i guess i guess i should go back to the beginning so tibet is just like straight up invaded by china when when the after after the communist

went the civil war this causes an enormous amount of shit to happen one of the things that the communist party is trying to do is they are trying to gain control of the tibetan religious system so that they can eliminate the religious system like they can they can eliminate like the the buddhist clergy effectively like they can eliminate buddhist monks they can eliminate like the religious institutions as a source of resistance to them they are kind of foiled in this when the dalai lama makes this break and escapes to india um and this is one of the things that triggers eventually in in the in the 60s china's war with india but one of the things that have been happening for a while was these kind of negotiations between the dalai lama and the chinese government

to try to like find a kind of resolution to like how bad things were in tibet and in 2009 dalai lama goes yeah none of this is fucking working like it's not nothing like we're not we're not getting anything. The Chinese government's not offering us any actual deal that we can live with. And pretty quickly, this... So, okay, you get this giant wave of self-immolations. The first guy is this guy named Taipei. He is a monk.

He lights himself on fire in 2009. There's conflicting reports. Okay, so one of the problems with talking about this is that in this period, the internet is not as widespread as it is today. And there is a Chinese media cordon, effectively, on Tibet in a very similar way to like west papua where they like they won't let journalists in it is very hard to get information out so the thing that i'm about to say is something that is reported a lot on the time by people who try who are trying to smoke messages out and the thing they report is that as this guy is self-immolating the chinese police shoot him like multiple times well i mean as we've as we've seen recently that is how cops tend to look at

somebody like yeah someone has lit themselves on fire clearly what this situation needs is a gun and and you know okay so like the chinese police they they're i don't i don't have any evidence of them shooting people after that they absolutely one of the things that so what happens after this is this wave of self-immolations is protest across tibet the thing that they absolutely do a lot is start beating the person who's on fire with a stick like using like riot sticks um sometimes they have these they have riot sticks with like spikes on them and they are absolutely beating people to death while they are burning to death the chinese police are like as psychotic maybe not quite as like absolutely murderous as

the american police but they are like they are beating a burning man to death right that is oh god i i will say that is that is definitely i haven't that's certainly i can't think of anything i've ever seen u.s police do that is more violent than beat a man to death while he's on fire like yeah that's up there that that makes the cut it's really bad um and this is the kind of thing that you know i mean this is this is the kind of thing that that sets off these self-immolations in the first place which is that tibet has you know like is has has a colonial occupation right it has you know the chinese government has been attempting to suppress tibetan buddhism there's been a massive way like systemic massive ecological destruction

of the tibetan plateau so that the chinese government can like mine gold and shit and in a way that's very similar to sort of like the ecological devastation you get in places like the amazon there are you know there are intense police crackdowns all the time. There's another very famous incident that's kind of one of the things that leads to this, where in 1989, there's a bunch of protests in Tibet, and the cops just start shooting them. They kill a bunch of people. And so, people had been, up until 2009, people had kind of had this promise that things were going to get better, because you know you have these negotiations between the chinese government and the dalai lama and then the dalai

lama turns around and goes yeah no they're not giving us anything like they're giving us nothing the chinese state's policy on tibet is that effectively we're going to like we're going we're going we're going to like we're going to try to make these people han effectively one of the things they spend they do this in xinjiang too is they spend a lot of there's a lot of resources invested in getting like han settlers from other parts of china to booth it's a bet you know and you know as as it's true also in xinjiang like the like the cadre jobs are basically all like government cadre jobs are basically all uh han people and so you know you start getting you start getting,

you start getting attempts at civil disobedience. There are these giant protests in 2008, like attempting to make a sort of like a giant, have a giant thing happen right before the Olympics in order to get international support. And those turn into riots and those are brutally suppressed. And once that happens,

people are really kind of, they're running out of options for civil disobedience. Because, you know, and this is one of these things about this kind of Buddhism is that it's very much a, like, their resistance tradition is nonviolence, right? Like, these people, like, very, very rarely you get riots, but they're not, like, they're not going to try your arm struggle. very rarely you get riots but they're not like they're not going to try your arm struggle and so what they have is non-violent civil disobedience but the problem is that if you try to do non-violent civil disobedience in china what happens to you is the cops show up and arrest you all and then they arrest your families and this is something that happens to the people who self-immolate is that there are like 160 of them from 2009 until now and when someone lights himself on fire what

the chinese government does is well a they beat the person to death um while they're on fire uh b they they start arresting the people's family they start arresting their friends they start arresting people in the monasteries that they're at um they start doing these purges to like stop like to to remove the sort of buddhist monks they think are going to be problems and this this fuels this kind of cyclical wave of this because on the one hand you know there's this incredible repression going on on the other hand it's not possible to like wage really like wage other kinds of mass civil disobedience campaigns and the thing about lighting yourself on fire is that the government can't stop it right like in theory you could maybe train police to stop people from lighting people on fire but the thing is the actual thing

that happens when you light when someone lights himself on fire is the cop goes and beats them and so it becomes this sort of cycle of self-immolations. And also, I mean, the other thing that's worth mentioning too is people, there are a few other cases of Tibetan Buddhists outside of Tibet. There's a few people in India who let themselves on fire. And I don't know i i think the tibetan example is really bleak because it doesn't work like they lose um and this is one of these situations where i don't know like i legitimately don't know how they could have won because they were dealing with a enormous a very very powerful state apparatus that was very invested in using all of its state capacity to repress them and it it it fails and it it

like the the thing that it mostly accomplishes is a bunch of is like just a generation of well i mean some like the youngest kid who self-immolates is 15 right and it mostly accomplishes a bunch of these kids light themselves on fire and die and everything is worse now than it was in 2009 yep i think you know so very recently there have been big there have been protests in tibet again because the ccp is trying to build a dam that's going to flood and destroy a bunch of monasteries and i don't think anyone's lit themselves on fire over it but the police just arrested everyone and so i don't know it's really bleak and i i i think the the the free tibet movement has become much weaker as the sort of like 2010s went on to the point where now i think like most america like most like most of the sort of like broad american far left basically just takes the

chinese line on it which is that like the dalai lama was a slave owner and the chinese occupation was a gift yeah yeah like i want to take like two like a couple like a minute to talk about this because like that a lot yeah and it's this thing where like you know it's really interesting looking at a lot of these people who are who are anti-tibet but pro-palestine because you know if you look at the originators of setter colonial studies like people like patrick wolf right who was like the godfather of setler colonialism studies, Tibet is one of the states that he holds up, like, as the paradigmatic example of what settler colonialism is, it's Palestine and Tibet, right? And, you know, like, the thing about, oh, it was because they were trying to, like, free the Tibetan serf really pisseses me off because if that was the actual thing the ccp

wanted to do they could have done a thing that happened all over the fucking world in communist countries which is they could have moved in they could have knocked off the government and they could have set up a communist tibetan state right this happens all over the fucking eastern block there's precedents for it in east asia which you know there's a precedent of mongolia which was also i mean a very different buddhist which was also a very different Buddhist society, but also a largely Buddhist society where the Soviet Union went in, knocked off the government, and set up an independent

Mongolian state. I'm not going to say things like went great for Mongolia, but the thing is, if your actual objective is just knock off a theocratic government that you don't like, you could have done that and they don't they don't do it they were pretty into fucking china it's also worth like stating like yeah

things maybe not like didn't work out great in the immediate term for mongolia but mongolia as a state right now is not like the worst it's not doing as badly as like tibet is doing you know like it's it's an independent country that functions more or less yeah and who does better than functioning more or less really yeah like and this i don't know and this is this is the sort of that's and that's one of the things that like chinese nationalists tend not to really use that line i mean they use it a bit when that when they're when they're personally like when they have to like specifically make arguments about the dalai lama that's something they do but most of the arguments that the that the actual like supporters of the chinese government in china the arguments they make is like oh well these

people are like these people are shitty barbarians and we have to like we have to civilize them and like our invasion was a gift to them because we're going to civilize these people and like it's it's literally it's like identical to the shit that like the Israelis say about Palestinians. We should also very briefly mentioned that a lot of the surveillance technology that's used in Tibet, like our cameras that the Chinese government sells to Palestine. So keep that shit in mind. Yeah. And I don't know, but it's, it's, this, this is one of the really bleak examples because the thing about self-immolation as a politics is that it functions by mobilizing someone else, right? And in some cases, that's another government.

In some cases, that's your own government. In some cases, that's the people around you. But if you're in a state where the government does not give a shit about you and they have the ability to ruthlessly repress anyone who's inspired by your actions, it just, it leads to a lot of people dying. And I don't know what the sort of lesson from that is other than it's really hard for this is the thing with Hong Kong too it's really hard for any one any one part of China to try to go into revolt against the government because there's

so much more of the rest of fucking China and if you if you alone are pitted against the entire might of the Chinese state that has broad popular backing, you're fucked. Yeah. It's really bleak. Yeah.

Yeah, I don't have anything positive to say there. ran very long, so this is going to be a two-parter. You'll be hearing about Tunisia and more in the next episode. But for now, please continue listening to our podcasts, and not other podcasts, because why would you do that? Who would do that? Nobody I like.

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I want to end, I guess, a bit. I want to end after you talk about Tunisia with one in China that kind of worked. Oh, okay. Well, that'll be nice. So there was a, you know, Tunisia existed for most of the, like, 21st century under a dictator. This state of affairs changed for, unfortunately, a fairly limited period of time on December 17th, 2010, when a young man, he was 26, Mohamed Bouazizi, went out to sell fruit. And, you know, Mohammed lived in a very poor region, a very poor part of Tunisia, the city of Sidi Bouazid. It's about 100 miles south of Tunis, which is the capital. And like a lot of people, you know, in that part of the world, it is not uncommon,

particularly for young men, because unemployment is so high for young men to kind of make their living doing a mix of odd jobs and like odd vending, right? Where you're just kind of like selling whatever you can get your hands on and think that you can make a profit on because there's not jobs in the traditional sense. And because political corruption was so horrific in the state at that point in time, it's one of those things where most everybody who's out there selling shit on the street is breaking the law by doing it, right? Because you can't get the permit because the permit is basically a bribe and you can't afford the bribe, right? That's how a lot of this stuff works. So, you know, Muhammad kind of prior to this, he had been, you know, his friends, when you read interviews, people who knew him, he was always like one of these guys who was like really upbeat and funny his nickname basically meant like funny man uh in town and this had started to change like friends noticed like a couple of years before you know 2010 when he's in

hits his mid-20s and starts getting into his late 20s that he's like it is impossible to get by as a young man. There are no jobs for us. There's no future. I don't feel at all like I have nothing to be hopeful for, right? I think a lot of people can empathize with where he was coming from. So he goes out to sell fruit, and this municipal inspector, Fida Hamdi, sees him, realizes he doesn't have a permit, and takes his shit, right? And there are accounts that he like hits him to basically is like, what the fuck is wrong with you? You're not paying your goddamn bribe and like smacks him around. So this is kind of the breaking point for was easy.

He's using the like way out fruit and stuff that he wants to get back. It had been confiscated. He like can't work without it. And they tell him like, fuck you. You're not getting shit back. So he says like, I want to meet with the governor and like plead my case to the guy in charge. And they're like, fuck you. The governor doesn't want to see you.

So at about 1130 a.m., he takes his cart outside of the governor's office. He pours, I think, lighter fluid, something flammable over his head, and he lights himself on fire. His cousin gets a call, Ali Bouazizi, gets a call, I guess from someone who was nearby and knew them both and was like, Muhammad just lit himself on fire in over to the governor's office with his smartphone, and he gets there in time to record his cousin's body being taken into an ambulance. Protests start up after this. Almost immediately, people take to the street. I think it's just everyone is living under the same regime. They're living under all of these fucking corrupt-ass officials. Everyone pieces together this. Yeah, and it's worth mentioning this is also a period of massive increases in food prices. Yes.

Which are one of the big, like, if you want your protest to work, like, Spark plus rising food prices, great way to get it to happen. Yes. So, you know, the Spark catches fire, protests start up, and they do not calm down. Part of why they don't calm down is Ali Bozizi stays out in the street. He uploads footage of his cousin's body to Facebook, and he takes footage of the protests too, and he just starts sending shit to Al Jazeera, right? So all of this footage he's taking winds up on television that evening, and by the next day, other cities in Tunisia are holding protests. And this is the kind of thing where it's like, you know, we all saw this, you know, obviously with a different cause in 2020. Sometimes something happens that's so horrible that the whole country takes to the streets. And that's what happens in Tunisia.

Zine el Abedin bin Ali does the normal dictator thing. He sends out, and non-dictators, right? We do it here too. Yeah, yeah. He sends the cops out to beat the shit out of everybody, right? But he's also, he's, you talked in, when we were talking about Vietnam, about like the playbook and they didn't quite have it down. Part of the playbook is down because in addition to sending the cops out to beat the shit out of people, he visits Boazizi in the hospital, because he lingers for a while, right? And he also has the officer, the guy who slapped Boazizi,

arrested. You know, he's kind of desperately trying, like, maybe this will calm everybody down. It does not. Boazizi dies in the hospital a couple of days later, and the protests, which are known now as the Jasmine Revolution, it takes about a month, but they force bin Ali to flee the country for Saudi Arabia and, you know, successfully bring an end to his regime and the return of a democratic system. There are functional elections for a while in Tunisia. They gain a significant amount of, like, political freedom. Like, there are some really significant inroads made in terms of like civil rights during this period immediately after the jasmine revolution but things also don't get better at least not enough right this is generally seen tunisia as the start of the arab spring and if you know anything about the rest of the arab spring this was also seen as like kind of the successful case right like shit didn't work out very well in syria um or or in egypt but like

yeah bahrain but here they got rid of the dictator and they gained a lot of civil rights and that's great the problem is that the the the other issues the high food prices the fact that unemployment is is at a nightmarish level, the fact that corruption was a hideous problem in Tunisia, this doesn't just go away, right? Because it's deeper than the dictator. The culture, whenever you have a culture of corruption like this, which is, by the way, it's not just the Middle East that has to deal with this, but if you've spent time in the Middle East, one of the things that is really depressing is how massive and absolutely

different, by the way, from the kind of corruption that we have in the West. It is over there. The degree to which, and you start to care about this, not because you're getting fucked over as a tourist, because you really don't notice it much as a tourist. It's when you make friends in that country and you talk to them about like how many different people

are constantly taking a little bit from them, right? And often not a little bit. Like the degree to which regular people suffer because every single person who is quote unquote a government official is just soliciting for bribes is, that's so much deeper than any one guy in charge, right? That's something you can't just revolt your way out of.

Yeah, like one of my professors in college, I don't know if he ever actually wrote about it, but he's long story but he lived in egypt for a long time and one of the things he would talk about is like the is the the concept of like the oddly powerful bureaucrat so like his thing was like the like the the the guy who sells you tickets at like the train station in cairo like that guy if you don't fucking pay him he can just say no and you can't get on a train. And there's just so many layers of this guy who controls this specific thing and thus can fuck you over

unless you do what he tells you, which is usually give money. Unfortunately, we need to go to ads. We'll be back in a second. And we're back. Yeah. And it's part of why it's more durable is it's not like, you know,

I think in South Vietnam, you know, when, when DM was around, you had a lot of, you have all this corruption, but a lot of it is top down. It is people who are loyal to the president, right? A lot of the corruption in places like this is bottom up in that it's not but a lot of it is that like well maybe it's technically my job to stop the guy who is works at the train station from denying people entry if they don't bribe him but if i do that then maybe he's gonna make a fuss about how i'm doing the

same thing for like permits to to to fix your roof or whatever right like there it's so much more bottom up in a lot of ways and so the reason this matters is that like shit doesn't really get better in Tunisia. Right. And now that the, so while all these problems continue, corruption continues to be an issue, high food prices continue to be an issue.

Unemployment continues to be an issue, particularly for young men. Another thing that's changed is that now everyone has seen what was easy does has done. And like, obviously he dies horribly, but one thing that happens is like his family moves to Canada, right? Like they, and this is, I don't think fair to his family.

I haven't seen the evidence. They were like corrupt or whatever. But like, I think because of how, like, because they're able to like get out of this situation, it's seen as like, well, maybe if I do this, not only will it hurt whoever, whatever corrupt motherfucker, you know, I'm angry at, but maybe shit will work out for my family, right? This is often not what actually happens, but there have been hundreds of self-immolation cases in the last 10 years in Tunisia. It has become, you might compare it to kind of mass shootings in the United States, not obviously on a moral level, you're not doing nearly the same thing, you're not hurting anyone else. But in terms of the fact that it is this really, really shocking event that then becomes kind of routine, because people pick up on it as like, well,

this is what you do in this situation, you know? One of the articles that I read for this was an AP News piece that interviews a guy named Hosni Kalea, who's one of the dudes, one of the many Tunisians who have attempted or succeeded in killing themselves through self-immolation as an act of protest. Hosni survived, right? And he did not survive without serious injury, right? Now he has to, he covers his face at all times, his left hand, he's lost a bunch of fingers, his right hand has no fingers at all anymore. Like He is just grievously injured as a result of this. And he said when interviewed by the AP, quote, I would never describe the act of self-immolation as an act of courage because even the bravest person in the world couldn't do it. When I poured the petrol over my head, I wasn't

really conscious about what I was doing. Then I saw a flash. I felt my skin start to burn and I fell down. I woke up eight months later in the hospital. And I found that really interesting because there's a lot of talk right now, you know, with what Aaron Bushnell did about like principle and courage or mental illness or whatever. And like, to what do we credit something that is so incomprehensible to most people and i found what hosney says here really interesting because what he's saying is that like you can't even call it courage you know it's almost like someone else is doing it you were animated by such rage and hopelessness that it's almost like someone else is is in control of your body and i don't that

doesn't sound like mental illness to me for certain that sounds like someone else is is in control of your body and i don't that doesn't sound like mental illness to me for certain that sounds like someone that sounds like desperation of such an extent that it's mind-altering i don't know any other way to describe it than that and i'm not saying this is what goes through everybody's head when they self-immolate but you don't get a lot of interviews with those people after the fact right yeah well like there's some people who survive in tibet and it's like well those guys the the chinese government will not let anyone near them right like no you know and like i i guess i should also i should mention this about the chinese government line on this is that it's very similar to what you see in the american press it's like the well no you're you're seeing the

terrorist stuff too here but like the the chinese government line and this line works pretty well is like these people were mentally ill these people are terrorists um or they were like misled by like the dalai lama who's like leading his people to the flames yeah and that's been kind of the that's been kind of the playbook everywhere for this that like the one the one that kind of works is that one it's it's you have to attack the moral character of the person because it's such an it's such an act of it's an inherently selfless selfless yeah so the only way to do it you can't describe it anywhere else they're lighting themselves on fire yeah yeah so and so they like you know the the it's it's it's the the roger stone rat fucking thing of attack them where

they're strong yes and you know so it's the attack on the moral character that like happens i i think the thing with tunisia too is it's like like the political alternative to this is this like rabid anti-immigrant politics in a way that's like we'll talk about that in a second but yeah it's it doesn't end well one thing i do want to hit on is the degree to which, again, this kind of does function in Tunisia as like a memetic virus. Hosni, the guy we heard from, survives. But his brother, shortly thereafter, lights himself on fire in an act of protest and kills himself. And his mother attempts to do the same, right? Like three members of the family all carrying out self-immolation.

And it is one of those things. This is listed as like an example of the tactic succeeding, and it does in terms of it gets the regime out of power, but things are not better in Tunisia, especially since, so, you know, there is a period of time where there is at least a functioning democracy and significant gains for civil rights, But because food still doesn't get affordable, there aren't jobs. You'll find a lot of articles from around 2020, especially where people are like, yeah, I guess freedom's nice, but it's not really worth much if you're starving, you know? Yeah. Which, you know, anyway, all of this leads in part to the coming to power of the guy who is currently leading Tunisia, Kais Syed.

And as you noted, Mia, you know, this guy is a populist. He is elected with 72% of the vote. He frames himself like populist. He was like, I am, you know, I'm outside the system. I'm going to help you take on the elite that have corruptly ruled our country. And he also is very anti-migrant, have corruptly ruled our country. And he also is very anti-migrant, right? Tunisia, a lot of people who migrate into Europe do so through Tunisia, just for geographical reasons.

And he is blaming a lot of their problems on, he does like great replacement shit that all these black migrants are causing our country's problems. He inspires a wave of violence against black people in Tunisia. That's pretty hideous and horrific. And he has gained a significant amount of backing from particularly the Italian government, I think also the French government, because he's cracking down on migrants, right? And those migrants come to Italy and France, and that's a problem for those governments. So they're supporting this guy who, by the way, has turned himself into a dictator. All those gains Tunisia had in the wake of the Arab spring he has rolled back um he has centralized power he has more or less destroyed

the judiciary as something that's independent you know he is if he's not a dictator he's not all that far from it you know and he's being supported by these these quote-unquote democratic nations because well i mean because racism right yeah same reason they supported gaddafi. Like, yeah, when it comes to the politicians, it's a mix of racism and just like, well, racism wins votes. And when it comes to like, why racism win votes, it's back to racism, right? Anyway, so those are, that's Tunisia, more or less.

Unfortunately, we need to go to ads. We'll be back in a second and we're back yeah so let's end on a slightly more positive note where well so the line i was gonna give was a one about how like you know i mean this is the thing with tunisia right is like you have this like tunisia has effectively structural unemployment rates of like 30 40 percent right yeah it's it's and that's that's the thing that that's the thing that can't be solved without changing the economic system yep if you you know if you you can have your political revolution without your social revolution you'll be right back to where you were in like 10 years the problem

though the other thing is you can have your social revolution and also end up in the same place which is where we're going with with china where so one of the there's a very famous okay i guess the place we should start with this is that one of the i've talked about this a bit on this show one of the ways that labor works in china like structurally is that so you're a contractor you work for a contracting company the contracting company is this like series of shell companies and there's like a there's like there's a payday on like new years because that's when the like the financial like the year sort of rolls over and that's when you get paid and so these companies are designed to specifically go out of business like the day before new year so they don't have to pay any of the workers for the work that they've done and this leads to a a rash of protests in china like

every single year on new year on like new year's day there's like this massive there's there's protests like fucking everywhere because people have been screwed it happens a lot with construction companies and so there's a very like one of the very common tactics you see is is people like standing on top of buildings holding banners saying like we're gonna jump unless you guys like pay us and so that that's kind of the background of this which is that that's like that's a fairly common kind of like workers protest in 2021 there's a delivery driver in who he so something something i didn't really talk about in the 10 episodes is that chinese economy is increasingly becoming a gig economy and this has been this has been

happening for a while now and so this guy is a delivery driver for alibaba and he's like he's like trying to change apps and the app garnishes his wages and steals 700 from him and that's an enormous amount of money yeah i mean the app garnished his wages as a sentence that just makes me want to light something on fire so i get why this would spark protests yeah and he like tries to get it back and they don't give it to him and he like and he lights himself on fire and this turns into so he lets himself on fire and then like this this is in 2021 this is the same year where the temu employee falls over dead like or father like dies in her bed from overwork and also the same year

when a temu employee jumps off of the building because of overwork and this sets off like a giant kind of shift in in the way that the chinese public is thinking about labor because up until this one people have been you know like china it's it's not it's nowhere near as bad as tunisia but it also has this problem of like everyone works harder and harder you're working you're working 996 right you're working 9 a.m 9 p.m six days a week and you're like you're working more and more and more hours and you're not getting ahead right you're still stuck in your shitty apartment and your app isn't paying you for the work you did and this leads to a whole like a whole thing that sort of culminates in in

something i talked about a bit in the time of episodes which is the the chinese supreme court like the chinese constitution says you're not supposed to be able to work people for longer than like 35 hours unless like special circumstances and the chinese supreme court goes like well obviously you're not allowed to work people uh like 12 out like 12 hours a day six days a week and that isn't in large part, and partially it's because of the Temu suicide and the Temu thing but the other huge contributing factor to this

and the other huge thing contributing to Chinese society attempting to reckon kind of with their unbelievable overwork culture is the self-immolation and it goes viral so fast that there's no way to sort of like cover it up there's it's it's you can't the chinese government can't

really just press the racism button like they normally would because this isn't someone in tebac or this isn't someone in xinjiang they can't really do that and so they kind of are they're forced to make at least like some kind of change because it pisses off so many people in ways that like can't really be contained so you know i i guess a lesson from that if there is one is sometimes very rarely you can back a government into a corner where the normal things that they would say about it or like the the normal like mental illness terrorists uh deluded things don't work because the the the the raw simplicity of what they did and why just breaks through the media sphere thing and it's again very hard to predict because obviously like this isn't the first within the last 12 months this isn't the first self-immolation of the united states right and the last self-immolation attacked or not attack sorry i

should jeez do i have any brain or what well the last self-immolation um that we had which i believe was is was over climate change um oh there was there was a palestine one too oh then there was a pass so i guess we've had a couple like two in the last or three now i guess in the last like 12 months or so but they didn't the other ones did not really move the needle yeah right why aaron i mean i think part of it might have to do with with how deliberate it was and how you know it got was very quickly picked up by local media and the national media i don't know that's that's really outside the scope of these episodes but i hope you at least now have more of a grounding in like how this has gone other times people have used this as a method of protest

and hopefully that's of use to you anyway have a good day bye i found out i was related to the guy that i was dating i don't feel emotions correctly i am talking to a felon right now and I cannot decide if I like him or not. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take real phone calls from anonymous strangers all over the world as a fake gecko therapist and try to dig into their brains and learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's pretty interesting if you give it a shot. Matter of fact, here's a few more examples of the kinds of calls we get on this show. I live with my boyfriend and I found his

piss jar in our apartment. I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. I have very overbearing parents. Even at the age of 29, they won't let me move out of their house. So if you want an excuse to get out of your own head and see what's going on in someone else's head, search for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's the one with the green guy on it. 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. I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me and a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while commuting

or running errands, for those who find themselves seeking solace, wisdom, and refuge between the chapters. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary works while uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them. Blacklit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to life. Listen to Blacklit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons?

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sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. Welcome to It Could Happen Here, a podcast sometimes, not even that occasionally, that's about a bunch of not very functional mass surveillance technology that's being deployed against all of us. I'm your host, Mia Wong. Also with me is Garrison Davis. Yeah, and so today we're going to be talking more about something we've talked about on the show, I think a couple of times, but that is the ShotSpotter program.

And there was recently a leak of the locations of all of ShotSpotters' gunfire sensors. And with us to talk about it are the people who got the leak and wrote the article about where the ShotSpotters' sensors are. And that is Dhruv Mehrotra, who's a staff writer at Wired, and Joey Scott, who's a freelance investigative journalist and photographer. And both of you two, welcome to the show. Thanks for having us yes thank you yeah i'm glad to be talking to you about this so i guess for for for the people who don't remember or like have not listened to other episodes we've done about this or have like

read this article which you should go read at wired it's great can you describe what ShotSpotter is and what it's supposed to do versus what it actually does? Sure. Joey, you want me to take this or do you want to do it? Yeah, go ahead. Sure. Well, ShotSpotter is a sort of controversial gunshot detection system built by the company Sound Thinking. On the face of it, the tech is sort of straightforward. sound thinking. On the face of it, the tech is sort of straightforward. The company will basically install little sensors on streetlights and traffic signs in a jurisdiction. And these sensors are sort of like algorithmically tuned to detect gunshots. So when one of these sensors hears something, it basically will send an alert to an incident review center, which will then like vet

the sound make sure it was actually a gunshot before then forwarding it to dispatchers who send a cop to investigate the sound you know activists and academics have been basically saying for years that this tech is inaccurate and um primes police basically to go to low-income community communities of color expecting gunshots when likely they won't find any. Yeah, and I think the specifically low-income communities of color thing is a big part of this because, so you all created a map of where the shot spotter sensors are from the data you got. And I looked at Chicago one and immediately I was like, I recognize that map.

That is the map of where the non-white people are in the city. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, it's, it's stark. I think a lot, a lot of the responses that I've seen on Twitter and, you know, in my email inbox are essentially that like, look, this is just a map of where all the not white people are in whatever city that it's deployed in. Yeah, and y'all did some analysis of what you found sort of statistically about where these centers ended up and like the sort of the, I guess, like class and racial composition of those places. Can you talk about that a little bit? Sure, I'll take this one just because I worked on the analysis. So yeah, I mean, what we found is that more than 12 million Americans live in a neighborhood with at least one shot spotter sensor. We basically joined census data onto the locations of every

single shot spotter microphone, and looked at the demographic composition of those neighborhoods. And, you know, what we found is that an aggregate nearly 70% of the people who live in a neighborhood with one set with at least one sensor identify as either black or Latina. Nearly three quarters of those neighborhoods are majority not white. And the average household income in a neighborhood with at least one sensor is $50,000 a year. So these are low-income communities of color. It's kind of hard to describe it in any other way. Yeah, and one of the things, and this has been a thing for, so I'm in Chicago.

There's been a huge series of fights over getting rid of ShotSpotter here. And one of the things you hear all the time is the ShotSpotter people will go, no, well, we don't use race as a factor for yeah but like shot spotter insists that they don't use race at all in in determining where where they put these sensors but kaba they've still managed to somehow create this map and i i don't know i i i'm wondering what you think about like their response and whether you and i guess this is more of a subjective thing like how much do you actually believe them when they when they say this well i think uh when you know we we were investigating this we found that the the police don't even know where these locations are.

And so they're just giving ShotSpotter data of where to put this stuff. So the police can kind of wipe their hands of like, oh, we insisted that they put it in this place or anything like that. And I think, you know, Drove can probably speak to this, but you know, the argument is, this is where all the shootings are. And so that's where they are. But, you know, when you investigate that, it doesn't call into effect like in other parts of the country outside of like Chicago or something. You look at gun violence and where these alerts are, you know, they aren't just where the alerts are. And, you know, Pasadena is an example. You know, shootings happen outside of where the alerts are, but they're specifically in a very specific part of Pasadena that is poor and non-white. So, yeah.

Yeah. And I think, you know, when we spoke to Sound Thinking, you know, I think it's important to point out here that they did not dispute our findings or the sort of authenticity of the doc. to point out here that they did not dispute our findings or the sort of authenticity of the doc. But, you know, they said what you would expect that the sensory deployment is not really informed by race. And, you know, the way it works, as Joey says, is that the company basically asked police department who purchased the systems for data about gun violence, which sound thinking says is objective, but we have no idea what that data actually looks like, right? We don't know if it's Sound thinking says is objective, but we have no idea what that data actually looks like, right? We don't know if it's all thinking had told me is that, you know, sometimes they'll ask for data and they'll do it this sort of data informed way. But other times cops will just say, like, look, we want the we want the deployment in

this area. And that might include like a stadium or a school or places where people gather. So, you know, it's kind of we don't really know why exactly sound thinking is deploying its sensors in any given location. Yeah, and having them be deployed by cops is like a spectacular way to have cop brain in terms of locations, which not, not, not, not, I don't know, not an especially good way to get a statistically unbiased sampling of where you would potentially want these things so i i guess i guess the a thing we should talk about in terms of what the issues with the system is are okay so shot spotter claims that it and this is something i've seen over and over and over again it claims it is a 97 accuracy rate over again it claims it is a 97 accuracy rate of detecting gunshots there's just i i i don't believe it none of the research i've ever seen backs that up um can you talk a bit about a bit

about like what it what it's actually detecting versus what what they sort of claim it is yeah i think well i guess the the overreaching kind of theme here is we just don't know. ShotSpotter is very not transparent about their data. There have been really no peer-reviewed independent studies of the technology. When we talk about, you know, how effective it is, that is a claim that ShotSpotter makes based off of, you know, very little information given to the public about it. You know, and that's kind of the big issue is when you start getting down into the nitty gritty of like what's actually going on, you notice that a lot of the times what they consider a gunshot, police will investigate and find out it was a firework, which if you live in, you know, I use Pasadena because it's next to me out here in L.A. You know, fireworks are kind of how we celebrate and it's a different kind of language out here. You know, fireworks they claim it was a gunshot, but when police show up, they don't find any evidence of a gun crime. And sometimes they find out it was a car backfiring or construction equipment and all of that. And that just kind of shows, you know, their claim that it's effective at

identifying gunshots is, you know, very questionable to make that claim. Yeah. And, you know, their 97, like the 97% figure that they cite in their marketing material is based on police reporting back to ShotSpotter that there was a mistake, right? Like for ShotSpotter to count a gunshot or to count a sound as an error, the police have to report it back to ShotSpotter, right? So it's almost like by default, if they hear nothing, they have 100% accuracy rate. But the second that they're informed of this they you know uh will adjust that rate well and and also i mean that that that's a metric that relies on the cops telling them like it relies on the cops taking an extra step in an investigation and these are like you are

dealing with one of the most notoriously lazy group of people like in the entire country like i i have i have watched these people on duty in chicago they spend like 80 percent of their time standing around on their phones playing candy crush right like this this entire statistics thing requires them to do another step it's like like what percentage of the time is a cop going to admit that they ran out to this thing and like drew their guns and we're doing their like whole oh there's been gunshots thing and then there's just nothing there it's like i don't know it seems like cast a pall over even this

even the sort of potential that their data can be right right i mean we all know that cops lie yeah and we we've seen them kind of use shot spotter alerts you know chicago was one of the examples where they were using it as cover to make illegal stops and you know yeah that that sort of thing so you know if there's room for that it's hard to then take what data police are giving them in this way as accurate. And then again, it goes back to, well, we don't, the public doesn't get to see any of that information. So we don't get to make that, I guess, distinction between the two and, you know, know what's best for people's communities because of that. what's best for people's communities because of that that's one of the things about this program that is really alarming is that you have this mass surveillance technology and the people in charge of it or like the people people who'd be in charge of sort of like

deciding whether or not you want it it's like like both both the general public and like city mayors etc etc seem to have so little information about whether about what it's even doing that it's incredibly difficult to make any kind of like any kind of sort of database choice all you have is sort of this combination of like the company going oh yeah well obviously our stuff works and then this sort of let me this is the thing that's been happening in chicago is this sort of like the company going oh yeah well obviously our stuff works and then this sort of i mean this is the thing that's been happening in chicago is this sort of like crime panic stuff they just that people just fall back on and they combine this sort of crime panic with just the assumption that it works because that's what it says in the box and that's a i think a really alarming combination to me yeah i mean i think the fact that city council members are kept in the dark about the

locations of these things, as a, as are the, you know, the police departments who pay for the, or the cities pay for it. I think it's, you know,

something that's really been quite interesting as after we published is that, you know, I've gotten a bunch of emails from city council members asking, you know, asking me if I can provide them data about the locations because they can't even get them from the company. Right. So, yeah, there's a lot of transparency issues here. Yeah. And, you know, this is a public, this is a tool being paid with public money. You know, another thing we found in the data was that there are a list of sensors that are broken or out of service or

anything like that um in talking to to various police departments shot spotter doesn't let them know uh when that happens and and you know referred us to talk ask the shot spotter about that so you know not even the the functionality of like how many sensors are down are really communicated. And that's a huge problem. But like, again, this data, as a journalist to investigate it, to request documents, I can count at least three separate cities where ShotSpotter intervened and said the release of the data would be a trade secret. And so therefore, yeah. So like even any data that shows transparency

of like anything more detailed than just an alert that many cities have, ShotSpotter won't release because it is quote unquote a trade secret. Mind you, I have gotten documents from other cities that are more detailed. And then when I request those from other cities, Shotspotter intervenes and goes, no, that's a trade secret. to the effectiveness and usefulness of the product, which the public, I believe everyone would agree, deserves a right to know, especially if it's taxpayer money.

Yeah, and it's a lot of money too. So speaking of a lot of money, unfortunately, we have to take an ad break. So we will be back in a second okay we are back something i wanted to talk about with the way that these sensors are used so about actually i okay sorry i should have actually figured out the exact date after which the story originally came out, but maybe like four or five days after your story came out, there was a story that came out of Chicago about a sort of effectively the cover-up of a case where a CPT was responding to a shot spotter ping and it was just like a 13 year old kid shooting off fireworks and the cop showed up and immediately started shooting and like thankfully cops can't set up a barn so the kid didn't get shot but like this child had a cop shoot at him while the kid was running towards the

cop going no it was fireworks yeah so i i was wondering what kind like you know how how many of those kinds of stories did you run into when you were sort of like doing this running into the story and yeah what is the impact of that stuff sort of been you know i think that that example you bring up is particularly egregious but what happens more often i think are these um they're sort of like less dramatic events where you know sound thinking or shot spotter will detect two shots and deploy cops to a to a corner and you know they'll detain someone on the scene run their name through their you know their databases find that this guy has got a bench warrant or, you know, pick someone up on a misdemeanor. Right. So like, I think, you know,

while there are some really egregious examples, the thing that I think about a lot here is that is just how much unnecessary, how many unnecessary arrests are happening because of shot spotter, right? How many people are being picked up on bullshit, essentially? year old kid for the same reason cops were responding to a shot spot earlier and the chicago oig and their report about it kind of highlighted one of the things which is cops are just primed to be you know expecting you know gunfire somebody shooting at them and everything and you know i think that's that is a danger, you know, but again, to what Drove's saying is like, it also leads to a lot of unnecessary stops. It, it opens up people to be profiled and pat it down. And, you know, so both options are not great. You know, when you consider the, the,

the harm that this causes, it's just, we all know that like cops are very jumpy to begin with. So, you know, they hear a firework or you know an acorn hits their cop car or something we all know that like that's probably not what we need police to be expecting on a call and so you're just telling people oh gunshots and then they're going to run in expecting to be fired upon and i don't think that's great for society garrison do you want to talk a bit about that oh hi i i don't know if there's much more to say i think that's true yeah we did do a lot of acorn cop i think the acorn incident stands on itself i don't think it needs to even be talked about i think it okay i think one sentence is uh speaks speaks a whole a whole

book's worth of uh possible analysis of police behavior and no being the notion of police rushing into every situation thinking that there's there was there was a gunshot obviously has its inherent problems now like mind you a lot of the times you know and at least in uh in other cities it's 60 to 80 percent of the time they don't find anything you know which i i i think is good in the sense that nobody's being harmed or stomped but it's also bad when you consider the effectiveness and utility of the device, you know, which Shotswater has kind of distanced themselves from, you know, this idea of preventing gun crime or lowering gun crime and more in terms of like safety and arriving to a scene quicker

to render aid and help police find shell casings. You know, you've seen over the years the kind of switch of focus on what the technology does. And that most certainly happened around the time they changed their name to Sound Thinking. Yeah. I think, you know, the other thing I wanted to mention here is that, you know, from a different leaked internal report

from the state's attorney's office in Illinois, in Cook County, Illinois, it found that like a third of arrests stemming from a shot spotter alert actually had nothing to do with a gun in the first place. So it's not even like, you know, they're 89% of alerts don't, you know, result in finding a shell casing. It's that even when there are arrests that occur from a shot spotter alert, 30% of them have nothing to do with a gun, right? And that just shows you sort of the criminalization of people in areas that have these microphones. Yeah, and I think the combination of those two things gets you to this point about ShotSpotter's effectiveness, which is that like, okay, so we've had ShotSpotter for a while in Chicago, right? Chicago police do not solve murders like it's sub it's their their their murder clearance rate and you have to keep in mind that murder clearance doesn't actually mean they solved a murder but like even that jacked up murder clearance rate i don't think has like i think they may have had one year in my entire

life over 50 and that was because murder clearance counts. If two people both shoot each other and they both die, that counts as a clearance, or their suspect dies in another way. So it's pretty clear that it's not actually substantively contributing to the Chicago Police Department solving murders. Like, you have a better-than-coin-flip odds if you kill someone in Chicago that, like, the police aren't even going to, like, really try to figure out what happened. And so, yeah, I think it makes a lot of sense that they've been pivoting away from even, like, even claiming that this can do anything to solve gun violence, because it just clearly

hasn't at all. And instead, it seems to be doing a bunch of other stuff which is like either throwing cops around doing, it's like throwing cops around chasing like shadows which either results in them arresting just random people

or like having these really sort of terrifying incidents or it just results in straight up nothing yeah we're gonna go to like looking at the effectiveness like two cities that have continued to deny shot spotter contracts are atlanta and portland two cities that spend a lot of time thinking about how they equip their police spend a lot of time like making sure that their police are able to serve uh the largest amount of the community possible and the fact

that like specifically atlanta with their massive like a flock program of an integrated camera network across the whole city like it is one of the most surveilled cities in the country, if not the most, the fact that they are turning down this equipment for not being effective enough and it being too costly is, is, is a sign for like beyond just being a sign. It's also like a look at what,

why other police departments are interested in this and like what, what it allows them to do and being deployed to uh to to these various communities that have the what like 25 000 sensors but no i mean like they've constantly tried to send this stuff to atlanta and it's like and it's just it's simply not happening and even after 2020 that portland's like no it's it's it's it's two super super useful examples to uh measure how much this technology actually is going to get used for what they say it's being used for versus just having an excuse to to act like there's gunfire all across the city yeah and and you know i i think when we start more police departments are going to start relying more on technology.

Sure. Largely because many departments cannot hire more cops. Now, this isn't advocating me. You know, I don't want police departments to hire more cops. You know, they've slowly defunded themselves in that way. But like, you know, cities like Los Angeles are themselves in that way but like you know cities like los angeles are trying to grow their surveillance capabilities for that reason they just do not have enough they say they do not have enough cops and so this is where kind of the surveillance

capitalism is going to really thrive is police departments are going to get desperate and they're going to start reaching out and getting more invasive surveillance technology and you know i think in some cities shot spotter is kind of they're a way of quieting the the narratives about you know the growing gun violence and everything in their communities you know they're like oh look we've deployed this new toy to kind of help us without really solving anything because we all know cops aren't really good at solving crime. Yeah. So it kind of gives them cover of like, we're bad at our jobs.

So how do we make it look like we're better? Well, let's, you know, invest in some new technology. So it looks like we're trying something. But, you know, at the end of the day, it's a waste of money. And then the impacts of that is harm, you know, the end of the day it's a waste of money and then the impacts of that is harm you know greater than the good yeah it's like we're spending an enormous amount of money to hurt people for no reason yeah and you know i think shot spotter is only one of um sound thinking's offerings right like they you know when they changed their name to sound thinking,

it's sort of like reflected this pivot in the company where now they were going to start thinking more about like resource management, right? How do we, how do we convince departments that our technology is going to better help them allocate their resources? And, you know, surveillance is the way to do that. We can measure where crime is. We can measure where gunshots is and where gunshots are, and we can deploy police there. And one of ShotSpot, or recently, SoundThinking had acquired a notorious predictive policing company called PredPol.

That happened, I think, earlier this year. So, you know, they're trying to expand their offerings here to be this kind of resource management solution for departments. See Mia, did you have anything else you wanted to bring up here? Yeah,

I guess, I guess there's one more thing I wanted to talk about, which is that. So one of the things that I've heard from places that have gotten rid of their contracts is that shop spotters not like taking their sensors down. Even when cities stopped doing contracts i was wondering what you two sort of know about that yeah i i reached out to dayton ohio who recently got rid of their contract and i reached out you know because i i was like asking departments who had

it like are you aware of the the the status of the sensors or do you know the locations you know both knows and then um i asked dayton you know what now that the contract's over what happens to the sensors and they basically said we don't know that's shot spotters responsibility and their responsibility is maintenance and care and removal and installation. So who knows? Obviously, somebody knows because it's not like some person can just start climbing telephone poles and installing surveillance equipment. So obviously, you know, somebody is issuing permits to install stuff and put stuff up there.

But like, you know, as we're finding out, city council members don't know. Police departments don't know. And so who knows what happens to these devices afterwards? And then say a city like Chicago, you know, say they cancel their contracts. Well, a new mayor can come in and then just instantly turn them back on, you know, in that way. And so that's kind of the other thing we're slowly starting to learn here is more cities start canceling their contracts or not renewing them. You know, it is what happens to the technology afterwards. And we don't know.

Which is not a great sign. Like, I mean, you know, it's not good that there's just a bunch of state surveillance technology around all the time. surveillance technology around all the time but it somehow feels even worse that we don't have any idea what happens to it even if the state decides it doesn't want to use it so yeah i guess on that somewhat disquieting note um do you have anything else you wanted to make sure you get to no nothing from me no i mean this is you know thanks to you know somebody brave enough to send us the info and it's the only way this information has been able to get out and i i think if i i implore the public to really research and dig into this technology if their cities are thinking about extending their contracts or bringing a contract in and really questioning and trying to get ShotSpotter on the record to answer for some

of these things. And, you know, we know what works and what doesn't work. And I think most cities are starting to find out that there is a better use of that amount of money to stop these sort of gun crimes, interventions and other more community-based solutions rather than just dumping money into surveillance technology and you know you can get a lot done with an eight million dollars yeah you know it's just it's just like there's always money in the banana stand sort of thing there's like there's always money for police so it's just like there's always money in the banana stand sort of thing there's like there's always money for police so it's just like why don't we just re-transform that money into things that actually work in these communities and you know go behind that so yeah and i i think i don't know hopefully hopefully this will encourage more cities to stop paying for this shit um yeah so where can people find you choose work i mean i know like

obviously this one's unwired but i are online places etc etc social media places plug yourself go yay uh well i'm i'm you can find my stuff on wire.com and i'm on x or twitter or whatever you want to call it at d marrow and on blue sky at d marrow d m e h r o um and you can find me on instagram and twitter with the username joey never joe um and then my writings have been in local press out here in LA, LA Public Press, and KnockLA. Yeah, and thank you to you both so much for coming on. Thanks for having us. Thank you so much. Appreciate it.

Yeah, and I'm going to encourage everyone else to go get your city to not use this stuff because it sucks all right this has been this has been a good happen here you can find us in the usual places goodbye I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating. I don't feel emotions correctly. I am talking to a felon right now, and I cannot decide if I like him or not. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take real phone calls from anonymous strangers all over the world as a fake gecko therapist and try to dig into their brains and learn a little bit about their lives.

I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's pretty interesting if you give it a shot. Matter of fact, here's a few more examples of the kinds of calls we get on this show. I live with my boyfriend and I found his piss jar in our apartment. I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. I have very overbearing parents. Even at the age of 29,

they won't let me move out of their house. So if you want an excuse to get out of your own head and see what's going on in someone else's head, search for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's the one with the green guy on it. Hey, I'm Jack Peace Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me and a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories.

Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while commuting or running errands, for those who find themselves seeking solace, wisdom, and refuge between the chapters. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary works while uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them. Black Lit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers

and to bring their words to life. Listen to Black Lit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals.

You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. Hello and welcome to It Could Happen Here. This is Shireen and today we are talking about, you guessed it, Palestine. I'm also going to keep talking about Palestine because there has been a genocide happening for the past five months and also 76 years and I refuse to let it be forgotten about and I refuse to let it be something that we used to talk about because it's happening right now and we need to talk about it. So here I am, talking about it. And while being a public supporter of Palestine has never been popular in

the United States, since October we've seen a significant increase in the silencing of Palestinian and pro-Palestinian voices, and this is happening both online and offline. But let's first start with the digital sphere, where the censorship of Palestinian voices and pro-Palestinian content can have really dangerous consequences, especially since the vast majority of us consume our news via social media these days. Meta, for example, has a long history of systematically censoring Palestine-related content. While the company has stated that it's never their intention to suppress a particular community or point of view, Access Now conducted a report where their documentation points to the opposite conclusion.

The information in this episode, when it comes to Meta in particular, will be from the findings of Access Now in their report, because I don't think the report got the attention it deserved when it was published on February 19th. Denying the public from both expressing and seeing content supporting Palestine is a very dangerous game that only further bolsters Israeli propaganda as well as silences any criticism against the settler colony of Israel. This is not okay, and it should concern you, because you have the right to know the truth. This pattern of censorship is no glitch. Soon after Israel began bombarding Gaza and blatantly committing genocide last October,

Palestinians and people sharing pro-Palestinian messages began to report that their content was being censored and suppressed on social media platforms, including on Facebook and Instagram. censored, and suppressed on social media platforms, including on Facebook and Instagram. The platforms restricted and sometimes even suspended the accounts of Palestinian journalists and activists both inside and outside of Gaza, and arbitrarily deleted a considerable amount of content, including documentation of atrocities and human rights abuses committed by Israel against the Palestinian people. Examples of this online censorship show that it is rampant, systematic, and global. For instance, Human Rights Watch has documented 1,050 cases of peaceful content expressing support for Palestine, originating from more than 60 countries around

the world, being removed between October and November 2023. Meanwhile, the Palestinian Observatory for Digital Rights Violations has documented around 1,043 instances of censorship between October 7th of 2023 and February 9th of this year, including on Facebook and Instagram. From content removals to very blatant restrictions, the following examples illustrate the main patterns of censorship on Meta's platforms documented since October 7th, 2023. Our first example is Facebook's removal of content that was documenting the explosion at Al-Ahdi Arab Hospital. It removed content shared by people who were on the ground during the massacre and during the bombing. The automatic deletion of bystander content

with evidentiary value, especially during times of war, not only violates people's ability to express themselves and freely access information, it also hinders current and future investigations into alleged war crimes and atrocities perpetrated in Gaza by Israel funded by the United States. There have also been suspensions of prominent Palestinian and Palestine-related accounts. Meta has banned and suspended scores of accounts that posted content about Palestine. For instance, on October 10th, 2023, Manda Weiss reported that Instagram had twice suspended the account of Leila Warah, its West Bank video correspondent. the account of Leila Warah, its West Bank video correspondent. It was only after Manda Weiss publicized the suspension that the platform quickly reinstated her account. Meta also

suspended the account of Gaza journalist and photographer Motaz Azeiza, who gained more than 18.6 million followers for reporting on the genocide in Gaza. This forced him to create a new backup account under at Motagaza, which acquired more than 1 million followers within 24 hours. Meta later did reinstate Motaz's original account, but several of Azaza's posts showing dead or injured Palestinians were flagged by Instagram for possibly violating its policy on adult nudity and sexual activity. Under its DOI policy, which stands for Dangerous Organizations and Individuals, Meta also permanently banned the Arabic and English-language Facebook pages of Quds News Network,

the largest and entirely volunteer-run Palestinian news outlet, which has over 10 million followers on Facebook. Other news outlets that has temporarily suspended or banned include Aijal Radio Network, Breakthrough News, 24FM, and Palestinian Refugees Portal. In addition, Palestinian journalists Fatin Alwan, Salah Al-Jafarawi, and Ahmed Shihab Al-Din have all experienced and continue to experience content takedowns and account restrictions on Instagram and Facebook. There have also been numerous examples of restrictions on pro-Palestinian users and content. Here are some examples.

Meta blocked Jerusalem-based activist Saadnan Bark from live streaming on Instagram. It restricted Jewish American artist and author Molly Crabapple's Instagram account. There have also been documented cases of Meta hiding Instagram comments that contain the Palestinian flag emoji for being, quote, potentially offensive. Many people have reported being barred from commenting on Instagram posts containing Palestine relatedrelated content. One user said that a comment was blocked for over 24 hours without explanation. People have also reported being unable to repost or reshare content related to Palestine in their Instagram stories.

In addition to the usual screening that Meta imposes on graphic or violent content, Meta imposed a quote, sensitive content warning before users could reshare Palestine-related posts via their Instagram stories. In some instances, attempts to reshare such content generated a blank page and a message stating that quote, something went wrong. Following the Al-Ahri Arab Hospital massacre, people reported being unable to reshare a video report that was criticizing Western media coverage of the bombing, either via their direct messages or Instagram stories. This video report was conducted by a Lebanese media outlet called Megaphone. repeatedly discouraged users from following or sharing content from popular Palestinian accounts that were sharing updates on Gaza in the form of prompts saying, quote, are you sure you want to follow or mention this account? And warnings that certain accounts have, quote, repeatedly posted false information or violated Meta's community guidelines. And perhaps the most disturbing

incident and one that I will never forget, and I hope you don't either, and if you haven't heard about this, buckle up, Instagram repeatedly auto-translated the word Palestinian or instances of the Palestinian flag used alongside the Arabic phrase Alhamdulillah, which means praise be to God, on people's bios. Praise be to God. On people's bios. Alhamdulillah, by the way, is an extremely innocent phrase that is used by all people that speak Arabic, essentially. And it's said all the time. It's a very peaceful, calming thing to say. Alhamdulillah. Thank you, God.

But guess what they translated this into? Instagram translated the word Palestinian, the use of the Palestinian flag, along with Alhamdulillah in people's bios into Palestinian terrorists are fighting for their freedom. Palestinian terrorists are fighting for their freedom. Are you fucking kidding me? When a TikTok user uncovered this disturbing pattern, Meta apologized and fixed the issue. And we all moved on. One of the most insidious ways that Palestinian and pro-Palestinian voices are being censored and suppressed on Meta's platforms is via the restriction of certain accounts' reach and visibility without any explanation or notification, aka shadow banning. For example, following the Lebanese media outlet Megaphone's coverage of the Al-Ehdi Air hospital attack, its Instagram account, at Megaphone News, was hidden from search results. Evidence also suggests that on October 8th, 2023, Meta hid Instagram content that included the hashtag Al-Aqsa Flood from view.

Meta's censorship of Palestinian voices and Palestinian-related content is far from new. In recent years, however, it has become increasingly pronounced, with a well-documented pattern of systematic censorship, algorithmic bias, and discriminatory content moderation emerging. During the 2021 Sheikh Jarrah protests, social media content expressing support for Palestinian rights was deleted, removed, and shadow banned, while users who were sharing such content were suspended or prevented from commenting or live streaming, and pro-Palestinian hashtags were suppressed. These were all serious problems that Mehta brushed off as, quote, a technical issue. Let's take a little breather, and when we come back, we'll talk about silencing that is outside of the digital world.

So, BRB. Okay, we're back. In addition to digital silencing, we have seen cases of silencing occurring offline as Americans are being fired or facing threats for speaking out in support of Palestine. An open letter published in Art Forum on October 19th declared, We support Palestinian liberation and call for an end to the killing and harming of all civilians. It was signed by thousands of artists, scholars, and cultural

workers, including the Art World Magazine's editor, David Velasco. A week later, Velasco was fired from the publication that he had worked at for 18 years, reportedly after pushback from Martin Eisenberg, a major arts patron and Bed Bath & Beyond heir. Wow. At least four art forum editors have resigned

in protest against Velasco's firing. And many, many more people have lost their jobs. Just a few quick examples. A Philadelphia sports writer was fired after tweeting, quote, solidarity with Palestine in criticism of a 76ers post that offered support to Israel after Hamas's attack. In another high-profile incident, a University of California Berkeley professor was sacked as editor-in-chief of the scientific journal eLife after he retweeted an Onion article that he said, quote, calls out indifference to the lives of Palestinian civilians. A spokesperson for Palestine Legal, a civil rights group, says it has responded to more than 260 incidents of suppression

against Palestinian rights activists over two weeks of October, more than it did in all of 2022. The Council on American Islamic Relations, also CAIR, which is a civil rights non-profit, says it received 774 complaints between October 7th and October 24th, which was the largest wave of complaints that it's handled since Donald Trump announced his Muslim ban in 2015. This wave has targeted professional activists as well as ordinary people who have spoken in defense of Palestinians. It has reportedly also escalated into death threats as well as assaults and visits from the FBI to Muslim individuals and mosques. In surprise to absolutely no one, in the United States, the highest levels of power have long supported voices backing Israel and its military. In the words of Justin

Sadowski, an attorney at CARE, the swift blowback against pro-Palestinian voices builds on decades of organized efforts to quote tar-Palestinian rights speech as pro-terrorist or anti-Semitic. The late civil rights attorney Michael Ratner called this the quote, Palestine exception to free speech. In 2015, CCR and Palestine Legal published a report on the tactics used by pro-Israel lobbying groups, school administrators, and public officials to shut down Palestinian rights activists. They included false accusations of anti-Semitism or support for terrorism, as well as legal threats and criminal investigations, and they often succeeded in intimidating or deterring Palestinian solidarity activists from speaking out.

And again, this pattern of silencing is not new. The prominent Palestinian-American scholar Rashid Khalidi recalls feeling overwhelmingly outnumbered at Columbia University in 2003 when pro-Israel advocates protested against him and other faculty as well as students who spoke out against Israel amid intense fighting in Gaza and the West Bank. News crews hounded him on campus, and pro-Israel students even made a documentary about the controversy. Khalidi says, I think the narrative was pretty firmly in the hands of people who supported Israel. But, he continued, there is a generational change taking place, with young people having an entirely different set of views. They consume different media, and I think they're more educated, more worldly, and better informed

than their elders. The recent laws against the boycotting of Israel in particular, which 36 states have enacted, directly stifle political advocacy by making people choose between their livelihoods and their First Amendment rights. Last year, the Jewish-American scholar Nathan Thrall announced that he had been disinvited from speaking at the University of Arkansas for refusing to sign an anti-boycott pledge that was required of public contractors by state law. Maybe after all this, you're asking yourself, so what do we do now? We do exactly what they don't want us to do, exactly what they're afraid of us doing, exactly what they're trying to deter us from doing. Continue talking about Palestine and sharing news and images and information that exposes Israel's crime of genocide against the

Palestinian people. The same way people say to vote with your dollar when it comes to boycotting certain brands and choosing where your money goes, you can decide how you want to use your social media platforms. What do you want to do with your digital presence? What do you stand for? Personally, I think the days of casually and incessantly posting about your life are behind us, or at least we're headed in that direction. We're utilizing social media in a different way now. Seeing how Gen Z has utilized TikTok to share information is a great example of that.

I don't think celebrity culture unfortunately will ever completely go away on social media, but I do think we are demanding more of our celebrities now. And I think especially as we're seeing quote-unquote trusted news sources peddle disinformation and propaganda in an irresponsible and appalling way, to put it very lightly, we are relying on each other to share real information. And in this case, our resources are coming from the people who are directly experiencing the horrors of genocide for the past 5 months and 76 years. And those voices must be amplified. There are a lot of solid arguments to be made against social media as a whole when it comes to whether or not it benefits humanity.

But I am seeing something shift now, where we are able to utilize this tool for our betterment. If it wasn't for social media, the movement for Palestinian liberation would not be where it is today. People who were previously uninformed would never have seen the reality of the situation, were it not for our ability to learn from each other outside of the limitations of mainstream news. We are learning to trust the establishment less and trust each other more. And I think if we're able to use social media in this way, it's actually a net positive for us. It doesn't have to be empty and mind-numbing and a way to control us or get us to spend our money to keep the capitalism machine

in good working order. We can decide how we utilize our digital presence and the good that can come from it. And to be united in this way is extremely powerful, and it can ignite real change. And at the very least, it can be our way of spiting the powers that be and refusing to be sheep. Existing in an age of mass surveillance is frankly very terrifying, but seeing the lengths that companies like Meta will not only go to to surveil us, but to monitor what we consume, it's extremely revealing of how weak their power actually is. It's up to us to take back that power, especially now as we are witnessing a genocide happen in real time on our silly little devices for the past five months and having people become aware of the slower

genocide and ethnic cleansing that has taken place for 76 years. So keep talking about Palestine, both in person with your peers and family and online. I can't guarantee that you won't face pushback or repercussions because as we know that is a real possibility. But the community of people that you gain from learning of and speaking the truth far outweighs any individual fear. And I would rather stand for something than cower by myself or be controlled by fear. We do have the ability to change things. I have to believe that something else is possible. But it starts with taking the blinders off and making a choice about how you want to utilize the tools at your disposal rather than be utilized yourself. And that, my friends, is our episode for today. Thank you so much for listening and free Palestine.

Don't feel emotions correctly. I am talking to a felon right now, and I cannot decide if I like him or not. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take real phone calls from anonymous strangers all over the world as a fake gecko therapist and try to dig into their brains and learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's pretty interesting if you give it a shot. Matter of fact, here's a few more examples of the kinds of calls we get on this show. I live with my boyfriend,

and I found his piss jar in our apartment. I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. I have very overbearing parents. Even at the age of 29, they won't let me move out of their house. So if you want an excuse to get out of your own head and see what's going on in someone else's head, search for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's the one with the green guy on it. Hey, I'm Jack B. Thomas, the host of a brand new

Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me and a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while commuting or running errands, for those who find themselves seeking solace, wisdom, and refuge between the chapters. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary works while uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them. Blacklit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to life. Listen to Blacklit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons?

Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

New episodes every Thursday. Hello and welcome back to It Could Happen Here. I am once again your guest host, Molly Conger. Joining me today is our friend Garrison. Hello. Excited to get the Robert Rundo rundown. So you already know what we are talking about today. It is a guy that you probably already know more about than you ever wanted to. It is Rob Rundo, the founder of the Nazi Fight Club, the Rise Above Movement. You and Robert did a great two-part behind the bastards on

Ram back in 2021. Which is shock, shockingly three years ago ago which does not sound right but i guess is the case it's been a long three years for you but an even stranger one for rob he's yeah he's been he's been really uh country hopping a lot the past few years huh he's been busy um so when you recorded that episode back in january of 2021 rundo's federal charges had been dismissed by Judge Cormac Carney in 2019. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned that decision in March 2021, right around the time the episode came out. I think at the end of the second episode, you had a postscript, like an addendum you recorded afterwards, because before it came out, the Ninth Circuit ruling had been issued. Okay, okay. But in an almost comical turn of events, Judge Carney has once again dismissed those charges two weeks ago now.

Three years later, a few countries later, hopping from Serbia to the United States to probably other places around Europe. Yeah. And we're sort of back in the same position you were in when you talked about him three years ago. Time is a flat circle. But before we get into one of the sort of strangest legal slap fights I've ever read, let's back up for a second. Who is Rob Rundo and what was he charged with? Yeah. So if you want a more robust look at the early days of the rise above movement, I do recommend going back and listening to that behind the bastards two-parter

on the rise above movement. It originally aired in March, 2021. So like really scroll back in your podcast app. But we'll do a quick recap here because it's not, I can't assign the listener homework. So, so the rise above movement first emerged in early 2017 after a brief period of being called the DIY division. Both stupid names. I don't know which one's better, but Ram. We're just going to call them Ram. In 2017 was a big year for political violence. It was really hot that year. The group was on its surface a mixed martial arts club for white men. They trained together and bonded over their shared and abhorrent political views. In their own words, they are fighting against the modern world corrupted by the destructive cultural influences of liberals, Jews, Muslims, and immigrants. And gay people. And gay people, yeah. Just pretty much everybody except, you know, themselves.

Except Rob Rundo. Yeah. Essentially. If you are not a member of the Nazi Fight Club, you are a victim of the Nazi Fight Club. That's the first rule of Nazi Fight Club. Sure. Whatever. Okay.

The first rule of Nazi Fight Club was not don't talk about Nazi Fight Club. And I think that's a big part of the problem. No, because they can't shut up about it. They cannot stop talking. Like, if they had just followed the first rule of Fight Club, they might not be in this position. But Ram quickly became a staple at rallies in Southern California that year. In the spring and summer of 2017, they kept showing up and kept throwing punches. In March, members assaulted journalists and counter protesters at a MAGA rally in Huntington Beach. In April, they assaulted numerous counter protesters at a rally in Berkeley. In August, RAM members

attended Unite the Right in Charlottesville and assaulted counter protesters in the streets again. And, you know, they're not just going to these events and getting in fights, right? They're not just like showing up and just like it just happens. They're going to these events, planning on committing these assaults and then bragging about the assaults publicly and privately. They're using these acts of violence as propaganda and recruitment tools, right? Like they're making little videos, they're posting about it. It's not just about committing the assault. So the violence is not just about physically hurting people. It's part of a larger strategy to incite others to join them in this project. And that's, I mean, you already know this. You covered that in your

episode three years ago. This is for everybody else. And they're still going. Unfortunately, they're now often called active clubs, are more popular than what they were three years ago. They've become a very big staple of white supremacist organizing across the United States and Canada, mirroring a lot of organizational styles in eastern europe there's probably one in your area that you might not know about they are active on telegram they're actively recruiting they recruit from high schools it is a big increasing problem as patriot front becomes more and more like fed jacketed between their own nazi ranks we see more people plugging into these active clubs. Right, RAM did not go away.

It just sort of morphed. And so like back in 2017, they said they had a lot of members. They probably had like 20. But now these active clubs, they do genuinely have chapters all over the country. Yeah.

But back in the past, right? So after Unite the Right, RAM members decided to lay off the rallies a little bit, you know, being seen on camera beating a woman into the pavement at a rally that ended in a hate crime murder, invited some bad press, and they weren't looking to get door knocks at that particular moment. So they backed off a little bit at the end of 2017. But they'd spent most of that year attending rallies and getting into physical altercations. attending rallies and getting into physical altercations. It wasn't until over a year after Unite the Right in October of 2018 that there was any attempt to do anything about this very obvious problem. You know, the criminal complaint itself even says that some of these assaults were committed in plain view of cops who just stood there and did nothing while these guys beat the shit out of people in the streets. You know, they're in each other's DMs

bragging about kicking a woman in the head while she's lying on the ground, but nobody lifted a finger to stop them. But in October of 2018, two cases were filed. One in the Western District of Virginia. Charges were filed against Ben Daly, Cole White, Thomas Gillen, and Michael Macellus. And a few weeks later,

in the Central District of California, charges were filed against Rob Rundo, Robert Bowman, Tyler Laub, and Aaron Eason. So all eight of them, four in each district, all eight of them were charged under the Federal Riot Act and conspiracy to riot. I think it was Robert who said in the original Ram episode, you know, like if at any point early on, like if at any point in those first few months of this happening, any point early on like if at any point in those first few months of this happening there had been any kind of intervention if anyone had been arrested in the act maybe this could have been nipped in the bud and a lot of what happens later wouldn't have happened or even if they were like beaten up like if it's like if a group of like anti-fascists like beat them up that would

disincentivize them from going to future events to try to beat up other people right like violence is actually very good at doing this specific thing i think if you feel like you're going to go somewhere to get beaten up you probably don't want to go there and even like divorce from uh the actions of the state like that is that is a demotivating factor which has been effective against proud boys in portland now obviously some of these guys especially the ram crew go there with the express interest of getting into fights so that's something you should definitely like consider but yeah like if as long as they have a bad time it makes them not want to come to these things but when they're able to just beat up anyone they want to without any pushback it's like yeah it becomes like a fun thing it becomes like a a large

amount of incentive is gained for going to a rally, whether that's in Huntington Beach or halfway across the country. Yeah. I mean, they were having a great time and there was no movement to stop this. And it's hard to know why it took over a year for any charges to get brought. I think you speculated in that Ram episode a few years ago that it was public pressure after that in-depth reporting came out in mainstream press. But I was going back over the timeline and that ProPublica piece came out in October 2017. That was just two months after Unite the Right and a whole year before those charges were filed. It's not really possible to know why they waited so long unless some, you know, young U.S. attorney wants to level with us about it, but I don't foresee that.

Probably not. Just, you know, what's going on behind the scenes, buddy? But I do have one sort of interesting little anecdote. A couple months ago, I was at an event here in Charlottesville. It was a panel discussion, and one of the speakers was the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Virginia, Chris Kavanaugh. He was speaking to a group of people about the work that he does, and he was talking about the work that he did on some of these sort of extremism cases after Unite the Right. Back in 2018, he was the assistant U.S. attorney here. He's been promoted since then. But he worked on the James Fields case and he worked on the Ram case that was filed here in Virginia. And he said something really interesting that I

hadn't thought about before. So right after Unite the Right, in August 2017, a bunch of FBI agents were assigned to, you know, check out what happened here at this mass casualty event, right? They had the resources to investigate and try to develop cases. I, you know, I love my documents. I spent a lot of time in the documents. So I've actually seen, you know, they got some federal search warrants. It was actually an FBI agent who dug the round that Richard Preston fired at Corey Long out of the mulch in Market Street Park.

You know, they got search warrants for social media for a couple of guys who ended up prosecuted locally. Alex Ramos, Richard Preston, Daniel Borden. So it looks like they were trying to develop hate crime cases, right? Like that federal warrant they got for Richard Preston's Twitter account said that they were developing a hate crime case and they never did. So like right after United, right, they're getting these warrants, they're developing these cases. But back to that event that I was at with Chris Kavanaugh, the US attorney, he said when the Las Vegas shooting happened in October of 2017, they lost their task force. They had this huge volume of agents working, trying to develop Unite the Right cases. When that shooting happened two months later, they all got reassigned. He was left with like a skeleton crew and they just didn't have

the resources to develop these cases. Like, I don't know how the FBI is managing their resources internally so badly that they can only handle one mass casualty event at a time or why the Washington field office was so heavily impacted by a shooting in Nevada. But that is what he said. So take that as you will. And I think that theory is at least in part supported by the fact that the federal charges against James Fields didn't get brought until June of 2018. Right. He'd been charged locally for the car attack that killed Heather Heyer. But the federal charges didn't pop up until June of 2018. So I don't know if maybe something shifted in terms of resources in their office that summer. I don't know. It's interesting to think about. But then so in, you know, back to October of 2018, right, when these two different RAM cases get filed, Virginia's case was actually

filed first. It was filed a few weeks before the case in California. So I don't know. I assume they were in communication about that, but I don't have any special insight into what their federal prosecutor was doing. But it's also possible that it just takes the government a whole ass year to do anything, no matter what, right? In a recent filing in the Rundo case, the government's talking about how this investigation was developed. And it says, you're going to shit a brick, Harrisonison it says that the fbi investigation into ram only started when a bartender in la called the fbi a few weeks after unite the right because he overheard a patron ben daly quote gleefully bragging about having caused havoc during the riots amazing and he also

quote bragged about hitting a guy and punching a girl in the face during protests in Berkeley. So that first comment was about Charlottesville. He had just come home from Charlottesville. He was talking about how he caused havoc. He's bragging about punching people in Berkeley. And the bartender's like, that's kind of suspicious. That's suspicious. This unnamed complainant also told the FBI that Daly and other RAM members had come to the bar often and sometimes used it for recruitment. They were recruiting the patrons at this bar. And based on what he overheard, he told the FBI that the group, quote, did not care about the issues regarding the statues in Charlottesville, but rather, quote, enjoyed

going to protests just to raise havoc, cause trouble, and fight. So it wasn't until a bartender called the FBI to be like, hey, this guy's talking about like doing a lot of gang violence. I don't know if you guys know about this. And according to that same court filing, the FBI took until January of 2018. So a few weeks after Unite the Right, maybe we're looking at September. It took them three or four more months until January of 2018 to discover in the course of their investigation that ram was based in southern california great work great work everybody fantastic stuff they're they're on it now garrison and so at this point the la field office opens an investigation into members in the area now i i kind of hope this isn't true right like i i hope that this is not a correct summary of the of the these events because if it really took someone calling the fbi

to say like hey i heard a guy bragging about doing crime in september that definitely happened no that is definitely how this went down absolutely that makes so much sense but then it took three months of investigating to figure out that the guys who recruit for their nazi gang at a bar in la probably live in la yeah yeah i mean that is this is kind of how the fbi investigates white supremacist groups they have they're too busy investigating teenagers in black hoodies they can't they can't bother to spare the manpower for this there's antifa out there by the time they got this tip from the bartender that pro publica article was already out why did it take them

three months to find out that the guys whose names were already in the newspaper lived in california i don't know I don't trust anyone who lives in Virginia. So it took them a few months, right? It took some time. I hope that's not true, but it is what the government has put on the record as the truth. So anyway, that's how this case starts, right? So these eight members of RAM are charged for in Virginia, for in California with rioting and conspiracy to riot um just for efficiency sake i'll just say that the cases in virginia are fully resolved daily miss ellis gillen and white all pleaded guilty there were some later unsuccessful appeals where when they

after they saw what happened in the california cases they were like oh um actually us too can we um but that didn't work and their convictions stood and that's all over where is daily now is he out again they're out he's out he's out yeah white didn't get any additional time after his plea because he was so cooperative and the other three all got less than three years yeah yeah so they're out but these california cases where rondo was charged they have been a mess from day one so the charge charge, October 2018. In 2019, Judge Cormac Carney dismissed the charges in California, saying that the Riot Act was unconstitutionally overbroad and its application violated the defendant's First Amendment rights. So true. First Amendment defender here. That's right. Travel across state lines to riot,

endorsed by this judge. That's free speech,arrison like love it or leave it go back to canada so the prosecutor appealed that ruling because it was hot garbage and the ninth circuit agreed it takes a long time for things to get appealed it's like slower than watching grass grow so the ninth circuit reversed that ruling in march of 2021 reinstating the indictments things move really so so you know it took two years for them to reverse it and then another year to enter the order so it wasn't until february of 2022 that the case was formally reopened in which case around this time rundo's trying to like hide in eastern europe and eventually get sent back to the United States.

Curiously around the same time that Andrew Tate does. God, imagine, imagine an Andrew Tate, Rob Rundo fight. Oh, I wouldn't pay money because I don't want to support them, but I would love to watch that.

Actually send them both back to Romania and let them fight. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So by the time that the California Ram defendants are re-indicted on the original charges it's january of 2023 and only three of them get re-indicted because aaron eason has died so sad it doesn't say much more than that tragic loss of life i don't know i don't want to i guess i don't want to speculate because it doesn't say on the record and i was unable to determine i couldn't find anything other than the court record dismissing

his charges because he was dead i can't find any record of his death um it must have just been you know private but you know you were talking about in that ram episode a couple years ago about how they're you know they're all about clean living and fighting they're all straight edge except for all of the ones who do drugs. A lot of them have really serious drug problems. And I don't know for a fact what was going on with Aaron Eason, but I know Robert Bowman had some trouble staying out on bond due to a very severe meth addiction. Yes, yes. So I don't know what happened to Aaron Eason.

Very, very pure. You got to keep the bloodline pure. So they're re-indicted January 2023. And as you guys talked about back in 2021, R had been living in serbia for most of this time he is overseas making friends doing fight club doing nazi stuff hanging out making bad t-shirts doing bad graffiti mostly opening up t-shirt factories it's really what he spent a lot of time doing. It's really about the merch. You have to merchandise. That's, hey, if you took away one thing from Revolt Against the Modern World,

it's that Ovola loved merch. That's the biggest through line in that work. It's you got to sell those stickers, man. You have to. It's a sort of a pointy shaped operation right the guys on the bottom have to keep selling the stickers to the guys and it has to make new bottoms right there's there's no bottom it is a pyramid scheme patriot front is a period pyramid scheme well i didn't and and patriot front and rundo had the same sticker manufacturer for quite a while their websites well their merch websites

were identical look i mean how many webmasters can these nazi groups have it's got to be one guy yeah they do not have a graphic designer so anyway so he's in serbia in 2021 serbia made a big show of saying like oh like he's not welcome here he's deported to bosnia he was still in serbia i think bellingcat has some some great articles tracking exactly where in belgrade rondo was hanging out but serbia was like no he's not here he we can't he's not welcome here he's in bosnia bosnia was like he's not fucking here uh he was in serbia he kept trying to lie to he kept trying to like like make people think he was somewhere else but he just couldn't stop posting and if you ever post anything outside or really even inside you you you can be found so like he couldn't stop posting and every single time he'd be like haha the the cia assets and belling cat think i'm here when in fact i'm actually over there and you're like no you're actually right

here it's really easy to find out where you are you posted yourself standing next to this tree there's only one type of this tree in this area it's obvious you're right here and it's like you can post all you like if you have terminal posting disease you can keep posting but just like don't post photographs of yourself in a place he can't he can't stop he can't stop won't stop my favorite old rondo lore is that he had this youtube series called tea time with robert rondoundo that I still think about about once a week, where he would give his Nazi followers advice on how to flee the country if they have a felony while sitting at like a European cafe filming on his iPhone. It's the most, it's the funniest thing I've ever seen. In a sane world, evidence like that would make a judge say i don't think we should let you back out

considering you've made instructions so finally in march of 2023 he's freshly re-indicted in january 2023 march of 2023 the romanian police are like we fucking found him we got him he's here in romania so he's arrested in Romania. So he's arrested in Romania and it takes a few months to sort out all the paperwork and get him extradited back to the US in August of 2023. You know what? Won't get you indicted on federal felony charges that result in you being extradited from a Romanian prison. Listening to these ads, as long as we declare them as my FTC training today taught me how to do. So yes, these are all paid advertisements. We're not allowed to call them promoted content. We have to call them ads. These are advertisements. I believe that was

part of my training today. So to make sure I don't go to prison, enjoy these paid advertisements. Well, I hope you enjoyed those paid advertisements. Paid ads. We're only airing them because they're paying us money. These are not our sincere belief. We can't really say that either. There's really no way way to win there's no way to win here anyway i'm going to the war against the ftc so so true so that more or less gets us up to the current controversy so we get rundo back august 2023 and then february 2024 about 10 days ago, Judge Carney dismisses the case again.

So in 20 back in 2019, Carney said, no, there's no crime here. This is just protected First Amendment activities. You can't use the Riot Act. That's unconstitutional. Right. And he dismisses the case. And the Ninth Circuit says, no, no, I don't think so. That's not how we're reading this.

You got to take the case back. So it gets remanded back to the same judge. It goes back to judge Carney, but of course Rondo is missing now. It takes a while to get him back. And so he finally gets his defendant back from his Nazi lair in Eastern Europe. He has to come up with a new reason why a Nazi street fighting gang

shouldn't be charged with a crime. Okay. So like it's obvious he just doesn't want to fucking try this case. Yeah. So he has to come up with a new reason. And honestly, I think no shade to the federal public defender right rento has a public defender it is their job to throw everything at the wall and see what sticks they are providing zealous

defense to their clients so they write up what i i would say in my personal opinion was an absolute dog shit motion and i think maybe they knew that too i don't know they're just doing their jobs i think judge carney would have agreed with whatever they put on paper he gets this motion dog shit motion. And I think maybe they knew that too. I don't know. They're just doing their jobs. I think Judge Carney would have agreed with whatever they put on paper. He gets this motion. He's like, yes, for sure. Dismissed again. So true. And this time it's selective prosecution that if the government wants to charge Ram with rioting, they would have had to charge Antifa too, because otherwise it's not fair. Which they do all the fucking time. fair which they do all the fucking time it's just not fair i mean this this case does actually like showcase like selective prosecution the fact that you were super willing to drop charges against a white supremacist but will send like quote-unquote antifa gay gay teenagers to prison for going to a

going to a blm protest like, that actually does show exactly exactly how these cases are very selectively prosecuted. Right. Like these guys are playing on easy mode. And as soon as they draw the wrong card, it's like, well, this deck is stacked. This deck is stacked. Right. So now I'm like, we talked about this before, Garrison. I'm not a lawyer. We know this, but I am an enthusiastic consumer of the law and i did read a bunch of law review articles today okay selective prosecution sounds like the kind of thing that could work right like oh it's not constitutional to selectively prosecute based on maybe a protected characteristic right like if you're only prosecuting black people for a crime like of course that's

wrong yeah but here's the thing it doesn't work it never works this is not an argument that is effective i won't say it never works it is generally not an effective argument even when a lay person could look at it and say oh yeah that is kind of that is kind of fucked up it just doesn't work you can't just walk into court and say you know well your honor i was speeding but so was everybody else on the interstate It's unconstitutional to give me a ticket unless everyone gets a ticket, right? That it's not how it works. They're, they're picking on me. It's just, yeah. You can't just say, you know, other people did what I did, but I'm the only one standing here. So it's not fair. You have to, there's an actual structure to this. OJ got away with it. That means I should too.

Right. Right right we're not catching every murderer so like i should get a freebie yeah so you have to show not only that there was a particular other individual who engaged in the same conduct who was not charged but also that quote a federal prosecutorial policy had a discriminatory effect and it was motivated by a discriminatory purpose so it was motivated by a discriminatory purpose so in the speeding ticket analogy right you'd have to say you know i was doing 80 in the school zone but so were these three other particular women like john jane and gina were all doing it too and we all got pulled over but the cop only gave me a ticket because he hates men or something, right?

Like, you'd have to show that- Based misandrist cop. Right. So you'd have to show that other people did the exact same thing you did, and it was possible for them to have gotten in trouble too. Yeah. But they didn't because of a particular form of discrimination. Yeah. So in order to make a valid claim of selective prosecution,

Rundo's lawyers would have to say, look, here's Joe Antifa, a real guy who exists. And here is a materially similar set of circumstances in which Joe Antifa ran an organized group that got into fights on purpose, provoked confrontations, chased people to their cars, beat women in the streets, and then used that footage to recruit people to his gang, right?

Like, here's Joe Antifa bragging online about targeting members of a particular minority group for brutal gang assaults at political rallies. Here's his group actively planning and organizing to travel to different cities and other states across the country with the explicit and stated goal of provoking and attacking people, right? You can't just say, well, Antifa didn't get charged. You have to present an actual person who did what you did. Not just some other guy who did something you don't like or somebody else who maybe did kind of a crime. You have to say this is a specific person and he did what I did in a materially similar way to the same degree that I did it and with just as

much evidence to support that. Yeah. And in the Ram ram case there's so much evidence because they couldn't stop fucking posting so they can't produce evidence that antifa to whatever degree that's a meaningful term here engaged in similar behavior to what the evidence shows ram did right it's not just what other people were fighting and in this case that's kind of preposterous because the evidence does show that they specifically bragged like Like there's a text that was produced from Ben Daly bragging about how they were first through the barricades at Berkeley. So you're acknowledging that, you know, there was this big riot and that you started it. that you started on purpose. So no one else can be similarly situated to you because even if they were fighting, you started it. There has to be a real actual other person who is similarly situated. That's an actual legal term that encompasses a sort of set of criteria. Is there a similar amount of evidence against this other person? Would it take a similar amount of state resources to investigate, arrest,

and convict this person? We just don't have an organized militant street gang of Antifa that sold branded apparel and bragged about crimes online. There is no similarly situated uncharged actor on the other side of this. That person doesn't exist.

But it's even more than that. Even if we did have Joe Antifa, the gang leader who's bragging online about doing this kind of stuff, even if he existed, even then, even then there is what's called prosecutorial discretion. There may be reasons that we just aren't entitled to know about as to why a prosecutor made the decisions they did about who gets charged. For a selective prosecution argument to work, you have to show that this decision was made for a discriminatory purpose. And that's really hard to do because they're not going to tell you that, right? In an ideal world, selective prosecution would be an argument raised about racial bias because we do know that there is racial bias in

who is investigated, arrested, charged, and convicted for crimes. Like at every step along the way, there's a thumb on the scale against people of color. And even then, even when it is so obvious, even when you have a prosecutor who is a member of the fucking Klan, even then these arguments don't tend to work. This should not have worked. But Judge Carney clearly just doesn't want this case prosecuted, right? I think it's very obvious that he just like, thinks Rob Rundo is a nice boy who shouldn't have to go to jail for this. He is also, I think, notably about to retire. He hits the minimum retirement age in May, and he is going to retire the day that he can. I think Megan Kuniff, who has a great blog, Legal Affairs, she's been covering this case.

She noted in a tweet a few weeks ago that she knows that he intends to retire because he, in rescheduling some hearings, said that that was the only day he could go to the retirement benefits class that he needs to go to to make sure he can retire the day he's eligible in May. So he just doesn't, he just doesn't want to deal with this, right? That this was scheduled to go to trial in March and he's retiring in May. He just doesn't want to do it. What's even the point anymore? What's even, what, what, I just, I and it's like why why are they even trying here like it just just just like kick the can down to someone else if you don't want to like deal with this i don't know it's turning this whole like i don't know i've read other things from this judge how he's

like he's like very much into like this big like antifa conspiracy theory and he's a little bit racist like there was a an issue he was oh He was, he was chief judge of the circuit briefly, but he had to step down. So he's still a judge in, in the, um, the central district of California. Uh,

but he's not the chief judge anymore because he made a racist comment to the clerk of court. So he's, I mean, I think there's some stuff going on with judge Carney. So I think he knows when he made this ruling that like the ninth circuit's going to send it back, but that's not going to be his problem anymore. Cause he's out of here in may. So he made this ruling that like the ninth circuit's gonna send it back but that's not gonna be his problem anymore because he's out of here in May so he heard this like

absolute dog shit argument and he was like so true king this is not fair you are free to go go ahead and he let him out same day like he heard this argument he was like absolutely that's the one go on home and he let him out that day. The U.S. attorney made a motion for an emergency stay saying like, OK, well, let's just let's not get ahead of ourselves when we just hang on to him till we can talk to the Ninth Circuit about this, because I don't know. And that's pretty normal. That would be normal for the judge to say, let's give it a day. I mean, I want him released, but we'll give it a day. We'll let you get your paperwork in order. No, he just let him out. Just let him out right that day. And considering his history

of fleeing the country, not the call I would have made. It is quite the choice. So the very next day, the Ninth Circuit was like, hold on, let's get him back in custody while we think about this. And it makes no sense for Carney to deny the emergency stay. That would be really normal to stay the decision until we have a chance to sort of think this through, right? Even if he truly believed with his whole heart that there's no way that this would ever get kicked back by the Ninth Circuit, that the case would stay dismissed and Rundo would be free to go. It would not be unusual to say, you know, well, this has been pretty contentious. The defendant has fled the country multiple times. So let's just hang on to him for 24, 48 hours while we go through the

motions of getting that emergency hearing. But that's not what happened because Robert Rondo is the definition of a flight risk. Yes, he is like he's the platonic, like ideal form of a flight risk. I've sat through a lot of bond hearings, and I know we are definitely not all using the same dictionary here when it comes to what is a flight risk, but you really can't find a guy who has done more to demonstrate that he absolutely can and will flee the country to avoid going back to court. He does not want to go to court. So back in 2018, when those two prosecutions were initially filed, right, the Virginia case was filed first. So when Ben Daly was arrested, the charges hadn't actually been filed yet against Rob Rundo. But I guess when they came to get Ben on October 2nd,

so 18 days before the charges were filed against Rob Rundo himself, they came to get Ben in L.A. and he was like, hmm, time to get out of Dodge. Right. Ben in L.A. and he was like, time to get out of Dodge. Right. So I think that was the moment he was like, I got to go. You know, he knew they might be coming for him next. So first he tries going to Ukraine, which is a great place for a militant right wing extremist to go hang out with friends. Right. Yeah. Unfortunately for him, his flight had a layover in london i don't know if it like didn't occur to him that maybe when they look at your passport like maybe maybe the u.s government like anticipated that you would do this um but so he throw looks at his at his

passport it was like the u.s government says do not pass go do not collect 200 do not proceed to nazi asylum and they turn him back now mind, mind you, he's not arrested yet, right? They just won't let him go to Ukraine. Interesting. So he, he does, he doesn't get to London though.

I think he gets to London and they were like, no, you can't, you can't go. I don't know how he got that far. Yeah. Yeah. That is,

that is intriguing. So back in California, he walked to Mexico. Yeah. that is intriguing. So back in California, he walked to Mexico. Yeah, which is part of his tea time with Robert Rundo advice. Right, so he literally went on foot over the US-Mexico border to avoid passport control, and then he traveled over land through Mexico into El Salvador, where he presumably intended to try getting on a plane again. You need to get far enough south so that when you fly,

you don't cross over American airspace. Other people in RAM have tried this and have not gone far south enough. And their plane crosses over the tip of US airspace around Florida. And then they get flagged so that when they land, they get arrested or turned back. See, that's so tricky. Like I bought a plane ticket. Extremely funny.

I bought a plane ticket recently for vacation. I'm not fleeing the country or anything. Molly's fleeing, everyone. I actually don't even have a passport. But when you buy a plane ticket, they do not provide for you a sort of schematic of the flight path. So I don't know how they're figuring this out. I guess they're not, if it's not working.

Rundo, I think, typically tries to get far enough south that he just gets a direct flight to somewhere in the Middle East or Eastern Europe. Well, I don't know if it would have worked, because when he got to El Salvador, the plane that he got on was not headed to Ukraine. It was headed back to LAX in the company of some FBI agents. Ope. So they brought him back,

and he was formally arrested in the LA airport when they brought him back. Ope. So they brought him back and he was formally arrested in the LA airport when they brought him back. Very funny. Because in the weeks that he had spent trying to get away, the indictment against him

had come back and he was also being charged. So after Judge Carney so after judge carney dropped the charges the first time back in 2019 rondo got his passport back and immediately left the country again traveling to europe visiting other fascist fight clubs and so you know in this time period the u.s attorney is appealing the dismissal of the charges like they they want to bring this case they're you know they're waiting for the ninth circuit to hear them but they're watching him cavorting around eastern europe and they're filing motions saying like we really got to get him back like he's at a nazi rally in hungary he's he's got a podcast he's got a podcast where he's telling people how to evade capture by getting foreign passports like we gotta get him back and so when the charges were finally reinstated by the ninth

circuit in 2021 he'd been formally expelled from serbia where he'd been living and he was eventually arrested in and extradited from romania and then when judge carney dismissed the charges again two weeks ago and the ninth circuit was like we gotta get him back do you know where they found him the mexican border oh curious who could have predicted huh so like he really loves leaving the country time is a flat circle right so connie lets him out he tries to leave the country again immediately the ninth circuit says hold on let's bring him back and because the system works in just the most like insane imaginable ways like i guess when they wrote how this was going to work they just assumed everyone would act in good faith and they didn't put anything in for when that's not what happens

you know i'm pretty sure that's in the constitution you have to assume good faith intention that's that's i believe the the 69th amendment you have to good faith. Everyone's going to be normal about this. We don't need to build in any contingencies here. So every time the Ninth Circuit is like, ooh, Judge Carney, that's nuts. They just have to send it back to him. It doesn't get sent to a different judge. It's just they just keep sending it back to the guy

who is bound and determined to ruin this, right? So it gets sent back to Judge Carney. This case is still in front of Judge Carney. So the Ninth Circuit, they put him back in and Judge Carney's like, I'm gonna let him back out. And the Ninth Circuit's like, no, you really can't do that. You really can't do that. And he's being kind of a pissy little baby about this, right? Like the Ninth Circuit issues an order saying like, no one can let him out but us. If he gets let

out, it will be because we said so. No one can let him out. You can't do it. The Ninth Circuit said so. We're up here. We're on top. We're on top. This is fascism. This is tyranny. This is fascism, but the bad kind, the kind I don't like, Robert Rundell.

So Carney's on the bench and he's like, well, I really want to though. And so he issues an order saying like, he's released, but I'm going to stay my own order. I mean, like, you know, I'm going to enter this order saying he's released, but like it won't go into effect because technically I'm not allowed. It's such a, such a dorky, like piss baby tantrum move from a judge. Like you're being a real baby cormac and he says quote i would like to be in a position to release him right now and let him walk out the door well you

can't you can't so it gets like stupid messy here right so the ninth circuit put him back in and it comes back to carney and carney's like well this arrest wasn't even legal i should let him out because this you can't even you couldn't put him back in you can't arrest someone without there being cause for a crime well it is a little bit messy here right so carney argues that rundo's rearrest wasn't legal because he dismissed the case so technically when rondo was arrested again there was no charge against him there is currently because the indictment was dismissed you know the prosecutor is appealing that that dismissal maybe it'll get reinstated like it did last time but like right now

he is not charged with a crime which is which is ridiculous because there's so many other things you could charge him with i just like find a different crime like there's like between all of his between all of his passport stuff between all of his crossing the border like there's there's so much other there's so many other things that you could you could decide to charge him with surely some fbi agent has been sort of keeping tabs on his activities and they could come up with something but as it stands when he was was rearrested, there was no charge, right? Yeah. So the Ninth Circuit does have the authority to stay the release order. So Carney issued a release order saying, let him out of jail, right? And so the prosecutor was like, we need an emergency

hearing in front of the Ninth Circuit on that release order. So Carney issues the release order, the prosecutor goes to the Ninth Circuit and say, we need you to push the pause button on the implementation of this order. That's really normal. That should have been what happened. But because he was released immediately, you know, before they had a chance to get heard by the Ninth Circuit, Carney's argument, which I think may be true here, right, is that by the time the Ninth Circuit heard the motion to stay the release order, it was mooch. They can't hear argument on a motion that doesn't mean anything. You can't stay an order that's already been implemented. So once the release order was carried out and Rundo was no longer physically in custody, there was no order to stay.

So the Ninth Circuit had nothing to rule on. So they they rearrested him saying, like, we're staying the release order. But the order of operations there is kind of key. At the next hearing, Carney said, I must tell you from the little things I've read, I'm quite concerned. I feel Mr. Rundo is being unconstitutionally detained. And it's messy. And I don't know what the right answer is here, right? Like, it's not unusual for someone to stay in custody pending appeal, especially if they have repeatedly attempted and succeeded at fleeing the country. And Carney's refusal to stay the release order kind of makes you wonder if he didn't create this procedural nightmare intentionally. wonder if he didn't create this procedural nightmare intentionally. Sure. He kind of created this legal dilemma that now puts Rundo's incarceration and actually like a point of

question. Right. Like he had to know that when the Ninth Circuit did hear this motion, they would probably reverse him. He had to know that. And he absolutely knew Rundo would flee the country before that could happen. And he's not wrong that it looks a little questionable to issue an arrest warrant when there is no live charge. The end result that Rundo is in custody pending some kind of further ruling from the Ninth Circuit, that's not weird. That's really normal. But everything that happened in between is a mess. I don't know what the answer to that is. I mean, as nuts as Carney is behaving, he is probably right that you can't make a ruling on a moot motion and you can't arrest someone who's not charged with a crime. Those things are true, but I don't know what the answer is here. And I think it's his fault yeah so at this point right the government is appealing carney's dismissal of the charges just like they did back in 2019 remember that it took almost two years from the original dismissal to the ninth circuit ruling reversing and remanding the case

in 2021 so this could take a while at point, what the government is asking for is a stay of the release order to keep him in custody while they work through this appeals process, because they are appealing the dismissal of the indictment. I don't expect a lot of movement on that this week. I think the docket shows that the appellant's brief is due on the 12th. Today, as we're recording, this is the 4th. So they'll file that brief. They may file more sort of emergency petitions for his release. I'm not sure the Ninth Circuit will do that. But it's anybody's guess at this point, because it's kind of a big mess. The only thing that is clear is that only the Ninth Circuit can let Rob Rundo out. Well, what an enticing rundo down have the legal events of this case.

Don't want to be in that position. You know, Karrison, I'm not sure that you'll ever be in this position. I hope not. At least not in this exact one, unless you running a secret nazi gang that i do not know about in which case disavow disavow okay that's good that's good yeah you should that's probably the right move but so it'll take some time i don't know yeah i don't know what else there is to say um this is like sort of inciting a lot of active club activity you were saying earlier that you know ram doesn't exist anymore it's morphed into these active clubs there's these cells all over

the country and they are fired up about this so i think this has the potential to incite more political violence or at the very least incite more t-shirt sales which would be be just as horrifying to see one of those things out in the wild already marketing free rundo merch yeah i bet yeah uh i guess even nazis have constitutional rights i guess they do although it does feel again slightly uh insidious at the selective non-enforcement of some of these things where there is many many people who are being held especially like in atlanta it's been many people being helped out bail because they've been deemed a flight risk for for a long long time for for crimes and not because they hold like a serbian passport you know no no just because

they attended a music festival right it's i mean it's hard to get like super fired up about rob rundo's constitutional rights in terms of this this sort of like procedural quagmire when it's like people are actively and intentionally violating everyone else's constitutional rights constantly yeah like the only thing i'm left to think of is how this whole system of law does not seem to work very much and especially we we often point out how a whole bunch of laws get put in place that are like ostensibly framed like combat white supremacist terrorism or whatever and in in in actuality really only get used against people fighting for like the rights of black people people fighting for getting trans

people not to be murdered like that's that's really what all these laws get targeted against and they face so so much more harsh punishment because we have we have a judge who's treating rob rundo like a little a little baby who's this innocent little creature meanwhile people can get constantly locked up for completely bullshit charges in other parts of the country for engaging in, like, actually, like, pretty valid acts of protest, not even related to any, like, alleged violence. Like, it's quite frustrating to look at,

yes, there is actually a decent case of selective enforcement here. And it's the other way around. Yeah. It is not, in fact, that they're letting Antifa run wild and burn down cities. In fact, these Nazis get treated

like little innocent First Amendment defenders as they purposely talk about and brag about their claims of traveling across the country to assault people and start riots anyway well that's that's not great things are not good i hope only the worst for rundo regardless of whatever legal thing happens just like in general like i like i i wish him bad just like in life you know like I hope he like trips and falls down the stairs, you know, just like in general, like stub his toe really bad.

I'm not optimistic about this situation. Like there are a million outcomes here that are the dumbest possible ending to this story. So I'm not holding my breath for, you know, some brilliant prosecutor to save the day here. But I do hope that that Rob Rundo continues to have a bad day regardless. Yeah. Well, thank you for this lovely piece of legal research, Molly. Now I have to close 87 tabs. That is always the joy of wrapping up one of these episodes,

is closing the ridiculous amount of tabs that are open. Because at any moment in my research process, if any of my friends looks at my computer they are horrified by the uh the stress that i'm putting my own ram through again different ram the other ram than the yeah it is computer computer ram not also under considerable strain at this time yeah exactly well all right like that's that's as bad enough a joke to end it on as anything else. Where can people find you online, Molly? Oh, gosh. Yeah, I am online at Socialist Dog Mom on Twitter, on my newsletter on Ghosts, The Devil's Advocates. And I don't know, my dogs have an Instagram that I haven't updated lately. It's at Otto M. Buck. That's it for me. How about you, Garrison?

Oh, you can find me documenting my process of slowly turning my entire apartment into the Black Lodge on Twitter at Hungry Bowtie. Jesus Christ. All right. Wow, you can actually see a little bit of it behind me. It's kind of dark, but you can see a glimmer of red curtains.

Yeah, it's spooky back there. It is quite spooky back there. Wait until I turn on the strobe light. All right. Thank you for joining on the strobe light. Alright. Thank you for joining me today, Garrison. Alright. Thank you, Molly. Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe.

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