It Could Happen Here - It Could Happen Here Weekly 130

Episode Date: May 11, 2024

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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. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while running errands or at the end of a busy day. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. poetry will explore the stories that shape our culture. Listen to Black Lit on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. AT&T, connecting changes everything. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating. I don't feel emotions correctly.

I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take phone calls from anonymous strangers as a fake gecko therapist and try to learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's very interesting. Check it out for yourself by searching for Therapy Gecko 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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Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. 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. This is It Could Happen Here. I'm Garrison Davis. The past few years, we have regularly covered the rise of legislation that restricts access to public space and medical care for trans people in the United States, as well as attempts by politicians, lobbying groups, and media personalities to drum up transphobia in hopes of quote-unquote eliminating transgenderism from our society and culture. The quest to eliminate transgenderism includes harassment campaigns targeted against specific individuals, boycotting companies that feature trans people in their marketing, and banning queer books, media, and art from libraries across the

country. The conservative right has decided that the boogeyman of gender ideology and the woke mind virus is one of the most pressing threats to Western civilization. This brand of transphobic militancy opposes any form of visible queerness, viewing it as an ideology that acts as a viral cultural contagion. That's why they spend so much time trying to ban drag shows and art featuring queer people. They know they're losing the cultural battle, and that really scares them. As trans people have been trying to weather this huge wave of organized transphobia, trans and queer artists continue to push forward, with multiple hit films coming out this year from trans directors, and trans actors and actresses are taking more and more high-profile roles. Last episode, I interviewed comedian Ella Yeerman

and filmmaker Vera Drew on the process of creating independent queer media. This episode will focus on why we are seeing this new wave of queer art, why mere representation isn't enough, and attempts to go beyond the online media ecosystem. Ella Uriman is the host of Late Stage Live, a queer Gen Z public access late night show on Brooklyn Public Access and YouTube. The format of late night comedy is almost wholly dominated by old white cis straight men. Late Stage Live attempts to deconstruct the genre in which it aligns itself with, utilizing sketches, correspondent segments, and original reporting, but for a younger, queerer, more politically radical audience.

The show is not just made for Gen Z queers, it's also made by an entire team of young queer and trans people, which gives it a very unique feel compared to literally all of its competition. The show itself feels queer, and highlights the massive gap between simple queer representation and queer art, or in this case, queer late night comedy. There's a palpable distinction between hiring a gay person to work on Seth Meyers versus having a late night show that is built on queerness.

On that note, here's a clip from my interview with Ella Uriman, host of Late Stage Live. There's like a huge difference between like the token queer writer um and and like a show that um centers queerness and transness and i'm really proud of of that as in terms of our show like i think that's one of its main drives is how queer focused it is something we talk about in every episode in every piece um reed loves to hammer this home is sort of the question of why us it's the first question we ask when anyone pitches any segment or piece or story of like the question is like what's the game what's the perspective and then why is it us delivering this perspective because anyone can write a piece of political analysis lots of people

do but like what about this story is uniquely coming from us, uniquely coming from the host Ella, from the writer's room? And I think we found it most strongly in the last two pieces, the Lives of TikTok piece, and then the episode before that, we did a segment on the Alliance Defending Freedom, which is a spooky, evil, conservative cabal that trains lawyers to overturn SCOTUS cases. And I think those both felt really focused in on sort of us as young queer people. And I think the Gen Z part is also really relevant for us. A lot of Late Night is hosted by old men. And as much as I love Jon Stewart, he is an old man, an old cis white man, an old cis, as far as I know, heterosexual white man. Who already left the job 10 years ago. And he already left it. Right. And he's back now. But like, what does that say about anything?

Yeah. Yeah. And everyone talking about politics is like old white guys and everyone in Congress is old white guys or George Santos. congress is old white guys or george santos and there's like this sense of like the world is ending as you probably know on this show that builds itself as like amidst the collapse or whatever your tagline is um but like gen z is so uniquely affected by political goings on in a way that i suppose this is true of every gender every youngest generation that like all of the decisions are impacting us most, but it feels more urgent these days because the world is ending with climate change and with the encroaching, you know,

global fascism and with the decay of late stage capitalism that it feels so important now more than ever to like center those experiences and look at how the world and the news and politics impacts these groups of people and the way we achieve that is yeah we don't just have one token queer writer we are our room is all queer largely trans about half of our writers room is non-white um and as we grow that that number will either stay the same or get bigger, certainly not smaller. Yeah, at the end of the day, I think the fact that the room is completely queer and predominantly trans and non-white and all young, it just like sort of happens. And the fact that it started that way and has been built from the ground up that way, I think gives us a huge edge.

Even if The Daily Show fired all of their writers and hired only trans people, I think it would be a hard pivot to get the show to suddenly be doing what we're doing just because the whole structure is built differently. People's Joker, an autobiographical transgender coming-of-age parody set in the Batman universe, the shallowness of queer representation is actually one of the core themes of the film. In the movie, the main character is not satisfied by simply being a token diversity hire for a late night comedy show, and instead hijacks the airwaves and charts her own path. This plotline, like many others, mirrors the director's own life, and the movie itself is a perfect example of how creating a piece of art inherently built on a multimedia experience of queerness will produce a wildly different result than simply having a gay person in the writer's room. Here's a clip from my interview with Vera Drew. writer's room. Here's a clip from my interview with Vera Drew. It's not even that I feel like queer representation is like too straight or cis. It's just not even like an accurate

reflection of queer reality. You know, like every gay couple I know is nothing like a straight couple. I mean, some of them are, but like those those gay couples always break up like it's like they're just they're just in uh you know reenacting cycles and thousands and thousands of years of patriarchal bullshit on each other when they could just be having hot gay sex with each other um and like that to me is like the biggest tragedy of like representation and it like is also why I think people lash out at us so much. On one level, I understand the idea of this is getting shoved down our throats. Because it kind of is. That's coming from a place that I sort of agree with. Because they're getting sold this propaganda that it's like,

they're just like us. And to me, it's like my experience is so specific to me and so specific to the experience of a trans woman. There are things about my life that are similar to that of a cis woman, but certainly not identical. So I never want to see art that is that. I'm really over trans people being used in a way that they're either, I mean, it doesn't really happen anymore where they're like treated like freaks, but like it's kind of the tragedy porn or, or, uh, kind of pedest because this is who I am. It's not a pleasant situation to deal with. So I think It's just sad that people like us keep having to have this kind of conversation.

Cause like, I've also heard it now within our own community that like, you know, I've heard other trans filmmakers say like, we should only be telling happy stories. We should only be spreading queer joy or whatever. Absolutely not. No,

absolutely not. Like it's, it's, that's embarrassing yeah no i i want i want to spread queer panic i want to not even panic just like queer existential uh horror um i suppose i don't i don't know well i mean for me it's like i don't know like because i've gotten shit to not I haven't gotten a lot. And now, honestly, that I've started mentioning it in the press, people haven't said it to me as much as good. But like I was getting a little bit of the like how, oh, making the Joker a murderous trans woman. Oh, please. First of all, like villains are queer coded.

It's the history of film. Almost all of the Batman villains are queer coded. It's the history of film. Almost all of the Batman villains are queer coded. Exactly. Completely. And like, why can't, so why can't a, why can't we do it?

Like not in a subtext way. Why can't we just do it directly? And then also like I live in a country that villainizes trans people. So like, why can't I process that very thing by making myself a queer villain in a movie that I made? And I don't know. I think what I hate

about the queer joy thing and the... People's Joker is a very funny movie. It's very colorful. It's very campy, but it's also devastating. Yes. It's got a very serious's very campy, but it's also like devastating. You know, like it's,

it's got a very serious message to it that I think it brings up a lot of emotion in people when they watch it, both cis people and trans people. And, you know, I think that speaks to something else just like about representation is like, I told this story that was so specific to my experience. And trans people are identifying with it and relating to it,

but so are cis people. Yes, we should be telling stories that portray the trans experience honestly or the queer experience honestly and specifically. And if we do that, if we do that effectively, that is still art that a cis person can consume because cis people also go through transition. Cis people also have to die and

be reborn sometimes. And I think just everybody comes of age. It's just like trans people and queer people have to do it more visibly and publicly and externally a lot of the times and and uh i don't know for me it's like that was like another reason too of like of just being like no like we're gonna get this out into theaters and um and you know like make this kind of theatrical experience um before anything else um you know it was always made made to be like viewed i think with like a crowd of people like yeah yeah kind of like a midnight movie vibe i guess when you think about it jesus and the joker do have a lot in common in terms of getting baptized getting born again it's it's really very similar characters absolutely and i And I mean, that's why, uh, cause I think this was something while Brie and I were writing the movie

that, that she was constantly every step of the way. Like, what are you doing? Like, why are you bringing this much like Gnostic Christianity to this? Yeah, absolutely.

Uh, like I, I remember, you know, there's this like French song that's in the movie called I'll be your Joker. That's was composed and performed by Emily Sloan. you know there's this like french song that's in the movie called i'll be your joker that's was composed and performed by emily sloan and the lyrics to that are a poem that i wrote

that are just you never like it's not in anywhere in the movie it's just in that song but it's like this it's the people's joker prophecy like I actually wrote it in this like kind of Gnostic Bible structure. And then we translated it to French and recorded it as a song. And like, that was like really kind of coming from that place of like, just really, I love, I mean, I'm obsessed with Jesus. And I kind of just always have been like, I was raised Catholic. And I just... I'm not Christian, but I have a lot of

Jesus stuff around my house. I'm just obsessed with the iconography and really love it. The story itself as a myth and the mythic understanding of death and rebirth and also just

thinking of it as another example of the hero's journey. And I don't know, somebody asked me at a Q&A, basically, how do you have the balls to... Because by the end of The People's Joker, you basically find out it is like Dune. There's a weird Messiah story happening.

And that partially just comes from like i think for me queerness is inherently like a very spiritual experience um it just has been for me and i think a lot of trans people actually deal with messiah complexes i think it's something that i feel safe saying i have and And I also really wanted to unpack that just idea of, of the like Joseph Campbell, white savior heroes journey thing. It could happen here. We'll return after these messages.

We now return to It Could Happen Here. During my interview with Vera Drew, she mentioned something about not just wanting to throw the movie up on YouTube when the film was dealing with legal issues resulting in uncertainty around how the film would be released. And that got me thinking about queer people's relationship to platforms like YouTube as the sort of default way of sharing video art. A big reason why is simply because the platform is so accessible, without many of the hurdles and roadblocks of more traditional distribution models. But sometimes I worry that it's become so default that our reliance on YouTube has actually become a self-limiting factor that over-determines the scope of our own art. Let's return to my interview with Vera Drew to continue this topic. Queer people, specifically trans people, have kind of been stuck with a lot

of their like art or video art just becoming this thing that you throw up on YouTube. We've done a good job in making like a community there, I suppose. But at certain points it feels very insular. We've created this little tiny bubble that everything is just trapped inside of. Because obviously we can't rely on big studios to make our own stuff or distribute our own stuff. That's not happening either. But I feel like we're kind of kicking ourselves in the foot if our only artistic output is like techno music and youtube video essays both of which can be good both of which

can be art but there's a whole other world out there that i feel like we have closed ourselves off from and so i'm kind of interested like on like on that choice to like not put it on YouTube and actually like ride this thing out as like a movie. Yeah, I mean, that is it's it's it's such a relief to hear you talk about it in that way, because, yeah, I never want to be dismissive of online creators. Sure. Like I worked in TV for 10 years as an editor and I was very fortunate to work on a lot of really cool shit. My first job was... I was an intern on The Eric Andre Show. And then my job immediately after that was on Nathan For You. So I really got to work with all these really amazing comedians, many geniuses. And in that process, I always knew I had wanted to make film.

My earliest memories are wanting to make films. Right around the time I saw Batman Forever, I was like, I want to be a director. And I came up in post-production just because a lot of editors end up following... A lot of editors are really just frustrated directors. So I was like like here's a place where i could like sort of learn my craft and i've always loved experimental animation and visual effects and stuff and also just like incorporate that as well into like my career and it's good i'm so glad i had it as like an incubation period for me to kind of find my my

voice and my aesthetic and learn a lot from these like super talented people. But there was always this frustration that I had because when I would take stuff out to pitch or anything that was like my own story, like, you can't really get trans art made in any sort of mainstream space. I think that's one of the things that's most frustrating about the whole like woke culture bullshit, just because it's like they act like we're some sort of like elite class that's like favored by the media, which it's like,

I can just tell you like, that's I'm on my press week right now. Like the media is certainly enamored with trans people, but like, I don't think it's like coming from a place of like, we're trying to change and put everything and make these people in charge. It's clickbaity and it keeps people arguing online. breakthrough as a director too. I mean, I was at that... Forget pitching shows that I've written or whatever. Just trying to get episodic TV work. I just couldn't do it once I changed my pronouns. I was literally up for jobs that went away after I came out. So I just reached this point of, I think, maximum frustration and kind of wanted to...

Whatever I did... I don't want to say I was ready to walk away from working in the industry in 2019, but I kind of was. I was kind of just at this point where I was like, I need to make a fucking movie or something on my own and kind of just put all I have into that. And that's going to be the way people will either finally take me seriously as a director, or I'll at least have made a movie and then I can just be in debt

and I'll have a movie I made. So to me, it was always about not necessarily finally being taken seriously by my industry, but just making this giant piece of art that is not only a big, look what I can do style thing, but is also just about all of that, about the frustration of being allowed in, but only being allowed in, in these certain ways, whether it's on a diversity cast or whatever. I worked on the show. I can't really talk about it because it's like NDA stuff and I don't think the show will ever come out. But I was in the writer's room

on a cartoon that was being rebooted and it was one of my favorite cartoons of all time. But I had a day where I was just sitting in the writer's room and I was looking around at my coworkers and I was like, Oh, wait a minute. It's all girls and I'm a girl and I'm a trans girl.

We're all just being brought in to rehabilitate this problematic piece of art. And it was like this crazy moment of having like, also have had lost jobs because of my identity. And now being in this place where it's like, my identity is like this bargaining chip. So anyway, how does this connect to the online art conversation? I've always kind of had to also play in online spaces.

I started a public access station with my friends a few years ago called Highland Park TV. A few years ago. It was like 10 years ago now. But that's still going on today. And it was basically just this space for us where we could just record whatever. We'd meet up one week and come with some pretty simple sketches and shoot it on our public access set and throw it up online. And 12 people would watch it. And that was it. But that was cool. You build little followings and communities that way. And I had always just wanted to break out of that, you know, because I think my sensibilities are pretty me and edgy and weird.

But like, I'm really kind of a basic bitch. Like when it comes to the stuff I like, like I really like my taste is very college dorm room. I have a back to the future tattoo. Like I'm very influenced by like genre film. And you know, like I love David Lynch. I love experimental film and stuff too. But like, I've always like really felt like I could do it. I could be like, just like a genre filmmaker.

But when we had the controversy at TIFF, I had a lot of pressure on me to just put the movie out there. And I could never articulate to people why it was important to me to not do that and to hold out. It wasn't just financial. It really was... Maybe it's an ego thing. But it's also just like, I've been doing this long enough to know like the movie was going to always find its audience, but there needed to kind of be a plan in place so that like I could actually put it towards having a career that the career that I've wanted my whole life, you know, like I think it's ridiculous that we live in a culture now where every artist, even the ones like me who have had a trade in an industry, that we have to really

carve our own path in online spaces or on Twitter or YouTube or whatever. It just keeps us all in cycles of poverty. I fucking hate posting to Twitter. I do it still just because it's the easiest way to get the word out. But every single time I send a tweet, I'm like, this sucks. I'm supporting one of the worst people alive right now just by still using this site. Somebody who hates me and people like me so much that he literally won't talk to his own child. Yeah, I really just wanted to kick the door down uh for myself and hopefully for for some people that come after me and you know I I really don't want to be the type of

filmmaker and the type of queer filmmaker who like holds the ladder up behind them like it's not even that I have integrity it's just that like this movie is that to me this movie is such like it's a gospel on how we need to be making art more ethically and more um for ourselves and from a place of care and uh yeah that's just i i want to hopefully change my little corner of the industry as much as i can uh toward that i mean it definitely feels like we're getting more and more people are embracing this idea of independent queer cinema and more people are, are deciding instead of putting whatever short film they want on YouTube, try to do a festival circuit.

And it's, it, that was one of the things that I think I, I really respected after what happened at TIFF. What I really respected at your like insistence to like, no, like we're going to find a distributor. Like we're,

we're not just going to throw it up online and call it a day. It's not just going to be like a fan film. It's like, this is an actual like expressive piece that we're going to, it might mean that you won't see it for another two years, but it shows like a level of like actual artistic commitment that I found gave, it gave the project a real sense of like,

wait. Oh, thank you. The notion of this comfortable YouTube bubble we've created is perhaps why I find the public access TV side of Ellie Ehrman's Late Stage Live so compelling. A lot of queer people around my age grew up with the transgender video essay as the primary form of our artistic video output. And there's a lot of good video essays out there, but at a certain point, it started to feel like the main way a young radical queer person could engage with the art form. It's gotten to feel so insular and a bit restrictive, like we're enforcing our own bubble. On top of this self-limiting

aspect, I'm not even sure how much growth the format even has anymore. Recently, I've begun to see more queer artists specifically trying to make things outside the strict video essay framework. Even some of the most popular trans video essay creators have been trying to move into documentary and narrative filmmaking. I asked Ella about moving beyond the video essay bubble, because although Late Stage Live does air on YouTube as well as Brooklyn Public Access, the format is not just your average transgender video essay. We don't have any pink lighting at all. Yeah, it's definitely something I've been thinking about a lot, both like in my own personal career and for the show.

A lot of my bylines in the last few years are all youtube based with late sage and somewhere news and it's frustrating that even as youtube has seen so much growth and like celebrities come from youtube all the time and some of the biggest names in the world are internet stars now there's still like the sense of illegitimacy to be doing a project on youtube and like like when i try and get published in like more legitimate journalism magazines every so often i'm always looking at my resume and being like i wish i had like a project on YouTube. And like, like when I try and get published in like more legitimate journalism magazines, every so often, I'm always looking at my resume and being like,

I wish I had like a byline in a magazine instead of three years of writing for a YouTube show that I love so much and think is doing better works than most of these magazines, but like that I know won't get treated the same. So there's definitely an aspect to that, that I think, yeah, like it's partly because YouTube is so accessible.

Anyone can post on YouTube that I understand yeah like it's partly because YouTube is so accessible anyone can post on YouTube that um I understand why queer people have sort of relegated themselves to this bubble trans people have like why we've ended up with like you know the trans video essay scene thank you mother Natalie but it makes it hard to sort of break into this like final frontier of legitimacy, I think. And I think by like, yeah, like not fully committing ourselves to being a YouTube show from the get-go, we do sort of leave doors open to be considered like a more legitimate television production, which is exciting for like growth opportunities. I think the live studio audience also really pushes us out of that zone.

We get a lot of accusations from people who are mean on the internet of using a laugh track. And I just want to say, and I will say it until the day I die, it would be so much easier if we were. I could totally tell when there's gay people laughing in the background versus a laugh track. It's a very clear difference. Absolutely. It would be so easy if I was just plugging that in in post, but no, we bring in 30, 35 gays every month just to laugh at my jokes. And sometimes they don't. And you can see that too, uh, when they don't laugh at my jokes. But I think that, um, is something I was really excited to do that is different from a lot of the other video essay sphere, because it also like brings an aspect

of live performance, um, that I love as a standup and as a theater artist. And also like, yeah, just pulls it into like a slightly different genre of thing that we're making and i think certainly in terms of like growth and audience building and like the potential of being picked up by some larger organization it definitely puts us in like a different it makes us look slightly different than like a youtube show even if we can all like sort of quietly acknowledge like well but all of our growth is happening on youtube and instagram but like as you but all of our growth is happening on YouTube and Instagram. But like, as you said, like real late night is huge on YouTube now too.

And there's all these other extra correlating factors of like monetization on YouTube sort of died a few years ago after the ad apocalypse or whatever. And so you have to go through crowdfunding sources like Patreon or sponsorships or X, other Y, like there's not like you can't. Nebula or whatever new streaming service for YouTube pops up. Yeah. Right. You can't just rely on AdSense anymore.

And that's frustrating in its own degree. But I think even beyond that, yeah, like not relegating ourselves to being a YouTube show, both thematically and concretely in terms of content and form, is really exciting. And I think even as we grow and gain a budget and are able to buy nicer cameras, we want to keep the aesthetics and vibe

of edgy, radical public access because it's a part of the voice of the show along with the practicalities. Yeah. Having background ketamine jokes, I think really is what sets you apart. The quote unquote VHS cleaner that sits on the desk every episode. I don't own a VHS. We will return to It Could Happen Here after these messages. We now return to It Could Happen Here. To me, the most exciting thing about the idea of a new wave of independent trans cinema is that we'll get to see a whole bunch of trans films that otherwise would never get made by the big studios.

After trans filmmaker Jane Shonbrun's successful festival run of her small-scale feature debut titled We're All Going to the World's Fair back in 2021, her next film, called I Saw the TV Glow, got picked up by Emma Stone's production company and A24. The film is now coming out later this month. In the case of The People's Joker, it dares to take Warner Brothers and Disney at their word that their privately owned intellectual property is in fact our culture's version of mythology, our very own Greek gods. And so if these characters really are the cultural icons that the monopolized companies who own them claim them to be, what happens when we actually do treat them like mythology and use these characters to artistically mythologize our own lives?

By skillfully sidestepping copyright law via effective legal parody, we get to have a Batman film through the lens of transgender chaos magic, which I'm afraid would simply never happen under Warner Bros. Discovery as they can't even stop deleting their own finished films to get tax write-offs. A few weeks ago, I showed my It Could Happen Here co-host Mia Wong, the People's Joker, and afterwards we talked about what makes it feel so special and its place within the pantheon of queer cinema. One of my dear friends, Vicky Osterweil, is writing a book called The Extended Universe about sort of copyright law and what it's done to film and specifically focusing on Disney. And the thing that's different about The People's Joker, right, if you want to know why The People's Joker is, you know, why specifically you couldn't make this, it's partially because it's trans and it's partially because it's actually a movie.

Yes. It's partially because it's trans and it's partially because it's actually a movie. Yes. And this is this is this is this is Vicky's argument. And this is this is the hidden truth about the film industry is that movies are not designed to sell movies. No, they're designed to send copyright. No, no, it's worse than that. Like a superhero movie does not make money on the movie.

Right. The movie theater is not making money on the movie. The movie theater is making money on food. The company itself. That's not where the money comes from the money comes from toy sales yeah and sales of stuff afterwards right so what you're actually seeing when you're seeing a superhero movie is just an ad and advertising this and this is yeah and this is part of what the people's joker is that makes it different right and you know and it's because like specifically because it is trans and because of the way that it's trans this makes it impossible for it to be made by a corporation. And because trans people fought to make it, it gets to be an actual movie and not a fucking toy sales thing.

Yeah, because they're not going to be making a toy of mustache pedophile Batman. Yeah, right. And this is incredibly important for the genre of film because, you know, I mean, there is a world that is not too far off where we are the last people making actual fucking films and not advertisements. Yeah. To use the sort of like only semi ironically using the sort of lofty like Marxist language is like, yeah, like we kind of also have been given the historical task of saving film from its complete annihilation by these fucking capitalist copyright ghouls it's a pleasure to see it's a joy to see i think i i was reading an interesting article recently that talked about how trans media's um orientation has been very referential it's been very much based on experiences that trans people have as kids engaging with media, whether that's with something like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, whether that's with DC Comics. And it's because transness

is so much about recontextualizing your whole life and identity, a lot of trans media has also been about this form of recontextualization, both with I think the People's Joker is a great example. Also, the upcoming film i saw the tv glow which is very much based on like buffy and other and other kind of like monster of the week style tv shows it's combining all of that kind of stuff with a lot of uh lynching influences both both in these cases both in the people's joker and in i saw the tv glow to create this like fever dream of self-identity in this referential format. And that's been an interesting trend to watch in trans cinema. And I think that's something to look for when you're

engaging with future trans cinema projects, seeing if those kinds of things pop up. And if they don't, why is that? What else is actually happening instead? I think those are going to be some interesting ways to engage with our own DIY art in the next decade here. Because as much as everything we talk about is so depressing, like on this show, about how everything dealing with trans stuff is about how everyone's trying to kill us and restrict our medical care, that does not actually stop us from becoming people who actually engage with culture in any real sense. I think despite everything that's targeted against trans people, it does not stop

us from actually having a cultural output. And the thing a lot of conservatives are afraid of is our cultural output. The fact that trans people keep being actually really compelling artists and really compelling people in general makes conservatives nervous. I don't think it's impossible for conservatives to make art. I think there is conservative art that actually can be seen as like, okay, art. But they certainly are afraid at how good trans people are at making music and now making movies. When I was talking with Mia, she brought up a good point that I'll paraphrase here. Part of why we're seeing this new wave of independent trans cinema is the result of a

combination of two things. One is that trans and queer artists have been and continue to be chewed up and spat out by the traditional media machine. And two, the traditional media machine itself is slowly rotting from the inside, which can be a tricky situation to navigate for a lot of queer artists. But simultaneously, it also means that we're in this position where having been spat out, we have full reign to go make our own massive, grotesque, degenerate queer art on our own, because there simply is no artistic alternative. Trans people need to be submitting to film festivals, regardless of whether or not cis viewers and critics will understand the work. Filmmaking is one of those art forms that you

can't really do all by yourself, but that doesn't need to be a limitation. That can be an asset. Gay people are good at a lot of different things, and filmmaking integrates so many different artistic areas and skills. And as we've seen, a movie made by a community of queers can create such a unique result. When talking with Vera Drew, she mentioned that having a whole team of artists help her complete the movie is also in part what ensured that she would find a way for the film to be distributed the right way so that it's seen up on the big screen and not just published online for free. You know, that was another thing that really kind of kept me from doing anything irrational with

the film, like posting it on Google Drive with a donation link or whatever. I was like, I have all these artists that just worked on this movie with me for two and a half years. And like, no, we're going to fucking do this. Like I said, I would do this and I'm going to do this because like, I can't just like feed this back into the incubator and the fucking feedback loop of trans Twitter and like cool underground circles

that I totally love to be a part of. But we're all trying to get more visibility outside of those things. So yeah, I always really just wanted to honor the team and make everybody feel valued. And I paid as many people as I could and was very straightforward about what I could afford. And a lot of people worked in ways that they just felt compensated. And that was very appreciated. You know, I think in general, like everybody on this was very underpaid,

but like it was such a labor of love and such like a, a personal thing for, for all of us that everybody just like showed up and, and really rallied around each other and really just kept saying yes. And to everything. And, um, it's so cool.

I don't, I don't know how I'll ever really be able to replicate. I don't think I should either just cause it's, it was, it was quite a gargantuan task, but, um, you know,

it was, it was literally the best time of my life was, was making this movie. Like, I think it really, it taught me just how to be a human being and and how to love and and how to like finally feel connected to my to my queer community because i think like the people's jokers really more than anything it's really about nuance

and like relationships and and family and uh politics and it talks about nuance by really leaning into these like extremes which i think just is also inherently queer um and i don't know i mean that to me is like another thing it's just like i i hope and there there's there's a lot of trans filmmakers that are like starting to pop up in the genre space but like i hope i hope we see more of it just because like we all grew up on the same movies that cis people did, so why can't we make similar art and tell our stories in the process? And also

do it in a way that's not hiding in the shadows. The People's Joker is slowly ending its US theatrical run, but you can still look for tickets and showtimes at thepeoplesjoker.com, and you can find Vera Drew online at veradrew22. Late Stage Live just released their sixth episode, and I'm really excited to see how the show will

grow and evolve over time. And we've actually recently hit an inflection point with the show where the sort of organic haphazard growth is no longer sustainable for us. We've been having a lot of really exciting and scary conversations behind the scenes about like formalizing our production process and, and kicking our shit up a notch so that we have the potential to, to make this bigger and better and more polished. But it is at its core still like a production born out of community and like mutual respect. I'm Ella Yerman.

You can find me on Instagram at Ella dot Yerman on x.com at Ella Yerman. I think I'm on blue sky also, though. I don't do anything there. You can find late stage live as late stage live on all platforms. That's Instagram X, YouTube, TikTok, probably also blue sky, but those are the big ones. And then if you're interested in finding my, my standup show, um, we're at T4T comedy on Instagram and X. Oh, and, and then most specifically, um, if you're interested in helping fund late stage and make us bigger and better and shinier, um, you can go to patreon.com slash late stage live, um, where we post, yeah, we have a behind the scenes photos and videos, and we make a semi-frequent podcast where my head writer and I talk about the news and shoot the shit and talk about the process

in a lot more detail episode by episode. And we're so grateful for our current patrons and for opportunities like this. And we're excited to see where the show goes. That does it for us at It Could Happen Here. I hope you enjoyed my Transformers and G.I. Joe ad break references. And if not, you can send any complaints

to the president of Columbia University. Solidarity to everyone across the country who's been out the past few weeks. See you on the other side. 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. 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.

Hola mi gente, it's Honey German and I'm bringing you Gracias, Come Again. The podcast where we dive deep into the world of Latin culture, musica, peliculas, and entertainment with some of the biggest names in the game. If you love hearing real conversations with your favorite Latin celebrities, artists, and culture shifters, this is the podcast for you. We're talking real conversations with our Latin stars, from actors and artists to musicians and creators,

sharing their stories, struggles, and successes. You know it's going to be filled with chisme laughs and all the vibes that you love. Each week, we'll explore everything from music and pop culture to deeper topics like identity, community, and breaking down barriers in all sorts of industries. Don't miss out on the fun, el té caliente, and life stories. Join me for Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get into todo lo actual y viral.

Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to It Could Happen Here, a podcast that is, I don't know, I'm going to speak for the rest of my hosts who aren't here, so they can't stop me and say that this is a podcast normally opposed to brunch. I'm your host, Mia Wong, and today we are talking about something that we kind of haven't been covered. We haven't covered as much as I think we should have, which is unionization in small businesses. We've talked a lot about unionization in sort of larger things. We've talked about sort of mid-sized chains. But today, we're talking about the unionization of a place called Friday Egg I'm in Love in Portland, which it's – if you sort of imagine the platonic ideal of what do you think a

place called Friday Egg I'm in love is going to be like it is in fact that um and with me to talk about this is sol and janie from the fried egg workers union uh yeah both of you welcome to the show thank you so much yeah thanks for having us yeah i'm i'm excited to talk about this um partially you know i mean as we sort of discussed a little bit because i want to get into a bit later the specific dynamics of sort of small business union stuff but first things first i wanted to sort of talk about what actually you know how did you all decide to unionize because i think this is a bit different story than the kind of thing we usually get on this show absolutely

well i've been at this particular restaurant since 2019, and it's been something that's come up every now and then. I think we're just a very queer workplace. We're a very leftist workplace, and we tend to have a lot of common ideals. And I feel like what makes our unionization effort unique or maybe not unique but just different than a lot of like we need to start a union right now kind of efforts is there wasn't a thing that caused it we were all like me and five other people were just sitting around a table

and decided hey we should just start a union and so we kind of looked into what that looks like and the snowball started rolling downhill. Yeah, and this is something I think is really interesting because, you know, I mean, one of the things you get really commonly in sort of like anti-union propaganda, you see this, like, so a lot of my family were engineers, right?

And engineers do this all the time where they're like, oh, we don't need a union. We're like happy. We're well paid. Everything's great. And then, you know, you look at you, you look at what happens to them and it's like, oh, well, now you have Boeing, right? It's like, well, you all never organized.

You no longer have any power and your planes are like falling from the sky. So, yeah, this is a I'm taking this taking my soapbox moment to be like you two out there even if your job is good uh at some point it's going to not be and you should unionize first before they i don't know like be google and decide that i don't be evil actually constrains them from making money and decide to be evil so get get out ahead of them before. Couldn't agree more. Absolutely. This has felt very proactive. I haven't been there nearly as long as some of my comrades, but the general consensus is that things are pretty good.

So instead of letting things go bad, let's make major steps to protect what we have. Especially as you kind of notice how this small business is slowly starting to operate like not a small business. And one of our food carts was upgraded uh to a brick and mortar at the beginning of this year and pretty much in that in that moment that that started operating as a real restaurant it things really clearly i think started setting in that like this is a bigger operation than it used to be

and they very like the owner very much still has the intention of making it as good of a place to work as he can which is to be appreciated but it's also understandable that as things start to grow, it's a lot better if it's a collaborative process in terms of making it the best place to work that it can be. And I think getting a seat at the table is something that we have to make for ourselves, but it doesn't necessarily have to be a threat or a retaliation this is something i think is kind of important with unionizing especially places that are kind of you know like or you know we're even where the sort of the boss is legitimately trying to like do the right thing which like is kind of true of like my work right like you know like the the people above my bosses are kind of a fiasco but like my immediate like bosses are like you know it's robert and sophie right like they're pretty chill um

but you know like what one of the dynamics that sets in is like you know it's not what the actual conditions are isn't necessarily always going to be under their control, even if, you know, like even if they want to do the right thing and the demands of things like scale and, you know, the demands of sort of market competition have this sort of disciplining effect on what, you know, like what, what your working conditions can be. If you're going to sort of compete with like, I don't know, you're, you're like donut shop that like tortures his union workers right you know for example yeah yeah purely abstract purely abstract yeah absolutely um you know seeing a shop of you know 12 become, two shops, a food cart and a commissary kitchen of 35, that definitely, you know, it's just pushing the business in a direction very naturally. It

feels very much like a part of how systems work. Even if our, even if your owner has really good intentions, just the nature of like how capitalism works is, uh, starts to change, uh, things as a, yeah, at scale for sure. Yeah. And that, that gets into something else that i'm sort of interested in how the sort of unionizing process went because this is a very i mean i guess going from 12 to 35 is a big increase

in the number of people but that's still a very small shop so can you talk a bit about what it what it's been like kind of organizing in you know i mean organizing a number of people that you can very easily fit into a room it's been interesting and it's been exciting in that way because we are able to cram into a room and the energy is very palpable and so like inspiring momentum to get shit done in each other has been really, really wonderful in that way. But I think also it's, it makes it easy for us to be very tactical with how we are handling this process, where we're making sure that at all four locations, there's a majority, if not unanimous approval and support and membership in the union. And the more that I'm meeting union organizers and union reps and people from IWW,

the more that I'm realizing we're in a situation where we can establish some really lovely precedent for similar workplaces who want to start a union who are about the same size as us or even like neighbors and aren't like on the on the streets that our locations are at where we can do things like there's not enough precedent in the IWW for a service industry in general, but particularly it's very common to be in the negotiating process. And one of the things that will be offered to the employer in exchange for whatever you're negotiating on is like a no strike clause. Like, okay, we we'll just we'll give this to you of like we're just not gonna be able to just to strike for the duration of our contract and so

in exchange we can get some other stuff that we're asking for but because we have such a strong majority and in all four locations we have a strong majority i think we're currently planning on keeping the right to strike hell yeah and you know we're not planning on it i hope that we don't ever have to do that but just having that as precedent i think will help our community and other similar unions. Yeah, absolutely. I think, you know, this is something that going back to, if you look at the sort of heyday of American unionism,

if you look at like the 50s, 60s, 70s, like those contracts didn't have no strike clauses in them. Some of them did. So sometimes it was like a federal thing. But the thing about no strike clauses is that it makes, you know, we've talked about this a bit before on the show, but one of the, one of the sort of issues when you have a union is like, okay, so even if you get a contract, right. And that usually takes a, that takes a long time, takes a lot of fighting. The company is immediately going to start trying to violate the contract.

And so, you know, your, your, your contract is only as strong as your ability to enforce it. And you know, what, one of the, a really, really good way to enforce it is by being able to go on strike but normally like yeah people aren't organized enough to actually like fight their employers on it and so it just ends up being a kind of standard part of contracts and yeah it's really exciting that y'all are committing to fight for that from the beginning because it's it's it's hard it's it's not it's not an easy thing to do yeah the more i learn about how unions operate the more i'm realizing that you know it doesn't necessarily stop people from getting fired it doesn't necessarily stop people from having you know injustice happen upon them but it just gives you the ability to fight in the first place

and i think a lot of employers who are facing a workplace who are wanting to unionize like recognizing that it's it's it's not like a threat it's not like okay we're uh we're gonna have this union and everyone's gonna go on strike the next day and our business is going to tank. But they're just asking for the right to have a better negotiating seat. Yeah, this is something I actually characteristic of an incredibly militant shop. if you can actually get the precedent of, you know, having companies treat this as normal, because it's something that should be normal, right? Like this is how a lot of the US used to work, right? It used to be, if you were on like an auto line,

assembly line, there'd be a guy in the back with a whistle. And if, you know, if a contract violation happened, or like, you know, if the company's asking you to do something that you aren't, you know, that you're not like contractually obligated to do, the person would, you know, the union person would blow the whistle, immediate strike, the entire assembly line goes down. mentality of the people who own who own businesses right now is that you should never at any point like you know you should never at any point let your workers do anything at all you should immediately fight them at the moment they try to unionize and i think you know having a precedent of like you know of of being able to get this kind of stuff without immediately having to launch like

you know like immediately immediately kick off a a series of strikes with your employer is is a good one is a good one to set that we have so many people that are super interested in like being a part of this organizing effort because because we all like being there like is i think is huge in comparison like lots of stories that we hear about and um yeah really wanting to like bring that to the restaurant industry because yeah that's unions are you know criminally under recognized within service work yeah and arguably an industry that needs it the most yep yep well and that's the other exciting thing about this shop is that you know you were talking about sort of like there not being enough service

organizing within it with the iww and that's true of like basically all unions because and especially shops at your scale because you know a lot of these unions are using like a very kind of crude cross cost benefit analysis and their their assessment is like well why should we bother to organize like this shop that has 35 people at it because you know this is gonna like we're like the amount of dues money we're gonna get out of it is like not you know is not is not worth the effort but on the other hand you know like do you know how many workers there are like how many of these like how many of these tiny shops across the there are across the entire country that if you know and if everyone just refuses to organize

them then you're leaving like tens of millions of workers just sort of like screwed yeah um i i can't speak for all iww but i know like talking with like the Portland branch, um, definitely mirrors our shop and it like how queer and leftist it is. And, uh, it's not surprising, uh, that they, uh,

you know, working with the IWW or with, um, the coalition of independent unions, which is a Pacific Northwest, like union for unions kind of thing. Um, it's not surprising that like our,

our values are aligned and it's like, make it, making for something like really fun and like, you know, setting a new kind of industry standard for service industry. Yeah. Unfortunately, speaking of industry standards, I have to go to an ad break. It's in my contract somewhere, probably. I don't think my employers have read my contract in a long time, but you know, such are the dictates of a podcast that your that your senior bosses don't listen to um yeah we will return in however long the ads are and we are back so okay another thing that i kind of wanted to talk about is what has it sort of been like in in terms of like you know so like how how how has you know in a shop that's like

this small how has the sort of like organizing conversations gone right like is is everyone just sort of close enough that you know you were able to kind of do this organically or was there still sort of a like mapping process for all of the shops or well luckily it has gone pretty smoothly but we were advised early on to create an interest map where we go through the list of every coworker that we have and talk about like, how well do we know them? Do we think they would be down? Like, well, this person would obviously be down. This person, I guess we'll just have to talk to them and see. And apart from a few cases, it has been very successful and easy so far it's really lucky

that almost all of our co-workers are comrades yeah i think like our first like conversation was i think about 10 people at like a bar close to like the main hawthorne shop and like once we had like that get together yeah it really became, you know, how do we get our satellite locations, you know, on this, on the same page, you know, with like a super majority at one shop, you know, then just moving on to, you know, our little, you know, the Pioneer food cart and then our commissary kitchen and then the Mississippi location that was just, you know, hiring a whole new staff for and, you know, getting them in, you know, collecting them into the fold. And yeah, IWW was very helpful in like how to like kind of create those processes to like ensure that, you know, we were approaching people in the right way and, yeah have it getting a proper head count yeah that can be a disaster um yeah oh god like my union we're still trying to hash out whether some people are in the union or not and like people will leave the company then this happens all the time right like one of the things you discover really quickly when you do unit organizing is that you're like management doesn't actually know how anything works or like even who's working

for them and what they do. They have absolutely no idea. And so you have to do their job and figure out what everyone does. What management would be so mad at you for saying such blasphemy. You know, look, if they didn't want me to talk negatively about them they should pay me more they simply do not pay any of us enough that's not a universal rule time to time yeah yeah but i i think that you know what's what's interesting about this shop too is it really seems like y'all just sort of speed ran doing a good campaign. Like you're doing all of the things that you get from good organizers,

but then, you know, every once in a while you just get a shop where it just kind of, everything just clicks and goes. It has been five months start to finish, which I feel like is significantly faster than most. Yeah. Most of that is just down to that. There aren't very many of us. And so talking to everyone hasn't been that crazy of an endeavor. Yeah. But I think probably in the first meeting or two, we just crunched the numbers and realized,

okay, we're not going to have any trouble uh having a majority but we have to and so the focus of our work went into making sure we do it right and learning to inoculate people and talk to people we haven't talked to yet and people for whom it would be a little more sensitive or uh more like in-depth conversation and uh educating ourselves on what starting a union actually looks like and iww has been very helpful providing these little trainings uh that i've i've been able to go to it's funny that they're on uh sunday afternoons and so i'm pretty sure i'm the only person at our brunch restaurant who doesn't work sunday afternoons so i've been going to those but yeah this is this is something that like i don't know i feel like it should be a thing that so i was at this will i guess will have

come out after the labor notice episode that i'm doing but something that i i i feel like i don't hear much discussion of in in union organizing that i feel like there should be is like fighting management on scheduling and like trying to fight for you know people actually a having consistent schedules and b not just having like i don't know like i i i i know a lot of people who find out their schedule on facebook like four hours before they have to go in. Right. Like that's insane. That is, that is, that is not a way for an industrial process to function.

Right. No. Um, thankfully that has not been one of our issues, at least, at least not systemically at Friday. Yeah. But, but, but it does make it hard to do intro organizational training because it's like everyone has weird scheduling stuff going on. So it's

hard to like, I don't know, I feel like it's an underrated barrier to getting a lot of people from different unions to work together is that no one is ever off at the same time. That's real. Yeah. Absolutely. I know it's been weird. I think there are a huge aspect of our

success i think is that um we have been able to like i think the unique part about the breakfast place is that it's not open from you know a.m to p.m um it's not open from 10 AM to 11 PM. Like a restaurant could potentially be open. We are open for breakfast. We're done at two on the weekdays. And adding in a standing union meeting at 4 PM once a week was very easy to add to everybody's schedule. I think the nature of the breakfast place lent to that working very, very easily. Yeah.

maybe need a little more persuasion that like, hey, no, don't worry. This is really happening and you can be a part of it. Even if you know that they're pro-union, kind of getting the ball rolling with people sometimes takes a meeting or two. And being able to have the peer pressure of like, hey, we're going to a meeting right now. I know you're not doing anything after this and I'll give you a ride. Helps a lot. Cause then they go to their meeting and they're like, wow, that was awesome. I never knew I could take control of my life in any way.

Yeah. That rules. There really is nothing like just being in a, in, in, in a place with a bunch of people who all are trying to, like, actually do the thing. Like, you know, I mean, and I think this is why, you know,

like, as we're recording this, like, a bunch of campus occupations are going, right? And, I mean, I don't know. God, hopefully by the time this comes out, they won't have all died horribly because this is getting recorded on, like, what day is it?

April 28th. So, inshallah ideally an inshallah this isn't being released into like hell world but yeah you know i mean i think one of the aspects of of of those camps is that like you're just there with a bunch of people who you get to talk to and organize with and it turns out that actually being there face to face with a bunch of people is just great and that's that's the thing that's the thing you can also like that you know as as much as like union work can just can be work right like you can be you sitting in front of a spreadsheet and going oh my god why won't this person respond like it's also

i don't know it's it's also like could be really great. And I don't know, you should, you dear listener should experience it because it rules. I couldn't recommend it more. It is the best feeling in the world. And yeah, so and I are addicted to it. To feel like you're actually doing anything real. Hell yeah. It's incredible that's yeah something

we heard from iw or iww friends is that like this like especially with how early in the process we are like how exciting that is to like just get everybody but everybody in a room and um feel like we're all working towards the same thing um and that you do get addicted to it and that's often where the union organizers came from was like starting their own and they're like oh i need to keep doing this i think i think that's a pretty good note to end on unless you do have anything else that you want to make sure we get to first. Yeah. Um, with like how early in the process we are, um, like after this comes out, like we will have like dropped our authorization cards and like actually started like the formal

process. Like we're still pretty early on, but, um, we already have, um, a fundraiser set up with like a local beer bar we're at, Worker's Tap. Hell yeah. And that's super exciting. And we're building our socials and probably have a GoFundMe for Strike fundraiser.

So yeah, early days, but very very exciting very purposeful days it's gonna be a big week hell yeah yeah where can people go to find the union and go to support you all well our socials are not live yet but alright so yeah this is being recorded

before things go live we will we will have the links down there yeah yeah we I think we're settling on the tag the username fried egg wu which we are saying foo about because you know you gotta you gotta you gotta make you gotta make this fun but yes we will be yeah we will be sharing that with you i'm glad you knew because i wasn't't sure if we had a handle agreed upon yet. Yeah, find us on the socials, FridayWU.

With it being early days and us not even being public yet, I've built those accounts, but they're not ready to go. So we're in this dead zone period where um we're we built the infrastructure for um a proper you know the proper election even though we are very hopeful that our owner would um will recognize us with you know the majority that we have but yeah we're uh our zero day is may day a couple from now, and we are very excited for that. Very much so. Hell yeah.

Hopefully it goes well. It will be in the past by the time this comes out. But good luck to both of you. And thank you both so much for coming on. Oh, the pleasure belongs to us. We're both fans. Thank you so much for having us on. Yeah.

And yeah, this has been naked happen here. I, you too can go experience the joys of organizing your workplace. So go, go do that or go to a student occupation or do both. I don't know. There's a lot going on. There are many places for you to experience the joy of organizing with other

people. So go, go do that. And yeah, you can find us in the usual places. I don't know. Sophie will probably be on in about one second. I in this ad pivot, not whatever.

Listen, this has gone completely off the rails. I have not had enough sleep. I know. No sleep for organizing. I found out that 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. 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, this is the podcast for you. We're talking real conversations with our Latin stars, from actors and artists to musicians and creators, sharing

their stories, struggles, and successes. You know it's going to be filled with chisme laughs and all the vibes that you love. Each week, we'll explore everything from music and pop culture to deeper topics like identity, community, and breaking down barriers in all sorts of industries. Don't miss out on the fun, el té caliente, and life stories. Join me for Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get into todo lo actual y viral. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Car Could Happen Here. I'm Andrew Sage of the YouTube channel Androism,

and I'm here with James. Yeah, it's me, Ian Ender again. Yes, once again. So I recently dropped a video on states, or more pointedly, a video that sought to define the state and its functions, synthesize its critique by anarchists, and basically understand the ways that states fail both society and nature so that we can let go of state's inevitability and think outside of it to realize the freedom and power of all the people. Most people aren't anarchists, unfortunately, but I've noticed that generally speaking, some folks are more receptive to anarchist ideas and others just seem to shut down without engaging with it earnestly or meaningfully. You get a mix of those reactions in my comments, though overwhelmingly toward the receptive side because, I mean, that's the kind of intellectual curiosity I try to attract in

my space. I mean, that's the kind of intellectual curiosity I try to attract in my space. But the more hostile reactions had me thinking about a book that I read many years ago and did a video on years after that was called The Authoritarians by Bob Altamire. So I want to take another look at the ideas in that book, because even though Altamire doesn't land on any truly radical conclusions, his scholarship, in my opinion, gets us closer to understanding the psychology of both authoritarian followers and authoritarian leaders. Also, rest in peace, I found out that he died when I was preparing this, just this year in February. But, uh, yeah, that aside, we'll be talking about the former first and that is what's up with authoritarian followers

let's get into it first we need some context so in the wake of world war ii social scientists sought an explanation for the evils perpetuated by the nazi government during the war theodore w adorno els frankel brunswick daniel levinsohn and nevett sanford published The Authoritarian Personality in 1950, proposing a personality type for the fascist follower ranked on an F scale. They particularly concentrated on prejudice within the psychoanalytic and psychosocial frameworks of Freudian and Frommian theories. Their work was highly critiqued, but it was also highly influential in laying the groundwork for our understanding of authoritarian personalities. In the aftermath of Adorno and Company's book, social scientists would continue to tweak, develop, and expand our understanding of authoritarian psychology.

Most notably, the concept would be refined by Bob Altamira. A Canadian-American psychology professor proposed the right-wing authoritarian personality in 1981. proposed the right-wing authoritarian personality in 1981. After numerous studies, Altamira presented his findings in his free book, The Authoritarians, in 2006. I had to clarify though, right-wing here is not being used in the context of the political spectrum, which is a concept that deserves its own scrutiny. In this context, Altamira uses the word right in the sense of the old English writ, an adjective for lawful and proper. Altamira defines authoritarian word right in the sense of the old English writ, an adjective for lawful and proper. Altamira defines authoritarianism as, quote, something authoritarian followers and authoritarian leaders cook up between themselves. It happens when the followers submit too much to

the leaders, trust them too much, and give them too much leeway to do whatever they want, which often is something undemocratic, tyrannical, and brutal. Unquote. I find this definition of authoritarianism lacking, but I'm an anarchist, so of course I would. To me, if authority is defined as the recognized right above others in a social relationship to give commands, make decisions, and enforce obedience, then I would define authoritarianism as a matter of degree to which you uphold the principle of authority. I think many people are at least authoritarian-lite because that's the status

quo, unfortunately. But more specifically, I think the people we call authoritarians are those which are especially invested in the enforcement or advocacy of strict obedience to authority at the expense of freedom and plurality. So right-wing authoritarian followers, or RWAs, are those which overwhelmingly support the established authorities in their society, like government officials, arms of the state, and traditional religious leaders. In North America and elsewhere, RWAs tend to be, or rather I should say high RWAs because the RWA thing is a scale, but the high RWAs tend to be, or rather I should say high RWAs, because the RWA thing is a scale, but the high RWAs tend to be political conservatives. However, that doesn't mean the authoritarian personality is exclusive to conservatives, nor is it exclusive to North America. But the scale is definitely

tailored to a North American and English-speaking audience, lending to its documented issues with translating to other regions. But with effort, I could definitely see it being adapted to other cultural contexts as well. And as Altamira argues, the concept of the right-wing authoritarian could equally apply to a society where the established authorities claim to be representing the left. So, what defines the right-wing authoritarian personality, psychologically speaking? They feature three primary traits or attitudes. For one, a high degree of submission to authorities who are perceived to be established and legitimate in the society in which one lives. Two, a general aggressiveness directed against various persons that is perceived to be sanctioned by established

authorities, and three, a high degree of adherence to the social conventions that are perceived to be endorsed by society and its established authorities. These traits are measured with the Right-Wing Authoritarianism Scale, or RWA scale for short. It's readily accessible online, so I'm not going to go through the entire scale point by point, but basically includes a mixed series of statements that folks can indicate their level of agreement or disagreement with. Statements like, our country will be great if we honor the ways of our forefathers, do what the authorities tell us to do, and get rid of the rotten apples who are ruining everything. Or, what our country really needs is a strong, determined

leader who will crush evil and take us back to our true path. And just to mix things up, a woman's place should be wherever she wants to be. The days when women were submissive to their husbands and social conventions belonged strictly in the past. As you could imagine, the degree to which you agree or disagree with these statements would place you somewhere along the scale. The lowest total possible score on Ultimae's version of the test would be 20, and the highest 180, but most people who hit either extreme. A sample of 1000 Americans in 2005 found that the average score was 90. Technically speaking, high RWAs are just people who score higher than the average population, so it's really

a relative term. Also, another disclaimer, in the context of psychological studies, personality tests can definitely make mistakes about individuals, so it's not a diagnostic tool for individuals to determine if they'd make a good stormtrooper. However, the scale can reliably identify levels of authoritarianism in groups. Also keep in mind that stuff like the interpretation of wording and foreknowledge of what the test is trying to measure can definitely influence results. Still, this tool has been used for most of Altmeier's research on authoritarianism, so it's good to be familiar with it. So now you may be wondering, how well does the RWA scale's

measurement of submission, aggression, and conventionalism map onto people's reality? So for submission, high RWAs tend to believe that people should submit to authority in almost all circumstances. So they put a lot of trust in the law and the authorities. Maybe not all authorities in every single circumstance, but they definitely bought into the concept itself. They're the types who trusted Nixon during and even after the Watergate crisis. Likely the ones in Germany in 1945 who refused to believe that Hitler was responsible for the Holocaust.

The type to rabidly support anti-terrorist initiatives, no matter how invasive. Throughout his research, Altmaier found that high RWAs are far more likely to tolerate police burglaries, drug raids without warrants, police crackdowns on peaceful protests, subversion via agents provocateurs, and so on. As far as they're concerned, father knows best. Their favorite authorities are above the law. But like I said, they don't always submit. Their blind support can be trumped by other concerns, but most times they're not big fans of holding officials accountable for their actions. They really don't care if a cop kills someone in broad daylight or someone drives through a crowd of protesters on the street. In terms of aggression, higher WAs aggress when they believe right and might on their side.

Right meaning their hostility is authority approved. Might meaning they have a physical, tactical, or numerical advantage over their target. They don't fight fair. And just like they go easy on authorities who commit crimes, they go easy on anyone who attacks people they're prejudiced against. But they definitely don't go easy on the people they hate they seek to sentence criminals to longer terms than average and they're some of the loudest supporters of capital punishment and if they hate one group bet your bottom dollar they probably hate other groups too you could call them equal opportunity

bigots chances are if they hate immigrants or trans people, those are not going to be the only targets of their ire. Their prejudice has more to do with their own personality than their target's actual attributes. Still, they don't always aggress when they think the proper authorities approve, just like they don't always submit. There are always more factors at play in any given situation, including a fear of counter-aggression or consequences that may halt their hostilities. Regarding conventionalism, higher WA's believe that everyone should live by the norms that their authorities have decreed. Multiculturalism, plurality, diversity, those things clash with what they consider correct

and what they consider wrong. They usually get their ideas from fundamentalist religions, so you'll find that higher WA's are strong advocates for the traditional family structure, with patriarchal husbands, submissive wives, and obedient children. They're also far more likely to support their government's patriotic version of various historical narratives. Most interestingly, their conventionalism even influences their response to the high RWA test itself. If they were told the average response for a statement on the test, they were far more likely to adjust their answers to the mean than most. When asked what they would like their own RWA score to be, low RWAs said they would

like to be low RWAs. Middle RWAs said they'd like to be low RWAs. Middle RWAs said they'd like to be low RWAs, but high RWAs said they want to be middles, not lows or highs. Why? Because they tend to rank being normal very highly in values tests. Also, just because they want to be normal doesn't mean they don't want to be richer or smarter than others. No, it doesn't mean they're necessarily going to drop their prejudices. They may get tugged slightly, like with the somewhat decrease in prejudice against gay people after the legalization of gay marriage. But their normal is often a measure of what's normal in their in-group. So if it's still normal in their in-group

to be violently homophobic, more than likely they will to be violently homophobic more than likely they will still be violently homophobic the conformity is the value rather than specific bigotry or what have you yeah talking of conformity andrew we have to conform to the needs of sponsors of this show right now and we're back. Yeah, so Altmaier has been lightly critiqued for rendering RWA as the dominant psychological account of authoritarianism. Of course, it makes sense that RWA has been the focus, considering that the study of authoritarian personality was born out of post-World War II studies of fascists. Right-wing authoritarians often favor established, absolutist forms of government and weaponize the presently dominating hierarchy to facilitate said absolutism. But there are authoritarians who also favor absolutist forms of government,

with slight differences, believing that the presently dominating hierarchy should be overthrown and replaced with their own. should be overthrown and replaced with their own. These have potentially been called left-wing authoritarians, even though the right and right-wing authoritarian didn't have anything to do with the political spectrum. Let's keep pushing. In Chapter 9 of the Authoritarian Spectre, Altmaier conceptualizes left-wing authoritarianism, or LWA,

as also composed of submission, aggression, and conventionalism. So essentially, LWA is a subcategory of RWAs. He's also quick to point out that not all leftists are LWAs. But, as he describes them, LWAs are revolutionaries who, one, submit to movement leaders who must be obeyed, a.k.a. submission, 2. have enemies who must be ruined, from capitalists to counter-revolutionaries, a.k.a. aggression, and 3. have rules and party discipline that must be followed, a.k.a. conventionalism. In essence, authoritarianism is psychological. RWAs support the established authorities, LWAs oppose them in favor of their own, but the underlying dispositional core is still authoritarianism. But the focus is on RWAs in general here. Considering these traits

submission, aggression, and conventionalism, it's clear that people with right-wing authoritarian personalities are rather dangerous. They find it easier to bully, harass, punish, maim, torture, eliminate, and exterminate their victims than most people do. They're more willing to join mobs and militias, more likely to blame victims for their misfortune, and more likely to condemn common criminals to long, brutal sentences in jail. They seem to have a lot of hostility boiling away inside them that their authorities can easily unleash. So we have to ask, what causes this? Why are they like this? According to Albert Bandura's social learning theory of aggression, aggression occurs after two conditions are met. Firstly, some feelings like anger or envy need to stir up hostility.

Secondly, inhibitions or contextual restraints against releasing that hostility would have to be overcome. Only then can the aggression erupt and flow. So let's discuss the instigator and releaser of authoritarian aggression. High RWAs are highly motivated by fear. Like, they have an extra dose of fear response in their genes, more than most people. They probably learn to be fearful from their parents about all kinds of things, you know, radicals, atheists, kidnappers, queer people, etc, etc. They grew up in a scarier world than most, which is probably why they tend to score so highly on the dangerous world scale. That scale, like previous scales, provides statements and measures

levels of agreement or disagreement with stuff like, quote, if our society keeps degenerating the way it has been lately, it's liable to collapse like a rotten dog and everything will be chaos. End quote. Any day now, chaos and anarchy could erupt around us. All the signs are pointing to it. End quote. Everything, to them, is a sign of the times, a perversion corrupting society. In peaceful times, and in generally dangerous ones, higher WA's feel threatened.

But what releases that aggressive impulse to act? Altamira found, more than anything else, self-righteousness. Of course, almost everyone thinks they're a bit more moral than average. But higher WA's, they tend to think they're the holy ones, the chosen, the righteous. That empowers them to isolate, segregate, humiliate, persecute, harass, beat, and kill. That self-righteousness, combined with their high scores on the dangerous world scale, is what empowers their prejudice, their heavy-handedness, their mean-spiritedness, and their eagerness to crusade against the other.

eagerness to crusade against the other. So, how do high RWAs become high RWAs? Are they born that way? Possibly. Do their parents make them that way? Somewhat, but not completely. You see, no one's a complete carbon copy of their parents. So what determines a person's position on the RWSQ?

Experience Our life experiences teach us lessons that our parents and peers may not. Our experiences with authorities shape our perception of authority. Especially when someone hits adolescence, they tend to chafe against authority, even if they're submitted to authority as children. Those hormonal urges, desires for autonomy, and new experiences could shake up their early lessons completely. Experiences could either end up reinforcing the authority's teachings or contradicting them entirely.

Naturally, it's easier for kids from authoritarian homes to remain authoritarian, and vice versa, but ultimately, experiences do most of the shaping. Middle RWAs have some mix of experiences and upbringing that keeps them in the middle. When it comes to higher WAs, their experiences were probably very controlled. Authoritarian followers usually live in a homogenous bubble of patriotic, traditional people. An echo chamber apart from the evils of the world, safely kept on a short leash for most of their lives. But there's hope yet. Autonomous research has shown that high RWAs can change if they have some important life experiences. That's why university can be such a game changer for people. It's just

meeting new people, leaving that small enclosed world and developing relationships with people of different walks of life and that makes a big difference. There are a couple traits that make higher up ways such good followers for would-be dictators. In short, those traits are illogical thinking, highly compartmentalized minds, double standards, hypocrisy, a lack of self-awareness, ethnocentrism, dogmatism. In long, well, consider syllogism.

All fish live in the sea. Sharks live in the sea. Therefore, sharks are fish. Logically speaking, the conclusion doesn't follow. Even if sharks are fish, and they are, the premises do support the conclusion. But if higher WA's were asked if the reasoning was correct, they were more likely than most to say that it was. When asked why, they'd answer, because sharks are fish. In essence, because they agreed with the conclusion, they assumed the reasoning was right. That simple test shows that if authoritarian followers like the conclusion, the logic involved is fairly irrelevant. Reasoning is what should justify the conclusion, but as far as they're concerned, the conclusion violates the reasoning. Of course, let me not overstate, a lot of people have trouble with syllogistic reasoning.

Higher WAs just happen to be slightly more likely to make such mistakes. But higher WAs generally have more trouble than most people do realizing a conclusion is false. They have a harder time determining whether empirical evidence proves or doesn't prove something. They more easily fill gaps in science with supernatural forces. And they have trouble being critical of anything unless they've already gotten their talking points from their authorities. Regarding the highly compartmentalized minds i mean we all have some inconsistencies in our thinking but their minds must be like oil and water one second they're saying free speech next they're saying ban critical race theory

one moment they're talking about individual freedom and next they're basically throwing the boot of the state they don't merge files in their brain to really see what fits. They tend to just pick up whatever their demagogues are saying. And if your mind is such a mess of contradictions, you're going to end up with a lot of double standards, easily justified by whatever idea you hold that's most convenient in the moment. Principles are really irrelevant. Keep in mind the excuses they make for those in power and how hard they are on victims. Classic example is the difference between how they treat a prisoner who beats up another prisoner versus a police officer who beats up a prisoner. The lower WA's usually

don't have such stark double standards. When it comes to hypocrisy, I'm going to keep using this example because it's still somewhat topical. Critical race theory. As much as authoritarians accuse the left of being anti-free speech, politically correct types, RWAs are far more likely to report a desire to censor ideas they don't like. This is also because they tend to lack basic self-awareness. If presented with a list of things right-wing authoritarians are likely to do, like be prejudiced, conformist, etc., and then ask how true it is of themselves compared to most other people, they really have no idea how different they actually are. And that's partially because of the bubble they tend to exist in.

Us versus them is a very hard line in the sand for authoritarians. Humans as a whole do have a tendency sometimes to fall into tribal patterns of thinking, but authoritarians see the world far more sharply in terms of their in-groups and out-groups than most. We do tend to associate with people who agree with us on many issues, but authoritarians really do stick to their bubble of validation and ethnocentric reinforcement. That's why they don't realize how prejudiced or aggressive or submissive they are compared to most people. By avoiding challenges to their beliefs and holding fast to their authorities, they remain stuck in a circular logic of I'm right because the people I agree with say I'm right.

Finally, in terms of dogmatism, higher WAs hold to unchangeable, unjustified certainty. Righteousness beyond a shadow of a doubt. They're more likely than most people to agree with statements like the things I believe in are so completely true I could never doubt them, and there are no discoveries or facts that could possibly make me change my mind about the things that matter most in life. I am absolutely certain that my ideas about the fundamental issues in life are correct. Meanwhile, they're more likely than most people to disagree with statements like, it's best to be open to all possibilities and ready to re-evaluate all your beliefs, and flexibility is a real virtue in thinking, since you may very well be wrong.

When you receive or absorb rather than contemplate your beliefs, you have no basis upon which to determine whether or not they're true. So you avoid challenges by staying in the bubble as much as possible, and when that can't be avoided, threaten out whatever token points you got from wherever. And if that dialogue tree fails, you can always fall back on your group's assurance that you are right. Now, you could challenge your beliefs, or you could insist you're right and retreat. What option do you think higher WA's tend to choose? Yeah, the double down.

Exactly. Dogmatism is by far the best fallback defense. But it's also the most blatant dead giveaway that the person doesn't know why they believe what they believe. Alas, higher WAs are only one side of the authoritarian coin. They're nothing without their leaders.

So next time, we'll be talking about those leaders. Those social dominators. Until then, all power to all the people. Peace. Cheers, Andy. 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 in 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 Blacklit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hola mi gente, it's Honey German and I'm bringing you Gracias, Come Again. The podcast where we dive deep into the world of Latin culture, musica, peliculas, and entertainment with some of the biggest names in the game. If you love hearing real conversations with your favorite Latin celebrities, artists, and culture shifters, this is the podcast for you. We're talking real conversations with our Latin stars, from actors and artists to musicians and creators, sharing their stories, struggles, and successes.

You know it's going to be filled with chisme laughs and all the vibes that you love. Each week, we'll explore everything from music and pop culture to deeper topics like identity, community, and breaking down barriers in all sorts of industries. Don't miss out on the fun, el té caliente, and life stories. Join me for Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get into todo lo actual y viral. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to El Carapane. I'm Andrew Siege of the YouTube channel Andrewism. Once again, I'm joined by...

James, and we're back again. I'm excited to learn more about authoritarian leaders this time, right? Yes. Last time we discussed the mind of the authoritarian follower, thanks to the research of the late Bob Altmeier. You should definitely listen to the previous episode, but in summary, we looked at his concept of right-wing authoritarianism, which refers to a personality type that features three primary traits or attitudes. First is a high degree of submission to authorities who are perceived to be established and legitimate in the societies in which one lives. The second is a general aggressiveness directed against various persons that is perceived to be sanctioned by established authorities. And the third is a high degree of adherence to the social conventions

that are perceived to be endorsed by society and its established authorities. We also speculated the roots of authoritarian aggression and looked at the mind of the authoritarian follower, which demonstrates traits such as illogical thinking, highly compartmentalized minds, double standards, hypocrisy, a lack of self-awareness, ethnocentrism, and dogmatism. Today, as promised, we're looking at the other side of the coin. We're looking at the leaders, but also what we can do to address both followers and leaders. So let's begin. In 1994, social psychologists Felicia Prato and Jim Sedanius presented the social dominance orientation test as a measure of belief in social inequality.

Social dominators agreed with statements like, quote, this country would be better off if we cared less about how equal all people are. And, quote, some people are just more worthy than others. and, quote, some people are just more worthy than others. While disagreeing with statements like, quote, if people were treated more equally, we would have fewer problems in this country. Fellow social psychologist Sam McFarlane took their test and 21 others, including the RWA scale, to determine which would be the best predictor of prejudice. His research found that only two of those tests, the social dominance orientation and the RWA, could do the job well.

But the thing is though, while both tests were able to identify prejudiced people, they were identifying different types of prejudiced people with very little overlap. Social dominators and high RWAs, authoritarians of two flavors. They have some things in common though, besides prejudice. They tend to support the same political parties. They tend to have shared economic philosophies, usually conservative on both counts. But they also have some huge differences. Starting with a desire for power. have some huge differences, starting with a desire for power. Altamira conducted two surveys with students that included the question, how much power, as in the ability to make adults do what

you want, do you want to have when you're 40 years old? In this sense, Altamira is using power in the sense of authority, as I would define it. They recognize right above others in a social relationship to give commands, make decisions, and enforce obedience. So the scale went from zero, meaning they don't care for it, to five, meaning their goal is to have a great deal of authority. Social dominators consistently wanted to have much more power than most people did. Authoritarian followers did not. Now obviously, people often want authority for different reasons

some more self-righteous than others but social dominators take thrill in authority in and of itself doesn't matter what the cause is as long as they can control others in the process there's another scale altamira uses the power mad scale on it social dominators agree with statements like it's a dominators agree with statements like it's a mistake to interfere with the law of the jungle, some people were meant to dominate others, and do you enjoy taking charge of things and making people do things your way? They also disagree with statements like life is not governed by the survival of the fittest, and we should let compassion and moral laws be our guide. Social dominators have some of the highest scores on this scale,

and high scorers tend to be intimidating, ruthless, and vengeful, with no care for nobility or charity. They despise empathy and have a dog-eat-dog mentality toward the world. They love the power to hurt in their drive to the top. High RWAs just don't have that drive. And while authoritarian followers might highly value group cohesiveness and loyalty, social dominators don't. Because like I keep saying, they're in it for themselves, for their power, and they will betray their own group if push comes to shove. Another area where social dominators and higher WAs

diverge is when it comes to religiousness. Authoritarian followers are usually religious fundamentalists, while dominators don't tend to be that involved. Some of them do go to church regularly, but that's for manipulative reasons. Because social dominators could lie they lie a lot all they have to do is pretend to be religious and say the right words and boom they get through the higher was reminds me of a certain politician i'm just gonna say this is putting me in mind of like donald trump tear gassing a massive crowd of people so he can walk to a church and then take photos outside and not go in. Yeah. Good times. There's another scale we could take a look at,

and that's the exploitative, manipulative, amoral, dishonesty, or exploitative mad scale. Unlike higher WAs, social dominators' anonymous responses indicate that they agree with statements like, there's really no such thing as right and wrong, it all boils down to what you can get away with, and there's a sucker born every minute, and smart people learn how to take advantage of them. Social dominators disagree with statements like,

it gains a person nothing if he uses deceit and treachery to get power and riches, and all in all, it is better to be humble and honest than important and dishonest. In essence, social dominators admit to striving to manipulate, to being dishonest, to being amoral and treacherous. They see their followers as suckers, fools to be controlled. But what else makes them different? Well, we could go back to the roots of hostility. Social dominators actually show greater prejudice against minorities and women than higher WA's do. But their followers are much more hostile towards LGBTQ people. Why?

Well, it ties back to the religiousness point and the higher WA respect for the law. Since attacks against minorities are less clearly supported by religious and civic authorities as they used to be, authoritarian follower aggression towards these groups, both overt or sneaky, had to be curbed a little bit. Meanwhile, social dominators are hostile because they already live in the apocalyptic jungle that hired W.A.'s fear, and they are the apex predator. They don't score highly in the dangerous world scale because they're not scared. They're the ones ready to weaponize that fear. Dominance is their first priority. For everyone they meet, they need a reason to not try to control them.

They don't care too much about the law either. It's just about not getting caught. They're not as self-righteous as higher WAs because they're quite immoral. And higher WAs aggress when they believe right and might on their side. Social dominators aggress because might makes right for them personally. Higher WAs hate crime out of fear and self-righteousness in the name of authority. Social dominators hate crime out of sheer desire to intimidate and control. Lastly, we need to look at the differences in their thought process. Social dominators, for the most part, do have a web of contradictions, weak reasoning skills, compartmentalized thinking, or gullibility that define higher WAs' mental life. They're not particularly dogmatic or zealous

about any particular cause or creed. They just want authority. They say whatever they need to say to get ahead because they have no consistent values. They'll be hypocrites like higher WAs, but they're probably aware of and fine with their own hypocrisy. For example, they're cool with wealth inheritance and corruption. They're opposed to welfare. They're unconcerned with income inequality or forced disenfranchisement. They're apathetic to racial inequality and injustice.

They believe that people should have to earn their place in society and they don't care if most of them can't. They still talk about how the only way to have a level playing field is to get rid of things like affirmative action. And part of what defines social dominators is their utter disregard for equality. So we have to ask again,

what causes this? Why are they like this? And well, social scientists just aren't sure yet. If we look at the life-shaping experiences of social dominators, they would probably report that deceit and cheating were good tactics because it led to what they wanted. Taking advantage of suckers felt great. They enjoyed having power and having people afraid of them. Life boiled down to what you could get away with,

and of course, the experiences led them to believe that life is a jungle. Dominators were probably rewarded early in their lives when they cheated, took advantage of people, weaponized fear, overpowered others, or got away with something wrong. Whether or not their parents gave them that outlook on the world, because of the psychological law of effect, they simply learned that being amoral, unsympathetic, and exploitative worked well for them. So what happens when higher WAs and social dominators work together?

In this field of research, the lethal union refers to the combination of happily subservient RWA's with social dominators who share their values in the driver's seat, eager to dominate and control. A death spiral union that develops all the time in the real world. As Altamira aptly described, quote, true, sufficiently skilled social dominators served by dedicated scores on RWA tests and vice versa, a very, very small percentage of people in Altamira samples scored highly on both RWA and social dominance tests. These are the double highs. If prejudice was a sport in the Olympics, higher RWA's would get bronze, social dominators would get silver, and double highs would definitely get gold.

Social dominators would get silver and double highs would definitely get gold. Now you might be wondering, how do they manage to score so highly on both tests if social dominators and higher WAs have so many differences? How can somebody be a submissive dominator? So there are a couple of reasons why a wannabe dictator would score highly on both tests. One is because some RWA scale statements are open to interpretation take the statement quote our country desperately needs a mighty leader who will do what has to be done to destroy the radical new ways and sinfulness that are ruining us end quote a follower would be like yes please and a dominator would be like here i am behold i am your leader double highs still score highly

on all the power scales like other social dominators and unlike other higher w's secondly double highs are the religious among the social dominators so they respond to these religious items on the rwe scale that other social dominators don't thereby significantly raising their rwa score i don't, thereby significantly raising their RWA score. I don't think I need to go into too much detail. I feel like I should be absolutely clear the double highs suck. Whatever the issue, they probably are on the wrong side of it. The worst of the worst, prejudiced, power-hungry, exploitative, mad, religiously fundamentalist, dogmatic, dangerous, worldist, a noxly fundamentalist, dogmatic, dangerous worldist,

a noxious stew of the worst of both social dominators and higher WAs. Regular social dominators might end up in charge of PTAs, HOAs, workplaces, local governments, and other personal kingdoms. Not all of them succeed in life due to the animosity they create, the obstacles they might face, or their lack of intelligence, attractiveness, or network to gain the kind of power they want. And some of them might even get caught in their lies and illegalities and don't have the capital to get out of it. Do you see double highs? They tend to have a head start. While regular social dominators have to fake their religiousness to get the support of higher WAs,

double highs can more easily get started in their own churches, already part of the in-group, sharing their prejudices, economic philosophies, and political lean-ins. Even if they are faking it a little bit, a double high already knows all the code words, dog whistles, and bible verses they need to get ahead. knows all the code words, dog whistles, and bible verses they need to get ahead. They know what stance they should hold about evolution, the role of women, abortion, school prayer, censorship, law and order, etc etc. Double highs run the show, you dig? Yeah for sure. So now what? Knowing that social dominators do whatever they can to hold on to power, and higher WAs are extremely resistant to change,

how do we deal with a situation where social change requires dealing with these people? I mean, you can't debate them. Even if you were to intellectually wrestle with a double high leader and utterly destroy them with facts and logic, their higher WA audience is not likely to change their minds. Trying to change highly dogmatic, evidence-immune, ethnocentric people is an exercise in frustration and futility. It's also hard to fight the sheer fear-mongering power of the likes of Fox News and Facebook, to combat the class and religious

roots of ethnocentrism, and to reduce the self-righteousness of their followers. It's even harder to convince them that they are being systematically misinformed and played for fools by their leaders. Even if they listened to these episodes or watched my videos or read Altmeyer's books, they would either get defensive or, honestly because a lot of them aren't self-aware, assume that this is about someone else. Finding a way to compartmentalize, misinterpret, rationalize, and dogmatically deny anything I've said so far. So, what to do? First and foremost, representation matters.

It's important that higher W's see more of the breadth and diversity of human existence and experience. Their reality is skewed and the visibility and representation of people from other backgrounds, not just in media but also in their personal lives, is very important. One thing studies have shown is that higher WAs who know a gay person are far less likely to be homophobic than their fellow higher WAs. And the best exposure to different types of people is through access to higher education, or more broadly, just any space with diversity. College may not necessarily turn them into committed revolutionaries, contrary to popular belief, but the environment of higher education has a

tremendously beneficial impact on higher WAs. Four years of undergrad experience can knock their scores down by 15 to 20 percent. Academic spaces need to be alive, vibrant, and most of all, accessible. And we need people in academic and non-academic spaces to embrace the power of influence. I don't mean this in a give them an authoritarian to follow kind of way. I'm not talking about like becoming a club president or ordering people around. I'm not thinking about hierarchical leadership,

but rather the natural influence of individuals who model exemplary behavior and provide an example for others to look to. People who freely lend their talents and knowledge and mentorship to others. In a conformity experiment in Harvard in the late 1940s, real subjects were surrounded by actors who deliberately gave obviously wrong answers to questions. Usually, the subjects went along with the wrong majority at least some of the time. But if, in another condition of the experiment, one other person gave the right answer, real subjects were much more likely to do the right thing even though it meant joining a distinct minority rather than the majority. So I'm saying that as the people who hold radical beliefs,

it's important to stand up. You know, you don't have to form a majority to have an effect. Two or three people speaking out can sometimes change the decisions of entire school boards, church boards, or other institutions. Obviously, reform is not going to be enough, but we do need to present some opposition on that front in that sphere. No lack of opposition teaches dominators to keep dominating, and it only takes one person to start the opposition, the domino effect that could potentially influence even higher WAs. Because at the end of the day, it's clear that they want to be quote-unquote normal. In their bubbles and their echo chambers, they don't really realize how extreme they are. They need to be exposed to the perspectives and experiences of people outside their tight circles.

Mutual aid and other organizing efforts can show them the humanity of other people, finding common ground and common cause. humanity of other people, finding common ground in common cause. But ultimately, in my view, the best long-term solutions require youth liberation and prefiguration. We need youth liberation both at home and at school and everywhere else. As long as we continue to reinforce the notion that children need to blindly submit to authorities, as long as we refuse to grant them humanity and autonomy, we will continue to be without humanity and autonomy. We will continue to have adults, generation after generation, who do not know how to resist authority. We must prefigure those relationships in our personal lives and our social spaces. But we must prefigure our liberation.

It's not enough to just campaign against social dominators. We have to dismantle the systems that allow them to dominate in the first place. The only way to keep social dominators from seizing power is to prefigure a system where no one person can so easily coerce and dominate. To quote Bob Altmeier one last time, we cannot secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity if we sit with our oars out of the water. If we drift mindlessly, circumstances can sweep us to disaster. Our societies presently produce millions of highly authoritarian personalities as a matter of course, enough to stage the Nuremberg rallies over and over and over again.

Turning a blind eye to this could someday point guns at all of our heads, and the fingers on the triggers will belong to right-wing authoritarians. We ignore this at our peril. Social dominators want you complacent, apathetic, hopeless, and out of the way. They want to control everything and everybody, and they have their loyal followers ready to mobilize. They are not the majority, but they are determined to win. Do not let them. If you know what's happening, if you spot these signs in your own spaces, it's your responsibility to do something about it,

to organize, to educate. Because one person could accomplish so much and two people could accomplish so much more. Good luck. All power to all the people because it could happen here. You can follow me on patreon.com slash stdrew. This has been Andrew Sage. Andrewism. It could happen here. You can follow me on patreon.com slash stdrew. This has been Andrew Sage,

Andrewism. Make it happen here. Hola Jazz. Peace. 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

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Check out betteroffline.com. Welcome back to It Could Happen Here, a podcast about it happening here. And, you know, when we talk about, like, collapse, things falling apart, there's very few case studies that are more important for folks to be aware of than what has happened and is continuing to happen in northeast Syria, in a region of the world known as Rojava or the autonomous regions of Northeast Syria. And I'm here with James Stout. He and I have both reported from the Rojavan Project. And we are talking again with Arthur and Debbie Bookchin about what's going on there now, kind of as the struggle continues, so to speak.

That's right. Thank you very much for joining us, Arthur and Debbie. And you're both here in your capacity as representatives of the Emergency Committee for Rojava, right? That's right. And thanks for having us. Yeah, thanks for coming back. So I think perhaps we should begin by explaining what ECR

is and does. I've been very fortunate to be asked to speak at one of your meetings. So I'm familiar, but I think maybe some of our listeners wouldn't be. So could you begin with explaining what it is, what it does? Yeah, absolutely. So the Emergency Committee for Rojava is kind of the only standing U.S.-based organization focused on solidarity with the Rojava revolution. And what we do is we try to build a grassroots solidarity movement with the revolution in northeast Syria, with the Kurdish freedom movement more broadly. And we do that in a few different ways. One is like just trying to inform the public. Right. So kind of public education. Another is advocacy, trying to sort of put pressure on the United States government to stop arming people who are trying to kill everybody in Rochefort and to support the people instead. But another thing that we do is try to build kind of movement to movement relationships, not like finding social movements in the United States that. government to stop arming folks killing the people there, which in this case refers specifically to the Turkish military.

I mean, we're all kind of dealing with, in a separate part of the world, how difficult it is to stop the United States government from arming people. Ain't that right? That's a great point, Robert. Yeah, that's a great point, Robert. You know, I think sometimes it's at least millions and, you know, Chinook helicopters, the Cobra attack helicopters, there is just a huge flow of arms from the United States to Turkey. And as Arthur said, you know, one of the things that we really do try and do at ECR is to get people not only aware, but also into doing some advocacy on that. to Turkey, which, as I'm sure your listeners know, are used in the bombing of people in Rojava and also in Turkey and in northern Iraq. So that's a very critical issue, in fact.

Yeah, yeah. And it's a critical issue in part because what we're seeing is a, I would describe it as a pretty concentrated attempt to destroy civil society in Rojava, right? Like you're not just through the use of airstrikes, through things like blocking off access to water, but the F-16s that Turkey purchases from the United States and the continuing armaments to keep those things flying and firing missiles are a huge part of how they're able to continue degrading the capacity of the self-administration to maintain civil society. Exactly. I mean, there is really an aim, their aim to completely destabilize the society, to shake confidence in the autonomous administration, to break morale, to engage in psychological terror,

and frankly, you know, also to do physical harm. As I'm sure you know, and your listeners know, Turkey very effectively uses drones and other methods to take out leadership, particularly female leadership, women who are leaders of the movement. And, you know, there's not a day that goes by, really, that doesn't include strikes from Turkey into Rojava. I mean, I'm just thinking, you know, the Manbij Military Council just has reported in the last couple of days that the state of Turkey has shelled various villages in Manbij, you know, that Kurdish neighborhoods in Aleppo are really subjected to continuous embargoes by the Damascus government, but also, you know, Turkey intercedes to prevent

supplies from getting to these places. So it's really I think there's something like more than 200 bombings by Turkey in Iraqi Kurdistan, even since just the beginning of the year. So it's really ongoing assault. No, absolutely. I think, you know, for people who are less familiar with it, it's easy to kind of get bogged down in the weeds because all the power, to its own ideology. You know, the idea that local communities would govern themselves pluralistically through autonomy is a direct threat to the idea of the Turkish state, which is basically a fascist nation state. And they kind of have a twofold strategy. I think you could see it this way, right? So, like, for those who don't know, Turkey has already invaded northeast Syria multiple times.

It's invaded Afrin in 2018, Serekaniye, Tal Abyad in 2019. And it occupies that territory still to this day. But when it's been unable to seize more territory directly, it kind of has this twofold strategy where the other side of the coin is to just do everything possible to make life unlivable. Right. So that's where the assassinations come in. That's where the sort of information warfare, blocking of water, sort of economic embargo. The basic idea is just to spread fear, to spread uncertainty into every sphere of life.

And like you said, Robert, to basically attack civil society itself. Yeah. I wonder if you could explain, I think our listeners are maybe familiar with the campaign against civil society and civilian targets that we saw, like in October, November of last year, I saw some of while I was there. But Turkey's recently launched like a spring offensive, right? Which isn't exclusively unlimited to

bombing uh but but also like contains uh like like i guess combined arms you know infantry bombing can you explain what's happening there and what the sort of i think the plan you've sort of very well summed up already right which is to make life unlivable for the kurish freedom movement. But can you explain what's been happening in the last few weeks for people who haven't caught up? So for one, for people to understand the connection in the first place, right, it's important to understand that really, while there are distinct organizations, which are autonomous and are place based within the Kurdish movement, right, there's their own parties and self-defense forces in Syria and in Iraq and other parts of Kurdistan.

It's important to see it also as kind of one big Kurdish freedom movement in another sense, and in an important sense because Turkey sees it in that light. So for the same reasons that Turkey wants to crush the revolution in northeast Syria, Turkey wants to crush the PKK, the Kurdistan Workers' Party, right? And the guerrillas of the PKK are based in northern Iraq. And time and time again, they've tried to sort of dislodge the guerrilla forces from the mountains, but it's pretty hard to do. You know, this is NATO's second largest military, and they still, after decades, have not been able to crush this insurgency. And so what we're seeing in recent weeks is not necessarily so novel. I mean, again,

you can get into the weeds about the region of Matina and a particular road that they're trying to seize for logistics on their way to the mountain of Gara. But the truth is they're trying to crush the movement where it is and they they're seizing an opportunity there's there's often like a weather window for the fighting in the mountains as well and so when the snow starts to melt in the spring you start to see an escalation of the fighting in the mountains which often winds down in in the fall again but it's yet to be seen how this is going to go i I mean, y'all have, I don't have to tell you, right? Like you've done some recent episodes on technological developments with the movement, and Turkey's been having a really hard time

making gains on the ground. And also, I mean, as I think, as Megan Bodette noted on this podcast recently, you know, the Turkish leader Erdogan tends to take out any insults he feels he's suffered, and particularly election setbacks, as happened in the local elections at the end of March, on the Kurdish regions everywhere in Turkey, Iraq, Syria. And so we're seeing also crackdowns, as has happened also for quite some time, but on journalists, again, sort of cranking up again. It's funny that on World Press Day, which was May 3rd, a Kurdish journalist was arrested, you know, stripped, searched, a woman thrown in jail. was arrested, you know, stripped, searched, a woman thrown in jail. And this is, you know, another sort of wave of politicians being arrested. Just again, on Monday, I think 13 politicians were sentenced to six years plus in jail, in prison. So this sort of policy that seems to show itself every time Erdogan feels a bit threatened is one that we're seeing right now, in part, I think, as a result of those election defeats

that his party suffered. Yeah, absolutely. And as sinister as it is, whenever they lose in the mountains, they often hit harder in northeast Syria and vice versa. So it's all just a big kind of ugly game that they're playing. Well, I want to get to some more here, but first we've got to take a quick break. We're going to throw to some ads and then we'll come back and continue this discussion. All right, we're back. And I'm trying to get a sense of how the situation is on the ground right now, despite the or considering the challenges of the attacks on infrastructure that have continued to go on? Like, what are we looking at from a daily life point of view in places like Kamishlo? Well, you know, one of the things that I think is important to emphasize is just how strong a lot of the civil structures really are, even in the face of these attacks by Turkey. And

I'm sure Arthur will have something to say about that and also about maybe some of the sort of the military side of this. But, you know, the extraordinary thing about Rojava is just how deeply engaged they are on the civil level. In our group at the Emergency Committee for Rojava is just how deeply engaged they are on the civil level. In our group at the Emergency Committee for Rojava, we're in contact with a lot of people in civil society. And I'm always amazed at how many sort of requests we get for, you know, exchanges of information and scholars, and they're building the university there to do more and more technical things, you know, whether computers or agricultural sciences or, you know, just a vast variety of graduate program they want to do right now in social ecology that I've been working with them on. And so even though there's this effort by Turkey to kind of terrorize the civilian population, and I'm sure, you know, people can imagine what it must feel like to have drones flying constantly overhead and wondering if you get into a car, whether you might, you know, be the subject of a drone attack. Nonetheless, there is still this extraordinary

sort of hopefulness and also energy towards building the society. And for example, one of the things that they recently did, and it took a long time, but they rewrote their social contract, which is what we would think of as a constitution, to empower women even more, you know, to empower various ethnic minorities more, and to make it a document that is truly inclusive in terms of how it was written and how it will be implemented. And so on the ground, I think even though they are suffering in a lot of ways, and they are, because, you know, Rojava is also a region that is subject to terrible environmental dislocations because of global warming, there's still a huge sort of excitement, I think, about the fact that

they are self-governing and the fact that they are empowering women and those kinds of activities, especially on the part of the women's movement, Congress, Star, just continue to go on. You know, they've built an alternative justice system. They are increasingly turning their sort of economy as much as is feasible. And it's a slow process, but into a more of a cooperative economy. So all of those things are very much underway there. And education is a huge part of that. No, I mean, that's also true. It really is. But just to speak to kind of the other side of that, you know, Robert, as of what what is life like say in a place like kamishla right now um you know i think in in some ways it's it's a lot like it was when when i was in a place called zirgon which is another frontline city where at the same time

debbie's describing people life goes on people trying to build up civil society they're trying to organize the communes and the cooperatives. At the same time, there's a tremendous fear and uncertainty, fear in an immediate sense around these drone strikes. I mean, you guys have been there too, right? Like I said, I've been home, I think 11 months now. And I still, every time I hear a small airplane, my body just, even if my brain knows that it's just a plane, like my body's convinced it's a Turkish drone. And imagine, you know, you live your whole life in a place like that or you've spent the last 10 years. So a lot of people are living in this constant state of fear and uncertainty, even on a practical level. You know, say you're a farmer and you're going to plant your seeds this year.

Do you know that you're even going to have your land in a month or six months? You know, people are taking Turkey's threat of an invasion seriously. It hasn't happened again since 2019. But I can tell you, I talk to people there almost every day and they're taking it extremely seriously. So there's kind of this idea of an impending invasion sort of hangs like a cloud over daily life in so many ways. And on top of all of that, of course, since I left Northeast Syria, there was this major wave of attacks against civilian infrastructure right around the time you were there last, James, you know, and you can probably speak to it more, But I mean, we're talking about power stations and oil wells and hospitals and schools and food storage facilities. So they're still really reeling from these infrastructure attacks. Cutting off electricity to a million people at a time and water supplies.

Which is about a third of the population of the region. Yeah. I mean, you know, war crimes. There's no other word for it. That's what they're called. Yeah. It's a very jarring experience, at least in my time there,

which is much briefer than the amount of time both of you have spent there, to go out in the daytime and talk to people and see this incredible optimism for we are building a different world and like it's there and you can see it and we're moving towards it it's not like you know we're building a different world when we have encampments on campus too but this is a tangible societal project yeah well and that it speaks to that's why the attacks turkey

is carrying out take the form they're taking, right? Yeah, absolutely. The priority, the primary strength of the self-administration is not in its arms. It's in its ability to provide a functional civil society that people are motivated to take part in, which is why their primary weapon is to try to destroy the ability of people to live. Yeah. And that's what it feels like like you know my experience with a brief you know we lost electricity every night uh people are not willing or people are less willing to go out and drive long distances after dark um there is very clearly damage to the infrastructure. You know, I was in a couple of different places. One of them was having issues getting water pumped.

There are massive funerals, right, for people who have been killed. And you get to see this beautiful spectacle in a sense, but also, like, you know, you can't spend a week in Rojava and not see a little baby say goodbye to their dad uh or or just a dead baby uh and uh that that's that's terrible you know and like the uh one thing that i noticed which i think people might not have picked up on just sort of consuming media the presence of uh people who about martyrs as they call them, right, Shahid,

it's everywhere. Like from the first place I stepped foot across the river, there were these portraits, these yellow and green portraits on roundabouts in cities and people's homes. The scale of the sacrifice, both to build this project and to defeat isis i think is very hard i mean the united states has been a war for most of our lives but it has nowhere near the same impact on our day-to-day lives as it has had there yeah that's so true there's not a family really in rojava when you spend some time there and you meet with different

people there's not a single family that hasn't lost somebody. I mean, it's 13,000 people in the fight against ISIS alone. And not to mention, for example, the 200,000 people who were displaced when Turkey's jihadi militias invaded Afrin, the westernmost region. Houthi militias invaded Afrin, the westernmost region. So it's absolutely a fact of everyday life. Yeah, every time I spend a lot of time volunteering at the border, as people listening know, and every time we meet Kurdish people, often they're from northern Kurdistan, which is in Turkey, under the control of

the turkish state i guess even like the volunteers who are not super briefed out before rajava who are just people who want to help like everyone knows what it means when people when you talk to people and they have the little green picture or the little little yellow picture on their phone which is it's it's a profound part of the lived experience of being part of the kurdish freedom movement or just existing as a kurdish person in that area and that's uh it's it's really hard to grasp the scale of that no it's so true i mean it just makes me think that it's kind of related to this larger sort of spirit of sacrifice that's part of what the movement calls like a revolutionary personality you know and in in a lot of ways, the families of, you know,

what they call the martyrs, they also see it as their sacrifice. It's their contribution to the movement. And it's easy for, I think, Westerners to kind of, I don't know, dismiss it or get really uncomfortable with it. We're not familiar with that on a cultural level as much. But I think it's a, to see it that way. I think there's something incredibly profound about it that has to do with the way that people really identify their whole lives, the meaning of their lives with the revolution, with the movement, that that's what, that is the purpose of their lives. That's the purpose of the life of their families, and come what may. That's something that, you know, movements here can't really

relate to in the same way yet, I think. Yeah. And I kind of want to talk a little bit more about that. We're going to throw one last time to ads, and then we'll come back and kind of flesh out this discussion. And we're back. Talking about what it means to be part of a revolution, as opposed to someone who has revolutionary sympathies, which it's easy to be. And we have a lot of those in the United States. I'm going to guess most of the people listening to this show have at least

some of those, right. Whether or not you think there's any realistic chance of, of seeing that during your own life. Yeah. It's, it's a very different thing from being from living it, which,

which people do, you know, about 3 million 3 million of them in Rojava every day. And the sacrifice is a part of it. The kind of continual conflict is another part of it. Because it's worth emphasizing, we're about a decade into the project right now. If we consider that being from the start of the self-administration in varying fashions. And that's not like – it's not a perfectly even process, right? Because it occurred as part of this series of broader conflicts. But what you've seen is both the retreat of the government that had formerly controlled the area.

You've seen a successful war prosecuted against ISIS. You've seen what you could look at as one conflict or kind of a series of conflicts with both these Turkish-backed militias and the Turkish military itself. And then also this continuing conflict, both with the environment, just because, just because that is really a – that's a force at work here. The Cold War that kind of – that's not even a really perfect way of describing the situation with the Assad regime and with, you know, their backers and their Russian government. But it's a complex interwoven series of conflict, but kind of the result is just a life of conflict for the people who are part of this revolution as sort of just a fact of daily life. And I think that is really hard to grasp.

I think that's true. And I think there's this part of it, like you say, that has to do with this sort of objective situation with the conditions that people are living in, this perpetual conflict that you're talking about. And at the same time, I think there's also an aspect that's more like, I don't know, like subjective, you could call it. It has to do with the kind of movement that they've really actively been building for themselves and the kind of spirit that their movement has taken on, and the kind of spirit that their movement has taken on, that they've cultivated themselves sort of painstakingly for years. I mean, I think one of the things that I know Debbie and I really want to get to in our conversations with the speaking tour that we're working on,

which is coming up later this month on the West Coast, is we really, while we want people to be inspired by this revolution, coast is we really, while we want people to be inspired by this revolution, we really don't want people to just see it as this very like other thing on the other side of the world. You know, even those who are really supportive, especially us, you know, anarchists or you could say fellow travelers, we have a tendency to kind of maybe oversimplify or romanticize what's happening over there and think, oh, well, you know, if the state could just collapse here, I'm sure everybody would just sort of like melt into an anarchist utopia of statelessness. And that would be a mistake too. I think the truth is that

what Rojava shows you is a real revolution is incredibly messy and they only were able to kind of face the threats and the opportunities that crisis brought to them in Syria because of the kind of movement they had built for themselves. And they had these practical tools to kind of help local communities govern themselves in that sort of chaos, in the power vacuum that arose. And, you know, in a moment like this, the world over, especially here in the United And, you know, in a moment like this, the world over, especially here in the United States, you know, where the crises that we're facing, the crises that we're looking down the barrel of, I think there's been no more kind of relevant or urgent time to think about how those lessons actually could apply here and what it means for us,

what kind of movement do we need to build to be ready for that moment? what it means for us, what kind of movement do we need to build to be ready for that moment? Yeah, you know, I really agree. And Robert, I'm glad you mentioned, you know, the fact that the revolution is over 10 years old, because I think, you know, and to follow up sort of just on what Arthur was saying, that sort of sometimes the crises that we face, environmental, ecological, global warming, and not to mention democracy itself, you know, can seem almost paralyzing or that we're constantly in a state of reaction. But one of the things that the revolution in Rojava teaches us is that, first of all, that moments of crisis can also be moments of great transformation, but really only if we're prepared for them. And that's why, you know, whenever I talk about the Rojava Project, I feel it's important to remind people that it didn't just spring miraculously out of nowhere in the moment of the Syrian civil war. The folks on the ground there had really

been preparing for years, I mean, decades even, for the opportunity that opened up for them during the Syrian civil war. And in various ways, of course, they were educating themselves on radical history, in particular, understanding, you know, the failures of classical Marxism, Leninism, you know, which had been embraced previously by the PKK, and putting also into practice clandestinely the kinds of grassroots democratic social structures that we see operating on the ground there today. So I think that that's one of the lessons that we here in the U.S. can absorb, that we need to be able to exploit the crisis of legitimacy that's growing here today by thinking about what kind of alternatives we want to build and showing

people that those alternatives exist. And that includes engaging in a kind of prefigurative politics that really focuses on things like dual power, cooperative economic project, but also local assembly democratic politics. So that's one of the things that I'm also really excited about talking about talking about as Arthur and I make our way from Seattle down to San Francisco and Oakland during the course of these six presentations and chats and talks and discussions that we're really excited about having beginning next weekend. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's provide people with a little bit of information on how they might be able to attend and take part in that.

So what should folks look up and look into if they're interested? And where are you guys going to be? Absolutely. Yeah, thanks. I think the best thing people can do is go to DefendRojava.org. That's the website for the Emergency Committee for Rojova, our group. But right there at the front page, you're going to see a poster for our tour that you can click on. It'll take you to links for all the different stops that we're going to do. We're going to be making our way all the way from Bellingham, Washington, which is up near the border of Canada, down to the Bay Area. And, you know, we really wish we could make more cities. There are a couple events that our comrades and colleagues are organizing on the East Coast around the same time frame.

So be sure to look up the calendar on our website. But people can go to defendrojava.org to hear more. But the basic idea, like Debbie said, is we want to talk to people not only about what's going on in Rojava, why we think it matters, how they can stand in solidarity, but we want to talk about what we're going to do in our own communities to take those lessons and apply them to our own context. We want to help connect people who are doing, you know, real community organizing in local movements and to try to kind of inspire and strengthen what's already going on rather than just to see this as being strictly about Rojava. Because, I mean, y'all probably were told the same thing when you're over there and you ask people, what can we do to support?

One of the things they'll tell you is you've got to organize the revolution at home. And that's on us. You know, it's easier said than done, right? And we're not saying we have all the answers. But what we do want to do is to invite local grassroots activists, especially, to come join the discussion. local grassroots activists, especially, to come join the discussion. And let's talk together about what it would mean to apply these basic principles, not to copy and paste them, but to apply these basic principles and lessons, principles of direct democracy, local autonomy, you know, cooperation, feminism. We haven't even talked about how central, you know, gender

liberation is to the Kurdish freedom movement. How do we apply these things in our own communities? Yeah. And one of the things, by the way, if people are interested in getting some more detail and a real inside look at what is going on in Rojava in detail, is that Arthur has two pieces in the magazine Strange Matters, which is also online, which are just terrific. And they're part of a series that he's going to be doing, I think, monthly over the next few months. And so that's some great background as well. Aw, shucks. Yeah, it's fantastic stuff.

Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, check that out. Thank you. Yeah, check that out. Obviously, folks, if you haven't, we've also got a podcast series, The Women's War, that covers the earlier history of the Rojavan Revolution up to about 2019, late 2019, which will cover quite a bit of the impact that kind of this sort of feminist lens has had on what's happening over there and how it's actually persisted, you know, under the conditions that are really kind of almost impossibly challenging when you look at what these people are up against, which is part of, again, I guess, ultimately why, as we've repeatedly come back to, I think this is so important for people in the West to study as things get worse for a lot of folks here. And

as we attempt to arrest and take charge of the situation in our own lives, you know, we have all these questions about how do we stop our government from arming not just Turkey, but all of these regimes around the world that are doing such terrible things? How do we stop? How do we arrest, you know, these problems that are continuing to affect, you know, really ultimately billions of people around the world? It's taking charge of our own lives in the same way that these people have. It's kind of making that slogan of the Roshavn revolution, you know, resistance is life, actually embracing that in a way that matters. And when you focus on sort of the challenges,

like the sheer amount of work that has to be done here, the very primitive state of any kind of meaningful resistance, the relatively primitive state of organizing on the left compared to, for example, the organizing that the right does in tandem with paramilitaries in the state, does in tandem with paramilitaries in the state. It can seem like an impossible challenge. But 10 years on, the people in Northeast Syria are still fighting. And I think you have to, I think paying attention to that makes it clear that it is actually possible to win. So true. Well, I guess that's kind of it for us today um is there anything else we want to uh i just wanted to go out on a better note yeah i'm writing a piece for kurdish peace institute

uh i'm manifesting this on the podcast so i've actually write it about uh myanmar uh kurdistan solidarity which i think is cool so like great topic. Yeah, I don't think we have a lot of time, but I think that one thing that I've learned from the friends in Rojava is that, like, even when you are going through difficulties, you can still stand in solidarity with other people. And God knows we're all going through difficulties in economic and political and state violence terms

in this country um and i think that like one thing i really took from that was that uh it's never too hard for you to be in solidarity and i hope that folks who are in this country will appreciate that and be in solidarity with people in Rojava as well. Absolutely. Well, Debbie, Arthur, thank you both so much for being here with us. And thank you for continuing to do the work that you do to,

to keep this topic alive in people's hearts and minds. Thank you all so much. Yeah. Always happy. Yeah. Keep up the great work yourselves. Thank you. All right,

everybody. That's the episode. We will be back tomorrow, unless this comes out on a Friday, in which case we might not be back tomorrow, but we'll be back, you know, Monday. You understand how this works at this point, right? It Could Happen Here is a

production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening.

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