It Could Happen Here - It Could Happen Here Weekly 161

Episode Date: December 21, 2024

All of this week's episodes of It Could Happen Here put together in one large file.  Anarchism in Paraguay feat. Andrew What’s Happening In Rojava The Madison, Wisconsin School Shooter Was A Columbine Copycat: Here's What That Means Who Is Running South Korea? Collective Media in the Second Trump Era You can now listen to all Cool Zone Media shows, 100% ad-free through the Cooler Zone Media subscription, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. So, open your Apple Podcasts app, search for “Cooler Zone Media” and subscribe today! http://apple.co/coolerzone  Sources: The Madison, Wisconsin School Shooter Was A Columbine Copycat: Here's What That Means ttps://shatterzone.substack.com/p/the-madison-wisconsin-school-shooter  Who Is Running South Korea? https://www.commondreams.org/news/south-korean-president-impeachment https://www.npr.org/2024/12/12/g-s1-37854/south-korea-yoon-martial-law https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/09/south-korea-ruling-party-accused-of-second-coup-as-opposition-pushes-for-new-impeachment-vote?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=bluesky&CMP=bsky_gu https://www.npr.org/2024/12/14/nx-s1-5228633/south-korea-parliament-impeach-president-yoon-suk-yeol https://www.npr.org/2024/12/11/g-s1-37718/south-korea-president-insurrection-charges https://www.dw.com/en/south-korean-military-faces-scrutiny-amid-officer-arrests/a-71092765 Collective Media in the Second Trump Era https://www.cawshinythings.com/ https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/help-launch-cawSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Welcome to Decisions Decisions, the podcast where boundaries are pushed and conversations get candid. Join your favorite hosts, me, Weezy WTF, and me, Mandy B. As we dive deep into the world of non-traditional relationships and explore the often taboo topics surrounding dating, sex, and love. Every Monday and Wednesday, we both invite you to unlearn the outdated narratives dictated by traditional patriarchal norms. Tune in and join the conversation. Listen to Decisions Decisions on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturne, Tales from the Shadow.

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It's hard to read the news these days without asking yourself, how did we get here? Fiasco is a history podcast from the co-creators of Slow Burn. In our first season, Bush v. Gore, we examined an unmistakable turning point in American politics, the 2000 election, which resulted in a high-stakes stalemate, ended with one of the most controversial rulings in Supreme Court history. So if you're trying to make sense of the present moment, check out Fiasco, Bush v. Gore. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Perdenti.

And I'm Jeme Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. If you're early in your career, you probably have a lot of money questions. So we're talking to finance expert Vivian Tu, aka Your Rich BFF, to break it down. Looking at the numbers is one of the most honest reflections of what your financial picture actually is. The numbers won't lie to you. Listen to this week's episode of Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple

Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everybody, Robert Evans here and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation of the wherever you get your podcasts. 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. Hello and welcome to It Could Happen Here. I'm Andrew Siege. I'm on Andrewism over at YouTube. And I'm not on YouTube right now. I'm on It Could Happen Here. And I'm joined by the disembodied voice of the one and only...

Garrison Davis. Yes. Well, one and only that I know of of unless there's another one going around, which would be freaky. There might be. There might be. But today I want to continue our journey through Latin American anarchisms and their histories. Now, compared to all the other countries I've discussed so far, such as Peru and

Chile and Argentina and Brazil, and Cuba. This one had a bit less information about anarchism in its past. So this will be a smaller sandwich of anarchist history, perhaps a fitting of the country that is sandwiched between Argentina and Brazil. I'm speaking of course about Paraguay, known for its fraught history of warfare, politically volatile landscape, series of dictatorships, and indigestively intertwined cultural and social fabric. Anarchism took root in this rather unique setting, and thanks to the work of Angel Capuleti

and a few other scattered sources, I've been able to piece together the history of anarchism in Paraguay. Without further ado, nos comencemos. For much of its early history, Paraguay's identity was distinct within South America. From its time as a Guarani settlement to its formation as a Spanish colony in the 16th century. Spanish Jesuit missionaries wielded significant influence and for over a century Paraguay was a self-sustained colony with a rigidly

hierarchical system based on the Spanish Casta system. Paraguay's economy primarily revolved around agriculture and cattle herding, unlike the mining economies in other Spanish territories. The Guarani people had a significant cultural impact throughout Paraguay's history, and their language and traditions remained central even as Paraguay evolved through the centuries. Even today, most of the population speaks some variety of Guarani alongside Spanish. Fast forward to the early 19th century, as South American nations began declaring independence from Spain, Paraguay took a unique

approach. Rather than aligning with the neighboring revolutionary movement, Paraguay, under the leadership of José Gaspar Rodríguez de Vede Francia, declared independence in 1811 and adopted an isolationist authoritarian path. Francia ruled as the country's supreme dictator for nearly three decades, envisioning a self-sufficient, climatic society. He strictly controlled foreign influences, banned European migration, and restricted trade. By the mid-19th century, Paraguay had built up a significant state infrastructure under Francia's successor, Carlos Antonio López. However, this era of economic development

was short-lived, as Paraguay entered the catastrophic War of the Triple Alliance between 1864 and 1870 against Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay over territorial disputes. This conflict proved disastrous for Paraguay, as they suffered staggering losses. Nearly 70% of its population died. Its economy was shattered, and its territory was significantly reduced. And yes, you heard me right, nearly 70% of its population perished, including most of its male population. In the war's aftermath, Paraguay was plunged into political chaos, economic ruin, and a period of foreign interventions. Due to the economic devastation of the war, the country became indebted to British creditors.

With that leverage, Britain pushed for the development of a free market economy and privatization, which brought Paraguay into closer contact with the global economy and eventually led to a more pronounced class divide and establishment of an exploitative agricultural export system. Land that had once been communally managed was swiftly privatized, driving indigenous communities and small farmers off their land and into the workforce of larger estates. On those estates, workers would find themselves in debt bondage, tied to the estates as small debts that workers owed to landowners would spiral into insurmountable debts that would become nearly impossible to repay.

Laborers, called peonies, were typically paid in vouchers or scrip that could only be redeemed at the estate store, where prices were exorbitantly inflated. Any attempt to leave or challenge the conditions was met with violent repercussions from estate managers, creating a cycle of economic entrapment that was essentially slavery by another name. Paraguay became a country of ever more wealthy and powerful landowners with a struggling rural working class. As the 20th century approached, the labour struggles and social divisions in Paraguayan society were glaring. Growing inequality, exploitative working conditions, and the dislocation of ambitious communities

created fertile ground for radical ideas among rural campesinos and urban workers. European immigrants fleeing political oppression brought with them some rather radical ideas that began to resonate with Paraguayan workers who were desperate for a way out of their circumstances. For a people who had survived centuries of oppression and authoritarian rule, anarchism had a unique appeal. By the 1880s, workers in Paraguay had begun organizing mutual aid societies, and one such society of typographers would organize themselves into a union, the first in the country's history, by 1886. That same year saw the rise of construction workers, carpenters,

tailors, postal workers, and baker's unions. Those bakers would also conduct the country's first ever strike action in October of 1886. The first distinctly anarchist publication I could find in Paraguay was organized by a group called Los Hijos del Chaco, who published a libertarian manifesto in 1892. They called themselves anarchist communists, and declared their intent to abolish private property, the clergy, the state, and the armed forces. Quote, We seek the complete emancipation of the proletariat as we fight to abolish the unjust exploitation of man by man.

We dedicate all of our moral and physical strength to overturn all tyrannies, to establish genuine liberty, equality, and fraternity in the human family. We seek to transform private property into a common good. We seek to do so because individual property is the basic cause of all the evils that afflict us. It is on that basis that the dregs of humanity—government, clerics, lawyers, militaries, entrepreneurs—maintain themselves in power, live as parasites, and to continue in enjoyment of their plunder finances large armies with the products of our labour."

Even prior to that manifesto, anarchists were making moves in the graphic, railway, and beacons unions as early as 1889, fighting for and winning the 8-hour workday by 1901. Strike actions in this period were focused on that goal alongside wage increases and other improvements to working conditions. The anarchists also tried to establish a national trade union center, but unfortunately did not succeed. In 1892, thanks in part to the growing Spanish and Argentine immigrant populations, there

was a wave of libertarian union formation throughout Paraguay. The anarchists were also quite successful among the peasantry, as they helped organize armed resistance societies to aid in their struggles against the landowners. Anarchists also managed to establish Rafael Barrett Cultural Center in the early 90s, hosting an impressive collection of books by fellow Paraguayan and foreign writers, and emboldening the formation of even more trade unions. Rafael Barret, by the way, is one of the most significant figures in Paraguayan anarchist history, according to every account I've read. Born in Torre de Vega, Spain in 1876, Barret's early life was typical of a world's new intellectual.

He studied languages, piano, and eventually engineering. By his late 20s, he was drawn to Latin America, partly by adventure and partly to make a difference, driven by a growing commitment to justice and solidarity. He arrived in Buenos Aires in 1903, where he found work as a journalist, soon making waves with an article that condemned the stark inequality he observed in Argentina's capital. This critique cost him his job. Yet it deepened his dedication to speak for those who were voiceless. Barak's experiences of seeing European immigrant workers toiling under brutal conditions fueled his indignation against unchecked wealth and poverty's vicious hold on the working class.

In 1904, Barak made his way to Paraguay. He was initially welcomed as a correspondent for El Tiempo and even held government positions, including as the director of the Department of Engineers and the Railroad Agency. But his commitment to exposing the country's political and social rot soon put him at odds with Paraguay's new liberal government. He saw that simply swapping out conservative leaders for liberals did little to improve conditions for ordinary Paraguayans. As demonstrated by the continuous labor struggles that arose in response to the industrialization

undertaken by the liberal government, workers were fighting to abolish child labor, improve their conditions, increase wages, and so on. He couldn't stand by in silence. So he resigned from government service, now fully committed to social justice, even as his growing radicalism began to alienate the political elite. Barrette's personal experiences sharpened his perspective, transforming him from a sympathetic observer to a dedicated anarchist. His writings in Freminal became essential reading for workers and peasants alike, urging them to see beyond superficial reforms and to challenge the entire structure of oppression. Barret condemned the government's abuses and spoke out against exploitative systems

that kept the majority of Paraguayans marginalized. He was a fiery advocate for social justice. And one right in particular, Agostor Roabastos, called him the discoverer of Paraguayan social reality. Because Barret didn't just observe these injustices, he threw himself into exposing and condemning them with fufa. His impact was so significant that even when he was forced to flee Paraguay in 1908 under Gulfon pressure, his ideas endured. His health was deteriorating from tuberculosis, but he continued

to write, receiving support from intellectual comrades in Uruguay and Brazil. His final years were just a continuation of his relentless dedication, even as his health continued to decline. In 1910, he went to Paris to seek treatment, but his health failed and he passed away in December of that year. But just before Barrett's exile and passing in 1906, the anarchists would form the first and for some time only Workers' Federation in the country, by joining together the illustrators, carpenters, and drivers' unions. Rafael Beret actually became something of a thought leader for this group. And this was the Federación Obreras Regional Paraguay, or FORB, partially

inspired by the Federación Obreras Regional Argentina, or FORA, where they borrowed many of their programmatic ideas. If you recall the episodes I did on Argentina, you know that the reasoning for the name was ideological. By adding the adjective regional, it made plain that the country in question, whether Paraguay or Argentina, was not being considered a state or political unit, but a region of the world in which workers struggled for their liberation. Soon after its founding, on the 1st of May 1906, the F.O.R.P. held the country's first

International Workers' Day demonstration, despite police attempts to shut it down. F.O.R.P. also launched their official publication, El Despertar, in the same year, and the paper carried articles about the anarchist movements in Europe and Latin America, printed works by authors such as Peter Kopotkin and Selma Lorenzo, published reports of the Forbes activities, named and shamed the known strikebreakers, and encouraged its members to pay their union dues promptly. Subsequent years would introduce other libertarian newspapers such as La Rebellion, La Tribuna, and Asiel Futuro. After the 1908 coup by Emiliano Gonçalves Navarro destabilized the economy and restricted

Asuncion's labor movement, anarchism still found strength among rural and tenant industry workers. Despite increased hostility from figures like Presidents Gondra and Jara, labor strikes continued, which were met by feish repression, arrests, and forced deportations. With the outbreak of the Paraguayan Civil War from 1911 to 1912, anarchists and other labor organizations faced a government crackdown. Groups like the FORP became inactive, temporarily at least. By 1913, in the wake of the war, a schism was emerging as some unions moved toward reformist

ideologies, influenced in part by the populist Colorado Party. Meanwhile, FORP reaffirmed its anarchosynicalist roots, forming a federal council that included both workers and intellectuals, aiming to rekindle its union activities amidst a wave of reorganization. Post World War I, a new surge in demand for Paraguayan exports revitalized labor activism. In 1916, the Coop, or Centro Obrero Regional del Paraguay, took on the role of championing anarcho-syndicalism and labor rights. This movement gained support from a wide network, launching influential

publications like El Combate and Renovación. Other groups like MEDE and the Revolutionary Nationalist Alliance, which sought a federalist union of the people to Latin America, also took part in the resurgence of anarchist ideas. In 1922, the Paraguayan anarchists were able to finally establish links with the International Workers' Association. By the 1930s, Sirriaco Duarte emerged as a prominent voice, advocating for workers' rights despite, you know, everything. He was a protégé of fellow anarchist and printmaker Félix Cantalicio Aracuyo, a Paraguayan mestizo of mixed Indigenous and Black ancestry. At one point, Aracuyo and his comrades had helped organize a tram workers' strike in Asuncion, which compelled the government to round them up and dump them in the middle of the jungle in Mato Grosso, hoping that they would die.

And yet Arakuyu and his friends made their way through over a thousand three hundred kilometers of mountain jungle, surviving on roots, fruits, and game, to make their way back to their hometown of Encarnacion. And speaking of Encarnacion, both Duarte and Arakuyu took part in the little known attempt at an anarchist uprising in Paraguay, which was actually centred in Incarnacion. On the 20th of February 1931, a group of 150 workers and students, organised in a couple popular assemblies, took control of the city of Incarnacion with the goal of establishing a libertarian commune, part of a plan to spark a wider anarchist-syndicalist revolution in Paraguay.

This was the culmination of a series of strikes and widespread leafletting by anarchists and students in support of revolution. It wasn't meant to be centred in Encarnacion, as there was a planned construction worker led Donald Strichen and Suencion and similar action Villarrica and Concepción, but key organizers in those struggles in those cities were deported in the days leading up to the action. So those planned actions ended up failing. After 16 hours, when their efforts were not reinforced by workers and the rest of the nation, the Interactionists of Encarnación took over two steamboats and made their way

along the river to Brazil, but not before they attacked the aerobatic companies and burned the records related to indentured laborers in two ports. Their solidarity never died. Even after they went through everything they went through, they didn't lose their sight on what really mattered. Sadly, the 17 students and workers who remained in Encarnacion were arrested. Duarte found himself jailed and interned on Margarita Island after Liberal Party President José P. Guguiarri outlawed trade unions. Other revolutionaries were dropped off in the jungle

to die at random points along the Parana River. Seven of the captured 17 met this feat, and the other ten spent a few months in prison before being deported to Argentina. Movement then faced distinct challenges during the Chaco War from 1932 to 1935 between Paraguay and Bolivia, which halted much of the anarchist activism. Many anarchists joined the war effort reluctantly, including Duarte, who performed duties in the Reagard while working as a typesetter for various presses, including anarchist presses. With the Paraguayan victory, following the war, the return to domestic concerns saw a resurgence of anarchist and labour activities. The government's crackdown of leftist ideologies in the late 1930s and 1940s under President

Mori Niko's rule led to severe repression of anarchist and syndicalist groups. Duarte spent some time as a worker representative at the National Labour Department, or DNT, who was under considerable fire from the communists, who had taken hold of the trade union movement after anarchism waned in popularity. He finally resigned from his post in 1941 after a workers coordinating committee of seamen, tram workers, bakers, print workers and other trades issued a protest note to President Mourinho, threatening to withdraw from the workers' delegate for the infringement of their rights of assembly, to unionise and to strike.

Of course, their protest note was completely ignored. The president's authoritarian tenure pushed several anarchist and socialist organizers into exile. Duarte himself ended up in exile in Argentina by 1942, but eventually was able to return and reclaim his appointment as a worker representative. But then, not long after, he became a victim of a police crackdown during the 1944 general strike. After the labor movement was hijacked by the Republican Workers' Organization after 1947, Duerte dropped out of trade union activity entirely and refocused to publishing articles

in trade union publications abroad and urging research into Paraguayan trade union history. He had faced repeated arrests and took part in strikes anyway, advocating for workers' rights across various industries. He continued his activism against fascism and authoritarianism, operating from Argentina at times, while still supporting strikes at anarchist literature in Paraguay. The 1954 ascension to power of General Alfredo Streisner marked a significant period of intensified authoritarianism. Streusner's regime violently suppressed opposition, including anarchists, for over three decades. Even in his 70s, during the 1970s, Duarte was harassed by Streusner's secret police. Many other anarchists were imprisoned, exiled, or disappeared by

Streusner, who imposed tight control over unions and labour organising. The 1954-1989 dictatorship of Streusner stifled anarchist activities severely and forced them underground, where they would have to preserve anarchist literature and ideas through secret print publications and solidarity movements. The result of this dictatorship was that anarchism in Paraguay experienced resurgence much later than other Latin American nations, with the spark rekindled only in the early 2000s. This reboot of anarchist sentiment emerged largely within the punk counterculture and youth-led social movements, often interconnected with struggles for Indigenous rights, economic justice,

and environmental causes. The establishment of spaces like La Terraza and Anarchist Squad provided platforms for activists and community engagement, while publications such as Autonomia, Zine, and Grito Fanzine disseminated anarchist ideals. Despite Paraguay's history of anarchist repression, these newer movements, however small, signify some small hope for a renewed interest in the material ideas within Paraguay, one that can be seen even more virulently in other parts of Latin America. Paraguayan anarchists have shown us that the drive for freedom and equality is a daily commitment to defy tyranny and resist exploitation.

Despite facing decades of silencing and the destroyers and dictatorship, anarchism did not disappear. The seeds of resistance lay dormant, but they are ready to bloom again as new generations can take up the struggle. As we conclude, let us remember the words of Raphael Barrett, who fought tirelessly for the people he came to call his own. Justice, justice above all things. Justice even if it costs blood. All power to all the people.

Peace. Welcome to Decisions Decisions, the podcast where boundaries are pushed and conversations get candid. Join your favorite hosts, me, Weezy WTF, and me, Mandi B, as we dive deep into the world of non-traditional relationships and explore the often taboo topics surrounding dating, sex, and love. That's right. Every Monday and Wednesday, we both invite you to unlearn the outdated narratives dictated by traditional patriarchal norms.

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Tune in and join in the conversation. Listen to Decisions Decisions on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome, I'm Danny Threl. Would you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnal, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora.

An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. No. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturna, Tales from the Shadows, as part of my cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Hey everyone, it's John, also known as Dr. John Paul.

And I'm Jordan, or Joe Ho. And we are the BlackFatFilm Podcast. A podcast where all the intersections of identity are celebrated. Ooh, chat, this year we have had some of our favorite people on, including Kid Fury, T.S. Madison, Amber Ruffin from the Amber and Lacey Show, Angela Carrasso and more. Make sure you listen to the Black Fat Fam podcast

on the iHeart Radio app, Alpha Podcast or whatever you get your podcast, girl. Ooh, I know that's right. I'm Dr. Lari Santos. I'm a psychology professor at Yale, and I started to notice that a lot of my students weren't all that happy. So I created a new class. Welcome everybody to Psychology and the Good Life. It became the biggest class in the history of Yale.

I'm a little bit surprised to see as many of you are here as are here, but that's great. But it's not just my students who need to understand the science of wellbeing. And that's why we launched the Happiness Lab, so you can learn about it too. Are you ready to feel happier? Head to the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or if you like to listen. Brought to you by the 2024 Subaru Share the Love event, now through January 2nd. Hi everyone, and welcome to the podcast. It's me, James, today, and I'm joined by Dani.

Dani's an engineer and photographer who lived in Northeast Syria from 2018 until 2023 and a founding member of the RIC, which is the Rojava Information Center, if you're not familiar. And she worked for the Self-Administration and Civil Engineering while she was there. Welcome to the show, Dani.

Hi, James. It's really good to be on. Yeah, cheers. Thanks for thanks for coming. I know it's like a stressful time. So what I thought we would do is there's been a lot of reporting on Syria that people have probably seen if they're living in the US or the UK. Nearly all of it has either excluded or like footnoted what's happening in North and East Syria and specifically in the areas that are under the self-administration. So I was hoping today we could give people a little more introduction towards what's happening there. There's been a lot of jubilation about what's happening in Syria,

and things have been very far from universally positive. There's a massive displacement of civilians, ethnic cleansing of areas that have been captured by the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army, and genuine peril for the self-administration project, the like of which we haven't seen for a long time. So perhaps if listeners aren't familiar, would you give them the real basics of the self-administration of the AANES and what it means and what's going on there? Yeah, well that's a big, because it's a big project. It's been going on for quite some time.

Yeah, it's kind of been lost in discussions and news about the Syrian civil war, because it has been such a complex, multipolar, multi-access, multi-ethnic conflict. And it's been going on for, what, like 13, 14 years now? Yeah. Coming up to 14 years. The Kurds in the northeast had been preparing for some time before the outbreak of civil war back in 2011 for something like this. Obviously they didn't know this was going to happen but they had been working on revolutionary

emancipation for decades and in particular since around 2000 they've been working on this concept of democratic confederalism which is moving away from a sort of what they call an old paradigm of Marxist-Leninist thought to this system they've now quite effectively built up there where democracy is bottom up, it's structured around small communes and self-organizing units, cooperatives. There's a market economy but it's not a capitalist economy where there's sort of radical emancipation of oppressed peoples, particular women, who are really centered in the revolutionary process and organizing that. And I think because they, maybe you can't call them conflict avoidant, to peoples, particular women, who are really centered in the revolutionary process and organizing that. And I think because they, maybe you can't call them conflict avoided,

like they haven't avoided conflict, they very famously defeated ISIS amongst other groups in the northeast. They fought against Al-Nusra Front and various other jihadi groups. They also didn't enter into serious conflict with either the FSA as they were or the regime and the Assad regime. And so they kind of managed to carve out a sort of democratic and semi enclave, I mean people would describe it as a statelet and they quite vehemently say it's not a state in the northeast of Syria, whilst the worst of the fighting was between the Assad regime and the FSA and groups that came out of the FSA in the west and south of the country. Yeah, I think it's a very good summary.

I think it gets missed maybe because of how relatively successful it's been compared to other democratization projects within Syria, it gets missed that when people are talking about what will happen in Syria now, bizarrely, I don't quite understand how we get here, but people seem to go to Libya, or I understand how we get here through a process of orientalism and ignorance. But we have a functioning democracy, an example of, like, it's not just Kurdish people, right? It's lots of communities living together in North and East Syria.

And because of democratic confederatism, they're able to coexist and still feel they have enough sovereignty to be safe. Is that fair? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think something that is hard to convey or fully understand unless you spend a lot of time there or you're deeply involved with any of these communities is quite how hard that was to do.

Yeah. A lot of the different ethnic groups, political groups that hate each other, you know? Yeah. The Kurds, they brought in lots of different policies like the right to be taught in your mother tongue. When they took power 2012 onwards, they were very keen not to just sort of replace everything with Kurdish, make it a Kurdish state, you know, start being the oppressor instead of the oppressed. They made sure that they continue using Arabic as the majority language because it is the majority language. The north and east of Syria is still an Arab majority area. And this is despite the fact that

they've been pretty horrendously oppressed by the Arab population through the Ba'ath party and its oppressive systems for decades. So it has been a pretty hard ongoing process to negotiate and to put aside pretty serious conflicts between quite a few different groups that exist there. Yeah, it won't be any easier across the whole country than it was there. But they have a system that works and it's kind of frustrating to see these discussions of what happens next that just ignore the fact that there's a functioning multi-ethnic democracy right there.

So if we just look at women's liberation, I've reported from lots of places around the just ignore the fact that there's a functioning multi-ethnic democracy right there. If we just look at women's liberation, I've reported from lots of places around the world, lots of places in that part of the world, and the difference is profound in everyday life. It's not just a rhetorical commitment. At least my impression as a man is that this is a revolution by women, not a revolution. It's about women. It's not a revolution by men that like seeks to liberate women, says it's going to liberate women, you know, with the US invaded Afghanistan saying it's going to liberate women and look what we got. And like the difference in just the way people are able to like every aspect of everyday life is completely different. But that's in danger right now. The narrative, I guess, that people will be familiar with from Syria is that the state has been defeated, the Assad regime has been defeated, and that therefore the revolution has succeeded. But the Assad regime is not the only state in play

in Syria, right? So can you explain the Turkish antipathy to the project in North East Syria and how that's manifesting itself currently? Yeah, it's pretty hard to discuss any of this stuff without talking about Turkey and without understanding where they're coming from. And I think it's something that isn't said enough or understood enough that the modern state of Turkey is an ethno-nationalist project. And I don't say that as a slur, that's like a basic founding principle of the state. It's a state founded on genocide and the mass forced demographic change across the whole country. And it's continued that way and there have been reforms for sure. But that's still a founding principle.

And even now, sort of speaking a non-Turkish language in the Turkish parliament is a pretty serious violation. Yeah. And the size of Turkey, the size of its economy, the size of its military, the regional power status they have in the Middle East means that they have an enormous gravity. They have an enormous amount of power over Syria. A lot of the goods and services that Syria relies on come in through Turkey or rely on on Turkish industry. And the Turkish military is a huge supporter of the groups in the northwest,

like Hayat-e Al-Sham and the Syrian National Army. And of course, the Kurdish question within Turkey is the main reason for their antipathy towards what's been built up in Northeast Syria. As much as the self-determination for oppressed people as minorities is something that's an issue, the fact that it's Kurdish-led, and in particular, it's emancipatory for Kurdish people

threatens this ethno-nationalist aspect of their state. And they kind of, they see it as something that needs to be nipped in the bud, right? And they've sort of done that with northern Iraq, the Kurdish region of northern Iraq, by essentially vassalizing the KDP, the main party there. And they know they can't do the same in North East Syria and the military option is their best chance, their best hope of upping Kurdish emancipation and Kurdish self-determination in the bud and preventing it from sort of snowballing across the region. Yeah, I think we should probably mention that, like, I guess, if we talk about like the electoral method or the electoral path, people in Turkish Kurdistan, in Northern Kurdistan, if you want to call it, in addition to the armed struggle, which has been there since 1984, they

have also like, tried to vote and repeatedly seen their votes ignored or changed or their elected officials removed. This is within the last year, I'm not talking about back in the 80s and 90s. Turkey has been aggressively attacking any attempts at self-determination within the country and then, as you say, militarily attacking the Kurdish freedom movement within North East Syria. Do you want to talk about the Syrian National Army or the Turkish back Free Syrian Army? Whatever you want to call them and explain like I think part of what we're dealing with is like that Turkey has a very well established state media project and they seem to do very well and like creating viral social media content

so people might not be fully familiar with who the SNA are and specifically like Turkey's role in creating them. Do you want to explain that a bit to people? Yeah I mean this is one of the reasons why I think it's so hard for people to report on the Syrian Civil War. It's very hard to convey like a simple coherent narrative of one side versus the other, you know like Ukraine versus Russia, the Russian world and Ukrainian world, because there are so many different groups in the SNA, it's an important one, and they're grouped together with this concept of the rebels that have liberated Syria.

Despite the fact that they're not actually part of Hayat al-Sham, the liberation movement, as it calls itself, that have taken over Syria. Yeah, the Syrian National Army, it's kind of like a loose collection of various, some of them call themselves brigades or groups. It's essentially a military proxy force of Turkey. They don't have a coherent political framework. They're not revolutionary groups. They're not liberatory or emancipatory. They wouldn't describe themselves as that in the same way that maybe HTS would. I mean, the Kurds in North East Syria describe them as gangs, which kind of sounds like a propaganda term, but when you actually look

at what they do, they really are like a sort of a criminal enterprise, a criminal gang that's used as a convenient proxy force by Turkey. Because ultimately Turkey has like a massive military. Their navy is quite underfunded and not particularly well-staffed. The air force has suffered pretty seriously from the fallout of the coup in 2016. But the army is massive, it's relatively well funded, and their drone program is huge. The thing that they struggle with is the losses that are incurred against Kurdish groups, particularly the PKK in the mountains

between Iraq and Turkey. And they need to control that because they realize that they've been fighting militarily, the Kurds as you say, since the early 1980s. And they can't have a Vietnam situation of a mass movement against their military occupation and against their military efforts in Syria. They can't afford financially or politically to get into a quagmire there. And so by funding this sort of collection of groups called the SNA, that's their way of being able to incur pretty massive losses without having

to report on it without that creating unrest or opposition within the Turkish population of Turkey. Right. And I think especially when some of the things the SNA have done, which we can maybe get into in Manbij, it gives them a deniability that wouldn't exist if that was regular soldiers doing that, like some stuff which is war crimes is, I guess, a nice way of saying it, like a more sanitized way of saying it, but horrific stuff, really terrible stuff. This has been happening since at least 2018. But Turkey doesn't have to be held accountable for that. Because like you said, it's not Turkish. It's not the Turkish army. Do you want to explain how the situation in North Syria has changed since, when was it,

like two weeks ago, a week ago? I guess that they moved south from Aleppo and the HTS largely with some support from SNA moved towards Damascus and then the SNA launched its own assault on the South administration. Can you explain a little bit of what's happened there in terms of displacement and in terms of the terrain that the SNA have captured? Yeah, it's been very fast moving. As you say, it's only been two weeks since the Battle for Aleppo started, if you can call it a battle. So the SDF, so this is like the alliance of military groups that falls under the remit of the self-administration

in the Northeast Syria. So the YPG and the YPJ are like the most famous and largest components of this force, but there are a whole bunch of Arab and Syrian and Armenian units within the SDF. They held this sort of salient pushing out into Northwest Syria towards Afrin, which was captured by the SNA in Turkey in 2018.

That was on one side, surrounded by HTS, and on the other by the SNA. When things really kicked off, the SNA started a pretty concerted campaign to capture this area known as Sheba. And because of its position and its relatively difficult terrain and difficult logistical position to resupply, they pulled back from that towards Aleppo and Manbij which is the only major city that the SDS still held on

the west of the Euphrates and this is the area closest to Aleppo. They got hit pretty hard. If you follow a live update map or any of these sort of update maps it looked like that that's pretty quickly actually it ended up being a sort of large gray zone of the guerrilla attacks and yeah potentially still ongoing. It's it's been really murky and hard to tell what's going on there but essentially there's a large area of uncontrolled but heavily contested territory between Aleppo and the Euphrates River now, which the SDF and the SNA have been fighting over. Like one of the curious things for me is that the Turkish Air Force and military did not get involved

for a while, but after about a week they did and they started hitting Manbij very very heavily. And at that point when the center of Manbij started being contested and for over the US stepped in, we don't know the details of it but there seems to have been some kind of negotiation whereby the suggestion is that if the SDF fighters pulled back across the Euphrates the SDF would assure their protection from any further assault. We don't know how true that is and we know that today further negotiations on this failed, but it's really hard to tell right now as we speak what's disinformation and what's truth because stuff's only coming out officially in drips and traps. Yeah and stuff's coming out unofficially, often that is just not true every five minutes

and getting blasted by maybe people who just don't understand or who do understand but have a certain agenda to push on social media especially, but on Telegram too. It can be really confusing and it's really frustrating. Yeah, for instance, just before we came on air, I saw a couple of videos being posted by Pro-Turkish accounts of purportedly showing mass troop concentrations lined up against this border wall waiting to invade. And I realized that they were from 2019 when Serekhani and Talabayed were invaded. And they were just reposting material from then.

As disinformation on these movements and whether an attack is going to happen, what the negotiations between the US and Turkey turned out to be. And the truth is like right now we don't know exactly what's going on. Yeah and like you probably won't and that's probably a good thing. One other thing is that like, the SDF tends to have much better operational security discipline than the SNA does. So you won't see as much of like media with an SDF spin or people directly streaming. I mean, one thing the SNA likes to do is a war crime and then post it on Telegram. And so like, it can be easy to only see that and be like, Oh God, it's terrible. Like, and it is terrible. Those things are horrific.

But like, because you're not seeing when the SDF is making movements or making advances until a bit later until you get something from like an official press channel, it can give the impression that the SNA is just romping around, which is not the case. Yeah, we saw this a few times when Manbij was reported to have been captured by the SNA and they posted videos of themselves in the middle of the city and then an hour later the SDF posted a video from the centre of the city of 20 or 30 dead SNAs blitting about the streets and them flying their own flag so yeah it's really it's really hard to tell. It's

also really hard as like, anyone who cares about the region or has been there has reported on it. Anyone interested in the kind of politics that the Kurds have built up in the region, and others I should say, it's been a multi-ethnic project. If you care about that, it's really hard not to be glued to social media to see what's going on. But it can be quite detrimental to morale. It can be quite an act of self-harm to be constantly checking on this because it's so murky. And as you say, things can turn around

within two hours of info or disinfo getting out there. Yeah. And I think it's a super important time to be looking at trusted sources and be considering if you need to be on Telegram that much, something I have been considering this weekend. So let's talk about like right now, certainly the focus is on Kabbani, right? But there's also,

well, there's a lot of self administration that could potentially be under threat if Turkey decides to go as hard as it can against the self administration against the existence of, I guess, any form of democratic project in North and East Syria, if it attempts to kind of bring the whole thing under one government from Damascus. Can you explain like, what might happen, what people can do? And like, we should talk about what's at stake as well, especially with the prison at our whole, which maybe we can come to after those two things, because I think that's a lot to ask you one question. But maybe if people aren't familiar with our whole, we'll leave that one. But can you explain at first, like, what could

potentially happen if Turkey decides to go as hard as it wants to here? I mean, I think the best way to answer that question is to look at what's already happened. So in 2018 and 19, they already captured three significant cities that were under control of the self administration. So the first and most famously was Afrin, which was in the far northwest of the country, like just north of Aleppo, sort of jutting out into Turkey. That was a majority Kurdish city, I don't know the exact details, but it was something like 80 or 90 percent, which I think is higher than any other city in northern Syria. And it was also like, it had seen the least fighting of pretty much anywhere in Syria

by that point. So the war had been going on for like, what, seven years and everyone was pretty much untouched. So it was in a pretty good state and Turkey and the SNA invaded just as the war against ISIS was winding down and, I mean, it's become hell on earth. It's been almost completely depopulated. I think it's less than 10% now Kurdish, ethnically. Yeah. It has been ruled by a number of different groups. We can say the SNA, but, you know, different groups within the SNA have fought over it. The HTS at times have had control over certain parts of the area, and there's been a lot of infighting.

There's been horrendous war crimes committed. Yeah. Rape, murder, thousands of disappeared people. And as you say, they really like to openly put videos out of them committing this stuff. I mean, they're pretty shameless about it. And there are some pretty disturbing videos of them mutilating the bodies of fallen YPJ soldiers, of committing summary executions, of wiping out whole towns. It's been awful and the same thing happened again in 2019 around in October when they they captured Sariqani and Talabayad. It's worth also pointing out that these were not Kurdish

majority cities as far as I'm concerned. I think that Serekhani maybe was about 50%. And Tel Aviv, which is kind of close to Kobani, I'm pretty sure wasn't a Kurdish majority city, but it was organized under the self-administration and it was organized quite effectively. And they committed the same horrific crimes there. They are an anti-Kurdish force, if you can say that. They are an anti-Kurdish force, if we can say that. They are racist. They do have a stated goal of committing genocide against the Kurds. That's not an exaggeration. That's something they openly say. But they don't seem to care who they steal from or

who they rape or who they extort. Wherever they go, it's death and destruction. And it still is now. And there's still something like a quarter of a million internally displaced people from these areas in northeast Syria, hoping to go back and now having to see the situation get even worse and not knowing if they ever will be able to. Yeah. And I think like what you were talking about, like, we're seeing it right now in Manbij, right? Like the SNA seems to largely be in control of the city, albeit with YPG fighters kind of more in, I guess, in a guerrilla role. So it would seem still fighting there.

But where I believe we're on the second day of a general strike in Manbij, like after less than a week of the SNA holding it because of looting and executions and other war crimes. Yeah, I think this is actually a really good political education to see what's happening because what's been built up in the northeast has been built up over decades, right? They like to use this analogy of the mycelium and the fruiting bodies of a mushroom. They appear to magically emerge from the earth in the autumn out of nowhere, but actually, you know, they've been brewing underground for years before. And they use this analogy because it took decades to put

in place these structures. That's why they were ready. As soon as the regime, the Assad regime, pulled out and collapsed in the face of ISIS in the early stages of the war. They were ready to build up these structures. They already had self-organized militias. They had the economy planned out. They set to work immediately. And the SNA don't have any of that.

They are a force of convenience. They're mostly sort of young men who were in groups before that were defeated in Syria like ISIS who are simply taking the opportunity to enrich themselves and that's that's also very convenient for Turkey because they do the dirty work and against the population of North East Syria. So I think it's worth saying that that aspect of it, that preparation, that resilience is something that also works in favor in the event of the worst case of full invasion of North East Syria. I do think they are significantly better prepared than they were in

2018 and 2019. And even if the worst happens, even if militarily it's defeated, that's not going to be the end of this project, right? It's not going to be the end of this project, right? It's not going to be the end of this emancipation. There's now an entire generation of young people in North East Syria who have grown up entirely living amongst a liberated and emancipated region and people. That's not something you can militarily defeat. So I'm not completely hopeless. And obviously, I'd be like devastated if the worst

does happen there. But like, I don't think it means the end of this incredible political, I know, it feels wrong to call it a project, because it's not, it's, it's really is a revolution in India, and every possible meaning of the word. And it's deeply embedded now. Yeah, and I think everyone I spoke to there, like, there's a deeply held conviction that they're not going back. Some people who have seen, like first hand, the fascist violence of ISIS and fascist is the right word, it's something maybe worse

than fascism. But like, certainly, they're like like speaking to women in Rojava about how they're not going back to the gendered violence that they experienced for decades to include ISIS, but by no means like only from ISIS. And I guess that kind of brings us onto, I wanted to talk a little bit about the situation in the parts of Syria that are controlled by HCS and in so much as they really are controlled, if perhaps the wrong word, like they haven't fully established their state project yet, but they're certainly moving towards that. They've sort of captured the institutions of the state rather than destroyed them. You'd

spoken about like, there's this very, I guess maybe I'll use an example, sorry I'm phrasing this question in a very meandering way. I saw this CNN clip where they're there like, oh, we found a guy who's in this prison and he was stuck here. And then second part of this was not broadcast on CNN. This person turns out to be like an Air Force lieutenant who was in fact himself someone who tortured and killed civilians. And like, there's this very liberatory, very excited messaging coming from media in the West, I guess, some of which is good, right? Like, it's good that the Assad regime is good. Assad was fucking terrible and tortured

and killed hundreds of thousands of his own people. But that doesn't mean that things are all perfect in Damascus. Do you want to talk a little bit about like, some of the worrying stuff we've seen in the last few days from those areas? Yeah, I mean this is something that I worry isn't being spoken about enough. I don't, as a non Syrian, don't want to say to people you shouldn't be celebrating your own liberation because people should absolutely should be. It's their right to be and I'm like extremely happy that this brutal dictator has gone. I mean it's hard to summarize quite how awful he was and it's deeply frustrating

that he's probably not going to see justice. But it's also really hard to see stuff which is really reminiscent of like 1979 Tehran, 2003 Baghdad of a sort of jubilation whilst at the same time there were videos of pogroms being carried out against minorities. Minorities like the Alawites who were in control and you don't know if the person being executed in the street was a torturer, an intelligence agent, you don't know who they were, but this is happening. But you're also seeing Salafist groups raising their flag, hardline Islamists raising their flag

in places like Latakia and Tartus that have significant minority populations. I am very, I mean, concerned is the right word. It's hard to feel that spirit of liberation when you see not only these things happening, but that the people who have captured these state institutions are admitted former members of Al-Qaeda. They are jihadis, hardline people that have now got a very effectively made themselves out to be moderates. But my gut feeling is that we're

going to see something like 1979 Tehran of a lot of talk of reconciliation, a lot of talk of the concerns of the Kurds or working with the communists, but mass executions and oppression is not far around the corner. And I guess when the jubilation dies down, my question is, what's going to happen when minorities do demand their rights or women don't want to wear a hijab inside the buildings of state institutions? And I'm finding it very hard to believe that these men who are professed Islamists are going to allow a moderate future to exist? Yeah, it's, I don't know, every day we get different information right, but like I don't know if concerned is the right word either, I don't quite know

what the word is, but like I'm worried I guess, I'm worried that, I'm especially worried when like rather than what we saw in the self-administration was not like a continuation of institutions, right? When the Assad regime left in 2011 and 2012 and areas that the regime or ISIS have left since then. Like it wasn't like, okay, we'll take over these institutions, administer them differently. It was we will build democracy from the bottom up. No, we'll just change the people in charge versus what it seems like we're now seeing for Damascus is like, hey, could the police from the Assad regime please stay at work, which is concerning.

Talking of police, the last thing I wanted to address was the Al Hul camp. I've spoken about it before on this show and people can look back on other episodes, but if you've not heard about it, can you explain briefly what Al Hul is and then the massive risk that this Turkish-backed invasion poses to Al Hul and other camps? I guess Al Hul is not the only camp, just the biggest one. Yeah, Al Hul is a really important point to talk about. Our whole is a very large camp. It's hard to sum up what kind of camp it is because it's so vast and has different sections. It's near Al-Hasakah, which is one of the largest cities in northeast Syria.

which is one of the largest cities in northeast Syria. It mostly contains families who were members or were resident in the Islamic State when it collapsed. So in the beginning of 2019, ISIS was sort of squeezed into this little corner in the eastern side of Syria between the Euphrates and the Iraqi border and when the state collapsed or the caliphate collapsed that the a lot of people had nowhere to go and a lot of them were foreign to come in from abroad I'm gonna say a lot I mean like tens of thousands yeah there were something like 20,000 families left within Susa and Bagos like the last parts of the caliphate to hold out and they didn't have anywhere to go.

And there were already camps set up for IDPs and for members of ISIS and families in North East Syria. But Al-Haw was rapidly expanded to take these on. So it's a sort of semi-prison, semi-open camp that I think peaked at 75,000 people, which it sounds like a lot on its own, but when you consider that a large city in in North East Syria is about 150,000 people, it still is significant. I don't you probably have more accurate recent figures than me,

but I think the current population is about 40,000. Yeah, it shrunk definitely. I'm not sure what it is exactly. The big problem that the South administration have had is a multitude really. Many of the people there are foreigners, many of them don't have papers. Many of them come from countries that either don't want them back or will almost certainly execute them if they're sent back like Iraq, which is against the policy of the abolition of death penalty in Syria. There are some in our whole, but mostly in other camps in the north and east of Syria,

former ISIS members like Shamama Begum, who come from countries like the UK, who simply won't take them back. And the UK has taken back some families that simply refuses to take back their citizens who joined ISIS as, you know, card-carrying members. So they've made a pretty massive effort to repatriate as many families as possible. They've made a big effort to rehabilitate and de-radicalise as many people as possible. They have shrunk the camp massively, but there's still 40,000 or something left there. And a lot of them are really radical. Like I think,

I don't know what the exact number is, but something in the order of 10,000 of them are still like professory members of ISIS. And they have a lot of children. And this was something that shocked me when I was at the end of the caliphate in Bagots and witnessed tens of thousands of people coming out. And I could not have imagined how many children there were. And this was like, what, five years ago now, coming up to six years ago. So some of them who were seven, eight, nine years old are now heading towards their mid-teens.

They've spent their entire lives being radicalized. And what do you do with them? And I think there's no coincidence that in previous Turkish attacks, because Turkey's been attacking the North East Syria for the last five, six years now, through the air, through the Meshina warfare. A lot of their attacks have focused on trying to break these people out. They have bombed the entrances to prisons multiple times. They provided funding and arms and ammunition to groups that are trying to break them out.

They provided safe passage back to Turkey for those who have managed to escape. So it's massively in their favor. But of course, it's a Pandora's box because, you know, if that does break open and if these people aren't repatriated or aren't de-radicalized, then that's a lot of people who have pretty much only known their whole lives, extremely radical, fascist, Islamist ideology. I don't think they're just going to give it up. Yeah, no.

They're not going to join this moderate future Syria. No, and those people probably have terrible experiences within that camp, and that's not going to make, that don't tend to be moderating and sort of pacifying experiences. And I'm sure that they will. There'll be a lot of hate coming from there when those people come out. And I don't want to like, you know, apportion blame too much, but we've had a long time to deal with this. The world's had

a long time to deal with this. Oh, I mean, I would happily apportion blame. Go ahead. This is entirely on the hands of the coalition. North East Syria is a very poor place. Yeah. This is entirely on the hands of the coalition. North East Syria is a very poor place. Yeah. And it's deeply impoverished. It's been kept impoverished by sanctions, by Turkey.

The oil refineries, the industry, the economy has been smashed to pieces. They've held on really well. Like, all credit to them. They have maintained this camp. They have tried to give these people a life, but it's pretty awful conditions. Yeah. And this could have been solved if the international community, if the coalition, in particular the United States, had helped with

these repatriations, who put political pressure on European countries in particular to take back their citizens, and had just provided the funding, you know, for, right, they have provided funding. I'm not saying they haven't pretty much, but like, it's a drop in the ocean compared to the, you know, Department of Defense budget. You know, we're talking a few tens of millions here and there, as opposed to a concerted effort to deradicalize and repatriate people that could pose a serious threat to Europe and the US. Yeah, and like, you've got Britain doing the opposite of what's helpful, which is removing people's passports, right?

De-nationalizing them, leaving these people stateless and saying it's not our problem, which is pathetic. I'm incredibly short-sighted. I don't like using the word terror or terrorism because I think they've become meaningless terms. Yeah, I don't like using the word terror or terrorism because I think it's they've become meaningless terms but like ISIS did commit horrendous acts of terror in Europe and United States and and these people a lot of them I'm sure would happily do so given the opportunity So I don't think that the threat is like sufficiently understood in the West

Yeah and like it's gonna end up biting them in the ass because they've put this off, put this off, and wouldn't spend the money to have justice, to go through a system and to have a chance to plead their cases, to have a tribunal, whatever it is. Instead, these people have just been essentially abandoned by most of the world.

The self-ad self administration has been forced to take care of the people who did horrific things right there. And yeah, at some point this population will continue to grow if we don't keep removing people from it. And then that's going to be a problem for the whole world, even if the whole world wants to pretend it's not happening right now and it is just endlessly frustrating to see it not even be covered, let alone kind of addressed in the West. Yeah, I think that's a really important point. When similar atrocities have been carried out in

Europe, we see international tribunals, we see the ICC and the ICJ step in. We see arrests. We see prosecutions, you know, like Milosevic, like the new and burnt trials. And ISIS was a massive state. It had something like 10 million inhabitants. It committed multiple genocides. You know, and this isn't just, you know, people in the region saying, oh, they're committing genocide. These are like Western, highly studied, highly understood, accepted by Western states as genocide against the Yazidis.

They committed horrendous atrocities. They pose an international threat and a massive regional threat. And at the end of the Caliphate, as a territorial realm, as a serious military presence, it just disappeared off the radar. I think this is like a really, really shows the sort of racist and colonial mindset behind this rules-based international order that the people who were their victims

and who have left big up pieces after it's got very little support or recognition, and they've been calling for tribunals for years, and it's just fallen on deaf ears. Yeah, and sadly, I would say that changing given the incoming administration in the United States. It's deeply concerning.

I'm deeply concerned through my words, it's just fucked. I want to ask, people I think want to be in solidarity with the revolution. They want to help if they can, they want to support. I did a fundraiser last night. Thank you to everyone who gave their money and came, that was really nice. But what can people do to, you know, it's one thing to like be in solidarity or post or whatever, but like what concrete actions can they take to help? This is a question that gets asked a lot. I think doing anything is helpful. It's also a question that's really hard to answer given how things

are just across the border in Palestine. I personally find it hard to engage and ask for help and ask for solidarity when there's a genocide being committed next door, but we might be about to see the same thing happen in Syria and I do think we should be taking it seriously and yeah anything from raising awareness to actually going there and lending support yeah anything on that spectrum it's not just like it's not just the material contribution that you can make it's the people that do really feel left out they feel betrayed they feel let down by the international community, by the rest of the world. Yeah. And any act of solidarity goes on incredibly well. Like the first year I was there, I was basically useless because I didn't speak the language,

I didn't know my way around, I was like a burden on society, more or less. And for people just like happy that you're there, you know, showing solidarity. And it's not about being useful. It's about that act. It's about more than that is what I'm trying to say. And if you can show solidarity in any way you can like this is incredibly, incredibly important to find to do it. Yeah, I think like, I don't know, if I go back to when I moved to the US, which was 2008, George W. Bush was president. And, uh, like I have my little free Palestine badge when I got off the plane and my little Kaffir and like, it was immediately sent to secondary inspection

by the customs people because like that was not really, of course, there were Palestinian people and people in solidarity with the people of Palestine and the US then, and they were for a long time before, but like, I would never have imagined that I would see thousands of people in the streets for the Palestinian cause. And the only thing that has materially held back the genocide of the Palestinian people has been the solidarity that they've experienced. And that shows the power that people have, though, obviously, it's been able to do comparatively little and Israel still seems to be killing their children every day. But it shows that we can build solidarity really quickly and really meaningfully.

You don't have to go, but you can go. It's much harder to get to Palestine than it is to get to North and East Syria. I went last year. I think people who are already organizing can bring that into their organizing too. These things don't have to compete. There's a lot of solidarity to go around. But I would say a lot of the news we see, unfortunately, from Turkey, and that will, unfortunately, give you information that's extremely biased when it comes to North East Syria. So being conscious of your media

consumption is very important. Yeah, absolutely. I think I would just add to that to say that solidarity with any group is a long term project, right? You're not going to jump in and be able to make a huge difference immediately, but also at the same time, like if the worst happens, if Turkey invades full on and there there's genocide in northern Syria, that isn't the end of it. It's a massive international movement and there are practices from it that are being put in place in things that actually don't even have anything to do with the Kurds as a nation. And there are ways of organizing, there are methods that they use, there's personality analysis, there's criticism and self-criticism, there's a lot of that

that goes far beyond a single geographic region. And I think engaging with that can, and I've seen with my own eyes since I've been back, there's a lot of groups around the UK that use techniques for self-organisation within land rights movement, within worker struggle, within anti-cuts campaigning. And these have nothing to do with with Rojava, but they have seen that through solidarity with Rojava and Kurdistan that there are ways they can improve their own practice and their own actions. Yeah, I think that's really important too. And those are things maybe we'll cover in the future

and there are plenty of good resources online. Are there any resources you'd like to plug or like personal social media, things you think people could follow to get good information on what's happening? Definitely the RIC, that's the Rojava Information Center. They are probably the best source on the ground in Rojava and they are a collective of journalists, a mixture of locals and internationalists who've been working there for six years now. So they're a Rojava IC on various social media platforms. You can follow me as at Lapinesq, L-A-P-I-N-E-S-Q-U-E. I'm also posting about it, although I'm not there anymore.

I'm posting updates from friends, people I know there, and my take on the situation based on my experiences of being there for almost five years. Yeah, I think good to follow if you can. Thank you very much, Dani. What we're going to do now is I got some voice notes from some friends who are at the front with TekoC9 Assist, which means anarchist struggle in Kurdish. They're a group within the SDF that is an anarchist group that's there fighting. And in this case, actually doing frontline medical support on behalf of the self administration, on behalf of the revolution. They sent me some notes this morning, Monday, today, from their positions on the

frontline. So like, obviously those notes will be a little bit, they'll be like 24 hours old by the time you hear them. But I still think it's very important to hear from people who are there when we can, not from like someone who's supposedly an expert but hasn't set foot in Syria in 15 years and hasn't really talked to anyone who's Syrian either. So we'll drop those in after a little advertising break here. And with that, I will say thank you very much, Dani.

Thanks for giving us your time and we really appreciate all your insight today. Thanks very much, James. Hello, talking from the Provisional Press Office of the Pursing Analysis. We wanted to share a little bit about the situation ongoing here in Northeastern Syria, because as you probably know, the regime has fallen. And Bashar al-Assad left the country on the 8th of December after a big offensive that started from Idlib

that took over quite soon, quite fast, the city of Aleppo, and continued moving on. We wanted to explain how is the situation right now on the ground, and also give some insight into the situation of Northern Syria, and what the media is actually not covering of the different events and situations that are ongoing here. The main thing to remark that this can be a bit of a confusing interview for those that are maybe not familiar with the ongoing situation. To give a short context, we can mention that there are right now two main conflicts ongoing, three conflicts.

One is what we reported, the other not so much. We are talking about the war that HTS or the offensive that H SNA and Turkish proxy forces write under the name of a Syrian National Army but that they are retrained, paid and supported by the Turkish state. The offensive that they have been launching against North East Syria and the Democratic Administration of North East Syria, that is the area also known sometimes as Fajrabad, that is started as a court-deceivation movement leading the war against the Islamic State

and establishing this autonomous administration. So let's go shortly to the first conflict, this offensive of HTA or the Faith of Riyadh Shrine, that it's an Islamist group, direct heritage of Al-Nusra, that was the Syrian branch of Al-Qaeda, that has been governing, having somewhat governed the structures in the region of Idlib, in the northwest of Syria, and was under heavy siege from the Syrian Arab Army. On the 27th of November, they launched this big offensive that led to the collapse of

the regime. We could reflect deeply about the reasons now we, on one side, the Syrian Arab Army was exhausted after years of war here in Syria. But especially their main allies and supporters were also in a bad situation. We were talking mostly about Russia and Iran. As we probably know, Russia has been entrenched in a war

in Ukraine for two years, almost. Iran recently had been also engaging, supporting their militias in the conflict against Israel after the virtual occupation that Israel started on Nazar a year ago. So these two conflicts create a situation that both partners, Russia and Iran, were not able to support the Syrian Arab Army as they did in the past. This led also to the collapse of the front lines of the Syrian Arab Army, allowing the offensive of HDS to overrun very fast the defenses in the city of Aleppo and also taking control of the city of Hama. These sparked also other groups that also opposed the regime for a long time to start also taking action in southern Syria and the regions of like Suezha and Dara

than Syria in the region's topics. Soezha and Dara and Khunaita, there was also Al-Tanum's military operation room that started coordinating surgeons and the regime. This sparked the collapse of the regime. A lot of soldiers were defecting their positions, and finally, the different military groups within the offensive took the mask off. This was an offensive that was really not very bloody in the sense of like a lot

of the civil rights army soldiers were just leaving their positions and running away and the offensive was able to advance very fast, very easily. Right now, this offensive led to the transition that we are seeing in Damascus, where the leader of the DHS had been doing really public speeches declaring the triumph of the revolution, trying to harvest the revolutionary spirit of 2011 for their own benefit. And they imposed or composed a transitional government that is formed exclusively by members connected or aligned to HTS. It would be good to discuss more about HTS, but maybe it's not the focus of our interview right now. Just mentioned that the authoritarian government in Egypt has been also really criticized by local population organizing protests against it.

And right now, running this interim government, they are already making proposals for morality, police, Islamic rights, Islamic courts. So I don't know how much this compression has been already shared, but clearly what we saw in Afghanistan with Taliban taking over and the state discharges is probably a good guide to understand what could be happening in Syria if HDS takes control of the state as it seems to be happening. So this is one of the conflicts ongoing that is widely reported.

The only one maybe is not so much reported. We see how the Turkish has been for a long time, Turkish state has been for a long time, attacking the region of North Syria, especially the Kurdish areas. And this is connected not only to war against the Kurdish areas. And this is connected not to their war against the Kurdish liberation movement that has been going for more than 40 years.

And the last chapter of this started in coordination with this offensive of HDS, where the proxy forces started to attack mainly the region of Tahrir Fad. It was an area where a lot of the refugees from Afrin were living. Afrin was a region that was already occupied by Turkey in 2018, and a lot of the people from the city were displaced and living in refugee camps in the region of Sheva and the city of Takifat. And these Turkish proxy forces attacked and conquered that region,

forcing all these people that already had to leave their homes more than five years ago, 2018. So forcing them to flee once again, a lot of these people was trapped in a caravan that suffered brutal raids, attacks, kidnapping, ransoms. It has been a really terrible experience for a lot of people that was trying to flee the offensive of these Turkish proxy forces. And most of them are now arriving to Dutkha and to Raqqa, to the regions of the South administration, where they are found in the confined shelter.

And for those willing to help, we can mention that HaibaSarq is the humanitarian organization, one of the biggest humanitarian organizations working in northern Syria and has been providing trends and photos and blind aids and everything they can to support all these people that is arriving on these areas. So those willing to support economically and this humanitarian crisis that we are experiencing, they can't easily find the website and the Baga Kalma Hebasur to donate to them to support all these people that once again lost their homes. But the offensive didn't stop on Shaffa, and the SNA continued their attacks

and took over the city of Manbij already right now. This was a really heavy clash, it was a really serious military conflict that has been totally supported by Turkish artillery and air force. Air Force. We are talking about drones sitting in different positions and even airplanes that of course are like NATO Air Force had been bombing positions of the Syrian Democratic Forces allowing these different events groups that are part of this coalition of the SMA, the Turkish proxy forces, to control of the city. At the moment, there is already several days that Manbij, this city, has been organizing protests and even a general strike that started yesterday against the occupation because these groups that occupy the city are looting and even killing local population in a really

terrible situation of this experience in the local people living in Malmich. And they are willing to continue. They have been threatening the city of Kobani, the symbol of resistance of the Rojava Revolution against the Islamic State. And these tribes and the city are not just the bondings of the Turkish air force and artillery, but also a lot of military personnel of the Turkish proxy forces gathering on the bridge that connects the divisions of Mandech and Kobani, all across the Euphrates River. So this war is not so reported, but it's been really brutal attacks against the self-administration in north of Syria. We are trying to report and update about the situation. We also published two statements to topple out

tension for comrades about what is ongoing here. And maybe I should talk a bit about the work that we have been doing on the ground. We need to remark that this offensive over Manbij and the other strata in Kobane have not been the only attacks that the Turkish army and the proxy forces are doing. All around the street that they occupied in 2019, the areas around the city of Siliconi and Aynisa, next to the border with Turkey, also host a lot of Islamic groups that are part of this Turkish proxy coalition,

and they have been intensively bombing the areas and their surroundings, and they're having quiet widespread rumors of these Islamic groups gathering forces to continue their attacks on the Assad administration of Northern Syria and the war against the Syrian Democratic Forces. We, from TekoSinah Rises, have been working in a medical capacity, providing materials for the medical clients in the front lines and being present in the front lines together with the Syrian Democratic Forces in case that a new invasion is happening.

Right now the bombings are hitting different areas and it has been really intense in the last days. The Syrian Democratic Forces are in maximum alert, and especially there is an important call in solidarity with the Sikriyevkobani, a symbol of resistance that is now once again under threat. We have been seeing also demonstrations all around the world in solidarity with the revolution here. And this has been actually bringing a lot of motivation to continue the resistance on the ground. Right now, this situation of lack of stability and political transition is still playing in ways that are difficult to predict. We can see how the stuff administration has been sending political allegations to the maskers

to negotiate with this new provisional government with the attempt to reach autonomy for the region that connects with the ideas of democratic capitalism. The ideas of democratic capitalism don't expect to run a state institution because we don't want to live in a society that is ruled by a state and are calling for a ton of economy

in local governments where the different communities can live together, coexist together, administrate their social affairs together and also their defense. We'll see how the Syrian Democratic Forces is like a military coalition of different local military forces that it's based on the principles of self-defense. Maybe to give a bit of context also, of what we have been doing here for several years, that our organization has been operating in other Syria. And as anarchists, we can share in solidarity, international solidarity, with the revolution,

because their political values and their political project is really close to our ideas. We see big similarities with the ideas of libertarian socialism and social ecology, like thinkers and Mourad Goudjine, have been a big inspiration for André Rosaland, the leader of the Courtesy-Liberation Movement, that has been proposing this political frame called democratic conformism, where especially with the principles of modern liberation, social ecology, and stimulus democracy has been the political compass of the revolution here. Building autonomy in the different regions

has been also a very important element to develop the project, and especially during the war against the Islamic State, as soon as the different territories were liberated, there was a big emphasis on creating local councils, civilian and military councils, both, that can run their own affairs. This is very interesting from an anarchist perspective, not to say how one of the main political points is this promoting self-defense and creating a military force

that is not based on a centralized monopoly of violence, but on allowing every community to take care of their own defense and their own affairs. This is a really inspiring element that for us has been also a really extraordinary learning process. Being part of a revolution, living day to day the developments that are happening here, and seeing what does it mean to make a revolution, because it's something that sometimes we anarchists look back often in the epic times of Spain in 1936 36 or Ukraine in the 20s,

to see examples of the American Revolution. And this is something that today is happening here. Kurdistan has been for a long time leading resistance against the logic of national state, especially in Turkey, but we saw how it has been finally in Syria where this movement found the space to put in practice these ideas and to develop the revolutionary society that has been terrorized for a long time. So even if we cannot say that Rojava is an anarchist vision,

but we can say how anarchist principles inspired the project, and that it's been developed here and implemented. This is really an important school. It brings a lot of lessons of the big challenges of reorganizing a society with principles of libertarian socialism. It is especially complicated here because of external reasons like the situation of the embargo, the constant threat of the Turkish army. And this is something that for sure we can point out as like, well, it's very difficult to make a revolution with these factors. But this is also a lesson that making a revolution will always be difficult and we always have

the really big factors that make the situation very difficult. If making a revolution would be easy, we would already have done it. So of course it's something that brings a lot of difficulties, a lot of contradictions, a lot of challenges. And being here day to day, living what it means to build a revolutionary society, brought a lot of lessons and reflections that we also aim to translate and to reflect together with anarchist movements from around the world to learn from this experience and to be able to analyze together and reflect and discuss together of what it means to build

anarchism in the 21st century, what it means to build libertarian socialism nowadays in the current society with all the different elements that we see. And of course, the military conflict that is ongoing, it can seem maybe sometimes far away for comrades in Western countries, but I think it's important to remember that revolution and war have been always two sides of the same coin. It's in these moments of instability of war where the logic and the status quo of national states is more weak, because we cannot succeed now in other times, in other moments, or even in other places nowadays. What is happening, for example, in Amman, what is happening in

different areas where the logic of national state is in question, creates instability, creates a situation where different actors will push to take control. And we know that often those actors will be led by a nationalist and fascist mentality with an authoritarian logic to just impose their ideas and their aims by force. And it's very important that we think and we reflect and we organize force that is able to react to that situation. Because authoritarian and hierarchical military structures are quite fast to react.

We as anarchists, we need time to organize horizontally because our instructors function based also on trust, based also on knowing each other. And even if I really believe that they are much more solid and much more reliable in the long term, in the short, we can face big, big challenge. So it's important to see fascism is actually advancing all around the world. And we can see how the tensions are growing. So maybe this is a call, Malik,

to learn from the lessons here, to learn from how the Kurdish movement have been working and preparing for decades, and what happened in Syria made possible for the revolution movement to put their cards on the table, to organize together with the people, and to defend their people and their their communities building this revolutionary process that nowadays so many people have been taking inspiration from. So yeah, probably this is a bit confusing and maybe not so clear. Sorry we have been quiet some hours.

We've had several weeks that have been extremely challenging with really few hours of sleep. But I hope this is more or less clear. And please, is there something that is not so understandable? I'm always welcoming new questions and hoping we can answer and share more perspectives. We have been writing some statements and we are trying to answer all those people interested in learning more about the situation here and in ways to support this revolution. Welcome to Decisions Decisions, the podcast where boundaries are pushed and conversations get candid. Join your favorite hosts, me, Weezy WTF. And me, Mandy B.

As we dive deep into the world of non-traditional relationships and explore the often taboo topics surrounding dating, sex, and love. That's right. Every Monday and Wednesday, we both invite you to unlearn the outdated narratives dictated by traditional patriarchal norms. With a blend of humor, vulnerability, and authenticity,

we share our personal journeys navigating our 30s, tackling the complexities of modern relationships, and engage in thought-provoking discussions that challenge societal expectations. From groundbreaking interviews with diverse guests to relatable stories that'll resonate with your experiences, Decisions Decisions is going to be your go-to source for the open dialogue about what it truly means

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Would you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by I Heart and Sonora. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters... inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shape-shifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures.

Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturne, Tales from the Shadows, as part of my cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everyone. It's John John also known as Dr. John Paul and I'm Jordan or Joe Ho and we are the Black Fat Film podcast. A podcast where all the intersections of identity are

celebrated. Oh chat this year we have had some of our favorite people on including Kid Fury, T.S. Madison, Amber Ruffin from the Amber and Lacey Show, Angelica Ross and more. Make sure you listen to the Black Fat Fam podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast or whatever you get your podcast girl. Oh, I know that's right. I'm Dr. Lauri Santos.

I'm a psychology professor at Yale and I started to notice that a lot of my students weren't all that happy. So I created a new class. Welcome everybody to Psychology and the Good Life. It became the biggest class in the history of Yale. I'm a little bit surprised to see as many of you are here as are here, but that's great. But it's not just my students who need to understand the science of well-being.

And that's why we launched the Happiness Lab, so you can learn about it too. Are you ready to feel happier? Head to the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or if you like to listen. Brought to you by the 2024 Subaru Share the Love event, now through January 2nd. Welcome to What Could Happen Here, a show about things falling apart. I'm Garrison Davis, and this episode is going to be a special audio companion piece to an article published last night on Substack at Shatter Zone. That's Robert's usual Substack,

though last night I published an article detailing the online history and trans-vestigation discourse regarding a school shooting in Madison, Wisconsin. The article has pictures and hyperlinks which might help explain some of the stuff I'm talking about, but I'll do my best to relay it here to you on the podcast feed. Another Monday in America and another school shooting. On the morning of December 16th, a female student at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisconsin, shot and killed a teacher and fellow

student and injured six others before killing herself. Initially, police falsely reported the shooter was 17 years old, but late Monday night they correctly identified the deceased shooter as 15-year-old Natalie Rupnau, who went by Samantha or Sam. In the aftermath of this horrific event, right-wing influencers and content creators wasted no time in blaming the shooting on trans people, labeling the suspect as another in a series of alleged transgender terrorists. But what really happened here had nothing to do with trans people and is sadly ordinary for the United States. In August of 2024, the father of the future

school shooter took his daughter to a gun range to do trap shooting. Samantha wore a shirt bearing the logo of a band, KMFDM. In another photo of the shooter, we can see the front of the shirt. The same design was famously worn by Columbine shooter Eric Harris, who is a fan of the band. The bulk of this new shooter's online footprint suggests a general obsession with school shooters and the TCC or True Crime Community, a nickname used for the de facto international Columbine fandom. This sort of content dominates Samantha's Tumblr, which last posted in May of 2024. An alleged online friend of the shooter said that she, quote, posted about school shooters

all the time, unquote, and, quote, posted about school shooters all the time unquote, and quote, had school shooter leanings unquote. Samantha is hardly alone in this. There have been over 100 copycats inspired by the Columbine shooting since 1999. A Twitter account believed to have belonged to the shooter posted a series of videos that teased and glorified school shootings

in the days leading up to her own shooting. The account was created in December of 2024, and the profile picture featured a young man in camo pants and a tactical backpack. The male profile picture was used as evidence by some conservative influencers that the shooter must have transitioned, though these same influencers could not agree on whether she was female to male or male to female. One user constructed an overlay trying to compare the photo of the shooter with her Twitter profile picture. This is a ridiculous diagram with about seven images overlaid at different opacities trying

to layer the faces and body shapes of these two people on top of each other. This post is only proof that most of what gets passed off as quote unquote, Ossent online, today is just completely incompetent rambling and propaganda. The main issue with this diagram is that the male profile picture is actually another Columbine copycat, a school shooter from Russia who, similar to Samantha, was only 15 years old when he carried out his shooting.

Hours after the shooting in Madison, Wisconsin, while right-wing accounts were still arguing about what sort of transgender the shooter had been, a neo-Nazi Twitter account named Nitro claimed to be friends with the shooter on Discord and repeatedly denied accusations that the shooter was transgender, calling her a quote-unquote biological woman. An early complicating factor in establishing the motive and identity of the shooter is that her alleged Twitter account posted a link to a Google Doc of her manifesto, but seemingly forgot to make the visibility setting public, so you couldn't access the Google Doc. You had to put

in an email for approval, and the person who was supposed to approve your email was now dead. So there was no way to actually look at this person's manifesto. The shooter's alleged Discord friend, Nitro, claims to find what he believed to be a snippet of a manifesto. The shooter's alleged Discord friend Nitro claims to find what he believes to be a snippet of a manifesto draft shared by the shooter in a Discord group chat. Nitro is based out of the UK, and so if this is legitimate, and that is a big if, this message would have been sent about an hour and a half before the shooting, per the Discord timestamp. I'm going to read a bit of this alleged writing from the shooter. Quote, women are the only hope for this wretched world, but even women have been brainwashed

by moids for too long. They've internalized the patriarchy and turned on each other, always begging for male approval and validation. It's disgusting. I realize the truth. Men are irredeemable. Radfem Hitler was, is fucking vindicated now. They can't be reformed or redeemed.

They are a fucking scourge upon the earth. The only solution is to total exterminate them. And every foyde who worships these fucking parasites. Every single male must be wiped out, from babies to the elderly. Only then can women be free to create a new world. I'll be the pioneer. I'll be the first one to take the first step. I don't care if they're fathers, brothers, husbands, sons, teachers, police, and especially N-words or politicians. I've been craving to kill them all. This is my mission. Only when their parasitic sludge has been expunged from the earth is when then

the world will be clean and women can start over. It's the only way. In approximately 10 minutes, I should be dead. It's strange, but it feels good." Hopefully to most people, this should read like unintelligible gibberish, a reactionary quote-unquote feminist screed about initiating a wave of male-targeted violence to cleanse the earth, with pepperings of moids and foids, which is internet incel slang for male and female respectively, also included are racial slurs, and something called quote unquote radfem Hitler. That last part is a reference to a Twitter influencer by the same name and the handle Hollow Earth Turf, whose content is a mix of trad-influenced right-wing feminism with

anti-trans flourishes, advocating for a mass purge of moids. This account is derided by those both on the right and left, but has a small dedicated following of conservative radfem and anti-trans women with trad or often occult interests. The Discord Nazi Nitro claimed that the shooter was quote-unquote a fan of Radfem Hitler and talked about the account frequently on Discord, though Nitro previously believed her interest in the account was merely ironic. Now obviously an anonymous Twitter Nazi is certainly not the most reliable source, but Nitro was the first person to correctly identify and post photos of the

shooter, though they could be utilizing this newfound clout to troll a widely disliked Twitter user. But the fact that he's been right about all other details inclines me to not discount his claims altogether, but instead just hold them with a billion pounds of salt. Allegations that the shooter was a neo-Nazi radfem certainly sent radfem Hitler into a panic who quickly deleted her account. Meanwhile, some of her online associates worked damage control, claiming to have contacted the alleged boyfriend that the shooter had been quote-unquote E-dating, with the apparent intention of disproving any ties the shooter had to

the Twitter radfem orbit. Through this alleged online boyfriend, the right-wing turf ecosystem claimed to have acquired a copy of the quote-unquote full manifesto. This purported manifesto lacks the anti-male, anti-moid ramblings of the Discord screenshot, but unsurprisingly shares its use of racial slurs and glorification of violence, at times evocative of Pekka Eriksson Ovinen's manifesto, a Finnish school shooter from 2007 who killed 8 people. Ovinen considered himself a quote-un quote unquote natural selector who had evolved beyond the classmates he gunned down.

In Samantha's purported manifesto, he is mentioned by name as a quote unquote true inspiration. Over the course of eight hours, a radfem twitter account released six pages of what they claimed to be Samantha's writing. It contains general misanthropic rambling about humanity and parents being quote-unquote scum. The writing describes a difficult family life, suicidal thoughts, and admiration for school

shooters and white supremacists. Though it briefly references the accelerationist Terrorgram Saints. The whole of this piece of writing is much more reminiscent of old school Columbiners than the modern white nationalist terror milieu. The alleged manifesto directly names the two Columbine shooters and includes a paragraph on Vladyshkov Roslyakov, another Columbine copycat but from Crimea, who also cosplayed as one of the Columbine shooters during his own mass shooting. Though the Discord Nazi and the reactionary Radfems question the authenticity of the other's

alleged manifesto, what both sides of the incel war do agree on is that Samantha was not transgender. We're going to go on a quick ad break and come back to discuss transvestigation and the trans-terror panic. Okay, we are back. It seems these days the fastest way to get transvestigated is to do a school shooting. Transvestigating is the practice of trying to determine if an individual is transgender. It's often leveled against celebrities, athletes, and politicians. But in recent years, there's been a new common subject of transvestigation.

Mass shooters. In particular, school shooters. Myself, Robert Evans, and James Stout previously reported on this trend back in 2023, right as it grew in prominence after the Nashville Covenant School shooting, which police say was committed by a trans man. We theorized that the online right was testing out a new strategy to attack trans people by associating them with mass shootings via the use of selective bias reporting and plain disinformation.

That fear has come to pass. The modicum of believability provided by the Nashville shooting, as it's the only legitimate trans-related incident that meets criteria for mainstream mass shooting databases, was enough to fuel this ongoing strategy for the next two years. Since then, conservative influencers have attempted to link nearly every viral mass-slash-school shooting to trans people to create a false trend. The strategy operates as follows. During the first few chaotic hours after a shooting a small group of right-wing content creators weaponized the lack of verified information to make posts framing an alleged shooter as being transgender.

This can be done through the use of out-of-context social media posts, doctored photographs, photos of other people, or simply pictures of long or dyed hair. All they need is a collection of loose evidence to affirm on social media that a mass shooter is really transgender. For more context on this, you can listen to an episode of It Could Happen Here I wrote earlier this year covering the rise of fake trans terrorists. The goal is to get as many of their followers to see and spread these claims as fast as

possible. Even if it's widely debunked the next day, many who heard the false claim won't be aware of the verified correction. All these anti-trans influencers need is a brief window of time to plant the idea into people's minds. And then that becomes remembered history. If this strategy is repeated every few months, whenever there's a new mass shooting, then it's pretty easy to create the false perception of a growing trend. Now, in reality, trans people per capita are actually way less likely to commit a shooting compared

to cis people, and are much more likely to be the victim of gun violence. But this past Monday, conservative and anti-trans influencers tried once again to weaponize a tragedy for their own hateful agenda. Monday afternoon, Ian Miles Chung posted, Trans Terrorism Must End. Hours later, Laura Loomer wrote, Quote, The trans movement is really turning out to be a terrorist movement. Just minutes after police responded to the shooting, the conservative influencer, Matt Wallace, posted that an unknown, quoteunquote witness said that the shooter quote looked to be transgender unquote.

Wallace who has over 2.2 million followers on Twitter provided no source or citation and has since deleted this post. But others in the online mega orbit parroted this language before any identifying information was released. With the user Just Jeff From Kali writing, a trans person targeted and opened fire on students at abundant life Christian school in Wisconsin. 12 hit." The right-wing content creator Ryan Mata baselessly claimed that the shooter was on hormone replacement therapy, calling the shooter,

another mentally unstable psychopath who was prescribed puberty blocker and hormones, unquote. Mata hosts a show on the right wing YouTube alternative Rumble and has over 123,000 followers on Twitter. His tweet claiming the shooter was on HRT racked up 1.6 million, quote unquote, views and 17,000 likes in just 12 hours.

Larger accounts like Chaya Rychek's libs of TikTok fueled undue speculation about the gender identity of the shooter, seeding confusion into the growing discourse and weaponizing a tragedy for political gain. Quoting the police chief saying, quote, I don't know if the shooter is male or female, unquote. A small group of conservative influencers have just so successfully created an alternate reality in which nearly every new mass shooter is transgender that they don't even

have to outright say it anymore. Accounts like Libs of TikTok and Malaysian blogger Ian Miles Chung can merely gesture to this reality tunnel they've intentionally created. And now thousands of people will affirm this fake reality as the obvious truth, backed up by historical precedent of fabricated memory. Matt Wallace posted a photo of the shooter and the male profile picture, saying, What do you notice about the shooter, again? Ian Miles Chung posted, Police are unable to identify if the school shooter in Madison, Wisconsin is male or female,

but they do know who did it and identified them as a student. Is anyone else thinking what I'm thinking? Unquote. This speculation fueled conspiracy theories, which spread claiming that police were intentionally withholding information about the shooter's gender identity in service of some hidden agenda.

And actually, they were just waiting to let the family know that their daughter was dead and making sure they had the correct identification. Very basic stuff, police always do this. But no, it's all part of some secret agenda and some hidden narrative. As early as 1 p.m. EST on Monday, which is just like an hour after the shooting would have taken place, the neo-nazi Twitter account Nitro correctly identified the shooter as his online friend Sam slash Samantha. As this name spread online, the multi-gendered nature

of the name added to the speculation that the shooter was trans. Scarlett Johnson, an activist with the ultra-conservative parents' rights group Moms for Liberty, shared self-admitted, unconfirmed reports that the shooter was quote-unquote a transgender teen who went by Sam or Samantha. As alleged pictures of the shooter started to spread online, courtesy of Nitro, the transvestigation of the shooter only intensified. An unfortunate coincidence is that the shooter's given name matches the ancient Sam Hyde meme, in which extremely online people try to trick journalists into believing the culprit of a new mass shooting was the American comedian Sam Hyde.

In recent years, the meme has turned into the Samantha Hyde meme, used to falsely label mass shooters as trans women. One Hyde post from an unassuming boomer named Ed Massey raked up over 600,000 views, 4.5,000 likes, and 1.5,000 views, 4.5 thousand likes, and 1.5 thousand retweets. Massey posted, quote, when you put disturbed children on hormone blockers and sexually mutilate them, you're not curing them, you're creating potential school shooters, unquote. Now, it should go without saying, but the use of puberty suppressing medication has no link to increased violence.

We're going to go on one last break and return to conclude our discussion of transvestigating school shooters. Okay, we are back. Time to talk about the potential double flipper. So as this transvestigation continued, the quote-unquote we-can-always-tell crowd ended up transvestigating in both directions, seemingly unsure of what assigned gender at birth the shooter must have had. Some believed the shooter was trans-fan, while others concluded they were trans-mask. With one reply to an end-wokeness tweet reading, quote, those do not look like female hands. And another trans-investigation post saying, the shooter is a trans kid, a

female pretending to be a male. Exactly why we keep our second amendment rights to protect our children from this mental health crisis. Zoom in close on her shirt and hand gesture." A now deleted post from a turf account also attempted to pass off the shooter as a trans girl, saying, quote, "'The Wisconsin school shooter was a 17 year old trans identified male. It just keeps happening.'"

Now quote unquote,-identified male was usually a transphobic dog whistle to refer to a trans woman, as in a male who identifies as a trans woman. But sometimes transphobes get confused by words and use the phrase to refer to trans people who quote unquote identify as men, like this other trans investigation post saying, quote, shooter was a 17 year old trans but identified male. Now, one of the most widespread posts claiming the shooter was a trans guy came from an antisemitic doctor in Denmark with 1.4 million followers.

She falsely claimed with no evidence that the shooter was taking testosterone writing, quote, the Wisconsin school shooter has been identified as a 17 year old trans identified male, another mentally ill girl on testosterone, unquote. As of Tuesday morning, this post has over 3 million views, 22,000 likes and 8.3 thousand retweets. In a following post, this doctor blamed quote-unquote the Jews for inventing transgenderism. As a note, extremism researchers have argued that transphobia is structurally similar to antisemitism. Now, a common piece of anti-transmimetic propaganda deployed in the wake of mass shootings is the trans shooter collage. This format spread after the Nashville school shooting in 2023, and this week Matt Wallace provided us with a brand new version.

This post is an ugly mishmash of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 people's faces with a variety of backgrounds, a purposeless red circle in the middle of the image, and text that reads, quote, almost every child killed in a mass shooting in the last few years was killed by a transgender shooter. Now, out of all those pictures in this collage, only one person in this collage has actually reported to be transgender, the Nashville shooter in the upper left. The rest of the people pictured are not trans and have never claimed to be trans. The person with long hair in the lower half of the image is Colt Grey, who is falsely labeled as trans by far-right influencers like N. Dwokeness and Mike Cernovich. Colt Grey's Discord posts reveal he actually held transphobic beliefs. A more classic version of the trans shooter collage format is just five pictures with

text next to each of them reading, the ex shooter identified as trans, the ex shooter identified as trans, right? Just a big list of five of these names saying that they all identified as trans. The version I'm using here is courtesy of Libs of TikTok admin Chaya Reichak, who posted this earlier this year. But just as before, the majority of the subjects in this meme aren't actually trans and it's just full of disinformation. The Colorado Springs shooter who targeted a queer club is not actually non-binary and simply tried to weaponize a false identity to get out of hate crime charges. The person labeled as the Denver shooter is not trans, has never claimed to be trans,

he just has dyed hair. This individual pictured did plan the shooting with a transgender male who is not pictured. Now lastly, though the person pictured as the Yuvaldi shooter is trans, this is not the actual Yuvaldi shooter, it's a random trans girl who was one of two trans women whose photos were used to falsely label the shooter as transgender. The other two people in this image is the Nashville shooter who does appear to be trans and the perpetrator of the Aberdeen workplace shooting. But back to Madison, Wisconsin. So after all of that transvestigating, what do we have? Just another column binder with neo-Nazi ties. The right has gotten so good at deploying the trans shooter as a smoke bomb.

It obscures the reality of the over availability of firearms, the dynamics of online radicalization, and the social issues that fuel alienation and anger in youth. Instead of focusing on all that, on the victims of this epidemic of white supremacist violence, we instead have to spend a whole day debunking the late shooter's pronouns. And that's the point, that's what they want us talking about. Those who delete their quote unquote trans-terrorist posts after being conclusively proven wrong will try the exact same shtick in a few months after the next mass shooting

goes viral. Others won't even care that much. They'll just leave up their post, secure in the stability of the reality tunnel they helped to create. I'm going to close with a quote from Sartre. Never believe that fascists are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge, but they are amusing themselves. For it is their adversary who is obliged

to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. This post has been deleted. -♪ MUSIC PLAYING Welcome to Decisions Decisions, the podcast where boundaries are pushed and conversations get candid. Join your favorite hosts, me, Weezy WTF, and me, Mandi B, as we dive deep into the world of non-traditional relationships and explore the often taboo topics surrounding dating, sex, and love. That's right. Every Monday and Wednesday, we both invite you to unlearn the outdated narratives dictated by traditional

patriarchal norms. With a blend of humor, vulnerability, and authenticity, we share our personal journeys navigating our 30s, tackling the complexities of modern relationships, and engage in thought-provoking discussions that challenge societal expectations. From groundbreaking interviews with diverse guests to relatable stories that'll resonate with your experiences, Decisions Decisions is going to be your go-to source for the open dialogue about what it truly means to love and connect in today's world. Get ready to reshape your understanding of relationships and embrace the freedom of authentic connections. Tune in and join in the conversation.

Listen to Decisions Decisions on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome, I'm Danny Drell. Would you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnal, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern day horror stories

inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturne Tales from the Shadows as part of my cultura podcast network available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.

Hey everyone, it's John, also known as Dr. John Paul. And I'm Jordan, or Joe Ho. And we are the BlackFatFilm Podcast. A podcast where all the intersections of identity are celebrated. Oh, chat, this year we have had some of our favorite people on including Kid Fury, T.S. Madison, Amber Ruffin from the Amber and Lacey show, Angela Carras and more. Make sure you

listen to the Black Fat Fam podcast on the iHeartRadio app, have a podcast or whatever you get your podcast girl. Oh I know that's right. I'm Dr. Lauri Santos. I'm a psychology professor at Yale, and I started to notice that a lot of my students weren't all that happy. So I created a new class. Welcome everybody to Psychology and the Good Life. It became the biggest class in the history of Yale. I'm a little bit surprised to see as many of you are here as are here, but that's

great. But it's not just my students who need to understand the science of well-being. And that's why we launched the Happiness Lab, so you can learn about it too. Are you ready to feel happier? Head to the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or ever you like to listen. Brought to you by the 2024 Subaru Share the Love event, now through January 2nd. Welcome to It Could Happen Here, a podcast about the worst coups in all of history. I'm your host, B.A. Wong, and we are returning to one of the worst coups I have ever seen because a whole bunch

more stuff has happened in our most recent unbelievably dogshit coup in South Korea, the six-hour coup in which President Yoon declared martial law and tried to shut down the National Assembly and then the National Assembly Got together and voted to end the martial law and then it stopped extremely bizarre and baffling series of events and you know when we last left our Intrepid heroes the people of South Korea, they had just successfully overturned a coup. No one quite knew what was going to

happen in the aftermath. We knew an impeachment vote was coming, a vote to impeach President Yun. The reason we're coming back to this though, is that the aftermath of all of this has been absolutely baffling. And I think this has all been lost in the news cycle because about a trillion things are happening right now, but the situation in South Korea has been unbelievably weird. And so we're now going to take a look at the actual impeachment of President Yun and the unbelievably bizarre path that led to it. Because oh my god, the more I talk to to people the more I realize that people don't know how

unbelievably unhinged everything has been since since the military coup because everyone has moved on so we're going back. So immediately after the coup there was this whole wave of military guys going like we didn't know we were taking part in a coup we're totally innocents like they just let us out of the trucks and suddenly we were at the National Assembly We were like, oh, what are we doing? And there's also been this whole thing of all these Special Forces guys going like oh, yeah No, no. Yeah, we totally could have taken the National Assembly in 20 minutes if we wanted to we just uh We just like didn't want to take a National Assembly Like we didn't really want to do it man

like our heart wasn't in this coup and like assembly like we didn't really want to do it man like our heart wasn't in this coup and like Really I have seen the videos of that shit bad like I didn't see you like going in there and kicking ass and taking games I saw you getting your ass kicked by a guy Just like blowing your ass up with a fire extinguisher and like not being able to break a bunch of very well-constructed Barricades set up by like fucking Senate aides So that's been extremely funny set up by like fucking Senate aides. So that's been extremely funny. So you like vanished the entire time this coup was going on and like nobody knew where he was and no one had seen him and

things were kind of fiasco-y. He was just gone. So he finally like reappeared, right? And as he sort of reappears, he tries to like, do this explanation of why he did the coup. It goes about as badly as you would expect from someone who just failed the worst coup that we've ever seen. Here's from NPR. Quote, In his speech on Thursday, Yoon, a former chief prosecutor, attempted to justify his actions and downplay its significance.

He argued that the opposition's quote, legislative dictatorship, unquote, paralyze state affairs and disturb social order. Now, this is this is going back to thing that you know he did at the time, right? He has this thing where he keeps calling the parliament, which is controlled by the Democratic Party, which is like the liberal opposition party. He kept calling the parliaments like opposition anti state forces. And and like my brother in Christ What the fuck is a legislative dictatorship? I Mean like I you know you could be really strictly anarchist about it and be like well Yeah, all legislators are dictatorships, but my dude you are not living under a

Dictatorship because the parliament that your country elected hates you and refuses to pass your dogshit budget because no one likes you, that is simply not what the word dictatorship means. It reminds me of this thing where like, you know, if you go back and you read like people in the 1800s talking about, or like in the 1800s, like 1700s too, you'll read them talking about monarchies, right? And they'll be like, ah, if the king can like overrule the will of the nobles, we would be living in a pure dictatorship. It's like, what the fuck are you talking about? Like sir, you live under a monarchy.

Like you are already in a dictatorship. You are also like part of the authoritarian apparatus of the dictatorship. And this is just like the inverse of that, where it's like, ah, the legislature won't let me do whatever the fuck I want. So this is now a dictatorship. And so like, you know, that's simply not what the word dictatorship means.

And you can't get away with that shit as much in a country where people, like in living memory, have lived through an actual military dictatorship and understand what that's like. The parliament refusing to pass your terrible budget. That's not an excuse to institute martial law and try to shut down the legislature. So this was not received well as you would expect from whatever unhinged speech that was. He did apologize for imposing martial law,

which is a very funny place to end up. It's like you try to do a coup and then you have to go on TV and apologize for trying to do the coup and also try to argue you didn like you try to do a coup and then you have to go on TV and apologize for trying to do the coup and also try to argue you didn't just try to do a coup. And so this is received very poorly. As we sort of predicted immediately, the opposition Democratic Party immediately tries to impeach you. And from the way the headlines kind of work in the West and from the way this is being talked about, and even from the way this episode sort of opened, you'd think that this impeachment vote was how we got impeached. But no, no, the first impeachment vote is not how Yun gets impeached. Everything is way, way weirder than that. Now, Yun's party, the People's Power Party, which is henceforth going to be called the PPP, because I am not

going to say the words people power party over and over again. Good Lord. The PPP got a lot of credit from people outside of South Korea for like, you know, some of their members legitimately did show up to Parliament to vote against the martial law declaration and at the time in the last episode I said that's bullshit. You don't get credit for voting against martial law and also like most of them weren't there and I I kind of got shit for this and I have been absolutely 100% vindicated because the impeachment vote the first one rolls around the first one happens very quickly after the first coup, right? Well the first coup hopefully the only coup hopefully there's not a second coup, but this happens very quickly and

Okay, so the vote rolls around and the entire PPP, the entire party, except maybe like two people, just walk out of the chambers. And because they walk out of the chambers, the vote fails because they don't have they don't have quorum. If you don't have quorum, is it like there's like a minimum number of members that has to be in attendance for for whatever you're doing to be legal to stop like two people from showing up in the middle of the night and being like, haha, I am the parliament, we've just passed this like order that makes me dictator or whatever. And again, the entire PPP just walks out and they leave and the vote fails because the PPP managed to whip basically its entire membership into into trying to keep union power.

And here begins the what the fuck is going on part of this episode because A, all reports we have suggest that Yoon was planning to have the leadership of the PPP arrested, and B, he just literally tried to do a coup and they're still backing him and see we stumble into a very very thorny question that I Saw from people in Korea like the moment after all this stuff happens but didn't really hit the Western press until later if at all and didn't really hit like The mainstream consciousness and this question will become apparent in a second. So here's from the Guardian Senior PPP politicians have claimed Youn can continue as president while delegating his powers to the prime minister. In arrangement Park, that's Park Chan-dae, who's a very powerful Democratic Party politician. In arrangement

Park described as quote, a blatant constitutional violation with no legal basis. Now, this is true. What Park is saying is right, right? And the fact that the Guardian is saying like that their way of framing this is, oh, the opposition party person says that this is a blatant violation of constitutional law with no legal basis. That's not just a thing that he says like this is true. Like there is no legal mechanism for, well, we don't want to impeach our presidents, but also he just tried to do a coup. So instead, we're going to take his powers away and give it to the prime minister so he can still serve without us impeaching him. Like that's not a thing. You can't do this. There's no mechanism

for this. The Democratic Party people are just completely correct here. But because for some reason, the Guardian feels it. I mean, it's the Guardian, right? Like, but they feel it necessary to sort of both sides again, a fucking coup. This is where we are. Here's more from The Guardian. Quote, the leader of the PPP, Han Dong-hun, said at the weekend that Yoon would not be involved in foreign and other state affairs with control of the administration shifting to the prime minister, Han Duk-soo. Han said Yoon's televised apology was effectively a promise to leave office.

Now, no it wasn't! It was not a promise to leave office! What the fuck are you talking about? Everyone could just go listen to his apology! He didn't say that! He did not say he was going to leave office! And no, he says it's effectively a promise to leave office, but it simply isn't! Everyone could just see this!

And again, the thing that the PPP is trying to do, right, the PPP is trying to have their prime minister like gain control of the administration. Now, there is a mechanism to do this under the Constitution. It's called impeachment. The thing that happens when you get impeached is that you get kicked out of office, as we're going to get to this later, but you get kicked out of office and the prime minister gets put into power. And this happens until the Supreme Court decides whether whether your impeachment should

go through or not right so like there's a mechanism for this but the PPP doesn't want to like impeach you but they also don't want him seemingly running the country because he appears to be like absolutely unhinged and just again declared martial law and tried to knock off the legislature so you have this you have this whole sort of steaming mess of a situation where the PPP is trying to like have it both ways of like not having union power, but also not impeaching him.

But this also begs one very important question. Who the fuck was running the country between the first impeachment vote and the second one? No one knows. No one knows who was running this fucking country! This is a country with 51 million people and nobody knew who was fucking running the country! And this- this barely made the news! I'm going insane! How- how? Why? Why- why is this a thing that just like completely disappeared beneath the fucking like chatter of the news waves? This just- this just vanished entirely. And speaking of vanishing entirely,

we're gonna vanish entirely to do these ads. And we are back. So as you would imagine from a situation where again you have a country of 51 million people where no one knows who is running the country, things have been extremely chaotic. So we covered in the last episode that a bunch of ministers were resigning, right? Because they had just taken part in a coup and they were like, well, shit. The ex-defense minister, who's one of the people who's been sort of implicated as being like... saying that he's to a large extent behind the coup, like, is true, but I mean, this was a cooperative effort between Yoon, the defense minister, and a bunch of the people

in the army. And the defense minister who resigned in disgrace, like, got thrown in jail? So that's fucking wild. Like he just got like arrested by the police. A bunch of testimony also has come out from the National Assembly investigation, which I'm not covering much of the testimony from the National Assembly investigation, because it's really unclear exactly how reputable all this stuff is. Because a lot of people are just saying shit, right? And some of it may be real, some of it may be stuff that people have, you know, obtained through their sources,

but some of it's probably not. But like, to get a sense of like the kind of stuff that is coming out in this investigation. One of the big claims was from, I think it was from like a TV host who claimed he got texted it by a guy in the army. But apparently he was saying that the plan by you and the army, the plan was to have the head of the PPP killed and then drop a North Korean uniform nearby to like do a false flag and implicate North Korean Special Forces. Now this is unbelievably unhinged, right?

What the fuck? And it probably isn't true, but you know, the source isn't great, but like, who knows, right? Like we don't we don't actually know if they were playing to do this and fucked it up or if they weren't playing to do this or if this person is this person just lying, this person did get this text, but the person was misinformed. We don't know if this is just like misinformation that's being spread around. This is a good demonstration of what the sort of chaos of this moment has been.

And you know, and there's been a lot of other stuff that I think in any other time and place probably would have been like front page news. So one of the things that happens in this whole process is that the South Korean police tried to raid the house of the president. And, you know, like as part of their investigation, there's a whole thing where you've been ordered by like the Investigation Services to not leave the country, because he's just actively under investigation for this military coup being illegal by just like the regular ass police. And so South Korean police like try to raid his house and they can't do it because the South Korean equivalent of the Secret Service stops them from doing the raid. And this in and of itself is something that like again would be a giant news headline at any other point in time, and it's just been completely lost.

And it's like, it's not sort of clear right now how this is all sort of going to play out and whether the police are going to be able to do this. And, you know, what's actually going to happen to Yoon after he presumably leaves office? I mean, I guess the Supreme Court could save him. But like, you know, there's there's a there's a real chance that he we're going to get into this more in a second. There's a real chance that he just like fucking goes to prison. Right. And unlike the last president who was removed from office, like, I can't imagine him getting pardoned by the next administration

because that was merely an unhinged corruption scandal involving the president of South Korea being under the influence of a shaman and doing a bunch of corruption that did a bunch of horrible shit. But this is, you know, this is like... He tried to do a coup, right? So it's sort of unclear if he's going to get saved from that. It does seem very likely that he's going to face a bunch of charges for this because everyone is unbelievably pissed off. Here's from DW.

On Monday, former head of Special Warfare Command Kwok Jung Gwin and former head of the Capital Defense Command Li Jin-woo were arrested on charges of deploying military personnel to the parliament. Former chief of the Defense Counterintelligence Command, Yeo In-hung, has been accused of orchestrating the implementation of martial law, and Army Chief Park An-soo has been suspended from his role. Yun's former defense minister, Kim Yong-hyun, who stepped down immediately following the aborted martial law declaration, and former Interior Minister Lee Sang-min also faced investigations. So what we're seeing here effectively, right, is the housecleaning of the ranks of the Korean military

who have been involved with this whole thing, right, and they're going through a lot of different people. Part of this is also clearing out some of like the cliques in the military who've been sort of backing Yoon and who people have suspected have been a bunch of people behind a lot of this stuff. And this is a good and necessary process the entire time this has been going on. Everyone has been terrified of the possibility of a second coup. And the only way to avoid that in the short term is to remove the senior leadership of the military and get them away from their troops. They don't have the ability to sort of play anything. And sometimes this can make people just go for it,

right? Like that's that's what happens in Bolivia, it looks like, where the failed Bolivian coup was a product of, you know, people trying to do house cleaning and get rid of military guys before they did a coup. And so this makes them go off half cockeded and like, you know, that's a bad situation for, I mean, it's a bad situation for everyone in the sense that there's a coup happening, but it's a bad situation especially for the military because they don't have their coup preparations in place, so it's easier to knock them off. But what's interesting about this too, is that to a large extent, we're seeing other parts of the Korean state, like, really go after the military right and

this I don't know I mean like I'm hoping this kind of like has a precedent inside of the sort of Korean like liberal democratic societal norms that like you can't let this just unhinged military do all of this stuff the precedent of this sort of like military house cleaning I think is a good one, right? This is gonna be a rare a rare Mia agrees with the people who founded the US moment because oh my god those people suck shit like a bunch of slave-owning genocidal bastards but you know one of the things that they were right about is the political danger to any democratic system of having a standing

army. Right. And especially when you have a set a standing army that's like permanently on a semi war footing, the way the South Korea's is there's always a real political risk that they attempt to seize power and you have to fucking stop them from doing that. And ideally, you just fucking acts as much of it as you possibly can, right? I mean, I think you should act, you ask the entire political system to make sure this doesn't happen.

But, you know, this is a, this is hopefully a good first step. I also wanna mention that the specific charge of insurrection is being thrown at a lot of these people and also at Yoon himself. And like, he absolutely did it did it right like there's not much of a dispute that he did in fact do an insurrection under sort of Korean law and this technically like carries the death penalty but I don't think they're gonna kill him but you know this is the

sort of severity of this stuff under the Korean legal system. And okay, so like all of this fucking chaos is happening, right? And eventually there's a second impeachment vote. And this time the public pressure is enough that the PPP stays in the chamber to vote no. And only about a dozen, like per NPR, only about a dozen PPP lawmakers actually vote to impeach the guy who just tried to have their fucking Parliament disbanded. You know, and this is like one of the really depressing things about this, right? Even

after everything, right? And this is something that that we can trace back to sort of the the roots of the conservatism of the PPP. Even after all of this shit, right? Like these people still backed him. And that's a really, really grim and depressing thing. And part of the reaction to this has been from the South Korean trade union movement, which has been calling for just straight up the disbanding of the PPP as a political party, right? And that's something that I think is extremely reasonable.

Again, if your party's president tries to do a military coup, I think you shouldn't be allowed to have a party anymore. This is the neoliberal opinions, right? Okay, so like eventually this vote does go through. And the stage that we're at right now is that, okay, so once you get impeached by the National Assembly, you're suspended from all your duties and the Prime Minister takes power. So what's happening right now is he doesn't have any power formally, but we're still in this sort

of holding period. We're waiting for the Supreme Court to weigh in and either approve the impeachment or not. And that's kind of where things stand now after an unbelievably unhinged week and a half of just everything being extremely, two weeks I guess, everything being just unbelievably extremely weird. And yeah, but I think there is a mild hopeful note, which is that like, if you fight back against these people, they can be defeated. It sucks, but you can eventually get them to crumble. And all I can really say for this is I hope the South Korean people prevail over the shitty military dictators and I hope that we too are able to sort of prevail in the U.S. against our sort of equivalents of these forces. Welcome to Decisions Decisions, the podcast where boundaries are pushed and conversations

get candid. Join your favorite hosts, me, Weezy WTF, and me me, Mandy B as we dive deep into the world of non-traditional relationships and explore the often taboo topics surrounding dating, sex and love. That's right. Every Monday and Wednesday, we both invite you to unlearn the outdated narratives dictated by traditional patriarchal norms with a blend of humor, vulnerability and authenticity.

We share our personal journeys navigating our 30s, tackling the complexities of modern relationships, and engage in thought-provoking discussions that challenge societal expectations. From groundbreaking interviews with diverse guests to relatable stories that will resonate with your experiences, Decisions Decisions is going to be your go-to source for the open dialogue about what it truly means to love and connect in today's world. Get ready to reshape your understanding of relationships and embrace the freedom of authentic connections. Tune in and join the conversation. Listen to Decisions Decisions on the Black Effect Podcast Network,

iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome. I'm Danny Trejo. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters,

to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturneal Tales from the Shadows as part of my cultura podcast network available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, everyone. It's John, also known as Dr. John Paul. And I'm Jordan or Joe Ho. And we are the Black Fat Film Podcast.

A podcast where all the intersections of identity are celebrated. Ooh chat, this year we have had some of our favorite people on including Kid Fury, T.S. Madison, Amber Ruffin from the Amber and Lacey Show, Angelica Ross and more. Make sure you listen to the Black Fat Fam podcast on the iHeart Radio app, have a podcast or whatever you get your podcast girl. Ooh, I know that's right. I'm Dr. Laurie Santos.

I'm a psychology professor at Yale. And I started to notice that a lot of my students weren't all that happy. So I created a new class. Welcome everybody to psychology and the Good Life. It became the biggest class in the history of you. I'm a little bit surprised to see as many of you are here as are here, but that's great. But it's not just my students who need to understand the science of well-being.

And that's why we launched the Happiness Lab, so you can learn about it too. Are you ready to feel happier? Head to the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or if you like to listen. Brought to you by the 2024 Subaru Share the Love event, now through January 2nd. Welcome to It Could Happen Here, a podcast that I introduce the same way almost every time. I don't know, you listen to the show, right? You're listening at like some point in the future. You probably know the things falling apart, putting back together again, intro. I don't know, you listen to the show, right? You're listening at like some point in the future. You probably know the things falling apart, putting back together again, intro. I don't have to do it.

We are doing something that we have done before and I guess we'll continue to do, which is talking to other Anarchist media projects about their work and how things are going and yeah, the general why, how, what of it all. And today we're talking with the collective of anarchist writers, and very specifically we're talking to Shuli Branson, who is a writer, translator, and teacher currently living in so-called New York. Parla Joy Bergman, who lives across the border in Canada and is a mom, writer, artist, and loves crows.

Very important. We'll be coming back to that in a second. And Vicky Ostewild, who is a worker, writer, and agitator based in Philadelphia. And all three of you, welcome to the show. Hi, thanks for having us. Hi. Thanks so much for having us.

Thanks for having us. Love your project. I also just wanted to give a shout out to our fourth member, Dani Berleson, who's not here today because she's working, paid work, who just rounds us out so beautifully and wanted to say her name. Yeah, I'm excited to talk about this. And partly I'm excited to talk about it

because, so the acronym for this is Caw, and there's a whole crow theme going on, and we love a crow here in Portland. It is maybe our big thing. Yeah, I'm in Vancouver, well, I was in Vancouver, I just stopped from there, but Pacific Northwest. And so it's Crow Highway, you know, thousands and thousands of crows. Oh, yeah, I get it. I think the Crow is like what ultimately sealed the project for us, honestly.

Yeah. Hell yeah. Yeah, it was, it really came together around the Corvid theme, I think. Yeah. The combination of enjoying shiny things, extreme intelligence and never ending spite, I think, yeah. The combination of enjoying shiny things, extreme intelligence and never ending spite, I think are all sort of motivating factors for all of us. So. Yep, yep.

And that they're a collective and have meetings often throughout the day. No, a collective called a murder, which is also pretty bad ass. Yeah. Yeah, there's a huge thing in Portland here where we have the mega murder so every day every like morning all the crows sort of fly off into their different like little murders and they go they

You know they go out and hang out in the city and then At around sunset every day all of the crows fly back into the city to have their like giant mega murder meeting There's thousands and thousands of them You know you look up and you just see them like the herds giant mega murder meeting of thousands and thousands of them. You know, you look up and you just see them like the herds, like the murders, the crow is flying past. And if you there's specific spots in Portland, where you can just go see all of the all the crows hanging out. And, you know, doing doing whatever the things crows do when literally an entire city is where the crows gather together every night. Oh, no, it's a spokes council.

It's not a spokes council, though, because all of them are there. I feel like that's an assembly. Yeah, on Vancouver it's called the Crow Highway. Yeah. Hell yeah. Because it's so massive and goes forever and ever and ever. So there's a brief story on crows and resistance. A really incredible story in Vancouver when a park was, a colonial person created a park in the downtown, which was like displaced a lot of Indigenous people in their homes and designed this park that was filled with crows as well. They also brought in animals from Europe as well to make it pretty. And the crows the crows made it really hard for these animals and so the city of Vancouver for

50 years from 1900 to 1950 gave free range to the Vancouver gun people to go into the park and shoot crows every day. Oh my god. And when I see like the amount of crows that are still alive, it's just a metaphor for indigenous resilience, you know, like it's just so powerful. So it's another reason why I'm like interested in them and in terms of where I was like living. As I've been gathering images for our project that have been specifically trying to find images of crows attacking people, because I think that's good. So it's like, you know, the follow up to what you were saying, Carla is the crows revenge.

Yes. Yeah, one of the things that you know, you kind of have to do here in Portland is you have to kind of like negotiate with the crows. You have to let you leave them like peace offerings and you sort of, you know, when your friends come you let you introduce them to the crows so the crows know that you're okay. It's very sweet. Shiny things. Yeah, we love a crow-based society. And speaking of a crow-based society, yeah, do you want to, I guess, give a brief sort of overview of what CAW is before we get sort of more into it? Yeah, I'm happy to take a spin at that. This is Vicki, by the way. Yeah, so CAW is sort

of like, I mean, it's an anarchist journal of arts and culture that is a collective of anarchist writers. It's also a Corvid appreciation working group. There's a lot of different acronyms for it. And what we are doing is we are bringing all four, at first just all four of our efforts together. So a lot of us work on separate podcasts, we have pedagogical tasks, we have many activist projects that center around culture. You know, I have a newsletter, Shuli has a Patreon, Carla has a newsletter, Danny has also has like an email list.

There's all these different projects. And we realized that like like for all of our talk about mutual aid and working collectively, when it comes to writing and creativity, the market has been so fractured and so alienated and so turned into like everyone has an individual newsletter that they're competing with one another, you know, even though they don't want to be like they want to be, but that's sort of ultimately what's happening is that there's limited sort of customers and there's also this other trend going on right now of this really exciting kind of worker owned journals, a lot of them local local journalism. There's

some in New York and Chicago and there's one in Asheville and all over the country, as well as like on special topics like aftermath, which like does I think the video games and there's 404 media who does tech. There's just like all these different sort of sites doing this sort this thing. I think in some ways, all of us are collectively reinventing the newspapers that have been stolen and destroyed by Capital in a big way. Yeah. There are two goals that we have and I think

Carla speaks really eloquently just to some of this, but one of which is to make writing radical culture work, beautiful, joyful, fun, and also critical movement work to make it sustainable for us and for anyone else who wants to share in this project who we can expand towards, but also to make it easier for people who are reading to have access to these things in one place instead of having to decide who they care for and who they like in order to do that math of who can I afford to subscribe? Like I personally, I don't know if this is true

for everyone else, but personally, I usually have about two or three people I can afford to subscribe to a month and they switch it out just like on a very arbitrary basis, you know, or something like that. That was very technical and financially focused. But what we're really excited to do mostly is support each other's work. Because I think we all really love and admire each other's work and have for a long time. And this is just this really exciting opportunity. Instead of my writing just being for me, it's for Shuli and Carla and Danny now. And that just makes it feel more inspiring and exciting as well as a collective process. Yeah. I mean, connected to the financial aspect, but I think when we were initially discussing

this, the experience of being a writer is trying to find outlets for your writing. Yeah. And if you're trying to get paid for that, you have to sell it to people, right? And so it's very hard to get paid at all for writing. And it's very hard to place your writing in venues that publish it, especially if you're coming from an anarchist angle, because people do not really want to publish things that come to anarchist conclusions. Like, they want you to do all the analysis and whatever, but they don't want you to think about, like, what an action is like.

So, like, you know, you could write for some of the lefty, so-called lefty socialist whatever rags, but they don't, yeah, they won't feature anarchists. They basically even just act as if anarchism doesn't exist, never exists, you know, never existed. They erase the whole history of it. The only serious kind of political force is some kind of democratic socialism. So to us, we wanted to create a place where we can do the writing we want to do without having to make compromises in what we want to say just to

get published. Because that yeah, just that game of like of shopping your stuff around is it's demeaning, it's totally time consuming, it distracts you from actually doing the work. So we were like, let's band together instead of each of us going off wasting our time trying to write. Yeah, and I think one of the other issues with this too, also, is like the pay is just so bad. Like even though like, almost especially the leftist groups, like pay just so rancid and all of the combinations of those things make it really, really hard to just sort of

be an independent writer. And also, okay, jumping back a second to the erasing anarchism exists. This is why I the one that makes me always lose my mind is like, I'm specifically going to name Jocoban here because I don't like them. But like one of the things that Jocoban will do is they'll be covering a strike that is organized by the IWW. It is an IWW union that they will have pictures of the strike where there are a bunch of people holding IWW banners and they will never mention that it was the IWW who organized the strike.

So like, yeah, there is this real sort of conspiracy of silence, I guess, about our politics and the stuff that we do in the world. It's so glaring. Jacobin is definitely a big culprit. And then the podcasts associated with the dig, like they will specifically talking about history where anarchists have been very involved and they just will not mention them I'm like and they sometimes there's really good history and analysis on that podcast But like this is an omission that they clearly are choosing. Yeah, and I think you know self-organization is

effectively the only way out of this because Otherwise you just sort of I don't know how to have to with all of the sort of media gatekeepers like sitting there in front of you with a stick going, no anarchism, bonk. Yeah, and even the projects that have sustained, that have survived, which are all really awesome, you know, like, and exciting. Like, very few of them have offered real sustainability, like, on a professional level. And like, I've been publishing quote unquote professionally for 15 years, and I'm the newest writer on the scene from our crew basically.

We're incredibly experienced and all of us have books out, all of us have edited volumes, all of us have podcasts and are people who I really respect, whose names I think are big and important in the world of theory and activism and in the Anglophone world especially. And none of us can sustain ourselves as writers as such because of the way that just, you know, both politically, but also just like the way the market has come down. Yeah.

And it just feels like something we could apply our politics to solving as a workplace issue rather than just sort of as like a, you know, are you committed enough to sacrifice all your time issue? And so hopefully like that will also function to make more work available to produce and to platform and to, yeah, to sort of work as an example simultaneously. Unfortunately, speaking of speaking of sustaining work as a platform, unfortunately, the way we are sustained here is with these ads. So hold on. We are back. And this, I guess, brings us to the kind of work that's happening here.

And I was very excited because one of the things you all have done is an interview with Rawool Zabecki, who is the author of like one of my favorite quotes of all time. I think I've said on this show like multiple times, I really ran into in a sort of completely unrelated book called Rhythms of the Pachacuti, which is about the sort of the water and gas wars in Bolivia. I talked about this book on the show like all the time. This quote goes roughly like struggle illuminates the divisions of a society like lightning illuminates the sky and I love it. It's like it's like the best

explanation of what happened during 2020 that I've ever seen. And this is sort of what's happening like right now too is like you have these sort of flashpoint moments where where you know, suddenly like all of how society works very briefly becomes visible and you have this sort of moment when you're illuminated by it to act. And so I'm, I dunno, I'm, I'm really excited that you are talking to him and. Yeah. Cause you talked a bit about more about what's been going on and what's to come. I'm sure.

Thanks. That was a highlight. Definitely. This year was talking to Raul, obviously, you know, a podcast go, we talked for quite a bit longer than what was on the show. And I think like reading his newest book that was translated and then doing that show with him, it was completely connected to me,

like reaching out to Shuli about doing Ka because there was a way that he talked about this whole idea of disappearing symmetries that the Zapatistas are working on, like this idea of really truly looking at all the fault lines within we, horizontality or autonomy that we don't actually enact in our day to day lives. And so I really started to reflect on my own life that way. And not so much Vicky at this point yet, but like Julie and Danny,

both of them like we're blurbing each other's books and like supporting each other to connecting to publishers or trying to connect each other to publishers and just this like trying to disrupt a competitive nature that's running underneath even when we're all really committed to not being competitive, but there's like it is like there's a, you know, so all of this to not being competitive, but there's like, it is like there's a, you know,

so all of this to say that for me, like collaboration is at the heart of what we're doing here in a deep, deep way. And for me, collaboration just means that when something is created that wouldn't be created otherwise without this collaboration. So I'm just really excited to see what sparks and comes up individually but also like with each other and even like through collaborations like the show with Raul and like how that spreads seeds and ideas. Yeah so like for myself I'm going to definitely focus on collaboration in a deep way. I don't think I'll write very much solo stuff for Ka. I think it will always be in conversation with others and just trying to double down on on doing it together instead of individual pursuits. Yeah and that's something I think is useful for everyone listening to this is that like

it's a lot easier to develop better ideas and you know it makes your writing more clear it makes the way that you you know just the way you act in the world a lot more clear when you're working with other people. And it's you know, it's the process by which the best stuff gets created. Yeah, I mean, I think that's really true. And I think, like, I have for a long time now sort of accepted that writing is never going to support or sustain me, and all I needed was a push from a few other people to be like, wait, what if we actually tried to do it collectively?

To be like, oh yeah, I could actually try that. I don't have to just accept that I always have a full-time job plus whatever writing, whatever hours I can steal with great difficulty, put out some writing sometimes, and then always feel guilty when I'm not putting out enough to sustain myself. That whole process, I think a lot of creatives right now know that struggle, of having gigs and work and lots of other important things to do, and accepting that that's the conditions.

I think what's so inspiring about, because Carla, as Carla was just mentioning, they sort of brought, I'm the last one on the crew, and I was sort of the closer or whatever. But I think, I'm the last one on the crew and I was the closer or whatever. But I think, I don't know what that means genuinely, but I was brought in and I think just having them propose it already just as a project that we've been thinking of has changed the way I've been thinking about what is possible with the writing I'm already

doing. And so I think just to underline that point and go on and on and on, collaboration's really, really like important and supporting one another is so, is so powerful. Yeah. When Carla and I initially had like the seed conversation of this, like Carla said something about collectivizing as writers, like we talked about it with all these other other workplaces and industries and whatever. And it was like, when she said that, I was like, oh yeah, that makes so much sense. We're off here doing our own thing. And as Vicky said, you do it sort of with the knowledge

that it's not sustainable, you steal your time to do it. Even the supposed jobs that are there to enable you to write, actually make you do all of this other work. So like the time for writing is always like endlessly deferred. And we have that image also like of the patron or something or like Virginia Woolf says, you need like money enough to have a room of one's own.

But if we put ourselves together in this way, then we are trying to, yeah, I don't know, create more time for ourselves to write. And then like going back to something Vicky said earlier about like reinventing the newspaper, there was a time in anarchism where like, I think we talked about this amongst ourselves, like where like every block

had like a Yiddish anarchist newspaper, right? It wasn't like you had one newspaper telling all the anarchists what to think. It was like, it was hyper-local in a way and there was so many voices and so I think that's another thing that we want to do is like help for that proliferation because in the sort of spirit of collaboration like the reason to write as an anarchist for me is to have conversations to produce the possibility for people to like receive it and then Then contact me and I get into conversations with people and learn things from them. Yeah and I think there's an angle there too

where like I think we're kind of okay so I was a tiny baby when all this was happening so I'm gonna have to rely on y'all for this but like I you know one of the things I get from sort of reading the record about like the older anarchist movement I mean when I say older I mean like like anti anti globalization era stuff was like there were there seemed like there was a lot more of a kind of like anarchist media sphere. Are you talking about like the late 90s? Yeah, like, like, like to the 2000s, to some extent, like Battle Seattle. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that was like the, you know, the birth of anarchy again, right? Yeah,

I was definitely around. I'm in my late 50s. But the same struggle was there, like that we're swimming in liberalism and like that socialist worker, like capturing of the movement was just as powerful then. And it was, you saw it at all the rallies and stuff. And, you know, immediately anarchism was marginalized and pushed off as irrelevant and not practical for the revolution. And this is why it's splintered off in all these kind of sectarian movements. And that's my take anyway.

I think that's, no, it makes sense. It makes sense. I mean, I've hashed this out with so many older anarchists that I was part of Institute for Anarchist Studies. Like we've talked about this a lot, this phenomena with Scott Crowe. And you can just see the direct line of where it went into sectarianism from this sort of rebirth. Sorry, I went off on a different thing instead of like journals and media, but yes. No, no. Well, this is good too.

Because like I think that's the only thing I've been realizing is like people don't, I mean in my generation too, but like people younger than me don't really know the history of this stuff. Like all the time I have conversations with people where I start talking about like the Oaxaca uprising and they have no idea what I'm talking about. And I'm like, Oh no, we need to like, we need to like resuscitate the history of like the two thousands because stuff happened there. So I wasn't actually active at that point, but I was very adjacent to some of that stuff at the moment. Some of that was actually because a lot of what was going on in the alter globalization movement in that period was happening through culture.

I think most famously, touring punk bands would also bring zine libraries with them. So they would have someone destroying zines and playing the show. I got radicalized through punk. I know a lot of people who did. When I finally did, it was after that movement had largely crested. But I think there was a lot of focus on culture and also a critique of culture was also pretty central to how people were thinking and moving.

And I think the explosion of social media and posting and this sort of quote unquote democratization and leveling of communication capabilities, which in some ways was more real in the early 2010s than it is certainly than it is now. It wasn't totally like a made up narrative, but it was also over relied on. I think people sort of reached for a kind of like, well, anyone who can use these tools to communicate, that's valuable. So critiquing sort of media in general or critiquing sort of capitalist media is sort of beside the point because we can go around it. We can sort of go, we can go on

Twitter and subvert it and we can like do all these, you know, go sideways around it. So I was, you know, a participant in Occupy Wall Street in 2011, which people also don't know anything about because that's, he's just being older. But Occupy Wall Street was started by a magazine called Adbusters, which came out of the WTO movement and sort of managed to stick around. And by 2011, when they did that, we thought it was like a joke. It was like, oh, these culture jammers who like make fun of advertisements, like they started the movement. Like that's ridiculous, right? Like that's silly. And like this is not to defend Adbusters. I think whatever. Yeah, there's some issues with them, but they also did think, I don't know.

Yeah. But also I think that reaction of like culture jamming is sort of stupid or like, you know, like talking about who wants to talk about culture at this point. I think that that made sense in the context in which we were moving and organizing. But like now once again, it is clear that by abandoning the cultural sphere in many ways, we have in fact lost a tremendous amount of ground. So I think it's actually really important to have cultural organizations that aren't just theory, that aren't just news, but that are really talking about art and beauty and excitement and joy and fiction and all these things that we find really important because, you know, I think a lot of people sort of think, well, it's a crisis moment, you know, the world's ending,

why would you do that? But like the world has been ending since 1492, like the world worth defending has been ending since then. And it hasn't ended yet. And one of the ways it hasn't ended is by indigenous and black and other marginalized cultures and stories and narratives and works of art has been an important mode of history and resistance, just as much as organizing and struggle. And yeah, I think we can move some struggle onto that terrain right now.

And I think there's a lot of craving for it now because I think also for a while, things felt really oversaturated. But the last five years, the internet doesn't feel helpful anymore. Everything feels like streaming is a mess. Everything's a mess. There's no access to culture that feels good.

Everyone hates what they're doing. They know it's exploiting the artists. They know Spotify is giving people pennies and that HBO and all the streaming services support Amazon and they're just miserable. I think there's a real opening and a real desire for something else at this moment, at the same time that things are indeed quite on fire, literally, ecocitally, but also sort of politically. Yes. We think of everything being on fire. We need to take an ad break and then we will come back and I think the deliberate political intervention here.

We are back from capital hellscape to mildly less capital hellscape. Yeah, actually you were going to say? Yeah, I wanted to just build on this culture thing because, you know, after October 7th, when people are getting together to try to figure out how in the United States to do some kind of work in action and support and solidarity with Gaza and the Palestinian liberation movement. Like people were just sort of like, what the hell can we even do? And one of the things that I would say to people is like, just putting up stickers and writing about Gaza on the walls, like in graffiti has a huge impact.

And it's overlooked often, I think, as like something that's effective, but we can see that there has been a giant cultural shift after October 7th in terms of people's awareness of the Israeli genocide against the Palestinians and then support for the Palestinians. I think that it has to do really, you know, post October 7th with the fact that this was like kind of plastered everywhere. And so it's easy to kind of think that that isn't action. But to me in a way, doing something like that is more effective than the kind of marching in circles that we can do that we call protest. And you know, like going back to punk, I think also punk gets a bad rap sometimes because you know, in that line of like the kind of book-shin lifestyleism,

but I don't think we should downplay it. Like punk created its own culture of people doing everything themselves to make it happen. It's where I got radicalized too, and they were like, it was anarchist, right? It was like explicitly anarchist, and you were living in an anarchist way and like creating things in an anarchist way and like creating

things in an anarchist way and it was this whole other world. So like if we put our anarchist energy into culture, it's part of making a world that we want to live in, you know, over and against this world, this hell world that we're also trying to destroy at the same time. So I think we shouldn't kind of just like dismiss this as as less important than than the other kinds of actions that we can take. They're here. Yeah, and that brings me to something I wanted to sort of ask about, like, more deliberately, which is like, what's the kind of specific political intervention that you're trying to make into this moment with with this project both sort of, I guess, a bit more generally too? Big question. I mean, my work has always been about intervening around any kind of dominant narratives that

things are just now bad or that people don't know what anything or pedagogically they're lacking. Like I've always tried to intervene around this idea that we've always been otherwise and we always are. And there's always cracks everywhere and eruptions of radical ways of being and knowing and doing. And so it's like a deepening of that. And I think probably on a systemic thinking systemically is really about disrupting individualism or liberalism or empire, whatever you want to call it, colonialism, to really live it in the everyday.

So that's partly that. And then on just a super practical level, all of us don't have wealth, don't have generational wealth, are working all the time to try to meet ends meet. And some of us have housing insecurity and other real basic needs are insecure and health stuff and so like actually showing up for each of us is at the core of it for me like I it feels so good in my body to know that I'm not just showing up to think about what to do for Ka for me it's like it's in the act of collectivism for each other. And so I'm just open to what sparks and emerges with our work. I don't have

an agenda, except for to disrupt and intervene belief systems that are ideologically driven by empire. And I also came of age in the early 80s in the punk scene and had a venue space. And to me, punk is, and I would say hip hop as well, underground hip hop stuff is like always the way to disrupt being captured by Empire or from liberalism is to keep that punk ethos of doing it together and keeping it low to the ground. Yeah. Nicole Sarris Yeah. Yeah. I just like to build on that, Carla, because I think that was really beautiful. I second everything that you said. Many of us have a perspective that huge structural change is going to need to come and that often that will come through these big social movements,

that these explosions of energy, that these lightning strikes, right? But you can't force those. You can't make those happen. And in the meantime, you can, I think I've spent a lot of my in the mean times in trying to sort of organize stuff that's sort of oriented towards mass movement, you know, and it just feels, often feels like wheel spinning, you know, like I'm building, I'm trying to build mass movement organizing, like, you know, like whatever that means. And in the 2010s, one of the things that happened from 2011, arguably 2009, but definitely 2011 to 2020 was that wherever you were, it was never more than probably 18 months before there was something else going off in the streets. And so although those could be very hard, those waves could be very difficult, you still

had a lot of periods where you could just be waiting and it sort of be waiting and it would just sort of happen again. That was certainly what I was doing in that decade in a way that I don't think I appreciated until it was over. Because the last four years has been very different. The rhythm has been very different since the pandemic started. And I can't just say panini on this podcast. Okay.

Um... Everyone does it, right? Yeah, since the dynamics started, um,, those, those rhythms have been disrupted. And I think the Biden counter revolution against way 20, which has also really disrupted those things. And in that space, it has felt very clear to me personally, and I'm older, you know, whatever I'm like, you know, a movement elder at this point, just because our movements are so youth focused, not because I'm actually old. The decade before

2011, from like 2001, from 9-11 until sort of Occupy is sort of how I periodize it a bit. There wasn't a ton of street movement. You had the Iraq War stuff that was really, really big and there were important exceptions to that in the US. I'm doing a pod in history here. Obviously there's exceptions to this, but you definitely had all this time and the stuff that was sustained and remembered were largely like sort of cultural projects. And so like, I think like now as we're moving into this era here in North America on Turtle Island of extreme repressive danger, right? Like we shouldn't like joke about it or downplay it. Like we're facing a lot of extreme repression and fascists back in the streets in a big

way. It doesn't feel like big political organizing of the kind that happened during the first Trump administration where people did a lot of marching in circles, but there were targets for the pressure. They don't feel as relevant now. So now I'm really off, now I'm way off. But no, I think we're in this moment where the fascists both are quite empowered and very unfocused. They're confused. They don't really have us in their sights. They think Liz Cheney is just as much a revolutionary as Assata Shakur or whatever, right?

Yeah. And that leaves us some space to move and to build things that can maintain a spirit of resistance, that can reproduce a culture of resistance, that can also organize. And another thing that has really been important for me recently with Ka is that I've been doing an organizing project that I won't talk about the details of, but that the skills have largely come from punk music that I did in the 20s, in my 20s, being in a touring punk band. And those skills have made this organizing really easy.

And that's been a huge thing for me because I'm working with other people who are younger who don't have that experience. They're like, oh, how do you do this? I'm like, oh, no, no, it's so easy. You just like do this, you know, here's these skills I learned just from doing music. And like, I don't think that's just like accidental. As Julie was saying, like the DIY nature of some of that work, the culture work, you know, maybe the band wasn't revolutionary, the bands I was in certainly weren't like the revolution or whatever. but they gave me all of these powerful skills and ideas and concepts for doing really important work. And I think that that's also a reason to pursue DIY culture in a way that's genuinely sustainable and world building. I think like if I can build off this too and I'm going to try to do some

tying together of things, but like one of the ways that I think about my Contribution is to think about like let's not like don't look there Like let's look over here and that can mean of multiple things which is often when people think of politically they're looking at these big Moments or big actions or like top-down solutions Which means that we take our attention away from these other places where we're doing all this stuff, like, like Carla was saying, like, we're already doing a lot of important kind of like life making work. And then also there's moments in our movements where we have to be like, you all look over here while we do stuff over here, right? Like you, you

don't want to be seen all the time. So we have to be able to direct our attention to the things that we do, and then also keep some of that stuff under wraps. And that means it's hard sometimes to see. And because it's so decentralized and anarchism really functions through decentralization, like we're not always aware of how much power we actually have and what's going on at any one moment. And going back to the kind of moments, even tracing back to, you know, the Battle of Seattle, and I think it's like ever more present today in all to the kind of moments, even tracing back to, you know, the Battle of Seattle, and I think it's like ever more present today in all of the kinds of organizing for street actions that are being done, that a lot of the groundwork for any of these moments is done by anarchists,

and then it's not either claimed by anarchists or stolen from anarchists. Like, we make everything sort of run run and anarchism makes everything run. And then it just gets ignored because it's not about taking credit. It's not about kind of imposing itself. And so I think like that kind of in between of saying what we're doing and sharing that knowledge and then keeping under wraps so that we can keep chugging along. And then just also being aware of when our work is being stolen and then repurposed for something that goes against what we want. I think these are all ways for us to prepare for those moments of like explosion or eruption

where anarchy really manifests and then we can kind of taste freedom for a moment. Love it. Yeah, I think the way I've always thought about it was this kind of like, it's this like flame tending process, where in these sort of flow cycles, your job is to keep the flame alive. And eventually, you know that you're going to see it, like, you know, you're going to see the explosion again, right, you're going to see the flame for up but like that that doesn't happen unless the flame is still there.

And unless people have been tending it and people have been trying to make it grow and you can't Necessarily just like add fuel to it and be like ah, it's gonna it's gonna grow now, right? It you know, you don't you don't really have control of how it sort of moves and grows it expands But you have control over your ability to like make sure that it keeps going absolutely all about the numbers. Yeah.

And I think also like I think about the punk metaphor a lot, like one of the ways that I've been thinking a lot about like what we're doing here and it could happen here is we kind of took the like we took the rage against the machine gambit, which is to say we were like we're like, OK, we're going to go to try to go somewhat mainstream in order to. I mean, Braje, well, obviously, like, went way bigger than we did. But like, we're gonna go try to some we're

gonna go like somewhat mainstream, so we can like, spread this thing to a larger group of people. That's also very, very dangerous, in the sense that like, it's very easy to sort of just lose yourself in the kind of mire of like the field you've walked into. But on the other hand, the upside about it is that we're not the only people Doing this right and there's all of you out there who are doing we're doing this like everyone on this call is doing this like is doing the like like the DIY work that is going to be the Core of what this whole thing becomes and the more the more of these media projects we get and the more that people are able to sustain themselves Doing this the more that we're sort of able to break like, I don't know, just like the

monomaniacal sub stack control of like taking your money and giving it to transphobes kind of thing, the better shape we're going to be in in the years to come. Exactly. And speaking of which, one thing anarchists are famously bad at doing is accepting that we do require money and asking for it. So I'm going to do that for the squad. We are currently fundraising because it's actually really hard to make something sustainable for four people. And we have a fundraiser going on. If you like what we're talking about here, you can donate to our Indiegogo.

Literally anything helps. Once we fully launch in February, we're going to have a pay what you want subscription model. So everything will be subscribed. But we really want to have three months worth of living wage for all of us to do two days a week on it. So we're not even, we're not talking full salaries and that's $45,000, just because four people for three months, it's not even a tremendous amount of money. Because we're including solidarity funds in that and like paying any writers who contribute, like lots of other stuff. So yeah, if you have a few bucks and maybe

you're thinking about getting off of one of those substacks or something and you want to throw our way, we would be absolutely honored. I'm very excited to accept anything in this launch. And if you don't have that money, which is true for a lot of us, which is why we feel bad asking for the money, because there are so many people who need it right now, you can subscribe online, you can find us on social media and keep in touch until we do launch and then you can join and subscribe that way. That's also a really great way to support us. But if you have a few bucks you want to throw, if you want to give someone a present of a year's membership, you can get that for a hundred dollars for the holidays,

radicalize your uncle, just with our work. We'd really, really appreciate it. And yeah. Thanks, Vicki. Yeah. And I don't know, I'm excited for this.'d really, really appreciate it. And yeah. Thanks, Vicki. Yeah. And I don't know, I'm excited for this. There's already been a bunch of great stuff that's up on the site. We will have links to everything in the description. Yeah, thank you. Thank you three for coming on the show. And I'm really excited about this. Well, thanks for having us. Yeah, thanks for the chance to share it. And like I always say, like, if anyone

is interested and wants to get in touch, I'm happy to hear from you. And yeah, same. And reach out to us to a few ideas on what cost stands for. We love hearing from people. My favorite is can anarchists right? That's what it stands for. I don't know who came up with that.

I think that might have been surely a big, but it's a good one. TBD, TBD. So yeah, send in what you think. And we are going to have an advice column that's going to be launched soon. Yeah, so send us questions or individually or whatever, but disrupt individualism. Reach out to us. Yeah, thanks so much. And yeah, as a long time listener, first time caller, it's really exciting to be on here.

So thank you, Mia, so much. That's not true. Hold on. Oh, second time, dang it. All right, sorry, I was on really once. It's like, hold on, hold on. I just go on so many podcasts, Mia. Like, can you blame me? No, I'm just kidding.

I'm just kidding. Sorry, yeah. Well, anyway, it's really exciting to be here and talking to everyone, and we hope to meet y'all in the future. And Ka will have a, well, we will have a Discord community. We'll be having writing class. We're going to have a lot of really exciting stuff.

So even if you can't throw in money right now, please sign up to our website, cawshinythings.com, stay in touch and find out all the really cool stuff we're doing. Just to reiterate, all the stuff that we're already doing is now going to have a home in CAW. So my essays and podcasts, Vicki's reviews and essays, and Carla's many projects, which include podcasts and writing and these interviews,

and Danny's writing and classes. Yeah, this is all moving there plus new things. Doing it together. Yeah. In that spirit, you too, dear listener, can do things together and go disrupt this world. So go do that now instead of listening to whatever else is happening on the show. This ending is not going well, but go disrupt things.

Get it. Thanks so much. Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, CoolZoneMedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for It Could Happen Here listed directly in episode descriptions.

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